by Michael Friday The American Department of Homeland Security has issued a warning for violent extremism, fueled by falsehoods, lies, and misinformation. One public affairs researcher wonders if American politics are now a rehearsal for civil war, while a former intelligence officer says this danger is on par with what ISIS was a decade ago.…
In her excellent and justifiably best-selling book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in The Age of Colorblindness, (The New Press, NY 2012) Michelle Alexander argues and substantiates that “racism is highly adaptable” (p.21ff). Establishing that America has always had a system where the white race sought to control first the American Indians and then…
by Michael P. Friday I can do parallel thinking. After all, is not life lived in 7.1 surround sound, even when it’s not a cacophony of movements?! Parallel thinking is an extension of logical thinking, and is consistent thinking (although it might appear contradictory). My doctoral studies adviser used to say, “thinking is hard work;…
For some days now, I have been watching, piece by piece, an Amazon Original documentary entitled Human Flow (Jeff Bezos can send me 0000.1% of this week’s earnings as payment for this advertisement). It is a harrowing depiction of refugees, refugee camps, the precious human beings whom are what some folks disdainfully or even dispassionately call “refugees”…
Several years ago, I sat in an adult Sunday school class in an American church. Around me were several people whom I would have no hesitation to call fundamentally good. My wife and I were two of the three people of color in that room, of about 15-20 persons. I can’t recall what was the…
I had been an immigrant merely 5 months that fateful Tuesday morning when 19 wicked men flew two airliners into the majestic twin towers on Manhattan Island, one into the Pentagon, and yet another, forced into the ground by heroes, in Shanksville, PA. The mayhem, shock, sadness, and disbelief of that surreal day were superseded…