Other Writing

Once you're done reading this, ask yourself, "Where have I seen this before? Where am I seeing this now?" Unless you're blind, or choose to be, I think you'll know where you're seeing it. Seeing it is the first step to stopping it, and maybe you'll help put an end to it.

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Throughout the centuries, and into 2025, the tools of oppression have always been the same. They train their victims to accept less than what freedom provides, and they train people to accept less of themselves and each...

The Path to “Salvation” Isn’t as Straight and Narrow as So Much of the Church Seems to Believe

Like many people, I’ve been struggling for several years with what the church has come to represent to so much of the world — rigid, judgmental, intellectually barren, heartless, and clannish. As I told a friend recently, it’s really difficult to claim Christianity when so much of it looks so ugly.

Yet, I am a Christian, and I believe the God I worship has the power to transform individuals, nations,...

I first learned about the racial caste system created by Jim Crow laws during the late 1950s. I spent most of my young life in my hometown, St. Louis, but each summer, my younger sister, Joan, and I would travel to tiny Cash, Arkansas — Population 141, according to the signs posted at each edge of the town’s only paved road.

As one family member or another drove us south into Arkansas, our surroundings changed from substantial brick homes, well-stocked grocery stores, the massive...

I want to believe I grew up in an unprejudiced family, but I know it’s not true. My mother and aunts, when they spoke about Black people at all, tried to be charitable, but they also were patronizing. “They’re good people,” they’d say, or, “The ones we knew in Arkansas were always good to us.”

On the other hand, their brother, my Uncle John, probably would be called a white supremacist today. The language he used about Black people was disgusting, but it wasn’t uncommon on St. Louis’s South...

Throughout my career, I occasionally ran up against people who were more than willing to volunteer as interpreters for Black people, as in

“What Vera is trying to say is . . . .”

This always struck me as a rude putdown. Just let Vera speak for herself, I thought. As often as not, the “interpreters” were only pushing her aside to make whatever point they wanted to make.

For most of history, that’s what has happened to Black Americans, especially in books, movies, and television programs. With a...

It’s March in Phoenix. I’m shoehorned into a row of folding chairs in center left at Chase Field, looking up at a Jumbotron, watching Billy Joel’s hands glide effortlessly across his keyboard. Strangely, they look bruised and scraped, as if he’s been in a brawl.

I’m lukewarm about the musician known as the piano man. I like his music well enough, but I’ve never put out even ninety-nine cents to download one of his tunes. I prefer baseball to Billy, so I’m taking time to appreciate what it...

Johnny Krackenstein is drifting down the hall, ducking into one office after another. He prides himself on “management by walking around,” and he walks around way more than he should, for my taste. I often wonder whether he ever does any “management by sitting his butt in a chair and working.”

Johnny owns Get Kracken Public Relations. He’s a “hiya, hiya” PR guy, and I’m not. But to be fair, Johnny is a hell of a rainmaker, which I’m also not. As he navigates the hall, he passes posters,...