B'more I N C R E M E N T A L

Image source: Evan Vucci/Associated Press Professor Ibram X. Kendi really opened my thinking about racism and my own antiracism with his impressive, thorough and National-Book-Award-winning book Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America. (If you haven’t read it yet, you should. It’s long, and it’s worth every minute.) Ever since I read the book last year, I’ve been following Dr. Kendi’s writing. He is a prolific thinker and an active commen

I first read How Studying Talmud Helped Me Understand Racism in America at a legislative kick-off for Jews United for Justice in January. On initial reading I felt it was just a new way to say ideas I was already familiar with, namely intention does not equal impact. But the more I processed this essay, the more I realized Avi Killip is actually saying something more nuanced. Killip overlays categories of injury from the Talmud onto racism. These categories were articulated b

For the December reading selection at BHC, I decided to focus on a few poems rather than a single article. I’ve been procrastinating writing this wrap-up because I haven’t written about poetry since my first year of college—more than twenty years ago. In short, bear with me as I walk you through these titles. The 6 poems selected ended up falling neatly into three pairs. I wish I could tell you I planned it that way from the beginning, but the truth is I got lucky. I selected

When I visited NMAAHC (see here for a little about the visit), I took some time to shop the gift store. Browsing the offerings, one (giant) book caught my eye. More than 500 pages long, an impressively thick volume, Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi, bears a subtitle that is hard to resist for me: “The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America.” It also bears the seal of a National Book Award Winner. And so, intimidated by the length but intrigued by the title,

This morning, I spontaneously awoke before five. In my mind was the image of Philando Castille, bleeding to death in the passenger seat of a car, a gun still pointed at him. The world watched his last breaths alongside his fiancee, with their little girl in the backseat. He was executed by an officer who was sworn to protect the Constitution. His crime was making the officer afraid--so afraid that he unloaded seven rounds from his state-issued weapon. Yesterday, a jury acquit

A few months ago, I was talking to an old friend of mine about his daughter’s experience in Kindergarten. Nick told me about his daughter confronting her teacher about George Washington. The teacher told the class that Washington was a great man. My friend’s daughter piped up, “but he owned slaves!” The teacher responded, “he was still a great man!” and expected the conversation to be over. As we stood in line waiting for sandwiches, Nick, who is Black, proceeded to express h

On Tuesday March 7, a small group gathered at Baltimore Hebrew Congregation to discuss two essays by our fellow-Baltimorean, D. Watkins. Together, we read Stoop Stories and Too Poor for Pop Culture. Those of us gathered that evening were all relatively privileged--middle to upper-middle class, white skin, cis gendered. We all noted the stark difference between the Baltimore we know and the one that Watkins describes in his essays. Our group spent a good deal of time talking a

I started this trip with a few other travelers right after the Uprising in Baltimore. Here are the books and articles we've read together between then and now: 1. Irving, Debby, Waking Up White: And Finding Myself in the Story of Race. 2. Alexander, Michelle, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness 3. Coates, Ta-Nehisi, Between the World and Me, 4. Coates, Ta-Nehisi, "The Case for Reparations" in The Atlantic 5. Cracking the Codes: The System of Raci

I wanted to start B'more Incremental here, because it helps you understand why I am working for incremental change in the first place. This post was originally written as a part of my participation in the Institute for Islamic Christian and Jewish Studies' Imagining Justice in Baltimore project. It was originally published on ICJS's blog on the Huffington Post. Dear God, I have been asked to write an essay about how religion fits into imagining justice in Baltimore. I’ve deci