A Specter is Haunting America

A “Free Kim Davis” banner during the 2015 controversy over issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

A specter is haunting America: the specter of a growing, almost viral xenophobia and an increasingly assertive conservatism.

The political arena seems more agitated than ever. Police officers are being shot, minorities take to the streets to insist on the value of their lives, and state clerks are imprisoned for refusing to issue marriage licenses to gay couples.

The election of a Black American president seems, somehow, to have stretched the bonds of society close to their limits. Liberal forces in America appear to be moving at a rapid pace, while a significant part of the country remains unwilling to embrace those changes.

Perhaps that is why opposing voices are growing in number and becoming louder.

For the sake of the country, I can only hope that social change will come in more measured steps, and that tolerance and good judgment will ultimately prevail.

Ferguson Aftermaths

Picture by Peoples World under Creative Common License

It took centuries for the United States to achieve even a measure of racial harmony. Many of us saw the inauguration of an African American president in 2009 as definitive proof of that hard-won mutual understanding. Yet the recent shooting of a young Black man in Ferguson, Missouri, and the reactions it provoked have cast doubt on that belief.

Is there a threat of Neo-Racism in the United States?

The country’s social balance now appears to be in crisis. Like any crisis, this one may also offer an opportunity for individual and collective growth.

Whether the events in Ferguson deepen existing divisions or open a path toward greater understanding will depend largely on how the communities involved respond. And the community involved is, ultimately, the whole of American society.

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Below is a painful expression of the cultural currents these events have stirred within the Black community.