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Con-solatio, Compassion, and Friendship
I was honored this week to have been chosen by Con-solatio to receive their annual Compassion Award at a ceremony in New York City. Con-solatio sends missionaries around the world to the poorest and most forlorn places on the planet. The goal is not to convert people or to educate them or to build them houses. It is simply to console them, to show them compassion, to be their friends.All Categories
Whiteness Talk and Class Talk
Roger BerkowitzDaniel Denvir interviews Barbara Fields and Karen Fields, the sisters who wrote the extraordinary book Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life. The Field sisters coin the word “Racecraft” to name the magical process through which the fiction of race is made real. When a police officer who is black is conjured as a black man, this conjuring trick is what allows that officer to be discriminated against or even killed
A Jewish Home
Roger BerkowitzPeter Beinart acknowledges what he calls “the painful truth” that there is not going to be a two-state solution in the Middle East. Given that reality, Beinart asks, what is the path forward? Growing numbers of Palestinians embrace a one-state solution. But in Israel and amongst Jews, the one-state solution crosses a red line, since it would likely mean the end of Israel as a Jewish state.
Discussion: MLK and the Legacy of Civil Disobedience in America
Kenyon Victor Adams; Amy Schiller; Thomas Chatterton WilliamsSince we are here concerned with citizenship, I want to preface my brief remarks by signaling the relationship between citizenship and national memory, and how the concept of race, as we see in various historical examples, necessarily replaces that of citizenship.
National Security and Suppression
Roger BerkowitzLily Kuo writes about the impact of the new National Security Legislation that is being imposed by China on Hong Kong. The law defines national security crimes broadly, allows suspects to be sent to China for trial, permits Chinese state agents to work in Hong Kong, expands police powers, and allows secret trials without juries.
What We Are Reading:
The State of Culture
Samantha HillIn the new issue of Salmagundi,Thomas Chatterton Williams, Margo Jefferson, Darryl Pinckney, John McWhorter, and Orlando Patterson debate “The Black Intellectual & The Condition of the Culture.”
Innocent Victims
Roger BerkowitzYascha Mounk discusses three recent instances in which individuals have been fired or punished for expressing opinions (or being thought to have expressed opinions) that were said to have been inconsistent with perceived pieties. Mounk looks deeply into these cases and shows that while the effort to use this political moment has good intentions and is rightfully seeking to root out racial injustice, overreactions that punish people...
Scaling Moderation
Roger BerkowitzIn an Interview with Kevin Roose, Steve Huffman explains his decision as CEO and co-founder of Reddit to ban a series of groups on the platform including “The Donald,” a group populated by many supporters of President Trump that has become “a source of countless memes, slogans and conspiracy theories that made their way into the broader online conversation.
Demagogic Democracy
Roger BerkowitzDemocracy is the rule of the people. Demagoguery is the people being led by a speaker who sparks and appeals to the people’s passions. Charles Sykes writes about a public hearing in Palm Beach, Florida in which citizens scream and yell at public health experts who argue that wearing masks should be required to help control the pandemic.