I sent my children to Scarowinds last week, and I do not feel at all guilty about it. Scarowinds is the end-of-season hurrah for Charlotte’s theme park, Carowinds. Staff dress up in Halloween costumes, the park stays open late, and…
Who’s behind the nationwide attacks on local school boards over Critical Race Theory?
School boards across America are under attack by conservative parents whose fears of woke liberalism are being stoked by national organizations affiliated with Donald Trump and the Republican Party, as well as Fox News and other conservative media outlets. The…
The history of Haiti you probably don’t know
Recent news coverage of U.S. Border Patrol agents on horseback chasing asylum-seekers from Haiti who tried to enter the United States at Del Rio, Texas, is disturbing. The images harken back to a time when white slave patrols used horses…
How the oldest American lie sustains our racial malaise
I have spent 50 years teaching college students from coast to coast and points in between, and while much has changed over the course of those 50 years, one thing has remained unchanged: the students’ abysmal ignorance of the negative…
Learning to sit with generational grief
I sat in bed staring at my laptop, the dozens of Google tabs detailing the journey I’d been on. Books were buried in my comforter, creating a type of literary war zone. My ojeras (the bags under my eyes) decorated…
Knowing our history does not make us anti-American
“Denial is not a river in Egypt.” I used to hear that sarcastic and humorous pun without really understanding it. After reading too much news for the last year, I understand it too well now. If you’re as slow as…
Making peace with my ancestral research
My husband and I have enjoyed delving into our ancestries. At one point in the past, we visited upstate New York, where we looked at gravestones, nearly erased with acid rainfall, and at documents in the historical archives in county…
Pharaoh is the model for American politicians who want to forget our history
The stories we tell matter. The stories some try to silence matter, too, maybe even more. Legislatures across our country are using the rhetoric of fear to push through bills that seek to control the story of our country. So…
Making the case for why Black History Month is necessary
Black History Month has its critics, but Chalice Overy isn’t one of them. Overy, associate pastor at Pullen Memorial Baptist Church in Raleigh, N.C., said the focus on Black heroes and accomplishments every February growing up prepared her for being…