Since the American Revolution, Americans have been divided about what the American Dream means. Is it about freedom and equality for all - or personal wealth? And what difference does it make? I gave this sermon on July 5, 2026, at Shoreline Unitarian Universalist Church in Shoreline, Washington.
How AI helps scammers seduce authors.
On March 25, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution unequivocally condemning the transatlantic slave trade and calling for reparations. The resolution seems squarely aimed at the United States, although many other countries were involved in the trade, and many more have slavery in their histories. What’s going on? Ghana proposed the resolution, [...]
Activist and singer Country Joe McDonald had something important in common with the framers of the Constitution. And President Donald Trump recently summed up why.
It takes detailed research to write good historical fiction, especially if your character is very different from you. The research I did to write about a 16th-century Yorùbá woman took me to some unexpected places.
Making abortion a crime does not stop it. In many cases a pregnant woman will take the desperate step of getting an illegal abortion, and in many cases it kills her. That’s what happened to a young woman in a small New England town in 1935. She was my aunt Frances.
Prissy, the enslaved Black woman who squeals, “I don’t know nothin’ ‘bout birthin’ babies!” has long been considered a cringe-worthy character. But she may have provided one of the most authentic moments in Gone With the Wind.
In the Great Migration, millions of Black Americans left the South for other parts of the country. Millions of white people migrated in the same patterns and at the same time, but their experiences were very different. Two of those white migrants were my grandparents.
All of a sudden we have a new national holiday: Juneteenth. Most states recognized the holiday before that, but until this week, most white Americans knew little or nothing about it. We might want to listen and learn for a while before we decide how to celebrate.
When we speak about someone “passing,” we often mean someone has died. It’s also used to mean pretending to be someone you’re not, especially someone Black pretending to be white. The two kinds of passing are more alike than we might think.