News & Features

We Have to Talk About White Guilt

Angelo Franco

Not being racist is easy: literally, just don't be a racist. But being anti-racist takes work, and it’s work that is not always easy or even beneficial to oneself. And there’s so much happening all the time, and everyone’s needs are different. Check on your Asian friends - don’t burden your Asian friends; go to marches - don’t take up too much space in marches; speak up - know when to shut up and just listen; at least share information if you can’t do nothing else.

100 Years After the Tulsa Race Massacre

Gregory B. Fairchild

From my grandfather’s memory of the riot’s devastation to my own work addressing low-income communities’ economic challenges, I have come to see that change requires harnessing economic, governmental and nonprofit solutions that recognize and speak openly about the significant residential, educational and workplace racial segregation that still exists in the United States today.

This Is What It’s Like to Wake Up During Surgery

David Robson

Although widespread signaling across the brain appears to be impaired when people are under general anesthesia, there is evidence that certain areas – including the auditory cortex – remain responsive, suggesting that medical staff might be able to send suggestions and encouragement, while a patient is unconscious, to reduce their pain after surgery. Studies investigating this possibility are few, but Jenny Rosendahl, at Jena University Hospital in Germany, and colleagues have attempted to gather all the evidence to date.

The Supreme Court and the Ongoing Debate About Originalism

Angelo Franco

It is this same argumentative viewpoint of legality and fairness that originalists use to call into question the Roe v. Wade decision. It’s why there are still lawsuits making their way up to the Supreme Court that seek to overturn Obergefell and Roe v. Wade. And this is a slippery slope because in its quest to “limit” judicial power, originalism places the burden of slow progress in the hands of the people while erroneously assuming that everyone has equal representation in Congress.

The Art of Virtual Travel: A Sordid History of the Rocking Chair

Hunter Dukes

While moral and spiritual comfort arrived in English through Anglo-Norman, our sense of comfortable as being physically content, relaxed and reclined, appears in the late 18th century. Soon after, a type of French easy chair, the confortable, became popular at home and abroad. What made it cozy? The systematic use of springs, hidden beneath inflated upholstery. In the 1800s, it was still possible for J.C. Loudon to claim that “the effect of spiral springs as stuffing has been long known to men of science; but so little to upholsterers, that a patent for using them in stuffing was taken out, some years ago, as a new invention.”

The Business of Matching Vietnamese Brides With Chinese Men

Wei Li

In Vietnam, where women experience significant social pressure both to marry and to support their families financially, China is seen as a rich country with great professional opportunities. Vietnamese women may advertise with a marriage broker because marrying a Chinese man seems likely to check off all those boxes. South Korea is also seeing a growing share of Vietnamese wives. Online marriage brokers do not always provide these woman with accurate information about their clients, my research finds.

Can the Spread of Violent Crime Be Prevented?

Samira Shackle

Violence interrupters use numerous techniques, some borrowed from cognitive behavioral therapy. Cole reels them off. “Constructive shadowing”, which means echoing people’s words back to them; “babysitting,” which is simply staying with someone until they have cooled down; and emphasizing consequences. “A lot of kids don’t know where their next meal is coming from, their mother’s getting high,” says Cole. “People say everything is common sense. No. Sense is not common to a lot of people.”

The Modern Presidency: Wherefore Art Thou, American Legislature?

Adam Gravano

A flashpoint of this contention has been the executive order. Most notably, President Obama's statement that “I've got a pen and I've got a phone,” which covered more than actions requiring the secrecy and dispatch that other areas in which the presidency is accorded a freer hand, namely foreign policy: “Helping to make sure our kids are getting the best education possible, making sure that our businesses are getting the kind of support and help they need to grow and advance, to make sure that people are getting the skills that they need to get those jobs that our businesses are creating.”

How the Super Bowl Evolved From Football Game to Entertainment Extravaganza

Peter M. Hopsicker and Mark Dyerson

The NFL’s strategic marriage to television has also diverted attention away from the game on the field. In 1967, advertising rates for a 30-second commercial spot cost a modest $42,500. In the years since, they’ve escalated to become the most expensive advertising time in the history of television. After 1985, in response to the huge impact of Apple’s legendary “1984” commercial, advertising rates soared to over $500,000 for a 30-second spot. This trend sparked the emergence of the “Ad Bowl,” an unofficial but hyper-intense marketing competition to produce the most creative and memorable television commercial targeting the Super Bowl’s enormous captive audience.

The Ebenezer Baptist Church Has Been a Seat of Black Power for Generations

Jason Oliver Evans

From the pulpit of Ebenezer, King preached some of his more memorable sermons. In one of his sermons published in a collection titled The Strength to Love, King describes racial prejudice as indicative of “softmindedness,” a person’s tendency to uncritically adhere to unsupportable beliefs. In the same sermon, titled “A Tough Mind and a Tender Heart,” King argued, “Race prejudice is based on groundless fears, suspicions, and misunderstandings.”

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