Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson took readers by storm in late 2020, so I was fashionably late reading it at the end of 2023. While something about its ubiquity made me hesitate to read it, it’s intrigued me for years.
Read moreAntiracism
Not Yours to Reclaim: A Review of Reclaiming Two-Spirits
I wanted to like Gregory D. Smithers’ 2022 book Reclaiming Two-Spirits: Sexuality, Spiritual Renewal & Sovereignty in Native America. It was my first Two-Spirit read, so I felt compelled to like the book due to the subject matter. But I found myself plodding through it for over a month, never seeming to have the energy or motivation to keep going.
Read moreOf Abortion and Abolition
I discovered a bizarre fringe wing of anti-abortion Christian Nationalists this week. Abortion “abolitionists.”
Read moreGrove City College’s White Supremacy Spreads to the LCMS
On May 2nd, 2022, I had the honor of being a featured writer with an above-the-fold story on OnlySky Media. While I was proud to be featured, I could not have been less proud of the subject of my article: my alma mater, Grove City College. (The Roe v. Wade draft opinion leaked later that same day, so my fame was short-lived. But it did happen.)
Read moreBook Review: Reproductive Justice: An Introduction by Loretta J. Ross and Rickie Solinger
Everyone knows that access to abortion is a critical human rights issue. The potential overturning of Roe v. Wade is more than unconstitutional, it’s inhumane. An unjust human rights violation. But the worst part? As many activists have said, it’s the floor, not the ceiling, of reproductive justice. That’s where Loretta J. Ross and Rickie Solinger’s Reproductive Justice: An Introduction becomes crucial to understanding what that ceiling might look like.
Read moreWhy I Can No Longer Support Brenda Marie Davies
The crimes of white supremacy have not gone unrecorded. They are etched into the bodies of brown and black people the world over. Our scars, past and present, physical and emotional, bear witness to the violence white men and women insisted they were not inflicting. White society marked the bodies of women of color as a receptacle for its sins so that it may claim innocence for itself, and, as the chosen symbol of the innocent perfection of whiteness, the white damsel with her tears of distress functions as both denial of and absolution for this violence.
Ruby Hamad, White Tears/Brown Scars, p. 101
(Trigger warning: racism, colorism, fatphobia, ableism, child abuse, sexual abuse, and suicide.) 90-minute read.
Read moreBook Review: Killing the Black Body by Dorothy Roberts
When you think of reproductive rights, what comes to mind? I’d bet you thought of the right to a safe and legal abortion. At least I hope you did, because that’s a central part of reproductive liberty. Before I read Dorothy Roberts’ Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty, I perceived reproductive freedom as the ability to get safe and effective birth control, age-appropriate sex education, and reproductive healthcare, which includes abortion. However, for over a hundred years, poor Black women have viewed reproductive justice as much more than just abortion rights.
Read more36 Crucial Quotes from Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist
If you have read Ibram X. Kendi’s bestseller How to Be an Antiracist, then you know that it is an absolute must-read. Kendi clearly explains why and how racism is sustained—and how it affects every group of people in dozens of intersecting ways—and he uses these facts to demonstrate how to dismantle it. While I definitely recommend that you read the entire book, here are some of my favorite quotes.
Read moreBook Review: How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
At long last, this week I completed the final book of my first “15-book reading challenge“. Ibram X. Kendi’s 2019 bestseller How to Be an Antiracist seemed like a great end to the series, as it is one of the most popular books in the antiracist movement right now.
Read moreBook Review: How to Argue With a Racist by Adam Rutherford
In my quest for both truth and empathy, I discovered geneticist Adam Rutherford’s book How to Argue With a Racist: What Our Genes Do (And Don’t) Say About Human Difference. I find combating racism to be very important, and I find great joy in reading about science. This book was a perfect mixture of both of these, which is great regardless of my preferences, because it turns out (unsurprisingly) that science is the best way to debunk racist claims anyways.
Read more