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The Los Angeles Riots
Los Angeles burned while I was in ninth grade. Less than a year earlier my family had left a decade of life in South America for our new home just 60 miles from that sprawling and simmering city that would soon explode. Tomorrow marks twenty years since the riots began, ignited by the acquittal of…
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“…an honest comparison is not always in our favor.”
The tendency to hold certain practices in ancient Israel up to idealized modern Western norms is pervasive in much that passes for scholarship, though a glance at the treatment of the great class of debtors now being evicted from their homes in America and elsewhere should make it clear that, from the point of view…
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The New Jim Crow, Chapter 5
Richard Johnson and I are blogging our way through The New Jim Crow. We’re rotating between chapters, posting reflections and the questions this important book is raising for us. Check out our posts on chapters one, two, three, and four. This is my final contribution; Richard will wrap things up with his thoughts on chapter…
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Trayvon Martin, Patience and Self Reflection
My friend Dr. Vincent Bacote, a theology professor at Wheaton College, offers helpful perspective on Tayvon Martin’s tragic death. While many changes have occurred in the 150 years since the Civil War began, race consciousness remains in our social and cultural DNA like a stubborn mutation, rendering it difficult for us to truly and consistently…
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The New Jim Crow, Chapter 4
Richard has posted his review of the fourth chapter of Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow. He’s posed some thoughtful questions at the end of his post and I hope you’ll visit his site and contribute your thoughts.
David W. Swanson
Pastor and Author
David W. Swanson 