The publishing world is continuing to send a generations-old message that a person’s gender and the color of their skin affects their ability to produce literature. Luckily, when I recently came across a New York Times essay by Jennifer Weiner about the increased pressure on female writers to tend to their looks, I was coming […]
I can’t change our genders or sexual orientations. I can’t change our skin colors. But I can change my children’s perceptions, give them gratitude for their privilege and anger for injustice, and teach them to use those feelings as tools. I am a straight, white parent. I sit in my position of privilege and peer […]
In the face of so much injustice, who wouldn’t be angry? “You’re a feminist? You don’t seem that angry.” The first time (of many) that this question was posed to me in high school, I stared blankly at the peer who asked it. I felt incapable of coherently responding: an uncommon experience for a self-proclaimed […]
As her boyfriend, it pains me to see her experience this. As a white man, it frustrates me to accept the fact that her experience is one I can’t fully understand. “It’s all over Facebook,” Danielle told me, sighing in frustration. The grand jury had just decided not to indict the white police officer who […]
