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Learning from a Racial Unity Fail, Pt. 3: It’s All About the Heart

You saw it. The defense attorney’s opening statement in the trial of Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis police officer who planted his knee on George Floyd’s neck for 9 minutes and 29 seconds. Not once did the attorney acknowledge that a tragedy had taken place, that a man’s life had been snuffed out. You heard the excuses. That Chauvin was a little guy, and Floyd was very big. Illegal drugs were found in Floyd’s system. The onlookers made the officers feel stressed and anxious. Now it’s time for a heart check. Do you lean toward the excuses, or do you lean

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Name It and Claim It or Go Home

While the Capitol riot was still unfolding on January 6, with Trump supporters scaling walls, smashing windows, beating up police officers, and threatening reporters’ lives, some white friends contacted me privately, asking if I was sure that “every single one of them [the rioters] is white,” as I reported in a Facebook post and on this blog. I responded that I had been watching the insurrection for 90 minutes and had not seen a single Black person who wasn’t a journalist, police officer, or member of Congress. And I posed a question in return: If it turns out that one