In his 1873 novel The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today, author Mark Twain discussed a world run by the upper echelons of society, detailing the growing and domineering aristocracy apparent at the turn of t…
Barred from the Ballot Box: Felon Disenfranchisement in America
Six million American adults are legally ineligible to vote, members of a group whose ranks have roughly quintupled over the past 40 years. In Kentucky and Tennessee, this group now comprises more than…
Thinking in Color: Disputing Identity Politics
On the 9th of November, 2016, in the wee hours of the morning, the news networks proclaimed Donald J. Trump the president-elect of the United States. From my vantage point, I watched hundreds of Berke…
Detention or Detox: Deconstructing America’s New Face of Heroin
Austin, Indiana, in many ways, is remarkably unremarkable. A small, mostly white, non-Hispanic population nestled in the center of the state, Austin may be your quintessential small-midwestern town. F…
A Coded Political Mantra
According to Malcolm X, “Racism is like a Cadillac, they bring out a new model every year.” Since the outlaw of slavery, racial discrimination taken on many different forms, from physical abuse, to le…
December Berkeley Protests: Where Do We Go From Here?
Traditionally, the start of Dead Week in Berkeley may be known more for competition among students for coveted study spaces in Main Stacks than for large-scale protest, but the weekend of December 6th…
The Ferguson Verdict
On November 24th, a St. Louis County grand jury of twelve came to the decision that white Police Officer Darren Wilson acted lawfully. He was on trial for shooting unarmed black teen Michael Br…
Tipping the Scales of Justice
In the simmering heat of the Nevada desert, a group of armed white men pointed assault rifles at Las Vegas police officers and 24 Bureau of Land Management (BLM) rangers. In the suburbs of St. Louis, …
The Hyde Amendment: Disproportionately Affecting Minority Women Since 1976
In 1976, just three years after the Supreme Court’s groundbreaking decision in Roe v. Wade, Republican congressman Henry Hyde attached a little-known amendment to a Health and Human Services appropria…
The Politics of the Hyphen
In a speech from 1916, Teddy Roosevelt boldly claimed, “There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some…