theblackbottom

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines a partisan as the following:
1: a firm adherent to a party, faction, cause, or person; especially: one exhibiting blind, prejudiced, and unreasoning allegiance
2 a: a member of a body of detached light troops making forays and harassing an enemy b: a member of a guerrilla band operating within enemy line.
The term [...]

We must take our full share of responsibility for the moulding of history, whether it be as victors or vanquished. -Dietrich Bonhoeffer
When I first read this sentence from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers From Prison I was deeply moved. It was though he had insight into my great grandparents who endured the institution of chattel [...]

Back in May I traveled to London to attend Transatlantic Roundtable on Religion and Race that was graciously hosted by the Birkbeck College of the University of London.
The conference was a critical inquiry into race viewed through the lens of religion. Can we understand “race” through the religious claims of universality among women and men. [...]

All marriages are civil unions! Let me explain! When two people get married they are bound together by state law contractually to one another. This means if they separate or divorce there is a legal proceeding to divide assets, just as if one partner in a business is opting out their contractually binding obligations.  The [...]

I was trying to imagine a commencement address I would give. Here’s what I came up with me with students and friends.
Graduates thank you for allowing me to distract your celebration for a very short, short, moment. I am so happy for you and your parents and loved ones. If your parents, grandparent, brothers or [...]

Dear Sisters in Struggle,
I have been thinking a great deal lately about the struggles of black men. This is not to say I have not thought of the struggles of women or the declining fortunes of the American middle class or the working class or the poor in general, I have.  My letter to you [...]

Black boys became criminalized. I was in constant dread for their lives, because they were targets everywhere. They still are. ~Toni Morrison
Perhaps, one day, we will think of Trayvon Martin in the same vein we think of Emmett Till. The publicity surrounding Till’s murder so horrified black America that it galvanized a generation to mobilize [...]

In 1902, when V. I. Lenin wrote his treatise What Is To Be Done, he was in search of a committed political leadership cadre to implement his vision of communism. Similarly, W.E. B. DuBois in his 1903 essay “The Talented Tenth” published in The Negro Problem thought it necessary to have a top tier black American [...]

Politics cannot save, but they might make our lives better. Let’s be clear, politics is no substitute for faith. Religious faith answers the question about life and death. And politics can never answer the great mysteries of our finite days on this earth. Nevertheless, politics are important. Political organization addresses how resources are divvied [...]

Decades ago I read a book by the French philosopher and anarchist Jacques Ellul titled the Technological Society (in French La Technique: L’enjeu du siècle). It was revealing book for me. Ellul observed how production techniques in the Western world took on its own self-reinforcing rationality.
Stated another way, the techniques we use to create machinery [...]