This morning, someone tried to take my white privilege away from me, and it was scary. When I feel attacked because I’m Jewish, what can that teach me about how safe I usually feel because I’m white?

In honor of Indigenous People’s Day, I will spend an hour re-listening to this amazing Seeing White podcast episode: “Little War on the Prairie.” Did you know that “we” deliberately mis-translated “Indian treaties” to leave out key provisions so we could trick them into signing bad deals, which we then repudiated anyway and turned into wars of […]

Summer of 1986. It’s hot and humid already at 6am as I’m on my way to start my shift at the 24-hour Burger King on the Mass Turnpike near my house. I’m walking fast and sweating in my too-big polyester uniform, desperately hoping none of the kids from school happen to see me because both […]

This. Is. Not. History. Most people running our country and policing our streets were either growing up when this happened, or were brought up by people who lived through this. This moment – which itself was not unique or isolated and was a product of the centuries that came before it – formed the moment […]

When you call someone “hysterical” for protesting, say, Brett Kavanaugh‘s Supreme Court nomination or unfair umpires or workplace sexual harassment: There is a reason this is a gendered insult and it’s not just because oh, we traditionally associate over-emotionalism with women. “Hysterical” comes from the Greek “hustera” which literally means “womb.” Do I think people […]

I want to thank the troll who gave me an epiphany in an argument about affirmative action last weekend. Nah, not the one he was trying for, about how much fairer it would be to have a “purely meritocratic” system for college admissions. But in thinking about who gets in despite not really having shown […]