Commentaries/Opinions

Over the past several days, the news has been full of stories about LA Clippers owner Donald Sterling and the racist outburst that’s gotten him banned for life by the NBA. But another story Vox wrote about this month that’s gotten far less attention probably tells us more — and something more disturbing — about how racism works in America today.

When Donald Sterling, owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, told his girlfriend he did not want her bringing blacks to Clippers’ games, he wasn’t talking to some blue-eyed blond.

At a panel titled “Grassroots Organizing” at the Network for Public Education conference in Austin in March, an audience member asked the all-white panel for its definition of “grassroots.” The conference had been called to “give voice to those opposing privatization, school closings, and high-stakes testing.”

At the march on Washington in August 1963, where Martin Luther King made his “I have a dream” speech, the United States Information Agency, the nation’s propaganda wing devoted to “public diplomacy”, made a documentary.

Today, the Department of Justice outlined expanded criteria that could allow prisoners convicted of non-violent crimes to win early release from prison. Under the new initiative, the Office of the Pardon Attorney will fast-track commutation applications from inmates who have served more than 10 years for non-violent offenses and who were well-behaved while imprisoned.

The Budget Debate for 2014-2015 has begun. The Governor General has given his throne speech and the Minister of Finance and Planning, Dr. Peter Phillips, has presented his “Stay the Course” budget.

America’s earliest academies, like the nation itself, have a legacy of slavery woven into their very fabric. In his latest work MIT historian Craig Steven Wilder (GSAS’89,’93,’94) examines the tarnished relationship between the Atlantic slave trade and the rise of the American college.