What did Jemele Hill get wrong? Let’s consider the evidence. He was sued for systematically refusing to rent to African Americans and settled out of court. He demanded the death penalty for five black and Hispanic kids charged in the notorious Central Park jogger rape case — and refuses to recant to this day, though […]
Leonard Pitts Jr.
Posted inOp-Eds, sj-web
Accept our own smallness, limitations
“Be still and know that I am God.” — Psalms 46:10 It’s an admonition some of us struggle to obey. Indeed, some of God’s self-appointed spokespersons seem to find it especially difficult. Thus, before the first raindrop fell, the first palm tree bowed, or the first transformer blew, they came out to tell us what […]
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Posted inOp-Eds, sj-web
Nothing to see here, say climate deniers
Katia and Jose? Seriously? As if it were not bad enough that Houston is still drying out from Hurricane Harvey and South Florida is hunkered down in the face of Hurricane Irma, last week found the newly formed hurricanes Katia and Jose, respectively spinning in the Gulf of Mexico and whirling west across the Atlantic. […]
Posted inOp-Eds, sj-web
America, a land of liberty and justice for some
Steve Loomis is angry. Loomis, the head of Cleveland’s police union, is using words like “hypocritical,” “ignorant,” and “offensive,” and you might, for a wishful second, convince yourself he’s talking about that day in 2014 when two Cleveland police skidded to a stop in front of a 12-year-old black boy playing with a toy gun […]
Posted inOp-Eds, sj-web
Alan Gratz’s novel ‘Refugee’ demands your humanity
“ ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’ “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’ “ — Matthew 25:44-45 […]
Posted inOp-Eds, sj-web
Hurricane Harvey brings Houston together
It seems like it always takes a disaster. Twenty-five years ago this month, that disaster was Andrew, a hurricane that devastated a large swath of South Florida, including the house in whose master bedroom closet I sheltered through the night with my wife and five kids. The storm took our roof and our possessions. It […]
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The day Marcellus Williams didn’t die
Last week, on the day he was scheduled to die, Marcellus Williams didn’t. Just hours before he was to be strapped down and pumped full of poison, Williams, the convicted killer of Felicia “Lisha” Gayle, a former reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, received a reprieve. Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens stayed the execution and announced […]
Posted inOp-Eds, sj-web
America repudiates its president
A remarkable thing happened last week. You might have missed it, because while it happened in plain sight, it also happened in increments. You had to put the pieces together to appreciate the magnitude of it. Last week, you see, America repudiated its president. This, of course, was in response to that pathetic performance in […]
Posted inOp-Eds, sj-web
Charlottesville didn’t spring from nowhere
It is important to look beyond the riot. Yes, the recent violent demonstration by white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia, culminating in the death of 32-year-old Heather Heyer, made for a carnival of obscenity as sickening as it was riveting. But the thing is, it did not spring from nowhere. And while your first instinct — […]
Posted inOp-Eds, sj-web
Sadly, America is not ‘better than this’
It has become the go-to cliche for moments like this. We whisper it when someone breaks the mosque window or scrawls hatred on the synagogue wall. It is our assurance and our hope. “We are better than this,” we say. “This is not America.” So it is no surprise to be hearing that sentiment days […]