CHARLOTTE, NC– After Roseanne tweeted a racist insult, her hit TV show was canceled. Entertainment, as well as sports, supposed escapes, are political in 2018.
Mary C. Curtis weighs in.
Opinion: A Not Entirely Unexpected Campaign Roadblock for Women of Color
The women of color who are still standing in an electoral slog that ends in November know their road to continued success will be hard. This is the United States, and the fact that they are still pioneers for getting this far in 2018 is not just news-making but also a little depressing.
It is also true that they can’t always count on the support of some of the same feminists they may have joined — in marches, #MeToo protests and the ballot box.
May242018
Opinion: What Is the Cost When the Language of Politics Devolves?
Who would have imagined that the term “breeding” to refer to human beings would be making a comeback? Seen through a cynical lens, it is a useful word when, step by insidious step, one wants to deem some people as inherently less — and thus deserving of less — than other Americans.
May102018
Opinion: We Just Can’t Shake That Old-Time Religion
“Bless your heart” is a phrase I got to know well when I moved from the Northeast to the South several years ago. Though often spoken in soft, sympathetic tones, there was nothing blessed about the sentiment. And when those three syllables were delivered in an email, usually after I wrote a column a reader did not like, they landed like a punch to the gut.
Oddly enough, it was commentary on faith and values that elicited quite a bit of high dudgeon, topped only by the historically reliable topic of race, which, like religion, carries the taint of a North versus South, “them” against “us” spiritual split.
It was no surprise, then, that one of the most recent dust-ups in the sandbox called the U.S. House of Representatives was over religion — most specifically, the faith, message and suitability of the chamber’s chaplain — or that it, too, had its share of regional side-choosing.
May032018
Opinion: America’s Future Depends on Clearly Seeing Its Past
It may be a museum that makes viewers want to look away, with its solemn memorial to the thousands of men, women and children murdered — lynched — in countless acts of domestic terrorism. But facing truth must come before reconciliation, before Americans can clearly see where the tribalism that continues to threaten unity can eventually and inevitably lead.
Apr262018
Opinion: Forgetting What It Means to Be an American
The 2004 romantic comedy “50 First Dates” offered a novel, though somewhat implausible, premise — and I don’t mean that Drew Barrymore would find Adam Sandler irresistible. The heroine of the tale, afflicted with short-term memory loss, woke up each morning with a clean slate, thinking it was the same day, with no recollection of anything that happened the day before.
Who knew the president of the United States, most members of a political party and White House staff would suffer from the same condition?
Jan182018
How Trump became ‘the white affirmative action president’
(CNN) When the Trump administration recently signaled that it was going to crack down on affirmative action, some critics responded with an odd request: Why not start with the man sitting in the Oval Office? President Donald Trump embodies the worst stereotypes conservatives have invoked to describe affirmative action beneficiaries, according to several commentators, political scientists and diversity experts. They say he’s entitled, unqualified and held to lower standards because of racial grievances. They call Trump the nation’s first affirmative action president.
Jan092018
Black Catholics are the past and future of the U.S. church
When you think about the history of American Catholicism, images of Irish, Italian, German and Polish immigrant parishes probably come to mind. Think about the future of the U.S. church, and you’ve probably been told it’s Latino. But the story of the church, in the United States—past, present and future—is the story of black Catholics.
On this week’s show we talk with Mary C. Curtis, an award-winning journalist and columnist at Roll Call, who recently wrote about the African-American Catholic experience for America. We ask her how the church can address the sin of racism, about the gifts black Catholics bring to the church and what she thinks about Pope Francis five years in.
Dec032017
The beautiful legacy of black Catholicism in the United States
This week’s guest is Mary C. Curtis, an award-winning journalist who is currently a columnist for Roll Call. Her latest article for America is “Catholics of color are keeping the U.S. Catholic Church alive.”
Ms. Curtis says “being [a] black Catholic was very natural, it was just my life.” She grew up in Maryland, and the political turmoil of the school desegregation movement, the trial of the Berrigan brothers, and the involvement of nuns in the Civil Rights movement informed her experience of Catholicism. She said article is about “keeping the faith, and seeing the Catholic church change through ways of inclusion and exclusion.”
Dec032017
