Drick Boyd's Blog
Jon Gruden, Zero-Sum Thinking and The Big Lie
The Resignation of Jon Gruden On Monday, October 11, Jon Gruden resigned from his position as Head Coach of the Las Vegas Raiders in the NFL (National Football League) after the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times revealed emails in which Gruden repeatedly made...
Morality, Ethics and the Big Lie
In his collection of meditations, Deep is the Hunger, Howard Thurman asks this question: “Is this a world with moral meaning at the center?” He goes on to say that this is not a question that can be answered with empirical research or an accumulation of data....
Seeing The Light, Being the Light in the Era of the Big Lie
“For there is always light, if only we’re brave enough to see it. If only we’re brave enough to be it.” Amanda Gorman Light and Darkness At the end of September, I visited Minneapolis, Minnesota on personal business, and took time to visit the George Floyd Memorial in...
The Big Lie and Our National Dark Night of the Soul
The Womb Not The Tomb On New Year’s Eve 2016 Rev. William Barber, co-founder of the Poor People’s Campaign, sponsored an interfaith Watchnight New Year’s Eve at Metropolitan AME Church in Washington, D.C. For many gathered that evening, there was a somber and sober...
Reflecting on September 11 – Twenty Years Later
Almost anybody 30 years or older probably remembers where they were and what they were doing when they heard that the World Trade Center had been attacked on Sept 11, 2001. I was teaching a class of first-year students and some other students ran into our class,...
Countering “The Big Lie”
When apparent stability disintegrates, as it must — God is Change — People tend to give in to fear and depression, To need and greed. When no influence is strong enough to unify people they divide. They struggle, One against one, Group against group, For survival,...
What Do We Say About Afghanistan and Haiti
Over this past weekend I was stunned and horrified as I watched the reports from Afghanistan and Haiti. I suspect many of you were as well. What are we to do and learn from these tragedies? Afghanistan In the case of Afghanistan we saw frantic and terrified Afghans...
A Plea and Confession to Anti-Vaxers and Anti Mask-ers
If COVID has shown us anything, it is that despite our differences, we are connected, we are contagions for one another, we are linked to each other at the most basic, biological level.
White Perfectionism
The Inevitability of Mistakes Whenever I speak about racism with groups comprised mainly of white people, I often make the point early on that in our efforts as white people to be antiracist allies (or accomplices or co-conspirators), we are going to make mistakes. We...
Coddling White Racists? Not A Chance
On May 5 Rev. David Brown, a diversity advisor at Temple University held a public conversation about the themes of my book Disrupting Whiteness. The event was sponsored by the Inside-Out Prison- Exchange program, which brings together traditional undergraduate college...
What’s All the Fuss About Critical Race Theory?
On May 5, 2021, Rev. David Brown, a diversity advisor at Temple University held a public conversation about the themes of my book Disrupting Whiteness. The event was sponsored by the Inside-Out Prison- Exchange program, which brings together traditional undergraduate...
The 1619 Project
On May 5 Rev. David Brown, a diversity advisor at Temple University held a public conversation about the themes of my book Disrupting Whiteness. The event was sponsored by the Inside-Out Prison- Exchange program, which brings together traditional undergraduate college...
Institutional Racism – Why is it so Hard for Whites to See and Accept?
On May 5 Rev. David Brown, a diversity advisor at Temple University, and I held a public conversation focused on the major themes of my book Disrupting Whiteness. The event was sponsored by the Inside-Out Prison-Exchange program, which brings together traditional...
How Racism Hurts White People
(Adapted from my book Disrupting Whiteness: Talking to White People About Racism0 The Hidden Wound In the wake of the Derek Chauvin trial there has been a great deal of speculation and prognostication that Chauvin’s guilty verdict might signal a shift in the public’s...
What Now?
Like many people, I was greatly relieved at the outcome of the trial of police officer Derek Chauvin, who was found guilty on all three counts for the murder of George Floyd last May. While, like many, I feared the worst – i.e. that Chauvin would be set free or there...