Drick Boyd's Blog
Reflections on My Day in Court
Yesterday (Oct 10) I had jury duty. Ninety of us were placed in a jury pool from which 12 jurors and four alternates would be chosen for a criminal trial. The case involved the murder of a young Black man by another Black man in the small city of Chester, PA. The...
Reflections from CCDA – Is Racial Reconciliation Possible?
One of the central values of the Christian Community Development Association (CCDA) and central topics of discussion at this year’s conference is racial reconciliation. On Thursday, I participated in an “action tank” whose task it was to make recommendations to...
Lament
I am attending the annual conference of the Christian Community Development Association (CCDA) in Raleigh, NC for the next few days. I came here not knowing what to expect, except for using the time to network with other urban studies programs and like-minded...
Money Matters: Why A Full, Fair Funding Formula is Essential for Racial Justice in PA | Philadelphia Public School Notebook
Link: A full, fair funding formula is essential for racial equality in Pa. | Philadelphia Public School NotebookThe following appeared in the Friday (8/29) edition of the Philadelphia Public School Notebook, an open letter to the PA Legislature written on behalf of...
White Folks and Ferguson
A recent New York Times article on the ongoing events in Ferguson, MO was entitled “Among Whites, Protests Stir a Range of Emotions and a Lot of Perplexity.” The article points out that while many whites want to be sympathetic to the concerns of the protesters,...
From Ferguson to Philly to Williamsport
Over the past week or so I have been holding four seemingly unrelated events together in my mind because in a strange way they seem to capture the essence of racial politics in our country today: the ongoing conflict and grief in Ferguson, MO over the shooting of an...
A Walk in the Woods (with apologies to Bill Bryson)
Every summer I try to climb a mountain. Some years it is questionable that what I have climbed can actually be called a “mountain” but most years I do get to some sort of high place that has a “Mount” in front of it or “Mountain” behind it. I am what my college...
Breathing Lessons – Learning to be in the Present thru Yoga
About four months ago, my wife and I began attending a yoga class on Monday nights. Once a week we bend and contort our bodies in ways that are both surprising and often painful. Yet I look forward to each Monday because no matter how I feel when I start class, I...
Requesting Your Support to Bike for a Good Cause
Dear friends, As many of you know over the past few years I have taken up cycling as a primary form of exercise. This coming September 20 I will do two things I have yet to do in my short cycling “career.” First, I will join hundreds of other cyclers in the Bike to...
Consider the Children
Down the street from me live three children I would guess who are all under the age of 10. Often they ride up and down the sidewalk on their bikes and scooters. Whenever I walk by their house with my dog and they are out playing, they run over to pet the dog. They...
Addressing Guns at the Level of Culture
Three years ago on a sabbatical, I spent some time studying the gun culture. I read a few books by sociologists who had interviewed gun enthusiasts and spent a fair amount of time on the websites of organizations like the NRA and the Gun Owners of...
A Fully Funded Formula for Public Education: A Moral and Spiritual Issue
Governor Tom Corbett (on left) provided Exhibit A for why the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania needs to pass a full and fair funding formula for public education in Pennsylvania. Earlier this week, state legislators from Philadelphia, plus the mayor, the superintendent...
A Prayer for a Muslim Gandhi or Mandela
As I have read about the growing conflict in Iraq between ISIS (The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) and the Iraqi government, I find myself wondering if there is someone or some group within the Islamic world that can help these two Muslim factions avoid massive...
The Case for Reparations Debate
I have been watching and reading with interest “The Case forReparations” an article written by senior editor of The Atlantic Ta-Nehisi Coates, which first appeared on May 21, 2014. On June 6, Coates’ colleague at The Atlantic, David Frum responded with “The...
It Starts With the Guns, Stupid!
Today we learned of another mass shooting, this time on the campus of Seattle Pacific University, a small private Christian university outside Seattle. Two weeks ago the same sort of event happened at University of California Santa Barbara. Last night and every night...