Gene Demby appears in the following:
In 2015, Race And Tolerance Permeated The National Dialogue
Thursday, December 24, 2015
NPR's Code Switch Team Explores Political Correctness On College Campuses
Friday, December 18, 2015
The Long, Necessary History Of 'Whiny' Black Protesters At College
Thursday, December 17, 2015
A few weeks ago, I was chatting with a young black woman who recently graduated from Louisiana State. I asked her how she liked it there. She smiled, then sighed in exasperation. Without prompting, she brought up race. She had enrolled at LSU knowing Louisiana is one of the blackest ...
Mizzou Points To Bigger Shifts In How College Athletes See Themselves
Thursday, November 12, 2015
This summer, football players at Northwestern University came very close to successfully forming a union — not to demand that they be paid, but to demand better scholarships and safety protocols. Had their bid succeeded, it might have changed college athletics — and, indeed, higher education — in some ...
A Graphic Shows How Much The 'Race' Question On The American Census Has Changed
Monday, November 09, 2015
In 1890, a shoemaker from Louisiana named Homer Plessy indentified himself as "black" on the decennial U.S. Census population survey. Plessy did this even though, as a Creole who was one-eighth black, he was light-skinned enough to pass for white.
A few years later, the fair-skinned Plessy climbed onto a ...
'Diversity' Is Rightly Criticized As An Empty Buzzword. So How Can We Make It Work?
Thursday, November 05, 2015
Over at the New York Times Magazine, ambivalence toward capital "D" diversity courses through Anna Holmes' excellent essay "Has 'Diversity' Lost Its Meaning?" Holmes, the founding editor of Jezebel and now an executive at Fusion, notes that while corporate odes to "diversity" are de rigeur these days ...
Making A Home In The Shadow of Confederate Symbols
Monday, October 19, 2015
Over at the New York Times, Jack Hitt considers the ubiquity of one particular icon of the post-Confederate South. "In front of nearly every courthouse or at the main intersection of nearly every town in the South, you will find a Confederate memorial," Hitt writes. "From the late 19th ...
'Empire' Nods To A Very Different Take On Policing Than We Usually See In Prime Time
Friday, October 02, 2015
So far, this season of Empire has been all about whether Lucius Lyon, the diabolical record executive played by Terrence Howard, is going to be convicted of a murder he committed in the show's first season. Last week, the rest of the Lyon family staged a big outdoor rally/concert to ...
Remember When You Had To Flip To The Back Page Of 'Jet' To Find Black People On TV?
Wednesday, September 23, 2015
Back in the heyday of Jet magazine, that weekly digest of short, fizzy articles about black life, there was a back-page feature simply called "Television." It was a no-frills rundown of nearly every black person who would be appearing on prime-time TV over the coming week, just their names, ...
What We Lose When A Neighborhood School Goes Away
Monday, September 14, 2015
A few years ago, a good friend and I were walking near downtown Philadelphia, not far from my old elementary school, Thomas C. Durham, on 16th and Lombard. The school was built on the edge of a black neighborhood in South Philly in the early 1900s, and its design ...
How Black Reporters Report On Black Death
Thursday, August 20, 2015
On Wyatt Cenac, 'Key & Peele,' And Being The Only One In The Room
Wednesday, July 29, 2015
Last week, the Internet exploded after an episode of the WTF! Podcast with Marc Maron went online. The guest was the comedian Wyatt Cenac, who talked about being a writer and correspondent on The Daily Show for several years. He recalled getting into a heated argument with Jon Stewart ...
A Compromise On Displaying The Confederate Flag
Wednesday, July 22, 2015
Last week, I wrestled with an idea that admittedly made me very uncomfortable: the possibility that for many defenders of racially loaded symbols like the Confederate battle flag and the Washington Redskins' brand, their affinity for these icons may be more understandable and — crucially — more relatable than ...
When The 'Heritage' In 'Heritage Not Hate' Is More Skynyrd Than Stonewall Jackson
Tuesday, July 14, 2015
Friday's ceremony to remove the Confederate battle flag from South Carolina's state Capitol grounds was scored by loud cheers and applause from the huge, largely black crowd who came to see it off. The contrast between the cheers and the official pomp — marching soldiers in dress grays funereally handling ...
'It's Like Having A Crazy Family Member': On Southern Black Folks And The Rebel Flag
Friday, June 26, 2015
A few months ago, my girlfriend and I were driving south on Interstate 95 from D.C. to Richmond, Va., where we had tickets for a comedy show. On an otherwise nondescript stretch of highway not long into the drive, we were startled by the sight of an enormous Confederate flag ...
Is The Millennial Generation's Racial Tolerance Overstated?
Monday, June 22, 2015
Dylann Roof And The Stubborn Myth Of The Colorblind Millennial
Saturday, June 20, 2015
The young age of Dylann Roof, who's charged with sitting alongside nine black churchgoers for an hour before standing up and shooting them dead, is sure to inspire some head-scratching in the wake of his attack. He's 21, which means he's a millennial, which means he's not supposed to be ...
Who Gets To Be Black? Honor The Struggle, But Don't Forget The Jokes
Wednesday, June 17, 2015
The story of Rachel Dolezal, the white woman who has been living as a black woman, offers a 20-in-1 construction kit of ways to be offended. A popular one is the seemingly unimpeachable complaint that Dolezal hasn't paid her dues: She didn't grow up black, in a black family or ...