A “racial caste system” is alive in America, says Michelle Alexander, whose book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, provides some shocking statistics. I heard her speak in Richmond last week. More African Americans are under some form of correctional control than were enslaved in 1850. As of 2004, more black men were disenfranchised (i.e. […]

On the day of the September 11, 2001 attacks our youngest son, Andrew, who was 15 at the time asked us, “Will this change our lives?”  While we wanted to say, “No,” we understood that we had entered a new era of uncertainty. Last Sunday, on the tenth anniversary of that fateful day, my wife and I participated in the […]

I write this from Cape Cod with the winds of Irene rattling the house. On the way from Richmond last week, Susan and I visited the “Breakers,” the seventy-room summer “cottage” built in 1892 by the Vanderbilts in Newport, Rhode Island. The end of the Gilded Age, symbolized by such remarkable monuments to wealth and power and to a grand […]

I was pleasantly surprised by Joe Nocera’s column in the New York Times on August 22.   He apologized. In an earlier column he had compared Tea Party Republicans to terrorists. Like many of us, Nocera was outraged that those who precipitated the financial crisis are not being prosecuted more vigorously; by the attempts to undermine the Dodd-Frank financial sector […]

I’m reflecting on some of the “disconnects” in American life. One is the glaring gap between personal faith and public policy.  How is it possible that the most overtly religious nation in the developed world has the greatest gulf between rich and poor? Why does a country with so many churches imprison more of its people than anywhere else on […]

If you are feeling cynical about the world of finance and investment you should talk with Patrick Davis.  He’s a 25-year-old senior associate with the Calvert Foundation, a Washington-based non-profit that aims to maximize the flow of capital to disadvantaged communities. The organization enables investors – large and small – to earn a financial return while lifting families out of poverty. […]

Mark and Ariane are married. They exchanged their vows shaded by ancient live oaks on July 3. Even at 7pm the Texas sun kept the temperature hovering in the high nineties. In a touch of thoughtful creativity, the order of service was printed on fans.   A guitarist played Bach’s Air on the G String. Parents read Letters to a […]

In March, I wrote about my experience at a retreat with fifteen practitioners and some program officers from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation where we shared personal stories of racial healing. Last month, the same group served as facilitators for the America Healing conference in Asheville, North Carolina, when the foundation convened 250 grantees, racial justice advocates, and leaders of national […]

In January, 1998, I was in Washington working with a team recruited by the White House to design a dialogue guide for the President’s One America initiative on race when the media erupted over Bill Clinton’s alleged affair with Monica Lewinsky. There was gloom in the room and groans of, “There goes all our work down the tubes.” No question, […]

Amid all the negativity in our nation’s capital, I was encouraged and inspired last week to meet with several people who are working constructively in various ways to bridge divides.   “The walls are high but they are not held together by very strong nails. People are willing to think beyond party lines if they are not going to be […]