Independent since 2002 Issue No. 1102 Week of November 7, 2026 Get the free email dispatch →

Category: Inclusion

Commentary

World AIDS Day 2022 Message Acknowledges Inequalities

By The Reverend Irene Monroe Editorial Board

African Americans are still disproportionately affected by the HIV epidemic. And the epidemic is heavily concentrated in urban enclaves like Boston, Detroit, New York, Newark, Washington, D.C., and the Deep South.

Dec. 1 was World AIDS Day! With the COVID pandemic foremost on the minds of many, HIV/ AIDS seems like a distant problem. A POZ Poll…

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Commentary

Transgender Day of Remembrance – Rita Hester’s Life Mattered

By The Reverend Irene Monroe Editorial Board

Rita lived large and loved big, but she could have never imagined her life and her death would mean so much to so many.

In the pantheon of slain civil rights activists, Rita Hester, an African-American transgender woman, is among them. There had been several transgender murders prior to Rita’s…

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Commentary

The Geopolitics of Being Brittany Griner

By The Reverend Irene Monroe Editorial Board

Griner being in a Russian prison is a direct consequence of the gender-pay disparity, even in professional sports.

WNBA All-Star Brittney Griner was arrested a week before Russia invadedUkraine. On February 17, the Russian Federal Customs Service detained Griner at Sheremetyevo International Airport for…

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Commentary

Boston Pride Returns to the Community

By The Reverend Irene Monroe Editorial Board

With this year’s Pride events occurring across the state and in various cities, these community-based grassroots events feel authentic, appropriate, and empowering.

June 12 was Boston Pop-Up Pride, to the surprise and joy of the throngs of revelers who gathered on Boston Common. When Boston Pride was dismantled…

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Commentary

Mixed Reactions to Will Smith’s Slap

By The Reverend Irene Monroe Editorial Board

romanticizing Smith’s violence as an act of chivalry masks its toxic masculinity.

By now, everyone has seen or heard about Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at the Oscars for making a tasteless and misogynistic joke about his wife’s…

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Commentary

Can I Be Happy to Be Nappy in Massachusetts?

By The Reverend Irene Monroe Editorial Board

In a milieu of anti-Blackness, discrimination doesn’t stop at skin color. It includes our dress style, music, dance, speech and hair, too.

How I wear my hair is my business. Ironically, the commonwealth is deciding it is now legal for me to do so. Last week, Massachusetts lawmakers…

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Commentary

Being Black in War-Torn Ukraine

By The Reverend Irene Monroe Editorial Board

Russia’s Ukraine invasion helps the world see what our inhumanity toward each other looks like. Also, it highlights the persistence of a global racist social order even in a humanitarian crisis.

Russia has invaded Ukraine. European countries bordering Ukraine have welcomed its traumatized neighbors – an open-arm welcome in stark contrast with Black international students left out…

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Commentary

Whoopi Goldberg’s Confusion about the Holocaust Is America’s, Too

By The Reverend Irene Monroe Editorial Board

how we view race today in America is very different than how it was viewed in Europe during the Holocaust.

Conversations about race in America are our third rail. It trips us all up. Whoopi Goldberg proved that last week on the television talk show “The…

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Commentary

Antisemitism in Ourselves and Society

By The Reverend Irene Monroe Editorial Board

What is happening in America right now is not just a crisis for Jews, it is a crisis for this nation as a whole. It is an assault on the very thing that makes us all Americans.

This year for International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27, I joined the Congregation Beth Israel of Merrimack Valley’s book discussion “People Love Dead Jews” by…

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Commentary

Remembering Our Sister-Friend bell hooks

By The Reverend Irene Monroe Editorial Board

Few have changed and challenged feminism like bell hooks.

Notable African Americans died in 2021. Each one left an indelible mark on American society. One who touched me personally was bell hooks. bell hooks died…

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