Sharon Kyle, JD

By now, the news that Chris Rock tweeted, “Happy white peoples independence day the slaves weren’t free but I’m sure they enjoyed the fireworks” is no longer news. His tweet set Twitter and a good portion of other online media ablaze for a couple of days. Chances are, you read it. How is it that…

I was going to let Black History Month pass without contributing an article this year because nothing particularly interesting sparked me to write. Then a couple things happened. First, the associate pastor of my predominantly white church read Toure�s book, Who’s Afraid of Post-Blackness?. The book motivated her – a white woman – to invite…

Listen to Mark Thompson Interview Sharon Kyle, JD about “Prison-Based Gerrymandering” (MP3 audio)

When, Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, spoke at a gathering in my community, I asked her to give the audience her condensed version of the prison-based gerrymandering phenomenon. Characterizing it as a modern-day 3/5ths Compromise, Alexander explained that in most states, census residence rules require…

Michele Bachmann dominated cable news and the blogosphere recently when she claimed that the Founding Fathers worked hard to eradicate slavery in the United States. Her revision of American history is patently false, yet she stood by her words when questioned, maintaining that John Quincy Adams – who was about 9 years old when the…

“It is, of course, the symbol for Americans to be reminded of other countries because this was gifted us, of course by the French—other countries warning us to never make the mistakes that some of them had made.” Okay, so Palin is saying that France gave us the statue to warn us not to make…