Tim Wise

This is an open letter to the man sitting behind me at La Paz today, in Nashville, at lunchtime, with the Brooks Brothers shirt: You don’t know me. But I know you. I watched you as you held hands with your tablemates at the restaurant where we both ate this afternoon. I listened as you…

According to government estimates, between two and three million cases of housing discrimination take place each year, victimizing persons of color who seek to either purchase or rent a place to live. This discrimination takes several different forms, some of which are rather blatant, and others of which appear more subtle: claiming that the last…

Part I of this article appeared in the May 5, 2005 issue of BC. “It’s the crime stupid!” Thus read the first line of an e-mail I received a few weeks ago. This particular love note came from someone who had run across an old article of mine in which I had discussed racism in…

Whenever I write an article about racism, or give a speech concerning the ongoing reality of discrimination in the labor market, I am assailed by those who refuse to believe what virtually any study done in the past two decades confirms: namely, that people of color are not seeing things, nor crazy when they suggest…

The victim – and let there be no mistake that is the only word that fits here – is Marcus Dixon: a young man who was an ‘A’ student in high school, a member of the National Honor Society, one of the best defensive football players in the United States, who scored above a 1200…

It’s just a game. Thus speaks David Chang, creator of GHETTOPOLY, which uses the traditional MONOPOLY board game formula to steer players through life in an inner-city community: or at least what Chang presumes such a place looks like. Though he has never spent time in a ghetto himself, Chang explains that watching MTV and…

This article was originally published December 5 as a Znet Commentary, by subscription at www.zmag.org So the Supreme Court has announced it will hear the long-simmering affirmative action case from the University of Michigan law school, in which white plaintiffs sued, claiming to have been denied admission even though they had grades and test scores…