Common Ground: Conversations on Race, Communities in Action

11/04/2019

She makes a compelling argument in this essay.

Tayari Jones addresses the myth of the moral middle

11/03/2017

Have you heard? Rev. Barber is reviving the Poor People's Campaign. Sign up here:

01/18/2016

Remembering Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. - the radical and the revolutionary - on this national holiday.

Fifty years ago today, Martin Luther King wrote this landmark missive. It was republished several months later in The Atlantic.

12/22/2015

"But the multiracial tableau obscures a stark racial divide: The union’s white members have received more work and larger pensions, data show. In contrast, minority members, who have lagged for decades, often struggle to find steady jobs and to earn enough credit to retire on time with full pensions."

Last month, a union began paying the first installments of $12.7 million in back pay to hundreds of black and Hispanic members in a partial settlement of a bias lawsuit decades old.

11/09/2015

"As long as our community is unable to uncouple race and poverty, there will be wide inequality and a tale of two cities that prevent our economy from running on all cylinders and our ambitions from being fully achieved."

For as long as we can remember, our community has been having a conversation about the need to have the conversation about race. And yet, we always seem to find reasons to put it off. But finally, it seems like we’ve run out of excuses – and time – and if all the positive talk these days about Memph…

08/28/2015

Melissa Harris-Perry and James Perry, New Orleans residents, reflect on "the Katrina decade," connecting the federal government's response to the recent Black Lives Matter movement.

Black lives matter. America understands this as a movement rooted in the breathtaking sadness of George Zimmerman’s 2013 acquittal in the brutal murder of Trayvon Martin; necessitated by the enraging refusals to indict police officers in Ferguson and Staten Island for the murders of black men in 2..…

08/27/2015

As the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina approaches, an LSU study examines the stark differences in racial perceptions about the recovery.

A survey found a stark divide among black and white perceptions of recovery, the economy, and life after Katrina.

08/25/2015

http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/op-ed/article31827543.html

Leonard Pitts on why "All Lives Matter" represents "moral cowardice."

08/25/2015

Congratulations to Common Ground founder Wendi Thomas, as she begins her year as a Nieman Foundation Fellow at Harvard. During her fellowship year, Wendi will explore how to extend public dialogues about economic justice through social media and civic engagement. For more information about the Nieman Foundation for Journalism: http://nieman.harvard.edu/.

Arrived.

07/15/2015

D'Army Bailey on the Civil Rights Museum: “It’s living history, and I don’t see it as the scene of a defeat or one bit morbid. Everybody dies, and that’s the price we all pay. This is the place where Dr. King paid his price in triumph.” Common Ground salutes Judge Bailey for his lifelong activism against racism. RIP Judge D'Army Bailey.

Mr. Bailey campaigned to transform the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, site of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, into a civil rights museum.

07/08/2015

We do a race-focused version of this exercise in Common Ground. It's very powerful.

"Privilege is complex..."

06/24/2015

Ta-Nehesi Coates argues that responsible public policy must begin with a responsible, comprehensive understanding of America's complicated social history.

Addressing the moral failings of black people while ignoring the centuries-old failings of their governments amounts to a bait and switch.