Baby Carriers and the So-called Caravan
What’s killing me the most is the photos: not just bodies crammed onto bridges or flatbeds trucks, or sprawled along the roadside with nothing more than…
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Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, and the Language of Massacre
On December 28, 1890, the U.S. 7th Cavalry Regiment intercepted a group of Lakota Native Americans en route to South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Agency and escorted them to Wounded Knee…
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The Time I caught Bernie Sanders’s Jacket
When I decided to make the trip up to New Hampshire to canvass for Bernie Sanders, it was mainly because I thought it would be cool to run around for a while pretending to be…
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The Plague of Stuff: We Buy, Who Pays?
Towards the end of every semester, I ask my anthropology students to conduct an inventory of their closets. It is both a nod to In Small Things Forgotten (the bible of…
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There’s No Such Thing as Race
As an adjunct professor of cultural anthropology, I’ve grown accustomed to my white students blaming their black classmates for their own failure to qualify for financial aid.…
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Do I Look Like a Baby Killer?
This morning I went to Planned Parenthood. I go every three months to pick up my birth control pills and again in August just before my birthday for my annual pelvic exam. My…
#MeToo and Matrescence at the Gas Pump
A few weeks ago, while I was pumping gas and thinking through about a million and one different things on my way into work, the man…
Grandma, where were you the night Hillary Clinton got the nomination?
DNC Day #4: The Hat I Wore to My Grandfather’s Funeral
A Racist Looks at The Nutcracker as a Form of Historical Dance
Rosaries and Ovaries: Standing for Planned Parenthood in Philadelphia
I think we might be “Glamping”
“Free wi-fi” doesn’t really mean free wi-fi in the great American southwest. It means if you stand on one foot, cross your eyes, stick out your…
Life Happens: How to Buy a House in 5 Weeks and Not Kill Your Spouse
When you’re on your honeymoon, as PIC and I were this time last year, a trip to the airport is all about holding hands, hinting hopelessly…
Day Without a Woman: To Strike or Not to Strike?
It’s here: March 8th, International Women’s Day and the Day Without a Woman General Strike. Fittingly, I’m on Day #1 of my period so I feel…
Pussyhats in the Street and Elephants in the Room at the Women’s March on Washington: 3 Notes from a Recovering White Feminist
Like many of us who marched on Washington DC yesterday, I’m still processing. This is probably because I’m tired (being a revolutionary is hard work!) and…
Is your Inventory of Good good enough? (Because mine sure isn’t…)
I thought I’d get skinned alive after Tuesday’s post about the death of Carrie Fisher, especially once Debbie Reynolds had the audacity (or perhaps good fortune?)…
When Celebrity Deaths are More Important than our own Darth Vader, America Needs the Force
Okay Facebook, let’s calm down for a moment and take stock: yes, Carrie Fisher died this week. As did George Michael, bringing the tally of this…
For all the Broken Hearted Americans: Maybe it was time to break?
When I was a senior in college I took a class in post-9/11 immigration policy. It was my first class in the political science department and…
5 Major Problems with Mike Rowe’s Manifesto of Electoral Ambivalence
Earlier this month, Mike Rowe’s condemnation of celebrity “Get out the Vote” campaigns went viral. It started back in August, when a fan suggested that the…
Educating Trump’s “Deplorables”
Usually, after a few weeks off in the middle of August each summer, I find myself chomping at the bit to get back into the classroom.…
Columbus Day and Election Day: Which is Worse?
It seems only fitting that one of our most fucked-up days as a nation (the second 2016 presidential debate) directly proceeded one of our other most…
Fieldwork in Stilettos 