Loss of social standing is an ever-present threat for individuals whose social acceptance is based on behavioral traits rather than unconditional human value.

You just have to be strong if you're a black woman.

I would want to know that my daughter is going to enjoy a long, happy and healthy life.

In a moment when young black voters were key to the election and the reelection of a black president, when the Department of Justice has been led these years by the first two African-American attorneys general, when many big cities boast African-American league prosecutors and police chiefs and mayors, even in this moment, why is it that it still feels to so many young people that there is more power for change on the court than in the courts?

Bill Cosby no longer on Temple University`s board. His name has been removed from various college scholarships and buildings. Two dozen colleges and universities have rescinded honorary degrees they gave him.

I can understand how someone might read wearing a blonde wig as a desire to be white, but I suspect that the same shaming smirk can happen if you wear a big afro or any number of other hairstyles.

I am a supporter of much of the Arab Spring, as a matter of indigenous self-determination. So, I see the United States' role in Libya as an appropriately restrained one in providing some international support for the work of those trying to bring democratic change against a regime that has undoubtedly been dictatorial, particularly in the past twenty years.