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Nekkid People

This morning in church I was a lay reader for the first time in my life. You usually have to go through training or some such before they let you stand at the head of the church at the heavily-carved lectern with a microphone in front of you and read the word of God—we say that after the reading, intone it, actually: “The Word of...

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The Mississippi that Might Still Be

When I heard that Mississippi during this massive moment of potential change was focusing on its racist flag, at first I thought, oh, dear Lord —that’s what Mississippians think matters now? But. I lose count when I try to say how many generations I’ve been from Mississippi (’cause, you know, we’re not very good...

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I Would Have Been A Confederate Soldier

If I had lived during the 1860s, I probably would’ve done exactly what my mother’s grandfather did. Cursing, I would’ve picked up a gun and left my Mississippi family to protect my homeland. I would’ve fully understood I was fighting for a cause I did not support—preserving the right to own people. But the...

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How to Fail at the Race Talk

I failed at the conference for racial justice this weekend. I gave racially tinged advice to a perfectly innocent question that had no race element to it. I mistook one African-American woman with glasses and short hair for a different African-American woman with glasses and short hair, because all African-Americans look alike to us white...

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First, There is Racism

When my husband and I built our house at Pickwick Lake, we built it into the high bluffs that circle the lake. In order for this to work, the architect had to take steel beams and drive them through the shifting mud until he hit bedrock. The house was thus anchored and then built around these beams. I keep thinking of this image as I ponder...

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