I will be at Columbia University on Wednesday, March 7th, talking race, whiteness, and social constructs with two of the smartest people I know: MSNBC's Joy Reid and poet extraordinaire Claudia Rankine. You can tune into the livestream at 12:00pm here: universitylife.columbia.edu/in-conversation-exploring-race

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo has a great piece today on collective memory, its construct and how to process the confederate statuary debate. Understanding when, why and in what context the monuments to confederacy were erected is imperative to understanding the current debate about removing them. These monuments don't just codify our collective national narrative, they continue to drive it. Who we will be as a nation in the future is determined by how we understand our past. This debate is critical and white Americans need to take a leadership role in it. http://talkingpointsmemo.com/…/some-thoughts-on-public-memo…