Acton Institute Powerblog Archives

Post Tagged 'racism'

January 20, 2014

Martin Luther King and The Birth of Freedom

Acton’s second documentary, The Birth of Freedom, begins with Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I have a dream” speech and ends with an image from the Civil Rights movement. The documentary, which aired on PBS, explores how the speech is rooted deeply in the Western freedom project and how that centuries-old project is itself rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Continue Reading...
January 20, 2014

MLK and the Natural Law

Martin Luther King, Jr. was fond of saying that the “arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” This was no thin, pragmatic account of rights-based egalitarian liberalism, says Derek Rishmawy, but rather a philosophically and theologically thick appeal to a divinely ordered and sustained cosmos. Continue Reading...
July 24, 2013

Grading Kids by Race?

In his famous 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech, Martin Luther King, Jr. declared, I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. Continue Reading...
July 03, 2012

Obamacare and Civil Disobedience

Florida Governor Rick Scott recently declared that his state would not comply with President Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. In blatant defiance of the federal government, Florida will not expand its Medicare program or implement any of the other changes that “Obamacare” requires. Continue Reading...
May 30, 2012

Commentary: The Power of Market-Driven Diversity

In this week’s Acton Commentary (published May 30), Anthony Bradley argues that racial discrimination is no match for the power of competition: “While companies were free to discriminate against blacks it was not in their economic interests to do so because, at the end of the day, every company’s favorite color is green.”  Continue Reading...
January 05, 2009

Book Review: My Grandfather’s Son

Perhaps the most striking theme of Associate Justice Clarence Thomas’s autobiography My Grandfather’s Son is just how many obstacles Thomas had to overcome to reach the high judicial position he currently holds. Continue Reading...
December 20, 2007

Romney and the Racism Charge

One element that came out in the aftermath of “Romney’s religion speech,” an event highly touted in the run-up and in days following, was the charge that Mormonism is essentially a racist faith (or at least was until 1978), and that in unabashedly embracing the “faith of his fathers” so publicly (and uncritically), Mitt Romney did not distance himself from or express enough of a critical attitude toward the official LDS policy regarding membership by blacks before 1978. Continue Reading...
October 01, 2007

Patterson Stops Too Short In Jena Six New York Times Piece

Orlando Patterson, professor of sociology at Harvard University, penned a challenging piece on Jena 6 and our current racial tensions. I have learned much from Patterson over the years. For example, he was the first person to help me realize that we often confuse issues of race and class in America by assuming the race as the single variable accounting for the cyclical plight of poor blacks. Continue Reading...