In 2013 the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office denied an Oregon punk rock band’s request to trademark its name, “The Slants,” on grounds it disparaged Asian Americans. The band, led by California native Simon Tam, appealed: He says its goal was to reclaim the term from racial slurs and “inject it with pride.” In 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the trademark denial violated the First Amendment and granted the band’s request. Since then, Tam has written a memoir and started a foundation to help Asian American artists.

Not long ago, I sat between two church friends in their 30s and listened to a heated debate about race. One friend is a black woman, the other is white.

Let’s call the first woman Esther, and the second Mary. They’re close friends and sisters in Christ who have walked through life’s hardships and joys together, but this was the first time they’d ever had such an intense discussion regarding race. I watched the whole interaction as a third party. This is what I observed.

Last year, I joined a group for World War II historical tour in Europe. Part of that trip took us to Dachau concentration camp, the first Nazi death camp, where a documented 32,000 prisoners died due to brutal treatment, murder, diseases, malnutrition, and suicide.

The city of Phoenix is facing a $10 million legal claim accusing city police officers of civil rights violations during an arrest involving an alleged shoplifting. The suit accuses officers of pointing guns and yelling profane commands at a father and pregnant mother after they said their 4-year-old young daughter took a doll from a Family Dollar store without their knowledge. Parents Dravon Ames and Iesha Harper said an officer injured their 1-year-old daughter after Harper would not respond to an officer’s command to put the child down.

These are confusing times when it comes to racial issues, and I’d like to address one subtopic that’s gained attention: interracial couples—or more specifically, the increasingly criticized trend of Asian women dating white men. It’s a divisive issue fraught with emotion and misunderstanding, and weighed down with historical, cultural, and social baggage. It’s also one I’ve hesitated to write about, partly because I didn’t know what to think about it myself.

What could be more genteel than a meeting of academic classicists? Imagine scholars in tweed jackets subtly correcting each other’s Greek as they compare translations of Thucydides and debate the political implications of Sappho. The expectations of Mary Frances Williams, an independent (i.e., not attached to a university) classics scholar, were not so clichéd. Still, she had no idea when she registered for the 2019 Annual Meeting of the Society for Classical Studies (SCS) what a wild ride it would be. 

In today’s politically charged climate, some advocates of racial reconciliation lump together that great need with controversial political policies and positions. On Feb. 1, though, the first day of Black History Month, I ran across two gospel-centric articles that explain how Christians, both pastors and lay people, can help to heal America’s racial wounds for the sake of the gospel—without the political baggage.