How do we determine if cockfighting is acceptable? Matt Bevin, a Senate candidate in Kentucky who is vying to unseat Mitch McConnell, has made contradictory assertions after speaking at a rally to legalize cockfighting. While he has apologized for speaking at the rally, asserting that he was not aware of the rally’s cause, he has balanced his denunciation of cockfighting with reference to claims that it is part of America’s heritage. Continue reading “Heritage and Cockfighting”
Dulling a Critical Edge
I caught a story this morning on the radio, concerning so-called contemporary Christian music. It was on Josh Garrels (above), whose music “wrestles with and celebrates the mystery of faith with authenticity and heart” (at least according to his web site).
What caught my ear was the following quote: Continue reading “Dulling a Critical Edge”
“She Fit That Profile”
Today is the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, delivered during the now famous March on Washington. To mark that date, Culture on the Edge asks: Do you know who Claudette Colvin is?
For if we’re marking anniversaries, which are part of a discourse on origins, after all — anchoring the present as significant inasmuch as it is somehow related to an authoritative, annually commemorated past — then, given this blog’s critique of how we usually think about identity, there might be something interesting to learn by taking a moment today to look at how we today talk about that period in U.S. history that we now know as the civil rights movement. Or, more specifically, to ask how we pick our origins points and the anniversaries that we celebrate, and what these choices about the past have to say about who we think ourselves to be today? Continue reading ““She Fit That Profile””