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Going native: Vial of racism called Sauvage

In late August, the chic French luxury brand Christian Dior debuted an ad campaign for its fragrance referencing Native Americans. A number of American Indians decried the advertisement as racist. It was. The company featured a video in its Twitter feed of an American Indian dancing in full regalia in the desert. A narrator can be heard saying, “An authentic journey deep into the Native American soul in a sacred, founding and secular territory.” After a swift, negative reaction on social media, Dior pulled the ads. But it was not so much the imagery or verbal content that ...

Disease can be financially toxic

For three decades I’ve worked with people who are aging or chronically ill, helping them figure out how the heck they are going to pay for old age or serious illness. One of the issues that’s gotten markedly worse during this time is financial toxicity — that is, the economic burden that too often accompanies the diagnosis of a dread or terminal disease. I see this most often with people battling cancer. Well, as often happens in life, I recently found the proverbial shoe on the other foot when my mother was diagnosed with cancer. Thankfully, her prognosis is pretty good, and she ...

Black Americans are doing a lot better under Trump

The August jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed more great news for all Americans. And particularly for black Americans. The nation’s unemployment rate of 3.7% puts it near the lowest ever in the last half-century. Black unemployment is at an all-time low at 5.5%. Also at an all-time low is the gap between black and white unemployment. With white unemployment at 3.4%, the gap is 2.1 percentage points. Put in other terms, black unemployment stood 62% higher than white unemployment. A few years ago, the Pew Research Center looked at BLS unemployment data back to ...

Is it ethical to take good money from bad people?

The now-former head of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab went from hero to zero in a couple of news cycles. Once heralded for overseeing projects that use technology for social good, Joichi Ito resigned after revelations that he had tried to hide the source of donations from sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein. It was the cover-up that ultimately did him in. Before that, there was some back and forth on the morality of taking good money from bad people — a subject on which hypocrisy often takes center stage. Few of the fortunes that shower colleges, medical facilities ...

Dealing with Taliban devil that’s waiting us out

President Trump was right to cancel a “secret” meeting with leaders of the Taliban and the Afghan government following two bomb attacks by the terrorist group that killed 10 civilians, an American soldier and a Romanian service member in heavily fortified Kabul. The president is eager to fulfill a desire to withdraw remaining American forces in what has been one of America’s longest wars. Who isn’t? Unfortunately, terrorism does not fall under a single umbrella. It is not just al-Qaida, though all Islamist terrorist groups appear to have the same objective: Kill Americans, ...

Slave labor in the modern era

By Mary Jane Wilkie The Baltimore Sun The prospect is appealing: work your own hours, be your own boss, choose your assignments. Who wouldn’t want that? But reports from Uber and Lyft drivers suggest that the glittering prospect is deceptive and that many drivers make roughly what fast-food workers make. Here’s the truth: The gig economy is glorious only if the skill you are selling has great value, your business skills are sharp and you have the opportunity to use your business savvy. Now well into senior citizen-hood (and still working), I have spent more than 60% of my ...