After 200 years of Caucasian hegemony, American society is now struggling to come to terms with its increasing diversity.  A new local group is coming together to aid in that process here in Sonoma County.

One common liberal response toward those who experience deprivation is to offer some form of charity. Community activist Carl Patrick says that’s not appropriate when dealing with ingrained cultural racism.

But, Patrick adds,  passive inaction is no better.

Aligned with other groups such as U.S. For All of Us and the Alliance of White Antiracists Everywhere.

Related reading: What if the Tea Partiers were Black? 

Tim Wise, the author of this article was featured on the North Bay Report on April 14th.

Racism will remain an ugly subtext in American culture, says writer Tim Wise (below), until we can collectively bring the subject out of the shadows and talk about it honestly.

Before America, as a society, can fully acknowledge and embrace the racial differences within, Wise contends we will need to recognize the ways in which white privilege has been empowered by the government. The backlash against the welfare programs of the past 40 years, he says, are a sad indicator of how far away such acceptance still lies.

One of the curious aspects of racist behavior, in Wise’s analysis, is how bigotry can lead people to act against the own best interests, out of fear those actions would also benefit the people they disparage.

Poisonings, both accidental and criminal, have been happening for centuries. But the science of investigating those deaths is barely a hundred years old.

As she began to research the history of forensic medicine in Jazz Age New York, science writer Deborah Blum, author of The Poisoner's Handbook,  says she was struck by the number and variety of toxic substances that were being used.

Many of those historic toxics are no longer in wide use, but that doesn’t mean we are any less vulnerable to poisons now, Blum (left) says. In fact, the chemistry of modern-day poisons is more complex than 90 years ago.

Forensic examinations and laboratory analyses have become central to a growing list of popular network television dramas. But Blum has no complaints about them.

County and federal investigators raided administrative and financial offices at Sonoma State Thursday morning, as part of a long-running investigation into allegations of fiscal mismanagement of a large grants administration program on campus.

It has been almost three years since the fiscal problems surfaced at the California Institute for Human Services, and Sonoma County District Attorney Stephan Passalaqua (right) says it will now take many more months to sift through the materials that were collected during this raid.

Conflict doesn’t have to be violent. In fact, proactive non-violence can be used to force change, and those skills and tactics can be taught and practiced. That’s what Cynthia Boaz is doing at an international conference in India this week.

Cynthia Boaz, a Sonona State University professor of political science, has studied the mechanics and practices of non-violence, and is presenting on that subject this week at an international conference hosted by War Resisters International. All true and effective non-violent movements for change must first gain a measure of popular support within the repressed indigenous populations, she explains, then as the movment gains strength, the oppressor is left with nothing but force to try to sustain itself.

Ghandi and the Rev. Martin Luther King are often seen as exemplars of non-violent leadership, but Boaz says the high-profile charismatic individual at the head of a movement is atypical, and not necessarily the most effective model.

But just as grassroots leaders can study and learn the skills and tactics of nonviolence, Boaz observes that oppressors, too, can and do try to understand and deflect those efforts.

International Center on Nonviolent Conflict