The event described below is part of a series of initiatives of the Anti-Racism Taskforce of the Northern Illinois Conference of the United Methodist Church. See below for details.
The color of concert music is white. Its gender: male. So goes the popular perception. To start a conversation on t.....continued>
Below is a 3:30-minute video of a small but momentous occasion. My son Aaron—a wonderful musician and talented teacher and conductor—leading the Gage Middle School orchestra, Riverside, California. He’s been teaching there for 20 years and thousands of students. When he first got to Ri.....continued>
We celebrate the Church’s “birth” on Pentecost Sunday, the day the promised Holy Spirit arrived. This year we celebrated on May 20th, a Sunday where at my church—one of the most diverse in America—its large Filipino group took charge of the service. The VIDEO below sh.....continued>
This is the first of 16 short excerpts from my radio series Voices and Freedoms: A History of Jazz. Based on my book of the same name, the series (and book) were produced at the University of Virginia in the nation’s Bicentennial Year. The show, syndicated by the Intercollegiate Broadcasting.....continued>
May 2020 Update: Another “I-Can’t-Breathe” incident. I could not watch the video of the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 26, 2020. But I heard it while my wife described to me what she was seeing: a police man with his knee on the neck of an already-subdued bl.....continued>
“CBS” (COOL BLACK SICKNESS) a song DAN GUZMAN co-wrote and performs with Brad Hoskins. Fat Cats, Moses in the desert with the Great I Am, bleeding seas, and things tumbling from the sky. Apocalyptic dread. Cool grooves. It not only sounds good—it&#.....continued>
Update: IN APRIL 2018, EMMANUEL HOUSE MERGED WITH LONG-TIME PARTNER ORGANIZATION THE JOSEPH CORPORATION TO BECOME The Neighbor Project. THIS INCREASED THE NUMBER OF FAMILIES SERVED FROM AROUND 25 AT THE TIME OF SENATOR DURBIN’S VISIT TO NOW, IN 2020, A NUMBER APPROACHING 3000. WATCH A VIDEO.....continued>
The Video below, posted on Facebook by a person who’s not in my Friend category, shows ICE agents stopping and checking cars at Galena and Blackhawk—just a mile from my house—on September 30, 2025. They’re by a park where two of my grand children played regularly because their family used to live in the blue house you see in the background. I don’t know if anyone was detained, but it had to be scary for any kids who were there, and obviously for those in the cars being stopped and searched.
In his 1941 book The Dual State: A Contribution to the Theory of Dictatorship, lawyer Ernst Fraenkel details how the Nazis slowly gained control of the German populace by maintaining a “Normative State,” which seemed to keep everything functioning with familiar stability, but then creating a “Prerogative State,” which allowed intimidation and violence to be visited upon certain groups of people—like Jews, of course. The city where I live is nearly 50% “Hispanic,” so the eventual presence of ICE was expected. But the fear engendered, though expected, can’t be fully appreciated until it’s actually here.
Will incidents like these turn Hispanic voters away from Trump? It’s hard to tell. In 2024 Trump garnered 45% of their vote, only 8% behind Harris, whose Hispanic totals were far below recent Democratic candidates (Obama garnered 71% of their vote in 2012, for example). Many analysts attribute this to the economy. “I won the election because of one word: ‘groceries,'” said Trump in one of his many post-election interviews. But it could also be that many Hispanics don’t exactly disapprove of mass deportation of “illegals.” Once here and legal, many immigrants often turn hard against other immigrants, especially if they’re illegal. It’s part of the lure of being an American, of wanting to be totally embraced by the nation, and—after all—I did it legally, and those others are spoiling it for the rest of us.
It could also show the limits of identity politics in America, something that the Democratic Party had normally taken for granted: if you’re a person of color, especially Black or Hispanic, of course you’ll vote for us. That worked, somewhat, in the case of Blacks, who gave 83% of their vote to Harris. But that means a significant percent of the vote, 17%, went the other way. Support among Black men went up over three times the historic average. Trump got 25% of their vote, and much of that was among young Black men.
In that “Preogative State” Fraenkel speaks of, lawlessness and fear can run rampant. Is the “Normative State” still strong enough to blind us to the dynamics of that Prerogative one, if this is indeed what’s happening? And in the end, will it matter? Will many people—many of them people of color—just react by saying: “Those other people. They deserve to be pushed around.”
* Read a more detailed account of Fraenkel’s book in “A Warning Out of Time: How autocrats create spheres of lawlessness” by Aziz Huq in The Atlantic, May 2025.
ICE in the Neighborhood
In his 1941 book The Dual State: A Contribution to the Theory of Dictatorship, lawyer Ernst Fraenkel details how the Nazis slowly gained control of the German populace by maintaining a “Normative State,” which seemed to keep everything functioning with familiar stability, but then creating a “Prerogative State,” which allowed intimidation and violence to be visited upon certain groups of people—like Jews, of course. The city where I live is nearly 50% “Hispanic,” so the eventual presence of ICE was expected. But the fear engendered, though expected, can’t be fully appreciated until it’s actually here.
It could also show the limits of identity politics in America, something that the Democratic Party had normally taken for granted: if you’re a person of color, especially Black or Hispanic, of course you’ll vote for us. That worked, somewhat, in the case of Blacks, who gave 83% of their vote to Harris. But that means a significant percent of the vote, 17%, went the other way. Support among Black men went up over three times the historic average. Trump got 25% of their vote, and much of that was among young Black men.
In that “Preogative State” Fraenkel speaks of, lawlessness and fear can run rampant. Is the “Normative State” still strong enough to blind us to the dynamics of that Prerogative one, if this is indeed what’s happening? And in the end, will it matter? Will many people—many of them people of color—just react by saying: “Those other people. They deserve to be pushed around.”
* Read a more detailed account of Fraenkel’s book in “A Warning Out of Time: How autocrats create spheres of lawlessness” by Aziz Huq in The Atlantic, May 2025.