Author: Pius Kamau
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GUEST COLUMN: Why do I think of owning a weapon?
The gun I dream of buying keeps popping up in my head in a recurring fashion. It never reaches fever pitch but loses velocity and intensity. It curls around my brain and then falls asleep, only to reawaken some later date when the air is full of menace. The reason for my wanting to own…
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What to do with those who refuse the vaccine?
Growing up in Kenya, our Kikuyu tribe elders were suspicious of British colonialists’ medicines in bottles and “white poisons” delivered with needles. Whites violently occupied our lands, killing many with “fire spitting” gadgets called guns; insisting they possessed the fountain of all knowledge. Because their science-based drugs were more effective than the traditional Kikuyu medicines,…
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GUEST COLUMN: Why the shortage of minority physicians?
“No physician is racist, so how can there be structural racism in health care?” wrote Edward Livingston in a Twitter message promoting a Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) podcast in February. “Many physicians are skeptical of structural racism, the idea that economic, educational and other social systems preferentially disadvantage Black Americans and other…
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Stapleton remembered — with a caveat — defeats Stapleton erased
Benjamin Stapleton, the Democratic mayor of Denver from 1923 to 1931 and 1935 to 1947 was a prominent member of the Ku Klux Klan and in his honor, Denver’s International Airport bore his name. After Stapleton International Airport was closed in 1995 the tony neighborhood that grew on top of the former airport grounds assumed…
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Colorado’s immigrants embrace U.S. political culture
If I close my eyes, it seems the mob is still battering the gates to the US Capitol. I can hear their angry cries and see the sequence of their actions, and the petrified, completely overwhelmed U.S. Capitol police. Obviously the videos of that afternoon are now a permanent part of our lore of the…