Les femmes voilées, en d'autres termes, transgressent la norme sociale. Comme autrefois, le procès en sorcellerie qui leur est intenté repose sur la conviction intime qu'elles ne se contentent pas d'être qui elles sont: différentes. On estime qu'elles sont animées de mauvaises intentions envers le reste de la communauté.

Mais ne peut-on renverser la perspective, en se demandant si le rejet du voile au nom de la laïcité n'est pas un communautarisme déguisé en universalisme?

Many people think that more immigration into Western countries leads to more terrorism, because immigrants from non-Western cultures are more likely to be terrorists. My research finds a very different kind of relationship. Immigrants aren’t committing terrorism in Western Europe. Rather, native citizens appear to be committing terrorism because of their hostility to immigrants.

Semenya’s revelations are important because the IAAF claims that taking a pill to suppress testosterone levels is safe and unintrusive, and that this is a humane way to discriminate. Her experience contradicts those claims. But her honesty is also important because it reminds us all that this is not really about appeals or court filings, fairness or protecting women’s sports. It’s about rules rooted in racism, sexism, and homophobia, that aim to control women’s bodies through any means necessary.

Investigative journalists have discovered hundreds of law enforcement officers around the country who are active in members-only Facebook groups that are based on racism, hate and ... well, it would be nice to add a third thing here, but that’s about it.

For a lot of white people, the mere suggestion that being white has meaning will cause great umbrage. Certainly generalizing about white people will. Right now, me saying “white people,” as if our race had meaning, and as if I could know anything about somebody just because they’re white, will cause a lot of white people to erupt in defensiveness.

And though the new breed of nannies is in some ways more varied than its predecessors (we now have male nannies, non-nannies who are more buddy than boss, and power nannies who take their cues from management consultants), these characters bear little resemblance to real-life nannies, who are most likely to be women of color and/or immigrants, whose work is often underpaid and/or undocumented.

The three fires were set at black churches at the end of March and early April. No one was injured during the fires. Police said they were aware of the history of hate crimes against black churches, including a series of fires set in the 1990s.