Persuasion & Rhetoric

April 19, FBT co-hosted a meetup for writers who publish on Substack. We ended up getting not only Substack writers but memoirists, writers for TV and screen, and writers for the New York Times, Atlantic, and elsewhere...

Listen now | From Russia with Love

As a trained theologian and womanist in Christian ministry, I look at race—the deification and demonization of skin and bones by social color-codes—as idolatry.

Many leftists claim that black Americans are crushed beneath a vast, racist social machinery. It is hard to imagine a more demoralizing message.

Mike's new Substack project, "Human Race Man": sample essay, "Have Race Relations Worsened?"

To promote true abundance, educators from a variety of disciplines must instill the basics of rational debate and consensus-building

Why is it important for me to talk about American slavery in 2024? It's really not important. I could live a fine and wonderful life and not give a second thought to American slavery. I think infinitely more often about dodging the homeless in downtown San Diego or about my daughter becoming...

Obligatory Seriousness. What does it mean to have “privilege” or a “privileged upbringing”? Is this just having parents with money, or is there something else involved?

Glenn Loury and Erec Smith (York College, Free Black Thought). Recorded November 13, 2023.

A Framework for an Empowering and Dignified Life.  An excerpt from Jason Littlefield’s forthcoming book titled Empowered Humanity Theory: A Framework for an Empowering and Dignified Life available November 2023.

How to think about Richard Hanania's past racism and recent apology

Being a victim of racial discrimination is not exclusive to being black.

Listen now (110 mins) | An interview with FBT co-founder and true neutral Michael David Cobb Bowen

When Wink Twyman responded to Jen Richmond’s article decrying a diversity training program she participated in he didn’t know it would kickoff a letter correspondence that spanned the course of years. Letters in Black and White: A New Correspondence on Race in America is the compendium of these...

On this inaugural episode of The Free Black Thought Podcast, host Connie Morgan and FBT President Erec Smith discuss Erec’s origin story, the importance of rhetoric, and what the anti-racist movement gets wrong.

I did this one a little differently, as I sat with my thoughts for the last week. Big changes by the supreme court, some our furious. I'm mostly sad...for th...

Rhetoric, or the ability to discern the available means of persuasion in a given case, can be an aid to abundance. If people don’t know how to talk to certain people or groups, especially those who differ from themselves, they miss out on social moments, good conversations and professional or...

Liberals spread misleading information, too.

In this episode, Joe chats with Jake Mackey about the woke takeover over academia; the importance of preserving and studying the art and ideas of the past; h...

Scratch beneath the surface and it’s clear Gen Z are often conscientious and tolerant.

FAIR Perspectives: In this episode, we speak with Dr. Erec Smith. We discuss his field of rhetoric, what led him to it, African-American Vernacular English versus Standard English, the implications of what activists call "linguistic justice

Retire the word and focus on ideas

Throughout most of the history of Western civilization, rhetoric was seen as one of the primary subjects of the liberal arts. After more than century of decline, the study of rhetoric is making a comeback. This is good news, since to combat political polarization, we can all benefit from the...

Introductory essay: Welcome to the Journal of Free Black Thought, a publication dedicated to foregrounding the widely diverse black perspectives that are rarely given room, and hence rarely encountered, in mainstream idea spaces. The Journal will publish essays that address black history, black...