Kevin Baker

Book bans are sweeping school districts across the country . The pattern is familiar: ban books that deal with racism, books with LGBTQ+ characters, books that tell uncomfortable truths about American history. On the surface, this is about protecting children. But let me ask you to interrogate that with me. Protecting them from what, exactly? From complexity? From truth? From the knowledge that their classmates live different realities? I grew up in Richmond, Virginia—the capital of the...

Black Mental Health "Breaking the Silence" February is Black History Month, but I want to talk about something we often leave out of that history: the mental health impacts of living in a society structured by white supremacy culture. When I work with organizations, I help people understand how unexamined trauma shapes leadership. But we need to have this conversation on a societal level too. The constant stress of navigating predominantly white spaces, the hypervigilance required to protect...

"Seeking Human Kindness" I've been thinking about the housing affordability crisis gripping our cities. Young people can't afford homes. Families are being priced out of neighborhoods they've lived in for generations. And the conversation keeps centering on supply and demand, as if economics exists outside of culture and history. Here's what we're not interrogating: How did we get here? Remember what I shared about school funding being tied to property values? That same system created...