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Megyn Kelly and Jim Crow, a character worn in blackface used to mock African-Americans.

Megyn Kelly defended blackface on the ‘Today’ show, but here’s the racist history behind it

By News & Current Affairs

By Jacob Shamsian, Insider — “Today” host Megyn Kelly apologized Wednesday for defending blackface, the act of non-black people wearing makeup to make themselves look black. Blackface has a racist history in the United States. It was used in minstrel shows, movies, and other forms of entertainment to dehumanize African-Americans and exclude them from the entertainment industry. Mocking caricatures spread stereotypes about African-Americans that were used to deny them civil…

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Nobody would mistake Cory Booker for a radical.

Cory Booker’s Big New Policy Idea Isn’t Reparations, but It’s the Closest a Presidential Candidate Is Going to Get

By News & Current Affairs

By Jordan Weissmann — Sen. Cory Booker did not come out and propose reparations for black Americans this week. But the policy idea he rolled out on Monday might be the closest thing that we can expect to see from a serious presidential contender going into 2020. The senator from New Jersey, who is gearing up for a White House run, plans to introduce legislation soon that would create a “baby bond”…

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Trumpism Is ‘Identity Politics’ for White People

By Editors' Choice

The president’s closing argument in the midterm elections lays bare the logic of his appeal. By Adam Serwer, The Atlantic — After Democrats lost the 2016 presidential election, a certain conventional wisdom congealed within the pundit class: Donald Trump’s success was owed to the Democratic abandonment of the white working class and the party’s emphasis on identity politics. By failing to emphasize a strong economic message, the thinking went, the party had…

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Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil

Why Some Afro-Brazilians Are Willing to Vote for a Racist Presidential Candidate

By Commentaries/Opinions

It’s Complicated: Why Some Afro-Brazilians Are Willing to Vote for a Racist Presidential Candidate Who’s Calling for More Police Violence. Kiratiana Freelon, The Root — Last week, Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s white, hard-right presidential candidate, received an unexpected American endorsement. “He sounds like us,” said David Duke, an unabashed white supremacist and former Grand Duke Wizard of the Louisiana Ku Klux Klan. “He is a total European descendant, he looks like any…

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Lucy McBath speaking to a group of supporters in Atlanta early this month.

‘Democrat. Fighter. Mother.’ Lucy McBath Is Redefining Social Justice in Politics.

By News & Current Affairs

By Astead W. Herndon, The New York Times — An air of solemnity hangs over Lucy McBath’s bid for Congress. It is present in her campaign stump speech, when she recounts the 2012 murder of her son, Jordan Davis, a black teenager who was shot and killed by a white man at a gas station when the 17-year-old refused to lower the volume of the rap music playing in his…

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President Donald Trump blends all too nicely with Italy's fascist dictator Benito Mussiloni.

“I Am a Nationalist”: Donald Trump Apes Mussolini in Drive to Destroy America

By Commentaries/Opinions

It is important that everyone understand how dangerous what Trump said is. By Juan Cole, Common Dreams — Trump proudly says he is a “nationalist.” He is, of course, saying this to shore up support among white nationalists. The Nazi sites on the web were all having wet dreams in the aftermath. From the 1990s, polling has found that about 10% of Americans support far right militias. These are the…

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Civil rights organizations have sued Georgia’s Republican secretary of state for failing to register 53,000 new voters, most of them black. Reuters/Christopher Aluka Berry

Georgia election fight shows that black voter suppression, a southern tradition, still flourishes

By Editors' Choice

Georgia’s refusal to process 53,000 voter registrations, mostly filed by African-Americans, is the latest in a long history of black voter suppression in the South, from poll taxes to literacy tests. By Frederick Knight, The Conversation — Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brian Kemp has been sued for suppressing minority votes after an Associated Press investigation revealed a month before November’s midterm election that his office has not approved 53,000 voter registrations – most…

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