Skip to main content
White protesters march against racial integration during a rally in Little Rock, Arkansas, on August 20, 1959. (Photo: Library of Congress)

White Supremacy Has Always Been Mainstream

By Editors' Choice

By Stephen Kantrowitz, Boston Review — White supremacy is a language of unease. It does not describe racial domination so much as worry about it. White supremacy connotes many grim and terrifying things, including inequality, exclusion, injustice, and state and vigilante violence. Like whiteness itself, white supremacy arose from the world of Atlantic slavery but survived its demise. Yet while the structures are old, the term “white supremacy” is not.…

Read More
Kiarra Boulware and her niece at Penn North, an addiction-recovery center in Baltimore

Being Black in America Can Be Hazardous to Your Health

By News & Current Affairs

In Baltimore and other segregated cities, the life-expectancy gap between African Americans and whites is as much as 20 years. One young woman’s struggle shows why. By Olga Khazan, The Atlantic — One morning this past September, Kiarra Boulware boarded the 26 bus to Baltimore’s Bon Secours Hospital, where she would seek help for the most urgent problem in her life: the 200-some excess pounds she carried on her 5-foot-2-inch…

Read More
The Democrat Stacey Abrams is vying to be the first African American woman governor in U.S. history.

The Democratic Party Apologizes to Black Voters

By News & Current Affairs

The DNC’s bid to energize African American turnout this fall began with these words from Chairman Tom Perez in Atlanta: “I am sorry.” By Russell Berman, The Atlantic — ATLANTA—Swanky fund-raisers don’t often begin with an apology to the well-heeled donors who shelled out thousands of dollars to sip wine, eat steak, and listen to pep-rally speeches. But as he looked out over a predominantly black crowd gathered at the Georgia…

Read More
Cori Bush is running for Congress in Missouri, aiming to defeat a lawmaker who has served in the House for 17 years.

The next Ocasio-Cortez: will these candidates pull Democrats to the left?

By News & Current Affairs

The New York activist’s upset primary victory has fueled hopes – and boosted funding – for progressives in Democratic races across the US By Adam Gabbatt, The Guardian — One day in mid-June, Cori Bush, a nurse and activist mounting a progressive primary challenge against a well-established Democratic congressman in Missouri, took a look at her fundraising totals. She had raised $9 during the previous 24 hours. On the evening of…

Read More
Left to right: Radical Republican Thaddeus Stevens; an African-American soldier in the Union Army; abolitionist Frederick Douglass

The Urgency of a Third Reconstruction

By Editors' Choice

The ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment marked a turning point in U.S. history. Yet 150 years later, its promises remain unfulfilled. By Robert Greene, Dissent — The ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment on July 9, 1868 was a turning point in United States history. Arriving at the height of Reconstruction, the amendment marked the first time the U.S. Constitution explicitly addressed the question of who qualified as an American citizen.…

Read More
About 12.7 percent of Americans lived below the poverty line in 2016.

Why the war on poverty in the US isn’t over, in 4 charts

By Editors' Choice

By Robert L. Fischer, The Conversation — On July 12, President Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers concluded that America’s long-running war on poverty “is largely over and a success.” I am a researcher who has studied poverty for nearly 20 years in Cleveland, a city with one of the country’s highest rates of poverty. While the council’s conclusion makes for a dramatic headline, it simply does not align with the reality of poverty in the U.S.…

Read More