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Commentary, Articles and Essays by Dr. Ron Daniels

Toward a Movement to Expand the Public Space and Culture of Rights in America

By Vantage Point Articles

Vantage Point by Dr. Ron Daniels — The headline in the February 13th edition of the New York Times front page was glaring: “Needs of Public A Low Priority in Rebuilding.” The headline was in reference to President Trump’s long awaited, so called infrastructure plan. The essence of this much ballyhooed “plan” is a dramatic shift in how the federal government has traditionally approached the construction of public highways, tunnels, bridges, harbors, railways, airports and other vital pieces of the nation’s infrastructure. In the past…

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March 10, 2018
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Stone Mountain

Is Stone Mountain Memorial a Gigantic Tribute to White Supremacy?

By Commentaries/Opinions

Some see the monument as “the largest shrine to white supremacy in the history of the world.” By Debra McKinney, Southern Poverty Law Center — From its north side, Stone Mountain is a formidable sight. Staggeringly steep, nearly five times as high as Niagara Falls, it rises from Georgia’s wooded landscape like a rogue wave. This anomalous, igneous dome east of Atlanta is the centerpiece of a state park that draws 4 million visitors a year. Forty stories above ground, front and center on the gunmetal-gray face of the stone, is the largest bas-relief carving on the planet, a Civil War memorial to Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson. These leaders of the Southern rebellion against the United States sit astride their steeds, hats over their hearts, on a three-acre backdrop etched into the mountainside.

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March 9, 2018
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Notes on the Capitalist Origins of Racial Oppression in the United States

By Commentaries/Opinions

By W. T. Whitney — When white people shed exculpatory myths and acknowledge the truth about slavery, they’ve arrived at what descendants of enslaved people know about only too well. But they need not stop there. They could test the proposition that historical memory contributes to undermining racial oppression. Members of a small family group – myself included – showed up September 25, 2017 at the Freedom House Museum in…

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February 28, 2018
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Do guns preserve freedom?

By Commentaries/Opinions, Reparations

By Ryan Cooper — Many conservatives believe they do. In one representative example, National Review’s David French argued that we need a heavily armed citizenry in case the government turns tyrannical and America’s private gun owners need to wield the threat of gunning down police and soldiers to preserve their liberty. For the Second Amendment to remain a meaningful check on state power, citizens must be able to possess the kinds and categories…

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February 28, 2018
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After the Sale: Slaves Going South from Richmond by Eyre Crowe, 1853 (Now hanging in the Chicago History Museum)

The Second Amendment was ratified to preserve slavery

By Commentaries/Opinions, Reparations

By Thom Hartmann, AlterNet — The real reason the Second Amendment was ratified, and why it says “State” instead of “Country” (the Framers knew the difference – see the 10th Amendment), was to preserve the slave patrol militias in the southern states, which was necessary to get Virginia’s vote. Founders Patrick Henry, George Mason, and James Madison were totally clear on that . . . and we all should be too.

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February 23, 2018
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Movie Black Panther

The Tragedy of Erik Killmonger

By Commentaries/Opinions

The revolutionary ideals of Black Panther’s profound and complex villain have been twisted into a desire for hegemony. Black Panther is a love letter to people of African descent all over the world. Its actors, its costume design, its music, and countless other facets of the film are drawn from all over the continent and its diaspora, in a science-fiction celebration of the imaginary country of Wakanda, a high-tech utopia that is a fictive manifestation of African potential unfettered by slavery and colonialism.

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February 23, 2018
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