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Commentaries/Opinions

Ta-Nehisi Coates

As Reform Jews, we must consider reparations for American slavery

By Commentaries/Opinions, Reparations

By Jonah Pesner, Chicago Tribune — Americans in general and faith groups in particular increasingly find ourselves reckoning with our nation’s bigoted history and struggling with how to dismantle the racist systems and structures that persist to this day. As the largest Jewish denomination in the United States, it’s time for the Reform movement to join this conversation. It’s time for us to talk reparations. When I first read Ta-Nehisi…

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Clockwise from top left: Michael Drake, president of Ohio State University; Elizabeth Alexander, president of the Mellon Foundation; Cecilia Conrad, a managing director at the MacArthur Foundation; and Henry Louis Gates Jr., a professor at Harvard.Credit...

Black Scholars Are Not ‘Rare Creatures’

By Commentaries/Opinions

When Purdue’s president said this, I had to respond because this myth is so pervasive. By G. Gabrielle Starr, The New York Times — In late November, the president of Purdue University, Mitch Daniels, told students that he will soon “be recruiting one of the rarest creatures in America — a leading, I mean a really leading, African-American scholar.” “Creatures?” a student asked. “Come on.” “It’s a figure of speech. You must have taken some literature,”…

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DACA

Slavery’s Lessons for the Supreme Court and the DACA case

By Commentaries/Opinions

The law is sometimes characterized as a clear set of rules, but it isn’t always so straightforward. By Jamal Greene and Elora Mukherjee, Los Angeles Times — The Morgan children were in their pajamas, probably dreaming, when four men broke into their home before daylight, loaded them into the back of an open wagon and forcibly took them across Pennsylvania’s southern border. The year was 1837. “DREAMERS” attend a news…

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Stephen Miller is no outlier. White supremacy rules the Republican party

Stephen Miller is no outlier. White supremacy rules the Republican party

By Commentaries/Opinions

Republican voters made Trump the white-supremacist-in-chief. That’s why a resignation from Miller wouldn’t change much. By Cas Mudde, The Guardian — This week, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) published a bombshell article revealing troubling emails that White House senior policy advisor Stephen Miller sent to editors at Breitbart News, the far-right media outlet previously led by Steve Bannon. The emails, which were leaked by former Breitbart editor Katie McHugh and predate Miller’s period…

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