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Commentaries/Opinions

Mmusi Maimane

Liberalism in South Africa isn’t only for white people—or black people who “want to be white”

By Commentaries/Opinions

By Steven Friedman — Liberalism is meant to be about freedom for all individuals, regardless of race. But linking liberalism to whiteness as is happening now is not new in South Africa. Most activists who fought for black freedom dismissed liberalism as a white ideology designed to tame black people, not to free them. This was hardly surprising, since many white liberals spoke and acted as if liberalism was exactly that:…

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R. Drew Smith Professor, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, Co-Convener, Transatlantic Roundtable on Religion and Race

National Reconciliation Without Accountability Rings Hollow

By Commentaries/Opinions

By R. Drew Smith Professor, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary Co-Convener, Transatlantic Roundtable on Religion and Race — Twenty-five years ago, Nelson Mandela was elected South African president after serving 27 years in prison for leading resistance against racially-oppressive apartheid rule. During that same moment in April of 1994, a horrible tragedy was unfolding further north on the African continent as longstanding ethnic grievances within Rwanda irr

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A crowd gathers in Abbeville, South Carolina, to commemorate a memorial to Anthony Crawford, a prominent Black businessman who was killed by a lynch mob in 1916.

On Reparations, Let Impacted Communities Lead the Way

By Commentaries/Opinions, Reparations

By David Ragland, Melinda Salazar and Tarell Kyles — The campaign FOR Truth and Reparations hosted the Black Manifesto Revival in Atlanta’s historic Candler Park neighborhood this past May. The revival was in observance of the 50th anniversary of the Black Manifesto, which initially demanded $500 million in reparations (and later $3 billion) from Christian European American churches…

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