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Commentaries/Opinions

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) sponsored HR 40, legislation to form a commission to study slavery reparations for African Americans.

Germany paid Holocaust reparations. Will the U.S. do the same for slavery?

By Commentaries/Opinions, HR 40 Congressional Hearing, Reparations

By Susan Neiman, Los Angeles Times — Born as a white girl in the segregated South, I’ve spent most of my adulthood as a Jewish woman in Berlin. This double perspective has fueled my resolve to explore America’s fraught relationship with its history. It is easy to point to the differences between the Holocaust and the enslavement and abuse of millions of Africans. When examining possible responses to these crimes,…

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Detail of an American flag held by a newly naturalized citizen during a U.S. citizens naturalization ceremony in Atlanta on Aug. 10, 2016.

Citizenship once meant whiteness. Here’s how that changed.

By Commentaries/Opinions

Free people of color challenged racial citizenship from the start. By Ariela Gross and Alejandro de la Fuente, Washington Post — The country has spent days debating whether President Trump’s tweets telling four congresswomen of color to “go back” to their countries are racist. Although all four are U.S. citizens and three were born here, Trump’s tweets channeled a long American tradition of equating citizenship with whiteness. But at this…

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President Trump’s recent comments about four congresswomen are widely seen as racist.

Trump’s America Is a ‘White Man’s Country’

By Commentaries/Opinions

His racist idea of citizenship is an old one, brought back from the margins of American politics. By Jamelle Bouie, The New York Times — If Donald Trump has a theory of anything, it is a theory of American citizenship. It’s simple. If you are white, then regardless of origin, you have a legitimate claim to American citizenship and everything that comes with it. If you are not, then you…

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Donald Trump defends racist tweets about congresswoman

Republicans Want a White Republic. They’ll Destroy America to Get It

By Commentaries/Opinions

By Carol Anderson, Time — When in a recent tweetstorm Donald Trump suggested that four Congresswomen of color leave the U.S. and “go back” to the “totally broken and crime infested places from which they came,” social media exploded. Outrage. Even some news outlets finally let go of the euphemisms and called the tweets “racist.” The Republicans, on the other hand, were quiet. As well they would be. The ideological demographics of…

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Confederate Statue Nathan Bedford Forrest

Tennessee Just Showed That White Supremacy Is Alive and Well

By Commentaries/Opinions

By Keisha N. Blain, The Washington Post — Honoring a former Confederate general and KKK grand wizard in 2019 is outrageous An obscure Tennessee law required Gov. Bill Lee to declare this past Saturday “Nathan Bedford Forrest Day” to commemorate the Confederate general and Ku Klux Klan leader. But Lee went further, admitting he had not even considered whether the law should be changed. His actions drew sharp criticism from politicians throughout…

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A group of Trump supporters display their "Women For Trump" and "Keep America Great" signs during the "Make America Great Again" rally held at the Mohegan Sun Arena.

Race against time: How white fear of genetic annihilation fuels abortion bans

By Commentaries/Opinions

By Carla Bell, YES! Magazine — Last year, White people constituted 60% of the U.S. population, down from about 90% in 1950. It’s projected that by 2050, they will be the new minority and people of color will be the majority—a nightmarish prediction to some White people. Sen. Lindsey Graham voiced his concern of a demographic dilution at the 2012 Republican convention, when he said, “The demographics race we’re losing badly … not generating enough angry…

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Almost 2,000 white people gathered at a 1970 protest in Charlotte, N.C. against a court-ordered desegregation busing plan.

On Busing, Joe Biden, and the ‘Pervasiveness of White Backlash to School Desegregation’

By Commentaries/Opinions

By Esther Wang, Jezebel — The most widely discussed moment from last week’s Democratic primary debates was Kamala Harris’s pointed critique of Joe Biden’s defense of southern segregationists and his stance toward busing. That encounter—in which Harris shared her own story of being a young girl bused from her working-class neighborhood on the majority-black side of town to a predominantly white school in Berkeley Hills, and in which Biden appeared visibly flustered…

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