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Civil rights advocates carry placards during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963, in Washington

Truth and Reconciliation: Addressing Systematic Racism in the United States

By Commentaries/Opinions, Editors' Choice

By Danyelle Solomon — 2019 marks the 400th anniversary of Africans sold into bondage arriving on Virginia’s shores. It has been 156 years since the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, 55 years since the end of Jim Crow, and 51 years since the civil rights movement. All of these moments in U.S. history represent crossroads—moments where the country made a choice or where people demanded that the words on the pages of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights became more than words; that policies and practices were equitably distributed among all people, not just a select few…

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The white nationalist plot to destroy America

The white nationalist plot to destroy America

By Commentaries/Opinions

By Ryan Cooper, The Week — In popular discourse, white nationalists are often portrayed as super-patriots — people who worship America and all it stands for. But the reality couldn’t be further from the truth. Take the instance of white nationalist terrorism in El Paso over the weekend. The culprit — following in many footsteps before him — apparently wrote and posted online a screed which fulminated against a “Hispanic…

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Eric Garner on left, Patrick Crusius, the El Paso shooter on the right.

Why Do White Mass Killers Always Seem to Live Another Day?

By Commentaries/Opinions

By Earl Ofari Hutchinson — Connor Betts, the mass shooter in Dayton, Ohio is an anomaly. He is an anomaly not because he murdered nine persons less than 24 hours after Patrick Crusius massacred 20 in El Paso. He is different because he was gunned down by Dayton police. That’s not the usual pattern. The pictures of Crusius being gently handcuffed and calmly being talked to by arresting officers after…

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The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City after a truck bomb explosion, April, 1995

White Power: At Home and Abroad

By Commentaries/Opinions

Two differently themed books complement each other; one on the rise of white power at home and the other on anti-communist adventures abroad show the domestic scourge nurtured by foreign experiences even as the global Right employed its services. By Thomas Meany, London Review of Books — In the spring of 1975, as America’s war in Vietnam drew to its grim conclusion, a new magazine targeted readers who did not…

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Elijah Cummings

Long Before Trump’s Tweets, Baltimore Had Become a ‘Target.’ Here’s How Segregation Helped Create Its Problems

By Commentaries/Opinions

By Mahita Gajanan, Time — State leaders, city officials and resident and several Democratic presidential candidates have rushed to defend the city of Baltimore after President Donald Trump lobbed an attack against Rep. Elijah Cummings and his Maryland district, which includes much of the city. In tweets over the weekend, Trump claimed that Cummings’ Baltimore-area district is “considered the worst run and most dangerous anywhere in the United States,” and called it…

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