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Editors’ Choice

‘If your anti-racism work prioritizes the ‘growth’ and ‘enlightenment’ of white America over the dignity and humanity of people of color – it’s not anti-racism work. It’s white supremacy.’

Confronting racism is not about the needs and feelings of white people

By Editors' Choice

Too often whites at discussions on race decide for themselves what will be discussed, what they will hear, what they will learn. And it is their space. All spaces are. By Ijeoma Oluo, The Guardian — I was leaving a corporate office building after a full day of leading workshops on how to talk about race thoughtfully and deliberately. The audience for each session had been similar to the dozens…

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A study by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition found that coastal cities had the largest number of neighborhoods that were gentrified from 2000 to 2013.

D.C. has the highest ‘intensity’ of gentrification of any U.S. city, study says

By Editors' Choice, Gentrification

More than 20,000 African American residents were displaced from low-income neighborhoods from 2000 to 2013, researchers say. By Katherine Shaver, Washington Post — About 40 percent of the District’s lower-income neighborhoods experienced gentrification between 2000 and 2013, giving the city the greatest “intensity of gentrification” of any in the country, according to a study released Tuesday by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition. The District also saw the most African American…

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Anders Breivik, who killed 77 people in bomb and gun attacks in 2011. gestures as he enters a courtroom in Skien, Norway, on March 15, 2016.

White Supremacy Is Bigger Than 8Chan

By Editors' Choice

Blaming the Internet alone for racist mass shootings is a naive delusion. By Brendan O’Connor, The Nation — At the juncture of blood-strewn history and a crisis-ridden future, 49 Muslims in New Zealand lie dead, executed at prayer by a white supremacist. A man has been charged with murder while others are being questioned over their involvement and the names of the victims have not yet been made public. The…

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Ta-Nehisi Coates

Ta-Nehisi Coates Is an Optimist Now A conversation about race and 2020

By Editors' Choice

By Eric Levitz, New York Magazine — In recent days, as Democrats debated the definition of “reparations,”Joe Biden rationalized his opposition to integration, and socialist congresswomen started demanding the rebirth of a nation, inquiring minds wanted to know: What would Ta-Nehisi say? Throughout the Obama years, Ta-Nehisi Coates provided politics-watchers with a regular source of historically grounded, bracingly well-written punditry and reporting. But since 2016, the writer’s ambitions have led him off of…

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Abraham Lincoln

One Way to Make Reparations Work

By Editors' Choice, Reparations

By Noah Smith, Bloomberg — The issue of reparations for African Americans is, of course, full of more moral and historical issues than one column, even by someone with much greater understanding and deeper knowledge than me, could ever resolve. But since the proposal is now being taken seriously, it’s worth thinking about the economics of how it could and should work. The idea of compensating the descendants of American…

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A sign posted on a construction site says, "Danger Due to Capitalism."

Beware the Soft Hand of Capital

By Editors' Choice

Capitalism co-opts our best visions — through its soft hand, capital reforms its way out of crisis, putting forward more tolerable forms of exploitation. By Clara Mejia-Gamboa & Daniel Sullivan, Roar Magazine — These days, it seems customary to begin any political commentary with the laundry list of indicators of global decline: exploding wealth inequality, looming environmental collapse, and the resurgence of overt racial terror in far-right governments. We are…

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When Franco Rosso’s “Babylon” premièred at Cannes, in 1980, it was hailed for its soulful depictions of a community largely invisible in British media.Photograph Courtesy Kino Lorber Repertory / Seventy-Seven

What “Babylon” Captured About Racism and Reggae

By Editors' Choice

By Hua Hsu, The New Yorker — In June, 1948, the H.M.T. Empire Windrush docked in the Port of Tilbury, near London. Among its passengers were approximately eight hundred West Indian workers, mostly from Jamaica, who had come in response to England’s postwar labor shortage. Some planned to earn money and return home; others wondered what it would be like to stay. There was a lot of work to be…

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