We must make reparations to the African-American community. By Ruth A. Zlotnick, Seattle Times — The Jewish community has just emerged from our holiest days, when we celebrate the New Year and make teshuvah, or atonement, for the wrongdoings of our past. I believe as a nation, the United States also must make teshuvah, atoning for our legacy of slavery by making reparations to African Americans. I came to this…
By Richard E. Frankel, Raw Story — Over the next few days, millions of Americans will be anxiously watching and waiting to see whether a few undecided Republican Senators will vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh as our next Supreme Court Justice. Their vote will help shape the Court for a generation. More importantly, their vote holds the potential to help Donald Trump further transform this country into an authoritarian, exclusionary…
Russia’s troll army was not interested in stirring up generic ‘chaos’ in America. The Kremlin is strategically tapping into the inexhaustible fuel source of white grievance. By Spencer Ackerman, Daily Beast — Not many Russians are likely to understand a shotgun formation or the strategy behind not punting on fourth down. But between September and December 2017, social-media accounts now associated with the Kremlin-backed troll farm known as the Internet…
During the 1870s, more than a half a million Black men voted for the first time in their lives. But this wave of progressive change did not last long. By Rebekah Barber and Billy Corriher, Facing South — One hundred and fifty years ago, a Congress dominated by “Radical Republicans” — mostly former abolitionists who represented Northern states — mandated that Southern states rewrite their constitutions, ratify the 14th amendment, and grant…
There’s one distinct difference between the Clarence Thomas hearings and the Brett Kavanaugh hearings. By Charles M. Blow, The New York Times — This week’s hearings in which Christine Blasey Ford,…
By Steven Sarson, History News Networks — The release of Dinesh D’Souza’s documentary “Death of a Nation” is the latest iteration of an alt.right mission to reinforce its recent rise to power…
Progressive Democrat Stacey Abrams is taking on Trump-style Republican Brian Kemp in a state where all 82 of its governors have been white men. By David Smith, The Guardian — In “Sweet Auburn”, a short walk from the birthplace and stone tomb of Martin Luther King Jr, salon owner Terrica Jones is silking hair with a ceramic iron and contemplating an opportunity that once seemed unthinkable: to vote for a black woman…
By Cyndi Suarez, Nonprofit Quarterly — Last week, Boston enacted its own version of what may be a national trend—black progressive candidates, many of them women, beating centrist incumbents and challenging traditional ideas about viability, strategy, and some would even say the soul of the Democratic Party. Before I go on, we should acknowledge that we are seeing a challenge to the disproportionally high rate of white leadership in many aspects…
By Garry Wills, NYR Daily — When former president Barack Obama called on the nation to oppose Donald Trump at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign last week, he said there was only one way to do it, by voting. This was a criticism of the internal resistance supported by the anonymous op-ed writer in The New York Times. Obama said that people who “secretly aren’t following the president’s orders” are not defending democracy: “These…
The rising importance of money as the dominant factor in the political decision making process, is a direct result of the successful assault to remove previous restrictions on the right…
Ella Myers provides an account of W. E. B. Du Bois’s nuanced analysis of the sense of entitlement among whites in the United States. Drawing from Du Bois’s Black Reconstruction…
What Danny Glover wants that “White voice” to tell us and how we’ve gotten the American Dream so wrong. Zenobia Jeffries, YES! — Boots Riley’s debut film, Sorry to Bother You, offers a…