Skip to main content
Tag

American Politics

Pete Buttigieg, mayor of South Bend, Ind., and a Democratic presidential candidate, greets people at Gibson’s Bookstore in Concord, N.H., on April 6

New Hampshire’s white liberals grapple with reparations

By News & Current Affairs, Reparations

By Julie Zauzmer, The Washington Post — CONCORD, N.H. — Over the past two years, a series of racist incidents has shaken New Hampshire, a state that’s nearly 95 percent white. A biracial 8-year-old was pushed off a picnic table with a rope around his neck in Claremont, an assault authorities are investigating as a hate crime. Teens sang “Let’s kill all the blacks” during a high school history class in Dover. A burned Confederate flag was…

Read More
Freddie Jenkins’ mother attended what is now the last standing African American schoolhouse in Mount Pleasant, S.C., in the 1930s.

Slavery’s descendants say a reparations check won’t make the pain go away

By Editors' Choice, Reparations

By Tyrone Beason, Los Angeles Times — CHARLESTON, S.C. — Five years before the first shots of the Civil War rang out from the harbor here in 1861, alderman Thomas Ryan and a business partner opened Ryan’s Mart at No. 6 Chalmers St. Their merchandise was slaves: African men, women and children who were prodded, picked over and auctioned off to the highest bidders. The finest adult males could fetch…

Read More
Democrat Kamala Harris, U.S. senator from California, spoke Saturday, Aug. 10, 2019, at the Des Moines Register Political Soapbox at the Iowa State Fair. Des Moines Register

Kamala Harris on reparations for slavery: ‘It can’t just be, ‘Hey … write some checks’

By News & Current Affairs, Reparations

By Barbara Rodriguez, Des Moines Register — U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris says she supports studying reparations, but she’s not sure what any resultant program would look like. The senator from California and Democratic presidential hopeful said Sunday during a Des Moines Register editorial board meeting that the idea, which would grant compensation to individuals impacted by slavery and racial discrimination, is complex and deserves to be examined carefully. “This stuff…

Read More
NRA Vice President and CEO Wayne LaPierre

The NRA Is a Symptom of the Racism That Drives Violence in the United States

By Commentaries/Opinions

By William Rivers Pitt, Truthout — In the immediate aftermath of the massacres in Gilroy, El Paso and Dayton, Donald Trump actually began to contemplate doing a tiny sliver of the right thing. In doing so, he ran straight into the teeth of the Second Amendment, without doubt, the most lethally misunderstood corner of the U.S. Constitution. On the Sunday after the attacks, Trump reached out to Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin and Republican Sen.…

Read More
The Cathedral of our Lady of Victories in Yaounde, Cameroon.

In Cameroon, religious freedom can’t be separated from politics

By Commentaries/Opinions

By R. Drew Smith, RNS — American religion and politics have been stubbornly connected — except where we pretend they aren’t. Despite constitutional separations between church and state, religion has been more closely tied to politics and politics more closely tied to religion than most care to admit. And yet, advocates for international religious freedom often treat religious freedom and political freedom as totally separate and distinct domains. This separation…

Read More
Donald and Melania Trump arrive in El Paso.

Trump could renounce white nationalism – but he can’t pretend he cares

By Commentaries/Opinions

In theory, a president can offer comfort at times like these. But this one would prefer to hurl insults. By Richard Wolffe, The Guardian — In normal American mass murders – because such horrors have become so astonishingly normal – the president usually plays the role of some great but helpless comfort blanket. He may be unable to break the NRA’s cold, dead grip on the Republican party, but he…

Read More