Skip to main content
Tag

Politics

Trumpism Is ‘Identity Politics’ for White People

By Editors' Choice

The president’s closing argument in the midterm elections lays bare the logic of his appeal. By Adam Serwer, The Atlantic — After Democrats lost the 2016 presidential election, a certain conventional wisdom congealed within the pundit class: Donald Trump’s success was owed to the Democratic abandonment of the white working class and the party’s emphasis on identity politics. By failing to emphasize a strong economic message, the thinking went, the party had…

Read More
Lucy McBath speaking to a group of supporters in Atlanta early this month.

‘Democrat. Fighter. Mother.’ Lucy McBath Is Redefining Social Justice in Politics.

By News & Current Affairs

By Astead W. Herndon, The New York Times — An air of solemnity hangs over Lucy McBath’s bid for Congress. It is present in her campaign stump speech, when she recounts the 2012 murder of her son, Jordan Davis, a black teenager who was shot and killed by a white man at a gas station when the 17-year-old refused to lower the volume of the rap music playing in his…

Read More
Civil rights organizations have sued Georgia’s Republican secretary of state for failing to register 53,000 new voters, most of them black. Reuters/Christopher Aluka Berry

Georgia election fight shows that black voter suppression, a southern tradition, still flourishes

By Editors' Choice

Georgia’s refusal to process 53,000 voter registrations, mostly filed by African-Americans, is the latest in a long history of black voter suppression in the South, from poll taxes to literacy tests. By Frederick Knight, The Conversation — Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brian Kemp has been sued for suppressing minority votes after an Associated Press investigation revealed a month before November’s midterm election that his office has not approved 53,000 voter registrations – most…

Read More

How 2018 Became the ‘Year of the Black Progressive’

By Editors' Choice

White Democrats are becoming more liberal; black Democrats aren’t. That fact is driving black candidates to win by executing a savvy strategy. By Theodore R. Johnson, Politico Magazine — It’s too soon to award the moniker, but 2018 may well be remembered as the political “Year of the Black Progressive,” much as 1992 was the “Year of the Woman.” Black women are taking office as mayors in major cities such…

Read More
Ghana’s President Nana Akufo-Addo and China’s President Xi Jinping at the 2018 summit in Beijing.

Ties between African countries and China are complex. Understanding this matters

By Commentaries/Opinions

By Yu-Shan Wu, Chris Alden and Cobus van Staden, The Conversation — The complex relationship between Africa and China has become even more complicated this year. Initially, 2018 was set to reaffirm the bond through the latest Forum on China-Africa Cooperation summit held in Beijing in September. The summit delivered its usual pageant of African leaders, side deals, and the announcement of a USD$60 billion financing package. The year also saw the recurrence of misgivings about…

Read More
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez reacts to a passerby in New York City on June 27, 2018.

A Blue Wave Next Month Could Be the Start of a Progressive Sea Change

By News & Current Affairs

By Katrina Vanden Heuvel — If Democrats flip the House, the Congressional Progressive Caucus will have the leaders, agenda, and institutional muscle to drive the debate. “Only in the darkness can you see the stars,” the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. taught us. Now, even in the bleak night of Brett M. Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court, there are stars that offer hope. If Democrats take back the House…

Read More
A Trump rally in 2016.

A new study reveals the real reason Obama voters switched to Trump

By News & Current Affairs

Hint: It has to do with race. By Zack Beauchamp, Vox — One of the most puzzling elements of the 2016 election, at least for a lot of Americans, was the millions of voters who switched from voting for Barack Obama in 2012 to Donald Trump in 2016. Somewhere between 6.7 million and 9.2 million Americans switched this way; given that the 2016 election was decided by 40,000 votes, it’s fair to…

Read More