Do we have any reason to believe that each new generation of white people will be more open-minded and tolerant than previous ones? Elvira Koneva By Margaret Hagerman, The Conversation…
The first African American principal dancer to star in a major ballet company. By Wendy Perron, The Guardian — A star of New York City Ballet and the co-founder of Dance Theatre of Harlem, Arthur Mitchell was also the first African American principal dancer in any major ballet company. Mitchell, who has died aged 84, had classical lines, buoyant energy and a palpable joy in movement. In NYCB, where he danced from…
The recent DNC vote over superdelegates revealed longstanding divisions within the party. By Seth Masket, Vox — What do Democrats fight about when they’re just fighting among themselves? The same thing the country fights about: race. I’m just back from attending the Democratic National Committee’s summer meeting in Chicago, where I observed as the party passed a number of reform measures, including a controversial proposal to reduce the power of…
The League of the South hates black people, Jews, and lots of other people. But there’s one country, and one man, it really, really likes. By Mark Potok, Daily Beast…
By “dangling the carrot” to improve worker productivity, businesses are taking a page from slavery’s playbook. By Caitlin C. Rosenthal, Boston Review — In 1911 a congressional special committee convened…
By Brian J Purnell, The Conversation — A southern city has now become synonymous with the ongoing scourge of racism in the United States. A year ago, white supremacists rallied to…
The far right movement may seem all but dead, but a crop of political candidates are introducing ideas into the mainstream. Vegas Tenold, The Guardian — No one would argue that the last year hasn’t been a rough one for the white nationalist movement in America. In fact, a not insignificant number of column inches has been written about how the movement is all but dead. The leader of the…
A year after white supremacists marched through the liberal city, Nikuyah Walker says the left needs less talk and more action. Interview by Lois Beckett, The Guardian — A year ago,…
How demographic change is fracturing our politics. By Ezra Klein, Vox — In 2008, Barack Obama held up change as a beacon, attaching to it another word, a word that channeled everything his young and diverse coalition saw in his rise and their newfound political power: hope. An America that would elect a black man president was an America in which a future was being written that would read thrillingly different…
By Robin D. G. Kelley, Boston Review — Cedric Robinson was fond of quoting his friend and colleague Otis Madison: “The purpose of racism is to control the behavior of…
A new book argues that King’s suspicion of American capitalism and his passion for economic justice did not represent a turn in his last tumultuous years. They were there all…
By Stephen Kantrowitz, Boston Review — White supremacy is a language of unease. It does not describe racial domination so much as worry about it. White supremacy connotes many grim and terrifying things, including inequality, exclusion, injustice, and state and vigilante violence. Like whiteness itself, white supremacy arose from the world of Atlantic slavery but survived its demise. Yet while the structures are old, the term “white supremacy” is not.…