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Race

George Wallace blocking a federal agent from entering the University of Alabama to enroll Black students, 1963.

Is Freedom White?

By Editors' Choice

In a political season of dog whistles, we must be attentive to how talk of American freedom has long been connected to the presumed right of whites to dominate everyone else. By Jefferson Cowie, Boston Review — “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!” Alabama governor George Wallace’s most famous sentence fired through the frigid air on the coldest day anyone in the state could remember. His 1963 inaugural address—written by a…

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Housing Segregation

Black Households Earned 61 Cents for Every Dollar of White Median Incomes

By Commentaries/Opinions

Police violence linked to segregated housing. By Charlene Crowell — The August 23 police shooting of an unarmed Black man in Kenosha, WI, triggered yet another round of community protests and national news coverage of a Black man. A series of multiple gunshots fired by a local police officer, were not fatal for 29-year old Jacob Blake; but may have permanently paralyzed him from the waist down. Days later on…

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In Wilkerson’s view, racism is only the visible manifestation of something deeper, a hidden system of social domination.

Isabel Wilkerson’s World-Historical Theory of Race and Caste

By Editors' Choice

By comparing white supremacy in the U.S. to the caste system in India, her new book at once illuminates and collapses a complex history. By Sunil Khilnani, The New Yorker — As the summer of 1958 was coming to an end, Martin Luther King, Jr., was newly famous and exhausted. All of twenty-nine years old, he had been travelling across the country for weeks promoting his first book, “Stride Toward…

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Glover, right, and author Ta-Nehisi Coates

History of affirmative action policies show how white people have benefitted

By Editors' Choice

By Christiana Best-Giacomini, Hartford Courant — When most Americans hear “affirmative action,” they often think the phrase is referring to a policy that protects African Americans. What many Americans don’t know is that affirmative actions are policies that were made by white people, to benefit white people, exclusively. Moreover, due to the insidious nature of how these policies and practices are integrated into American institutions and culture, white people continue…

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A print of U.S. President Andrew Jackson at the Battle of Tallushatchee, 1813.

This Land Is Not Your Land

By Editors' Choice

The Ethnic Cleansing of Native Americans By David Treuer — In his first annual message to the U.S. Congress, in 1829, U.S. President Andrew Jackson—a slave-owning real estate speculator already famous for burning down Creek settlements and hounding the survivors of the Creek War of 1813–14—called for the “voluntary” migration of Native Americans to lands west of the Mississippi River. Six months later, in the spring of 1830, he signed…

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Bill Clinton golfing with his wealthy friends on August 5, 2000, in Martha's Vineyard, MA.

The Racial Wealth Gap Is About the Upper Classes

By Commentaries/Opinions

By Matt Bruenig, Jacobin — In light of the recent resurgence of Black Lives Matter protests, there has been renewed discussion of the racial wealth gap and how to close it (Nikole Hannah-Jones, Annie Lowrey). I have written on this topic many times in the past (I, II, III, IV). One thing I have tried to emphasize over the years, which I will do again here in a different way, is that due to…

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‘Jacob’s Dream’ by Salvador Rosa (c. 1665).

How did ‘white’ become a metaphor for all things good?

By Commentaries/Opinions

We want to be whitelisted and not blacklisted for jobs. White lies make stretching the truth okay, but you don’t want to receive a black mark on your record. By Aradhna Krishna — Shortly after George Floyd’s death, one of my friends texted me that Floyd wasn’t necessarily a bad person, but, pointing to his prior stints in prison, added that “he wasn’t lily-white either.” Soon thereafter, I read an article in…

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The grand buildings of Bordeaux, France, were financed, in part, by the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The city has moved to address that past.

George Floyd’s Killing Forces Wider Debate on France’s Slave-Trading Past

By Editors' Choice

Rather than tear down statues, some argue that the past should not be obliterated, but remembered and explained. By Norimitsu Onishi, The New York Times — BORDEAUX, France — At a bend in the river, a succession of stately stone buildings, each more imposing than the last, stretches along the left bank. Their elegant 18th-century facades had helped Bordeaux, already famous for its wineries, become a UNESCO World Heritage site.…

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