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Race

“Colfax Massacre” in Louisiana.

‘The War of Races’: How a hateful ideology echoes through American history

By Editors' Choice

From slavery to Reconstruction to Dylann Roof, the idea of “race war” has a long and bloody legacy in the United States. By Michael E. Miller, The Washington Post — It was high noon on Easter 1873 when the white mob came riding into Colfax. Five months earlier, Louisiana had held its second election since the end of the Civil War and the beginning of black male suffrage. But some…

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‘Suggesting that whiteness has no meaning creates an alienating – even hostile – climate for people of color working and living in predominantly white environments.’

White people assume niceness is the answer to racial inequality. But it’s not.

By Commentaries/Opinions

While most of us see ourselves as ‘not racist’, we continue to reproduce racist outcomes and live segregated lives. By Robin diAngelo, The Guardian — I am white. As an academic, consultant and writer on white racial identity and race relations, I speak daily with other white people about the meaning of race in our lives. These conversations are critical because, by virtually every measure, racial inequality persists, and institutions…

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Jeb Bush speaks at a 2013 American Legislative Exchange Council meeting.

Rightwing ‘bill mill’ accused of sowing racist and white supremacist policies

By News & Current Affairs

By Ed Pilkington, The Guardian — Alec, the rightwing network that brings conservative lawmakers together with corporate lobbyists to create model legislation that is cloned across the US, has been accused of spreading racist and white supremacist policies targeted at minority communities. A report published on Tuesday by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and other advocacy groups charges Alec with propagating white supremacy. In one of the sharpest criticisms yet levelled at…

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‘Hundreds of thousands are in prison for selling drugs because prosecutors maintained they were poisoning the community – but in Flint, where the whole community was poisoned, not one official was punished.’

I believe black Americans face a genocide. Here’s why I choose that word

By Editors' Choice

Consider the physical, financial, mental, even spiritual deaths inflicted on black Americans. By Ben Crump, The Guardian — In the weeks since the release of my book, Open Season: Legalized Genocide of Colored People, the question I’ve been asked most often is whether my use of the word genocide in the title was meant to be intentionally provocative, rather than reflective of reality. Surely, genocide is too strong a word…

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Mmusi Maimane

Liberalism in South Africa isn’t only for white people—or black people who “want to be white”

By Commentaries/Opinions

By Steven Friedman — Liberalism is meant to be about freedom for all individuals, regardless of race. But linking liberalism to whiteness as is happening now is not new in South Africa. Most activists who fought for black freedom dismissed liberalism as a white ideology designed to tame black people, not to free them. This was hardly surprising, since many white liberals spoke and acted as if liberalism was exactly that:…

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