By Susan Neiman, Los Angeles Times — Born as a white girl in the segregated South, I’ve spent most of my adulthood as a Jewish woman in Berlin. This double perspective has fueled my resolve to explore America’s fraught relationship with its history. It is easy to point to the differences between the Holocaust and the enslavement and abuse of millions of Africans. When examining possible responses to these crimes,…
Free people of color challenged racial citizenship from the start. By Ariela Gross and Alejandro de la Fuente, Washington Post — The country has spent days debating whether President Trump’s tweets telling four congresswomen of color to “go back” to their countries are racist. Although all four are U.S. citizens and three were born here, Trump’s tweets channeled a long American tradition of equating citizenship with whiteness. But at this…
His racist idea of citizenship is an old one, brought back from the margins of American politics. By Jamelle Bouie, The New York Times — If Donald Trump has a theory of anything, it is a theory of American citizenship. It’s simple. If you are white, then regardless of origin, you have a legitimate claim to American citizenship and everything that comes with it. If you are not, then you…
By Carol Anderson, Time — When in a recent tweetstorm Donald Trump suggested that four Congresswomen of color leave the U.S. and “go back” to the “totally broken and crime infested places from which they came,” social media exploded. Outrage. Even some news outlets finally let go of the euphemisms and called the tweets “racist.” The Republicans, on the other hand, were quiet. As well they would be. The ideological demographics of…
The Trump Show isn’t exactly popular, but it does mask a plutocratic agenda that’s even less palatable. By Matthew Yglesias, Vox — On Wednesday evening, President Donald Trump traveled to North Carolina to arouse the faithful by reiterating his racist crusade of the moment — a campaign to drive Rep. Ilhan Omar out of the country and back to Somalia, a country she left when she was 6 years old.…
By Nicholas Wu and Deborah Barfield Berry, USA Today — WASHINGTON – Calling racism the “poison of America,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer gave his support Tuesday to a bill to set up a commission to study reparations. “The disparities in race affect everything, not just the obvious things, but the non-obvious things” like pollution and climate change, Schumer explained. The bill, proposed by Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Texas…
Beto O’Rourke says he is descended from slave owners, supports reparations to unite ‘two Americas’. By Vandana Ravikumar, USA Today — The former House representative from El Paso, Texas, published a Medium…
By Earl Ofari Hutchinson — Trump may win. Though Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer would never in a million years publicly say anything like that. The brutal reality is he…
WASHINGTON (NBC News) — Working to prove himself to African American voters, Pete Buttigieg is releasing an 18-page plan Thursday to improve conditions and opportunity for black Americans on everything from the health care, education and criminal justice systems to entrepreneurship and access to credit. The wide-ranging plan constitutes Buttigieg’s initial version of a proposal for reparations for slavery. His campaign says it views it as a “complement” to H.R. 40, legislation working…
By Nick Fouriezos, OZY — Maurice “Moe” Mitchell stalks the stage aggressively, barking lyrics in pointed contrast to his black T-shirt, which reads in bold white letters: “Don’t Shoot.” It’s August 2014, and the socially conscious punk rocker is grieving. Not just because this Afropunk Fest show is his band Cipher’s first in three years after the death of its drummer Danny Bobis, but also because, less than three weeks earlier, the…
By Dr. Maulana Karenga — Usually when we want to confront and discount America’s founding myth of creating a democracy of free and equal persons, its hypocritical and high-hype claims…
By Earl Ofari Hutchinson — At first glance, Trump’s assertion that Blacks won’t and shouldn’t vote for 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden because he backed the 1994 crime bill…