Why the Howling That New York’s Private Schools Have Been Taken Over By Critical Race Theory?

Claims that children are being harmed are a thin cover for returning to a world where white people don’t have to feel bad about racism

Late last week, Paul Rossi, a member of the mathematics faculty at Grace Church School in lower Manhattan, denounced the social justice and anti-racism program instituted by the school in 2020. Before writing this essay, published on Bari Weiss’s contrarian Substack, Common Sense, Rossi was already in hot water. By ...
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Why the Howling That New York’s Private Schools Have Been Taken Over By Critical Race Theory?

Broom Swept

Failure tells a tale about capitalism too

_____ What closes and then darkness, what opens and then bright?Before the horn has risen,where hides the lord of light? —Tian Wen, A Chinese Book of Origins  How you frame something is a moral decision. —Babette Mangolte On Mercer Street, on the island of Manhattan, and just before the city paused, walking in a southerly direction ...
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Broom Swept

We’ve Never Been Global

How local meanings mattered in 1900 and still matter now

The last sun of the century sets amidst the blood-red clouds of the West and the whirlwind of hatred. The naked passion of self-love of Nations, in its drunken delirium of greed, is dancing to the clash of steel and the ...
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We’ve Never Been Global

“I will tell you the story of belatedness”

Why for us, migrants, it is always too late

“I will tell you the story of belatedness. We migrants, we refugees, we foreigners.We are always seen as delayed people.We arrive [at] the right time.And it is always too late.”Shahram Khosravi It is mid-June when we video chat with Dagmawi Yimer, an Ethiopian refugee and filmmaker living in Italy, for the first ...
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How Do We Process the Loss of Our Homes?

A talk with filmmaker Swetha Regunathan

By all measures we are living in an era defined by housing crises, a flood of human habitat destruction. The losses are both economic and environmental. Over 17 million people in 2018 alone were displaced from their homes because of climate change–associated disasters, according to the United Nations. Here in ...
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How Do We Process the Loss of Our Homes?

Migration as a Claim for Reparations

The connections between political agency and migration

In October 2016, Hussein and I met over coffee at a Tunisian pastry shop in the north of Paris to follow up on his administrative battle with the French government. We had spent months filing paperwork together, building the strongest possible case for his asylum application. Hussein had fled Sudan ...
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Migration as a Claim for Reparations

Trumpism and the Banality of Evil

More reflections on challenges of historical comparisons

I am astonished that it has come to this. I have long understood that the American political system is flawed. White supremacy is knitted into its fabric. The electoral college is a monster that has undermined majority rule and is now being used by Trump and his supporters in their quest ...
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Trumpism and the Banality of Evil

(Dis)solving the “Problem” of Immigration

Why migrants and citizens alike should strive for a reformed labor system

Italian food is venerated by Italians and tourists alike. Being Italian, I am frequently told by others how much they love our food. But how many of them are aware of the conditions in which day laborers are forced to work to ensure its cheap and steady production? Imagine your dream ...
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(Dis)solving the “Problem” of Immigration

Confessions of a Poll Worker

When I volunteered to work on Election Day, my melting pot neighborhood taught me about the complexity of Trump’s America

It’s not the least of the paradoxes of the Trump era that this wannabe authoritarian did more than any decent man to lead Americans to assume their civic duties. Trump’s attacks on the electoral process led 52,000 New Yorkers to sign up for work at the polls, 18,000 more than in ...
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Confessions of a Poll Worker