Race Archives - Page 8 of 29

Politics

Harnessing Federal Power for Police Reform in America

What we can learn from Reconstruction and the Voting Rights Act of 1965

July 8, 2020 • by Richard Johnson and Desmond King

History suggests that the response to the current crisis of policing in the United States must be a stronger role for the federal government. Yet few activists within the Movement for Black Lives are demanding that the federal government flex its coercive muscle. Given the racism of the current occupant ...

Harnessing Federal Power for Police Reform in America

Activism

A Tale of Three Protests — in Brooklyn

A photo-essay

June 29, 2020 • by Jo Freeman

On Saturday, May 30, I heard that a crowd was at Bedford and Tilden in Flatbush near the Sears parking lot where Covid-19 testing has been conducted for several weeks. When I got there at about 5:30 p.m, I saw two to three hundred people milling in the street. They had ...

History

Public Seminar Presents: Becoming Free, Becoming Black

On July 1, Alejandro de la Fuente and Ariela J. Gross join your host, Claire Potter, to discuss their new book about race, law, and citizenship

June 28, 2020 • by Alejandro de la Fuente, Ariela Gross and Claire Potter

How did Africans become 'blacks' in the Americas? Becoming Free, Becoming Black: Race, Freedom, and Law in Cuba, Virginia, and Louisiana (Cambridge University Press, 2020) tells the story of enslaved and free people of color who used the law to claim freedom and citizenship for themselves and their loved ones. ...

Public Seminar Presents: Becoming Free, Becoming Black

Politics

The Rise of Liberal Support for Racial Justice

The critical factor connecting protest and electoral politics today

June 25, 2020 • by Sanford Schram and Richard Fording

There has been extensive commentary about the protests over the recent murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, with some suggesting parallels to the 1960s. But a number of observers have incisively pointed out differences as well, noting the racial diversity of today’s protesters compared to those who took to the streets ...

The Rise of Liberal Support for Racial Justice

Activism

Protestors Aren’t Destroying History, They Are Recasting It

When monuments to racism, slavery, and empire come down, new possibilities rise up

June 25, 2020 • by Durba Ghosh and Kelly King-O’Brien

In the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder at the hands of police, the movement to remove Confederate monuments has accelerated rapidly as part of a new wave of Black Lives Matter demonstrations. Protestors argue these monuments represent institutional racism and should be removed immediately. Many governors and local politicians readily ...

Protestors Aren’t Destroying History, They Are Recasting It

Activism

The Pride Wore White

Black trans women step out of the queer chorus

June 23, 2020 • by McKenzie Wark

I’d come for Brooklyn Liberation for Black Trans Lives. We were asked to wear white. I blended in easily with the human snow of the crowd, wrapped all around the museum. Coming up Washington Avenue, so many white-clad bodies streaming, milling, chatting, buying ice cream from the truck, clapping and cheering ...

Activism

Social Justice Is More Important Than Social Distance

Why a researcher who understands the health consequences of mass gatherings is in the streets fighting racism

June 19, 2020 • by Miranda Yaver

My first political memory was watching officers of the Los Angeles Police Department beating Rodney King on television. I did not fully comprehend what I was watching at 5 years old, though I sensed that it was unjust. Nearly three decades later, braving coronavirus and angry about police brutality against people ...

Social Justice Is More Important Than Social Distance

Race

black on Black

The digital future of color bias and racism

June 15, 2020 • by Asha Hassan Nooli

Asha Hassan Nooli is a rising sophomore at Lang College, and a first-generation American coming from a Somali background. She is interested in stimulating social reform on a global scale. The essay that follows was Hassan Nooli’s contribution to the New School Dean’s Honor Symposium, an annual celebration of the ...

Race

When the Penis Is Property

Why we can’t talk about the sexuality of enslaved African American men

June 11, 2020 • by Kevin Mumford

In Joseph Lavallée's novel, The Negro Equalled By Few Europeans, an enslaved African man named Itanoko describes being raped by a white slaver named Urban. The white man was "struck with my comeliness,” Itanoko says, which "made him violate, what is most sacred among men.’” According to Thomas Foster’s Rethinking ...

Feature

How “Blue Lives Matter” Perpetuates Police Violence

The movement fosters an environment of fear, hatred, and racism

June 9, 2020 • by Adam Quinn

In the aftermath of the killings of Terence Crutcher in Tulsa and Keith Lamont Scott in Charlotte at the hands of police, the Blue Lives Matter hashtag rallied around a video of a group of black youth attacking a white man and taking his pants off in a parking garage ...

How “Blue Lives Matter” Perpetuates Police Violence

Politics

If Everyone Else Is the Problem, You Probably Aren’t Seeing Things Clearly

Why effective anti-racism demands reflexivity

June 8, 2020 • by Musa al-Gharbi

In general, whites and socioeconomic elites in America feel a greater sense of entitlement and belonging, and a stronger conviction that social institutions exist to serve them and promote their interests. Within these groups, progressives are much more likely than conservatives to view various forms of state intervention as the ...

If Everyone Else Is the Problem, You Probably Aren’t Seeing Things Clearly

Kinships

The Bookkeeper

The racist legacy of a mixed-race family

June 5, 2020 • by Julia McKenzie Munemo

In The Book Keeper, the journey of finally reading those pulpy paperbacks set during slavery entwines with questions about Munemo’s father’s mental illness, the tale of her own love story, and her exploration of the fears she carries for her sons in a country where, as we continue to be ...