Essays Archive - Page 55 of 131

Hilaria Baldwin’s Newest Baby Should Make Us All Happy

A fresh baby makes us understand how little we understand of other families

March 15, 2021 • by Amanda Katz

_____ In its infinite generative power, Twitter recently churned up an oddly enchanting term: the fresh baby. What is a fresh baby, you may ask? Well, a fresh baby is the baby you get when you already have a newish baby, say less than six months old, and then all of ...

Hilaria Baldwin’s Newest Baby Should Make Us All Happy

Economy

Can Cooperatives Build Worker Power?

Give platform co-ops a seat at the policy table

March 11, 2021 • by Trebor Scholz, Doug O'Brien and Jason Spicer

If the American movement supporting Democratic Socialism gets traction, centrist Democrats are likely to push for cooperatives as a way to temper the severity of American capitalism. To that end, efforts like The Clean Slate for Worker Power project would do well to consider the potential of platform cooperatives ...

Democracy

Democracy and Social Justice

On the significance of C.T. Vivian and Adam Michnik

March 11, 2021 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

The New York Times, April 26, 1984: “A Polish Nobel laureate in exile stood in a church on lower Fifth Avenue yesterday and read an open letter of moral outrage from a jailed dissident in Poland to his jailer. The letter, as another speaker put it, fell like ''a tornado'' on the ...

Democracy

The United States Is Picking Up Where The Great Society Left Off

The conventional wisdom that endured for decades is making way for something new

March 11, 2021 • by John Stoehr

_____ You might be tired of me talking about the American Rescue Act, which passed the House of Representatives on March 10 and is headed to the President’s desk. But while the rest of the country is talking about Joe Biden’s dog, and while the press corps is asking about the ...

The United States Is Picking Up Where The Great Society Left Off

Politics

Why “Naming and Shaming” Is a Tactic That Often Backfires In International Relations

Understanding a deeply paradoxical political process

March 11, 2021 • by Rochelle Terman

_____ In recent decades, scholars and activists have argued that international condemnation can improve human rights conditions around the world. “Naming and shaming” is now a preferred tactic of global human rights advocates. When a government violates the rights of its citizens, the international community can respond by exerting moral pressure ...

Why “Naming and Shaming” Is a Tactic That Often Backfires In International Relations

Uncategorized

How Shame Plays a Productive Role in Racial Justice

Rejecting “the hollowness of American life”

March 11, 2021 • by Benjamin P. Davis

_____ I want to suggest here that shame can be more than a feeling that ends in self-judgment. It can also be a spur to live differently. In other words, shame is not simply, as is sometimes asserted, a political dead end. On the contrary, shame can be politically productive in ...

How Shame Plays a Productive Role in Racial Justice

Politics

The Neoracists

A new religion is preached across America: It’s nonsense posing as wisdom

March 11, 2021 • by John McWhorter

_____ One can divide antiracism into three waves. First Wave Antiracism battled slavery and segregation. Second Wave Antiracism, in the 1970s and 1980s, battled racist attitudes and taught America that being racist was a flaw. Third Wave Antiracism, becoming mainstream in the 2010s, teaches that racism is baked into the structure ...

The Left

A Genealogy of White Privilege

An essay on the politics of confession & guilt

March 11, 2021 • by James Miller

_____ How much shame and guilt should a movement for social justice try deliberately to cultivate? In recent years, this question, superficially abstract, has again become personal for me, both in my ongoing involvement in political protest movements, and my job as a teacher, working at an institution devoted to promoting equity, ...

Uncategorized

How “White Privilege” Obscures Black Vulnerability

There is a crucial distinction between the laborer and the capitalist, but the psychological security that a white person gains from the objectification of the Black Other is of a different sort.

March 11, 2021 • by Mukasa Mubirumusoke

_____ The idea of white privilege has become indispensable in both academic and public conversations about race. It is the ultimate trump card to play when one wants to concisely and incisively describe the often unseen roadblocks that white people erect, which can thwart the thriving of non-white people. Undoubtedly you’ve ...

How “White Privilege” Obscures Black Vulnerability

Uncategorized

#OprahMeghanHarry

The mother of popular antiracism presents these retired royals, and their pain, as a lesson to us all

March 11, 2021 • by Claire Potter

_____ Is it surprising that Their Royal Highnesses, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex (otherwise known as Harry and Meghan) chose to make their first public statement about their decision to become private citizens on an Oprah Winfrey special? No: it is predictable. Any American who believes they have anything important to ...

Uncategorized

Democracy Doesn’t Happen By Accident

Black Americans fought for the Voting Rights Act, and Joe Biden wants it back

March 11, 2021 • by Heather Cox Richardson

_____ Black Americans outnumbered white Americans among the 29,500 people who lived in Selma, Alabama, in the 1960s, but the city’s voting rolls were 99% white. So in 1963, Black organizers in the Dallas County Voters League launched a drive to get Black voters in Selma registered. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating ...

Fashion

Masking and Visibility

Performing the pandemic

March 10, 2021 • by Patricia Brien

_____ In his Autumn 2019 collection, Alessandro Michele, creative director of Gucci, sent his models out on the runway covered in clothing and layers of protective gear. He also used many different forms of face coverings and masks (not mouth coverings). He was inspired by Hannah Arendt’s writings on totalitarianism and ...

Essays

Hilaria Baldwin’s Newest Baby Should Make Us All Happy

A fresh baby makes us understand how little we understand of other families

Can Cooperatives Build Worker Power?

Give platform co-ops a seat at the policy table

The United States Is Picking Up Where The Great Society Left Off

The conventional wisdom that endured for decades is making way for something new

Why “Naming and Shaming” Is a Tactic That Often Backfires In International Relations

Understanding a deeply paradoxical political process

How Shame Plays a Productive Role in Racial Justice

Rejecting “the hollowness of American life”

The Neoracists

A new religion is preached across America: It’s nonsense posing as wisdom

How “White Privilege” Obscures Black Vulnerability

There is a crucial distinction between the laborer and the capitalist, but the psychological security that a white person gains from the objectification of the Black Other is of a different sort.

#OprahMeghanHarry

The mother of popular antiracism presents these retired royals, and their pain, as a lesson to us all

Democracy Doesn’t Happen By Accident

Black Americans fought for the Voting Rights Act, and Joe Biden wants it back

Masking and Visibility

Performing the pandemic

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