Race

What Does It Mean to Be Free?

Lewis Gordon and Nathalie Etoke discuss the space for freedom opened up by Black existentialist thought.

  • Nathalie Etoke
  • Lewis Gordon

Surviving a Wretched State

Melvin Rogers and Neil Roberts discuss the difficulty of keeping faith in a foundationally anti-Black republic.

  • Melvin Rogers
  • Neil Roberts

Unlearning Isolation

Mie Inouye and Daniel Martinez HoSang discuss the challenges of organizing in a society that tears groups apart.

  • Mie Inouye
  • Daniel Martinez HoSang

C. L. R. James’s Radical Vision of Common Humanity

It’s at the heart of what makes The Black Jacobins a classic.

  • David Scott

Bond Villains

How a little-understood feature of urban finance—municipal bonds—fuels racial inequality.

  • Clark Randall

Neville Alexander’s Struggle Against Racial Capitalism

The late South African intellectual and activist—imprisoned on Robben Island alongside Nelson Mandela—fought for a world without race and class.

  • Salim Vally
  • Enver Motala

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The Secret History of Revolutions

From the Magna Carta to the Mexican Revolution, there’s more to them than meets the eye.

After Affirmative Action

Can education fix inequality?

The Pursuit of Empire

The United States routinely contradicts its founding ideals.

Octavia But­ler’s Blasphemous Solidarities

The novel Kindred reminds us, emphatically, gruesomely, that white supremacy is us too.

  • Junot Díaz

A Black Geography of the City

N’Kosi Oates speaks with J.T. Roane about Philadelphia’s spatial politics and resistance to racial containment.

  • N’Kosi Oates
  • J.T. Roane

Reversing the Silence

Thelonious Monk lost (and found) in Paris.

  • Robin D. G. Kelley

A Piece of One’s Past

What does it mean for those living in the diaspora to remain attached to the land they left behind?

  • Kenda Mutongi

The Black Scholars Ron DeSantis Doesn’t Want Students to Read

Among them are Kimberlé Crenshaw, Angela Davis, bell hooks, and Robin D. G. Kelley. You can read them here.

At 79, Angela Davis Is Still Fighting for a Better World

A reading list in honor of the radical philosopher’s birthday.

Black Spirit, Black Struggle

When Desmond Tutu reconciled African theology and Black theology.

  • Panashe Chigumadzi
  • Cornel West

The New Faith-Based Discrimination

A sharp uptick in challenges to U.S. antidiscrimination laws threatens decades of progress in extending civil rights to all.

  • Louise Melling

Is There a Cure for Medical Racism?

From unequal rates of COVID-19 death and hospitalization to biased pulse oximeters, medicine must reckon with the racism in its midst.

“Fascism never disappears because people come to their senses.”

An interview with Robin D. G. Kelley.

  • Robin D. G. Kelley
  • Deborah Chasman

Affirmative Action Under Threat

If the Supreme Court deems it unconstitutional, how else might we challenge entrenched inequalities?

How to Be a Race Traitor

A posthumous collection of Noel Ignatiev’s writings.

  • Mike King

Race and Sweden’s Fascist Turn

The recent electoral success of a party with Nazi origins must be understood as part of the long history of white Swedes’ desire for racial homogeneity.

  • Tobias Hübinette

What the AIDS Crisis Can Teach Us About Monkeypox

Harm reduction strategies have the best chance of stopping this disease.

  • Joshua Gutterman Tranen

The Ordinary Pleasures of Black Motherhood

Freedom means a world where how I parent is simply mundane rather than overburdened with meaning. 

  • Jennifer C. Nash
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