Race

How Immigrants Became Criminals

Most Americans are blind to the separate and unequal justice system that governs immigration detention and deportation.

  • Alan A. Aja
  • Alejandra Marchevsky

Do Outsiders Have Legal Rights?

Stayed or not, Trump's ban highlights the need for strong immigrant rights.

  • Adam Hosein

Births of a Nation

Surveying Trumpism with Cedric Robinson.

  • Robin D. G. Kelley

Songs of White Innocence

Why did the alt-right, so eager to excuse Milo Yiannopoulos, finally turn on him?

  • Judith Levine

Islam on Trial

For too long we have acquiesced to Islamophobic government policies. The cost of our silence is now clear.

  • Jeanne Theoharis
  • Amna A. Akbar
with responses from
  • Wadie Said
  • Sudha Setty
  • Lisa Stampnitzky
  • Su'ad Abdul Khabeer
  • Tarek Z. Ismail
  • Sahar F. Aziz

To Remake the World: Slavery, Racial Capitalism, and Justice

How the history of slavery prompts us to rethink our notion of justice.

  • Walter Johnson
with responses from
  • Donna Murch
  • Caitlin C. Rosenthal
  • Peter Linebaugh
  • Roberto Gargarella
  • Peter James Hudson
  • Manisha Sinha
  • Samuel Moyn
  • Stephanie Smallwood
  • Andrew Zimmerman
  • Peniel Joseph
  • N. D. B. Connolly

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Reagan Used MLK Day to Undermine Racial Justice

The holiday was legislated as part of a strategy to defang King of his most radical qualities while co-opting him into the ideology of colorblindness.

  • Justin Gomer
  • Christopher Petrella

What Did Cedric Robinson Mean by Racial Capitalism?

A critique that anticipated the political currents of contemporary America.

  • Robin D. G. Kelley

Who’s Afraid of the Student Debt Crisis?

Two new books argue that the student debt crisis is a media myth. But they ignore the exploitation of disadvantaged students by for-profit colleges.

  • Marshall Steinbaum

Under Western Eyes

Islamophobia is a shared project of the Democrat and Republican parties, long preceding the rise of white nationalism and Trump.

  • John R. Bowen
  • Aziz Rana

The Souls of White Folk

What can W. E. B. Du Bois and the black radical tradition tell us about Trump’s election and radical political action today?

  • Walter Johnson

After Trump

A pluralistic democracy is built on debate, disagreement, and wakeful action. This forum begins the conversation.

  • Joshua Cohen
with responses from
  • Janice Fine
  • Judith Levine
  • Robin D. G. Kelley
  • Christopher Petrella
  • William Howell
  • Nick Bromell

Slaves of the State: Prison Uprisings and the Legacy of Attica

A historian uncovered an archive of massacre at Attica—only to have the records disappear.

  • Robert T. Chase

Voter Discrimination Starts Well Before Election Day

Voter ID laws burden minorities, but discrimination starts well before they reach the voting booth.

  • Ariel White

Trump’s Call For Dystopian Policing

Stop-and-frisk and broken-windows policing have ravaged black communities, while failing to make cities any safer.

  • Victor Ray

Queer in Rural America

Many LGBT Americans live in rural places. Their invisibility to the gay rights movement is a problem.

  • Hugh Ryan

Black Nationalism and Liberation

Integration doesn’t guarantee equality or freedom.

  • Garrett Felber

What Does Black Lives Matter Want?

The ideas in the movement’s new manifesto would enrich our practice of democracy.

  • Robin D. G. Kelley

White Leghorns

On the cruelties the South doles out to animals, children, and black folks.

  • Colin Dayan

Paying for Punishment

Debt still sends many people—especially black people—to jail.

  • Donna Murch

Lynching by Any Other Name

Prosecutors are corrupting the intent of lynching laws.

  • Christopher Lebron

From “War on Crime” to War on the Black Community

The enduring impact of President Johnson’s crime commission.

  • Elizabeth Hinton

What the Kerner Report Got Wrong about Policing

Bad police were not simply a symptom of racism. They were often its agents.

  • Daniel Geary

What Good Is History for African Americans?

To be useful, it has to help us think about who we should become as a nation.

  • Melvin Rogers
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