Race
The Cost of Canonizing MLK
In these video interviews, Brandon M. Terry explains how MLK’s canonization has come at the expense of taking him seriously as a political thinker.
Exceptional Victims
The resistance to the Vietnam War was the most diverse and dynamic antiwar movement in U.S. history. We have all but forgotten it today.
Who Gets the Right to Stay?
The moral right of states to apprehend and deport irregular migrants erodes with the passage of time.
One Year Later
We have to do much more than fight back, we have to fight for the world that could liberate and sustain us all when Trump is gone.
Keeping the Faith
Ta-Nehisi Coates’s latest book, We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy, is his clearest expression yet of political fatalism. But black activism has always believed in the possibility of change.
For American Corporations, Winning Is Not Enough
Standing Rock shows us that businesses don’t simply silence protestors, they also discredit and bankrupt them.
Waving at Trains
Nalo Hopkinson on the politics of dystopia, writing from the Global South, and the enduring importance of black mermaids.
What White Supremacists Want
Trump's paternalistic language of care draws an exceptional circle around whites only.
The Descent of Democracy
While the United States has expanded its borders of inclusion over time, the borders of whiteness have never fallen. Only a robust black public sphere can change that.
When Politics Drives Scholarship
Nancy MacLean’s new book has set off a heated debate. But strong claims require strong evidence, and mistakes could mislead liberals and the left.
What Does Police Abolition Mean?
Abolition is not about transforming the police; it is about transforming the nation.
The Book that Explains Charlottesville
The University of Virginia has long been a bastion of white supremacy and white supremacy–validating scholarship.
Kochonomics: The Racist Roots of Public Choice Theory
A controversial new book traces how the anti-democratic projects of the Jim Crow South evolved into an economic theory still championed by the GOP today.
Policing: A Public Good Gone Bad
Policing as we know it must be abolished before it can be transformed.
Why Coretta Scott King Fought for a Job Guarantee
She saw economic precarity not just as a side effect of racial subjugation, but central to its functioning.