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.

Coates and West in Jackson

America loves pitting Black intellectuals against each other, but today’s activists need both Coates and West.

Forgotten Men

The Long Road from FDR to Trump

History Is a Dystopia

A conversation with novelist Tananarive Due on writing the past—and a way out of it.

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.

No Rights Which the White Man Is Bound to Respect

The spectre of Dred Scott is haunting St. Louis.

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.

Statue Mania

Focusing only on Confederate monuments misses that racism is memorialized everywhere.

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.

Abolish the Police?

Is policing a public good gone bad?

Policing: A Public Good Gone Bad

Policing as we know it must be abolished before it can be transformed.

Ants Among Elephants

Sujatha Gidla, born an untouchable in India, tells the story of her family.

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.

No Racial Justice Without Basic Income

A basic income that supplemented existing welfare structures could make everyone safer while ending the most pernicious forms of policing.

The Return of Vulture Capitalism

Financial reforms are on Trump’s chopping block, and the stakes extend far beyond the economy.

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