Race

A Revolution in Values

King showed respect through disagreement.

Sparking Revolution

King connected injustice abroad and at home.

On Violence and Nonviolence

Violence and nonviolent protests were entwined forces.

A National Problem

King challenged injustice in the North, as well.

Diagnosing Racial Capitalism

King called for a restructuring of the whole of American society.

The Pivot to Class

King articulated an anti-capitalist analysis of the U.S.

King in Context

We must not sanitize King.

MLK Now

Canonization has prevented a reckoning with the substance of King’s intellectual, ethical, and political commitments.

How Slavery Inspired Modern Business Management

By “dangling the carrot” to improve worker productivity, businesses are taking a page from slavery’s playbook.

Hoverboarding While Black

In the era of digital neighborhoods, social networks embolden a new kind of racial surveillance.

White Supremacy Has Always Been Mainstream

“Very fine people”—fathers, husbands, and sons, as well as mothers, wives, and daughters—have always been central to the work of white supremacy.

Black AfterLives Matter

Cultivating kinfulness as reproductive justice.

Janelle Monáe for President

What Afrofuturism can teach us about surviving Trump

Free the Beach

American beaches used to be common property. Now access to many of them is controlled by wealthy whites.

A Love Supreme

Remembering James H. Cone, a founder of Black liberation theology.

The Forgotten Baldwin

His book about the Atlanta child murders speaks best to the era of Black Lives Matter.

Baldwin’s Lonely Country

When Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated, James Baldwin made a final attempt to reconcile the generational divide between the civil rights movement and Black Power.

Guns in the Family

A childhood steeped in guns shows that toxic masculinity and racism are at the heart of U.S. gun culture.

Brother Martin Was a Blues Man

Cornel West on Martin Luther King, Jr., hope, and the future of activism, in conversation with Brandon M. Terry, Elizabeth Hinton, and Tommie Shelby.

The Almost Inevitable Failure of Justice

The persistence of black poverty has become a permanent feature of U.S. democracy. We need an expanded political imagination to dismantle it.

Racial Capitalism and Human Rights

Going beyond liberal notions of justice.

This, Our Second Nadir

We need a restoration of historical thinking.

Black Humanity and Black Power

Humanity forms the beating heart of black liberation struggles.

When Liberalism Defended Slavery

The political ideology of slaveholders depended on liberal humanism.

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