By Joseph Orosco (March 18, 2019) In 1920, one of the big controversies in racial justice issues was the tension between Marcus Garvey and W.E.B. Du Bois. Garvey believed that Black folk in the US would never be treated with justice and the best plan was to return to Africa to build new states in which they could be…
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By Irami Osei-Frimpong (January 30, 2019) Heather Heyer died for going to a rally against White supremacists. She didn’t wake up that day to die. She woke up that day to go to a rally against White supremacy. But she paid the price. That’s simply what justice costs. Our unwillingness to pay that price is why we ended Reconstruction. I…
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By Joseph Orosco (December 21, 2018) Jason Wilson has written a good piece in The Guardian outlining how nonviolent action against far right and neo Nazi groups has been effective so far in dismembering those movements. This has been on my mind this week since news broke that notorious Springfield neo-Nazi Jimmy Marr was hospitalized after an altercation with Corvallis…
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By Nicole Berland (November 7, 2018) To other white and white-passing women, here goes a long and potentially unpopular post: I’m stoked on many of the results from yesterday’s election, but, per usual, the returns saw the majority of white women voters cast our ballots for Republicans who legislate against women’s interests in places like Texas, Georgia, and Florida. Whether…
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By Mark Naison (November 5, 2018) There are going to be a lot of people who are going to wake up November 7 shocked at how many people voted for candidates who embraced a message of hatred and division. I won’t be. I am an historian of race and immigration in the United States. Electoral majorities passed the Jim Crow…
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By William J. Jackson (November 1, 2018) I’m so tired of that tacky azz saying that has gained popularity among the pompous left: “If someone disagrees with you, it doesn’t make them evil”. Fool. We ain’t talking pizza toppings. We’re talking about if a person’s life matters, the school to prison pipeline, rapist and murderous cops investigating themselves. We’re not…
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By Sean Gelles (November 1, 2018) Hopefully it’s not too soon to address some of the reactions I’ve been seeing to the tragic racist attack in Pittsburgh on October 27th. I’ve been seeing a lot of ideas expressed which are the result not of conscious reflection but of sheer panic and dread. Perhaps right now is not the time to…
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By Joseph Orosco (October 29, 2018) Robin D.G. Kelley explains Cedric Robinson’s groundbreaking concept from Black Marxism: “Building on the work of another forgotten black radical intellectual, sociologist Oliver Cox, Robinson challenged the Marxist idea that capitalism was a revolutionary negation of feudalism. Instead capitalism emerged within the feudal order and flowered in the cultural soil of a Western civilization…
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By Mark Naison (September 27, 2018) I didn’t watch Christine Ford’s testimony, but the pain it has inspired among so many friends, which they have expressed with an eloquence and courage that has moved me to the core, is something I will never forget. This is a profound historical moment. I just ask for the wisdom and strength to show…
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By Teka Lark (September 27, 2018) I remember back when I had my newspaper and a blog and commented on Laist for making a comment on the coverage of Watts that was not only plagiarized from Wikipedia with photos from a moving car, but was also amazingly racist. I was called a stupid bitch and banned from ever commenting again,…
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By Teka Lark (September 18, 2018) Dismantling racism in your community/your org/your place of religious worship isn’t about you personally taking a journey and discovering everyone really is a human being, this isn’t about you, but yet –it is. Dismantling racism is also not about the first Black capitalist, the first Black general, or the first Black supermodel. Dismantling racism…
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