By Teka Lark (May 28, 2019) People say that in Dayton, Ohio that only 9 members of the Ku Klux Klan showed up and that it was a win for US, the community. But that was no win. According to the Time Magazine article, “9 People Showed Up for a KKK Rally in Dayton, Ohio. They Were Drowned Out by…
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By Arun Gupta (May 21, 2019) I am hearing a lot of despair lately, so I would like to share this story with you. In the early 1990s, when I was international news editor at The Guardian Newsweekly, we hired a bookkeeper named Frances. Being a political newspaper run by the staff, our interviews were a mix of questions about…
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By Teka Lark (May 17, 2019) My mother said when she was pregnant with me the doctor asked her if she wanted an abortion. My mother was married, a housewife, had no other children, and owned a home with my father, but still that was the first question that the doctor asked when she went to the doctor to confirm…
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By Teka Lark (April 3, 2019) When I see things like, “Three Mexican countries…” often I hear people discuss how ignorant people are. “How can you have power and be so ignorant to not know the name of countries?!” I am not sure if the people saying these things are saying them because they too are playing the game. I…
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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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