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racism



  • The Crisis of the Intellectuals

    by Ibram X. Kendi

    A dire health crisis forced the author to ask what his intellectual work was ultimately for. Intellectuals more broadly need a similar push from the dire state of democracy, and should be assured that when they face pushback about being "illiberal" or "presentist" or violating the traditions of their discipline, they're on the right track. 



  • "If they were White and Insured, Would they have Died?"

    by Udodiri R. Okwandu

    Texas's new maternal mortality report shows that historical patterns of medical racism are continuing, and the state plans to do little but blame Black women for the inadequate care they receive. 



  • Actually, All of Shakespeare's Plays are About Race

    by Daniel Pollack-Pelzner

    A new collection of essays argues that Shakespeare's works helped Renaissance Europeans to invent the category of "whiteness," and for later generations to refine and contest its meaning. 



  • A Different Kind of Unfree Labor Haunts a Houston Suburb

    by Ashanté Reese

    Texas's convict labor system was a first step in reasserting white dominance over Black labor through criminal law. The discovery of remains of convicted laborers on the site of a former prison farm show the need to reckon with unfree labor after the end of slavery. 



  • Black History, White Terror, and Rosewood at 100

    by Dan Royles

    The efforts of historians and survivors to achieve a small measure of justice and acknowledgment for the Rosewood massacre demonstrate the stakes of Florida's current efforts to restrict the teaching of history that challenges white supremacy. 



  • The Children of the Nazis' Genetics Project

    While much of Nazism was associated with destruction, it's racist ideological core was also preoccupied with creating or restoring racial purity, including through the Lebensborn program which viewed officers of the SS as the fathers of a new Aryan vanguard. 


  • Kara Walker Disrupts the Visual History of the Civil War in New Exhibition

    by Allison Robinson and Ksenia M. Soboleva

    The artist Kara Walker's 2005 series of prints merged the historical illustrations that shaped Americans' understanding of the Civil War in its immediate aftermath and in the 1890s with her original subversive take on the tradition of silhouette art to highlight the erasure of Black experiences of war. Two curators are putting Walker's work in context in a new exhibition.



  • Vincent Lloyd: What's Gone Wrong with Antiracist Politics

    The Villanova professor explains the incidents that led him to ask whether a center-right critique of antiracist rhetoric and discursive rules has some justification, and how a broader coalition against domination can be rescued from some censorious excesses.