Remembering Toni Morrison
Last week, in celebration of Herman Melville’s 200th birthday, The New York Times dug into its archives to reveal that Melville was so obscure when he died that the paper misspelled his most famous...
View ArticleThe Case of the “Disappearing” Poet
From Hollywood movies to children’s books, there has probably never been more discussion of how people of color are represented in American culture than there is right now. Efforts like #OscarsSoWhite...
View ArticleMore Government Power Is the Wrong Way to Fight White Supremacy
In June, Buzzfeed published the findings of the Plain View Project, a systematic investigation into white supremacist sympathies among police officers nationwide. The project searched the Facebook...
View ArticleReformed Climate Deniers Don’t Deserve Redemption
Last month, Republican pollster and messaging guru Frank Luntz sat down in front of a small committee of Senate Democrats and told a personal story about how wildfire almost consumed his California...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Harsh World of Offshore Borders
There are the borders that register quickly as borders—red, metal spikes jutting from dusty hills, glinting spirals of razor-wire—and then there are borders that don’t. There are borders roiling in the...
View ArticleEbola Outbreaks Are About Inequality
Living conditions in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s eastern province of North Kivu were already precarious when the first cases of Ebola were reported there last July. Only eight days earlier,...
View ArticleTrump Is on the Right Side of the Law, for Once
President Donald Trump is not generally a fan of the rule of law. He is ignorant of constitutional principles. He’s hostile to checks and balances on his power. He’s authoritarian in style and...
View ArticleNo Law Can Ban White Supremacy From the Internet
It wasn’t long after mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton killed more than 30 people that a chorus of commentators, reporters, and even the president himself offered a plaintive response. These...
View ArticleOpen Borders Made America Great
For nearly three decades, American immigration policies have re-enforced the false notion that undocumented immigrants are dangerous criminals. From Bill Clinton’s militarization of the southern border...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Trump’s Venezuela Policy Is Causing Turmoil in the Caribbean
Better known to most Americans for its picturesque beaches than its vast petrochemical reserves, Trinidad and Tobago boasts the most robust economy in the Caribbean. It has also, in the past year,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Honeyland Is a Stinging Allegory for Man-Made Disaster
The scene is Mediterranean. Outdoors, the sun is bright and universal, leaving only a few shadows dotted around the rocky, rural, mountainous landscape. Indoors, it is dark, the ground of the tiny...
View ArticleHere’s a Better Reason to Unsubscribe From The New York Times
You shouldn’t unsubscribe from The New York Times over a bad headline. Or even over a bad pattern of editorial decisions dating back years demonstrating an institutional worldview poisoned by false...
View ArticleThe Completely Predictable Death of Jeffrey Epstein
The reported suicide on Saturday of disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein in a federal jail cell in the heart of Manhattan was both utterly shocking and completely predictable. It’s shocking that the...
View ArticleTexas Is Bracing for a Blue Wave in 2020. Yes, Texas.
When Beto O’Rourke proclaimed, during the second round of Democratic presidential debates, that “there’s a new battleground state, Texas, and it has 38 Electoral College votes,” eyes rolled in unison...
View ArticleICE’s Raids Were a Win for Corporate Exploitation
In Canton, Mississippi, where they account for only 5 percent of the population, Latinos were often seen but not heard. Their children would translate for them at parent-teacher conferences, as...
View ArticleThis Land Is Their Land, Too
An unusual question surfaced amid America’s debate about gun violence last week. “If you’re on here arguing the definition of ‘assault weapon’ today you are part of the problem,” country musician Jason...
View ArticleJeffrey Epstein and the Myth of “Justice” in America
Just over one month after he was arrested in New Jersey on sex trafficking charges, Jeffrey Epstein is dead by apparent suicide. His body was removed from the Metropolitan Correctional Center in lower...
View ArticleRight Wing Attacks on The Hunt Are a Bad Faith Distraction
Only a handful of people have seen the most controversial movie in the country. After Universal Pictures canceled the release of The Hunt following an outcry led by Fox News and other conservative...
View ArticleThose Profiting off the Vaping Epidemic Should Pay to Stop It
“Why are there toilets in the Juul room?” read the caption of a Snapchat photo showing two urinals. I’m a senior in college, and that question made me feel old. Back in my day, cigarette smoke didn’t...
View ArticleDonald Trump’s Guide to Racism
President Donald Trump’s Twitter feed is, among other things, a gift to historians. No major historical figure has provided so thorough a public, real-time account of their daily thoughts and feelings....
View Article