racism

By Rebecca Gordon | – ( Tomdispatch) – You know that feeling when you trip on the street and instantly sense that you’re about to crash hard and there’s no way to prevent it? As gravity has its way with you, all you can do is watch yourself going down. Yeah, that feeling. I had […]

Christianity

Tear them down? “White Jesus” statues have an Unsavory History in Aryan Racial Theory that also Influenced Nazi Theology

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Emily McFarlan at the Religion News Service explores the controversy over depictions of Jesus as white in American statues. She notes that Brooklyn activist and podcaster Shaun King wrote that “Yes, I think the statues of the white European they claim is Jesus should also come down. They are a […]

African-Americans

The George Floyd protests aren’t just anti-racist – they are anti-authoritarian

The Conversation

By Lilian Bobea | — The massive protests that erupted across the United States – and beyond – after the police killing of George Floyd are billed as anti-racist mobilizations, and that they are. Demonstrators are denouncing police violence in minority communities and demanding that officers who abuse their power be held accountable. But I […]

Employment

To address Systemic Racism, we Must Focus on the Economy

John Buell

Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – Hate crimes are still too prevalent, but there is a widespread consensus behind efforts to root them out. More recently the concept of systemic racism has come to the fore. Though definitions have not been universally accepted, I take it to mean any set of widely held […]

African-Americans

No, Racial Justice Protesters aren’t ‘Maoists’; Conservatives just aren’t Comfortable with Black Lives Matter

John Feffer

( Foreign Policy in Focus ) – In their effort to transform their discomfort with the current #BlackLivesMatter protests into a superficially sophisticated critique, right-wing “intellectuals” in the United States and Europe have latched onto a dubious historical analogy. When former congressman Newt Gingrich, the National Review’s David Harsanyi, Breitbart’s Joel Pollak, and other right-wingers […]

African-Americans

Seattle’s BLM Autonomous Protest Zone and the Paris Commune of 1871: Anti-Capitalist Spirit still Lives

The Conversation

Oli Mould | – A new autonomous zone set up in Seattle by the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement bears some striking similarities with the Paris Commune of 1871. Despite its brutal ending, the seminal event in the French capital 150 years ago set the agenda for progressive urban politics and broader social justice movements […]

African-Americans

Tucker Carlson Rises to Defense of Confederates who Killed 360,222 Federal Troops, 100x more than Al-Qaeda

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Tucker Carlson is shedding advertisers the way a rattlesnake sheds his skin. He went full white supremacist some time ago, and has been carried at Fox News only because the channel’s owner, Rupert Murdoch, appears to be a throwback to the policies of white Australia, which restricted immigration to that […]

Pentagon

The Outpouring of Grief over George Floyd’s Death gave America a chance at Rebirth: Will we take it?

Nick Turse

( Tomdispatch.com) – They were relegated to the protest equivalent of a ghetto. Their assigned route shunted them to the far fringes of the city. Their demonstration was destined for an ignominious demise far from any main thoroughfare, out of sight of most apartment buildings, out of earshot of most homes, best viewed from a […]

Authoritarianism

America’s Wars always Come Home

Harry Blain

( Foreign Policy in Focus) – It was entirely fitting that Senator Tom Cotton would be the one to say the quiet part out loud — very loud — in the New York Times. Usually, Cotton specializes in inciting war against black and brown people in other parts of the world. He does so with […]