African-Americans

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – “Between 18 and 20 December 1922 Turin Fascism unleashed a 3 day terror campaign on a recalcitrant anti-Fascist labour movement.” So informs us Antonio Sonnessa.* Turin (Torino) was a site of resistance to Fascism. It had a powerful labor union, dissident newspapers, a Communist Party (Antonio Gramsci was there and […]

African-Americans

Riot or resistance? How media frames unrest in Minneapolis will shape public’s view of protest

The Conversation

Danielle K. Kilgo | – A teenager held her phone steady enough to capture the final moments of George Perry Floyd’s life as he apparently suffocated under the weight of a Minneapolis police officer’s knee on his neck. The video went viral. What happened next has played out time and again in American cities after […]

African-Americans

Top 6 Reasons Authorities are Cracking down Hard on Black Protesters while Treating White Supremacist Reopeners with Kid Gloves

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – My social media feeds have been full of comparisons between the treatment by police of Reopener mobs, some of whom invaded the Michigan state house while fully armed with assault weapons, and the treatment of protesters in Minneapolis regarding the killing of George Floyd by a policemen who kept his […]

African-Americans

Covid-19: No, we’re not all in this Together; Some Americans are being put at much Greater Risk

H. Patricia Hynes

Greenfield, Mass. (Special to Informed Comment) – There is a meme circulating in this time of pandemic that we are all in this together, that Covid-19 is, as New York Governor Cuomo stated, the “great equalizer.” From one vantage point, this appears to be true: last week a staff person to Vice President Pence and […]

African-Americans

The Killing of Ahmaud Arbery highlights again the Fatal Danger of Jogging while Black

The Conversation

By Rashawn Ray | – Unsteady cellphone footage follows a jogger – an apparently young, black man – as he approaches and attempts to run around a white pickup truck parked in the middle of a suburban road. Moments later he lies dead on the ground. The killing of Ahmaud Arbery took place on Feb. […]

African-Americans

African-Americans, Victimized by U.S. Racism and Classism, are now preyed on by Coronavirus

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The coronavirus appears to be striking African-Americans at far higher rates than white Americans, write Reis Thebault, Andrew Ba Tran and Vanessa Williams at WaPo. Given that African-Americans are on average younger than whites, they should have fewer cases. But other causes are overriding the youth advantage. The median age […]

African-Americans

Trump admits that Easy Voting would Defeat Republicans. That’s because they’ve made Their Base White and Evangelical

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Colin Kalmbacher at Law&Crime surveys reactions to Trump’s admission in an interview on Fox News that a mail-in ballot program that made it possible for the public to vote with ease and increased turnout would keep Republicans from ever being elected again. Voter suppression has not always been a purely […]

African-Americans

Top 3 Myths about Bernie Sanders and Electability

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – 1. There is a persistent meme that Sanders doesn’t do well with persons of color, which seems left over from 2016 when he was less well known. On the whole, persons of color in the United States are more likely to be part of the working class and to favor […]

African-Americans

A Dream Denied: Black Americans mostly left behind by progress since Dr. King’s death

The Conversation

By Sharon Austin | – On Apr. 4, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, while assisting striking sanitation workers. Back then, over a half century ago, the wholesale racial integration required by the 1964 Civil Rights Act was just beginning to chip away at discrimination in education, jobs and public […]