African-Americans

Republican Mainstreaming of White Supremacy Fuels Extremist Violence like the Racist Massacre in Buffalo

Chicago (Special to Informed Comment) – “All race politics is bad, all race politics is poison — it erases people, it dehumanizes them. Race politics always makes us hate each other. Race politics always leads to violence and death,” said Fox News’ white supremacist Tucker Carlson on his first broadcast after the Buffalo massacre. It […]

African-Americans

Tucker Carlson’s “Great Replacement” Theory Comes From an Anti-US Nazi French Thinker who considered all Americans Negroes

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – A hate-filled 18-year-old murdered 10 and wounded 3 African-Americans in Buffalo on Saturday, having penned a rambling screed about replacement theory. The most common version of this whiny idea, imported from the more hysterical fringes of the French Right wing, holds that Jewish capitalists are importing cheap immigrant labor to […]

African-Americans

Under DeSantis, Republican “Child Identity” McCarthyism comes for Mickey Mouse

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Gov. Ron DeSantis’s attack on the Disney Corporation may seem odd, coming from a pro-business governor in a state where Disney is one of the largest employers. But DeSantis is pushing back at Disney on behalf of big capital, in a roundabout way. The entertainment corporations are problematic for the […]

African-Americans

Ketanji Brown Jackson joins a Court that once Ruled Black Women had no Rights at All

Juan Cole

Revised. Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – An unprecedented ceremony at the White House on Friday celebrated the confirmation of Ketanji Brown Jackson as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. She noted in her remarks, “It has taken 232 years and 115 prior appointments for a Black woman to be selected to serve on the Supreme […]

African-Americans

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 […]

African-Americans

Why MLK would have Launched Nonviolent Disobedience to pass the Freedom to Vote Act

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Everything that the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., struggled for is at risk in today’s America, where one of the two major parties has succumbed to the deadly disease of Trumpism, which is built on white grievance. As the Republican Party has become more and more inflected by white nationalism, […]

African-Americans

How the Vietnam War pushed MLK to embrace global justice, not only civil rights at home

The Conversation

By Anthony Siracusa | – On July 2, 1964, Martin Luther King Jr. stood behind President Lyndon Baines Johnson as the Texan signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Although not the first civil rights bill passed by Congress, it was the most comprehensive. King called the law’s passage “a great moment … […]

African-Americans

Why we Really need King’s “Testament of Hope” right about Now

OtherWords

By Dedrick Asante-Muhammad | – ( Otherwords.org ) – 2022 has begun with melancholy, as our country sees the pandemic reach new heights. Meanwhile our crises of climate, democracy, and inequality seem more entrenched than ever. All this uncertainty is taking a toll, but uncertain times are far from unprecedented. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. […]

African-Americans

Sidney Poitier – Hollywood’s first Black leading man reflected the civil rights movement on screen

The Conversation

By Aram Goudsouzian | – In the summer of 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. introduced the keynote speaker for the 10th-anniversary convention banquet of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Their guest, he said, was his “soul brother.” “He has carved for himself an imperishable niche in the annals of our nation’s history,” King told the […]