Racism & Discrimination

Did Race Win the Race for Hillary?

Gaiutra Bahadur : Pennsylvania

Does living in mixed communities make people less or more vulnerable to campaigning that plays on ethnic and racial divisions?
House of Cards

Patricia J. Williams : Feminism & Women

t would be truly tragic if John McCain strolls into the White House while we argue over who has it worse, black men or white women.
Some Things Even Obama Can't Transcend

Gary Younge : Barack Obama

Before we can talk sensibly about transcending difference, we must first transform the conditions that give these differences meaning.
'The Mississippi Challenge'

George Slaff : Civil Rights Movement

Black people in the state were "regularly and systematically" denied the vote by "intimidation, harassment, economic reprisal, property damage, terrorization, violence and illegal and unconstitutional registration procedures."
Obama, Race and the Presidency

Ari Melber : Affirmative Action

Barack Obama's historic victory in Iowa comes at a crucial time for a nation still grappling with how remedies to offset racism affect America's power structure.

2007

Stop the Subprime Tsunami

Rev. Jesse L. Jackson : U.S. Economy

Predatory lending is the biggest economic crisis since 1929, especially for the black and brown people caught in its grip.
Judging Thomas

Jon Wiener : Supreme Court

A close look at Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas reveals a deeply conservative and increasingly bitter man.
False Prophets

Patricia J. Williams : Science

James Watson continues his long and well-documented history of baselessly biologizing social stereotypes.
Thieves of Black History

Gary Younge : African-Americans

In the struggle over the ownership of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, black history is on sale at bargain prices.
It's Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week!

Barbara Ehrenreich : Feminism & Women

David Horowitz serves up a witch's brew of Cheney-style anti-jihadism, mixed with anti-feminism and a sour dash of anti-Semitism.
Jena: Take Your Nooses Down

Music

A schoolyard fight in Jena, Louisiana, fueled by hateful symbols of the Jim Crow era, prompted John Mellencamp to write this song. Watch the video.
'Jena Is America'

Gary Younge : Civil Rights & Liberties

Jena, Louisiana, has become a national symbol of racial injustice, as civil rights activists converge on the town to protest a miscarriage of justice against six black teens.
The March on Jena

Mark Sorkin : Civil Rights & Liberties

Thousands of civil rights activists are heading to Louisiana this week to protest a case of gross injustice--and the system that supports racial inequality across America.
Skinhead Violence Rising in Russia

Alexander Zaitchik & Mark Ames : Russia

Copying the tactics of terrorists, neo-Nazi groups are targeting reformers, progressives and ethnic minorities.
Shouting Underwater

Walter Mosley : New Orleans

Two years ago, Katrina shed light on a harsh truth--we are all victims of a failed government.
Sacco & Vanzetti Today

Moshik Temkin : Human Rights & Civil Liberties

History sheds no new light on their guilt or innocence. But it does make clear that their trial and execution was an unjust and intolerable act of barbarism.
Mourning in America

Patricia J. Williams : Supreme Court

As the Supreme Court rules public schools cannot take voluntary action to overcome racial inequality, what's surprising is the lack of outcry.
Racists & Robber Barons

David L. Kirp : Supreme Court

Rather than build a unified culture in a diverse society, the conservative Gang of Five that now dominates the Supreme Court is polarizing the country.
Zyklon B on the US Border

Alexander Cockburn : Migration & Immigration

A grim history lesson of what happened in the 1920s when fears of alien infection inflamed American eugenicists.
A New Green Card Deal

Mae M. Ngai : Migration & Immigration

History is full of examples showing that policies designed to exclude immigrants are doomed to fail.
Shots in the Dark

Gary Younge : Crime

When guns claim lives where any middle-class child might be, America mourns. But in barrios, projects and trailer parks, it's as if the crime never happened.
SI Cooks the Books

Jonathan Cohen : Sports

Sports Illustrated's "all time" team is unfairly skewed to honor major league players from the segregation era at the expense of equally deserving players from the Negro League.
Nutter Wins in Philadelphia

Patrick Mulvaney : Electoral Politics

A favored Democrat's mayoral primary win divides a city between those who support his hardball anticrime tactics and minorities who see them as a blueprint for racial profiling.
Agent of Intolerance

Max Blumenthal : Religion

Jerry Falwell is best known for crusading against abortion and homosexuality. But early on, he skillfully used race to galvanize the Christian right.
Invisible America

Patricia J. Williams : Supreme Court

Fifty-three years after Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court will rule on two cases that will decide the future of school integration.
Hip-Hop's E-Z Scapegoats

Dave Zirin & Jeff Chang : Music

There's a big difference between the misogynous hip-hop produced by big media and the hip-hop that moves a generation.
The Good Victim

Gary Younge : Feminism & Women

Why do we hand-pick seemingly pure and innocent victims of injustice--such as the Rutgers basketball players--in order to combat American racism?
Let It Be Some Other 'Asian'

Andrew Lam : Asian Americans

When the shooter at Virginia Tech was identified to be Korean American, other minorities heaved a sigh of relief. But should they?
Exploiting Imus

Nicholas von Hoffman : 1st Amendment

The media's superficial coverage of Don Imus avoids important questions about free speech and race.
The Ho Industry

Alexander Cockburn : Media

In the larger context, the flap over Don Imus's racial slur is only one tiny square in our dirty national quilt.
Don Imus and the State of Women's Sports

Dave Zirin : Feminism & Women

It's been thirty-five years since Title IX was passed, and women athletes are still battling the kind of sexism Imus espouses.
Gary Tyler's Quest for Justice

Dave Zirin : The Courts

Sports figures are joining the crusade to free a Louisiana man convicted as a teenager of a murder he didn't commit.

2006

America to Me

Patricia J. Williams : African-Americans

What, exactly, does America look like to people like Michael Richards, Mel Gibson and Richard Viguerie?
The Plot Against Equality

Robert S. Boynton : Cultural Criticism & Analysis

Walter Benn Michaels's The Trouble With Diversity challenges us to remove our race-tinted glasses and view the world in the class-based terms that, he argues, define it.
Breathing While Black

Christopher Rabb

A young black man and an elderly black woman each die in a hail of police bullets; a comedian invokes the era of lynching--suddenly it feels like a crime to be caught breathing while black.
Mad Mel and the Maya

Earl Shorris : Native Americans

Mel Gibson's violent new film Apocalypto exploits Maya culture and perpetuates racist stereotypes.
Character Assassin

Max Blumenthal : Electoral Politics

Republican adman Scott Howell has racked up a startling Democratic body count with his signature hyperemotional style. Will his attack on Harold Ford Jr. succeed or backfire?
Obama: Black Like Me

Gary Younge : African-Americans

Barack Obama has fallen prey to the soft bigotry of unreasonable expectations from both the right and left.
Virginia's Rumbling Rebels

Bob Moser : Electoral Politics

As Senator George Allen's faux-populist campaign devolves into a series of racial embarrassments, Virginia Democrat Jim Webb's unlikely campaign is surging, thanks in large part to Webb's unblemished record of opposing the Iraq War.
A Klatch of Civilizations

Patricia J. Williams : Television

As Survivor races to the bottom by dividing this season's contenders into race-based tribes, perhaps we can look to Starbucks for new models of how to blend in.
New Orleans Forsaken

Gary Younge : Social & Economic Rights

One year later, how will we come to terms with what happened when Hurricane Katrina washed up the disenfranchised most people, including the President, have tried to forget?
Beyond Macaca: The Photograph That Haunts George Allen

Max Blumenthal : Republican Party

Virginia Senator George Allen claimed it was a "mistake" when he called an employee of his Democratic foe a racist name. But the leader of America's top racist group explains Allen's long and cozy history with white supremacists.
The Hard Edge of Hatred

Chip Berlet : Immigration to the US

American white supremacist groups have a long and ugly history of using anxieties over immigration as a recruitment tool. It's happening again, with a vengeance.
Same Old Song

Daniel Tichenor : Immigration to the US

American history is marked by waves of immigrants--from Germans in the eighteenth century to Mexicans in the twenty-first--and by nativist backlashes against them.
The New Nativism

: Immigration to the US

The nation must address the working-class anxieties underlying the anti-Hispanic sentiments now rising in Middle America--and Congress must pass an enlightened immigration bill that is both sensible and humane.
Drug Busts=Jim Crow

Ira Glasser : Drug Policy/Drug War

The drug war is the heir to Jim Crow: a form of widespread, legalized discrimination.
Borrowed Bodies

Patricia J. Williams

In a New York courtroom, a jury must decide whether a hip-hop-loving young white man who beat a young black man with a baseball bat is guilty of assault or a hate crime.
Anatomy of a Murder

David Bradley : Non-Fiction

Cynthia Carr's Our Town seeks to uncover hidden truths about a 1930 lynching in small-town Indiana. But Carr fails to break the code of silence that many of the town's inhabitants, including her grandparents, took to the grave.
A Short History of the Pads of Brillo

Patricia J. Williams : US Politics & Government

Martians visiting planet Earth are mystified by the racist ruckus over Representative Cynthia McKinney's hair.
Republicanizing the Race Card

Max Blumenthal : David_Duke

David Duke and a cohort of white nationalists seek to reposition their minuscule movement at a time when their signature issues have been co-opted by pseudo-populist media personalities and the GOP.
Erasing Whiteness

Silja J.A. Talvi : Feminism & Women

If women expect to shed the cruel and calculating artifice of race in our lifetimes, we must contribute to the emerging generation of literature that deconstructs racial categories.
The Race to War

David Levering Lewis : History

Lost Battalions tells the story of two US Army regiments of the American Expeditionary Force, the struggle to buy citizenship through the self-sacrifice of war.
What's Race Got to Do With It?

Gary Younge : Gay & Lesbian Issues & Activism

Socially conservative black churches may be ripe for exploitation by the Christian right on gay marriage. But that's only part of the story.
Just Us

David Oshinsky : Race, Ethnicity & Religion

Three books examine American history through the scope of racism and racial identity.
Pandora's Box

Patricia J. Williams : Increased Security After 9/11

A deep planetary insecurity has fostered a rush to build boundaries around ourselves--psychic green zones--no matter how irrational, separating white from black or brown, Christian from Muslim, European from Arab.

2005

The Rumble Down Under

Richard Pollak : Australia

Discrimination is on the rise for Australia's Muslims and others of Middle-Eastern descent, as Prime Minister John Howard's draconian anti-terror laws echo the fear-mongering tactics of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld.
Rosa Parks: A Woman of Substance

Eric Foner : Civil Rights Movement

Frozen in memory as the simple woman who helped to bring down segregation, Rosa Parks was far more complex and formidable than the popular imagination makes her out to be . A fuller picture of her life should make us also remember the many unsung heroes and heroines who came before and after her.
The Two-Way Squeeze

: Civil Rights Movement

Rosa Parks was a quiet woman whose refusal to move to the back of a city bus in 1955 helped change the course of history. She is not identified by name in this editorial from the December 24, 1955 edition of The Nation, but the quiet purposefulness that characterized her actions bears eloquent witness to the power of her protest.
Hurricane Gumbo

Mike Davis & Anthony Fontenot : Environment

The Cajun and Creole folks of Ville Platte, LA, learned long ago not to rely on the government for help. It the wake of hurricanes they launched a homemade rescue-and-relief effort to save their community.
Nearer, My God, to Thee

Patricia J. Williams

Follow a mythical voyage through America's nightmare, on a ship with an uncaring captain, a subsequent shipwreck, and the poor are left behind to perish.
The Little Black Book of Virtues

Patricia J. Williams : Conservatives & The American Right

The Wicked Witch stomps in his defense and the wise old tortoise explains his reasoning. But Mother Courage knows the truth behind William Bennett's racist comments.
Bill Bennett's Abortion Fantasies

Mark Sorkin : Right Wing Talk Radio

What's really shocking about Bill Bennett's public fantasies of reducing crime by aborting black babies is the ease with which conservative critics cast lawlessness in racial terms.
25 Questions About the Murder of New Orleans

Mike Davis & Anthony Fontenot : Architecture & Design

New Orleans did not die an accidental death--it was murdered by deliberate design and planned neglect. Here are twenty-five urgent questions from the people who live in a city submerged in anger and frustration.
Bohemia's Last Frontier

Curtis Wilkie : Urban Issues

New Orleans, a city full of idiosyncrasies, must be restored for the benefit of the nation as a whole.
The War for Latinos

Roberto Lovato : US Military

In the face of unprecedented manpower problems, the Pentagon is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to target young Latinos for military recruitment.
Class-ifying the Hurricane

Adolph Reed Jr. : African-Americans

What happened in New Orleans is an extreme and criminally tragic consequence of the belief that cutting public spending makes for a better society.
Let the People Rebuild New Orleans

Naomi Klein : Housing Activism

Let the evacuees of New Orleans take the lead in determining how the billions of dollars in reconstruction funds are used to rebuild their lives and their city.
Found in the Flood

Eric Alterman : Media Analysis

The most remarkable aspect of the media's treatment of the hurricane coverage was the return of the poor, in coverage that was neither condescending nor condemnatory.
The View From Lott's Porch

Patricia J. Williams : Urban Issues

Some storm victims evacuated from New Orleans were "sorted" by age, race or gender. Is breaking up families and prioritizing by race any way to deal with disaster?
Looting the Black Poor

Earl Ofari Hutchinson : Urban Issues

New Orleans is the classic tale of two cities: one showy, middle-class and white; the other poor, downtrodden and low-income black.
Kanye West, Unplugged

Adam Howard : Television

NBC took offense when Kanye West took an unscripted swipe at President Bush during a benefit concert for hurricane victims. But somebody had to say it.
Lobbyist for the Lost Cause

Max Blumenthal : Conservatives & The American Right

Meet Richard Hines, GOP lobbyist, front man for weapons makers and hidden hand behind the extremist agenda of the neo-Confederate movement.
Terror's Greatest Recruitment Tool

Naomi Klein : Great Britain

Though many blame Britain's excessive tolerance for the recent terrorist attacks, the real problem is not too much multiculturalism but too little.
Fables of the Reconstruction

Diane McWhorter : Civil Rights & Liberties

The Informant and Son of the Rough South examine the dynamics of moral choice through the lens of the civil rights movement.
Even

Susan Straight : California

Racial tensions abound in Southern California.
Racism Rebooted

Gary Younge : Civil Rights & Liberties

Forty years after the now-famous murders of three civil rights workers, racism persists in Mississippi.
Genetically Speaking

Patricia J. Williams : Media Analysis

There is no specific genetic marker that distinguishes one race from another.
Nationalism's Psychotic Side

Robert Scheer : Germany

Even decent people can be swept along by barbarism when a nation gets sick.
Southern Man

Darryl Lorenzo Wellington : Strom Thurmond

Strom Thurmond's black daughter tells her story.
Summers of Our Discontent

Katha Pollitt : Feminism & Women

As the saying goes, behind every successful woman is a man who is surprised. Harvard president Larry Summers apparently is that man.
Cartoon Wars

Richard Goldstein : Cultural Criticism & Analysis