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Race & Race Relations
Derrick Bell: Fighting Losing Battles
| by Stephen Steinberg | Winter 2012 |
When Derrick Bell published Gospel Choirs in 1996, he sent me a copy with this inscription: "Our job is to turn out the truth. God’s help is needed to get the truth accepted." This epigrammatic note — principled resolve, on the one hand, and pessimism born of despair, on the other — encapsulated the two sides of Bell’s world view.
Talking about race and Haiti
| Lois Weiner | September 10, 2011 |
Though these two pieces about education, one about the terrible way the US is destroying any possibilities for a real system of public education in Haiti, the other reasons the author is NOT talking about race, do not make this connection, they point to the fact that education in the US has to be seen in the context of international policy, and in particular US imperialism, in which racism is pro
Cincinnati: First Outsider, First African American Police Chief
| Dan La Botz | August 12, 2011 |
A Victory After Decades of Struggle for Racial Justice
Cincinnati's recent selection of someone who is not white and is not from the West Side of Cincinnati as the city's new police chief is a victory for justice and civil rights, and a vindication of the efforts of those activists who for decades have struggled against the racism, violence and abuse that have characterized the Cincinnati Police Department.
Fate of a Champion
| by Reginald Wilson | Winter 2011 |
It used to be said that if you walked down any street in a black neighborhood during a Joe Louis fight you would not miss a word of the broadcast because every radio in every house would be tuned to the same station … and turned up loud. A few years later, the same thing could be said about a Sugar Ray Robinson fight. Sugar Ray and Joe Louis dominated their respective divisions for nearly three decades.
Explaining Poverty
| Joanne Landy | January 14, 2011 |
Stephen Steinberg’s Boston Review article “Poor Reason: Culture still doesn’t explain poverty“ is a breath of fresh air, reminding us that the path toward ending poverty is creating decent jobs for everyone.
Contextualizing the Threat of Radical Islam
| Richard Greeman | October 27, 2010 |
Note: This article begins a series by Richard Greeman. Longtime socialist and international activist Richard Greeman is best know for his studies and translations of Victor Serge, the Franco-Russian novelist and revolutionary. His recent book Beware of Vegetarian Sharks: Radical Rants and Internationalists Essays (Illustrated) is available online at Amazon.com and may be downloaded for free at www.lulu.com/content/923573
Race and the Obama Era
| by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor | Summer 2010 |
It has been more than a year since Barack Obama was inaugurated as the first African- American president of the United States. Despite the obvious historic significance of his election, Obama’s actions to date make it very doubtful that his presidency will alleviate the persisting conditions of racism, discrimination, and general inequality that continue to shape the experience of most African-Americans in the United States.
Affirmative Action -- 2003
| by Reginald Wilson | Winter 2004 |
I
What Happened to Brown? A Review Essay
| by Reginald Wilson | Winter 2005 |
Books reviewed in this essay
After Brown: The Rise and Retreat of School Desegregation
Charles Clotfelter
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004
216 pp. $24.95
The Failures of Integration: How Race and Class are Undermining the American Dream
Sheryll Cashin
New York: Public Affairs, 2004
320 pp. $26
Black Outrage in Los Angeles
| Phyllis Jacobson |
[This article appeared in New Politics no. 13, Summer 1992.]
The fire burning in South-Central Los Angeles illuminated the rage, anguish and despair of African-Americans consigned to bleak lives of poverty and hopelessness by the most "advanced" country in the world. But as history attests, once the rage subsides, the images, which should be unforgettable, are all too soon forgotten. The ghetto and those trapped inside it are once more invisible.