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We Will Be Seen

Tressie McMillan Cottom On Confronting Racism, Sexism, And Classism

We are more comfortable in our culture talking about the distant past. We love black history; it’s black people we don’t like.

Racing Toward The Future

[History] rushes on, as it always did, with two forces racing toward the future, one splendidly uniformed, the other ragged but inspired.

Sunbeams

There are fundamentally two ways you can experience the police in America: [One is] as the people you call when there’s a problem, the nice man in uniform who pats a toddler’s head and has an easy smile for the old lady as she buys her coffee. For others, the police are the people who are called on them. They are the ominous knock on the door, the sudden flashlight in the face, the barked orders. Depending on who you are, the sight of an officer can produce either a warm sense of safety and contentment or a plummeting feeling of terror.

Chris Hayes

To Protect And To Serve?

Alex S. Vitale On The Overpolicing Of America

It’s a mistake to think of each episode of police misconduct as an isolated incident that might have gone another way if different officers had been involved. It’s not about individuals. The problem is a political imperative toward overpolicing.

Our Fellow Americans

Paul Chaat Smith On The Complex Truth Of Native American History

To see the full picture of Indians — as people who have had a continuing, complex relationship with all aspects of American culture — is just too much for some people. They want to put Indians in a box.

To Free Ourselves, We Must Feed Ourselves

Leah Penniman On Bringing People Of Color Back To The Land

We have food apartheid, a system of segregation that relegates certain people to food abundance and others to food scarcity. If you’re a black child in America, you are twice as likely to go to bed hungry tonight as a white child.

Sunbeams

It is an illusion to suppose that a dictator makes himself; at most he seizes an opportunity made for him by passive, stupid, incompetent, and, above all, unsatisfied and fearful men.

L. Susan Stebbing