Skip to content

Racism

White Supremacy Is At The Center Of The ‘Class Over Race’ Debate

September 22, 2023 Jon Jeter, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
With its swath of shuttered shops, empty cafes, dwindling crowds and shimmering seaside vistas, San Francisco’s Embarcadero resembles an abandoned amusement park in the post-pandemic era, but a century ago this tourist attraction was known as the “slave market,” where dozens of longshoremen would gather each weekday hoping to land a job loading and unloading the freighters docked in the bay. Seldom were there enough jobs to go around, however, and the hiring boss who was assigned by the shipping companies to choose the daily work crews would often go about the task with the same contemptuous air that an overseer might display while inspecting chattel slaves at auction, sneering as he rejected some longshoremen while doling out preferential treatment to others, many of whom had agreed to kick back a portion of their wages to him.

The Pyramid Scheme That Is Racial Capitalism

September 16, 2023 Jon Jeter, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
On August 26, a lone white gunman, 21-year-old Ryan Christopher Palmeter, fired 11 rounds from his semi-automatic weapon into the windshield of a car parked outside a Jacksonville Dollar General, killing the African American driver. Then he walked into the discount store, and fatally shot two other African Americans before turning the gun on himself. Palmeter left behind a manifesto indicating his displeasure with African Americans, reminiscent of another 21-year-old white gunman, Dylan Roof, who eight years earlier sat outside the Emanuel AME church in Charleston, South Carolina. Finishing off a bottle of Smirnoff’s Ice, he pulled a Glock handgun from his waistband, walked into the church and opened fire, killing a pastor and eight of his parishioners, all of them Black.

Chris Hedges Report: The Ruse Of Identity Politics

September 2, 2023 Chris Hedges, The Real News Network. , , , ,
There are very few intellectuals who have been as attacked, censored, and blacklisted as long and as ruthlessly as the Middle Eastern scholar, Norman Finkelstein. He has been hounded out of universities, denied speaking engagements, and had his books and scholarship either ignored or dismissed. It is surprising, perhaps, that Professor Finkelstein’s latest book, I’ll Burn That Bridge When I Get to It! Heretical Thoughts on Identity Politics, Cancel Culture, and Academic Freedom is a savage attack on identity politics. He likens the current woke culture of the left to red-baiting when his heroes, Paul Robeson, Pete Seager, Rosa Luxemburg, Paul Sweezy, and Annette Rubinstein were marginalized, and in the case of Luxembourg, assassinated.

Is Western Media’s Perception Of Africa Racist?

August 25, 2023 Ramzy Baroud, Counter Punch. , , , ,
Racism goes beyond the use of certain words or the discriminatory practices of everyday life. It is also about political perceptions, intellectual depictions, and collective relationships. Consider the way that Africa is currently portrayed in the news. From a political viewpoint, Africa is seen as a totality, and not in a positive way, as in a united Africa. For example, mainstream Western media coverage of the US-Africa Summit, held in Washington last December, presented all of Africa as poor and desperate. The continent, one can glean from headlines, was also willing to pawn its political position in the Russia-NATO conflict, in exchange for money and food.

Juvenile Sentencing In The US Is Barbaric, Racist, And Ineffective

August 15, 2023 Mansa Musa, The Real News Network. , , , ,
“The United States is the only country in the world that permits youth to be sentenced to life without parole,” the Juvenile Law Center notes. “Sentencing children to die in prison is condemned by international law. For children or adults, a sentence of life without parole is cruel, inhumane, and denies the individual’s humanity. For children, the sentence also defies law and research confirming that youth are different than adults and must be treated differently by our legal system.” While many individual states have banned the practice of sentencing juvenile offenders to life without parole, 22 states still permit it, and the conservative majority of the US Supreme Court has shown a troubling openness to overturning past precedents regarding juvenile sentencing.

Post-Conviction Review Could Correct Three-Strike Law Injustices

August 4, 2023 Raymond Williams, Scheer Post. , , , ,
Earlier this year, Washington lawmakers introduced a bill that would allow for post-conviction review for incarcerated people serving long sentences for crimes they were convicted of while under the age of 25. Washington’s Senate Bill 5451, locally known as the Emerging Adults Bill, would extend an already existing parole law that offers review for those convicted of crimes committed while under the age of 18. Many recent studies have shown that the prefrontal cortex—the area of the brain responsible for decision-making and impulse control—continues to develop in most human beings past age 18.

Hotel Workers Strike Against Scab Staffing App And Anti-Black Racism

August 2, 2023 Jenny Brown, Labor Notes. , , , , ,
When Thomas Bradley showed up for his third shift at Laguna Cliffs Marriott Resort and Spa in Dana Point, California, on July 2 he encountered something new: a picket line. The picket was part of a wave of strikes at Los Angeles-area hotels by members of UNITE HERE Local 11. Their contracts at 62 hotels expired June 30. The hotel workers’ top demand is for pay that will allow them to secure housing in a market that is pricing them out. Bradley, who had been a hotel union member years before, stopped to talk to the picketing workers and then joined them, exercising his right to strike under labor law. But there was a problem.

RFK, Jr.: It’s Not Genetics, It’s Racial Capitalism

July 20, 2023 Jacqueline Luqman, Black Agenda Report. , , , ,
I know that opinions about COVID-19 and the vaccines related to it are still as varied as they are passionate, at least in the US where this government did absolutely nothing under two presidents to protect people and save lives in the midst of a global pandemic. But let me just be the one to say it if you were afraid to. Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s recent comments about the virus are wackadoodle, but should not be dismissed outright because of his dismissal of US racialized capitalism that fueled the deadly outcome of the pandemic in the US among certain groups of people.

Fallout From Supreme Court’s Affirmative Action Decision Has Begun

July 11, 2023 Nadra Nittle, The 19th. , , ,
After the Supreme Court’s ruling last month effectively ending affirmative action in higher education, lawmakers and organizations on both sides of the ideological divide strategized next steps ranging from challenging legacy admissions to barring minority scholarships. In a consolidated decision in two cases — Students for Fair Admissions Inc. v. University of North Carolina and Students for Fair Admissions Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College — the Supreme Court decided that affirmative action is unconstitutional. Harvard is now under fire for admissions policies that activist groups say disadvantage students of color

Tesla: The Cars That Racism Built?

July 9, 2023 Ethan Baron, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
Complaint after complaint alleging anti-Black racism at Tesla’s factory in Fremont has not stopped such abuse and discrimination, with Black workers segregated into the hardest, most dangerous, lowest-paid jobs and subjected to a barrage of racist treatment, language and images, according to claims in recent court filings and employee interviews. Black workers at the plant — Tesla’s biggest California facility, which employs thousands to build its four electric car models — alleged such abuse often began soon after they started, excited at landing a job at the famed automotive pioneer.

Beyond Affirmative Action, Toward Black Unity

July 8, 2023 Austin Cole, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
“Affirmative action” is, at this point, a loaded phrase. Strictly speaking, affirmative action typically refers to sets of policies/procedures that attempt to “even the playing field,” most commonly in education or employment decisions, by stopping present and future discrimination against marginalized or underrepresented groups while making up for past discrimination and injustices. For some in the U.S., affirmative action that considers race is representative of ‘reverse racism’ and political ‘wokeness’ run amok, and for others, it is a major victory that our elders and ancestors struggled for for years.

The Supreme Court And Political Corruption

July 7, 2023 Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
The Supreme Court of the United States is enshrined in the Constitution as one of three branches of government, the other two being the Executive branch, the presidency, and the Legislative branch, the Senate and House of Representatives. In other words the Court is a lawmaking body. The 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision was a landmark, a case that most Black people commit to memory. The Court declared that public accommodations could not be considered equal if they were separate, and thus began the long road to ending segregation in the law.

Police Brutality, Racism And Poverty Underlie Youth Rebellion In France

July 6, 2023 Abayomi Azikiwe, Black Agenda Report. , , , ,
A 17-year-old youth of Moroccan and Algerian descent named Nahel M was gunned down by the French police on June 27 sparking a nationwide series of mass demonstrations and rebellions throughout the country. Several videos released on the shooting show clearly that Nahel, who was driving a vehicle, was posing no threat to the police. There were two other people in the vehicle with Nahel, one of whom has given evidence to the authorities while the third person is being sought by prosecutors. The policeman has been indicted for voluntary homicide. In addition, reports suggest he has apologized for the fatal shooting.

The Two-Sided Uprising Sweeping France

July 5, 2023 Nicolas Haeringer, Waging Nonviolence. , , ,
On June 27, Nahel Merzouk, a 17-year-old French boy of North African descent was murdered by a white police officer in a Parisian suburb. Since then, anger has erupted almost everywhere in the country, especially in poor neighborhoods. Young people are taking to the streets to protest against police violence and state racism. Their anger is eruptive. Recently, I helped organize support and solidarity for another uprising in France: Soulèvements de la terre, or Earth’s uprising. This movement, created in 2021, is fighting against large and useless infrastructure (like highways and giant tunnels under the Alps), transnational corporations and other sources of pollution and environmental destruction.

No Matter How You Frame It, The ADL Is A Racist Organization

June 21, 2023 Miko Peled, MintPress News. , , ,
The Biden administration has released the country’s first national strategy for combating antisemitism, a landmark plan aimed at addressing a growing problem.” This is from a piece in NPR titled, “The first national strategy for fighting antisemitism is finally here. What’s in it?” Spoiler alert: it is not about fighting antisemitism or any other sort of racism; it is a strategy to silence Palestinian voices in the U.S. in the service of Israel. The article starts with an outline of the Biden administration’s commitment to fighting Antisemitism. It then quotes the president, who referred to the plan as the “most ambitious and comprehensive U.S. government-led effort to fight antisemitism in American history.”
«12345678910»
Sign Up To Our Daily Digest

Independent media outlets are being suppressed and dropped by corporations like Google, Facebook and Twitter. Sign up for our daily email digest before it’s too late so you don’t miss the latest movement news.