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Systemic Racism

The Similar Praxis Of Jim Crow And Lord Voldemort

The current Supreme Court (SCOTUS) has left no doubt about its approach to representative democracy in the United States. Last month, in its Louisiana v. Callais decision, the high court ruled that a second, majority Black congressional district drawn in Louisiana in 2024 was unconstitutional and relied too heavily on race as part of its composition. The state, where Black people account for approximately 33% of its population, will now contain only one majority Black congressional district. The overarching decision vastly weakens the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA) and updates the legal test for determining if Section 2, which prohibits voting discrimination on the basis of race,  of the act has been violated.

Iran Has The Strait Of Hormuz; What Can Black People Use For Leverage?

The militant reaction to the Tennessee legislature’s recent obliteration of the state’s only predominantly Black voting district struck an emotional chord with Africans throughout the U.S. Protesters crowded into the legislative chamber, chanting, waving placards, sounding air horns, and leaving no doubts about their anger. State Representative Justin Pearson then eloquently spoke for many when he said: Today’s vote to redraw the congressional districts in Tennessee set our state back over 150 years. It was a political lynching that violated the rights of every Tennessean.

The US Supreme Court, Race And The Right To Vote

In perhaps its most insidious decision in nearly a century, the U.S. Supreme Court disemboweled Section 2 of the landmark Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965, the “crown jewel” of the U.S. civil rights movement. The VRA ended Jim Crow-era election procedures that precluded Black people from voting in the South through intimidation, literacy tests and  poll taxes. It was part of a system of post-Civil War legalized racial segregation meant to restore white supremacy after the end of slavery and the federal, military occupation of the South.

Florida Has Deemed All Existing Intro To Sociology Textbooks Illegal

Imagine the following scenario: You’re teaching Introduction to Sociology at a community college in Florida, and today, you’re trying to explain the well-documented pay gap between men and women in the United States. You check the guidance you just received from your dean, who received instructions via email from the executive vice chancellor of the Florida College System. The instructions state explicitly that explaining “unequal outcomes between men and women” in terms of “institutional sexism” would violate state law.

The EPA’s Zero Sum Game Surfaces A Dialectical Paradox

Kali Akuno, founder of Jackson, Mississippi-based Cooperation Jackson, reminds us in his book Jackson Rising Redux, “To deal with the crisis of Black labor redundancy, the US ruling class has responded by creating a multipronged strategy of limited incorporation [see also the Black Misleadership class, the cooniferous Congressional Black Caucus, and other elements of the Black petty bourgeois], counterinsurgency [i.e. crushing, dividing, and severely weakening and elite capturing of Black-led organizations], and mass containment [vis a vis mass incarceration and the prison industrial complex]."

After A White Town Rejected A Data Center, Developers Targeted Black Area

In December, on a two-lane road not far from the ACE Basin, a protected ecosystem and wildlife refuge in South Carolina, Paul Black drove past St. Paul AME Church and the cemetery where his wife’s grandfather, great-grandfather, and great-grandmother are buried, then slowed as the trees opened onto the piney tract. ​Black is an environmental activist who has spent years fighting polluting projects across the South. But now he and Black residents in the rural South Carolina community are bracing for a new fight: to stop a proposed data center complex the size of 1,200 football fields.

The Military Occupation Of Washington, DC: Then And Now

DC residents are living under an expanded military occupation ordered by Donald Trump that many are calling “unprecedented.” However, this is not the first time this action has been taken. Understanding this history is essential to properly contextualize what is happening now and to focus on the correct narrative and issue to fight going forward. I grew up in Southeast DC after my mom moved us from our hometown of Jarratt, VA to a little apartment in a four-unit building on Parkland Place when I was about five or six years old. We enjoyed free summer concerts in the park across the street from our building. I used to walk about a half a mile to Malcolm X Elementary school during the week, and to Liff’s Market across the street from that school every Sunday to get the paper for my mom and snacks for myself.

Trump Terror, Complicit Local Leadership: The Assault Against Southeast D.C.

On March 27, 2025, Donald Trump signed an executive order establishing the “Safe and Beautiful” federal task force for Washington, DC. Framed as a public safety and beautification campaign, the initiative is led by his Homeland Security Advisor, Stephen Miller—a figure known for his hardline white nationalist policies. Under the guise of civic improvement, this task force seeks to further entrench surveillance, policing, and state control over DC’s most marginalized communities, particularly Black working-class residents in the Southeast neighborhood.

Meatpacking Plants Pollute Poor, Non-White Communities Disproportionately

Postville, Iowa — In March, officials in Postville shut down its water treatment facility for two days as city employees worked to prevent polluted water from a meatpacking plant from entering the water supply.  Agri Star Meat and Poultry had discharged more than 250,000 gallons of untreated food processing waste — blood, chemicals and other solid materials — into the city’s wastewater system. Chris Hackman, the city’s wastewater operator for the past 25 years, said it was one of the worst incidents he could remember.  “We’ve never seen anything like that,” he said. 

Blacks And Hispanics Seeking Parole Face Widening Racial Disparity

Black and Hispanic people in New York state prisons have a much higher chance to be denied parole than whites over the past three years — a divide that’s gotten worse since being highlighted in 2016, a new study shows.  New York’s Parole Board released 34.79% of people of color while letting out 48.71% of white people from January through June 2024, based on a report by New York University School of Law’s Center for Race, Inequality & the Law posted online Monday.  Since Gov. Kathy Hochul took office in 2021, there would be 1,338 fewer Blacks and Hispanics behind bars if they were paroled at the same rate as whites, the report shows. 

Why All Hurricanes Should Be Named ‘Jim’

The devastation effectuated by Hurricane Helene represents yet another elucidation of a quintessential climate crisis that is right here and right now. It demonstrates that climate change is not a conclusion that awaits us, but a set of present day precarities taking and altering lives right now. According to initial assessments, Helene could cost U.S. taxpayers upwards of $175 billion , and of course, there is no way to quantify the estimated 230 lives that were taken, thus far, with the death toll expected to rise. Meanwhile, Hurricane Milton, which made landfall in Florida as a Category 3 storm, continued this season of carnage and calamity with a death toll of approximately 20 people and an estimated $50 billion in damages.

Tribal College Campuses Are Falling Apart

In the 1970s, Congress committed to funding a higher education system controlled by Indigenous communities. These tribal colleges and universities were intended to serve students who’d been disadvantaged by the nation’s history of violence and racism toward Native Americans, including efforts to eradicate their languages and cultures. But walking through Little Big Horn College in Montana with Emerson Bull Chief, its dean of academics, showed just how far that idea has to go before becoming a reality. Bull Chief dodged signs warning “Keep out!” as he approached sheets of plastic sealing off the campus day care center. It was late April and the center and nearby cafeteria have been closed since January, when a pipe burst, flooding the building, the oldest at the 44-year-old college. The facilities remained closed into late September.

Louisiana’s CRT Ban Continues Long History Suppressing Black Education

As more than 700,000 students across Louisiana recently headed back to the classroom, a troubling reality looms: Black history wasn’t allowed in with them. In an increasing number of states, books on Black history and lesson plans about systemic racism are barred from schools — and Louisiana has followed suit. Gov. Jeff Landry’s executive order in late August bans critical race theory (CRT) — on top of previous restrictions already in place — and makes Louisiana the latest state to pass a law prohibiting antiracist education. Incredibly, laws preventing honest education about race impact nearly half of all public school students in the United States.

Activists In Philly Have A Novel Approach To Help De-Oppress Society

In 2019, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America reported that one in 1,000 Black men in the U.S. are killed by police. Statista states that between 2015 and August 2024, Black U.S. residents were fatally shot by law enforcement officers at a rate of 6.2 per million of the population per year compared to 2.4 white Americans per million per year. This is an all-too-familiar example of systemic oppression, which the diversity, equity, and inclusion-based software company Develop Diverse defines as “the mistreatment of a social, ethnic, or racial group, perpetuated by governments, schools, health care systems, and other socioeconomic structures.”

AI Surveillance As A Tool Of State Repression

AI technology poses a significant threat to communities that are struggling for liberation. The technology is used to create large surveillance networks accessible to police, military, and private companies. Frequently this technology is installed without the consent or knowledge of the people it surveils. In the United States, AI technology is used to surveil Black and Brown communities and target people for arrest. Abroad it is used for bombing campaigns and genocide. In August 2023, a GPS tracker was found on a vehicle registered to one of the codefendants known as the Traverse City 3, a trio of queer activists.
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