race - Dissent Magazine

Memphis Blues

Editors ▪ Spring 2018

In his unstinting backing of unions, Martin Luther King, Jr. made clear that racism was rooted in a long and stubborn history of class injustice.

The Perils of Universalism

Leo Casey ▪ Winter 2018

The authoritarian offensive has primarily taken the form of attacks on racialized others. We must fight back accordingly.

Is There Such a Thing as the American Ghetto?

Daniel Geary ▪ March 31, 2017

Today, the term “ghetto” comes across as at best anachronistic, at worst offensive. Does it still have any value?

Kinetic Joy

L. Gibson ▪ November 16, 2016

In Zadie Smith’s Swing Time, a young woman explores her racial identity through a love of dance—and finds a different kind of history, one that is barely written down.

Red Lines, Black Lives

Colin Gordon ▪ October 25, 2016

A new digital archive reveals the extent of the federal government’s role in fueling and enforcing midcentury housing discrimination.

To understand how the housing market really works, we need to hear the stories of those who have been pushed out. Two essential new books shine a spotlight on those stories, and illuminate much more in the process.

“Coates Isn’t Hopeful”: Melvin Rogers Responds to Lester Spence

Melvin L. Rogers ▪ August 13, 2015

Why is Ta-Nehisi Coates unable to comfort his son in the face of the non-indictment of Darren Wilson? This is the central problem of Between the World and Me.

“Coates Is a Realist, Not a Pessimist”: Lester Spence Responds to Melvin Rogers

Lester Spence ▪ August 13, 2015

Rather than taking a pessimist’s approach with his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates is taking a realistic approach, grounded in American history.

Booked #4: What Did Race Mean to W.E.B. Du Bois?

Timothy Shenk ▪ May 7, 2015

Tim Shenk talked with Kwame Anthony Appiah, author of Lines of Descent: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Emergence of Identity, about how Du Bois’s experiences as a black American shaped his theories of race, and how his theories relate to politics then and now.