Racial justice - Dissent Magazine

Booked: On Their Way to Freedom

Timothy Shenk ▪ July 16, 2015

An interview with Eric Foner on the underground railroad in New York, how history helps us to understand change, and why the left should talk more about freedom.

The Fall of the Confederate Flag

Robert Greene ▪ July 15, 2015

The fall of the Confederate flag in Columbia, South Carolina, has been over fifty years in the making. What does it mean for the state, for the South, and for the nation?

Introducing Our Summer Issue: American Movements

Michael Kazin ▪ Summer 2015

What are the visions and complaints, accomplishments and limits of the largest and most important movements on the left today?

Belabored Podcast #80: Class Struggle? There’s An App for That

Sarah Jaffe and Michelle Chen ▪ June 26, 2015

What if you could run a workplace organizing campaign through your smartphone? We speak with Mark Zuckerman, president of The Century Foundation, about how unions can use digital platforms to empower workers. Plus: the latest on Uber, Verizon, the TPP, and an ice-cream labor revolt.

Black Lives Matter in South Carolina

Robert Greene ▪ Summer 2015

South Carolina has always been a battleground of larger, national campaigns for racial justice.

Israel’s #BlackLivesMatter Moment?

Joshua Leifer ▪ May 10, 2015

Ethiopian-Israelis face systematic discrimination and violence at the hands of the police. But comparisons to #BlackLivesMatter in the United States do not capture the complexities of their situation.

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.

Border City Blues

Colin Gordon ▪ April 30, 2015

It is no coincidence that the starkest reactions to police violence—from Ferguson to Baltimore—have flared in cities strung along the Mason-Dixon Line.

Liberal Punishment

Mike Konczal ▪ Spring 2015

Naomi Murakawa’s remarkable book The First Civil Right: How Liberals Built Prison America shows how, since the 1940s, liberals have provided legitimacy for the prison state.

American Violence from Baltimore to Baghdad

Hugh Gusterson ▪ April 25, 2015

This article originally appeared at the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. The choice of weapons is important because it radically affects what we are, and at stake in that choice is the risk of losing our soul. —Grégoire Chamayou I was reading …

Starbucks Wants To Talk About Race. But Does It Want to Talk About Racism?

Tressie McMillan Cottom ▪ March 18, 2015

According to Fortune magazine, Starbucks will “encourage baristas to discuss race relations with customers”. Starbucks’ media page says that a series of “racially charged tragedies” sparked the initiative “Race Together”. The initiative comes with stickers: [Race Together] may also engage customers in conversation …

How Racism Became Policy in Ferguson

Colin Gordon ▪ March 5, 2015

The Justice Department report offers a glimpse of the systematically oppressive and petty policing in Ferguson. But in order to fully understand how racism became policy in the St. Louis suburbs, we need to look at the history of suburban development itself.