Tag: African Americans
The Black Arts Movement’s Revolution in the South
In the 1960s, the Free Southern Theater, an organization founded by a group of activists with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), traveled to a church in a predominantly Black, rural corner of Mississippi. There they staged Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, an absurdist drama about characters conversing as they wait for someone
Maggie Nelson and the Evolving Politics of Liberation
Illustration by Katrien de Blauwer.
In July 2016, Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign released an ad titled “Role Models.” It starts off with what appear to be exterior shots of a single-family home in the rural Midwest and then of an inner-city rowhouse. Next we see children, representing numerous target demographics, watching TV inside dimly lit living rooms as candidate Donald Trump’s voice emanates from a bright screen. Some of his greatest hits ensue: “I could stand in the middle of
The Judge Who Told the Truth About the Mississippi Abortion Ban
Of all the arguments that animate the anti-abortion cause, two stand out as particularly far-fetched: that banning abortion protects women’s health and shields African Americans from genocide. Yet for years, these arguments have driven debates over state laws, served as justifications for court decisions upholding those laws, and even appeared on billboards warning women in predominantly Black communities not to kill their babies. Three years ago, Mississippi lawmakers prohibited almost all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy to save
The Mantra of White Supremacy
Below a Democratic donkey, the Fox News graphic read ANTI-WHITE MANIA. It flanked Tucker Carlson’s face and overtook it in size. It was unmistakable. Which was the point.
The segment aired on June 25—the height of the manic attack on, and redefinition of, critical race theory, which Carlson has repeatedly cast as “anti-white.” It was one of his most incendiary segments of the year. “The question is, and this is the question we should be meditating on,
How NOT to Talk About Race
Afropessimism and Its Discontents | The Nation
Illustration by Tim Robinson.
Afropessimism is all the rage among millennial Black academics and activists—most notably among Black feminist critical race theorists, who themselves are now the prime targets of the MAGA crowd. Black intellectuals haven’t enjoyed this much pop currency among the right wing since Black Power took over buildings to demand Black studies in state universities and the Ivies 50 years ago.
Afropessimism’s recent emergence in the mainstream of Black political conversation could not have been better timed.
Elnathan John on Satire and Cancel Culture
Few observers of global discourse range as widely as Elnathan John, the novelist, satirist, and lawyer who frequently participates online and off in conversations about art, politics, and culture pertaining to at least three continents. His novel, Born on a Tuesday, is a coming-of-age story set in his native Nigeria. In Becoming Nigerian: A Guide, he tried his hand at satire.
Today, John lives in Berlin, where, in addition to writing, he works with academic institutions to foster
Whose Side Is the Supreme Court On?
Many people who came of age between, say, 1940 and 1970 have become accustomed to seeing the Supreme Court as a force for good when it comes to race. They have developed a faith in the justices’ claim, voiced in 1940 in a decision overturning the convictions of Black defendants in a death-penalty case, that “under our constitutional system, courts stand against any winds that blow as havens of refuge for
Barry Jenkins’s American Saga | The Nation
As Cora, a fugitive enslaved person in Colson Whitehead’s 2016 novel The Underground Railroad, attempts to make her way to freedom via the clandestine antislavery network—depicted by the author as a subterranean train system—a remark follows her through the tunnels. “Look outside as you speed through, and you’ll see the true face of America,” a station agent told her as her train departed. The
