Essays and Commentary
Reflections and analysis inspired by the killing of George Floyd and the nationwide wave of protests that followed.
My Mother’s Dreams for Her Son, and All Black Children
She longed for black people in America not to be forever refugees—confined by borders that they did not create and by a penal system that killed them before they died.
By Hilton Als
June 21, 2020
How do we change america.
The quest to transform this country cannot be limited to challenging its brutal police alone.
By Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
June 8, 2020
The purpose of a house.
For my daughters, the pandemic was a relief from race-related stress at school. Then George Floyd was killed.
By Emily Bernard
June 25, 2020
The players’ revolt against racism, inequality, and police terror.
A group of athletes across various American professional sports have communicated the fear, frustration, and anger of most of Black America.
September 9, 2020, until black women are free, none of us will be free.
Barbara Smith and the Black feminist visionaries of the Combahee River Collective.
July 20, 2020, john lewis’s legacy and america’s redemption.
The civil-rights leader, who died Friday, acknowledged the darkest chapters of the country’s history, yet insisted that change was always possible.
By David Remnick
July 18, 2020
Europe in 1989, america in 2020, and the death of the lost cause.
A whole vision of history seems to be leaving the stage.
By David W. Blight
July 1, 2020
The messy politics of black voices—and “black voice”—in american animation.
Cartoons have often been considered exempt from the country’s prejudices. In fact, they form a genre built on the marble and mud of racial signification.
By Lauren Michele Jackson
June 30, 2020
After george floyd and juneteenth.
What’s ahead for the movement, the election, and the protesters?
June 20, 2020, juneteenth and the meaning of freedom.
Emancipation is a marker of progress for white Americans, not black ones.
By Jelani Cobb
June 19, 2020
A memory of solidarity day, on juneteenth, 1968.
The public outpouring over racism that has been taking place in America since George Floyd’s murder feels like a long-postponed renewal of the reckoning that shook the nation more than half a century ago.
By Jon Lee Anderson
June 18, 2020
Seeing police brutality then and now.
We still haven’t fully recognized the art made by twentieth-century black artists.
By Nell Painter
The History of the “Riot” Report
How government commissions became alibis for inaction.
By Jill Lepore
June 15, 2020
The trayvon generation.
For Solo, Simon, Robel, Maurice, Cameron, and Sekou.
By Elizabeth Alexander
So Brutal a Death
Nationwide outrage over George Floyd’s brutal killing by police officers resonates with immigrants, and with people around the world.
By Edwidge Danticat
An American Spring of Reckoning
In death, George Floyd’s name has become a metaphor for the stacked inequities of the society that produced them.
June 14, 2020, the mimetic power of d.c.’s black lives matter mural.
The pavement itself has become part of the protest.
By Kyle Chayka
June 9, 2020
Donald trump’s fascist performance.
To the President, power sounds like gunfire and helicopters; it sounds like the silence of men in uniform when they are asked who they are.
By Masha Gessen
June 3, 2020
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COMMENTS
Racism, the belief that humans may be divided into separate and exclusive biological entities called ’races’; that there is a causal link between inherited physical traits and traits of personality, intellect, morality, and other cultural and behavioral features; and that some races are innately superior to others.
A Memory of Solidarity Day, on Juneteenth, 1968. The public outpouring over racism that has been taking place in America since George Floyd’s murder feels like a long-postponed renewal of the ...
Anti-Racism: Marginalization and Exclusion in Healthcare. This essay examines the course’s impact and the concepts of marginalization and exclusion in healthcare. Marginalization is a concept that has profoundly influenced the understanding of race and racism in healthcare. The Issue of Racism in the United States.