White America’s Greatest Delusion: “They Do Not Know It and They Do Not Want to Know It” – Tim Wise

Though perhaps overused, there are few statements that so thoroughly burrow to the heart of the nation’s racial condition as the following, written fifty-three years ago by James Baldwin: …this is the crime of which I accuse my country and my countrymen and for which neither I nor time nor history will ever forgive them, that they have destroyed and …

Baltimore Youths Have It Worse Than Those in Nigeria – Elizabeth Kulze

When a teenager from East Baltimore was asked to describe his neighborhood, he spoke of “big rats going around in people’s trash, vacant houses full of squatters and needles on the ground.” A young woman in New Delhi, asked the same question, described the dirt and the “dirty water found lying on the roads,” while a young man in Ibadan, a large …

Fear of a Black Prophet: The Lowdown on the Takedown of Cornel West – Chris Floyd

Glenn Ford says, with eloquent heat, exactly what I was thinking: that Michael Dyson’s brutal character assassination of Cornel West in the historically racist pages of the New Republic was, above all else, an application for a job in the upcoming Hillary Clinton administration. Ford writes: “But, of course, there is method to Dyson’s meanness. The true purpose of his …

1.5 Million Missing Black Men – JUSTIN WOLFERS, DAVID LEONHARDT and KEVIN QUEALY

In New York, almost 120,000 black men between the ages of 25 and 54 are missing from everyday life. In Chicago, 45,000 are, and more than 30,000 are missing in Philadelphia. Across the South — from North Charleston, S.C., through Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi and up into Ferguson, Mo. — hundreds of thousands more are missing. They are missing, largely …

Going Rogue: 15 Ways to Detach From the System – Tess Pennington

I am inspired by the very definition of self-reliance: to be reliant on one’s own capabilities, judgment, or resources. Ultimately, it is the epitome of independence and lays the groundwork of what we are all striving for – to live a life based on our personal principles and beliefs. It is a concept rooted in the groundwork  that made America great. Being dependent on our own …

Killer Cops Boost Body Count in War on Black America – Glen Ford

“Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, …

Dixie Justice: The roots and legacy of the South’s incarceration boom

It’s not news that the United States is the incarceration capital of the world: The 2.4 million people behind bars in the U.S. today is, as Matt Ford at The Atlantic noted, “more than the combined population of 15 states, all but three U.S. cities, and the U.S. armed forces.” As Adam Gropnik wrote in hiscompelling 2012 piece, “The Caging of America”: …

EXCLUSIVE: TSA’S SECRET BEHAVIOR CHECKLIST TO SPOT TERRORISTS

Fidgeting, whistling, sweaty palms. Add one point each. Arrogance, a cold penetrating stare, and rigid posture, two points. These are just a few of the suspicious signs that the Transportation Security Administration directs its officers to look out for — and score — in airport travelers, according to a confidential TSA document obtained exclusively byThe Intercept. The checklist is part …

The paramilitary occupation of America

It is necessary to call things by their right names. The obscene regularity of police murders in the United States has reached the point where it is appropriate to speak of the police as an occupying army, whose daily violence and brutality can best be described as a war against the country’s poor and working people. Practically every day brings …