American politicians are now eager to disown a failed criminal-justice system that’s left the U.S. with the largest incarcerated population in the world. But they’ve failed to reckon with history. Fifty years after Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s report “The Negro Family” tragically helped create this system, it’s time to reclaim his original intent.
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An Interview With Former Black Panther Lynn French
The fact that the Panther Party, by the time you joined in 1968, was over two-thirds women struck me as amazing.
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South Africa’s Boldest Women in Music on the Ultimate ‘Girl Power’ Anthems
Women’s Month is officially underway in South Africa. It’s a time to reflect on the phenomenal, kick-ass women in our lives and throughout history.
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My Mother, the Drug War and Me: Reading Ta-Nehisi Coates and Forgiving my Own Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration
For years, I blamed the destruction of our family on her. Coates’ newest Atlantic article opened my eyes—and heart.
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David Duke’s getting more support from black voters in his race than Donald Trump is in his
Former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke was interviewed by NPR’s Steve Inskeep this week, and he reiterated his affection for the man at the top of his party’s ticket.
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The Financial Consequences of Saying ‘Black,’ vs. ‘African American’
People make vastly different assumptions about salary, education, and social status depending on which phrase is used.
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Boko Haram Survivors Are Starving To Death As Aid Falls Short
“I have never heard such fear and desperation. This is a new terrible.”
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Why Highways Have Become the Center of Civil Rights Protest
After activists protesting the death of Philando Castile left the governor’s mansion in St. Paul, Minn., on Saturday night, they marched through the city down Lexington Parkway and then onto the highway, across all eight lanes of traffic. There, some of them sat down, a provocative gesture of civil disobedience in the face of rushing commerce.
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In D.C., Disappointment with Obama Over His Silence on Statehood
For the first time in 16 years, D.C. statehood is part of the official platform at the Democratic National Convention. And when President Obama addresses the convention in Philadelphia on Wednesday, D.C. delegates are hoping the city’s most famous resident will make a prime-time pitch on behalf of their defining political cause.
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Who’s to Blame in South Sudan?
Colonial rule ended in Sudan in 1956. As the British and Egyptian flags were lowered, a struggle for power between rival factions was already under way. Fifty-five years later Sudan was partitioned and a new nation came into existence: South Sudan, whose population had spent decades waging a succession of wars against the regime in Khartoum, was now an independent country, the world’s most recent, recognized by the UN, the African Union (AU), and Sudan itself.
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