In a pocket of Louisiana known as “Cancer Alley,” Black residents bear the generational toll of “plantation country” becoming “pollution country.” Seven times as many people are expected to be diagnosed with cancer than the national average in these disproportionately Black communities. Now, a federal district court has given those residents something they almost never get: a chance to…
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As Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids schools, states ban honest teaching about race and gender, and public officials invoke Martin Luther King Jr. to call for restraint and “civility,” King’s legacy is being aggressively stripped of its political substance. Much of the scholarship and public memory of King has long privileged his work in the South, reinforcing the idea that…
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While New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago have all received significant attention when it comes to police use of surveillance technologies, the small city of New Orleans has for years been the laboratory for a sophisticated surveillance apparatus deployed by the city’s police department and other policing bodies. Just last year, New Orleans was in the news as the city considered setting a…
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Emmett Till is someone that we know through documentaries, writings, photos, and inadequate history lessons. Open Casket: Philosophical Meditations on the Lynching of Emmett Till draws us unsettlingly and lovingly close to Emmett Till, and to his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley. George Yancy’s and A. Todd Franklin’s breathtaking new anthology brings us face-to-face with the disquieting sorrow of Black…
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“My family is scared to step outside,” a student admitted during my class. Around him heads nodded. All were born in the U.S. but most know undocumented people. Donald Trump painted a big target on their backs. “We’re not criminals, you know. We’re just trying to work, and survive.” After class, I looked at the news on my phone. A December 4 CNN report showed a video of a boat blasted to bits…
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In Colorado, students taunted their Black classmates by playing whipping sounds on their cellphones and saying they should be shot “to make us a better race.” The only two Black students in a small district in Ohio were called the N-word by white peers starting on their first day. They got accustomed to hearing slurs like “porch monkey” and being told to go pick cotton. And at a school…
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