Race relations

Color Theory

By Frank B. Wilderson III,

From Afropessimism, which will be published this month by Liveright. In February 2001, I attended the Race Rave conference at the University of California, Santa Cruz, with my wife, Alice.…

No Joe!

By Andrew Cockburn,

In the heart of the US Capitol there’s a small men’s room with an uplifting Franklin Delano Roosevelt quotation above the door. Making use of the facilities there after lunch…

We Were So Happy Then

By Lynn Freed,

Coming home in the mid-Nineties to the new South Africa—new laws, new rules, new hope—felt not much different from coming home to the old one. De facto integration had been…

Visits from the Goon Squad

From behaviors of Little Rock, Arkansas, police, cited by the department since 2007. The internal reports were made public in October, following an investigation of the killing of Bobby Moore,…

The Gatekeepers

By Harper’s Magazine, on December 20, 2018

Unknown knowns: the limits of racial discourse in a system almost exclusively controlled by white people Read More

People Like Me

By Emily Bernard,

From Black Is the Body, which will be published in February by Knopf. Bernard is a professor of English and critical race and ethnic studies at the University of Vermont,…

The Gatekeepers

By Mychal Denzel Smith,

Toward the end of the Obama presidency, the work of James Baldwin began to enjoy a renaissance that was both much overdue and comfortless. Baldwin stands as one of the…

Political Football

By Kevin Baker,

With the fall and another election season upon us, the one thing we can count on is a renewal of Donald Trump’s war on football. This has become an annual…

Empty Suits

By Ian MacDougall,

The stench first hit me on US 80, just past the catfish feed mill and the processing plant next door. It was late March in Uniontown, Alabama, a whistle-stop thirty…

A Matter of Degrees

By Michael S. Collins,

According to the prophecy, we are in the last days when race will matter in the molding of American citizens. This particular prophecy was made in 2003 by Sandra Day…

Now and Then

By Rebecca Solnit,

The present is by common definition the instant between the not yet and the already, a moment as narrow and treacherous as a tightrope. But you might instead define it…

From the Archive

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Color Theory

No Joe!

We Were So Happy Then

Visits from the Goon Squad

The Gatekeepers

People Like Me

The Gatekeepers

Political Football

Empty Suits

A Matter of Degrees

Now and Then

September 2017