Dubious wilderness, cutthroat business, and human casualties in the war over the fabled Californian Oyster.
racism
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‘The Fight Is Yours’: Roxane Gay & Ta-Nehisi Coates on Writing and Talking About Race
RG: Discussions about race, particularly in mixed company, are often combative and contentious. How the hell do we talk about race? TC: No idea. I just try to communicate with as much honesty and respect as possible. I think we should not forget that a not so insufficient portion of this country sees it as […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
A Black Woman’s Body on the Tennis Court: Claudia Rankine on Serena Williams
What does a victorious or defeated black woman’s body in a historically white space look like? Serena and her big sister Venus Williams brought to mind Zora Neale Hurston’s “I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background.” This appropriated line, stenciled on canvas by Glenn Ligon, who used plastic letter […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Looter to Who? James Baldwin on Racism in America
In 1968, essayist, novelist and activist James Baldwin spoke with Esquire about racism in America, Dr. Martin Luther King, poverty and police brutality. In our current era of high profile police violence in communities like Ferguson, Missouri, and protests in Baltimore, Maryland, Baldwin’s words sound as prescient and, unfortunately, fresh as they did forty-seven years […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
‘A Century of Public Policy Designed to Segregate and Impoverish its Black Population’
As I described in the Making of Ferguson, the federal government maintained a policy of segregation in public housing nationwide for decades. This was as true in northeastern cities like New York as it was in border cities like Baltimore and St. Louis. In 1994, civil rights groups sued the Department of Housing and Urban […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
How Mardi Gras Helped Make Mahalia Jackson a Political Activist
“I never did like the world-famous Mardi Gras that went on in New Orleans. It was a beautiful sight, but to me it was horrible. I have seen so many people hurt on that particular day . . . The white people would celebrate their Mardi Gras with big and expensive floats that went down the main part of Canal Street, which were very beautiful and high class . . . But for my people, for them it would be such a tragedy. “
Posted inFiction, Quotes
The Unanswered Question of Race in Edgar Allan Poe’s Writing
It is seldom mentioned that Poe came of age in a slave society, in a household where slaves were present. Poe does nothing to draw attention to the fact. An account of the business interests of Poe’s foster father, John Allan, quoted by the biographer Jeffrey Meyers, notes that he and his partner “as a […]
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College Longreads Pick: 'The Final Barrier: 50 Years Later, Segregation Still Exists' by Abbey Crain and Matt Ford, University of Alabama
Every week, Syracuse University professor Aileen Gallagher helps Longreads highlight the best of college journalism. Here’s this week’s pick: One of the hardest rules of writing for students to follow is: “Don’t start a story with a quote.” Except… Except when the quote is so incredible that it makes the reader do a hard-stop. To […]
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A writer examines issues of racism he witnessed while growing up in Waterloo, Iowa, and running a grocery store with his father: When I went back for an event for my college fraternity, I introduced myself to one of the new guys, my brother who is the first ‘black guy’ in my fraternity. When I […]