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Eau de Bull, Again: Good Ole Boys Have ‘No Concerns About Anything Inappropriate’ in Environmental-Racism Case
Last year I wrote about an environmental-racism conspiracy in which a corrupt black congressman implicated Jeffrey Wood, the man now overseeing the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division, or ENRD. I’m back to report that this story has aged like wine: It’s gotten more complex, mightily more interesting and warrants an incredulous second taste…
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Chi-Town, Check Your Damn Blind Spots; I Have a Lifelong Nazi as GOP Congressional Nominee in My Backyard
There are many reasons why, when people ask me where I’m based, I say, “Entirely too close to Chicago.” Most of them have to do with hating the concrete jungle. I’m approximately the only black man so inspired by Steve Irwin that he wants to go running off to frozen volcanoes in Russia and jungles…
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‘Darkness Cannot Drive Out Darkness’: An Interview With a Former Racist on Reforming Neo-Nazis With Empathy
There’s a reason that I love Inglourious Basterds and Wolfenstein, and that we’ve joked about a neo-Nazi getting rocked. Nazis are the universal assholes. Few spectacles are more cathartic than seeing them get knocked the hell out. Nevertheless, when Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate…
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Columbus’ Ain’t the Only Legacy Stained by Slavery—So Is That of the Hero Many People Want to Replace Him With
Philosophical question here: Does anyone actually celebrate Columbus Day? Granted, most 9-to-5 workers enjoy it as a day off, but does anyone actually celebrate the accomplishments of old Cristoforo Colombo? Even Los Angeles’ vote Wednesday to replace Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples Day passed the City Council with relatively little serious opposition—though there was a…
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Tech Companies Decide White Supremacists Should Wear Hoods—Which Could Make Them Harder to Track
Charlottesville, Va., will be etched into American history, but not, perhaps, only as the day a new generation of Ku Klux Klan members went maskless and white America finally called a white terrorist what he is. Textbooks might not only record it as when right-wing hatred roiled up from a maelstrom of racial tension to…
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Under Obama, Blackness Grew Belligerent. Under Trump, the KKK Grows a Face
The last week has seen images of the Ku Klux Klan grip news coverage on Charlottesville, Va. However, they weren’t the images of old: that hooded, grotesque interpretation of mythical Southern-gent chivalry, who lynched and brandished fire in faceless anonymity. The new Klan had a face. To understand why, we need to talk about belligerence.…
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Hood Health Care: The Sweeter the Soda, the Sweeter the Tax
Black America, there are two health facts we should get straight. First, by demographics, we’re the most disproportionately dependent (pdf) on the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program—or, as SNAP is more commonly known, food stamps. Second, soda is not our friend. And that goes for the beverage, the companies that make it and organizations like the…
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Eau de Bull: A Cologne of Arsenic and Environmental Racism for Acting Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Wood
The Justice Department’s Environmental and Natural Resources Division is responsible for enforcing compliance with federal environmental laws. So to find that the fingerprints of coal lobbyist-turned-ENRD acting Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Wood are on an environmental-racism scandal is, actually, pretty par for the course with the Trump administration. In 2011, the Environmental Protection Agency found…
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The Profound Quandary of Blackness in the Video Game ‘Detroit: Become Human’
You might not have noticed, but over the past week, the internet has been losing its collective damn mind over E3, a video game conference showcasing all of next year’s flagship games, which just wrapped up several days of pomp and circumstance. Every E3 has had some controversy, but this year, rather than another sexual…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
