Politics
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The GOP’s Obsession With Detroit Is a Dangerously Coded Attack on Black Leadership
Donald Trump wasn’t the first Republican presidential hopeful to visit Detroit. Nor was he the first, fashioned like modern Tarzan, to swing in on a vine and lecture majority-black cities on how they suck at running things. Over the past several years, Detroit has made its way from storied wasteland to bankrupt town to experimental…
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1 Year Later: BLM Protester Who Interrupted Bernie Sanders’ Rally Discusses the Moment and the Movement
It’s been a year since Mara Willaford and I jumped up onstage with presidential candidate Bernie Sanders in what would become one of the most controversial Black Lives Matter actions to date. Filled with naivete about the impact we would make and conviction around the urgency of the fight for black lives, we did the…
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How Both Hillary Clinton and Black and Latino Journalists Blew Their Big Shot
There are a few people I would wait an entire day to see onstage. Chris Rock, if he were doing a live set with new material. Zadie Smith reading from one of her most recent works. I would even consider getting up early to get tickets to see Michelle Obama, since I haven’t heard her…
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Worst Behavior: How Donald Trump’s Self-Inflicted Wounds Let Hillary Clinton Off the Hook
“I’ve never seen anything like it.” That was the response of Larry Sabato, my mentor and old professor from the University of Virginia, when I asked him during a radio interview to put the last week of the 2016 presidential campaign in context. Sabato has been writing about American campaign politics since the 1970s; there…
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What Unity? Twitter Reveals a Great Divide Within Both Political Parties
Bernie Sanders dominates Snapchat, House Democrats just discovered Periscope and your grandma is starting to share her vacation on Facebook Live. Social media isn’t “mediating” life anymore; it is the primary mode of communication for Americans across class, race, gender and age. So when there is a Twitter analysis of the Republican and Democratic conventions,…
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The Mediocrity of Dope: How Donald Trump Hides His Averageness in 'Crazy'
Donald Trump is not insane. I know, I know. That might be terribly hard to prove, particularly since Trump says something crazy about every five minutes. And yes, we’re just about assured that if Trump could somehow be elected president, he’d start a nuclear war with China over a tweet from the Chinese premier declaring…
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Not Voting for Hillary Because You’re Petty? Get Over It
To all those people of color who call themselves progressives and are “Bernie or bust” supporters, I’m really going to need you to wipe your tears, get your life right and get this through your head: Brown people do not have the luxury of living under a Donald Trump presidency. And that means you do…
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#M4BL: New Policy Agenda Centers Black Demands as Presidential Campaign Hits Full Stride
August will mark the two-year anniversary of the killing of Michael Brown and the uprising of black youths in Ferguson, Mo. Many of us are asking ourselves, “What has changed?” Black people and our allies have since taken to the streets by the thousands, and a massive online movement proclaimed that “Black lives matter.” But two…