Running ads portraying Black candidates as soft on crime — or as “different” or “dangerous” — Republicans have shed quiet defenses of such tactics for unabashed defiance. For the Trumpers it was always about all about race.
The March on Washington was 59 years ago today. It’s popularly remembered as a moderate demonstration where MLK “had a dream” — but in fact, it was the decades-long culmination of a mass, working-class movement against racial and economic injustice.
While W. E. B. Du Bois praised an expanding penitentiary system, T. Thomas Fortune called for investment in education and a multiracial, working-class movement.
Throughout U.S. history, class has been bound up with other forms of oppression—so the disenfranchisement of Black men after Reconstruction decisively shifted class relations.
The goal isn’t merely eliminating barriers to ascending the strata, but rather flattening the hierarchy altogether. If “equity” is to be a worthwhile word, it will have to mean de-stratifying the systems that impose sexist and racist hierarchies.
Reader Comments: Russia, Ukraine And the U.S.; Free Leonard Peltier; Brian Flores Sues NFL; Unpaid Labor; Medicare for All - How; Ozark - new show; Cuban Blockade After 60 Years; resources, announcements, more....
Spread the word