Harry Belafonte Knows a Thing or Two

John Leland New York Times
The city native, about to turn 90, looks back at a glorious past and wonders what his next act will be. The rise of Donald J. Trump alarmed him, but not as much as the passion and numbers of Mr. Trump's supporters. 'I've never known this country to be so' - he paused before saying the word.' Though encouraged by the energy in the Black Lives Matter and Occupy movements, he felt that both lacked an ideology to make real change.

books

Frederick Douglass's `Amazing Job' Started With His First Book

Ron Charles Washington Post
Forget that Donald Trump said something commendable about Frederick Douglass--perhaps a first for Trump--the autobiography of Douglass is a classic, and reading it again is a fit way to commemorate Black History Month. Washington Post book editor Ron Charles gives ample reason why.

books

Across the Color Line: Interview with Author of new Du Bois Biography

Scott McLemee Insider Higher Ed
The interviewer doesn't exaggerate in ranking W.E.B Du Bois as the 20th century's pre-eminent African-American author and thinker, crediting his founding and stewardship of the NAACP's The Crisis with granting him not just an agenda-setting role in civil-rights history but also international influence. Before going into detail with the biographer, he also praises Mullen for a work that is a timely introduction to this impressive and somewhat imposing figure.

Black-White Earnings Gap Returns to 1950 Levels

Patrick Bayer and Kerwin Kofi Charles Science Blog
More and more working-age men in the United States aren’t working at all. The number of nonworking white men grew from about 8 percent in 1960 to 17 percent in 2014. The numbers look still worse among black men: In 1960, 19 percent of black men were not working; in 2014, that number had grown to 35 percent of black men. That includes men who are incarcerated as well those who can’t find jobs.

books

Slavery and Property: The Great Trap

Maya Jasanoff New York Review of Books
As more and more settlers arrived in the English colonies, the property they owned north and south increasingly took the human form of African slaves, encouraging the credo that freedom for some required the enslavement of others. The books under review exhaustively cover the early slavery period, where even the Puritan ideal of a city on a hill actually rested on the backs of numerous enslaved and colonized people.

U.S. Owes Black People Reparations for a History of `Racial Terrorism,' Says U.N. Panel

Ishaan Tharoor Washington Post
The legacy of colonial history, enslavement, racial subordination and segregation, racial terrorism and racial inequality in the United States remains a serious challenge, as there has been no real commitment to reparations and to truth and reconciliation for people of African descent, a United Nations report stated. "Contemporary police killings and the trauma that they create are reminiscent of the past racial terror of lynching."

Why Solidarity Between the Movement for Black Lives and Palestine Makes Sense

David Palumbo-Liu, Truthout News Analysis Truthout
Critics of solidarity between the Movements for Black Lives and the Palestinian struggle miss how concepts like apartheid are not meant to apply only when there is perfect equivalence between two situations. They also apply when the experiences of two oppressed groups share common features.

labor

Race and Beyond: Why Black Women’s Equal Pay Day Matters

Gabrielle Bozarth and Naomi Kellogg Center for American Progress
"Black Women’s Equal Pay Day, which observes the amount of time it takes the average black woman to earn the same pay that the average white man earns in one calendar year." Black women only make 60 percent of what white male counterparts make. This is a clear example of the importance of race and gender in determining salary.

What Comes After the Sanders Campaign? - Three Views

Mark Solomon; Joseph M. Schwartz; David L. Wilson Portside
Bernie Sanders delegates and their allies are fighting for a Democratic Party platform that will be able to inspire voters to defeat Donald Trump, and to lay a basis for the political revolution in the years ahead. Here three long-time progressive and socialist activists address the question of what comes next. How do we build and shape a post-election multi-racial politics. Read what Mark Solomon, Joseph Schwartz and David Wilson have to say.

books

Achievement. Invulnerability. Comportment

Marilyn Richardson Women's Review of Books, May-June 2016
Two startlingly realistic books by black female authors offering rich, contrasting and brilliantly wrought views of racial conditions for affluent and impoverished African Americans.
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