Portside

Will the eight years of America's first black president lead to more political voice for black citizens—or less?

Spike Lee endorsed the Vermont senator on Tuesday. He is the latest in a series of black intellectual heavy-weights to have come out in support of him.

Reader Comments: New Threat to Voting Rights before Supreme Court; The Portrayal of African Americans on Stage and Screen - Tonya Pinkins the Real Mother Courage; Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland and Oregon Thugs; Left Gains Ground, Can It Hold; Trump and Fascism; Readers Respond to poem about Berlin Wall - The GDR, A Different Perspective; The Real Northern Student Movement; Shostakovich; Vivian Stromberg Presente.(Sorry for length, three weeks since Tidbits last appeared)

Downward mobility plus racial resentment is a potent combination with disastrous consequences. We know now that election 2016 is increasingly an open portal into an age-old American dark side of slavery, repression, internment, and know-nothing-ism that couldn't be grimmer. And behind it all, running like an interstate highway through our history, is a powerful sense of white skin privilege that has traditionally extended even to those who were relatively powerless.

An open letter from more than 100 Black religious leaders and scholars to the African American ministers scheduled to meet with Donald Trump warn that such a meeting will serve to "de-radicalize the Black prophetic political tradition" and "give Trump the appearance of legitimacy" that he will use to harm Black communities.

Reader Comments: Black Futures, #BlackLivesMatter - Not More Cops; Harry Belafonte on Activism; Socialism - Making a Comeback; Building a Left Movement and the Sanders campaign; Mideast War Escalation - Syria; Wealth Data and U.S. Economic Inequality; China Pivot; Okinawa Missiles, Cuba and Nuclear War; Israel; 2016 elections, primaries and the military budget; satirical articles on Portside