Racism

Seemingly contradictory calls to lock up and to save Black people dueled in legislatures around the country but also in the minds of Americans. Black leaders joined with Republicans from Nixon to Reagan, and with Democrats from Johnson to Bill Clinton, in calling for and largely receiving more police officers, tougher and mandatory sentencing, and

From this point of view, Rodney King’s protective reflexes, the disorderly movements by which he struggled to stay alive (he flaps his arms, staggers, tries to get up, stands on his knees) were described as being under his “total control” and as evidence of “dangerous intent,” as if violence were the sole voluntary action possible for a Black body,

all identity is in part myth, the kind that we can use to sort out living, for better or worse, depending upon its uses.

What if we focused our human and fiscal resources on changing power and policy to actually make society, not just our feelings, better?

Over the course of the twentieth century, Haitians, escaping poverty and unrest, sought refuge in the Bahamas as well. It was and remains a deeply stratified place, sitting at a crossroads, with the global elites and their tax havens at the top and poor Haitians living in shanties at the bottom. It is one of the tragic ironies of global history

Hatred, I learned quickly, was the antidote to sadness. It was the only safe feeling. Hatred does not make you cry at school. It isn’t vulnerable. Hatred is efficient. It does not grovel. It is pure power.

black people have often been figured as essentially feeling bodies and bodies that in turn hail more feelings to life: