Class & Inequality, Race

American Bottom

Designed as a bucolic working-class suburb of St. Louis, the nearly all-black town of Centreville now floods with raw sewage every time it rains. “Bring us back some help,” residents say, living through an environmental horror that evokes centuries of official disinterest in black suffering, as well as a future in which the poor are left to suffer in areas made uninhabitable by climate change.

Walter Johnson

Print Issues

New Issue: On Anger

Our winter 2020 issue has gone to press, featuring Agnes Callard, Paul Bloom, Elizabeth Bruenig, Judith Butler, Martha Nussbaum and more. Preorder now. 

Science & Nature

Science for Sale

By using a variety of ploys to manufacture doubt, a whole industry of science-for-hire experts helps corporations put profits over public health and safety.

David Michaels

Politics, Race

Missing Zinn

On the tenth anniversary of radical historian Howard Zinn’s death, Cornel West opens up about their friendship and what Zinn would have made of the decade—including whether he would have voted for Bernie.

Cornel West, Mordecai Lyon

Politics, Race

The Hidden Stakes of the 1619 Controversy

Seeking to discredit those who wish to explain the persistence of racism, critics of the New York Times’s 1619 Project insist the facts don’t support its proslavery reading of the American Revolution. But they obscure a longstanding debate within the field of U.S. history over that very issue—distorting the full case that can be made for it.

David Waldstreicher

Class & Inequality

Conservatives’ Newfound Interest in Dignified Work

They can give up free-market orthodoxy, but still can’t bring themselves to embrace labor.

Suresh Naidu

Philosophy & Religion

The Philosophy of Anger

There are two problems with anger: it is morally corrupting, and it is completely correct. 

Agnes Callard

Race

The Radical Lives of Abolitionists

History has tended to sanitize the lives of abolitionists, many of whom were involved in other radical movements as well, including Free Love, which promoted women’s independence and an end to traditional marriage.

Britt Rusert

Race

Black Abolitionists Believed in Taking Up Arms

Long before the Civil War, black abolitionists shared the consensus that violence would be necessary to end slavery. Unlike their white peers, their arguments were about when and how to use political violence, not if.

Randal Maurice Jelks

Philosophy & Religion

The Radical Equality of Lives

Judith Butler talks with Brandon M. Terry about MLK, the grievability of black lives, and how to defend nonviolence today. 

Brandon M. Terry, Judith Butler

Global Justice

Uncivil Disobedience in Hong Kong

The protests have been critiqued for their rejection of classic nonviolence—but that may help explain why they has been so successful.

Candice Delmas

Politics, Science & Nature

Technology Can't Fix Algorithmic Injustice

We need greater democratic oversight of AI not just from developers and designers, but from all members of society.

Annette Zimmermann, Elena Di Rosa, Hochan Kim