Race

Race

Is Freedom White?

In a political season of dog whistles, we must be attentive to how talk of American freedom has long been connected to the presumed right of whites to dominate everyone else.

Jefferson Cowie

Race

The Literature of White Liberalism

Antiracist nonfiction sidelines more powerful critiques from the Black radical tradition.

Melissa Phruksachart

Class & Inequality, Gender & Sexuality

Budgeting Diversity

We know that faculty retirement policies shape racial and gender diversity on campus. What universities do now in the face of COVID-19 will have long-term consequences.

Daniel E. Ho, Oluchi Mbonu, Anne McDonough

Race, Science & Nature

How a Popular Medical Device Encodes Racial Bias

Pulse oximeters give biased results for people with darker skin. The consequences could be serious.

Amy Moran-Thomas

Race

Tearing Down Black America

Policing is not the only kind of state violence. In the mid-twentieth century, city governments, backed by federal money, demolished hundreds of Black neighborhoods in the name of urban renewal.

Brent Cebul

Law & Justice, Race

How the Law Killed Ahmaud Arbery

In many states, legal regimes sanction the predictable murder of innocent black men. Justice will not be served until the law changes.

Joseph Margulies

Race

The Revolution at the Gate

Photos of Mark and Patricia McCloskey waving guns at St. Louis Black Lives Matter protesters became instantly iconic. But the McCloskeys are also only a symptom of how racism is served by private property.

Walter Johnson

Law & Justice, Politics

The Problem Isn't Just Police—It's Politics

In this interview, sociologist Alex Vitale explains how the policing crisis in the United States begins with politics—the decision to embrace neoliberal austerity and to turn the social problems it creates over to police.

Alex Vitale, Scott Casleton

Law & Justice, Race

How Police Abuse the Charge of Resisting Arrest

We must reject the current legal regime under which resisting arrest is so widely accepted as a justification for police brutality and officer shootings.

Lisa Cacho, Jodi Melamed

Law & Justice, Politics

Power over Policing

A special project from Boston Review. 

Politics, Race

America’s Long War on Children and Families

A new book shows how Trump’s family separation policy belongs to a much longer history of U.S. government forces—alongside state and local entities—taking children from families deemed inimical to the idealized American family form.

Paul M. Renfro

Race, Reading Lists

Abolition Isn't Only About Police

We also need to abolish prisons—as well as put an end to counterterrorism. An abolitionist reading list. 

Rosie Gillies, Boston Review