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The struggle against racism







 

SUBJECTS BELOW:
Racism today
Racism and U.S. politics
Can racism ever be ended?
History of the struggle

LATEST NEWS AND ANALYSIS

Shot down by Oakland police
Police claim that 15-year-old José Luis Buenrostro-Gonzalez pointed a weapon at them. But eyewitnesses and his family tell a different story.

Will Sean Bell's family get justice?
The family of Sean Bell is finally seeing the New York City cops who shot their son stand trial.

RACISM TODAY

Chicago's deadliest gang
A series of news reports show that Chicago's boys in black and blue are as deadly--and as unaccountable--as ever.

Jocks 4 Justice in Jena
An impressive group of sports-world figures have spoken out in solidarity with the Jena 6 in Louisiana.

On the march against racism
Tens of thousands of people descended on the tiny town of Jena, La., as part of a massive outpouring of protest against a case of Jim Crow-style injustice.

How a bigot got the boot
One reason the reaction to Imus was so ferocious is because of the pent-up rage people feel about the way this kind of bigotry continually goes unchallenged in politics and the media.

Zero tolerance means jail for minority youth
Scores of children have been handcuffed, arrested, fingerprinted, jailed and convicted of crimes stemming from incidents as trivial as temper tantrums in kindergarten.

Boiling anger at the NYPD
Tens of thousands of people took to the streets December 16 to protest the NYPD murder of Sean Bell, only hours before he was supposed to be married on November 25.

Racists' mock lynching
Bigots spew their hate at LA mosque
More than 100 racists gathered across the street from the King Fahd Mosque in Culver City, Calif., September 10 to perform a mock lynching.

Politicians demonize Arabs and Muslims to justify their war
Making anti-Arab racism respectable
The demonization of Arabs and Muslims by politicians and the media is on the rise--with all too predictable results.

How the system fails poor and minority communities
"It's a set-up for failure"
SW talked to two supporters of Stan Tookie Williams about why the system places no value on their lives--and consigns them to a world of violence and repression.

The resegregation of America's public schools
Separate and unequal
Fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, schoolchildren in the U.S. are suffering the consequences of an increasingly segregated school system.

Thirteen years old and killed by the LAPD
"A sweet, loving kid." That's how a family friend described the latest victim of the Los Angeles Police Department--13-year-old Devin Brown.

Nights of rioting against police and poverty
Anger erupts in Benton Harbor
Like Los Angeles in 1992, the riots in Benton Harbor in June show the pent-up anger brewing below the surface in U.S. society--especially among the African American poor who have been pushed to the edge by the economic crisis.

Behind bars in the land of the "liberators"
The racist injustice system
The U.S. doesn't need to send its military thousands of miles away to free people from a cruel prison system. That's because the world's largest prison system is right here in the U.S.

A city explodes in anger at racist police violence
Rebellion in Cincinnati
"They shot him down like a dog." So said one young Black man as he stood in the Cincinnati alley where 19-year-old Timothy Thomas was gunned down. In this special feature, SW reports on the police rampage that led to the Cincinnati rebellion--and what it means for the fight against racism.

RACISM AND U.S. POLITICS

Racism and politics in America
Race and racism have emerged at the heart of the Democratic presidential campaign. But they have always been beneath the surface of U.S. politics.

Immigrant rights and Black politics
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor looks at why Black Democrats have been slow at best to embrace the rising movement for immigrant rights.

A former Panther's campaign in Georgia
"We're stuck voting for people who don't serve our interests"
Former Black Panther leader Elaine Brown talks about her campaign for mayor of Brunswick, Ga., on the Green Party ticket.

Why is Bill Cosby spreading racist stereotypes?
Leading the "blame the victim" chorus
A new book that challenges the racist rants of comedian Bill Cosby proves that racism is alive and well in the U.S. today.

The Supreme Court's affirmative action decision
Should we celebrate?
Supporters of civil rights had reason to celebrate as right wingers were blocked from winning their goal of abolishing affirmative action. But this was only half of the court's split decision.

The resegregation of U.S. schools
The U.S. Supreme Court is poised to deliver another--perhaps fatal--blow to affirmative action. But the Bush administration is already pursuing the next target in its mission to destroy the gains of the civil rights movement.

Confronting the crime of slavery in the U.S.
In 1865, the U.S. government promised every freed slave 40 acres of tillable land, known as the "40 Acres and a Mule Proclamation." That was the last time the U.S. government gave any thought to compensating African Americans for 300 years of slavery. Until now.

CAN RACISM EVER BE ENDED?

The roots of racism in the U.S.
In an excerpt from his book Black Liberation and Socialism, Ahmed Shawki explains how racial oppression emerged as a consequence of the economic system of capitalism.

Staughton Lynd tells the hidden story of...
The Lucasville Prison revolt
In 1993, inmates at Ohio's Lucasville Prison rose up in one of the longest prison rebellions in U.S. history.

Is there a "white-skin privilege"?
One popular explanation for the persistence of racism is that all whites benefit from the oppression of all Blacks. Is it true?

A system that's racist to the core
Sen. Trent Lott's bigotry has returned racism to the center stage of American politics. Unfortunately, though, the debate that followed has done little to explain what racism actually is and what can be done about it.

Has racism always existed?
The roots of racism
For many people coming to radical politics--Blacks and whites alike--hatred of racism and a desire to get rid of it is a huge motivating factor. This is in contrast to some of the common assumptions about where racism comes from.

HISTORY OF THE STRUGGLE

Forty years after King's last stand
The unfinished struggle
Martin Luther King was assassinated in the midst of a struggle that he saw as part of the next stage for the civil rights movement.

Radical roots of the civil rights movement
The standard history of the civil rights movement given by the media obscures the radical sources of the struggle against racism.

Civil War and Reconstruction:
How slavery was ended
Abolishing the crime of slavery took an immense Civil War and a postwar period of Reconstruction that involved dramatic political struggles.

The Black Power revolt
Before the ink had dried on the 1960s civil rights legislation ending legal racism in the South, Blacks in the North went into revolt against the conditions that defined their lives.

Why has Gary Tyler spent three decades behind bars?
Miscarriage of justice
The case of Gary Tyler--one of the great travesties of justice of our time--is back in the national spotlight after a series of articles by New York Times columnist Bob Herbert.

The civil rights movement after Montgomery
The early days of the African-American civil rights movement, when activists faced widespread resistance from supporters of Jim Crow, have important lessons for today.

Lawyer and political activist Stephen Bingham on...
The assassination of George Jackson
Stephen Bingham, a lawyer who worked with George Jackson, talks to SW about the murdered prison activist's legacy--and his own fight for justice.

Organizing against racism during the Great Depression
Communists in Harlem
Mark Naison's Communists in Harlem During the Depression documents one of the high points in the history of the struggle against racism--and the socialist contribution to it.

New from Haymarket Books by Ahmed Shawki
Black liberation and socialism
SW prints excerpts from a new book that uncovers the history of the struggle for Black liberation in the U.S.--and reveals how socialists have been an integral part of the struggle.

The governator's hit list
In rejecting clemency for death row prisoner Stan Tookie Williams, Arnold Schwarzenegger smeared the legacy of 11 Black and Native American revolutionaries. SW tells their stories.

Malcolm X: Legacy of a revolutionary
Malcolm X, who was assassinated 40 years ago, was a revolutionary and internationalist who confronted questions of imperialism and racism that remain with us today.

The MLK they don't talk about
Martin Luther King's radical antiwar views don't fit with the image that has been sanitized for school textbooks and hijacked by Corporate America--so it's ignored.

Brown v. Board: 50 years later
Fifty years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court's Brown v. the Board of Education decision declared an end to segregation in public schools--and helped launch an era of struggle for civil rights.

Forty years since the civil rights march that changed U.S. politics
Hidden story of the March on Washington
Four decades since the historic civil rights march where Martin Luther King delivered his famous "I have a dream" speech, Socialist Worker tells the hidden story of how the Kennedy administration frustrated and betrayed the civil rights movement.

Ten years after the Los Angeles Rebellion
No justice, no peace!
Everyone interested in social justice should remember the LA rebellion as an inspiring example of working-class people refusing to be treated like animals--an upheaval in which "a generation found that it can fight back."

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