Feature – Trump is trying to Make America White Again. President Trump’s immigration proposal reveals what he has been after all along: an end to family-based immigration and the “lottery visa,” which would mean fewer Latino, African and Muslim newcomers. And perhaps more Norwegians, if any want to come. Read more 

Trump’s solution to America’s crisis: Nationalism. Ethnically inflected nationalism, scapegoating, a vague and general sense that danger is looming. President Trump has tapped into the nationalist response to our current malaise largely because there was no widespread sense of civic trust strong enough to hold him back. Read more 

Watch – The Racist History of Cartoons. Nostalgia and familiarity may have trained us not to notice, but many elements of the classic cartoons you love—down to the white-gloved hands—have a disturbing history. Read more 

The Super Bowl won’t shine light on Minneapolis’ racial and economic problems. The Super Bowl comes at a time when Minneapolis is recovering from a string of high-profile police killings that put the city in the national spotlight for all the wrong reasons. The shootings revealed a glaring blind spot covered up by the slogan “Minnesota Nice.” Read more 
The Koch Brothers Are Plotting a Right-Wing Takeover of America’s Judicial System. The Washington Post reports the oil magnates have their sights set on the next Supreme Court vacancy, and that their political advocacy group, Americans for Prosperity, is “expanding its portfolio into the judicial branch.” Read more 

‘Black Panther’ first reactions: It’s ‘astonishing,’ ‘iconic’ and ‘will save blockbusters.’ The first superhero movie in years to star a black lead character – with Chadwick Boseman playing an African king, and director Ryan Coogler at the helm – had its world premiere on Monday night in Hollywood. Read more 

An African country reckons with its history of selling slaves. In Ouidah, Benin, a man walks past a statue of Francisco Félix de Souza, a major slave merchant who worked in the 18th and 19th centuries in what is now Benin and is considered the father of the city. Read more 

A Monument the Old South Would Like to Ignore. During the civil war the grounds surrounding Fort Negley served as a de facto refugee camp for escaped slaves. In an irony lost on no one today, the Union Army immediately forced those refugees into service; under brutal conditions, some 2,700 of them built Fort Negley itself. Read more 

The hidden history of black nationalist women’s political activism. Contrary to popular conceptions, women were also instrumental to the spread and articulation of black nationalism – the political view that people of African descent constitute a separate group on the basis of their distinct culture, shared history and experiences. Ella Baker speaks in 1968. Read more 

Indian Slavery Once Thrived in New Mexico. Latinos Are Finding Family Ties to It. Mr. Trujillo is one of many Latinos who are finding ancestral connections to a flourishing slave trade on the blood-soaked frontier now known as the American Southwest. Their captive forebears were Native Americans. Read more  

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