Feature – The Quiet Death of Racial Progress. Unfortunately, this is not a comforting column. The deeper I dug into the evidence, the more I came to doubt the idea that we are still making progress on race. For every positive statistic indicating racial reconciliation, there was one indicating stagnation or even decay. David Brooks asks, “How can we stop backsliding toward inequality”? Read more  

White Supremacy and Vladimir Putin: They’re the same problem. If one looks beyond the United States (especially to Europe), it becomes clear that the two matters are linked there – and, in all likelihood, here as well. That leads to some disturbing questions that we need to ask. Read more 

“Democracy Dies in a Variety of Ways.” A leading scholar on modern Germany says we’re not headed for Nazi Germany, but we’re also not headed anywhere good. As President Trump meets this week with the heads of NATO countries, it’s hard not to feel increasingly worried about the health of democracy. Read more 
Never Trumpers Will Want to Read This History Lesson. In the 1850s, disaffected Democrats made the wrenching choice to leave their party to save American democracy. Here’s what happened. Read more 

Trump’s Claim That Europe is ‘Losing Its Culture’ is Racism – And It Must be Challenged. In an interview with The Sun newspaper, given in Brussels shortly before travelling to London, Trump explained how migrants from the Middle East and Africa are permanently changing Europe for the worse. Read more 

The Lesson of Emmett Till Has Been Ignored for Decades. Reopening the Till case doesn’t even begin to address the white terrorism festering in Trump’s America. No, Emmett was beaten, shot, then tied to a cotton gin fan and set down in the Tallahatchie River to tell every black person in the surrounding area – and perhaps the entire United States – that our lives were meaningless, our civil rights a mere rumor, our bodies useful only as driftwood. Read more 

Does Brett Kavanaugh Spell the End of Voting Rights? The threat of voter disenfranchisement will get worse if Judge Kavanaugh is confirmed to the court. His opinion in the South Carolina case and his record in civil rights matters suggests that he will join with the court’s conservative justices to further roll back voting rights protections and other civil rights laws. Read more 

‘Sorry to Bother You’ Review: Welcome to the WTF Satire of the Summer. Boots Riley’s brilliant, take-no-prisoners comedy skewers social norms, racial strife and the media – then things get really weird. Read more 

Study: Asians displace blacks as most economically divided group. Income inequality has been growing steadily among all Americans since the 1970s. But within racial groups, the gap between rich and poor is growing most rapidly among Asians in the U.S., according to a new study. Read more 

Would anyone really want to be LeBron’s newest teammate? You get the King, but you also get drama, media spotlight and all the blame if your team doesn’t win. Read more 

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