(Bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is now in police custody in Boston.) Race is a social construction. There is only one race, the human race. But race has historically been something negotiated by the courts, something that has legal standing, and something that has impacted people’s lives across the color line. As Cheryl Harris and […]

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  AP photo It is a given that Kermit Gosnell should be stripped of his medical license and incarcerated. Those who support abortion rights see Gosnell as proof of the types of horrible things that will occur if a woman’s right to be the final arbiter over her reproductive choices is curtailed by the state: […]

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Brad Paisley went on Ellen this week to explain his new country song, “Accidental Racist.” Ellen Degeneres asked: “So you’re basically saying?” Paisley answered: “I don’t know.” Pop music is disposable by design. Pop music is also a space for society to work through its collective feelings, anxieties, sentimentality, hopes, and dreams. As such, LL […]

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The presidential library of George W. Bush opens next month. A central aim of the new library appears to be the rehabilitation of Bush’s presidency, primarily by distancing him from the Iraq War and by drawing him closer to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. MSNBC’s Al Sharpton was characteristically outraged on Friday and […]

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President Barack Obama could not have been clearer about the urgency of now: “For the sake of our children and our future, we must do more to combat climate change,” he said in his State of the Union address. He issued a call to action—and a threat: “I urge this Congress to pursue a bipartisan, […]

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