https://znetwork.org/category/topic/culture-race/racism/ Independent Left News, Analysis, Vision and Strategy Tue, 20 Jan 2026 16:07:53 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://znetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/cropped-Z_logo_512-32x32.png https://znetwork.org/category/topic/culture-race/racism/ 32 32 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/kings-dream-was-never-finished/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/kings-dream-was-never-finished/#respond Tue, 20 Jan 2026 17:00:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1293705 On a cold January morning, a small group of visitors walks through a National Park, expecting to honor Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy. The gates are open, but the celebration is absent—no banners, no programs, no recognition. Juneteenth, too, has vanished from the federal calendar. Last year, the Pentagon paused Black History Month. And President [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/kings-dream-was-never-finished/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/mlks-struggle-against-policing-and-surveillance-is-still-alive-in-memphis-today/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/mlks-struggle-against-policing-and-surveillance-is-still-alive-in-memphis-today/#respond Mon, 19 Jan 2026 19:11:26 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1293672 Every year on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, elected officials quote King while standing safely at a distance from the risks he embraced. His name is invoked, his image sanitized, and his politics stripped of urgency. The U.S. celebrates a softened King who spoke about love but not power, unity but not confrontation, peace but [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/mlks-struggle-against-policing-and-surveillance-is-still-alive-in-memphis-today/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-life-of-civil-rights-hero-claudette-colvin-should-teach-us-this-resistance-is-collective-and-it-never-stops/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-life-of-civil-rights-hero-claudette-colvin-should-teach-us-this-resistance-is-collective-and-it-never-stops/#respond Sat, 17 Jan 2026 15:04:38 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1293606 “In life, there’s the beginning and the end,” John Carlos, the African American sprinter who raised his fist in a black power salute from the podium of the 1968 Olympics, once told me. “The beginning don’t matter. The end don’t matter. All that matters is what you do in between – whether you’re prepared to do [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-life-of-civil-rights-hero-claudette-colvin-should-teach-us-this-resistance-is-collective-and-it-never-stops/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/venezuela-its-much-more-than-oil/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/venezuela-its-much-more-than-oil/#respond Tue, 13 Jan 2026 17:00:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1293441 As the US openly discussed schemes to add Greenland to its list of conquered territories, it became abundantly clear that “Alternative Energy” (AltE, solar, wind, hydro power) joined fossil fuels at center stage. [1]  Corporations which pull the puppet strings of governments are well aware that oil production will cease long before none remains in [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/venezuela-its-much-more-than-oil/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/10-reasons-why-ice-is-harassing-native-americans/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/10-reasons-why-ice-is-harassing-native-americans/#respond Mon, 12 Jan 2026 13:01:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1293382 ICE and Border Patrol are increasingly detaining Native American citizens, and ignoring or refusing to treat Tribal ID cards as proof of citizenship. Just north of where ICE killed Minneapolis rights monitor Renee Nicole Good, agents have detained tribal citizens in the clearly Native neighborhood around Franklin Avenue, where the American Indian Movement was itself [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/10-reasons-why-ice-is-harassing-native-americans/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/ice-out-for-good-coalition-announces-nationwide-weekend-of-action/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/ice-out-for-good-coalition-announces-nationwide-weekend-of-action/#respond Sat, 10 Jan 2026 14:36:52 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1293306 A broad national coalition, including Indivisible, MoveOn Civic Action, the American Civil Liberties Union, Public Citizen, Voto Latino, United We Dream, 50501, the Disappeared in America Campaign of the Not Above the Law coalition, and partner organizations across the country, is calling for a coordinated ICE Out For Good Weekend of Action on Saturday, January 10, and [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/ice-out-for-good-coalition-announces-nationwide-weekend-of-action/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/trumps-attack-on-birthright-citizenship-seeks-to-further-codify-white-supremacy/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/trumps-attack-on-birthright-citizenship-seeks-to-further-codify-white-supremacy/#respond Sat, 03 Jan 2026 16:09:58 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1293058 The Supreme Court has scheduled a hearing early next year regarding historic challenges to the Trump administration’s attempt to undermine the Fourteenth Amendment’s longstanding guarantee of birthright citizenship, which was enacted in 1868. The administration proposed to get rid of birthright citizenship by means of an executive order issued on inauguration day, and not through a proposed constitutional amendment, which most [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/trumps-attack-on-birthright-citizenship-seeks-to-further-codify-white-supremacy/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/zvideo/terror-fear-trump-moves-to-denaturalize-citizens-end-birthright-citizenship-halt-visa-lottery/ https://znetwork.org/zvideo/terror-fear-trump-moves-to-denaturalize-citizens-end-birthright-citizenship-halt-visa-lottery/#respond Sat, 20 Dec 2025 16:20:19 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=video&p=1292560 The Trump administration is ramping up efforts to strip more naturalized immigrants of their U.S. citizenship, with The New York Times reporting that officials are seeking 100 to 200 cases per month. The news comes less than two weeks after the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case to decide the constitutionality of President Trump’s executive order [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/zvideo/terror-fear-trump-moves-to-denaturalize-citizens-end-birthright-citizenship-halt-visa-lottery/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/a-farewell-to-sports/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/a-farewell-to-sports/#respond Fri, 19 Dec 2025 14:01:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1292534 In the year I was born, 1938, the White Christian males who ruled the sports world considered their various games and pastimes as definers of righteousness, crucibles of character, and a preparation for dominance in business and war. Anyone who played but didn’t look like them was an interloper, clearly operating with some kind of [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/a-farewell-to-sports/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/seiu-california-sits-out-fight-against-classroom-censorship/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/seiu-california-sits-out-fight-against-classroom-censorship/#respond Mon, 15 Dec 2025 18:53:38 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1292395 SEIU California routinely uses fighting words. Unfortunately, when was time to “stand up” and “fight back” against legislation that threatens the working conditions of tens of thousands of SEIU education workers, our union’s spirited rhetoric dissipated. SEIU California stood down. In the final days of the legislative session, AB 715, a dangerous censorship bill with broad [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/seiu-california-sits-out-fight-against-classroom-censorship/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/inside-the-mamdani-campaigns-appeal-to-black-voters/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/inside-the-mamdani-campaigns-appeal-to-black-voters/#respond Mon, 15 Dec 2025 14:33:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1292407 One crucial factor in Zohran Mamdani’s victory in the New York City mayoral election last month was a huge shift in the Black vote. According to The City, Mamdani won 64 percent of the vote in neighborhoods with a plurality of Black residents — a 25 percentage point jump from the June primary. In our feature “Will Zohran Mamdani [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/inside-the-mamdani-campaigns-appeal-to-black-voters/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-endurance-of-anti-roma-racism/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-endurance-of-anti-roma-racism/#respond Mon, 08 Dec 2025 21:31:34 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1292155 Anti-Roma racism has long been normalized and interwoven within the fabric of systems, societies, and interactions of liberal societies. It has endured not only through overtly violent racist laws, policies, behaviors, and actions, but also through veiled, unintentional, or implicit gadjikane (or non-Roma) power, advantages, and privileges in cultural, social, political, and economic spheres. In [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-endurance-of-anti-roma-racism/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/how-one-black-labor-union-changed-american-history/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/how-one-black-labor-union-changed-american-history/#respond Mon, 08 Dec 2025 21:22:40 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1292152 The fact that the meeting was even happening was enough to produce an air of subversive excitement. On August 25, 1925, a century ago this year, black sleeping car porters hoping to form a union at the Pullman Company packed the room at the Elks Hall in Harlem. Though we’ll never know how many, Pullman [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/how-one-black-labor-union-changed-american-history/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/ice-raids-turn-schools-into-battlegrounds-to-defend-students/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/ice-raids-turn-schools-into-battlegrounds-to-defend-students/#respond Sat, 06 Dec 2025 17:19:39 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1292086 Educator Carolyn Brown was meeting with school counselors when she got the call: ICE agents were out front. By the time she got out of the building, ICE had abducted a woman and her 17-year-old daughter, an American citizen. Brown, a coordinator of the International Baccalaureate program at Thomas Kelly College Prep, is also part [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/ice-raids-turn-schools-into-battlegrounds-to-defend-students/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/nyt-covers-racism-from-the-point-of-view-of-the-racist/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/nyt-covers-racism-from-the-point-of-view-of-the-racist/#respond Sat, 06 Dec 2025 17:01:58 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1292071 In the latest installment of sympathetic media profiles in the “Nazi Sympathizer Next Door” genre, the New York Times (11/3/25) offers a more than 3,000-word article on William Hendrix, one of the 12 Young Republican state leaders whose bigoted and violent group chat messages were leaked and reported on in October (Politico, 10/14/25), resulting in a nationwide uproar. [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/nyt-covers-racism-from-the-point-of-view-of-the-racist/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/synagogue-killings-colonialisms-victim-arithmetic/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/synagogue-killings-colonialisms-victim-arithmetic/#respond Thu, 04 Dec 2025 16:51:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1291972 After two years of ongoing genocide in Gaza, two Jewish Britons—Adrian Daulby and Melvin Cravitz—were killed on 2 October 2025 at the entrance to the Heaton Park Synagogue in Manchester, following a knife attack. The news media immediately leaped into action to treat this as unprecedented (in terms of sensationalist heightening of the story, the [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/synagogue-killings-colonialisms-victim-arithmetic/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-audacity-of-hope-denied/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-audacity-of-hope-denied/#respond Mon, 24 Nov 2025 17:56:37 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1291619 In a letter to Richard Nixon dated January 16, 1970, his domestic advisor Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote the following regarding the White House approach to the situation of Black people in the United States: “The time may have come when the issue of race could benefit from a period of “benign neglect.” The subject has [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-audacity-of-hope-denied/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-genesis-of-israeli-ultra-apartheid/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-genesis-of-israeli-ultra-apartheid/#respond Wed, 19 Nov 2025 19:20:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1291473 On November 10, the Israeli parliament passed the first reading of a bill to impose the death penalty on Palestinian prisoners convicted of killing Israeli individuals, with 39 votes in favor and 16 against out of 120 members.  The bill would make it mandatory for Israeli courts to impose death penalty against individuals convicted of [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-genesis-of-israeli-ultra-apartheid/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/tupac-shakur-was-forged-in-a-revolutionary-political-culture/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/tupac-shakur-was-forged-in-a-revolutionary-political-culture/#respond Mon, 17 Nov 2025 17:53:17 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1291348 Review of Words for My Comrades: A Political History of Tupac Shakur by Dean Van Nguyen (Doubleday, 2025). Who was Tupac Shakur? Depending on who you ask, you’ll get a plethora of responses. He was hip-hop’s greatest icon. He was a violent thug who was convicted of sexual abuse. He was the voice of the oppressed. He [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/tupac-shakur-was-forged-in-a-revolutionary-political-culture/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/from-mississippi-to-maryland-black-communities-are-taking-on-big-tech/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/from-mississippi-to-maryland-black-communities-are-taking-on-big-tech/#respond Mon, 03 Nov 2025 16:37:14 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1290784 When word spread through Bessemer, Alabama, earlier this year that a tech giant was eyeing hundreds of pine-covered acres at the city’s edge, Benard Simelton’s phone wouldn’t stop ringing. The longtime NAACP leader had fielded calls about toxic air and shuttered steel mills before, but this, he said, was new to him. At first, the [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/from-mississippi-to-maryland-black-communities-are-taking-on-big-tech/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/trumpism-it-was-ever-thus/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/trumpism-it-was-ever-thus/#respond Mon, 20 Oct 2025 16:21:25 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1290206 Over and over and over, I read, meet, or talk to people who are shocked by Donald Trump’s relentless trolling, his thoroughly vulgar and outlandish demagogy. Why, they’ve never seen the like! How could this be, in a country with a storied constitution and a two-party system in which partisans rotate in government without attempting [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/trumpism-it-was-ever-thus/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/zoe-wicombs-local-universalisms/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/zoe-wicombs-local-universalisms/#respond Mon, 20 Oct 2025 16:01:46 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1290198 Zoë Wicomb’s passing, on October 13 at the age of 76, has prompted an outpouring of tributes from black women writers and scholars across the globe, a reflection of the immense political and literary impact of her work. Figures like Pumla Gqola and Gabeba Baderoon have highlighted her fearless critique of colonial and racial mythologies, [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/zoe-wicombs-local-universalisms/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/showered-with-lies/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/showered-with-lies/#respond Mon, 20 Oct 2025 15:25:02 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1290192 The Senate Finance Committee hearing with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was explosive. The Secretary of Health and Human Services was accused of “reckless disregard for science and the truth,” and senators from both parties were openly hostile as they questioned him extensively on his vaccine policies, as well as the firing of scientific advisory board [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/showered-with-lies/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/native-survival-depends-on-protecting-both-tribal-and-us-citizenship-rights/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/native-survival-depends-on-protecting-both-tribal-and-us-citizenship-rights/#respond Mon, 13 Oct 2025 18:20:41 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1289896 Indigenous Peoples’ Day has always been an act of celebration, resistance, and truth. When we gather and organize for Indigenous Peoples’ Day, we affirm that we are still here. It is a reminder that our stories did not begin with Columbus, and they do not end with the myth of American exceptionalism and conquest. But [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/native-survival-depends-on-protecting-both-tribal-and-us-citizenship-rights/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/legacies-of-scapegoating-and-persecution-in-the-palestinian-genocide/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/legacies-of-scapegoating-and-persecution-in-the-palestinian-genocide/#respond Mon, 22 Sep 2025 14:59:16 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1288884 In the waking nightmare into which middle eastern politics has degenderated, one question stands out above all others: how do ethno-fascist imperialists not perceive the historical continuity between their own genocidal mentality and their own historical experience? Jews, after all, have been persecuted for millennia, surviving attempted genocide after 20 centuries, so much so that [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/legacies-of-scapegoating-and-persecution-in-the-palestinian-genocide/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/three-recent-vignettes-from-sanatan-politics/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/three-recent-vignettes-from-sanatan-politics/#respond Sat, 20 Sep 2025 14:42:27 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1288795 The following three snapshots illustrate how everyday political interactions in New India are steadily reshaping democracy along the twin axes of feudal entitlement and authoritarian intolerance. The first comes from Debu Sarai in Bihar. Asked by Union textiles minister Giriraj Singh of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) whether he was receiving government benefits, a Muslim [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/three-recent-vignettes-from-sanatan-politics/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-second-amendment-was-created-to-put-down-slave-revolts/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-second-amendment-was-created-to-put-down-slave-revolts/#comments Fri, 19 Sep 2025 18:36:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1288788 One mass shooting after another, one accidental child death after another tears through this country on an almost daily basis. Once again, lawmakers hide behind “thoughts and prayers,” while clinging to an amendment that has been twisted beyond recognition. But to understand why the Second Amendment exists at all, we must strip away the myths [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-second-amendment-was-created-to-put-down-slave-revolts/feed/ 2 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/prison-labour-the-last-stronghold-of-slavery-in-the-us/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/prison-labour-the-last-stronghold-of-slavery-in-the-us/#respond Thu, 18 Sep 2025 15:53:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1288723 In the United States, freedom has never been free. For Black Americans, in particular, the price of freedom has been immense, paid through generations of impossible decisions and forced compromises with the loss of history, family unity, financial stability, and privacy. Costs that emerged in efforts to escape chattel slavery now continue as many fight [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/prison-labour-the-last-stronghold-of-slavery-in-the-us/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/colonize-then-deport-now/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/colonize-then-deport-now/#respond Mon, 15 Sep 2025 15:53:20 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1288586 Robert Goldsborough, a Maryland lawmaker, rose one Friday early in 1826 to clinch what he fancied a good deal for his state. Goldsborough informed his fellow legislators that a private entity had “incurred an expense in a late deportation of 150 free people of color to the African settlement in Liberia.” Given that “twenty of [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/colonize-then-deport-now/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/80-years-ago-a-jewish-radical-and-two-negro-league-stars-led-a-crusade-to-integrate-baseball-that-paved-the-way-for-jackie-robinson/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/80-years-ago-a-jewish-radical-and-two-negro-league-stars-led-a-crusade-to-integrate-baseball-that-paved-the-way-for-jackie-robinson/#respond Mon, 08 Sep 2025 16:34:55 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1288267 Eighty years ago this week—on September 8, 1945—a little-known episode in the struggle to challenge racial segregation took place in, of all places, Germany’s Nuremberg Stadium, where Adolf Hitler had previously addressed Nazi Party rallies. It was led by Sam Nahem, a left-wing Jewish pitcher who had a brief career in the major leagues, and [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/80-years-ago-a-jewish-radical-and-two-negro-league-stars-led-a-crusade-to-integrate-baseball-that-paved-the-way-for-jackie-robinson/feed/ 0