Some observations on race and security in South Africa
The writer, an anthropologist, gets a quick lesson on race and crime on a visit to South Africa.
Politics
Steven George Gerrard: A Man Apart
The remarkable thing about Liverpool captain Steven Gerrard’s reserve is that it never prevents him from protecting those whom he leads.
Dutch elites and blackface
Most elites in the Netherlands are no different than racists when it comes to defending #ZwartePiet.
Who is Dulcie September?
The author stars as the famed South African activist in a new play. Dulcie September was murdered by a conspiracy of South African and French death squads.
An archive for historian Jeff Guy (1940-2014)
“We know… but we don’t know.” These were words that we heard often from Jeff Guy
The Books of 2014
Christmas is coming, and like the German Bundesliga we’re going to be taking a wee break on
5 Questions for a Filmmaker: Philippe Lacôte
The Ivorian filmmaker wished he had made Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams, based on the filmmaker’s own dreams, when the fantastical infiltrates the real.
Explaining Racism to a White South African Liberal
Highlighting spectacular incidents of racial violence is that they overshadow the daily, unrecorded anti-black racist acts.
Black death and revolution
In the days leading up to the grand jury decisions in the separate murders of Mike
#ICANTBREATHE
One morning last semester at John Jay College in New York City, I asked my students
The Fate of la Francophonie
Do we still need an organization of France's former colonies? Whose interests does it actually serve?
The Gambia Gambit
There is a long-standing Norwegian tradition of externalizing racism, so that anti-black racism is always and inevitably located elsewhere.
The A to Z of Kenyan Twitter
“Twitter is going to change Kenya!” I declared in my presentation. We’d just set up a
Angola’s Flash Mobs
Should the tipping point against the MPLA - in power since independence - arrive in Angola, there are some activists ready to hit the ground, running.
Tony Blair Saves The Children of Africa
Interventionists across the political class in Europe and North America have comprehensively militarized the humanitarian enterprise
Remembering Mandela and Other Weekend Specials
Weekend Special is all that stuff we wanted to, but did not get around to writing about or just shared on social media.
Racial Degeneracy and Cowardice
The failure of Americans to have a concerted conversation on racism is not surprising. Too much is at stake for too many people, interests and institutions.
The University as a Place to Think
How we harness knowledge to the ethical injunctions we uphold against marginality, pain or suffering, on a global scale.
Remembering Differently
Slavery, despite its centrality to South Africa's founding, remains on the periphery of popular and institutional memory there.
Between polarization and transition
Brazil, under the Workers' Party, even if it’s still struggling with enormous poverty and social inequality, has managed to improve tremendously.