Contributions by:

Michael Javen Fortner

“Down with White Leadership!!”: Racial Capitalism, “Race Men,” and the Wages of Political Blackness

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In late 1913, several well-heeled African Americans, mostly businessmen, in New York City founded the United Civic League (UCL) to promote the “interest and welfare of the Negro voter by organizing and solidifying said voters into a body without party designation.”[1] Civic leaders, like Adam Clayton Powell, Sr., pastor of Abyssinian Baptist Church, deemed it…

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Black Bodies and the Problem of “Linked-Fate”

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The murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers ignited something.  People protested. Cities burned. Though seemingly sympathetic to the cause, many feared the conflagrations in the streets.  “Above everything else, I am a mother,” Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms remarked at a press conference she called after hearing “rumors about violent protests…

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Crime, the Dangers of Racial Tropes, and the Limits of Racial Metaphors

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“Why do people who deal drugs have more rights than people who try to get up and go to work everyday and take their children to school,” asked San Francisco’s Mayor London Breed in an interview with KQED, a San Francisco based media company.[1]  This was her response to a question about a previous statement saying that…

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