In Kuwait, domestic laborers are bought and sold on Instagram
Slavery is one of many industries made more efficient by Silicon Valley, and specifically, Facebook-owned Instagram. A new BBC investigation reveals the widespread online sale of human beings in the...
View ArticleWhite woman interrupted a Broadway talkback to call the playwright "racist...
Jeremy O. Harris's Slave Play is meant to be provocative—certainly moreso than most other Broadway productions that transfer from Off Broadway theatres. The play itself is about a group of interracial...
View ArticleElementary school apologizes after children of color were asked by peers to...
The principal of Lafayette Elementary School in Washington DC has apologized after a fifth grade lesson on the Civil War and Reconstruction had some children of color role-playing "a person of color...
View ArticleJuneteenth: "Emancipation is a marker of progress for white Americans, not...
Today is Juneteenth, a holiday celebrating the long-delayed emancipation of enslaved Black people in Texas on June 19, 1865. In the New Yorker, historian and Columbia University journalism professor...
View ArticleIt's not ok to use the term "slave," and the "B" in Black should be capitalized
On this Juneteenth, I thought I'd share two things I've just learned: 1. It's not ok to use the word "slave." It's dehumanizing. We should use "enslaved" instead. Watch the video with Ta-Nehisi Coates...
View ArticleSixth great-grandson of Thomas Jefferson re-creates his presidential portrait
Shannon LaNier is a television reporter, actor, author, and a direct descendant of Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States. He's also a Black man — the sixth great-grandson of...
View ArticleGOP Senator Tom Cotton describes slavery as "necessary evil"
In an attack on the New York Times' 1619 project tracing slavery in America to its origins, Republican senator Tom Cotton described it as "the necessary evil upon which the union was built". "We have...
View ArticleThe Boston Public Library needs help transcribing 40,000 anti-slavery...
This is a pretty cool — and historically important — project from the Boston Public Library! The Boston Public Library's Anti-Slavery collection—one of the largest and most important collections of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The wild story of the first known Chinese person to live in Boston in the 1790s
SAMPAN, a Chinese-English newspaper for Chinese and Asian diaspora in New England published by the nonprofit Asian American Civic Association, has a fascinating new post about the first Chinese person...
View ArticleClik here to view.
U.S. Treasury resumes efforts to place Harriet Tubman on $20 dollar bill
With the incoming Biden administration, the U.S. Treasury Department is now resuming efforts to put Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill, White House and Treasury officials said on Monday. Tubman was an...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Confederate memorial removed to make way for John Lewis statue
Progress in Decatur, Georgia: a Confederate memorial was removed last night, having been ruled a public nuisance, and will be replaced by a statue of late U.S. Rep. John Lewis. "In short, the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
America's obsession with tipping of course has racist roots
Tipping-as-wage is a weirdly American phenomenon. Don't get me wrong, I have some friends in the restaurant industry who have done quite well for themselves thanks to the bizarre social expectations of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Juneteenth: "Emancipation is a marker of progress for white Americans, not...
Tomorrow is Juneteenth, commemorating the freeing of enslaved Black people in Texas on June 19, 1865. That was the day that Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger delivered a message to the people of Galveston,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Prager University: "Anti-racist" rhetoric is "fighting America itself"
On Sunday afternoon, right-wing "university" PragerU (i.e. conservative radio host Dennis Prager's YouTube channel) tweeted something that cut closer to the bone than it perhaps intended. Young people...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Republican candidate for California governor wonders why slave owners...
Larry Elder is the most likely of the GOP candidates to replace California governor Gavin Newsom should voters recall Newsom in this month's recall election. Elder, a conservative black man, is a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Excavating the underwater wreckage of sunken Trans-Atlantic slave ships
For NowThisNews, journalist Tulika Bose spoke with National Geographic storytelling fellow Tara Roberts about her underwater mission to examine the wrecks of sunken slave ships to uncover some...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Taking a deeper look at Winslow Homer's iconic "The Gulf Stream"
Over on Hyperallergic, cultural critic and long-time Boing Boing contributor, Mark Dery, takes a breathtaking dive into the symbolic waters of Winslow Homer's "The Gulf Stream." As the headline deck...
View ArticleClik here to view.
"Kill the Overseer!", a book about slave resistance in video games
In her new book Kill the Overseer! The Gamification of Slave Resistance, Sarah Juliet Lauro looks at slavery and rebellion as motivational elements in video games. Does it lead to empathy or...
View ArticleClik here to view.
All slavery now officially banned in Tennessee
Until yesterday, the Tennessee Constitution included the following statement: "Slavery and involuntary servitude are forever prohibited in this state – except as punishment for a person who has been...
View ArticleClik here to view.
How one family illustrates the legacy of slavery
History is more complicated than the accumulation of dates, events, and people. The serpentine links between the past and present, the notion of historical accuracy, and the truth that contradictions...
View ArticleClik here to view.
"The Christmas Uprising" in Jamaica, 1831, heralded the end of slavery in the...
"Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will." Frederick Douglas Lincoln did not free enslaved people; enslaved people freed themselves. Lincoln may have signed a piece of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The long arc of counter-revolution to fascism, according to historian Gerald...
If you went to primary or secondary school in the US or watched any mainstream movie that discusses the past, you learned the white-washed patriotic uplifting (for some) story of people persecuted for...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Harriet Tubman statue replaces one of slaver in Newark, New Jersey
A statue celebrating 15th-century slaver Christopher Columbus was removed from Newark, New Jersey, in 2020. It was replaced over the weekend by one of Harriet Tubman, a woman born into slavery who...
View ArticleClik here to view.
MAGA couple tries to explain why slave-owners were anti-slavery (video)
I almost feel sorry for this Trump-adoring twosome, donned in their sartorial symbols of devotion — matching MAGA caps — as they tie their tongues into Gordian knots, striving to explain to Davram of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
This 1998 Octavia Butler novel predicted a Christofacist United States with...
Parable of the Talents, a novel by Octavia E. Butler, published in 1998, portrays a dystopian United States under the control of Christian fundamentalists. The group, known as "Christian America," is...
View ArticleClik here to view.
"Ron DeSantis Slave Trade Trade School" mocks GOP's take on historical...
According to the GOP, it's woke to think that slavery and the Holocaust were bad things. White non-Jews like Jesse Watters, Ron DeSantis, and Greg Gutfeld have made it a goal to explain that enslaved...
View ArticleClik here to view.
De Niro says Apple censored his award show speech, so he read the original...
On Monday night, Robert De Niro took the stage at the Gotham Awards in New York City to introduce an award for Martin Scorsese's Apple film, Killers of the Flower Moon, which De Niro starred in. When...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Watch Nikki Haley desperately avoid saying the Civil War was about slavery
Last night Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley said the U.S. Civil War was not about slavery but about other things–and got short when challenged on it: "What do you want me to say about...
View ArticleClik here to view.
School teacher assigned 5th graders "to pretend to be a white slave master'
A fifth grade teacher in Conemaugh Township, Pennsylvania gave students a worksheet with the instructions to "pretend to be a white slave master." The worksheet was titled "Auction! Winnings to the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Rep. Byron Donalds suggests slavery had upsides
Hoping to become Trump's VP pick, Republican Congressperson from Florida Byron Donalds described slavery as an economic boon and good for the enslaved. Economists suggest he review ethics, not...
View Article