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We like to think of the racial violence of America’s recent past as an aberration, that it cropped up during an especially hostile moment in history and went away suddenly. A closer look at the reality of racial violence — lynching in particular — suggests, however, that America’s predilection for the slaughter of black men is alive and well […]

The Black community is, in large part, coming together to speak out against the tragedy of Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson, Mo. Many on social media and elsewhere have stepped up to demand justice. There is, however, some small tension between young activists and the old guard Civil Rights Movement set with many disagreeing over […]

Did you know that at least 20 states have sentencing policies that allow them to determine the severity of a criminal sentence based on factors like employment and marital status, age, education, finances, neighborhood, and family background? In effect, “evidence-based sentencing” is a tool to predict a defendant’s future crime risk based on demographic data and not […]

CNN devoted significant time recently to profiling the St. Louis police officer who shoved their host Don Lemon on camera. It appears that, after the incident with Lemon, someone did some digging into the officer’s past and uncovered video of an hour-long speech he delivered, one in which managed to rail against blacks, the LGBT community, President Obama and […]