Civil Rights
The Front Row
“Freedom on My Mind”: A Symphony of Voices for Civil Rights
This 1994 documentary brings the passions and agonies of Mississippi’s voter-registration drive into the present tense.
The Front Row
James Baldwin’s Anguished Prescience in “I Heard It Through the Grapevine”
Reflecting on the civil-rights era in the nineteen-eighties, the author sounds like our contemporary.
Under Review
The Disciplining Power of Disappointment
In a new book, Sara Marcus argues that American politics are defined by unfulfilled desire.
Daily Comment
The Next Targets in the Fight Against Affirmative Action
It won’t be admissions offices at selective schools but institutions and programs that use race as a plus factor in making decisions about who gets contracts, jobs, scholarships, and awards.
Dispatch
Pakistani Women Are Not All Right
The country’s annual march for women’s rights was a defiant act of self-assertion that once again sparked panic and condemnation from conservatives.
The Political Scene Podcast
What Happens if the Supreme Court Ends Affirmative Action?
The conservative majority may strike down consideration of race in school admissions. David Remnick talks with two academics and an admissions officer about the future of diversity.
On Television
Hulu’s Fascinating and Incomplete “1619 Project”
Nikole Hannah-Jones’s documentary series offers a damning portrait of American racism, but its emphasis on the past at times obscures the complexity of the present.
The New Yorker Interview
Danielle Deadwyler’s Gravity-Shifting Intensity
The multi-hyphenate discusses her role in “Till”; her approach to art; ego death; and the retrograde values of the Hollywood system.
Cultural Comment
The Memphis Police Are Not Bystanders to the Death of Tyre Nichols
By appropriating citizen-made mechanisms for monitoring violence, the police have spun failed reform into a myth of incremental accountability.
Daily Comment
The Killing of Tyre Nichols and the Issue of Race
The case dispatches several assumptions associated with police reform.
Daily Comment
The Long March Toward a National Latino Museum
A community whose role in U.S. history has been too often ignored is telling its story at the Smithsonian.
Under Review
The Defeat of Identity Politics
In a new book, the philosopher Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò condemns the “elite capture” of radical movements.
The New Yorker Interview
Wolfgang Tillmans’s Beautiful Awareness
The photographer talks about his first MOMA retrospective and how his prescient art flows from the act of paying attention.
Books
When Tribal Nations Expel Their Black Members
Clashes between sovereignty rights and civil rights reveal an uncomfortable and complicated story about race and belonging in America.
Daily Comment
What Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson Can Do on a Radical-Right Court
Can the liberal Justices hold the conservatives back—by appealing to shame or the Constitution—as the consequences of the majority’s recklessness become even more dangerous for American democracy?
Double Take
Sunday Reading: Pride Month and the L.G.B.T.Q.-Rights Movement
From the archive: pieces that explore the progress of gay rights and the types of challenges that may lie ahead.
Double Take
Sunday Reading: Honoring Martin Luther King, Jr.
From the magazine’s archive: a selection of pieces about the significance of Dr. King’s extraordinary work and devotion to principle.
Cultural Comment
The Meaning of Sidney Poitier’s Historic 1964 Oscar
The actor felt trapped in his role as the one Black actor whom Hollywood would accept.
American Chronicles
When Black History Is Unearthed, Who Gets to Speak for the Dead?
Efforts to rescue African American burial grounds and remains have exposed deep conflicts over inheritance and representation.
Q. & A.
The Meaning of California’s Bill Against Nonconsensual Condom Removal
The civil-rights attorney Alexandra Brodsky discusses how legislation banning so-called stealthing could expand understandings of sexual assault.