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Channel: Ibram X. Kendi | The Atlantic
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What's the Difference Between a Frat and a Gang?

When I thought about locking up with a crew in 1996, I wanted to see a full initiation first, not parts I stumbled upon over the years. My friend Cliff and I arrived at a park not close from my home in...

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It's Time for Police to Start Snitching

A 911 caller living in a nonwhite neighborhood snitches.A man wearing a black hoodie “busted both my truck windows out,” the caller reported on March 18, “and he’s in people’s backyards right now.” Two...

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More Devoted to Order Than to Justice

American politics is today a brutal boxing match of harassing confrontations. The disagreements renew two enduring questions: one philosophical, one historical. Is political harassment civil? And do...

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A House Still Divided

Editor’s Note: This article is part of a series that attempts to answer the question: Is democracy dying? He stood on the outer edge of the sidewalk, hands clasped behind him—handcuffed, perhaps, by...

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What the Believers Are Denying

For two years, they formed a community of experts, about 1,000 in all, including 300 leading climate scientists inside and outside 13 federal agencies. For two years, they volunteered their time and...

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What I Learned From Cancer

My daughter squirmed on her back, rocking the changing table. She bicycle-kicked her 1-year-old legs. No shoes or pants could be removed. She held her arms down. No shirt could rise over her...

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The Day ‘Shithole’ Entered the Presidential Lexicon

Editor’s Note: This article is one of 50 in a series about Trump's first two years as president. On January 11, 2018, during an Oval Office talk with several U.S. senators about protecting immigrants...

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A Reading List for Ralph Northam

In the years before he became Virginia’s governor, Ralph Northam apparently chose not to read books in which blackface was present. “I used just a little bit of shoe polish to put under my—or on...

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White Terrorists Give Political Cover to Other Americans’ Prejudices

How many people do white terrorists have to kill before America treats them as more dangerous than people of color? When asked after the recent massacre of Muslims in New Zealand whether he saw a...

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Robert Smith’s Real Gift to Morehouse

In 1969, Denver began busing a small contingent of black children across town to a better-resourced white elementary school. “Every morning, we were loaded up on Bus No. 13,” Robert F. Smith told...

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There Is No Middle Ground on Reparations

On December 1, 1862—a month before he issued the Emancipation Proclamation—President Abraham Lincoln wrote to Congress. He was not yet the Great Emancipator. Instead, he proposed to become the Great...

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What to an American Is the Fourth of July?

His impatience had thinned like the length of his letters back home to his wife, Abigail, in Boston. On June 7, 1776, John Adams finally had the opportunity to second the resolution that led to the...

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Am I an American?

I live in envy. I envy the people who know their nationality. All the people whose nationality has never been a question in their mind.I can imagine the woman staring at her reflection in the Volta...

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Trump Is in an Abusive Relationship With America

She mistreated me. I mistreated her. But we loved each other, we’d proclaim time and again.I’d listened for “I love you,” as if listening for a sign of life, like a doctor listening for a beating...

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A Lynch Mob of One

Everyone seemed to be fleeing the brutality of the Chicago sun. There was no haven that compared to the cooling waters of Lake Michigan. Thousands of blacks and whites flocked to its beaches. That is...

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The Hopefulness and Hopelessness of 1619

Her name was Angela, one of the first known Africans in British North America.His name was John, the first known antiblack racist in colonial America.In 1619, this black woman and white man—what they...

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The Greatest White Privilege Is Life Itself

I had a 30-minute ride to the train station. I nestled into my seat, opened my phone, and saw that Representative Elijah Cummings had passed away.I gasped and covered my mouth. The driver peeked at me...

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Twenty-One Books to Read After Becoming

Last fall, Shonda Rhimes received an unexpected phone call, with a top-secret invitation. She was given the chance to read an advanced copy of the book; fly to Washington, D.C.; and share her thoughts...

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How to Talk About the Truth and Trump at Thanksgiving

Between bites of ham, he is always liable to say it.“The New York Knicks will never ever win the NBA championship!” my uncle jabs seemingly every year, mouth full, at the Thanksgiving table. The last...

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The Other Swing Voter

We needed some air. The room’s high ceilings had been stuffed with roping hugs and raining tears, with eyes and smiles wider than the television announcing the impossible, with raised arms and shouts...

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