The Future is Another Country
The Activist History Review seeks articles on the historical and present-day construction of masculinity in the United States and its significance for politics, society, economics, and culture.
Several years ago, during a tenure-track search, I asked two questions – two questions which I ask of every scholar applying for a position with our institution. The first is innocent enough: “How important is racial/ethnic diversity in your scholarship and teaching?” Not surprisingly, all enthusiastically answer in the affirmative. Then I ask my second question: “Which scholars and/or books from racial and ethnic minorities do you include on your syllabus and why?” Here is when the squirming begins, revealing the candidate’s lack of academic rigor.
I started the Slants nearly a decade ago because I wanted to change people’s assumptions about Asian Americans. When you combine the great discomfort that people have when talking about racial injustice to the fact that the Asian American experience is rarely considered in these discussions, I realized that opportunities to do so would be extremely rare. I wanted to give racism a chance—a chance for discussing its existence in a way that would be compelling, honest, and yet, subversive.
Many Americans view self-defense as a natural right. However, African Americans have a long history of being denied the right to armed protection in a society that has sought to undergird white supremacy.
As we continue in the struggle for economic justice, it is important to examine how white Christian evangelism shapes our efforts to alleviate poverty. Casting poverty as a form of moral failing encourages people to disengage from the social, cultural, and structural causes of poverty and ignores the role that white Americans play in the global proliferation of poverty conditions worldwide.
We must cast a critical eye toward the diversity conversation within the tech industry as it impacts who’s employed in that industry, the types of products they produce, who writes about those products, who those products are made for, and who benefits from those products.
While it is not fair to say that technology is bad, the New York City Police Department (NYPD), with its deployment of geospatial software for crime analysis in the 1990s, provides an example of how technology can become dangerous.
There is a narrative of racism that permeates all of Decatur, Georgia that goes much deeper than a stone monument.
The objectification of women is not a new occurrence. Yet when Black women are objectified, those who are routinely shocked and appalled seem to fall silent.
People who lived in communities destroyed by urban renewal and gentrification frequently frame their narratives about displacement as theft. They see their homes, businesses, and churches as stolen by capitalism. Spaces for the dead are among those stolen and erased.
