racism
July 7, 2021 -
Geeta N. Kapur, a North Carolina civil rights attorney and UNC-Chapel Hill alumna who has a book coming out in August about the school's fraught racial history, says it should come as no surprise that journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones — a Black woman bold enough to speak truth to power — was initially denied tenure by the school and then granted it only begrudgingly. Tenure would have given her a degree of academic freedom to reveal other truths that some don't want to hear.
July 2, 2021 -
Last week the U.S. Department of Justice announced that it was suing Georgia over its restrictive new voting law, part of a recent wave of such legislation passed by Republican-led state legislatures. But a July 1 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court on a Voting Rights Act case out of Arizona makes the lawsuit's future even more uncertain.
June 29, 2021 -
In the 1960s, Athens's urban renewal program evicted a Black neighborhood through eminent domain to build dorms for University of Georgia students. In response to displaced families' demands, Athens-Clarke County has set aside money dedicated to public projects of their choosing, a form of reparations for the community that was lost.
June 28, 2021 -
Joan C. Browning of West Virginia took part in the 1961 Freedom Rides challenging segregated transportation in the Jim Crow South, and she recently welcomed the Black Voters Matter Freedom Ride for Voting Rights to Charleston. We're reprinting the full text of her remarks drawing on history to suggest paths to a more just future.
June 18, 2021 -
A 1988 issue of Southern Exposure magazine, the print forerunner to Facing South, reprinted a visionary address by North Carolina-based organizer Mab Segrest calling for an intersectional Southern gay and lesbian liberation movement. We're republishing it in honor of Pride Month.
June 11, 2021 -
The Emory law professor and author of "The Whiteness of Wealth" calls for returning to a progressive income taxation system and establishing a tax credit as compensation for systemic racism. She also argues that simply publishing tax data by race could make the public angry enough to want to change the federal tax system.
June 10, 2021 -
As in the South of the 19th century, we have a massive group among us willing to throw democracy away in order to assure their ascendancy. With a dominant political party committed to autocracy, we're treading new ground — at least new ground in modern times.