Independence Day
The labor and political organizing of Somali immigrants in the US Midwest should inspire more Americans to join the broader movement for worker rights and racial equality.
United States
‘We have no Harlem in Sudan’
The current global discourse on Black Lives Matter does not yet adequately include anti-black racism beyond how the West experiences it.
The blankest spot on Trump’s world map
In his new book of his time in the Trump White House, former US National Security Adviser John Bolton shares Trump’s very few thoughts on Africa.
The book of his life
Father's Day reflections for the time of COVID-19.
Pandemic in the city
How African immigrants in New York City’s Manhattan borough coped with the COVID-19 pandemic.
The class character of police violence
Police violence and the murder of black people in the United States have provoked outrage and protest around the world, including on the continent. But, why is there so little outrage over police violence in African countries?
We cannot reform ourselves out of the times we are in
To end racism, we will have to change the structures from which it draws its mandate, and get rid of liberal and right-wing politicians who give it oxygen while we are being asphyxiated.
Ivan Vladislavic and Muhammad Ali
How do white South African writers confront the country's as well as their own pasts?
Eric Garner in Palestine
Activists in the occupied territories reinvent the Freedom Rides of 1960s America and in the process link US and Palestinian struggles for liberation.
The new normal
Reflections from New Orleans, Louisiana — the US's most African city — on the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic.
The undeclared war in Somalia
The United States’ military operations in Somalia are not well known because they'e carried out secretly or via proxies. COVID-19 hasn't slowed them down.
The third brother
A new thriller by Andrew Welsh-Huggins follows a detective investigating the disappearance of a Somali-American teenager in Ohio.
Du Bois in Berlin
Kwame Anthony Appiah’s Lines of Descent (2014) argues that W. E. B. Du Bois’s two years as a graduate student in Berlin vitally informed his views on race and politics.
We wear the masks
The TV series "Watchmen" deserves credit for how it put unsung elements of black history into mainstream culture.
A question of desperation
Black popular culture has gained two new heroes in Queen & Slim — a film about desperate violence.
Roti and roses
Will Shoki sits down with Ugandan-born rapper and housing advocate Zohran Mamdani about his bid to represent Queens in the New York State Assembly.
An injury to one is an injury to all
Historian Peter Cole’s book on dockworkers in apartheid South Africa and San Francisco gets beyond slogans to vital historical truths.
A particular kind of black man
The Nigerian-American writer, Tope Folarin, wrestles with blackness and black immigrant identity in his new novel.
Beyoncé and the Heart of Darkness
Few black thinkers and creatives in the United States seem able to grapple with the implications of their Americocentrism in relation to Africa.
How to film a revolution
The films of Robert Van Lierop and Margaret Dickson chronicled anti-imperial struggles in Mozambique.