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Reframing the conversation on racial justice and equity.

A collaboration with The Boston Globe and Boston University's Center for Antiracist Research

Health | Mary T. Bassett

Black Americans’ poor health outcomes is proof of wildly overdue unpaid tab for slavery

Successful reparations means eliminating racial health disparities. Until racism no longer drives negative effects on the health and length of a Black person’s life, equity remains theoretical.

The Big Picture | Brandon Hasbrouck
American horror story: The Supreme Court
The U.S. Supreme Court’s October 2022 term is set up to be a Halloween massacre, and Black, Brown, and poor people will suffer the worst of these cases’ likely outcomes.

Black Progress Index | Donna M. Owens
Entrepreneur who charted her own Great Migration finds purpose, place in Florida
Carol Thompson-Finn has thrived in Collier County, a locale identified by the Black Progress Index as a top county for Black well-being, and and whose Black community boasts a long, rich history.

Black Progress Index | Andre M. Perry
What’s going right about Black life? The Black Progress Index tells us what, where, and how
We assembled data from as many U.S. counties as possible to identify the strongest predictors of well-being, with life expectancy as the primary measure. The index analyzes these places and more.

Black Progress Index | Donna M. Owens
Montgomery County, Maryland emerges as place where Black people can live their best lives
The county is cited in groundbreaking new data about places nationwide where Black residents are prospering. Dubbed the Black Progress Index, this historic collaboration between the Brookings Institution and the NAACP examines the social factors that influence Black well-being.

Black Progress Index | Donna M. Owens
Living life like it’s golden: Where Black people are thriving in the U.S.
Loudoun County, Virginia, a rising hub of Black entrepreneurship, stands out in the groundbreaking Black Progress Index, an analysis of where and why Black people are leading healthy, long lives.

Culture
Banned Books Week Quiz
Banned Books Week is now underway! Put your knowledge of banned and challenged works to the test with our quiz.

CULTURE | KIMBERLY ATKINS STOHR
Books have power; it’s no surprise the powerful want to control them
The Emancipator looks at the history of book banning, from the burning of the nation’s first Black bookstore in 1800's New York City, to author Toni Morrison's books being taken off school shelves, to kick off this year's Banned Books Week.

THROUGHLINE | Esther A. Armah
Centering the colonized in a time of mourning
The reign of England’s longest-ruling monarch represents the blood, the bone, the soil, the struggle, and the graves of millions of people across Africa, the Caribbean, and in England.

Culture | V. Jo Hsu
The irony of the trans ‘villain’
When a hospital gets violent threats for providing gender-affirming care, and drag queen story hours are attacked as “sites of sexual predation,” it’s time to confront the rising tide of anti-trans propaganda seeking to divide us.

HEALTH | Katherine Standish and Afi Semenya
Paying attention: Boston hospital helps breastfeeding Black moms, babies thrive
Many healthcare interventions can help families successfully breastfeed and address compelling evidence of racist structures that perpetuate the vicious cycle of health inequities.

Education | Kimi Waite
The great resisters of Japanese American history have a powerful story to tell
History shows us Asian Americans have consistently engaged in resistance against injustices by challenging systemic racism as far back as 1879, but ongoing anti-critical race theory campaigns and backlash from the far right demonstrate the struggle for an antiracist education continues.

The Talk | Kristen Pope
Lily’s big hair day
For the last year of pre-kindergarten, my daughter, Lily, has thrived as the only Black child in her entire school, where her teachers and school administrators love her, care for her, and support her. But there have been some bumps that mostly involved race; one instance was related to her hair.

The Talk | Vidya Krishnan
The ‘model minority’ in the middle no more?
While many Indian American families simply ignore "The Talk" or encourage silence until it is forced, many are now learning to talk about race.

The Talk | Curtis Chin
For Chinese American families, young people are taught to self-police lest they offend
When I was growing up, whenever my family ventured beyond our known spaces — our home and school and Chinatown — we knew we had to be careful of our physical safety.

The Talk | Nick Martin
The Talk: A dual reality for Native kids
This unprecedented moment of representation exists in the same reality wherein you still go to a nontribal school and have to sit in a classroom and listen to social studies teachers turn our genocide into a “necessary” evil of progress — if it’s framed as an evil at all.

The Talk | Rebecca Cokley
Pointing out meaningful representation for children with disabilities
We train our kids to know the difference between genuine friendship, tokenization, and inspiration porn.

The Talk | Matt Richardson and Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley
Find your Black LGBTQ joy; it’s your superpower
Teaching our daughter that she’s perfect and powerful just because she is, opening spaces for her to be all she can imagine, mirroring back how she matters when the news pronounces her future dead — this is the hardest part of parenting a Black LGBTQ child.

The Talk | Amber Payne and Deborah D. Douglas
The Talk: How identity shapes the way we keep our children safe
Depending on who you are and how you live, this conversation can go a lot of ways.

The Big Picture | Brandon Hasbrouck
Checked and balanced: North Carolina Supreme Court clinches a win for democracy
North Carolina NAACP v. Moore provides a blueprint to advocates for democracy to challenge similar laws in their own states’ courts, where many more voting rights cases will be tried.

COMICS | Josh Neufeld
Clean Slate: A Student Debt Forgiveness Story
Is student loan forgiveness a real thing? In this comic, Samuel Autman reveals his journey to find out if its true — or not.

Culture | Jasmine Nichole Cobb
Public embrace of natural hair offers new twist on civil rights
Recognizing this history of control and humiliation through the material of Black hair is important for understanding new efforts to celebrate and protect wearers of Afro-textured hair in the United States.

CRIMINAL LEGAL SYSTEM | Brandon Hasbrouck
Dear Mr. Trump: I support your 4th Amendment rights. I wish you supported ours
I have the deepest of sympathies for anyone subjected to such police violence, though I must confess to having some doubts that this is quite what happened at Mar-a-Lago.

COMICS | Joel Christian Gill
Everything’s Racist Comic: Snowflake’s revenge
Artist Joel Christian Gill reveals the difficult history behind everything. Snowflake just can't get anything right.

CULTURE | Shen-yi Liao and Nat Hansen
We’re using the word ‘racist’ just fine, thanks
Are we using the word “racist” too broadly these days, applying it to too varied a range of wrongs and to too wide a group of people? Critics across the political spectrum have argued as much.

Explore Topics

Education | Kimberly Atkins Stohr
Biden’s student loan debt relief isn’t just fair, it’s a good first start
There is a reason White parents pay much more tuition or student loans as Black parents: Because they can.

throughline | Aniko Bodroghkozy
From civil rights to Unite the Right: What the photographs say
Examining voluminous media imagery of Charlottesville’s Summer of Hate, I couldn’t help but notice how the most heavily circulated photos graphically and thematically echoed famous images of mid-century civil rights-era struggles.

CULTURE | David Wall Rice and Julie Scelfo
There doesn’t have to be an ‘other’
Framing other people as inferior begins, innocently enough, with the essential mental process of trying to figure out one’s own identity. Beginning as infants, we encounter vast quantities of information and, to better make sense of it, start unconsciously sorting it into various categories.

Changemakers
These voting rights heroes are fighting for your rights
Across the country, people are mobilizing to stop these attacks on our democracy. Meet some of the changemakers working to protect our vote.

Changemakers
How new voting laws may affect you
The Emancipator is here to help you understand what voting laws mean and how to prepare. From registration deadlines to requesting mail-in ballots to voting in-person, VoteChat has the answers.

Throughline | Ja’nell N. Ajani
‘Nope’ reveals Black family working to defeat the threat that hovers over daily life
In an odd way “Nope” shows there is hope for those of us who are willing can take on this “thing” that wants to erase our legacies, the institutions we’ve built, the stories that reveal who we truly are.

Throughline | Brandon Hasbrouck
The case for overhauling the Constitution
The Supreme Court’s disturbing streak of antidemocratic opinions is a reminder that we don’t have to stick with the constitution we’ve got. We can make a new one.

Throughline | Jerry Mitchell
Here’s the proof against Carolyn Bryant Donham in the Emmett Till case. Is it enough to convict her?
Carolyn Bryant’s secret memoir contains new proof she is lying about the night the 14-year-old was killed, retired FBI agent says