Friedberg is an inconspicuous town with roughly 30,000 inhabitants in a rural district in the middle of Germany. It lies at the hinge of the metropolitan region of Frankfurt/Rhein-Main, where the European Central Bank is headquartered. In recent years, this town where urban and rural life collides...
Sam Biddle of The Intercept recounts the story of a black woman who applied for a job at Facebook only to discover the nature of the cult-like empire Mark Zuckerberg has created. Her candidacy was rejected. Some surmise from this that Facebook’s policies are racist. That is certainly true, but...
Several political parties and governments around the world have centered their commitment to countering the radical right on tackling hate and racism. The most recent example was the announcement by the German cabinet in late 2020 to spend €1 billion ($1.2 billion) for a four-year program on...
We simply don’t have enough time, energy or incentive to investigate the thoughts and behavior of people we admire. I’m not sure why I still remember this so clearly, but I do. In the late 1970s, while a student in Toronto, one of my professors, Gregory Baum, announced to a social theory...
In this edition of The Interview, Fair Observer talks to Akil Houston, an associate professor of African-American studies at Ohio University. Anti-black racism in the United States continues to be a problem over half a century since the abolition of Jim Crow laws. These laws enforced segregation...
When a culture focuses on slips of the tongue, it invites everyday racism to play out with total impunity. Commercial sports media have long sought to be a model for tolerance and racial justice. Whenever a commentator says something that could be perceived as politically incorrect, humiliation...
What lessons can multicultural Singapore offer America in light of the latter’s ongoing racial and religious tensions? Raw feelings over race and religion dominate the American political season. The talk is of walls and deportations to keep some out, "extreme vetting" for immigrants of a...
In “dishonest America,” inequality and informal segregation remain in a divided nation. Since the time of honest racial segregation in America—when whites wrote down race-based rules of exclusion—we have been formulating modes of dishonest segregation: denials of equality and inclusion...
Violent policing and mass incarceration are unjust, expensive and counterproductive, making reform of the criminal justice system an urgent priority for the US. Last week, the focus was terrorism. This week, it is wanton violence in the US. On July 7, a young woman live-streamed a video of her...
