Dr. Lenore J. Daniels, PhD

…inequalities and traditions are often reinforced, however directly, and created, however remotely, by government policies. Behind the husband’s abuse of his wife lie centuries of laws and doctrines awarding him authority over her; behind the employer’s cruelty are statues, past and present, granting him coercive power over his employees. Corey Robin, Fear: The History of…

10. When a young neighbor’s late evening parties continue well into the morning, and I, the Black tenant below, receive no response from the management, but the neighbor teasingly invites me to join the youthful gathering: “Hey, you know I’m a nice guy! I’m German!” 9. When a white woman informs me she is of…

Neo-liberal policies, as well as the financial and political powers backing them, ensured that the City and its most vulnerable citizens would be adversely affected. Infrastructure deteriorations, breakdown of water and sanitation and prolonged electrical blackouts are products of public disinvestment and private profit-taking; delays in repairing the electric grid are products of cuts in…

Reading Charles Silberman’s Crisis in Black and White after its publication the prior year, Martin Luther King scribbled a long note in the margins of his personal copy: ‘The South deluded itself with the illusion that the Negro was happy in his place; the North deluded itself with the illusion that it had freed the…

Whiles its successive campaigns, with apparent conclusive logic, held out to the Germans the prospect of a vast world empire in which, thanks to the fact that they belonged to the chosen people, they would all be able to embark on the most glittering careers…while we, the oppressed, lived below sea level…and had to watch…

A system that cannot conceive stopping and dreads a slowdown has developed its cultural complement in a postmodern sensibility that adores novelty, dreads boredom, and far from operating as a ‘fetter’ on capitalism, encourages its rhythms. -Sheldon Wolin, Politics and Vision [I]ntellectual activity, according to me, is, and must be, disinterested – the truth is…

Imagine you are a young Latino in a classroom in the U.S. and the lesson you hear claims that Columbus discovered the Americas. We do not want to talk about the political mascots (Democrats and Republicans) who do the bidding of the corporate power and that surprising (for those least affected) number of Black Americans…

The lesson of Hobbs and Tocqueville can be boiled down to a brief but chilling dictum: concentrated power, whether of a Leviathan, a benevolent despotism, or a superpower, is impossible without the support of a complicitous citizenry that willingly signs on to the covenant, or acquiesces, or clicks the ‘mute button.’ -Sheldon S. Wolin, Democracy…

-Toni Morrison, “Racism and Fascism,” [1] speech, Howard University, March 2, 1995 At 22 years old, a gentleman of Mississippi’s aristocracy, Quentin Compson is losing his memory. All that he remembers is fading. For as long he could remember, he has been dead. Dead! He can no longer live in the collective memory of his…