How do you identify yourself? You’re given a list of choices: gender, ethnicity or race, nationality, citizenship, marital status. Whether filling out a census form, a university application, a travel visa, or a home mortgage request, we are constantly prompted to define who we are. But what do these categories actually mean? Which aspects of
The idea of an America without Black people has a long history in the white national imagination. While often dismissed as an “absurdist fantasy,” as the US approaches its semiquincentennial, a new, more complex, but equally irrational version has appeared.
The Inconvenience of Black America Read More »
Once we realize that most identities are ephemeral social constructions, killing for such abstract, arbitrary, and transitory things as nations, religions, or civilizations will end.
Imagining a Pragmatic Post-Identitarian Peace Read More »
By invoking a racialized Indian identity, Hindu nationalists not only devalue academic studying of sources and evidence but also dismiss the lived experiences of the historical actors whose voices they misappropriate.
Insiders to Premodern South Asian History Read More »
President Trump’s Executive Order 14168 overlooks the complexity of human development and discounts those people who do not fit into their exclusive categories.
Sex is a Continuum Read More »
“I have lied to myself about how American I am. Now, I want to tell the truth. That may be the Blackest thing I can do.”
The Responsibility of Being Black Read More »
Non-profit industrial complex and neocolonial philanthropic entities are working toward their own self-preservation rather than fundamentally restructuring power and society.
Who Deserves to Exist? Gender Fear and False Promises of Identity-Driven Neocolonial Aid Read More »
In a time where there is an acceleration of differences, and annihilation based on those differences is justified, we ought to never stop asking what it means to be a human being, what it means to belong and to not belong, and to be at home in the world.
A Letter To Lanka: Soil that Breaks, Soil that Binds Read More »
The Palestinian genocide and American complicity has been possible because of an absence of empathy towards Palestinians. Western society needs a theology of empathy in order to stop this and other genocides.
Palestine and the Need for a Theology of Empathy Read More »
Memes are a popular form of digital communication and campaign, an internet language with sampling, rapid circulation, and knowingness at its core. Within that circulatory and referential system, the popularity and appeal of memes both influence and reflect a particular political, cultural, and social temperature.
Memes, Messaging, and Online Misogyny Read More »
Through entrepreneurship, Muslim immigrant women in Norway are challenging binaries like native/foreign and secular/religious and crafting new forms of citizenship based on contribution, not conformity.
