Adolph Reed Jr.

Adolph Reed Jr. is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania and an Organizer for Medicare for All-South Carolina.
Articles by this author
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Views Saturday, August 15, 2020 The Trouble with Disparity If the Covid-19 pandemic and the killings of unarmed Black people by the police have made visible the underlying inequalities of American life, both have been met with off-the-shelf analyses of, first, what's produced those inequalities and, second, how to eliminate them. The problem (thought to be... Read more |
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Views Saturday, April 04, 2020 Disparity Ideology, Coronavirus, and the Danger of the Return of Racial Medicine In the past few days, liberal Democrats Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Rep. Ayanna Pressley , and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez , academics Ibram X. Kendi and Keeanga-Yahmatta Taylor , and New York Times columnist Charles Blow separately have issued calls for special focus on black Americans' particular... Read more |
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Views Monday, March 09, 2020 Push for Racial Justice Beyond Race Alone nswering that question, and rising to meet this challenge, requires examining what we mean by “racial justice.” Most people who consider themselves progressives no doubt have general ideas of what would constitute a racially just society. Yet two basic norms of racial justice have coexisted—... Read more |
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Views Wednesday, March 04, 2020 South Carolina, Neoliberalism's Stranglehold, and the Mystique of the 'Black Vote' Many progressives hoped that South Carolina black voters, who have consistently expressed strong support for Medicare for All and other components of Bernie Sanders' political program, would counter the conventional wisdom that the "black vote" is tightly aligned with the Democratic party's... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, February 11, 2020 Here They Come Again: The Kind of Neoliberal Democrats Who Prefer Trump to Sanders Twenty-four years ago, I published an essay titled “Liberals, I Do Despise” in the Village Voice , which Common Dreams reprinted as an enduring oldie in 2009. The title was a play on an old doggerel, in this case rendering it: Liberals and flies, I do despise The more I see liberals, the more I... Read more |
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Views Saturday, March 30, 2019 Vietnam to Venezuela: US Interventionism and the Failure of the Left Vietnam came to my attention when I was maybe eleven or twelve, during the last years of the Eisenhower administration. There must have been some uptick that prompted public anticommunist saber-rattling about what really was already the U.S. war there. My father explained to me what was going on,... Read more |
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Views Sunday, December 23, 2018 Which Side Are You On? Miguel Salazar in a recent essay purporting to address the question " Do America’s Socialists Have a Race Problem?" ( The New Republic , December 20, 2018), seconds a perspective on current debates within the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) that answers his question in the affirmative. DSA,... Read more |
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Views Wednesday, July 11, 2018 Common Ground: For Secure Elections and True National Security Many Americans remain deeply concerned about reports of Russian interference with the 2016 election. Meanwhile, relations between the United States and Russia are at their lowest and most dangerous point in several decades. For the sake of democracy at home and true national security, we must reach... Read more |
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Views Sunday, June 25, 2017 Monumental Rubbish: With the Statues Torn Down, What Next for New Orleans? I’ve been in New Orleans since May 1. I came to visit my mother, who died on May 4, five months shy of her 95th birthday and was buried on May 10. That means I’ve been here through much of this latest round of public cavil over the city’s decision to remove the four most conspicuous monuments to... Read more |
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Views Thursday, August 18, 2016 Vote for the Lying Neoliberal Warmonger: It’s Important In 1991, former Klansman and American Nazi Party functionary David Duke ran for governor of Louisiana and made the runoff election against Democrat Edwin Edwards, the popular but scandal-plagued three-term former governor. Duke had made the runoff between the two top vote-getters since no one... Read more |