Tag: usa

JACOB LAWRENCE AND THE GREAT MIGRATION (5)

February 15, 2015 by Kenan Malik

I have been running a series of posts about Jacob Lawrence and his depiction of the Great Migration. Lawrence was one of America’s most important twentieth century painters, and the Great Migration, the exodus of African Americans from the Southern states to the Northern cities from 1915 onwards, one of the pivotal events of American history. Lawrence portrayal of that exodus, an epic work of 60 panels, is his most famous work, a work as much of historical memory as […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Race & Immigration • Tags: african americans, art, harlem renaissance, jacob lawrence, the great migration, usa

JACOB LAWRENCE AND THE GREAT MIGRATION (4)

February 1, 2015 by Kenan Malik

Continuing my posts republishing the paintings from Jacob Lawrence’s Great Migration series, I have reached panels 31-40. Lawrence was one of America’s most important twentieth century painters, though one who has rarely received great public recognition, and the Great Migration, the exodus of African Americans from the Southern states to the Northern cities from 1915 onwards, one of the pivotal events of American history, though again not often recognized as such. Lawrence’s portrayal of that event, and of its existential impact, […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Race & Immigration • Tags: african americans, art, jacob lawrence, the great migration, usa

JACOB LAWRENCE AND THE GREAT MIGRATION (PART 3)

January 18, 2015 by Kenan Malik

This year marks the centenary of the beginning of the Great Migration, the exodus of six million African Americans from the US South to the northern cities. The Museum of Modern Art in New York is marking that anniversary by bringing together in an exhibition all 60 panels of Jacob Lawrence’s epic portrayal of the exodus. Lawrence was one of America’s most important twentieth century painters and his Great Migration series is perhaps his most famous work, a work as much […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Race & Immigration • Tags: african americans, art, jacob lawrence, modernism, robert hughes, the great migration, usa

JACOB LAWRENCE AND THE GREAT MIGRATION (PART 2)

January 3, 2015 by Kenan Malik

This year marks the centenary of the beginning of the Great Migration, the exodus of six million African Americans from the US South to the northern cities, such as Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia and New York. The Museum of Modern Art in New York is marking that anniversary with an exhibition that brings together all 60 panels of Jacob Lawrence’s epic portrayal of the exodus. Lawrence was one of America’s most important twentieth century painters and his Great Migration series is perhaps his most […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Race & Immigration • Tags: african americans, art, jacob lawrence, the great migration, usa

JACOB LAWRENCE AND THE GREAT MIGRATION

December 21, 2014 by Kenan Malik

Beginning in 1915, some six million black African Americans from the South joined an exodus to the northern cities – Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, New York and many others. This was the Great Migration. It was the result both of the conditions in which African Americans found themselves in the South and the labour needs of Northern employers. After post-Civil War Reconstruction, white supremacy had largely been restored across the South, enforced though the Jim Crow laws. It was a segregated […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Race & Immigration • Tags: african americans, art, black culture, black identity, harlem renaissance, jacob lawrence, modernism, robert hughes, the great migration, usa

THE BIG APPLE IN BLACK AND WHITE

November 8, 2014 by Kenan Malik

There are few cities that give themselves more to black and white photography than New York. So, in this third and final selection of New York photos – the previous sets were of New York at night and the view from the High Line – here is the Big Apple in black and white. There are more photos on my photographic website Light Infusion (from where you can also buy prints), and on Flickr and 500px.

Categories: Photos • Tags: new york, usa

REASONING ABOUT TERROR

May 2, 2013 by Kenan Malik

Ken Livingstone, the former Mayor of London, has stirred up controversy with his claim, on Iran’s Press TV, that behind the Boston bombings lay anger about Western foreign policy and its attitudes to Islam: There was such ignorance in the Bush White House about Islam and about the history of so many disputes that exist in the Middle East. People get angry. They lash out. It’s the whole squalid intervention that has disfigured the record of the Western democracies. I […]

Categories: War on terror • Tags: chechnya, islam, islamism, olivier roy, terrorism, usa, war on terror

SHAWSHANK WITHOUT THE REDEMPTION

April 6, 2012 by Kenan Malik

Imagine being held in solitary confinement, not for a day, not for a year, but for forty years. Imagine entering a cell, four paces long, three paces wide, when Richard Nixon was in the White House and still being confined to that cell, as Barack Obama gears up for re-election. Imagine being confined to that cell for every minute of those forty years apart from time out to shower and a walk around an outdoor cage three times a week, […]

Categories: Justice & Liberties • Tags: angola 3, injustice, liberties, prisons, racism, usa

THE LONESOME DEATH OF TRAYVON MARTIN

March 21, 2012 by Kenan Malik

In 1963 Bob Dylan wrote ‘The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll’, the story of the murder of a 51-year-old barmaid by the wealthy young tobacco farmer William Devereux ‘Billy’ Zantzinger, who eventually received a six month sentence for the killing. That sentence was handed down on the same day that Martin Luther King delivered his I Have a Dream speech in Washington, at the end of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Dylan was one of the marchers. Returning […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Race & Immigration • Tags: bob dylan, civil rights movement, hattie carroll, jim crow, music, racism, trayvon martin, usa

TO RENDITION JUSTICE

February 15, 2012 by Kenan Malik

By next Monday William Hague and Phillip Hammond could be behind bars. In December, the Court of Appeal ruled that the foreign and defence secretaries had by February 20th to produce before the court a Pakistani rice merchant, Yunus Rahmatullah; if they did not, then the court would ‘be moved to commit you to prison for your contempt in not obeying the said writ’. Hague and Hammond will not, of course, be sent down. But the Rahmatullah case does reveal, yet […]

Categories: Justice & Liberties, War on terror • Tags: anti-terror laws, barack obama, britain, guantanamo bay, liberal hypocrisy, liberties, rendition, usa, war on terror

AMERICA IS NOT BOTSWANA

January 27, 2012 by Kenan Malik

John Kiriakou, a former CIA officer, was charged this week with espionage for disclosing to journalists classified information about the capture and torture of Abu Zubaydah, a suspected al-Qaeda member. Before Barack Obama entered the White House in January 2009, just three Americans had ever been prosecuted by their government for espionage for leaking stories to journalists. Kiriakou Is the sixth person to face such charges under Obama. In less than four years under Obama, in other words, twice as many people […]

Categories: Free Speech, Justice & Liberties, War on terror • Tags: barack obama, free speech, liberties, rendition, usa, war on terror

MYTHS AND REALITIES OF 9/11

September 9, 2011 by Kenan Malik

A recent poll by the Pew Trust showed that virtually every American can remember where they were on the morning of 11 September 2001. Most recognize the profound changes that 9/11 has wrought to the nation. But America is divided down the middle on the question of whether the USA brought the attack upon itself. Forty-three percent of those polled thought that 9/11 was caused by US ‘wrongdoing’; 45% disagreed. Perhaps no set of statistics better expresses the confusions and ambiguities […]

Categories: International, War on terror • Tags: 7/7, 9/11, 9/11 commission, anders breivik, anti-imperialism, anti-terror laws, charles kurzman, clash of civilizations, culture of fear, ground zero mosque, guantanamo bay, identity politics, imperialism, islamism, islamophobia, jason burke, jihadism, liberties, mary beard, muslims, osama bin laden, phillip zelikow, stephen howe, tariq ali, terrorism, tzvetan todorov, usa, war on terror, western civilization, western policy

THE OUTRAGE OF EQUAL TREATMENT BEFORE THE LAW

May 17, 2011 by Kenan Malik

The sight of IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a man so rich that he wears $7000 dollar suits, a man so powerful that he could make or break countries with a single policy, being forced to sit in a New York courtroom, handcuffed, unshaven, disheveled and mute has inevitably unleashed a torrent of comment on both sides of the Atlantic. There has, of course, been a large element of schadenfreude in the response, malicious glee at seeing a powerful figure cut […]

Categories: Free Speech, Justice & Liberties • Tags: bernard-henri levy, equality, france, free speech, journalism, law, liberties, privacy, usa

INVASION OF PRIVACY WE SHOULD TRULY WORRY ABOUT

May 16, 2011 by Kenan Malik

Jane Mayer, author of The Dark Side, a seminal account of the CIA, extraordinary rendition and torture, has an interview in the New Yorker with Thomas Drake, a former senior executive at the National Security Agency who is about to be tried for violating the Espionage Act by leaking to a journalist secret documents about America’s covert surveillance of its own citizens. Drake, as Mayer puts it, is effectively being charged with being ‘an enemy of the state’. But it’s a state […]

Categories: Justice & Liberties, War on terror • Tags: anti-terror laws, cia, jane mayer, liberties, privacy, usa, war on terror

TORTURE WORKS? SO OPPOSE IT.

May 6, 2011 by Kenan Malik

There is a growing debate about whether the use of torture played a critical role in allowing America to obtain information about Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts. Stories in the New York Times, Time, Haaretz, AP and elsewhere have suggested that it may have. And this in turn has emboldened those who see the use of what is euphemistically called ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ as an essential tool in the war against terror. According to the AP report: The revelation that intelligence gleaned […]

Categories: Justice & Liberties, War on terror • Tags: ethics, jane mayer, liberties, osama bin laden, torture, usa, war on terror