Author: TheGuardian

In the lexicon of human migration there are still hierarchical words, created with the purpose of putting white people above everyone else, and one of those remnants is the word “expat.” What is an expat? And who is an expat? According to Wikipedia, “an expatriate (often shortened to expat) is a person temporarily or permanently residing in a country other than that of the person’s upbringing. The word comes from the Latin terms ex (‘out of’) and patria (‘country, fatherland’).” Defined that way, you should expect that any person going to work outside of his or her country for...

In the United States, a system of modern peonage – essentially, a government-run loan shark operation – has been going on for years. Beginning in the 1990s, the country adopted a set of criminal justice strategies that punish poor people for their poverty. Right now in America, 10 million people, representing two-thirds of all current and former offenders in the country, owe governments a total of $50bn in accumulated fines, fees and other impositions. The problem of “high fines and misdemeanors” exists across many parts of the country: throughout much of the south; in states ranging from Washington to...

We recently passed a milestone in the history of human connectivity – people online now ​make up the majority​ of the world’s population. This has largely gone unnoticed, but it is an important moment and not just for statistical reasons. North American and European internet users now make up only about a quarter of the world’s users. Furthermore, while countries like the US and the UK have almost reached internet saturation, Africa, Asia and Latin America are home to billions more people who will come online in the next few years. The networking of humanity is no longer confined...

The spread of rightwing blogs, claiming the shooter was an anti-Trump liberal, on to mainstream platforms is the latest example of hyper-partisan trolling after a tragedy. Facebook and Google promoted false news stories claiming that the shooter who killed more than 50 people in Las Vegas was a Democrat who opposed Donald Trump. The misidentification spread rapidly from dark corners of the internet to mainstream platforms just hours after hundreds were injured at a festival near the Mandalay Bay casino, the latest example of fake news polluting social media amid a breaking news story. The flow of misinformation on...

Acclaimed author and lawyer Bryan Stevenson talks about why a new museum in Montgomery, a key place in the slave trade, sets out the history of American racial inequality. If one set out to crown a symbolic epicenter for the 400-odd year odyssey of white supremacy in the US, they would be hard-pressed to do better than Montgomery, Alabama. It was at the statehouse in Montgomery that Jefferson Davis was first inaugurated as the president of the Confederacy in a bid to preserve the institution of slavery and in defense of the inferiority of the black race. It was...