Required Reading
What Austen-Peters misses, however, is the way that the revolt went beyond the fight against taxation. Ransome-Kuti was a staunch anti-colonialist who publicly questioned the nature of Britain’s colonial rule and how it affected women’s economic and social relations with the state. The AWU also protested that there were no women in the local political structure and that there shouldn’t be any taxation without representation. The AWU and Ransome-Kuti fought for the state to protect their interests and well-being, whether it was about taxes, health care or education. A more holistic take on Ransome-Kuti’s work with the AWU would have provided audiences with a greater understanding of the ways the women’s personal lives influenced their work and that of others.
‣ Murtada Elfadl reviews a new documentary honoring Sudanese resilience, reminding us of 2019 protest movements as the country teeters on the brink of famine today. In Variety, he writes:
Meddeb chooses three narrative threads to tell this story. Instead of following her subjects separately, she follows them collectively, their stories grouped by theme. Firstly, this was a revolution of poetry and art. Secondly, it was a feminist revolution as most of its leaders were young women trying to break free from the constraints of a patriarchal society. And thirdly, this was a revolution that started as a conversation about modest individual dreams before quickly becoming, through sharing and solidarity, loud public demands.
‣ Scholar Christina Sharpe writes as if lifting a veil of fog. Her essay in Yale Review is no exception, full of musings on craft, an exhibition in Buffalo (co-curated by our former fellow Tiffany Gaines), and the inherently political role of writing:
Writers who try to do this work are told that our words don’t matter. When we demand a ceasefire and an end to occupation, we are told that those words are meaningless, that they do not prompt action, and that they cause tremendous injury (as in, to demand a ceasefire or to demand that the genocide in Gaza end is to cause injury and not to demand the cessation of injury). To name a person, institution, state, or a set of acts as racist or anti-Palestinian or antiblack is to cause injury. It is not the racism that injures, it is not the bullets and bombs that injure, it is the words that seek to name the injury—that name a murderous structure like apartheid or settler colonialism—that cause injury.
Meaning is in crisis. And we are embroiled, everywhere, in contests over meaning—which are also contests of power, contests over living. And dying.
‣ This fall marks the first academic year without affirmative action, and Inside Higher Education‘s Liam Knox offers a breakdown of the decision’s impact and what the future may look like:
Shaun Harper, director of the University of Southern California’s Race and Equity Center, said the effects of the ruling are likely to become more pronounced with time. He pointed to California’s public colleges, where, after a 1996 referendum banned affirmative action in the state, Black student enrollment began a protracted decline that continued for nearly a decade. It only reversed when institutions began to change their recruitment and admissions strategies in the early 2000s, adopting more holistic rubrics for applicants and introducing a guaranteed admissions plan—both recommendations that the Biden administration made last August, after the Supreme Court’s ruling.
“This is just the first year,” Harper said. “If both public and private colleges don’t step up and take the legally permissible actions they can to boost diversity, it will get worse.”
‣ Speaking of disastrous Supreme Court rulings, this summer also marked two years since the overturn of Roe v. Wade. Politico‘s Alice Miranda Ollstein spoke with one doctor who, like many of her colleagues, had to travel outside of her conservative state to learn how to perform abortions:
The doctor is one of many residents across the country who have gone out of state for training in abortion since Dobbs. Most of them are OBGYN residents who are required to have that experience but are unable to get it in their home states. A smaller group are those, like the doctor, who have opted to do so in addition to their required medical training. Her experience is just one glimpse into the challenges these residents encounter as they try to cover as much as ground as possible on an expedited timeline out of state — and supports medical experts’ fears that shortcomings in post-Dobbs training alternatives could affect the skills of many doctors.