Todd Cronan teaches at Emory University and is editor-in-chief at nonsite.org. His latest book is Nothing Permanent: Modern Architecture in California.
When Édouard Manet debuted his painting Olympia in 1865, critics were shocked by a nude who looked like “the Queen of Hearts after a bath.” Today they are more interested in imposing essentializing ideas of race about the black maid beside her.
The new corporate thriller Fair Play depicts an intra-office relationship gone sour — but asks audiences to relate to the relationship struggles of the 0.1%.
Radical sociologist Oliver Cromwell Cox argued that racial antagonism was an essential tool for maintaining capitalist power. Cox’s understanding of race and class can help us forge a broad, multiracial movement against oppression today.