Terrorist group du jour and demonic pieces of shit ISIS — also known as ISIL and the Islamic State — have had a busy year, beheading journalists and aid workers and terrorizing large portions of Iraq and Syria. The group is also systematically raping, torturing and enslaving hundreds of women and girls, a new report… » 12/23/14 4:00pm 12/23/14 4:00pm

Today in unimaginably horrible news that reaffirms both the tenacity of the human spirit and human beings' unfathomable capacity for cruelty to each other: three UK women who were held as slaves for thirty years have been freed. One of the women, who is 30, had never lived a free day in her life. » 11/22/13 2:20pm 11/22/13 2:20pm

Ahhh, the GOP, the party of hard work, strong values, and totally never ever ever being racist and HOW DARE YOU EVEN SUGGEST SUCH A THING. If there's one thing I know about the GOP, it's that they would certainly never abandon their extremely strong and heartfelt convictions in order to pander to uneducated bigots… » 10/29/13 10:20am 10/29/13 10:20am

If you grow up attending east coast public schools and you manage to make it through the early years of elementary school, you are often rewarded with an educational overnight trip with all your classmates. On that trip, you learn about different types of plants and the exhausting reality of what it's like to be… » 9/19/13 6:30pm 9/19/13 6:30pm

Actress and comedian Azie Mira Dungey used to work as a historical re-enactor at Mount Vernon. And 1- because George Washington's old stomping grounds are staffed with people acting out roles they might have had during the George Washington days and 2- Dungey is black, she played the role of a slave named Lizzy Mae.… » 9/03/13 1:10pm 9/03/13 1:10pm

A Chilean nanny is accusing an aristocratic family of forcing her into slave-like conditions in their Upper East Side home. » 6/16/13 12:29pm 6/16/13 12:29pm

In a surprise turn of blame-giving, CPAC panelist K. Carl Smith, a representative from the Frederick Douglass Republicans who unfortunately ceded the floor to an anthropomorphized pile of racist vacuum cleaner gatherings during the panel discussion, managed somehow to reserve most of his criticism for a female… » 3/17/13 5:00pm 3/17/13 5:00pm

On the season finale of NBC's Who Do You Think You Are, Paula Deen discovered that her great great great great-grandfather, John Batts, was a slave owner. Deen, who was born, raised and still lives in Georgia, found that Batts, a politician and plantation owner, was very wealthy — and a hefty portion of his assets… » 5/21/12 12:20pm 5/21/12 12:20pm

Police in Luoyang, Henan province, China have discovered an underground dungeon where a man forced women to have sex for money and perform in pornographic movies. In all, six women were enslaved for periods of 2 to 21 months, and two of them were eventually murdered. The operation went on for two years without police… » 9/25/11 2:30pm 9/25/11 2:30pm

Here is what Franca Sozzani, editor of Italian Vogue, has to say about her magazine featuring "slave earrings," with a bizarre caption about "women of colour": "It is a matter of really bad translation from Italian into English," according to a statement. » 8/22/11 4:50pm 8/22/11 4:50pm

The language about slavery and marriage in the far-right pledge signed by Michele Bachmann wasn't just wildly offensive, it was also just plain wrong, as historian Tera W. Hunter explains in a Times op-ed today. Ignoring how slavery actually tore apart families is, she writes, "part of a broad and deliberate amnesia"… » 8/02/11 12:05pm 8/02/11 12:05pm

Rick Santorum recently said he found it "almost remarkable for a black man" to be pro-choice. The anti-choice linking of abortion, slavery, and genocide has always involved a cocktail of distortion and condescension. So what to do about it? » 1/31/11 3:25pm 1/31/11 3:25pm