Mississippi police and the Bolivar County coroner’s office have labeled the death a suicide. But Reed's family members and other advocates, including Reps. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) and Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), activist and former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick, attorneys Ben Crump and Vanessa J. Jones (both of whom are representing the family), are calling for further investigation. 

Cases like Reed’s awaken questions rooted in legacies of racial violence in the South. “While the details of this case are still emerging, we cannot ignore Mississippi's painful history of lynching and racial violence against African Americans,” said Thompson in the days following Reed's death. That history is not distant: Mississippi recorded more lynchings than any other state, and the echoes of those crimes persist in how the deaths of Black people are investigated and discussed. The reflex to dismiss possible racial motives—or to declare a death a suicide before all evidence is known—reflects a deeper national unwillingness to confront the full scope of anti-Black violence.

The post Trey Reed’s Death—and Its Swift Labeling as Suicide—Demands the Scrutiny Ida B. Wells Called For appeared first on Ms. Magazine.

When marketing to the male gaze sex sells, and it is used as a persuasive attempt to influence consumerism, but it does not stop there. Her blonde hair and blue eyes being the selling point and the center of this advertisement with the punchline, “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans.” This (not so) subtle play on words becomes explicit when she describes how genes are passed down by “offspring,” affecting things like eye color that make her “jeans blue.”

The post White Femininity Is Still the Poster Girl for American Capitalism appeared first on Ms. Magazine.

The Trump administration is emboldening and reinvigorating such violence by providing more tools to harm women of color, including both systemic tools (mass detention and deportation) and a cover for any man looking to kidnap immigrant women in broad daylight.

The post Men Are Impersonating ICE to Attack Immigrant Women. MAGA Emboldened Them. appeared first on Ms. Magazine.