Hegemony: Welfare, Police, Protests

Lull’s opening statement — that “hegemony is the power or dominance that one social group holds over others” is clearly pertinent to the world as it is in the 21st Century, in the 2020s: the past few years as have been shaped by police brutality, protests, the covid pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and the January 6th insurrection (to name but a few). As has been pointed out by many a scholar — Keeanga-Yaamahta Taylor, from Princeton, among them — people of color’s over-representation among those most impacted by COVID is a direct result of the wealth inequities of racism that have placed people of color among the essential workers (members of the proletariat) and thus having faced the daily risk of exposure (which continues to this day).

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