Aaron Ross Coleman

Freelance Journalist

United States

Aaron Ross Coleman is a freelance writer from Atlanta, focused on the intersection of economics and racial inequality. Based in New York, his work has appeared in GQ, The New York Times, BuzzFeed, The Nation, Vox, CNBC, HuffPost, The Marshall Project, and elsewhere.

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Vox
06/19/2020
Juneteenth should remind America what it owes black citizens

This Juneteenth, a rallying cry has taken hold as uprisings around the world take place. "Defund the police" has become the signature demand of those marching for racial justice, and is about more than just taking money from the city budget lines devoted to law enforcement.

BuzzFeed News
Big Fast Food Won't Talk About The Sodium Killing Black Customers

The overabundance of fast-food restaurants in poor black neighborhoods is partly to blame for high rates of high blood pressure among black Americans. Posted on August 29, 2018, at 11:32 a.m. ET Growing up, I learned to hate the blood pressure machine at the Kroger by my house.

GQ
How NBA Players Became the World's Highest-Paid Union Workers

Before debates on Hong Kong devoured the NBA preseason, the league's biggest controversy followed the rising prominence of player power. LeBron James recruited too much. Anthony Davis spoke too much. Chris Paul earned too much. This summer, coaches, commentators, and owners fumed like smokestacks, puffing up a critique unheard-of in the United States' economy- the workers had too much money and too much clout.

The New York Times
12/22/2018
Opinion | Fighting Rent-to-Own Racism This Christmas

For low-income shoppers, the holiday season can be particularly precarious. By Aaron Ross Coleman Mr. Coleman is a writer who covers race and economics. I am not done with my Christmas shopping. I realize this is not great. Partly, I blame procrastination. I also don't like crowds.

The Nation
01/28/2020
Kobe Bryant: America's Imperfect Icon

For an immeasurable cross-section of Americans and sports fans across the globe, "Where were you when you heard Kobe Bryant died?" will become a seminal topic of conversation. I was in a LongHorn Steakhouse eating lunch with my brother. First, my phone started to vibrate incessantly.

HuffPost
04/27/2017
Ta-Nehisi Coates, Kendrick Lamar, And The Epiphany Of Black Fear

In the age of Donald Trump's flip-flopping doublespeak, the importance of accurate, unwavering speech has recently become an urgent priority for many Americans. But for African Americans, a people whose access to language and liberty have been contested since the nation's founding, the need to speak truth to power is always of perennial interest.

The Marshall Project
04/23/2018
Fear of a Black Patron

Last week, the fear that two black men would siphon free WiFi, jazz, and bathroom breaks from a Philadelphia Starbucks drove the coffee shop's manager to call local law enforcement for backup, creating yet one more media spectacle highlighting the disparate treatment of black Americans in the criminal justice system.

Vox
06/10/2020
Study: Covid-19 lockdowns hit black-owned small businesses the hardest

Before the coronavirus's financial onslaught, economists and experts feared a recession would precipitously hurt black entrepreneurs. New data validates the concern. A report published this week by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that "the number of African-American business owners plummeted from 1.1 million in February 2020 to 640,000 in April."

Vox
06/09/2020
The devaluing of black property has led to the devaluing of black lives

Black communities, long denied the opportunity to own property, now stand at the center of a national debate about the destruction of property. Following the police killings of several unarmed black people, retailers from Minnesota to Atlanta have been looted, smashed, and burned down during otherwise peaceful protests, drawing accusations ranging from foreign interference to radical antifa takeovers.

Vox
06/05/2020
Black bodies are still treated as expendable

Ahmaud Arbery's lynching raises the specter of slavery like the hoisting of a rebel flag. This crime's imagery - the white men racing, the rifles brandishing, the black man fleeing - looks ripped from Birth of a Nation. Georgia, where Arbery was killed, still houses Stone Mountain, the world's largest Confederate monument.

Vox
05/06/2020
Recessions are always racist. This one could be catastrophic.

Black Americans experience recessions the way front-seat passengers do head-on collisions. During the Great Depression, when national unemployment reached 24 percent, black unemployment neared 50 percent. During the Great Recession, when national unemployment reached 9 percent, black unemployment topped 16 percent. Today, as Covid-19 slams into the economy, black Americans again brace for the brunt of the crash.

Vox
04/28/2020
Retail Covid-19 testing is a massive failure for black communities

Adarra Benjamin, a 26-year-old black home care worker in Chicago, lacks the luxury of staying home during the Covid-19 pandemic. She assists several elderly patients. Her work demands travel by public transit. Her duties - picking up groceries, running to the post office, counseling clients - have, amid the news of death and disease, devolved into a series of anxiety-inducing tasks.

GQ
The Buttigieg Campaign Should Really Stop Comparing Him to Obama

Last month, Lis Smith-the senior advisor credited with transforming the South Bend, Indiana, mayor into a serious contender-made a bold claim about Pete Buttigieg. "I don't think it's wrong to say that Pete brings a talent and that ineffable 'it thing' that Obama had," Smith, a former Obama campaign staffer, told Bloomberg News.

GQ
The Attacks on Gayle King Over Kobe Bryant Were Rank Misogyny

"Why are you all attacking us?" Snoop Dogg asked in a response video. "We're your people. You ain't come at Harvey Weinstein asking those dumb ass questions." The California rapper went on to call Gayle "a funky doghead bitch" yelling, "how dare you try and tarnish my homeboy's reputation, punk motherfucker.

The Nation
01/02/2020
The Bitter (Occasionally Brave) Legacy of Selling Blackness

The day I heard that the default, peach-hued looking Band-Aids were known as "flesh-colored," my heart sank. I don't remember how old I was. Just the way I felt. Growing up as an active black boy, I got more scratches than a lottery ticket. I'd show them to my mom or my teacher.

The Nation
01/28/2020
'Woke' CEOs Don't Actually Care About Economic Justice

The relative horror of Donald Trump's presidency warps public memory, making old pariahs-Mitt Romney, George W. Bush, even the late John McCain-no longer seem that bad. Yet of all the realigned allies and rehabilitated reputations, perhaps the most troubling remains the media rebranding of corporations as civil rights advocates.

The Nation
11/14/2019
How Will Americans Remember Donald Trump?

As Americans, our collective desire to maintain a veneer of nationalistic piety tends to supersede our desire to tell the truth-and if the past is prologue, President Donald Trump will face no historical reckoning for his sprawling malfeasance.

GQ
How a Group of Student Debtors Took on the Banks-and Won

Standing outside the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, his student debt looming in the back of his mind, 28-year-old artist Thomas Gokey knew what he had to do. The plan was simple. He owed $49,983. Buried beneath the bank in an underground vault sat tens of millions of dollars in shredded money.

The Nation
06/21/2019
'Cut the Check': The Americans Who Deserve Reparations Walk Among Us

When I saw a little black boy standing outside the Rayburn House Office Building holding a placard that read "Cut the Check-MLK," I knew it was going to be an extraordinary day in Washington, DC. This Juneteenth, Congress held its first hearing on the resolution to study reparations, and its halls stood in rare form.

The Nation
11/12/2019
Recessions Are Racist (but They Don't Have to Be)

Anthony Hamilton's voice sounds the way a recession feels: full of struggle and loss. In 2008, as the US economy came crashing down, the North Carolina crooner deployed his tenor in the ballad "Cool." He wanted folks to hear that it didn't take much money to have a good time.

The Nation
05/22/2019
Black Capitalism Won't Save Us

Last month, Jay-Z fumbled his tribute to the slain rapper and entrepreneur Nipsey Hussle. Performing a eulogy freestyle in New York City's Webster Hall, he told his audience they could best honor Nipsey Hussle's legacy by claiming eminent domain over their neighborhoods and gentrifying their community.

CNBC
11/02/2016
Trump lacks nuance, but speaks 'modicum of truth' about black America

Albin Lohr-Jones | Pacific Press | LightRocket | Getty Images Building on these comments during the presidential debates, Trump added that African-Americans "are living in hell," and reiterated that "they have no education" and "they have no jobs." Experts told CNBC Trump's analysis contains a grain of truth, but totally lacks in necessary nuance and historical context.

The Nation
03/14/2019
How Black Lives Matter to the Green New Deal

Reparations have long seemed a politically impossible dream, but the climate crisis may be changing that. As the planet's weather has shifted radically in recent years, so has the conversation about paying compensation to black America for centuries of economic injustice.

The Nation
04/10/2019
The Salad Giant Sweetgreen Has Used Hip Hop to Turn Salad Into Gold

As a black hip-hop fan, gazing across the landscape of corporate America can be disorienting. In the 1990s, juggernaut brands like Sprite and Tommy Hilfiger used rappers Q-Tip and Spinderella to boost sales. Through the 2000s, outlets like Urban Outfitters peddled rap iconography from " Ghettopoly" to bamboo earrings.

The Nation
03/01/2019
Mariah Parker Invites You to Be Your Complete, Weird, Messy Self

To enter the Tip-Top Bar & Grill is to travel back to a pre-gentrified Brooklyn. Pictures of Martin Luther King and Michael Jackson hang from wood-panel walls. Christmas lights dangle above bar stools and reflect off a metallic "Happy Birthday" sign. Like Tip-Top, Mariah Parker seems plucked from another era.

The Nation
05/29/2019
Joe Biden's Whiteness Isn't the Problem

Despite his role overseeing the Anita Hill hearings, catalyzing mass incarceration, and pushing for banking deregulation, Joseph Biden, a white man, is still leading the Democratic primary. And yet white men, we are constantly informed, are the new political underdogs.

Nextcity
Data Shows How Doubters Are Wrong About Chicago Commercial Corridors

For decades, the south and west sides of Chicago have belonged to a group of low-income, urban areas that major retailers have regarded as a black hole. Dating back to the mid-1990s, economists like Harvard's Michael Porter noted many of the nation's largest grocers, department stores, and pharmacies avoided these communities, viewing them as unprofitable and unsustainable markets.

The Nation
01/28/2019
Black Culture Won't Save Kamala Harris

Kamala Harris is campaigning like she knows Black History Month is coming up. She announced her presidential bid on Martin Luther King Day. She's breathlessly recounted how her parents met during the civil-rights movement. She played Tupac at her book signings, danced to Cardi B, and even joked about smoking joints on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert .

Nextcity
How the Crescent City Got to Be Segregated In the First Place

At $150,000, the average value of a black-owned home in New Orleans is only half the value of the average white-owned home. Half of the city's black residents spend more than 30 percent of their monthly income on housing, compared to only 34 percent of their white counterparts.

YR Media
03/12/2019
Opinion: 5 Men Who Are Better Role Models Than Donald Trump

Last week, Glenn Beck said that James Bond and Donald Trump are the last male role models for red-blooded American boys. Fawning over the president's "masculine" energy, Beck said: He is the almost cartoon of an alpha dog. You know what I mean?

The Nation
02/26/2019
Hollywood Is Still a Sundown Town for Black Representation

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences boasts a robust legacy of ignoring black people's opinions, and Sunday's Best Picture Award for Green Book confirms that this tradition is alive and well. Since its debut, the tone-deaf racial reconciliation biopic drew condemnation both critical and comical.

HuffPost
05/29/2017
Timid Reporting On Racism Skews Our Political And Economic Debates

Much ink has been spilled condemning the press's failure to predict the election of President Donald Trump. But equally important, though much less discussed, is the media's misreporting on how racism drove Trump's victory and the national political agenda in 2016.

YR Media
02/08/2019
Opinion: Ralph Northam is the Fall Guy for America's Racism - YR Media

Virginia's government casts more white men in blackface than "Tropic Thunder." Gov. Ralph Northam, Attorney General Mark Herring, it's anyone's guess who's next. Thus far, the governor has been comically self-incriminating. He admitted to donning blackface to impersonate Michael Jackson, while putting on an encore performance as Shaggy -  saying that the man in another blackface photo wasn't him.

The Nation
01/21/2019
What AOC Owes MLK

In the spring of 1967, Martin Luther King had more than 99 problems. White supremacists wanted him dead. Federal agents wanted him defamed. Younger activists wanted him dethroned. But of all the challenges Martin faced, the biggest was selling the country on the steep cost of the Bill of Rights for the Disadvantaged, his bold new plan to address the country's deep-rooted racial and economic inequities.

Medium
06/15/2017
Minorities Build Ladders to Employment, Rung by Rung

Despite nonprofits best efforts, joblessness continues to blight black and brown communities in New York City On a warm, wet April morning, in Gowanus, Brooklyn, eight men and women ring the buzzer on a nondescript, industrial-looking brick building.

Nextcity
All Hands on Deck to Prevent Displacement on Atlanta's Westside

From a distance, the massive Mercedes-Benz Stadium, as of last year the new home of the National Football League's Atlanta Falcons, is every bit the $1.6 billion spectacle it was meant to be. An eye-catching geometric design, by HOK, with roof panels that slide open and closed like a camera aperture.

Nextcity
City Halls Now Hiring for Community Wealth Building

Reggie Gordon is the director of Richmond's Office of Community Wealth Building, the first of its kind in the nation. As he says, minorities all too often suffer from high unemployment or are pushed into low quality, service-sector jobs that don't give them the opportunity that they need.

YR Media
03/12/2019
Opinion: 5 Men Who Are Better Role Models Than Donald Trump

Last week, Glenn Beck said that James Bond and Donald Trump are the last male role models for red-blooded American boys. Fawning over the president's "masculine" energy, Beck said: He is the almost cartoon of an alpha dog. You know what I mean?

CNBC
10/06/2016
New $10 million Harvard study to investigate racial hardships

U.S. policymakers need comprehensive, unbiased research if they are to adequately address America's racial inequality, Harvard sociologist William Julius Wilson told CNBC on Thursday. Wilson's call for research follows two years of political unrest that have swept the nation following controversies, such as the fatal police shooting of black motorist Philando Castile in Minnesota and the Flint, Michigan, water crisis.

The Nation
06/05/2018
As a Black College Student, Poverty Was My Everyday Life

Before getting accepted into New York University, I had never contemplated sleeping on the sidewalk. But two weeks after moving to New York City in the fall of 2016, I was running out of options. I hardly knew a soul in the city.

HuffPost
08/01/2017
When 21 Savage trained his scope on American racism

The Atlanta rapper's track 'Nothin New' is a stunning combination of lived experience and historical literacy In the years since three queer, Black women's declaration of dignity first ignited a wave of pro-Black activism in 2013, several artists have openly aligned themselves with the fight to end state-sanctioned violence.