Current

Commentary. Reflection. Judgment.

racism

Racism and interstate highways

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Joe Biden’s new infrastructure plan singled out the Claiborne Expressway in New Orleans as a “racist highway. The plan sets aside $20 billion to “reconnect” neighborhoods that were racially divided by highway construction. Over at NPR, Noel King interviews New […]

The Western Klan

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When we think of the Ku Klux Klan we think about the American South during Reconstruction and the 1920s. But as Kevin Waite informs us in his recent piece at The Atlantic, the Klan also targeted Chinese immigrants in California. […]

When the KKK came to Harvard

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This is an excellent piece of undergraduate historical research and reporting. Here is a taste of Simon J. Levien’s piece at The Harvard Crimson: This article is my attempt to do “good history.” It represents a year’s worth of archival […]

Why do people say that the Senate filibuster is racist?

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Here is Zack Beauchamp at VOX: The question of what to do about the filibuster — the once-arcane Senate rule that creates a de facto 60-vote threshold for major legislation — is arguably the most important topic in Washington, DC, […]

A Black Evangelical family in Trumpland

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Isaac Bailey is the James K. Batten Professor of Public Policy at Davidson College. In a recent piece at Politico, he describes what his son experienced at Erskine College, a Reformed Christian college in Due West, South Carolina. Here is […]

What the Oprah interview with Meghan and Harry revealed

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I have been fascinated with the responses to the article I posted about here. (What follows assumes you have read Brendan O’Neill’s piece). It is interesting to watch how the British royal family elicits such strong responses from Americans. Nothing […]

A socialist defense of Abraham Lincoln monuments in Chicago

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The city of Chicago recently launched a group called The Chicago Monuments Project. Here is the project’s mission statement: The Chicago Monuments Project intends to grapple with the often unacknowledged – or forgotten – history associated with the City’s various municipal […]

The Dr. Seuss controversy

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In case you haven’t heard, Seuss Enterprises will no longer publish six Dr. Seuss (Theodore Geisel) books because they “portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong.” They are: And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street […]

The real meaning of your Monopoly board

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Did you know that the prices of the properties on the Monopoly board reflect the economic and racial demographics of 1930s Atlantic City, New Jersey? Here is Mary Pilon at The Atlantic; Take a good look at a Monopoly board. The […]

*The Brownies Book*

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In the 1920s, Black activist and intellectual W.E.B. Du Bois published The Brownies’ Book, a monthly magazine for Black children. Here is Anna Holmes at The Atlantic: Du Bois had a somewhat radical vision of Black children as foot soldiers […]