When the George Floyd was killed, Americans took the streets in protest. When Donald Trump was elected president, the #MeToo movement took the streets in protest. Why don’t we see similar uprisings in support of working class Americans fighting for...
social class
Nicholas Kristof on “Rich Men North of Richmond”: “Liberals are properly attentive to racial injustice but have a blind spot about class.”
It is the #1 song in America right now. Have you heard it yet? On his You Tube channel Oliver Anthony, the writer and singer of the song, says: Watch: Here is Nicholas Kristof, a liberal columnist at The New...
Does a fixation with identity politics hurt the fight against racism?
Over at Jacobin, Taj Ali interviews writer Kenan Malik, the author of Not So Black and White: A History of Race from White Supremacy to Identity Politics. Here is a taste: TAJ ALI: You discuss the decline of cross-racial class...
“The Ivy League doesn’t have low-income students because it doesn’t want low-income students”
Here is Aatish Bhatia, Claire Cainb Miller, and Josh Katz of The New York Times: Elite colleges have long been filled with the children of the richest families: At Ivy League schools, one in six students has parents in the...
The Author’s Corner with Mark Erlich
Mark Erlich is the Wertheim Fellow at The Center for Labor and a Just Economy at Harvard Law School and the retired Executive Secretary Treasurer of the New England Regional Council of Carpenters. This interview is based on his new...
The Author’s Corner with Thomas A. Castillo
Thomas A. Castillo is Associate Professor of History at Coastal Carolina University. This interview is based on his book, Working in the Magic City: Moral Economy in Early Twentieth-Century Miami (University of Illinois Press, 2022). JF: What led you to...
The Author’s Corner with Victoria E. Ott
Victoria E. Ott is James A. Wood Professor of American History and the coordinator of Gender and Women’s Studies at Birmingham-Southern College. This interview is based on her new book, The Failure of Our Fathers: Family, Gender, and Power in...
The Author’s Corner with Gregory A. Andrews
Gregory A. Andrews is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History at Texas State University. This interview is based on his new book, Shantyboats and Roustabouts: The River Poor of St. Louis, 1875–1930 (LSU Press, 2022.) JF: What led you to write Shantyboats...
The Author’s Corner with Chad Pearson
Chad Pearson is Principal Lecturer of History at the University of North Texas. This interview is based on his new book, Capital’s Terrorists: Klansmen, Lawmen, and Employers in the Long Nineteenth Century (University of North Carolina Press, 2022). JF: What...
The Author’s Corner with Ahmed White
Ahmed White is Nicholas Rosenbaum Professor of Law at the University of Colorado Boulder Law School. This interview is based on his new book, Under the Iron Heel: The Wobblies and the Capitalist War on Radical Workers (University of California Press, 2022). JF:...
Chris Lehmann remembers Barbara Ehrenreich
We lost a great cultural critic and writer last week. I have benefited immensely over the years from Barbara Ehrenreich‘s work on social class in America. She is well-known for her 2001 book Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By...
The Author’s Corner with Rebecca Sharpless
Rebecca Sharpless is Professor of History at Texas Christian University. This interview is based on her new book, Grain and Fire: A History of Baking in the American South (University of North Carolina Press, 2022). JF: What led you to...
“Economically vulnerable people of color are significantly more anti-abortion than rich white folks are”
Here is Fordham University moral philosopher Charles Camosy at Religion News Service: Stop me if you’ve heard claims like these since Justice Samuel Alito’s draft majority opinion was leaked: “We need to center the stories of the economically vulnerable and...
The Author’s Corner with Kathryn Olivarius
Kathryn Olivarius is Assistant Professor of History at Stanford University. This interview is based on her new book, Necropolis: Disease, Power, and Capitalism in the Cotton Kingdom (Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2022). JF: What led you to write Necropolis? KO:...
Blame the Bobos
David Brooks believes that if you want to understand the Trump backlash in 2016, you need to revisit the folks he wrote about in his 2000 book Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There. Here...
Most Americans “do not learn piano from the age of five, do not attend private school” and “do not have SAT tutors”
According to Elizabeth Currid-Halkett, the members of the “aspirational class,” for all their tree-hugging and wokeness, have lost their way. Here is a taste of her piece at The Hedgehog Review: According to the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, cultural capital...
How do we have “thick” conversations when our mediums are so “thin”?
Ezra Klein talks to University of North Carolina sociologist Tressie McMillan Cottom. They cover a broad range of topics such as writing for public audiences, nostalgia, blogging, generational change, race, disabilities, moral panic, social class, status, blondness, smartness, and the...