It Is to Me
“I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood. I had, as I now think vainly, flattered myself that without very much bloodshed it might be...
Model Minority?
The Chinese in America by Iris Chang is a sweeping narrative history exploring the wholly unique circumstances of Chinese migration to the United States. Most notably, two general waves of Chinese migration were separated by an 80 year period...
Citizen Korematsu
Following the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, more than 120,000 Japanese Americans were gathered from their homes along the Pacific coast and relocated to camps within the interior of the country. The large majority of these...
Life is Good
In Enlightenment Now: The Case For Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress, evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker defies the persistent drumbeat of negativity that floods our avenues of information. Through six dozen graphs that break down the vitality of the human...
Uncle Joe
Dear Uncle Joe, Given the general attitude towards government in the twenty-first century, it occurs to me that the expectations surrounding your recent promotion are rather low. With that said, you have been pursuing this job for quite some...
Black and White Spaces
Racial segregation in America has often been viewed through two lenses. In the South, Jim Crow laws separated the races in schools and other public spaces. This is de jure (by law) segregation. Outside the South, de facto (in...
The Gift of History
The history of the United States* has been a shared experience. Whether your family recently stole its way across the Southern border or has been here long before Columbus; whether your roots in this country were planted at Ellis...
Making Sausage
In The Secret Life of Groceries: The Dark Miracle of the American Supermarket (2020), “hands-on investigative journalist” Benjamin Lorr peels back that thin layer of self-delusion that separates almost all of us from the troubling truths of modern society....
Long Division
A podcast series titled To See Each Other focuses on the activities of politically progressive organizations throughout the country that were absolutely floored by the election of Donald Trump in 2016. Sponsored by an umbrella group known as People’s...
A Voting Rights Déjà Vu
Ari Berman’s Give Us the Ballot (2015) documents the history of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Berman’s book begins with the great struggle to bring about the VRA’s passage including one of the most dramatic moments of the...
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