Roundup

“Taxpayer Dollars”: The Origins of Austerity’s Racist Catchphrase

by Camille Walsh

The rhetoric of protecting "taxpayer dollars" hinges on a selective interpretation of who pays taxes that reinforces the privilege of affluent whites to have government follow their preferences. 

Does New York Still Want to Be the Capital of the World?

by Kenneth T. Jackson

Local development politics threaten a development in lower Manhattan, an example of the difficulty in building affordable housing that threatens the city's vitality.   

Her Crazy Driving is a Key Element of Cruella DeVil’s Evil. Here’s Why

by Genevieve Carpio

The depiction of Cruella DeVil as a dangerous and deranged driver in the new prequel to "101 Dalmatians" draws on deep-seated sexist tropes that recognize driving and mobility as aspects of women's social freedom. 

Philanthropy and the “Jewish Continuity Crisis”

by Hadas Binyamini

The particular focus of some large Jewish philanthropic organizations on promoting Zionism and denouncing intermarriage reflects changes in the broader philanthropic universe: private wealth supplanting the welfare state, and rules encouraging charities to invest and amass wealth, and the focus on nuclear families as social units.

In Reimagining a Key New Deal Program, Joe Biden can Eliminate its Racism

by Katie Thornton

Advocates for a new federal initiative modeled on New Deal-era conservation work programs must acknowledge and fight against the racial discrimination those programs perpetuated. Stories of the relatively few Black men who developed leadership skills and developed careers from CCC service show, however, that such programs could promote opportunity. 

Runaway American Dreams

by Dennis M. Hogan

What does it say about American liberalism that it's cultural tribune, Bruce Springsteen, is doing a corporate-sponsored podcast with the former President of the United States? 

Higher Education's Racial Reckoning Reaches Far Beyond Slavery

by Davarian L. Baldwin

American universities have grown in harmony with American racism throughout their history, from building on land appropriated from Native Americans to accommodating Jim Crow to promoting social science theories that justified segregation and directly encouraging gentrification through real estate purchasing. 

“The Greatest Purveyor of Violence in the World”

by Liz Theoharis

Martin Luther King's 1967 Riverside Church address pointed out that the cause nonviolent civil rights struggle required him to challenge the US government to end militarism. Today, the pandemic shows that an ethos of nonviolence must include an active approach to end suffering through global cooperation. 

The World the Suez Canal Made

by Aaron Jakes

"The purpose of the Suez Canal, from the perspective of both the Egyptian state and its European investors, was not simply to render the world more interconnected and international transport more efficient, but to extract transit fees from the ships passing through it."

The Closer You Look, the Worse it Gaetz

by Claire Potter

"It appears that Gaetz went to Washington to fight a culture war and stayed for the parties."

The Myth And The Truth About Interstate Highways

by Sarah Jo Peterson

A historian with experience in transportation planning takes a close look at the way that canonical texts in the highway planning field have erased the politics of road building and the way that the interstate highway system was always tied to urban land use planning and urban renewal. 

The Roundup Top Ten for April 1, 2021

The best opinion writing by historians and about history from around the web this week. 

The Painful History of the Georgia Voting Law

by Jason Morgan Ward

The new wave of vote suppression bills, like the one in Georgia, reflect a less obvious but important aspect of Jim Crow law: the use of superficially race-neutral language to keep specific groups from voting. The danger is that courts today will similarly fail to see these bills for what they are. 

Working with Histories that Haunt Us

by Marius Kothor

The author responds to a recent essay on the traumatic aspects of archival research. As a political exile from Togo, her identity and experience converged with subject matter she couldn't study at a remove. 

America’s Longest War Winds Down

by Andrew Bacevich

Public fatigue over the ongoing War on Terror must not allow political leaders to do what they seem to want most to do: avoid taking responsibility or learning lessons.

Who's Afraid of Antiracism?

by Chelsea Stieber

Recent books in different genres shed light on the limits of the French governing ideal of republican universalism for a society where racism is real and historically significant. 

Will Afghanistan make Biden's Presidency Turn Out like Truman's or LBJ's?

by Joe Cirincione

"Joe Biden can be a great president. But not if he is so afraid of attacks from the right that he repeats LBJ’s blunder and stumbles into a war we cannot win and never need fight."

Paleo Con

by Daniel Immerwahr

Why do the lifestyles of paleolithic hunter-gatherers repeatedly pop up as foils for western capitalist modernity? 

Government has Always Picked Winners and Losers

by David M.P. Freund

Government action has always been tied to economic growth, and always involved policy choosing winners and losers. Policies proposed by the Biden administration as part of the COVID recovery aren't inserting the government into the market, they're changing the parties favored by government policy. 

Decades Before the Civil War, Black Activists Organized for Racial Equality

by Kate Masur

Despite being a "free" state, Ohio imposed special restrictions on free Black residents within its borders. In 1837 Black Ohioans began to organize a non-Southern civil rights movement that anticipated modern struggles for justice.