Roundup

Texas’s Power Grid Failing Shows why Biden Needs to Go Big on Infrastructure

by Teal Arcadi

The lesson of the Interstate Highway system is that when it comes to large and necessary infrastructure programs, opportunistic partisanship is better than laboriously building a bipartisan coalition.

What Good Is Impeachment, Anyway?

by Lindsay M. Chervinsky

The Constitution sets forth an expectation that Congress will check the power of the executive, through impeachment if necessary. The fact that it has failed to do so in th past doesn't excuse inaction in the present. 

The Unsettling Message of "Judas and the Black Messiah"

by Elizabeth Hinton

The film "brings the disparities engendered by a surveillance state into focus, leaving audiences to wonder what this country would look like if the war on white supremacy were fought with the same implacable intensity as the one against the Black Panther Party some 50 years ago."

McConnell’s Task: Purging the Crackpots and Bigots

by Kevin M. Schultz

William F. Buckley Jr. was able to advance conservative ideas by publicly dissociating from antisemites, Ayn Rand cultists and John Birch conspiracists on the right-wing fringes. Mitch McConnell's problem leading America's conservative party is that all those groups are back with a vengeance. 

A Forgotten Black Founding Father

by Danielle Allen

The figure of Black abolitionist Prince Hall has been discussed for his advocacy for abolition in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, but there remains a deeper work of historical reconstruction to understand his connections to family, community and civil society in the founding era. 

The Crossroads Facing Country Music after Morgan Wallen’s Use of a Racist Slur

by Amanda Marie Martinez

Country music has always been more racially diverse than the commercial recording and radio industries in Nashville have recognized. It's time for the industry to reflect the music's history. 

A Tragic Day at the Senate

by David Palumbo-Liu

A Stanford scholar of Asian American Studies decries the university administration's dismissal of faculty complaints that the conservative Hoover Institution has produced disinformation about both COVID-19 and the integrity of the 2020 presidential election under the imprimatur of Stanford's academic reputation. 

What a Public-Information Act Request Revealed About My College President

by L.D. Burnett

Were threats of disciplinary action against a professor for her private tweets demanded by angry state legislators holding the purse strings, or were they efforts to silence critics of a college president's handling of COVID protocols? 

Mardi Gras is a Critical American Tradition — Even Without Parades

by Olivia Durand

Mardi Gras rituals and public celebration have reflected the efforts of some white New Orleanians to establish and preserve white supremacy and the efforts of Black and Creole residents to express demands for freedom; the festivities are not just a party but "the active performance of what American society cares about."

Fighting School Segregation Didn’t Take Place Just In The South

by Ashley Farmer

"The Harlem 9’s fight serves as an important reminder that school desegregation protests were popular and successful in the North as well as in the South."

Convicting Trump would have Required Accepting a Half-Century of Republican Guilt

by Steven M. Gillon

Senate Republicans could not convict Donald Trump without also accepting their party's collective blame for the politics of white male resentment and Christian nationalism that the party has cultivated for decades before MAGA. 

Jews Fear what Follows after Republicans Applauded Marjorie Taylor Greene

by Deborah Lipstadt

"Having spent decades studying, teaching, researching and fighting antisemitism, Greene’s claims were familiar territory. All of them – space lasers, 9/11, school shootings, Trump’s election loss and so much else – shared a common theme: conspiracy."

The Roundup Top Ten for February 12, 2021

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

Would the Founders Convict Trump and Bar Him From Office?

by Eli Merritt

"Today’s Republican senators must at least be willing to break with their party and disappoint some of their constituents — and, yes, perhaps lose their jobs in coming elections — to serve the larger interest of protecting the nation."

Beyond Donald Trump: When Poisons Curdle

by Andrew Bacevich

The writer regrets not absorbing the message of MLK's prophetic "Beyond Vietnam" sermon when it was delivered in 1967. But the years since have shown he wasn't alone, and the nation's failure to reflect on the interconnection of racism, materialism and militarism accounts for the dire state of affairs reflected in the January 6 attack on the Capitol. 

Immigration Enforcement and the Afterlife of the Slave Ship

by Ryan Fontanilla

Since Ronald Reagan's executive order introduced the Haitian Migrant Interdiction Operation, the U.S. Coast Guard has been in an undeclared war against the 120,000 Haitian asylum-seekers it has interdicted, who are labeled "economic" rather than "political" refugees, as though the poverty they are fleeing is not political in nature. 

Why a Shootout Between Black Panthers and Law Enforcement 50 Years Ago Matters Today

by Paul Ringel

A 50 year-old police attack on members of the High Point chapter of the Black Panther Party has been largely forgotten, but it shows the historical development of a pattern of law enforcement that targets Black militants and allows white supremacist radicals free rein. 

What’s at Stake in the Fight Over Reopening Schools

by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

In cities like Chicago, parents anxious to return children to school have blamed teachers' unions. The historian and New Yorker columnist argues that some proponents of reopening are using racial equity arguments in bad faith while ignoring the gross racial inequalities that characterized schooling-as-usual before the pandemic and the work of teachers' unions to fight it.

Black History is Often Shunned, Like the Book I Wrote

by Martha S. Jones

The historian of voting rights and Black women's activism examines the reaction to a planned discussion of her book through a Louisiana public library. 

A Paradox: History Without Historians

by Jim Grossman

"We cannot heal this nation without accurately understanding its pathologies, which are by their very nature historical."