Roundup

Think The Trump Tapes Are Worse Than The Nixon Tapes? Think Again.

by Leonard Steinhorn

Recordings of the President reveal not only racial bigotry but a cynical indifference to the rule of law and a belief that any means were justified to prevail over political adversaries. No, we're talking about Richard Nixon. 

This Republican Party Is Not Worth Saving

by Tom Nichols

"The hardening of the GOP into a toxic conglomeration of hucksters, quislings, racists, theocrats, and cultists is already happening. The party gladly accepted support from white supremacists and the Russian secret services, and now welcomes QAnon kooks into its caucus. Conservatives must learn that the only way out of “the wilderness” is first to vanquish those who led them there."

In 2020, Voting Rights are on the Ballot

by Peniel Joseph

Black citizenship remains the best yardstick to measure the nation’s democratic health, and even before the coronavirus pandemic, the Black vote in large parts of the country remained imperiled.

The Players’ Revolt Against Racism, Inequality, and Police Terror

by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

The radicalization of young Black professional athletes is a stunning development in this unfolding, raucous movement, one that demonstrates the sheer scale of racial inequality and a deep need to do something about it.

The Black Ambition of "A Raisin In The Sun"

by Koritha Mitchell

Lorraine Hansberry's play and the critical response to it offer a lens on American theater's current reckoning with racism and exclusion, as "the play reveals that what has been framed as “integration” is really about getting white people to stop hoarding everything desirable."

The Depression-Era Lessons That Can Solve Today’s Evictions Crisis

by Anya Jabour

Social workers and researchers Edith Abbott and Sophonisba Breckinridge conducted an important study of evictions in Chicago during the Great Depression and advocated for federal support for a minimum standard of living including housing. The looming eviction crisis demands similar big thinking. 

A Forgotten Campaign To Support ‘Displaced Homemakers’ May Help Women Today

by Suzanne Kahn

A 1970s initiative by feminist Tish Sommers for legislation to help women who had worked at home as caregivers to more easily reenter the paid workforce. Her preferred term "displaced homemaker" emphasized the economic importance of domestic care work most often performed by women and women's vulnerability to economic disruption and provides a useful way to think about solutions to the problems caused by COVID today.

Voltaire Spread Darkness, Not Enlightenment. France Should Stop Worshipping Him.

by Nabila Ramdani

Nabila Ramdani argues that the French Enlightenment thinker's abstract defenses of free speech and inquiry should not overshadow the concrete content of what he said and wrote, which included historically influential racist and antisemitic bigotry cloaked in the language of reason and science.

Our Long, Forgotten History of Election-Related Violence

by Jelani Cobb

A weather forecast is not a prediction of the inevitable. We are not doomed to witness a catastrophic tempest this fall, but anyone who is paying attention knows that the winds have begun to pick up. 

“All the World’s a Harem”: Perceptions of Masked Women during the 1918–1919 Flu Pandemic

by Jessica Brabble, Ariel Ludwig and E. Thomas Ewing

Contemporary sources show that women's mask-wearing practices during the 1918 flu pandemic could be viewed through a sexist lens, but women adapted the practice to claim independence and found examples in popular culture.

Trump and Critical Race Theory: What is Really Going On?

by John Fea

Trump and his followers want open discourse, debate, and the free exchange of ideas, but only with those ideas that they find agreeable. 

Trump’s 2020 Playbook Is Coming Straight From Southern Enslavers

by Elizabeth R. Varon

In arguing that radical protesters endanger U.S. law and order, Trump is echoing the attacks leveled by Southern enslavers against abolitionists.

The Interdisciplinarity and Influence of Alan Trachtenberg

by Jennifer Giuliano and Lauren Tilton

"The need to interrogate, understand, and even disrupt how we see images is a part of Trachtenberg’s enduring legacy that becomes more important as researchers are distanced from physical archives." The work of Alan Trachtenberg in developing historical methodologies for understanding images is crucial for historians' ability to speak to current affairs.

Covid-19 Has Exposed The Consequences Of Decades Of Bad Public Housing Policy

by Gillet Gardner Rosenblith

Poor and economically precarious Americans are at risk of eviction in the COVID-19 crisis because American policymakers have spent decades rejecting a public role in providing decent housing outside of the market system. 

Our Summer of White Male Supremacy

by Ibram X. Kendi

"Adherents of Trumpism think they are facing a choice between white male supremacy and 'anarchy'."

Korean War: Open Questions

by Gregg Brazinsky, Chen Jian, Sheila Miyoshi Jager, Jiyul Kim and Michael J. Devine

A group of historians describe the major unanswered questions about the Korean War in terms of its military conduct, its impact on the people of Korea, relations between the United States and China, and memorialization and memory.

Fourth World: From the End of History to American Carnage

by Tom Engelhardt

A critic of American empire examines the unforeseen path from the triumphal "end of history" moment of the collapse of the Soviet Union to the rise of Donald Trump. How did the nation squander the opportunity? 

‘Weimar America’? The Trump Show Is No Cabaret

by Niall Ferguson

Popular culture and lazy historical comparisons have elevated Weimar Germany as an analogue for contemporary America. Ferguson suggests reasons to dial back the comparisons; while current events are troubling, US democracy is more stable and stronger than the Weimar Republic.

I'm So Bored with the Lost Colonists

by Michael Leroy Oberg

Speculative energy focused on the fate of the "Lost Colonists" of Roanoke Island might be better spent investigating how Native people responded to their arrival. 

The Supreme Court’s Starring Role In Democracy’s Demise

by Carol Anderson

The Supreme Court today repeats the shameful actions of the courts in the 1890s, which gave judicial cover to state laws explicitly designed to disenfranchise Black voters, by accepting bad faith arguments that the laws in question were race-neutral.