Roundup

A Brief History of Anti-Fascism

by James Stout

Today's anti-fascism isn’t about waving flags at football matches; it's about fighting, through direct action, racists and genocidaires wherever they can be found. The author discusses the history of the movement.

Yes, D.C.’s Emancipation Memorial Advances White Supremacy

by Rebekah Bryer

The argument that freed slaves commissioned the Emancipation Memorial is only half true; white officials used the funds but ignored designs that expressed a role for the enslaved in bringing about emancipation.

Monuments to a Complicated Past

by Sean Wilentz

Unless we can outgrow the conception of history as a simplistic battle between darkness and light, we will be the captives of arrogant self-delusions and false innocence.

“This Is Chaos:” Order Maintenance and the Fear of Black Anarchy in Atlanta

by Danielle Wiggins

Although the city has been called the "Black Mecca" of America, Black political leaders have long tried to suppress protest as part of a strategy to win over the city's business community. Today's protests reflect the limits of that strategy. 

Cancel the Fall College Football Season

by Victoria L. Jackson

For too long, instead of facilitating the intellectual advancement and economic empowerment of young Black men, college sports have helped make American universities another institution perpetuating the undervaluing of Black lives.

American Fascism: It Has Happened Here

by Sarah Churchwell

A cultural historian of the American right argues that efforts to trace American allegiance to European fascist movements miss the point. There are American traditions of racial dictatorship, strident nationalism and populist demagoguery that have come close to converging in a homegrown form of fascism. 

The Confederacy Is Not Worth Commemorating

by Jonathan Adler

A traitorous and failed attempt to secede over slavery is nothing to celebrate.

This Monument to White Supremacy Hides in Plain Sight

by Richard White

The invisibility of Drake’s Cross in a San Francisco park may make it the most fitting monument to white supremacy in the country.

Britain's Persistent Racism Cannot Simply Be Explained by its Imperial History

by David Edgerton

It played its part, but empire does not explain all of Britain’s record of elitism, exploitation and discrimination.

Britain Celebrates 'Windrush Day' Amid Broader Reckoning on Race

by Billy Perrigo

Here's what to know about the history and significance of this British celebration.

How 1970s U.S. Immigration Policy Put Mexican Migrants at the Center of a System of Mass Expulsion

by Adam Goodman

"90% of the people pushed out of the country during the 20th century were Mexicans deported via a coercive, fast-track administrative process euphemistically referred to as 'voluntary departure,'" writes Adam Goodman.

Don’t Be Fooled by Seattle’s Police-Free Zone

by Margaret O'Mara

Protest is forcing our city to reckon with truths that can and should make white citizens like me uncomfortable, and that remind us just how much Seattle is like the rest of America: impossibly divided, and impossibly full of hope.

The History That James Baldwin Wanted America to See

by Eddie S. Glaude, Jr.

"In his reflections on King, Baldwin wrote that we were witnessing the death of segregation, and that the question was how long and how expensive the funeral would be. If only he knew."

What Kind of Society Values Property Over Black Lives?

by Robin D.G. Kelley

"Let me offer a more productive question instead: What is the effect of obsessing over looting?"

The Black Women Who Launched the Original Anti-Racist Reading List

by Ashley Dennis

Black women librarians have been important leaders in promoting books and publishing standards that encourage readers to recognize human dignity and reject racist stereotypes in children's literature.

The Military Provides a Model for how Institutions can Address Racism

by Margaret B. Montgomery

Making good on the military's policies of desegregation required organized pressure to change military justice and the communities around military installations. 

Removing Lost Cause Monuments is the First Step in Dismantling White Supremacy

by Ashleigh Lawrence-Sanders

Black activists have always understood that the symbols of the Confederacy are tied to current politics of racial subordination; removing symbols can't be the end of work toward justice. 

Destroying Confederate Monuments isn’t ‘Erasing’ History. It’s Learning from It.

by Keisha N. Blain

Confederate monuments and symbols emerged in an effort to intimidate black Americans and uphold a revisionist — and racist — version of history. 

How to Stop the Cuts

by Sara Matthiesen

Historians and other faculty who want to protect their disciplines and their colleagues from budget cuts need to develop maps of power and how it operates in a university.

Martin Luther King’s Giant Triplets of Injustice

by Andrew Bacevich

Without addressing the fundamental evils of economic inequality and militarism American society will continue to fail to realize the promise of racial equality, as Martin Luther King warned in his 1967 speech at Riverside Church.