Roundup

Coronavirus Can Afflict the Powerful. Yet Food Workers Remain the Most Vulnerable.

by Angela Stuesse

The rollback of workplace protections under a generation of conservative state and federal administrations has made low-wage service workers acutely vulnerable to COVID. 

Why ‘Stand Back and Stand By’ Should Set Off Alarm Bells

by Kathleen Belew

"What binds these disparate groups is that they espouse the violent defense of white supremacy."

This Vanishing Moment and Our Vanishing Future: John Hersey, Hiroshima, and the End of World

Postwar prosperity depended on a truce between capitalist growth and democratic fairness. Is it possible to get it back?

Remembering Wilma Rudolph, the “Queen of the Olympics”

by Scott N. Brooks and Aram Goudsouzian

"Maybe most important, Rudolph was a real Black woman, not a stereotype. The Olympics lent her a special platform at a unique moment in American history, and Rudolph capitalized upon it with grace."

Trump's Call for Freelance Poll-Watchers Summons a Dark History

by Nicole Hemmer

In 1981, the Republican National Committee used threatening signs and deployed off-duty officers to polling places in Black and Latino neighborhoods to help win the New Jersey governorship. This is the first presidential election year since the decree expired, making Trump's call for supporters to "watch the polls" ominous. 

Fearing a Fear of Germs

by Heather Murray

Will responses to the Coronavirus, like early public health steps taken in response to HIV, foster suspicion and mistrust? 

Roundup Top Ten for October 2, 2020

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

A Brief History of the Taxpayer in Chief

by Margaret O'Mara

The revelation, at the height of the Watergate investigation, that Richard Nixon had abused deductions to avoid nearly all of his tax obligations initiated modern interest in presidential candidates' tax returns. 

When Reporting on a Nation's Civil War Erases the Truth of a Beautiful People

by Roberto Lovato

US journalists who write about political violence in El Salvador have focused needed attention on the problem of repression, but have failed to give credit to the enduring humanity of Salvadoran people. 

President Washington and the Character of the First Supreme Court

by Lindsay M. Chervinsky

The first Supreme Court was not the magisterial institution we know today. Both Congress and the executive branch saw its role in political terms, and its composition as subject to change to reflect the shifting needs of the nation. 

Teaching the Racism of European Art Head-On

by Letha Ch'ien

"Race and European Art set out to examine our racial history clearly, without sidestepping  the ugly and uncomfortable parts of our heritage. I got lucky, because the students who signed up wanted to do the same work. And boy, was it depressing. I joked that I had become the professor of 'Bum You Out Studies'."

A Thousand Times Worse

by William Astore

Some of Donald Trump's more bloodthirsty rhetoric isn't exceptional at all; American culture has long been able to accommodate the idea of mass killing in war, even at incomprehensible scales. 

Trump is Afraid of Honest History

by James Grossman

Trump's proposal for a "1776 Commission" suggests that history teachers should be cheerleaders, reducing the nation’s complex past to a simplistic and inaccurate narrative of unique virtue and perpetual progress.

Black Women are Leading the Movement to End Police Violence

by Keisha N. Blain

Throughout the 20th century Black women have led movements in protest of police violence and unequal treatment under law. Today's protests carry on that legacy. 

D.C. Statehood Is Good for the Democrats, Good for Democracy

by George Derek Musgrove and Chris Myers Asch

DC statehood will secure the citizenship rights of the city's residents and begin to repair the crisis of legitimacy caused by the gross imbalance of political representation in the U.S. Senate. 

How Trump Brought Home the Endless War

by Stephen Wertheim

The Global War on Terror reconfigured American foreign policy around military force against abstract ideas and indeterminate enemies. The divisions of domestic politics set the stage for Donald Trump to move the war to the streets of the United States. 

The Electoral Punt

by Jonathan Wilson

Many people imagine they understand the Framers' intent in creating the Electoral College. They impute more clarity of purpose than they should to a group who essentially made a slapdash compromise in order to be finished with the ordeal of drafting the Constitution. 

The Debate Showed That Treating Trump ‘Fairly’ Only Helps Him Cheat

by Brendan Nyhan

"Will the media accurately describe Trump’s attacks on the election as dangerous and anti-democratic? Or will they run faux-neutral headlines like “Pure chaos on election night” if he says the vote is being stolen and tries to declare victory before all the votes are counted?"

Stopping Trump’s Coup

by Jim Sleeper

A phalanx of fomer officials was persuaded by a book to publicly press for abandoning tactical nuclear warfare as a military strategy because of the risk of global annihilation. The prospect of a Trump coup requires living former presidents to close ranks against the prospect of ignoring or challenging the election results. 

On the Peaceful Transfer of Power: Lessons from 1800

by Sara Georgini

Adams lost the presidency amid violent factionalism, a seething press, rampant electioneering, and the eruption of party politics, yet became a champion for the peaceful transfer of power.