Are Americans Finally Facing Up to the True Costs of Mass Incarceration? Are Americans Finally Facing Up to the True Costs of Mass Incarceration?
The human devastation caused by prisons goes far beyond the cost to taxpayers.
Sep 16, 2015 / Dani McClain
Historians of Color Are Revolutionizing the Narrative of ‘American Exceptionalism’ Historians of Color Are Revolutionizing the Narrative of ‘American Exceptionalism’
For too long, we have looked in the wrong place and race for the genesis of our national story.
Sep 1, 2015 / David Levering Lewis
Give Trump This: The 14th Amendment Has Been Working Overtime Give Trump This: The 14th Amendment Has Been Working Overtime
How healthy is it to found a democracy on this one slender reed?
Aug 26, 2015 / Richard Kreitner
Stop Turning the End of Slavery Into Army Propaganda Stop Turning the End of Slavery Into Army Propaganda
Yes, the United States army, “wearing this blue uniform,” helped destroy slavery. Doesn’t it matter what else that army has done?
Aug 12, 2015 / Richard Kreitner
Jeb Bush Admires a Really Lousy President — And It’s Not His Brother Jeb Bush Admires a Really Lousy President — And It’s Not His Brother
James K. Polk was condemned by John Quincy Adams, Henry David Thoreau, and Abraham Lincoln on issues of human bondage and lawless militarism.
Aug 3, 2015 / John Nichols
What Was the Confederate Flag Doing in Cuba, Vietnam, and Iraq? What Was the Confederate Flag Doing in Cuba, Vietnam, and Iraq?
The Confederate flag’s military tenure continued long after the Civil War ended.
Jul 7, 2015 / Greg Grandin
Why the Black Church Forgives Dylann Roof Why the Black Church Forgives Dylann Roof
And how President Obama’s Charleston eulogy used the theology of black liberation to call the country to account for racism.
Jul 2, 2015 / Kelly Brown Douglas
June 30, 1936: Margaret Mitchell’s ‘Gone with the Wind’ Is Published June 30, 1936: Margaret Mitchell’s ‘Gone with the Wind’ Is Published
"Margaret Mitchell gives us our Civil War through Southern eyes exclusively, and no tolerant philosophy illumines the crimes of the invaders."
Jun 30, 2015 / Richard Kreitner
The Historical Roots of Dylann Roof’s Racism The Historical Roots of Dylann Roof’s Racism
South Carolina’s warped public display of its white-supremacist history confronts South Carolinians, white and black, with a stark message about who rules the state.
Jun 25, 2015 / Eric Foner
Blackness as Being, Whiteness as Nothingness Blackness as Being, Whiteness as Nothingness
Nell Painter and Herman Melville on American racism as existentialism.
Jun 23, 2015 / Greg Grandin