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Roundup Top Ten for June 19, 2020

The GOP Missed Its Chance To Embrace Martin Luther King Jr.

by Tim Galsworthy

Invoking a sanitized and selective memory of Dr. King enables politicians and voters to trumpet order and exhibit faux outrage at disorder, rather than face up to endemic racial inequalities.

The History of the “Riot” Report

by Jill Lepore

How government commissions became alibis for inaction.

The End of Black Politics

by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

The 1960s generation of Black protest demanded a stronger presence in local government. The current protest movement recognizes that presence isn't enough; leaders must advance an agenda that serves their least advantaged constituents. 

Bail Funds are Having a Moment in 2020

by Melanie Newport

Activists have supported protestors by contributing to bail funds, but it's time to follow through on the longstanding call of social movement leaders to abolish cash bail as a symbol and symptom of unequal justice.

After World War II, Most ‘Ordinary Nazis’ Returned to Lives of Obscurity. The World Must Recover Their Stories Before It’s Too Late

by Daniel Lee

The act of recovering perpetrators’ voices sheds light on consent and conformity under the swastika, enabling us to ask new questions about responsibility, blame and manipulation.

A Statue Was Toppled. Can We Finally Talk About the British Empire?

by Gurminder K. Bhambra

Protesters who dumped Edward Colston's statue into Bristol harbor have forced a long-overdue discussion of how the British Empire conquered and governed in the past and set the stage for racial divisions in contemporary Britain. 

A Silver Lining for the Golden Arches in Black America

by Marcia Chatelain

McDonald’s has profited handily from its Black customers, while its presence in Black communities has led to a vexing set of circumstances for Black wealth and health.

A Short History of Black Women and Police Violence

by Keisha N. Blain

Despite, or perhaps because of, their own vulnerability to state-sanctioned violence, black women have been key voices in the struggle to end it.

The Disgrace of Donald Trump

by Sean Wilentz

Trump wants to copy Richard Nixon's "law and order" appeals, but may end up echoing Herber Hoover's violent crushing of the Bonus March movement. 

Appalachian Hillsides as Black Ecologies: Housing, Memory, and The Sanctified Hill Disaster of 1972

by Jillean McCommons

The Sanctified Hill disaster exposed the vulnerability of Black people to climate events due to a combination of placement and neglect.