The Roundup Top Ten for December 17, 2021
Worst Isn't Over for Political Violence in Rhetoric or Actionby Joanne Freeman"Here’s the problem, and it’s foreboding: If a line is crossed, and the occasion passes unacknowledged, was there really a line?" |
Frederick Douglass and American Empire in Haitiby Peter James Hudson"Douglass was aware of the moral limitations of U.S. exceptionalism and cautioned against its abuse—especially against countries such as Haiti that had neither the economic nor the military resources to easily withstand U.S. pressure." |
When American Prep Schools Ran Student Exchanges with Elite Nazi Academiesby Helen Roche"The Napola program appeared to have achieved some success in persuading their American partners to give the Nazi regime the benefit of the doubt, at least in the short term." |
bell hooks Leaves Legacy of Feminist Thought Embracing and Embraced by Black Womenby Anthea Butler"I’m among the generation of teachers who were influenced by her thinking and by her admonition that 'popular culture is where the pedagogy is, where the learning is'." |
Americans Have been Forgetting Afghanistan for 20 Years. I Didn't Have That Luxuryby Ali A. Olomi"Every Afghan American I know has lost a family member or friend. The war became part of who we were and even shaped our career trajectories. Afghan friends became immigration attorneys and activists. I became a historian." |
Passing for Racial Democracyby Stephanie Reist"Color and race are not always synonymous in the Brazilian context. Features like hair texture, education, place of origin and address, and social class all factor into how people conceive of color, resulting in what researcher Elizabeth Hordge-Freeman calls a traitocracy that is more complex than a pigmentocracy or simple colorism." |
(Re)locating Sites of Memory in Appalachia Through Black Spaces and Storiesby Kristan McCullum"I grew up in Jenkins not knowing its full history. I never knew the church I was raised in was once the movie theater that required Black patrons to sit in the balcony." |
Baseball's Lockout Shows the Growing Power of Laborby Gwendolyn Lockman"In many ways, the twists and turns of baseball’s labor battle over salaries, pensions and more have reflected the ebbs and flows of labor power in the United States." |
The Government Penby Nick Delehanty"The Skilcraft pen is indeed more than a pen. It’s the physical embodiment of New Deal social policies; it’s the product of disabled people’s labor, labor which has long been a site of contestation." |
Beware Prophecies of Civil Warby Fintan O'TooleNorthern Ireland's history shows how "premonitions of civil war served not as portents to be heeded, but as a warrant for carnage," as a seemingly inevitable mass conflict justifies and normalizes smaller-scale political violence as an everyday phenomenon. |