Roundup Top Ten for April 9, 2021
The Meaning of the Democrats’ Spending Spreeby Keeanga-Yamahtta TaylorJoe Biden supported a balanced budget amendment in 1995, ran as the "establishment" candidate in the Democratic primaries, and has been a regular advocate of bipartisanship. So why is his administration proposing the massive American Rescue Plan Act, and showing a willingness to act without securing Republican cooperation? A tour of recent history can explain. |
Our Greatest Libraries are Melting Awayby David FarrierIce core samples from the Greenland shelf are a physical archive of the long sweep of human history, and demonstrate the connections of humanity's past and future. |
Without Asian American Studies, We Can’t Understand American Racismby Min Hyoung SongThe establishment of Asian American Studies and ethnic studies programs has been essential to putting Asian American scholars (and scholars of Asian Americans) in position to engage the mass media around events like the Atlanta shootings. As those programs are under fire, it's time to recognize their value. |
What Manhattan Beach’s Racist Land Grab Really Meantby Alison Rose JeffersonDebates over the redress of past racial injustice must acknowledge that some past actions have harmed communities in ways that can't be repaired, including th loss of space for communal leisure or equal access to everyday pleasures. |
A Poem That Shows How to Remember the Holocaustby James Loeffler and Leora Bilsky"Lemkin’s anguished text also explains why the world had already begun to forget the Holocaust. Genocide represents more than a large-scale physical assault on human bodies, he suggests; it is also an attack on the very existence of minority cultures. In a genocide, books are burned and memories are extinguished." |
“Taxpayer Dollars”: The Origins of Austerity’s Racist Catchphraseby Camille WalshThe rhetoric of protecting "taxpayer dollars" hinges on a selective interpretation of who pays taxes that reinforces the privilege of affluent whites to have government follow their preferences. |
Higher Education's Racial Reckoning Reaches Far Beyond Slaveryby Davarian L. BaldwinAmerican universities have grown in harmony with American racism throughout their history, from building on land appropriated from Native Americans to accommodating Jim Crow to promoting social science theories that justified segregation and directly encouraging gentrification through real estate purchasing. |
The World the Suez Canal Madeby Aaron Jakes"The purpose of the Suez Canal, from the perspective of both the Egyptian state and its European investors, was not simply to render the world more interconnected and international transport more efficient, but to extract transit fees from the ships passing through it." |
Restoring the People’s Universitiesby Alejandra Marchevsky and Jeanne Theoharis"We see this trend across the nation: when students of color finally began to gain access to higher education, disinvestment and the shrinking of educational opportunity followed." |
Biden’s Plan for Central America Is a Smokescreenby Aviva ChomskyThe Biden plan for Central America revives the Cold War formula of business-friendly economic development and militarized security in the name of stopping migration toward the US. This, the author argues, amounts to doubling down on failed policies that have driven migration for decades. |