The Roundup Top Ten for July 16, 2021
There Is No Debate Over Critical Race Theoryby Ibram X. Kendi"Republican operatives... are effectively debating themselves. They have conjured an imagined monster to scare the American people and project themselves as the nation’s defenders from that fictional monster." |
America’s 40-Year Experiment With Big Business Is Overby Nelson LichtensteinBiden's executive order returns to a longstanding American view of concentrated economic power as a threat to democracy. |
A Major Supreme Court First Amendment Decision Could Be At Riskby Samantha BarbasThe "actual malice" standard of proof in libel suits established by New York Times v. Sullivan is an imperfect fit for the social media age, but right-wing calls to overturn the ruling would allow the rich and powerful to bully the press with expensive lawsuits. |
What the Hell Happened to the Claremont Institute?by Laura K. Field"Many of the people associated with Claremont, including several of its most prominent figures, have gone all in for MAGA—some even embracing its most authoritarian, paranoid, and racist strands." |
The Many Myths of the Term ‘Anglo-Saxon’by Mary Rambaran-Olm and Erik WadeReferences to America's "Anglo-Saxon heritage" are often racist dogwhistles, and usually fully detached from the history of the Anglo-Saxon people. |
The Legacy of 9/11by Stephen Wertheim"9/11 might well have 'changed everything' as momentously as was assumed—just not in the direction intended." |
Conservatives are Once Again Trying to Erase Black Historyby Tyler D. ParryThere are, in fact, millions of southerners from the antebellum,Civil War and Reconstruction eras that deserve to be memorialized. Their stories have been suppressed not out of political correctness but because they were Black southerners fighting for freedom and interracial democracy. |
From the Labor Struggles of the 1930s to Today, the Highlander School has Sought to Make America More Equitableby Jelani M. FavorsFrom the Great Depression through the Civil Rights era and beyond, Myles Horton's Highlander Folk School was a rare interracial space for political organizing. |
Autobiography with Scholarly Trimmingsby Zachary M. Schrag"The autobiographical tradition has served historians well, as both scholars and teachers. Our personal experiences—and those of our ancestors, biological or fictive—inspire our research, help us make sense of the past, and guide our students to questions that drive their curiosity and passion." |
Culture War in the Classroom: Time for Educators to Go on the Offensiveby Leo CaseyEducators need to fight back aggressively against the CRT panic, which is a right-wing effort to limit teaching and learning about racism in K-12 schools. A civics educator and teacher advocate explains how. |