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Baseball and the Unspeakable

As history teachers struggle with how to handle racist slurs in primary sources, an unexpected remark from a ballplayer in 1938 illustrates that this struggle isn't new. Columnist Neil Steinberg asks if making words unspeakable blows up in the faces of teachers more often than bigots.

Is "Cancel Culture" an Existential Threat to America or a Moral Panic?

by Michael Hobbes

Podcaster and moral panic debunker Michael Hobbes asks what's really happening with the current "cancel culture" uproar. 

"He Never Stopped Ripping Things Up": Trump's Habitual Document Destruction

Donald Trump's personal defiance of the Presidential Records Act appears to have been widespread, purposeful, and illegal. 

National Archive Had to Retrieve White House Records from Mar-a-Lago

In an odd twist that no one could have seen coming, the Trump administration appears to have violated legal requirements for the preservation and security of presidential records. 

For Trump and Trumpists, the Law is Always White

by Melissa Gira Grant

In singling out the Black elected officials who thwarted his bid to steal the election and are investigating his political and business affairs, Trump evoked the Reconstruction-era rhetoric of white southerns under attack, which, as Eric Foner wrote, justified a massive wave of racist political violence. 

"The Last Refuge of Scoundrels": E.O. Wilson's Support for Scientific Racism

by Stacy Farina and Matthew Gibbons

Evolutionary biology has long been used to promote the ideology that "races" are real and meaningful divisions of the human species. A recent controversy about a recently-deceased leader in the field shows that there is more work to be done to ensure that science no longer lends credibility to racism. 

Conservative Book Banners Have Ties to Rich Megadonors

Local groups lodging complaints about curriculum and school library books are part of a national network of astroturf organizations that combine mass membership with the resources of major ideologically-driven donors. 

The Banning of Maus: Even Dumber Than You Think

David Corn says that for the students of McMinn County, "their intellectual development is being held hostage by board members who are stuck in another era, who find vulgarity in an old pop song, and who cannot be bothered to do their own homework."

A Mississippi Conservative Took the Only CRT Course in the State. Here's What Happened

Engaging with the now-notorious body of legal scholarship shook up Brittany Murphree's assumptions about the law and society, leading her to oppose her party's state legislation restricting how issues of race can be taught.

Black Parents' Group Fights Texas Book Bans

"The determined mothers of the Texas-based Round Rock Black Parents Association are speaking out against the multiple attempts of book bans in their kids’ schools."

Two Boston Council Members Propose Reparations Study Commission

The group would examine the history of racism in Boston and its effects on the city’s Black residents.

Child Holocaust Survivor: Whoopi Goldberg's Remarks "Careless" and "Saddening"

Survivor and Holocaust educator Joan Salter says that the TV host's remarks grossly miss the nature of antisemitic ideology, oppression and genocide under Nazism. 

Virginia's Great Dismal Swamp a Haven from Slavery in Middle-Grades Novel "Freewater"

Author Amina Luqman-Dawson tells a story rooted in her research about the lives of people who escaped slavery and endured danger to build free communities in the swamps of Virginia. 

The Hidden History of the New Deal's "Black Brain Trust"

Writer Michael Harriot examines the influence of a group of African American advisors to Franklin Roosevelt, which began with the friendship between Eleanor Roosevelt and Mary McLeod Bethune.

FBI Identifies 6 Juvenile Persons of Interest in HBCU Bomb Threats

On the first day of Black History Month multiple historically Black campuses reported bomb threats. 

Dutch Publisher Stops Printing Book Alleging Fellow Jew Betrayed Anne Frank's Family

Two Dutch historians of the World War II period argue the book's claims that Arnold van den Bergh turned the Franks over to the Nazis are poorly supported speculations. 

New Orleans's Second Line Tradition is a Reminder of the Need for Collective Grieving

Funeral processions and independent second line marches in New Orleans demonstrate the power of the collective and public rituals, and represent the cultural influences of African, Caribbean and indigenous traditions in the city.

Outrage over Boris Johnson's Parties is Part of a Long Tradition

Since aristocratic 1920s Brits adopted the cocktail culture of Prohibition-era America, the idea of a hard-partying elite living by their own rules has been a source of popular outrage, with the Prime Minister only the latest case. 

Whoopi Goldberg's Holocaust History Latest "The View" Flap

The host's comments that the Nazi persecution of Jews was not rooted in racism drew argument from fellow panelists and is at odds with historians' understanding of European antisemitism. 

Books on Race, Sexuality Disappearing from Texas School Shelves

In a sample of 100 Texas school districts, 75 formal requests to remove books from libraries were filed between September and December (only one was filed in those districts a year before). But some students are fighting back.