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Politics, Race

The Hidden Stakes of the 1619 Controversy

Seeking to discredit those who wish to explain the persistence of racism, critics of the New York Times’s 1619 Project insist the facts don’t support its proslavery reading of the American Revolution. But they obscure a longstanding debate within the field of U.S. history over that very issue—distorting the full case that can be made for it.

David Waldstreicher

Class & Inequality, Race

American Bottom

Designed as a bucolic working-class suburb of St. Louis, the nearly all-black town of Centreville now floods with raw sewage every time it rains. “Bring us back some help,” residents say, living through an environmental horror that evokes centuries of official disinterest in black suffering, as well as a future in which the poor are left to suffer in areas made uninhabitable by climate change.

Walter Johnson

Race

The Radical Lives of Abolitionists

History has tended to sanitize the lives of abolitionists, many of whom were involved in other radical movements as well, including Free Love, which promoted women’s independence and an end to traditional marriage.

Britt Rusert

Race

Black Abolitionists Believed in Taking Up Arms

Long before the Civil War, black abolitionists shared the consensus that violence would be necessary to end slavery. Unlike their white peers, their arguments were about when and how to use political violence, not if.

Randal Maurice Jelks

Gender & Sexuality

Who Is an Ally?

Before allies were included in the LGBT movement, they had never been afforded equal footing within a social justice movement. But is this an effective strategy for building solidarity?

Micki McElya

Arts in Society

Walks in the Park: On the Foreignness of the Socialist Past

December 22 marks the thirtieth anniversary of the overthrow of the Romanian socialist state of Nicolae Ceaușescu. In a work of memoir, Nachescu recalls growing up under communism and wonders about the world Romanians hoped would follow its fall.

Ileana Nachescu

Politics

Atone—But Not Because It Will Save Democracy

Germany’s official policy of shame about its past is a model the United States should adopt. But it won’t protect either country from far-right extremism.

Samuel Clowes Huneke

Politics

How Not to Do Activism

The calculus of power isn’t defined by hits or clicks or tweets. It is measured in relationships and meaningful reactions over time.

Michael Gecan

Podcast

A People’s Anthology

From Claudia Jones to the Combahee River Collective, our new podcast explores key texts from the urban rebellions of the 1960s and ‘70s.

Boston Review

Race

Against Black Homeownership

The real estate market is so structured by race that black families will never come out ahead.

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

Class & Inequality, Politics

The Long History of Debt Cancellation

Moral thinking about debt has fluctuated throughout U.S. history. Today’s calls for cancellation suggest it may be poised for transformation once again.

Olivia Schwob

Arts in Society, Class & Inequality

Zero Hour: The First Days of New Berlin

30 years after the Wall, the story of Berlin's anarchist utopia.

Paul Hockenos

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