I have nothing of interest to add to the inauguration discussion. But I do want to link to Atrios on the shocking significance of Obama to anyone with an understanding of American history. Whatever one thinks of Obama, it says something positive about our country...
race
I'm not sure that this study is as scientific as its authors claim, but this piece on how baseball commentators use code words to describe players based upon race suggests.
On this date in 1925, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters was founded. Led by A. Philip Randolph, this labor union became the most important civil rights organization in mid-20th.
Ta-Nehisi Coates's essay, "Fear of a Black President," is probably the best essay on this country I've read in 2012. It's hard to even know what to excerpt here. Of many excellent passages, I'll go with this one: What we are now witnessing is not...
Jamelle Bouie has an excellent article arguing that progressives' dreams of a demographic majority with the rise of the Latino population is a chimera. Progressives have a vision that endless.
(It goes without saying that this is another one of those posts.) First of all, let me begin with what I won't be talking about: race. It's clearly going to be.
Victor Davis Hanson should be celebrated for writing an entire post without mentioning that he taught Classics to poor people. But he shouldn't be celebrated for writing what he wrote: [W]e all must deplore that [Pat] Buchanan was booted from MSNBC, and recognize why it...
Excellent Peter Birkenhead piece at Alternet on the exclusion of slavery on private plantation home tours in the South. Slave cabins are being turned into spas and restaurants rather than.
Chris Bertram lists the 46 races, circa 1914: African (black), Armenian, Bohemian, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Chinese, Croatian, Cuban, Dalmatian, Dutch, East Indian, English, Finnish, Flemish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Herzogovinian, Irish,.
James Forman, Jr. has a piece up in the forthcoming N.Y.U. Law Review attacking the analogies made between high rates of incarceration and Jim Crow. From the abstract: But despite its contributions, the Jim Crow analogy ultimately leads to a distorted view of mass incarceration....
Great to know that the hilarity of blackface remains popular at some of our nation's finer sororities and fraternities! And I thought we lived in a post-racial society! In all.
This issue came up in the comments to a post from earlier in the week. Before you answer that question with the obvious no, note that this was a real.