African-American GIs of WWII: Fighting for democracy abroad and at home

  Until the 21st century, the contributions of African-American soldiers in World War II barely registered in America’s collective memory of that war.

  The “tan soldiers,” as the Black press affectionately called them, were also for the most part left out of the triumphant narrative of America’s “Greatest Generation.” In order to tell their story of helping defeat Nazi Germany in my 2010 book, “A Breath of Freedom: The Civil Rights Struggle, African American GIs, and Germany,” I had to conduct research in more than 40 different archives in the U.S. and Germany.

Mass deportations don’t keep out ‘bad genes’ − they use scientific racism to justify biased immigration policies

  Threats of mass deportations loom on the post-2024 election horizon. Some supporters claim these will protect the country from immigrants who bring “bad genes” into America. But this is a misguided use of the language of science to give a sheen of legitimacy to unscientific claims.

  Politicians invoke genetics to confirm false stereotypes that immigrants are more violent than native-born citizens as a result of biological differences. This is despite the fact that immigrants living in the country with or without legal authorization have significantly lower crime and violent crime rates than U.S. citizens. Moreover, there is no strong genetic evidence to support a biological predisposition for committing violent acts.

How Trump’s appeal to nostalgia deliberately evokes America’s more-racist, more-sexist past

  There’s a reason Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign is working hard to evoke nostalgia: People who are nostalgic – meaning, people who long for America’s “good old days” – were more likely to vote for Republican candidates in the 2022 midterm elections, according to research I conducted along with collaborators Kirby Goidel and Paul Kellstedt.

Yes, efforts to eliminate DEI programs are rooted in racism

  Right-wing activists who have long criticized liberalism and “wokeness” in higher education and helped force the resignation of Claudine Gay, Harvard University’s first African American president, have now set their sights on ending the diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, programs that these activists claim helped place figures like Gay in her job in the first place.

  Christopher Rufo, the conservative activist who played a pivotal role in forcing Gay’s resignation, stated this view bluntly on X – formerly known as Twitter– following Gay’s ouster: “Today, we celebrate victory. Tomorrow, we get back to the fight. We must not stop until we have abolished DEI ideology from every institution in America.”

They want silence around Rosa Parks

  The Rosa Parks statue in Montgomery’s Court Square is not what you expect from a monument. That’s why I love it.

  There’s no pedestal. No stage. Nothing separating the viewer from Parks. It’s a life-sized and human-scaled depiction of a civil rights hero.

  This is no divinely ordained messenger walking in the sky above us. This is a woman going home after a day at work – a dignified, respected citizen with a long track record of activism. She has a plan for the bus ride ahead.

Alabama can’t look away from difficult history

  Rep. Ed Oliver (R-Dadeville) predicted in January that a “divisive concepts” bill — which presumes exposure to hard or unflattering history will melt children into gelatin — would pass in the first or second week of the legislative session.

  And happy Black History Month to you, too. The good news is that the 2024 Alabama Legislature finished its second week last Thursday without the bill — sponsored by Oliver over the last several years — rearing its rage-choked head in the Statehouse.

For 150 years, Black journalists have known what Confederate monuments really stood for

  In October 2023, nearly seven years after the deadly Unite the Right white supremacist rally, the statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville, Virginia was melted down. Since then, two more major Confederate monuments have been removed: the Confederate Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery and the Monument to the Women of the Confederacy in Jacksonville, Florida.

  Defenders of Confederate monuments have argued that the statues should be left standing to educate future generations. One such defender is former President Donald Trump, the likely GOP presidential nominee in 2024.

Martin Luther King Jr., union man

  If Martin Luther King Jr. still lived, he’d probably tell people to join unions.

  King understood racial equality was inextricably linked to economics. He asked, “What good does it do to be able to eat at a lunch counter if you can’t buy a hamburger?”

Lessons for today from the overlooked stories of Black teachers during the segregated civil rights era

  My grandmother’s name was Mrs. Zola Jackson.

  As one of the handful of Black teachers in Mississippi during the Jim Crow era of racially segregated public schools, she faced a daunting challenge in providing a first-class education to students considered second-class citizens.

New FBI hate crime report sparks concern, prompts action

  On May 14, 2022, an 18-year-old white supremacist drove over 200 miles to Buffalo and murdered 10 Black people, injuring three others, at a supermarket. The young man had come to believe the false conspiracy theory that Jewish people and liberal politicians are leading a covert plot to replace the political power and culture of white populations in Western nations with immigrants of color.

  The act of terror was one of 11,643 hate crime incidents documented in the FBI’s new hate crime report, covering bias crimes committed in 2022.

What if Alabama had never taken anyone’s vote away?

  There’s a chance — not a guarantee, but a better-than-average possibility — that two Black Alabamians will represent the state in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2025. 

  A federal court created two new congressional districts for the state, one with a Black Voting Age Population (BVAP) of 51.9% and one with a BVAP of 48.7%.

  To this point, the declared or likely candidates for the districts are nearly all Black Democrats. Because voting in Alabama is racially polarized — white Alabamians tend to support Republicans and Black Alabamians tend to support Democrats — it’s a good bet that two Black Alabamians will serve in the state’s seven-member U.S. House delegation. 

  That’s never happened before. 

Today’s white working-class young men who turn to racist violence are part of a long, sad American history

  In recent years, the United States has seen a surge of white supremacist mass shootings against racial minorities. While not always the case, mass shooters tend to be young white men.

  Some journalists and researchers have argued that class and ideals of white masculinity are partly to blame.

  This argument is not surprising. Throughout U.S. history, white men’s anxieties over their manhood and social class help explain many violent attacks on Black people, whom the perpetrators blame for denying them their rightful privileges.

White men have controlled women’s reproductive rights throughout American history – the post-Dobbs era is no different

  More than a year after the Supreme Court ended federal protection for abortion rights in the United States, disagreements over abortion bans continue to reverberate around the country. Candidates sparred over the idea of a federal abortion ban during the Aug. 23, 2023 Republican presidential debate. And abortion is likely to figure prominently in the November 2023 contest for a seat on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

  When the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, removing women’s federal constitutional right to get abortions and giving states the power to pass laws about the legality of the procedure, the 6-3 vote was by a four white men, one Black man, and a white woman majority.

That redistricting argument sounds familiar

  Three federal judges order the Alabama Legislature to draw fair districts for Black voters. 

  Lawmakers drag their feet. They submit a plan. Judges reject it for limiting the ability of Black Alabamians to choose their leaders. 

  September 2023? 

  Nope. September 1965. 

Support for legacy admissions is rooted in racial hierarchy

  Not long after the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 2023 decision to ban the use of race in college admissions, people began to ask questions once again about the fairness of legacy admissions.

  Legacy admission is a practice in which colleges give a preference to the children of graduates when deciding which students to let in.

How the shooting of Ralph Yarl demonstrates the fiction of a colorblind society in America

  Given the gunshot wounds to his head and arm, the fact that Ralph Yarl was able to celebrate his 17th birthday on May 7, 2023, is a modern-day miracle.

  Less than a month earlier, on April 13, Yarl had gone to pick up his twin younger brothers from a play date in the Northland section of Kansas City, Kansas.

  Instead of going to NE 115 Terrace, Yarl went a block away to NE 115 Street Place, where he rang the doorbell.

  Within a few seconds after seeing Yarl at his door, the homeowner, Andrew Lester, an 84-year-old white man, fired his .32-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver and struck Yarl twice, once in his forehead and once in his arm.

U.S. has a long history of state lawmakers silencing elected Black officials and taking power from their constituents

  Mississippi legislators have enacted a law that would create a new judicial system covering the state’s capital city, Jackson, in place of the current county court system.

  Set to take effect July 1, 2023, the move by a Republican-dominated legislature has been criticized by opponents as creating a “separate and unequal” court system that is not answerable to the majority-Black community it would seek to govern.

Attacks on ‘segregated’ graduation ceremonies overlook the history of racism on campus

  For most college students, graduation is a one-time event. But for a growing number of students from various groups, such as students of color or LGTBQ students, there might be multiple graduation ceremonies to attend.

  These special graduation ceremonies for certain groups are known as “affinity graduations.” These ceremonies are drawing the ire of conservatives, who dismiss them as “segregated” graduations.

White nationalism is racism

  White nationalism is racism.

  Don’t take it from me. That’s the dictionary definition.

  “The belief, theory, or doctrine that white people are inherently superior to people from all other racial and ethnic groups, and that in order to preserve their white, European, and Christian cultural identities, they need or deserve a segregated geographical area, preferential treatment, and special legal protections,” says dictionary.com.

  And the definition of a white nationalist?

Why GOP lawmakers fear ‘divisive concepts’

  As a kid, I consumed histories and biographies like my peers read comic books. It didn’t matter what era it was. If a story was well-told, I devoured it.

  One of many convictions I’ve developed from that reading: You can’t understand the South of today without understanding the history of this place.