History Archives

We’re re-running this fantastic post by Friend of the Blog Ari Kelman, a history professor who reminds us that MLK was never the saintly, beloved man in life that he has become in death.

During last week’s ‘Scandal’ recap, I expressed annoyance with Olivia’s likening her relationship to Fitz to that of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings — and the adamant Twitter cosigning of that janky-ass analogy. But if you want to understand how vastly different these two situations are, try thinking up a label for the relationship between Read More

In a post about some dope-looking charts made by W.E.B. Dubois for the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris on the state of black life in America at the time, Adam offers up this aside: But you can get a hint from this of the days when teachers at black schools were among the best in Read More

I don’t watch Gossip Girl, but, apparently, Rebecca Traister’s terrific book about women and the 2008 election, Big Girls Don’t Cry made a cameo in Monday’s episode. I did, however, just finish reading that great book. In it, Traister points out something that I had missed and that you probably did too. When Hillary Clinton Read More

Daniel J. Flynn of the conservative magazine Human Events thinks that American racism could have been whittled away by the power of the free market. Businessmen motivated by racial solidarity rather than profits won’t stay in business. Landlords limiting tenants by race, storekeepers limiting customers by race, foremen limiting workers by race limit themselves just Read More

In what’s become something of  a yearly tradition here at PB, we’re re-running this fantastic post by Friend of the Blog Ari Kelman, a history professor in California who blogs over at Edge of The American West. Kelman looks at the sterilization of King’s image, who was never the saintly, beloved man in life that Read More

Last week, a friend of my grandmother’s passed away, after a brief struggle with pancreatic cancer. She was chic, impeccably styled and coiffed, well-traveled, well-read, highly educated, and within three months of her diagnosis, she was gone. For my grandmother, the loss is primary. Her memories with Miss Edna span decades. And in her late Read More

I’ve a piece in The Root about the Morehouse dress code and Aliya S. King’s Vibe article. As I’ve indicated before, I’m squarely in the camp of people who believe that expressions of gender identity are far more fluid than what one wears or how one behaves. But I dug a little deeper and talked Read More

The website RaceBox.org has compiled a list of census forms stretching back to the country’s infancy, and it offers a fascinating look at how ideas about racial classification have evolved over time. [via MetaFilter.]

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