I have been meaning to write something about identity politics (and its hazards) for ages. Last night I dug out an old article from 2002, published in a well-known left-leaning newspaper, in which the writer asserted baldly that Elvis Presley had appropriated the songs of Black artists such as Little Richard and Chuck Berry […]
People are distillers of information, with anything meaty getting cooked-down to its bare bones. Nowhere is this more true than in our understanding of history – even recent history. Entire decades of events, trends, and changes are reduced to a shortlist of manageable icons and symbols. Take the 1960s USA. Ask anyone who wasn’t […]
There is a trend, particularly widespread among the amateur genealogical community, to share historical photos which have been colorized. There are a myriad reasons why this practice is at best misguided, and at worst, a vector for ethnic whitewashing. Most non-professionals probably assume that cameras and video recording devices are inherently “neutral” instruments for […]
In the heat of post-emancipation excitement, men like the one pictured could never have imagined that it would be another 100 years until the Civil Rights Act would finally enshrine the rights of all US Americans in law. And this soldier would have probably been shocked (or not?) to learn that 160 years later, […]
In US history, it’s called “genocide by paperwork”. An Indigenous woman becomes consort to a frontier settler or wealthy planter. She is given a “Christian” name – maybe that of a neighbor or local preacher. Her husband/partner calls her “white” in census records to protect the rights of his mixed-ethnic children. Later historians scan […]
Inspired in part by the success of the American Revolution, enslaved Haitians rose up against their French colonial oppressors in 1791. And won. Many Haitians had hoped and even expected that the new USA would recognise their independence – after all, many free Black Haitian “Chasseurs-Volontaires de Saint-Domingue” had fought alongside American militias against […]
Hi! My name is Kristi Noem. You probably already know me. I’m the governor of South Dakota, where we like living right and being free. This great ol’ state was built by decent Christians like my great-grandpa Edward Arnold, who arrived in South Dakota in 1887 with his daddy in a boxcar on the […]
Humans like sex. It’s why there are over 8 billion of us on the planet now. So far, so blazingly obvious. Men, women, and folks in between have never been particularly picky or finicky in terms of “race”, ethnicity, or skin color in selecting sexual partners. This is the reason almost every population group […]
Like the pine trees linin’ the windin’ road I’ve got a name, I’ve got a name Like the singin’ bird and the croakin’ toad I’ve got a name, I’ve got a name And I carry it with me like my daddy did But I’m living the dream that he kept hid… Jim Croce [1973] […]
It’s only after various pieces of a jigsaw puzzle are in place that we can begin to see some semblance of a picture. When I first wrote about J. D. Vance a few years ago, it was out of simple anger. Anger that a man who had managed to become wealthy would take the […]
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