“The Left Banke” had a smash hit in 1966 with “Walk Away, Renée“, a song co-written by Michael Brown, son of Russian-Jewish immigrants named “Lookofsky” who had first fetched-up in America in…Paducah, Kentucky. Brown’s father Harry Lookofsky was an accomplished bebop violinist who relocated to New York, running a small recording studio and working […]

  Early in February 2017, the administration of Donald Trump introduced the Reforming American Immigration for Strong Employment (RAISE) Act. Americans of every political hue love their acronyms… This was one of Trump’s earliest efforts to begin the “re-whitification” of the USA, by clamping-down on what is known as “chain migration”. This is when members […]

  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 […]

  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 […]