2,395 words
In his 1920 book The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy, Lothrop Stoddard warned that unless an immediate moratorium was placed on non-white immigration into white-majority countries, white dominance over geopolitical affairs would be lost amid a “tide” of non-white fecundity. Wikipedia’s page on the book categorizes it under “White genocide conspiracy theory.” (more…)
From left, lawyers George E. C. Hayes, Thurgood Marshall, and James M. Nabrit, Jr. at the Supreme Court following the Brown v. Board of Education ruling on May 17, 1954.
From left, lawyers George E. C. Hayes, Thurgood Marshall, and James M. Nabrit, Jr. at the Supreme Court following the Brown v. Board of Education ruling on May 17, 1954.
3,695 words
Jesse Merriam
How We Got Our Antiracist Constitution: Canonizing Brown v. Board of Education in Courts and Minds
Claremont Provocations Monograph Series, 2023
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion . . .” — First Amendment of the United States Constitution, 1791
“Equal opportunity is the bedrock of American democracy, and our diversity is one of our country’s greatest strengths… It is therefore the policy of my Administration that the Federal Government should pursue a comprehensive approach to advancing equity for all, including people of color and others who have been historically underserved, marginalized, and adversely affected by persistent poverty and inequality. (more…)
1,856 words
Carl Schmitt can illuminate American politics and jurisprudence by offering an outside perspective from continental Europe. First, his idea of the state of exception can help describe how the United States Constitution was rewritten in the Civil Rights era. And secondly, his description of the sovereign and of political theology explain in part why American conservatism has been a spectacular failure. (more…)
1,298 words / 7:50
Part 4 of 4 (Part 1 here, Part 3 here)
Audio version: To listen in a player, use the one below or click here. To download the mp3, right-click here and choose “save link as” or “save target as.”
The School Experience
While working on and thinking about this piece over the last few years, I spoke with several white middle-school and high-school students and conducted informal interviews about their experiences. (more…)
A white student being harassed by a black student at a New York City school bus stop.
A white student being harassed by a black student at a New York City school bus stop.
3,358 words / 20:43
Part 3 of 4 (Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 4 here)
Audio version: To listen in a player, use the one below or click here. To download the mp3, right-click here and choose “save link as” or “save target as.”
Subsequent case law
Several education-related Supreme Court cases would follow over the years after Brown, coming from the Warren and then the Burger courts. Most people are not aware of the continued litigation that went on for decades in the post-Brown era. (more…)
Desegregation at gunpoint on the orders of the US Supreme Court.
Desegregation at gunpoint on the orders of the US Supreme Court.
1,908 words / 11:22
Part 2 of 4 (Part 1 here, Part 3 here)
Audio version: To listen in a player, use the one below or click here. To download the mp3, right-click here and choose “save link as” or “save target as.”
The legal regime
A handful of laws and Supreme Court cases have truly shaped and continue to shape the day-to-day lives of Americans and their children. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954) is one of those cases. Its consequences have been an unmitigated disaster for white children. (more…)
5,113 words
5,113 words
The recent movie on Elvis Presley[1] is exceptional in its acting, script, and production. For those interested in such matters, it is also excellent as cultural history.
The movie deals to a significant extent with the African influences on Presley’s music. As a little boy growing up in a poor, integrated neighborhood, he was fascinated by the rhythms and gyrations of the blacks, including black gospel music. (more…)
1,457 words
1970’s Halls of Anger is low-budget, tense, sensational, but real. Calvin Lockhart plays Quincy Davis, an ex-basketball star who’s happy teaching in a suburban high school until integration comes and he’s reassigned to a ghetto school, as are several white students. The principal, Boyd Wilkerson (John McLiam), couldn’t care less about his students; he wants more federal money (from integration) and a chance to get elected to the school board. (more…)
Tim Pool
Tim Pool
2,680 words
It’s always interesting when I find someone who shares a clean sweep of my politics but for largely different reasons. Such a person seems completely in line with my outlook, but really isn’t. Although in Tim Pool’s case, I’ll bet that he is and just doesn’t realize it yet.
For the past several months Tim Pool has been banging the Trump drum. (more…)
“I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”
“I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”
3,923 words
I’m not going to claim that I have been totally 1488 from day one or that I came goose-stepping out of the womb. But I think I have always been instinctively and intuitively a race realist. Or at least, I have been since around the age of 8. The first black person I ever met was this kid named Scooter when I was in kindergarten. This would have been in the early 80s. (more…)
1,629 words
1,629 words
Steve Luxenberg
Separate: The Story of Plessy v. Ferguson, And America’s Journey From Slavery to Segregation
New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2019
Steve Luxenberg is a Washington Post associate editor and protégé of the Watergate reporter Bob Woodward. In 2019, he published a book called Separate, which describes the (more…)
2,303 words
I attended a small (about 160 students per grade) Midwestern high school only ten minutes from a metropolis, but the neighborhood had large houses with high property taxes and the district had gerrymandered the auto-enrollment zone to keep the school about 90 percent white with a smattering of Asians (several boys named Tenzin). (more…)