Wealth extraction
Redlining maps were not just tools of racism; they were tools of wealth extraction.
The second
The Second Amendment was really a bribe to the South to ensure ratification of the Constitution. The amendment’s language about militias, though broad, was designed to protect the institution of slavery and suppress potential slave revolts.
Coming to terms with the past
History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.
White fear: the New Jim Crow
The primary reason that some people defend mass incarceration is because they are unwilling to let go of the notion that some groups, by nature, are more dangerous and criminal than others.
White fear: a history of violence
The trigger for white rage, inevitably, is black advancement.
White fear: by every means
Slave patrols are often seen as the precursor to modern-day policing in the United States, as both systems have historically been used to control and suppress Black communities through state-sanctioned violence and surveillance.
White fear: a dangerous element
White fear emanates from knowing that white privilege exists and the anxiety that it might end.
The Compromise of 1877
The Compromise of 1877 was a betrayal of the country’s commitment to equal rights for all citizens, a signal to the South that it could impose a racial caste system without fear of federal intervention.
A few years of sunshine
The slave went free, stood a brief moment in the sun, then moved back again toward slavery.
A struggle over the spoils
The struggle over the spoils of cotton—an economic resource so central to the rise of the American South—was a battle that intertwined economic ambitions with the brutal realities of slavery, shaping the region's social and political landscape in ways that reverberated through American history.
John Punch to the White House
John Punch, whose lifetime servitude marked the earliest instance of racial discrimination in American history is a twelfth-generation ancestor of Barack Obama, the first Black President of the United States.
Learn to walk
A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward.