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Tidbits – Dec. 28, 2023 – Reader Comments: Trump-Haley-MAGA GOP Embrace Slavery-Fascism; Israeli War Crimes; Migrants and Immigration; Reader Response to Police Reform; Maestro Does Disservice; March on Washington for Gaza-Jan 13; More…

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Reader Comments: Trump-Haley-MAGA GOP Embrace Slavery-Fascism; Israeli War Crimes; Migrants and Immigration; Reader Response to Police Reform; Maestro Does Disservice; March on Washington for Gaza-Jan 13; more Announcements; Cartoons;

Funhouse Mirror

Christopher L. Brown London Review of Books
‘Perhaps the greatest shame of the Atlantic slave trade was that it inspired no shame at all. In their own time, Britain’s slave traders were men of distinction: “worthy men, fathers of families and excellent citizens”

Our Supposedly Glorious Past Existed Only for Some

Esau McCaulley New York Times
Where can African Americans find this lost golden age? Do we discover it during the first centuries of the Republic when slavery was the law of the land? Do we fast forward to the Red Summer, Jim Crow laws, “strange fruit” hanging from poplar trees?

Ships Going Out

James Oakes The New York Review
In American Slavers, Sean M. Kelley surveys the relatively unknown history of Americans who traded in slaves in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Sunday Science: Forging Connections

Andrew Curry Science
DNA from enslaved Black workers at a 19th century iron forge links them to living descendants. But the research swirls with ethical questions

White Minority Locks Out First Black Mayor of Newbern, Alabama

Equal Justice Initiative Equal Justice Initiative
Patrick Braxton, first Black mayor of Newbern, small town in Alabama’s Black Belt region, filed federal civil rights lawsuit alleging the white former mayor and city council members violated the Constitution when they locked him out of the Town Hall

This Week in People’s History, August 1 – 7

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Monument for murder victims Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffit Pinochet's men accused of Letelier murder in 1978. Dick Cheney's hypocrisy in 2000. Reagan's racist dog-whistle in 1980. Dixiecrats defend the poll tax in 1948. Chicago Freedom Movement in 1966. Birth of a hero in 1848. Toxic-waste emergency in 1978.

Racism and Race – The John Roberts Two-Step

Jamelle Bouie New York Times
The Roberts two-step. He takes racism, a system of subjugation and social control, and removes the racists. What’s left is the mark of racism - race. A landmark case about the legitimacy of race hierarchy becomes, the use of race in school placement.
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