Culture Warriors category archive

At Psychology Today Blogs, Heather Rose Artushin talks with Eve L. Ewing about how America’s original sin of chattel slavery continues to affect our society. Their conversation focuses primarily on how schools have served to perpetuate the myth of white racial superiority that was created to justify theft of labor through slavery. Given the recent assaults on schools and libraries and on efforts to promote equality, diversity, and inclusion, I recommend this as a timely and valuable read.

Here’s how the discussion starts (emphasis in the original):

Heather Rose Artushin: Your recent book, Original Sins, explores how American schools have helped build and reinforce an infrastructure of racial inequality. Please share a bit about the racial hierarchy that is rooted in the American education system and what readers should know about the ways our educational system perpetuates systemic racism.

Eve Ewing: The United States has very specific origins defined by the unique intersection of two forms of violence: the institution of chattel slavery and the mass killing and dispossession of the people indigenous to this land. In order for people to abide by these structures in a republic that defines itself as being the “land of the free,” where all men are created equal, requires a kind of mental gymnastics to reconcile a pretty obvious self-contradiction. That’s where schools come in . . . .

At AL.com, Roy S. Johnson hears a rhyme from six decades ago.

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*Mark Twain.

At AZcentral, Erika Andiola makes a convincing case that those who stir up anti-immigrant fears are deliberately pursuing a strategy of divide and conquer.

In a letter to the editor of the Portland Press Herald, the Rev. Dr. Douglas Nielsen suggests that America’s far-right evangelical they-call-themselves Christians may have mistaken an identity.

Emma talks with Syracuse University professor Austin Kocher about our immigration system is “brokent by design” and about the racism that underlies much anti-immigration feelings.

In a longer article about how certain California Republican congresspersons have been–er–taken aback by negative reactions to Donald Trump’s pogrom crusade against immigrants, SFGate quotes a “social” media user who methinks sums it up succintly:

“This is not ‘common sense reform,’” one person commented under an Instagram video of Jones expressing his support for the bill. “This is bigotry wrapped with a bow.”

I think it highly likely that this fellow’s ancestors were immigrants once. Indeed, anyone whose ancestors came here after 1491 is descended from immi–oh, never mind.

We are a society of stupid. And of hate-full.

Illinois Governor Pritzker hears a rhyme.

Via The Bob Cesca Show After Party.

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*Mark Twain.