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History

Empire As A Way of Life – A Review

  “Maybe the reason people don’t like Hillary isn’t so much that they don’t like her, as it is that they don’t like the role of the presidency itself.” I read this comment recently somewhere on Twitter, and thought it was an interesting point. William Appleman Williams in his book Empire As A Way of…

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When White Christians Support Good Cops

[blockquote type=”left”]”The religious institutions became comfort stations for scribes and publicans and pharisees. Far from curing the wound of racism, the white man’s Christianity has been its soothing bandage – a bandage masquerading as Sunday clothes, for the wearing of which one expects a certain moral credit.” – Wendell Berry, The Hidden Wound[/blockquote] How do…

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An Integrated Life – The TL;DR Version

As Reconstruction ended, and the Great Migration was getting underway, white people collectively looked around and realized they weren’t alone. And they wanted to be. So they made it happen. A summary of the series looking at the book Sundown Towns by James Loewen, and also ideas for what you can do about it.   Know…

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An Integrated Life – Until We Solve the Problem of Sundown Neighborhoods…

[blockquote type=”left”]”America should not have white neighborhoods or black neighborhoods. It should just have neighborhoods. People who live in interracial neighborhoods and towns have taken an important stand in favor of better race relations. Integration is no panacea, but there is no substitute…Integrated towns and suburbs are a necessary first step to integrated hearts and…

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An Integrated Life – Reputations are Important

[blockquote type=”left”]”We have seen that sundown towns both collect and create racists, while integrated towns both collect and create anti-racists. Just as cognitive dissonance makes whites more racist when they live in a sundown town, which they must justify, so it makes whites less racist, even anti-racist, when they live in a multiracial town, which…

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An Integrated Life – Hidden Fault Lines

In my high school of 1000 students, all of our teachers and staff were white. My class was nearly all-white. We had a small handful of Asians and Indians, out of a class of 250, and I think that was only because they fulfilled the stereotype of being smart, which helped make our school look…

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