Menu
Idea

hypocrisy

195
Filter by:

Filter by published date

Side by side photos of Columbia University protests in 2024 and 1968.

America’s Colleges Are Reaping What They Sowed

Universities spent years saying that activism is not just welcome but encouraged on their campuses. Students took them at their word.
by Tyler Austin Harper via The Atlantic on May 2, 2024
Joe Biden and George W. Bush.

Biden Is Repeating Bush’s Post-9/11 Playbook. It’s Not Working.

Like his predecessor, the president is decrying anti-Arab and Muslim hatred while helping fuel it. People are refusing to let him get away with this hypocrisy.
by Saliha Bayrak via The Nation on February 23, 2024
Book cover featuring abstract watercolor splotches behind the title "American Exceptionalism."

"A New History of an Old Idea"

Richard Cándida Smith on Ian Tyrrell’s "American Exceptionalism: A New History of an Old Idea."
by Richard Cándida Smith via Society for U.S. Intellectual History on April 17, 2022

Martin Luther King and the 'Polite’ Racism of White Liberals

Many of King’s words about allies ring true today.
by Jeanne Theoharis via Washington Post on January 17, 2020

The Liberal Delusion of #ResistanceGenealogy

The effort to dig up information about the immigrant ancestors of prominent Trumpsters is doing more harm than good.
by Rebecca Onion via Slate on May 15, 2018
Black and white photo of a charity ball, 1929

The Oppressed Need Justice, Not Charity

1913 article, never before republished, about why the charity balls of the rich will never deliver justice for the poor.
by Eugene V. Debs via Jacobin on January 1, 1913
Mexican men in line for work in the Bracero program.
partner

What the World War II-Era Bracero Program Reveals About U.S. Immigration Debates

Efforts to restrict immigration have long coexisted with — and even reinforced — the nation's economic reliance on Mexican laborers.
via Retro Report on May 9, 2025
The words "the world you were born in no longer exists" covering Trump's eyes.

The Present Crisis and the End of the Long '90s

On the constitutional settlement that governed America from the end of the Volcker Shock in 1982 to the re-election of Donald Trump in 2024.
by Samantha Hancox-Li via Liberal Currents on April 24, 2025
Title page to Ida B. Wells's book about lynching.

Is It Legal?

Deferring to power and authority leads inevitably to autocracy.
by William Horne via In Case Of Emergency on February 7, 2025
Students at an Indian boarding school.

Acknowledgment as Denialism: The Myth of Reparations in the US

What is an apology from the President of the United States worth if reparations do not include cessation of settler colonial violence?
by Ja'loni Owens via Scalawag on December 11, 2024
Political cartoon showing Supreme Court Justice Sutherland handing a woman worker a decision on minimum wage.

The Most Conservative Branch

Stephen Breyer criticizes recent Supreme Court decisions and argues for a more pragmatic jurisprudence.
by Jed S. Rakoff via New York Review of Books on August 29, 2024
A senior quote from Bookter T. Washington High School 1921 yearbook.

The Myth of the Christian State

When religion became the veil for racial violence in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
by Ross D. Johnson via The Oklahoma Eagle on August 18, 2024
Eyes looking through the stripes on an American flag as if they were window blinds.

How Conspiracy Theory Made America

Americans are seized by conspiracy theories, and as a result, democracy is in peril—so conventional wisdom holds.
by Michael Cuenco via Compact on August 2, 2024
Lithograph of George Washington on his land with people he enslaved.

What, to the American, Is Revolutionary?

The colonial rebellion we celebrate every July 4th doesn’t fit the definition.
by Kellie Carter Jackson via The Emancipator on July 2, 2024

The Ghosts Of New Atheism Still Haunt Us

In trying to freeze reality into a cudgel that can be used to assault political opponents, the New Atheists deny the observable evidence in front of them.
by Erik Baker via Defector on May 29, 2024
A Ride for Liberty – The Fugitive Slaves by Eastman Johnson.

Unapologetically Free: A Personal Declaration of Independence From the Formerly Enslaved

Abolitionist and writer John Swanson Jacobs on reclaiming liberty in a land of unfreedom.
by John Swanson Jacobs, Jonathan D. S. Schroeder via Literary Hub on May 24, 2024
Lillian E. Smith

“You Would Make Little Nazis of Them”: Lillian Smith, Jim Crow, and Nazi Germany

Smith understood why so many white Americans, especially white Southerners, struggled to accept that their society was not so far removed from Hitler’s Germany.
by Matthew Teutsch, Camille Nunnally via COMP on May 22, 2024
Pete Rose on a baseball diamond, head bowed.

For Pete’s Sake

A new book traces "the rise and fall of Pete Rose, and the last glory days of baseball."
by Christopher Caldwell via The Washington Free Beacon on May 12, 2024
A crowd of people holds a up red banner of the Cuban Revolution leader Ernesto "Che" Guevara

Remember When the U.S. Secretly Built a Social Network to Destabilize Cuba?

U.S.-funded social networks were launched in 2010 with ZunZuneo and Piramideo in 2013.
by Matt Novak via Gizmodo on March 15, 2024
Jewish moneylender choking debtor

"A Fiendish Fascination"

The representation of Jews in antebellum popular culture reveals that many Americans found them both cartoonishly villainous and enticingly exotic.
by David S. Reynolds via New York Review of Books on February 1, 2024
A group of birds with one standing on top of the rest.

Rules for the Ruling Class

How to thrive in the power élite—while declaring it your enemy.
by Evan Osnos via The New Yorker on January 22, 2024
Peter Waddell's "A Vision Unfolds" imaginatively depicts Benjamin Banneker advising President Washington and fellow surveyor Andrew Ellicott on the layout of the proposed federal capital.

Banneker’s Answer to Jefferson: “I Am an American”

The black naturalist, astronomer, surveyor, and almanac-writer Benjamin Banneker took issue with Thomas Jefferson’s attitude toward “those of my complexion.”
by Edward J. Larson via American Heritage on November 21, 2023
View of a Boston Street, circa 1778.

Commissary Notes and the Dark History of Revolutionary Financing

From the outset of the American Revolution, a lingering problem that plagued the minds of the Continental Congress dealt with its financing.
by Zach Thompson via Journal of the American Revolution on October 12, 2023
Tuskegee Airmen, Ramitelli, Italy, March 1945; photograph by Toni Frissell. From left to right: Richard S. ‘Rip’ Harder, unidentified airman, Thurston L. Gaines Jr., Newman C. Golden, and Wendell M. Lucas.

‘We Return Fighting’

The ambivalence many Black soldiers felt toward the U.S. in WWII was matched only by the ambivalence the U.S. showed toward principles on which WWII was fought.
by Gary Younge via New York Review of Books on September 28, 2023
Smoke coming from Exxon Mobil plant

Inside Exxon's Strategy To Downplay Climate Change

Internal documents show what the oil giant said publicly was very different from how it approached the issue privately in the Tillerson era.
by Christopher Matthews, Collin Eaton via The Wall Street Journal on September 14, 2023
Cover of the book "When Crack Was King," and Donovan X. Ranmsey.

A History of the Crack Epidemic From Below

How documenting the history of the drug war is a “community project” and reflections on 1990s rap music's anti-crack hits.
by Donovan X. Ramsey, Naomi Elias via The Nation on August 4, 2023
W.E.B. DuBois

How W. E. B. Du Bois Helped Pioneer African American Humanist Thought

On the complex relationship between Black Americans and the Black church.
by Christopher Cameron via Literary Hub on July 27, 2023
The stairs leading to the segregated section of a cinema in Belzoni, Mississippi, in 1939.

The Writers Who Went Undercover to Show America Its Ugly Side

In the 1940s, a series of books tried to use the conventions of detective fiction to expose the degree of prejudice in postwar America.
by Samuel G. Freedman via The Atlantic on July 10, 2023
Train depot in Allston, MA.

Want to Protect the Historic Character of Massachusetts Cities and Towns? Take Away Their Power.

History shows that cities and towns have been poor stewards of what makes them special.
by Garrett Dash Nelson via CommonWealth on July 8, 2023

Doing the Work

The Protestant ethic and the spirit of wokeness.
by Ian Buruma via Harper’s on June 20, 2023
View More
30 of
195

Filter Results:

Suggested Filters:

Idea

Person

brought to you by
© Bunk History