social hierarchies — Bunk History

Black and white photograph of the Opening of the New York City Subway, 1904.

Advertising Etiquette: On Shaping the New York City Subway

NYC subway etiquette reflects socio-economic divides.

by Simone Blandford via Journal of the History of Ideas Blog on November 21, 2024

A World History Encloypedia graphic image/illustration of The Feudal Society in Medieval Europe.

American Feudalism

A liberalism that divides humanity into a master class and a slave class deserves an asterisk as “white liberalism.”

by Paul Crider via Liberal Currents on October 2, 2024

A painting of Napoleon Bonaparte standing in the center of the National Assembly.

Liberalism and Equality

Liberalism’s relationship to equality has, historically, been far from a warm embrace.

by Gregory Conti via American Affairs on August 20, 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

A scene from the film Orphans of the Storm depicting a group carrying a sign bearing the slogan “Liberté, Egalité et Fraternité,” 1921.

The History of Equality: It’s Complicated

The strange and contradicting development of the liberal version of egalitarianism.

by Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins, Darrin M. McMahon via The Nation on November 16, 2023

A Newton's Cradle where a black ball prepares to swing into 4 white ones.

Black Success, White Backlash

Black prosperity has provoked white resentment that has led to the undoing of policies that have nurtured Black advancement.

by Elijah Anderson via The Atlantic on October 16, 2023

Torn photos juxtaposing the face of a Black man and an Asian woman.

A New Theory of Race in America

How white-dominated racial power produces inter-ethnic group conflict.

by Rhoda Feng, Claire Jean Kim via The Chronicle of Higher Education on September 8, 2023

Newspaper lithograph of people fleeing the yellow fever epidemic on a boat in Mississippi.

The Sick Society

The story of a regional ruling class that struck a devil’s bargain with disease, going beyond negligence to cultivate semi-annual yellow fever epidemics.

by Malcolm Harris, Kathryn Olivarius via n+1 on September 2, 2022

The Last American Aristocrat

George Kennan made hierarchy seem seductive.

by Phil Klay via UnHerd on August 12, 2022

A man walks amongst deteriorating giant busts of U.S. presidents.

Take Me to Your Leader: The Rot of the American Ruling Class

For more than three centuries, something has been going horribly wrong at the top of our society, and we’re all suffering for it.

by Doug Henwood via Jacobin on April 21, 2021

Taverns and the Complicated Birth of Early American Civil Society

Violent, lively and brash, taverns were everywhere in early colonial America, embodying both its tumult and its promise.

by Vaughn Scribner via Aeon on November 23, 2020

When New Money Meets Old Bloodlines: On America’s Gilded Age Dollar Princesses

The intersecting lives of robber barons and floundering French aristocrats.

by Caroline Weber via Literary Hub on November 13, 2020

Harvard University in the colonial era.

Getting Into Harvard Was Once All About Social Rank (Not Grades)

In the 17th and 18th centuries, students at America’s elite universities were treated differently based on the social stature of their parents.

by Erin Blakemore via HISTORY on March 12, 2019

On Prejudice

An 18th-century creole slaveholder invented the idea of 'racial prejudice’ to defend diversity among a slaveowning elite.

by Blake Smith via Aeon on March 5, 2018

A group of workers in hard hats walk through the shallow water of one of the Panama Canal's locks.

‘The Canal Is Ours’

Trump’s threats to take control of the Panama Canal have precipitated a struggle over the country’s sovereignty.

by Miriam Pensack via New York Review of Books on June 28, 2025

William F. Buckley reclines behind a desk, glasses in hand, a bulletin board of National Review magazine material behind him.

The Conservative Intellectual Who Laid the Groundwork for Trump

The political vision that William F. Buckley helped forge was—and remains today—focused less on adhering to principles and more on ferreting out enemies.

by Jack McCordick via The New Republic on June 3, 2025

Vintage illustration of three generations of a 1950s American family, sitting in their living room watching television (screen print), 1950.

How Social Reactionaries Exploit Economic Nostalgia

Conservatives think we need traditional hierarchies to reverse social decline; But it’s the economic equality created by strong unions that Americans miss.

by Meagan Day via Jacobin on May 20, 2025

Elon Musk holds a chain saw as he shakes hands with Argentine president Javier Milei at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

The Method in the Far Right’s Madness

How today’s far right manages to combine the call for economic freedom with pseudoscience about natural hierarchies of race and IQ.

by Quinn Slobodian, Bartolomeo Sala via Jacobin on April 13, 2025

Headshots of Charles Murray, Friedrich Hayek, and Elon Musk in front of a red backgrounds.

Free Markets and Fixed Natures

How neoliberals fell in love with “human nature”—the glue that still unites the divergent factions of the new right.

by Quinn Slobodian via Boston Review on April 9, 2025

Children peering through the fence around the white community near Johannesburg, South Africa in 1973.

American Conservatism's Home Grown Defenses of Apartheid

A long and ugly history.

by Zeb Larson via Liberal Currents on March 10, 2025

African American boy watches a parade of white people from a distance.

The Great Resegregation

The Trump administration’s attacks on DEI are aimed at reversing the civil rights movement.

by Adam Serwer via The Atlantic on February 22, 2025

Group of white people carrying a sign that thanks Donald Trump

Make South Africa Great Again?

How the country’s post-apartheid politics may inform the world view of Elon Musk and Donald Trump.

by Isaac Chotiner, William Shoki via The New Yorker on February 19, 2025

Elon Musk arrives for Donald Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, 2025.

The Worldview of the Afrikaner Diaspora Now Haunts the US

Elon Musk and other tech moguls with roots in apartheid-era South Africa have been shaped by the history of right-wing white nationalism.

by Joseph Dana via New Lines on February 19, 2025

Women adjusting their makeup and hair in a women's restroom in the 1940s.

In the Ladies’ Loo

Gender-segregated bathrooms tell a story about who is and who is not welcome in public life.

by Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza via JSTOR Daily on January 22, 2025

Netanyahu, Trump, Orban, Modi.

The Reactionary Bind

In assessing the rise of the global anti-democracy movement, the United States must look inward as well as outward.

by Kim Phillips-Fein via Democracy Journal on October 21, 2024

Kamala Harris waving to the audience in front of American flags.

What Does Caste Have to Do With Kamala Harris?

This election year, two women of South Asian descent—Kamala Harris and Usha Vance—take center stage. What can their identities tell us about their approach?

by Tanvi Misra via Harper's Bazaar on September 26, 2024

Vice President Kamala Harris speaking at a podium in front of the Irish and American flags.

Kamala Harris’ Purported Irish Ancestry

The candidate's potential ties to an Irish slave owner invite us to reexamine Ireland’s multilayered historical identity.

by Christine Kinealy, Kim DaCosta, Miriam Nyhan Grey via The Conversation on September 6, 2024

Michelle Obama at the Democratic National Convention.

Michelle Obama Was Right to Clap Back at Trump on 'Black Jobs'

The idea of "Black jobs" owes to 18th and 19th century divisions of labor designed to uphold slavery and white supremacy.

by Whitney Nell Stewart via Made By History on August 28, 2024

Protestors and counter-protestors face off holding flags and posters.

Two Americas?

Heather Cox Richardson argues that there are two Americas: one interested in equality, the other in hierarchy. But it's not that simple.

by Nicholas Misukanis via Commonweal on August 6, 2024

Collage of Barack Obama and Kamala Harris.

What Trump’s Kamala Harris Smear Reveals

The former president is suggesting that Harris became Black only when it was obvious that being Black conferred social advantage.

by Adam Serwer via The Atlantic on August 2, 2024

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