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A painting of a crowd of people heading through gates labeled Chicago, New York, and St. Louis.

Fog From Harlem: Recovering a New Negro Renaissance in the American Midwest

How the focus on Harlem obfuscated Black culture in the Midwest.
by Sam Thozer via Journal of the History of Ideas Blog on June 19, 2024
Dorothy Roberts.

A Damning Exposé of Medical Racism and “Child Welfare”

A new book exposes effects of anti-Black myth-making and calls for an end to the family policing system.
by Dorothy E. Roberts, George Yancy via Truthout on September 17, 2023
1901 photograph of Frederick T. Cummins and three Native American men at the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. The men’s names, as given by the inscription, are: White Hawk, Left Hand Bear, and Chief Black Heart

Playing Indian: Cummins’ Indian Congress at Coney Island

The Coney Island “Congress,” supposedly captured here in audio, was a conglomeration of counterfeits.
by Kevin Dann via The Public Domain Review on November 2, 2022
Pocahontas characters overlaid onto a landscape.

Deconstructing Disney: Queer Coding and Masculinity in Pocahontas

Disney gets inventive when they need to circumvent white people’s historical responsibility for genocidal atrocities — and queerness is a useful scapegoat.
by Jeanna Kadlec via Longreads on April 1, 2021
Lawd, Mah Man's Leavin' by Archibald Motley Jr.

How Should We Understand the Shocking Use of Stereotypes in the Work of Black Artists?

It's about the satirical tradition of 'going there.'
by Richard J. Powell via Artnet News on February 16, 2021

My Native American Father Drew the Land O’Lakes Maiden. She Was Never a Stereotype.

The blind erasure of native culture is nothing new.
by Robert DesJarlait via Washington Post on April 29, 2020
Jim Crow-era postcard with illustration of a black boy in the jaws of an alligator

How America Bought and Sold Racism, and Why It Still Matters

Today, very few white Americans openly celebrate the horrors of black enslavement—most refuse to recognize the brutal nature of the institution or activ...
by Lisa Hix via Collectors Weekly on November 10, 2015
Gertrude Berg.

The Forgotten Inventor of the Sitcom

Gertrude Berg’s “The Goldbergs” was a bold, beloved portrait of a Jewish family. Then the blacklist obliterated her legacy.
by Emily Nussbaum via The New Yorker on June 9, 2025
The logo for Canada Lumber.

French Canadians in the New England Woods

French Canadians held a distinct position in an American labor landscape in which experts viewed different “races” as being suited to different kinds of work.
by Livia Gershon, Jason L. Newton via JSTOR Daily on June 5, 2025
Old man and young boy.

The Perils of Generational Thinking

By assigning personal attributes to birth cohort, generationism tends to undermine personal responsibility.
by Richard Gunderman via Law & Liberty on May 16, 2025
Gothic cathedral

On What Americans Know About Medieval History

A public opinion poll suggests that people really have strong opinions about a period that they don't really know anything about.
by Eleanor Janega via Going Medieval on April 30, 2025
Jack Clayton, The Great Gatsby, 1974.

America the Beautiful

One hundred years ago, "The Great Gatsby" was first published. It remains one of the books that almost every literate American has read.
by John Pistelli via The Metropolitan Review on April 7, 2025
Zora Neale Hurston.

Why Zora Neale Hurston Was Obsessed with the Jews

Her long-unpublished novel was the culmination of a years-long fascination. What does it reveal about her fraught views on civil rights?
by Louis Menand via The New Yorker on January 13, 2025
Author Alexis Pauline Gumbs posing in a field of collard greens.

How Collard Greens Became a Symbol of Resilience and Tradition

While modern women poets have found inspiration, collard references appeared in racist limericks during Jim Crow.
by Cynthia R. Greenlee via Capital B News on December 23, 2024
Political cartoon depicting contrabands carrying cannons, oblivious to their exploitation by the U.S. Army.

Racism and the Limits of Imagination in the United States and the Confederacy

Why did it take so long for the U.S. Army to authorize the enlistment of Black men as soldiers?
by Kevin M. Levin via Civil War Memory on December 1, 2024
Collage of different Indigenous people from the present day.
partner

Native Narratives: The Representation of Native Americans in Public Broadcasting

A selection of radio and television programs that reinforce or reject stereotypes, and Native-created media that responds to those depictions.
by Sally Smith via American Archive of Public Broadcasting on November 16, 2024
A McDonald's worker handing a bag of food to someone in a drive through.
partner

What Harris Talking About Her McDonald's Job Reveals

Harris' rhetoric about working at McDonald's shows how Democrats have rethought their 1990s emphasis on fast food jobs.
by Alex Park via Made By History on September 24, 2024
Foggy hills in Appalachia.

Love in the Time of Hillbilly Elegy: On JD Vance’s Appalachian Grift

Justin B. Wymer knows a snake when he sees one.
by Justin B. Wymer via Literary Hub on August 27, 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

What It Means to ‘Willie Horton’ a Political Candidate

Donald Trump supporters run their version of the original dog-whistle attack ad against Kamala Harris. Here’s the history.
by Beth Schwartzapfel via The Marshall Project on July 31, 2024
Benjamin Hawkins and the Creek Indians.

“Weapons of Health Destruction…” How Colonialism Created the Modern Native American Diet

On the impact of systematic oppression on indigenous cuisine in the United States.
by Andrea Freeman via Literary Hub on July 24, 2024
Cover of "Excited Delirium," left, and author Aisha M. Beliso-De Jesús, right.

The Racist, Xenophobic History of "Excited Delirium"

A new book takes on a diagnosis invented to cover up police killings: that men of color are “combusting as a result of their aggressiveness.”
by Julia Métraux, Aisha M. Beliso-De Jesús via Mother Jones on July 23, 2024
From left, Sam Warner, Harry M. Warner, Jack L. Warner, and Albert Warner.

Are Hollywood’s Jewish Founders Worth Defending?

Jews in the industry called for the Academy Museum to highlight the men who created the movie business. A voice in my head went, Uh-oh.
by Michael Schulman via The New Yorker on July 17, 2024
Four Black Marvel villains.

Marvel's Black Villain Era

The question of villainy has always been a complicated issue for African Americans in film.
by Brandon David Wilson via RogerEbert.com on June 21, 2024
Covers of paperbacks by white journalists who tried living as African Americans.

The Strange History of White Journalists Trying to “Become” Black

"To believe that the richness of Black identity can be understood through a temporary costume trivializes the lifelong trauma of racism. It turns the complexity of Black life into a stunt."
by Alisha Gaines via Nieman Lab on June 17, 2024
Ella Watson in American Gothic, photographed by Gordon Parks.

She Was No ‘Mammy’

Gordon Parks’s most famous photograph, "American Gothic," was of a cleaning woman in Washington, D.C. She has a story to tell.
by Salamishah Tillet via The Atlantic on May 8, 2024
George Eliot

“As If You Was a Insect”

George Eliot refused to stereotype the rural working class. Her outlook would serve us well today.
by Matthew Karp via Harper’s on April 26, 2024
A masculine caricature of an Irish-American woman threatening an American woman in a kitchen.

From Saint to Stereotype: A Story of Brigid

Caricatures of Irish immigrants—especially Irish women—have softened, but persist in characters whose Irishness is expressed in subtle cues.
by Melanie Beth Curran, Margaret Lynch-Brennan, M. Alison Kibler, Peter Flynn via JSTOR Daily on March 27, 2024
Peanuts' Franklin as a flat two-dimensional character.

It’s Flagrant Tokenism, Charlie Brown!

Peanuts’ Franklin has been a controversial character for decades. A new special attempts reparations.
by Troy Patterson via Slate on February 16, 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
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