Illustration by Abro
In his inaugural speech as the new US president, Joe Biden described ‘white supremacy’ as a security threat. Ever since the 9/11 episode in 2001, the inaugural speeches of the three presidents who preceded Biden, pointed out Islamic extremism as the leading threat. Biden too spoke of religious extremism, but his emphasis was more on the spectre of white supremacy haunting American society.
Till Donald Trump ascended as president in 2016, the American political and security establishments largely understood the idea and manifestations of white supremacy as an eccentric nuisance. This, despite the fact that incidents of racially motivated violence against non-white communities had witnessed a spike during the two-term presidency of the country’s first black president, Barack Obama (2008-2016).
Charlie Riedel/AP
The word “fascism” has been tossed around so much over the past four years that it’s hard to know what it even means anymore.
But after Donald Trump’s disastrous presidency, after the attack on the US Capitol on January 6 that has left a specter of violence hanging over American politics, the debate over the “F word” feels much more urgent.
Jason Stanley is a professor of philosophy at Yale and the author of
(2018). It’s one of the most influential books on the topic in recent memory. And strange as it is, we don’t really have scholarly consensus on the meaning of fascism. It’s a slippery term, and trying to apply it in different contexts is tricky.
Question:
Before the emergence of cotton as a primary crop in the south, the invention of the cotton gin, and territorial expansion southward and westward, slavery appeared to be on the decline. These factors, coupled with a rising demand for cotton by the British textile industry, revived the South s agricultural economy.
Although cotton could be grown with or without slavery, the expansion of cotton cultivation and slavery occurred together. When slavery was challenged on moral grounds, southerners chose to defend their peculiar institution, as in the words of John C. Calhoun a positive good.
Task:
This writing assignment will require you to analyze and discuss primary and secondary sources that relate to the institution of slavery in the United States.
Top 10 Fun Facts from US Presidential Inaugurations
Ah, the American transition of executive power. It’s something the US was fairly committed to from the late 1700s until… well, approximately the 21st century. But while presidential inaugurations typically haven’t involved quite as much drama as the previous one and the one about to occur, that doesn’t mean they were all smooth sailing.
Here are ten tales constituting a walk through Inauguration Day history. I do solemnly swear that you’ll enjoy them.
10 Say What? (George Washington) In 1788, Congress scheduled the first-ever presidential inauguration for the first Wednesday in March of the following year. However, the brutal winter of 1789 made it impossible for many legislators to reach the then-capital, New York City. On April 6, they were finally able to assemble and announce an outcome never in doubt: George Washington was unanimously elected president.
Race, Crisis, and Resistance in the United States
An Interview with Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor is an assistant professor in the Department of African American Studies at Princeton University. She is author of
Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership, published in 2019 by the University of North Carolina Press, longlisted for a 2019 National Book Award for nonfiction, and a 2020 finalist for the Pulitzer in history. Taylor’s book
From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation won the Lannan Cultural Freedom Award for an Especially Notable Book in 2016. She is also editor of
How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective, which won the Lambda Literary Award for LGBQT nonfiction in 2018. Taylor is a columnist for the