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A protest in Baltimore following the death of Freddie Gray.

The Problem with Baltimore

The impact of the city's history with slavery.
by Anthony Smooth via Black Perspectives on March 22, 2024
Still from The Wire (HBO): two detectives, McNulty and Bunk.

20 Years Later, "The Wire" Is Still a Cutting Critique of American Capitalism

The Wire — both stylish and smart, follows unforgettable characters woven into a striking portrait of the depredations of capitalism in one US city.
by Helena Sheehan, Sheamus Sweeney via Jacobin on June 14, 2022

Remembering Past Lessons about Structural Racism — Recentering Black Theorists of Health and Society

A look at African-American scholars' contributions to health disparity discourse.
by Jeremy A. Greene, Alexandre White, Rachel L. J. Thornton via The New England Journal Of Medicine on August 26, 2021
The White House.

Sociology and the Presidency

In 1979, Carter's "malaise speech," shaped by sociological insights, sought national unity but clashed with Reagan's appeal to individualism.
by Matthew Braswell via The Fifth Floor on October 25, 2013
Herbert Spencer

The Man Who Believed in Nothing - Part II

Spencerism in America.
by Henry Snow via Another Way on March 4, 2025

Edward C. Banfield and What Conservatism Used to Mean

Hard thinking on difficult and uncomfortable questions about how to keep everything from falling apart.
by Joshua Tait via The Bulwark on February 1, 2025

How America Invented the Red State

According to conventional wisdom, the last quarter century of elections has proved that most of the country leans conservative. It all started with a map.
by Tarence Ray via The Nation on December 17, 2024
Alexis de Tocqueville.

American Nightmares

Wang Huning and Alexis de Tocqueville’s dark vision of the future.
by Tanner Greer via Scholar's Stage on March 28, 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
Betty Friedan

The Abandonment of Betty Friedan

What does the academy have against the mother of second-wave feminism?
by Rachel Shteir via The Chronicle of Higher Education on September 11, 2023
Graph drawn by W.E.B. Du Bois displaying the income and expenditure of Black American families in Atlanta.

How W.E.B. Du Bois Disrupted America’s Dominance at the World’s Fair

With bar graphs and pie charts, the sociologist and his Atlanta students demonstrated Black excellence in the face of widespread discrimination.
by Susannah Gardiner via Smithsonian on February 1, 2023
Images of girls in a factory

Layered Lives

Rhetoric and representation in the Southern Life History Project.
by Lauren Tilton, Taylor Arnold, Courtney Rivard via Stanford University Press on August 30, 2022
Middle finger that says "Millenial" and Fist that says "Gen Z"

It’s Time to Stop Talking About “Generations”

From boomers to zoomers, the concept gets social history all wrong.
by Louis Menand via The New Yorker on October 7, 2021
Photo of Philip Rieff at microphone waiting to speak

The Importance of Repression

Philip Rieff predicted that therapy culture would end in barbarism.
by Park MacDougald via UnHerd on September 29, 2021
QAnon proponent and Trump supporters

Bad Information

Conspiracy theories like QAnon are ultimately a social problem rather than a cognitive one. We should blame politics, not the faulty reasoning of individuals.
by Nicolas Guilhot via Boston Review on August 23, 2021
Diagram relating to Black population and diagram of Georgia occupations by race

The Color Line

W.E.B. Du Bois’s exhibit at the 1900 Paris Exposition offered him a chance to present the dramatic gains made by Black Americans since the end of slavery.
by Annette Gordon-Reed via New York Review of Books on August 5, 2021

The History of Loneliness

Until a century or so ago, almost no one lived alone; now many endure shutdowns and lockdowns on their own. How did modern life get so lonely?
by Jill Lepore via The New Yorker on March 30, 2020

Everything You Know About Mass Incarceration Is Wrong

The US carceral state is a monstrosity with few parallels in history. But most accounts fail to understand how it was created, and how we can dismantle it.
by Adaner Usmani, Jacobin via Jacobin on March 17, 2020

It Was Never About Economic Anxiety: On the Book That Foresaw the Rise of Trump

Samuel Freedman rereads 1975's "Blue-Collar Aristocrats."
by Samuel G. Freedman via Literary Hub on January 30, 2020
A man shovels out the parking lot of an old factory buildingcovered in graffiti.
partner

How a 50-Year-Old Study Was Misconstrued to Create Destructive Broken-Windows Policing

The harmful policy was built on a shaky foundation.
by Bench Ansfield via Made By History on December 27, 2019

Three Decades Ago, America Lost Its Religion. Why?

“Not religious” has become a specific American identity—one that distinguishes secular, liberal whites from the conservative, evangelical right.
by Derek Thompson via The Atlantic on September 26, 2019

Donald Trump and the 'Paranoid Style' in American (Intellectual) Politics

Revisiting Holfstadter's "paranoid style" in the era of Trump.
by Leo P. Ribuffo via The International Security Studies Forum on June 13, 2017
A reporter interviewing another man near the wreckage from the Watts Rebellion.

Did The 1965 Watts Riots Change Anything?

Sociological data from immediately after the riots in Watts, Los Angeles, in 1965 show major disparities in attitude by race.
by Livia Gershon, David O. Sears, T. M. Tomlinson via JSTOR Daily on July 13, 2016
Aerial view of identical-looking houses in suburbs

Welcome to Disturbia

Why midcentury Americans believed the suburbs were making them sick.
by Amanda Kolson Hurley via Curbed on May 25, 2016
Portrait of W.E.B. Du Bois.

Who Was W.E.B. Du Bois?

A review of "Lines of Descent: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Emergence of Identity," by Kwame Anthony Appiah.
by Nicholas Lemann via New York Review of Books on September 24, 2014
Ted Kaczynski being led by two law enforcement officers.

Harvard and the Making of the Unabomber

Purposely brutalizing psychological experiments may have confirmed Theodore Kaczynski’s still-forming belief in the evil of science while he was in college.
by Alston Chase via The Atlantic on June 1, 2000
Sam Francis.

The Sam Francis I Knew

The late conservative thinker, who died 20 years ago Saturday, has transcended the pariah status imposed on him during his life.
by Paul Gottfried via The American Conservative on February 20, 2025
W.E.B. DuBois, seated in garden reading book, while Shirley Graham DuBois waters plants.

How Black Marxists Have Understood Racial Oppression

Black Marxist thought emphasizes the centrality of capitalism to racial oppression and the destructiveness of that oppression for all workers.
by Jeff Goodwin, Jonah Birch via Jacobin on February 17, 2025
John Harvard statue in Harvard Yard.

American Marxism Got Lost on Campus

At universities, American Marxism has led to good scholarship, but it’s also encouraged hyper-specialization and the use of impenetrable jargon.
by Russell Jacoby via Jacobin on December 8, 2024
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