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Opened standardized test booklet with pencil on top.

Can Standardized Testing Escape Its Racist Past?

High-stakes testing has struggled with overt and implicit biases. Should it still have a place in modern education?
Execution Chamber with restraining bed
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50 Years Ago, a SCOTUS Decision Placed a Moratorium on Executions. It's Time to Revive it

Fifty years ago in 1972, as spring faded and summer arrived in late June, America (and the world) was a vastly different place.
Clipping of a newspaper article titled "Helen Keller and Socialism"

Problematic Icons

Political activists Greta Thunberg and Helen Keller have been just as misunderstood by their supporters as by their detractors.

The Radical History of Corporate Sensitivity Training

The modern-day human-resources practice is rooted in avant-garde philosophy.

Bias Training at Starbucks Is a Reminder That the History of Racism Is About Who Belongs Where

A central component of the history of racism is the intersection in which geography and race collide.
Ripped green ScanTron sheet

The End of Scantron Tests

Machine-graded bubble sheets are the defining feature of American schools. Today’s kindergartners may never have to fill one out.
Yellow oily paper with writing

Smell, History, and Heritage

Smell’s diffuse nature requires crossing the boundaries of several subfields within the historical discipline, but also moving beyond the boundaries of history alone.
Cover of amateur photography handbook

Say Cheese! How Bad Photography Has Changed Our Definition of Good Pictures

The changes in popular photography.
A memorial for Eric Garner near the site of his death in Staten Island, NY
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Calls to Disarm the Police Won’t Stop Brutality and Killings

The history of unarmed police brutality is rooted in anti-Blackness.
Student completing standardized test

The Racist Beginnings of Standardized Testing

From grade school to college, students of color have suffered from the effects of biased testing.

The Wages of Whiteness

One idea inherited from 1960s radicalism is that of “white privilege,” a protean concept invoked to explain wealth, political power, and even cognition.

The ‘Death Penalty’s Dred Scott’ Lives On

In 1987, the Supreme Court came within one vote of eliminating capital punishment in Georgia because of of racial disparities.

One Reason Why White People in the South Have More Bias Against Black Americans

Research finds that white people in regions that were heavily dependent on slavery are more likely to harbor unconscious racism.

The Endless Night of Wikipedia’s Notable Woman Problem

What variables make a woman's inclusion in history more likely?

On Prejudice

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

The Long History of Black Officers Reforming Policing From Within

Some police are becoming more vocal advocates of change. But the project of ending racial bias in policing is a decades-old one.

Is Racism a Disease?

Is a psychological diagnosis a useful way to view racism-or does it merely absolve the racist of blame?
Photo-Illustraton of Adolph Ochs.

The Invention of Objectivity

The view from nowhere came from somewhere.
Sha-Rock tells her story to a crowd at the Bronx Music Heritage Center, 2023.

"You Gotta Fight and Fight and Fight for Your Legacy"

Sha-Rock claims her place as the first female MC in hip-hop history.
Redlining map from the 1930s

The Tyranny Of The Map: Rethinking Redlining

In trying to understand one of the key aspects of structural racism, have we constructed a new moralistic story that obscures more than it illuminates?
Mark Wallinger's "Self-Portrait," a painting showing black dripping paint in the silhouette of an unfurled scroll on a grey background

The Illusion of the First Person

The personal essay is the purest expression of the lie that individual subjectivity exists prior to the social formations that gave rise to it.

Inventing Solitary

In 1790, Philadelphia opened the first American penitentiary, with the nation’s first solitary cells. Black people were disproportionately punished from the start.

Police Reform Doesn’t Work

A century of failed liberal attempts at policing reform in Minneapolis suggests that none of the city’s current proposals will prevent another George Floyd.
A drawing of a person with a facial expression of pain with "Simple Bodily Pain" written above

The Fifth Vital Sign

How the pain scale fails us.

Algorithms Associating Appearance and Criminality Have a Dark Past

In discussions about facial-recognition software, phrenology analogies seem like a no-brainer. In fact, they’re a dead-end.
Map displaying Francis Parkman Jr's route on the Oregon Trail.

Native History: Harvard Rich Kid Starts Research for ‘Oregon Trail’

On June 15, 1846, Francis Parkman Jr., a young, Harvard-educated historian, arrived at Fort Laramie, Wyoming, to begin his journey along the Oregon Trail.

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