This is Your America

Why Frederick Douglass Still Matters

I’m worried. Very worried. But don’t mistake my worrying for pessimism or, worse, nihilism. Rather, I worry because I see a nation, with its connection to a wider world, unraveling right in front of us. Daily attempts to shatter what constitutes citizenship contribute to this entropy. There’s no immediate solution ...
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This is Your America

Authoritarianism and Civilization

Du Bois, Davis, and Trump

In 1890 the young W.E.B. Du Bois delivered the Harvard University Commencement address “Jefferson Davis as a Representative of Civilization.” Du Bois focused on a central figure of nineteenth-century America as he prophesied the meanings of freedom, democracy, and what American life -- or more accurately, civilization -- would look ...
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Authoritarianism and Civilization