In the weeks since the Minneapolis police killed George Floyd—an unarmed, restrained Black man—in broad daylight, as he begged for his life, there has been a sort of cultural atonement for the myriad ways white power structures have routinely exploited people of color. Some white folks have resigned; other have joined book clubs; and Hollywood, never to be outdone in the performative allyship department, recorded a funereal PSA. A farrago of pained expressions, darting eyes, and black shirts, the ad featured a chorus of actors, some recognizable and some not, taking “responsibility” for turning a blind eye to racism, thereby facilitating […]
Confederate Army
3 posts
Taylor Swift has no interest in preserving and protecting statues of racist leaders. In a lengthy Twitter thread posted Friday, the singer condemned several “racist” monuments in her home state of Tennessee. As protests have erupted across the country in support of Black Lives Matter, demanding justice for black Americans murdered by police, statues of various racist figures, most of them Confederate leaders, have toppled. As a result, a debate has begun to rage regarding these monuments’ historical significance as some states vow to repair and replace them—despite the violence and bigotry they represent. “Taking down statues isn’t going to fix […]
Grant, a History Channel miniseries airing over three nights beginning on Memorial Day (May 25), is an overt—and timely—reclamation project. His reputation having faded over the past century because, as many here assert, the South’s “Lost Cause” rewriting of Civil War history invariably downplayed his accomplishments, Ulysses S. Grant is restored by this informative and entertaining TV documentary to the prototypical modern American hero. Based on Ron Chernow’s critically acclaimed 2017 biography of the same name, it’s a stirring tribute to an individual who embodied America’s finest ideals: hard work, determination, courage, resolve, and belief in democracy and equality for all, […]