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The Roundup Top Ten for February 19, 2021

Can Historians Be Traumatized by History? (Content Warning)

by James Robins

"If the historian—the very person supposed to process the past on behalf of everyone else—struggles with trauma, then it is little surprise that societies as a whole struggle to face the violence of how they were formed and how they prevailed."

Phrenology Is Here To Stay

by Courtney E. Thompson

Liberal journalists have treated present-day exponents of phrenology as kooks. This is a dangerous dismissal of phrenology's origins among the 19th century intellectual elite which encourages false security that today's science is insulated from social currents of racism, sexism, or other power politics. 

Texas’s Power Grid Failing Shows why Biden Needs to Go Big on Infrastructure

by Teal Arcadi

The lesson of the Interstate Highway system is that when it comes to large and necessary infrastructure programs, opportunistic partisanship is better than laboriously building a bipartisan coalition.

The Unsettling Message of "Judas and the Black Messiah"

by Elizabeth Hinton

The film "brings the disparities engendered by a surveillance state into focus, leaving audiences to wonder what this country would look like if the war on white supremacy were fought with the same implacable intensity as the one against the Black Panther Party some 50 years ago."

It's Time to Stop Calling Slavery America's 'Original Sin'

by James Goodman

The theological origins of "original sin" mean that the metaphor portrays slavery, racism, and the dispossession of Native American lands as evils foisted upon Americans, rather than as social and political products of choices made by them. 

The Crossroads Facing Country Music after Morgan Wallen’s Use of a Racist Slur

by Amanda Marie Martinez

Country music has always been more racially diverse than the commercial recording and radio industries in Nashville have recognized. It's time for the industry to reflect the music's history. 

Jews Fear what Follows after Republicans Applauded Marjorie Taylor Greene

by Deborah Lipstadt

"Having spent decades studying, teaching, researching and fighting antisemitism, Greene’s claims were familiar territory. All of them – space lasers, 9/11, school shootings, Trump’s election loss and so much else – shared a common theme: conspiracy."

Ancient Rome Has an Urgent Warning for Us

by Kyle Harper

It's simplistic to look to the classics as instructions for political or social conduct, but the study of the past should inform our awareness of the power of nature to affect social and political life. 

Fighting School Segregation Didn’t Take Place Just In The South

by Ashley Farmer

"The Harlem 9’s fight serves as an important reminder that school desegregation protests were popular and successful in the North as well as in the South."

We Wouldn’t Have Had President Trump Without Rush Limbaugh

by Max Boot

Rush Limbaugh stripped conservative politics of principle, policy, and argument, broadcasting a show based on "assertion, mockery, and resentment." Donald Trump's presidency has proven that this was enough.