Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 178

February 4, 2020: Immigration Laws: The Chinese Exclusion Act

[On February 5, 1917 Congress passed the influential and exclusionary Immigration Act of 1917. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy that Act and other stages across the history of immigration laws, leading up to a weekend post on where our laws and narratives stand in 2020.]On how my thoughts about a foundational, exclusionary law have evolved over time.It’s quite fitting that the 7th post I wrote for this blog focused on the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act and its aftermaths; I don’t know that any historical topic has been more consistently central to my AmericanStudying career, as illustrated by that post, my third book, the chapter on the Chinese Exclusion Act era in my recent fifth book, this other online piece, these twoearly postsfor my Saturday Evening PostConsidering History column…well, you get the idea. There have been various through-lines across all those pieces and works, but I’d say the most prominent and consistent can be found in the very first sentence of that November 2010 blog post: “There are a couple of particularly salient reasons why I wish we included the Chinese Exclusion Act a lot more fully in our national narratives.” If my number one, overarching goal for my AmericanStudies public scholarship is expanding our collective memories (which, spoiler alert, it is), then adding the Chinese Exclusion Act to those memories has been my most longstanding case study toward that objective.Which makes it ironic, but also I hope exemplary, that my own thinking about the Act has significantly shifted over this decade of remembering and analyzing it. At the time of my Chinese Exclusion Actbook, and throughout the 18 months or so of book talks that followed it, I focused in many ways on the Act as the first national immigration law, and as one that helps us understand the fundamentally xenophobic and exclusionary nature of those laws as they developed. I also made the case in those talks that the Exclusion Act era (which could be seen as extending from 1882 through the 1965 Immigration Act, about which more in a few days) was a blip on the radar screen, the one period in American history when our national policies sought (more and more over those decades, especially after the 1920s Quota Acts turned exclusion into the overarching frame for national immigration policy) to limit our foundational diversity rather than extend and amplify it. Given that all Americans over 50 (at that time; over 60 now) grew up in that era, that frame seemed to me also to help us understand why so many older Americans use phrases like “I want my country back” (and, now, “Make America great again”) as a shorthand for exclusionary visions of the nation.I think there’s still a lot of value to those different frames for and analyses of the Exclusion Act and its era, but over the last few years my perspective on the law’s central goals has changed quite a bit. Of course the law was intended to affect future arrivals, indeed to make it impossible for immigrants from China (and then, gradually, other Asian nations as well, leading up to the 1917 law I’ll discuss tomorrow) to come to the United States. But I would now argue that it was much more fully intended to affect current residents of the US, indeed to destroy the longstanding, deeply rooted, and sizeable Chinese American community (there were more than 102,000 Chinese Americans documented on the 1880 Census, the first to ask about national origin). As I traced in this Saturday Evening Post column, numerous aspects of the Exclusion Act and its follow-up laws can only be understood through the lens of that goal: stripping citizenship from those Chinese Americans who had been able to gain it; making it illegal for Chinese Americans to leave the US and then attempt to re-enter; requiring all Chinese Americans to go through the onerous and un-Constitutional step of carrying “residency papers” at all times or risk arrest and deportation. These were steps intended to destroy an existing community, and defining the Exclusion Act’s central purpose thusly makes it even more foundational as an exclusionary, white supremacist document.Next law and stage tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?

February 3, 2020: Immigration Laws: 19th Century Origins

[On February 5, 1917 Congress passed the influential and exclusionary Immigration Act of 1917. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy that Act and other stages across the history of immigration laws, leading up to a weekend post on where our laws and narratives stand in 2020.]On why state immigration laws have to be part of the story, and an important distinction nonetheless.When I wrote my third book, The Chinese Exclusion Act: What It Can Teach Us about America (2013), I was aware of the existence of state-level immigration laws prior to the passage of the first national laws (the 1875 Page Act and 1882 Exclusion Act). (My initial such awareness was due in large part to a great 1993 Columbia Law Review article, Gerald Neuman’s “The Lost Century of American Immigration Law.”) But my reading of those laws was that they had much more to do with internal migration, and particularly in many cases with concerns about free African Americans and other “unwanted” populations moving into states, than they did with immigrants arriving from other nations. And so one of my book’s overarching arguments was that, up until those first national laws in the last quarter of the 19th century, there really were no immigration laws, no laws that affected those who came to the United States from elsewhere in the world (not upon entrance, anyway—certainly naturalization laws, like many others, affected them once they were in the US). And I continued to argue that for the next few years, until I read Hidetaka Hirota’s magisterial book Expelling the Poor: Atlantic Seaboard States & the 19th-Century Origins of American Immigration Policy (2016).Hirota’s book is magisterial partly for its deep dive into evidence that (as I understand it) had previously gone largely unexamined (Neuman does what he can, but an article is by definition far less in-depth than a monograph), his extensive and multi-layered research into and readings of these state immigration laws. But at the same time, as with all the best historical analyses, Hirota develops through those in-depth readings an overarching argument about how and why these individual state laws reflected a set of exclusionary attitudes and nascent policies, a continuity across the laws and stages that both foreshadowed and became a model for the late-century, national immigration laws and exclusions. As his book’s title suggests, the state laws tended to focus more on “classes” of individuals (both in the literal, economic sense and in the categorical one) than on ethnic or racial communities, although of course there were overlaps between those types and it’s fair to argue (as Hirota does) that the laws were implicitly intended to affect particular ethnic/racial communities. And in any case, toward whomever these laws were directed (including the still-to-my-mind-uncertain question of whether they were aimed more at internal migration or external immigration), they unquestionably modeled the concept of excluding unwanted communities based on narratives of “native” and “non-native” populations in these states.All of that makes those state laws (and Hirota’s book) vitally important contexts for the multi-stage development of national immigration laws about which I’ll write in the rest of the week’s series. So too are other state laws about which I’ve learned since I wrote that book, including California’s 1850 Foreign Miners’ Tax and 1855 Anti-Vagrancy (or “Greaser”) Act, both of which targeted non-Anglo populations, identified them as “foreign,” and sought to keep them out of (or rather expel them from) the newly annexed US territory. But I would also say that those California laws highlight an important distinction that’s salient for most all of these state laws—they generally didn’t even make much of a pretense of focusing on outside, arriving populations (which the later laws did, although complicatedly as I’ll discuss tomorrow). From what I can tell, these laws tended to be quite overt about their desire to reshape existing state populations, indeed often to expel (as Hirota rightly terms it) foundational communities of color (or otherwise disenfranchised ones, such as the extreme poor) in favor of often newly arrived or at least newly expanded Anglo and upper middle class communities. That certainly makes them an important step toward exclusion, as I’ll argue throughout the week—but it makes it even clearer that they very often were not, at their heart, immigration laws at all.Next law and stage tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?

February 1-2, 2020: January 2020 Recap

[A Recap of the month that was in AmericanStudying.]December 30: 2019 in Review: The UAW Strike: The annual series on stories I didn’t get to on the blog kicks off with a radical, influential national strike.December 31: 2019 in Review: “Old Town Road”: The series continues with three contexts for one of the year’s (and music history’s) most surprising smash hits.January 1: 2019 in Review: Global Protests: Two ways to think about one of 2019 (and early 2020)’s most important stories, as the series rolls on.January 2: 2019 in Review: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: What the nostalgic take on a mythical Golden Age gets wrong, and what it gets even wronger.January 3: 2019 in Review: The Democratic Primary: The series concludes with what’s unquestionably historic about the presidential primary, and why the story can’t end there.January 4-5: 2020 Predictions: Kicking off 2020 with a few (likely already proven wrong, with how this year is shaping up) predictions for the year ahead.January 6: AmericanStudying Unbelievable: Sexual Assault: A series on my favorite recent TV show starts with one historic and one ongoing context for its central theme.January 7: AmericanStudying Unbelievable: The Worst and Best of Police: The series continues with two cop duos who reflect the spectrum of possibilities for this vital civic organization.January 8: AmericanStudying Unbelievable: Police Dramas: How three ground-breaking shows embody three stages in the genre’s evolution, as the series rolls on.January 9: AmericanStudying Unbelievable: Three Women: A few of the many layers of characterization present in the show’s wonderful trio of protagonists.January 10: AmericanStudying Unbelievable: “Inspired by True Events”: Two stages to how the show’s story was uncovered and told, and what they reveal about 21stcentury media and society.January 11-12: Crowd-sourced TV Studying: My latest crowd-sourced post, featuring responses to Unbelievable and other TV nominations and analyses—add yours in comments!January 13: Spring Semester Previews: Intro to Sci Fi/Fantasy: My Spring semester previews kick off with how I’m finally trying to diversify my class and reading in science fiction and fantasy.January 14: Spring Semester Previews: First Year Writing II: The series continues with a significant shift in my first-year writing class, and a (still relevant!) request for help with it.January 15: Spring Semester Previews: The Short Story (Online): A change in readings that highlights the limitations of teaching online, and the possibilities there nevertheless.January 16: Spring Semester Previews: English Studies Capstone: Why I’m teaching my first-ever text in hardcover, as the series rolls on.January 17: Spring Semester Previews: Adult Learning Classes: The series concludes with adapting the same topic for two distinct adult learning programs and settings.January 18-19: Book Talk and Project Updates: A special weekend post sharing the good news about my next book project and the ongoing details of my book talks for We the People!January 20: The Real King: My annual MLK Day post on the limits to how we remember King, and how to start moving past them.January 21: Expanding Civil Rights Memories: Women and the Bus Boycott: A weeklong MLK Day series kicks off with the wonderful scholarly text that helps us revise our memories of Montgomery and the Civil Rights Movement.January 22: Expanding Civil Rights Memories: Bayard Rustin: The series continues with the Civil Rights leader who illustrates the possibilities and challenges of intersectionality. January 23: Expanding Civil Rights Memories: Lillian E. Smith: Better remembering one of the movement’s most inspiring allies, as the series rolls on.January 24: Expanding Civil Rights Memories: Gordon Parks: The series concludes with links to five posts where I considered the life, art, and legacy of the great Gordon Parks.January 25-26: 21st Century Voices of Civil Rights: A special weekend post on five contemporary figures carrying forward the fight for civil rights in America.January 27: Sports and Politics: Jack London and Jack Johnson: A Super Bowl series kicks off with the ugly moment when white supremacy took precedence over athletic achievement.January 28: Sports and Politics: Curt Flood: The series continues with three documents that together trace the story and influence of one of sport’s most ground-breaking figures.January 29: Sports and Politics: Kaepernick in Context: Two ways the quarterback’s protests and activisms extend historical legacies, as the series plays on.January 30: Sports and Politics: Curry, LeBron, and Trump: Two NBA superstars and the evolving intersections between sports and politics.January 31: Sports and Politics: The Nationals at the White House: The series concludes with two distinct ways to AmericanStudy a frustrating recent moment.Next series starts Monday,BenPS. Topics you’d like to see covered in this space? Guest Posts you’d like to contribute? Lemme know!

January 31, 2020: Sports and Politics: The Nationals at the White House

[If it’s Super Bowl week, it’s time for another SportsStudying series! This time on the fraught and contested, and not the slightest bit new, intersections between sports and politics. I’d love to hear your thoughts on any of the week’s posts or any related issues!]On two different ways to think about a surprising and frustrating moment.I’m not sure any sequence of events better expressed the yin/yang quality of hope and despair in late 2019 America than did a two-part moment involving the Washington Nationals. On Wednesday October 30th the Nationals won an epic Game 7 over the Houston Astros to clinch their first World Series title (and the first championship for a Washington baseball team in more than 70 years), bringing a great deal of joy to all us sports aficionados who had become fans of this likeable underdog team throughout their consistently nail-biting postseason run. And less than week later, on Monday November 4th, many of those Nationals attended a White House ceremonyin their honor where some players expressed (to this fan at least) surprisingly enthusiastic support for the most divisive and unpopular president in American history. (To be fair, a number of Nats did not attend the ceremony, including closer Sean Doolittle who articulated his reasons for staying away in an eloquent and inspiring set of comments that exemplified his and his wife’s consistent commitment to social justice.)Ironically, the most aggressively pro-Trump message came from one of my favorite Nats, Ryan Zimmerman (a favorite both because he attended the University of Virginia and thus had been a favorite of my parents for many years, and because he was literally the first National and was able to contribute to this World Series title 14 years later). Zimmerman said to Trump, “We’d also like to thank you for keeping everyone here safe in our country, and continuing to make America the greatest country to live in the world,” and to be honest I don’t think there’s any way to analyze Zimmerman’s “everyone” and “our country” that doesn’t focus on a white supremacist, exclusionary vision of America and Americans. I’m not suggesting that Zimmerman is an overt white supremacist (I have no idea whether he is or not), but those phrases—particularly suggesting that the president who has lost thousands of immigrant children, inspired hate crimes and mass shootings, called for the jailing and execution of political adversaries, etc. has kept “everyone here safe”—unquestionably depend upon a sense that only certain Americans are truly part of “our country.” It was beyond frustrating to hear a favorite National use such phrases to praise such a president.The other most surprising and striking moment, when Nationals journeyman catcher Kurt Suzuki donned a MAGA hat and was embraced by Trump, might seem even more frustrating still. Suzuki, who was born in Hawaii to parents of Japanese American heritage, would seem to be one of the players who could most understand the destructive effects of Trump’s (and Zimmerman’s) exclusionary rhetoric. But Suzuki downplayed the moment’s political or divisive sides, repeating at the time, “I love you all” and then adding in an interview afterward that he was “just trying to have some fun.” I think it’s possible to take him at his word, to see an athlete caught up in the continued aftermath of the pinnacle of sporting achievement (on the team level, anyway) and just enjoying the crazy ride (made even crazier, I’m sure, by the fact that it came in his 13th Major League season). As I hope my weeklong series has illustrated, sports and politics have always been interconnected and will certainly remain so—but that doesn’t mean that every sporting moment is also a political one, or that we can’t still seek and find the joys of sports on their own terms. The story of the Nationals, like so many contemporary stories, features all these contradictory but consistently present layers.January Recap this weekend,BenPS. What do you think? Other sports and politics intersections you’d highlight?

January 30, 2020: Sports and Politics: Curry, LeBron, and Trump

[If it’s Super Bowl week, it’s time for another SportsStudying series! This time on the fraught and contested, and not the slightest bit new, intersections between sports and politics. I’d love to hear your thoughts on any of the week’s posts or any related issues!]On two NBA superstars and the evolving intersection of sports and politics.As the NFL national anthem protests and their various responses have unfolded over the last few years, one of the critiques I’ve seen raised most frequently is that these athletes are unnecessarily bringing politics into the sports world. On the one hand, as I hope pretty much all of the posts under my Sports tag here at the blog make clear (as do all of the great posts at the Sport in American History blog), that critique misses the ways that sports have always been connected to—indeed, interconnected with—politics, society, culture, and everything else in our nation and world. In that sense, Kaepernick and his peers have simply forced us to examine those interconnections, a process that clearly frustrates and angers many of our fellow Americans. Yet at the same time, while such ties between sports and politics have thus always been part of our culture, there seems to me to be no question that the overt and prominent interconnections between these realms have become more frequent and more pronounced in this evolving age of Trump. And the high-profile cases of two of—perhaps the two—biggest basketball superstars in the world exemplify this striking and complex trend.Steph Curry’s purposeful engagement with Trump and the political realm is on the surface by far the more surprising of these two situations. As he has over the last handful of seasons become one of the NBA’s most prominent and popular stars—and the leader of a team that has dominated the league like few others over that period—Curry has done so in the mold of a young Magic Johnson: charismatic and charming, seemingly just as popular with opposing fanbases as with his own, an irresistible ambassador (along with his just-as-likable young family) for the league and sport. So for a player in that mold to take the step of expressing uncertainty about whether he would attend a White House ceremony celebrating his team’s championship—to, that is, not just intervene in a political conversation, but express a direct criticism of a political leader, risking alienating some portion of his fanbase among other potential effects—was a striking moment, even before Trump did his usual thing and escalated the situation on Twitter. While of course I agree with Curry’s perspective and stand, it’s also important just to note the significance of the moment itself, as a reflection of this new era in American sports and society.One of the figures who responded most directly to Trump’s Twitter attack on Curry was LeBron James, whose Tweet in response to Trump remains one of the more incendiary (and popular) social media messages (in any context) offered by an athlete to date. On the one hand, LeBron’s response seems less surprising than Curry’s words, both because of LeBron’s history of activism and because he’s already such a polarizing (and frequently hated-upon) figure that he had a good deal less to lose in that sense that did Curry. Yet if we take a step back and compare LeBron to the basketball great with whom he is most often linked (including by himself), Michael Jordan, I would still argue that this moment is a striking and significant one. Jordan was far from likable, and indeed happy to be hated as much as loved; but he also steadfastly recused himself from the political realm, both for brand/endorsement reasons and (it seemed) because of how laser-focused he was on athletic success and dominance. LeBron has often seemed just as laser-focused throughout his hugely successful career to date, and of course has garnered quite a few endorsements of his own along the way. So for him to take on Trump so directly likewise reflects this new world of sports and society in which we find ourselves.Last sporting post tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other sports and politics intersections you’d highlight?

January 29, 2020: Sports and Politics: Kaepernick in Context

[If it’s Super Bowl week, it’s time for another SportsStudying series! This time on the fraught and contested, and not the slightest bit new, intersections between sports and politics. I’d love to hear your thoughts on any of the week’s posts or any related issues!]On two ways the controversial quarterback’s protests extended a historical influence.Although the presidential election of course sucked much of the oxygen out of any other news stories during the fall of 2016, one of the other most talked-about stories of that season was been San Francisco 49ers backup (although former Super Bowl starting) quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s #BlackLivesMatter-connected national anthem protests. In the course of his season of protesting, Kaepernick inspired similar protests across the league (and other sports leagues), sparred with a Supreme Court Justice (and even changed her perspective in the process, per that hyperlinked story), and produced numerous thinkpieces on whether he was contributing to apparently declining ratings and attendance for the NFL, among many other effects. But too much of the time, then and in the more than years since, journalistic stories on Kaepernick have focused on those 2016 questions and issues, rather than linking him and his protest to what seems to me (and other historians) its perfectly clear historical origin: the 1968 national anthem Black Power protest in Mexico City by U.S. Olympic sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos.As is so often the case with history (see for example the collective embrace of Martin Luther King Jr., compared to the vitriol and hate he facedin his lifetime), the Mexico City protest has perhaps come to seem less controversial or divisive than was the case in its moment. As Smith and Carlos have amply testified, they were (and have continued to be for nearly four decades) on the receiving end of just as much racist, faux-patriotic nastiness in the aftermath of their protest as Kaepernick has been. Which, to be clear, they very much expected, and indeed was precisely the point of choosing both the Olympic stage overall and the potent symbolic moment of the national anthem specifically as the occasion for their protest. Similarly, Kaepernick has always made clear that he was and remains prepared for the consequences of his own anthem protest, and has—by donating a million dollars to activist organizations in the Bay Area—demonstrated his deep and ongoing commitment to the cultural and political causes for which he’s protesting. In those ways, Kaepernick’s protests can be seen as also paralleling the Black Panther Party—a source of controversy and division, but also an example of thoughtful and committed activism for and contributions to social justice efforts. While the Mexico City protest and the Black Panther Party had a good deal in common, I would also differentiate them when it comes to audience. That is, the Black Panthers very overtly focused on addressing and engaging with fellow African Americans, while Smith and Carlos were seeking to reach a broader national (and even worldwide) audience with their message. Both kinds of activism are equally important and complement each other, so the difference isn’t a hierarchy in any sense; just another layer to analyzing these respective efforts. I would put Kaepernick’s protests in the “broader audience” category, and I have one particularly clear illustration of his effects on that level: my sons. While I talk about lots of AmericanStudies kinds of topics with the boys, I don’t believe we had yet talked about Kaepernick when, out of the blue, my older son told me that his 5th-grade chorus was practicing “America the Beautiful,” but that he had chosen not to sing, “just like Colin Kaepernick.” A few days later, he mentioned that he had decided not to say the Pledge of Allegiance during morning announcements; his teacher asked him to do so, but he resisted. For the three years since, both he and his brother have consistently knelt during the Pledge in their respective classrooms. With at least these two thoughtful young Americans, the influence and inspiration of Kaepernick’s historically grounded protests have been tangible and impressive.Next sporting post tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other sports and politics intersections you’d highlight?

January 28, 2020: Sports and Politics: Curt Flood

[If it’s Super Bowl week, it’s time for another SportsStudying series! This time on the fraught and contested, and not the slightest bit new, intersections between sports and politics. I’d love to hear your thoughts on any of the week’s posts or any related issues!]On three documents that together help tell the story of the athlete whose stand for players’ rights changed professional sports forever.1)      Flood v. Kuhn (1972): At the end of the 1969 season, Flood’s 12th in his highly successful Major League baseball career, the St. Louis Cardinals traded him to the lowly Philadelphia Phillies. Angered by the total lack of control that professional athletes had over their own careers and destinies, and (he told the players’ union) emboldened and inspired by “the change in black consciousness in recent years,” Flood refused to go along with the trade, instead writing a letter to Commissioner Bowie Kuhn in December 1969 requesting that he be declared a free agent. Kuhn denied his request, Flood sued Kuhn and Major League baseball for violating federal antitrust laws, and the case eventually went all the way to the Supreme Court. In its June 1972 decision, the court ruled 5-3 in favor of Kuhn and MLB, citing as predecent 1922’s Federal Baseball Club v. National League . But the case and Flood had set irrevocable forces in motion, and they would lead to numerous changes in both baseball and professional sports, including the creation of precisely the free agent category for which Flood had argued.2)      The Way It Is (1971): Unfortunately, Flood himself was never able to benefit from those changes. Blacklisted from baseball following his lawsuit, he sat out the entire 1970 season (receiving what teammate Bob Gibson estimated were an average of “four or five death threats a day”during that time); the Cardinals then traded him to the Washington Senators, and he played 13 games for them in 1971 before retiring from the sport. Later that year, he published a groundbreaking memoir, The Way It Is, that linked his own story and life to impassioned arguments against the reserve clauseand other elements of baseball’s anti-player policies. Flood’s text is rarely highlighted on lists of either American autobiographies or baseball books; while it’s not particularly compellingly written, it certainly offers a new and important perspective on both professional sports and (among other categories) African American identity and life, and deserves to be more widely remembered and read today. 3)      The Curt Flood Act of 1998: Changes such as free agency took place and evolved over time, but it took twenty-five years before Flood’s legacies for professional sports and players’ rights were cemented at the most national and legal level. That happened with two Congressional laws, 1997’s Baseball Fans and Communities Protection Act (in the House) and 1998’s Curt Flood Act (in the Senate). Together, these laws established once and for all that major league baseball was subject to the same antitrust laws as all other American corporations, and that players were thus protected by those antitrust laws as well. Both laws were crafted in honor of, and the Senate’s law was named in overt tribute to, Flood, who had passed away from complications from throat cancer in January 1997 (just two days after his 59th birthday). While he thus tragically did not live to see the most sweeping results of his stand and activism, I hope and believe he knew how much he had changed professional sports, and the lives of professional athletes, through his courage and commitment.Next sporting post tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other sports and politics intersections you’d highlight?

January 27, 2020: Sports and Politics: Jack London and Jack Johnson

[If it’s Super Bowl week, it’s time for another SportsStudying series! This time on the fraught and contested, and not the slightest bit new, intersections between sports and politics. I’d love to hear your thoughts on any of the week’s posts or any related issues!]On an ugly moment when white supremacy took precedence over athletic supremacy.I was super excited when I was invited to review Cecelia Tichi’s book Jack London: A Writer’s Fight for a Better America (2015) for the American Historical Review. There were lots of reasons for my excitement, including how important Tichi’s book Shifting Gears: Technology, Literature, Culture in Modernist America (1987) was for my development as an AmericanStudier, and how much I appreciated her goal in this new project of recuperating London as a public intellectual (and thus a model for that role in 21st century America as well). But I was also just super excited to learn more about London, whom I knew largely as the author of hugely popular boys’ adventures stories about wolves and sailors and that one incredibly realistic and depressing story about a man who needs to build a fire in order to keep from freezing to death and the dog who becomes a witness to the unfolding horrors (all of which of course was a central rationale behind Tichi’s attempt to recreate the more socially and politically engaged sides of London as both a writer and a public figure).I’m not trying to dwell on my one criticism of Tichi’s book here, but it turned out that one of the things I learned about London was a frustratingly bigoted moment that Tichi understandably but problematically minimized in her project. She did note (if still to my mind a bit too briefly) London’s lifelong fascination with Social Darwinism and that philosophy’s consistently hierarchical and racist worldviews; but it was in response to the controversial (at least for white supremacists) rise of early 20th century African American boxing champion Jack Johnson that London would articulate much more overtly his own racism. In December 1908 Johnson became the first African American world heavyweight champ, defeating the reigning champ Tommy Burns, and that historic moment led London to implore a retired white champion to return to the ring and defend his race. Covering the 1908 fight as a syndicated sportswriter, London concluded his column, “But now one thing remains. Jim Jeffries must now emerge from his [Burbank, CA] Alfalfa farm and remove that golden smile from Jack Johnson's face. Jeff, it's up to you. The White Man must be rescued.”Initially reticent, Jeffries did eventually emerge from retirement, facing Johnson in a July 4th, 1910 championship bout in Reno. Jeffries was by this time so out of shape that “bout” probably isn’t the word, though, as he was quickly knocked down for the first time in his career and threw in the towel at that point. Given that white Americans often find reasons to riot in both sporting events and racism (although not usually at the same time), it’s unfortunately no surprise that Johnson’s victory led to riots around the country that left a handful of African Americans dead and many more injured (riots, I’ll note, that to this day, when they’re remembered at all, are usually and all too typically described with that deeply loaded phrase “race riot”). Perhaps it should be no more surprising that when an African American athlete reached the pinnacle of his sport, theories of physical prowess and the survival of the fittest gave way to white supremacist bigotry and ignorance, even from an otherwise intelligent and (as Tichi convincingly argues) socially progressive figure like Jack London. But it’s still frustrating to see how powerful such white supremacist nonsense can be—although it’s also deeply satisfying to see it literally and figuratively knocked on its ass.Next sporting post tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Other sports and politics intersections you’d highlight?

January 25-26, 2020: 21st Century Voices of Civil Rights

[For this year’s MLK week series, I’ve highlighted under-remembered figures, histories, and stories that can expand our collective memories of the Civil Rights Movement. Leading up to this special weekend post on 21stcentury voices!]On five figures helping carry the legacies and conversations forward.1)      Alicia Garza: I said much of what I’d want to say here in that hyperlinked post, but will add that of course the #BlackLivesMatter movement is not just about individuals or leaders, no more than the Civil Rights Movement was. Yet individual figures can nonetheless serve as inspirational models, for the best of what a movement represents and for the kinds of activism, leadership, and thinking that embody the best of American identity and community. To my mind Garza does and is all those things, and then some.2)      Tressie McMillan Cottom: I don’t imagine it’ll be a surprise that I think writers and public scholars can also be civil rights leaders. But they really can, more than ever in this era of social media and multimedia conversations and communities, and an inspiring case in point is Cottom: for her black feminist podcast (co-hosted with Roxane Gay, who could certainly occupy this spot as well) and her Twitter account just as much as for her acclaimed and groundbreaking autoethnographic and sociological books. In all those ways, Cottom’s voice and words offer vital guidance, on civil rights and so many other issues, through our 21st century maze.3)      Ava Duvernay: Not just because she made (to my mind) the best film yet about the Civil Rights Movement; nor just because she made (to my mind) the best TV show yet about race, justice and community in late 20thand early 21st century America. Each of those cultural works would certainly merit Duvernay a spot on this list, but I would argue that it is really her amazing support for fellow artists, filmmakers, and cultural voices that makes Duvernay not just a civil rights artist but an activist and leader as well. Pop culture and mass media are, now more than ever, key battlegrounds in the fight for civil rights, and I’d follow Duvernay into any such conflict.4)      Jennifer Gunter: Before these last two figures, a disclaimer: I would never argue that the movements for other civil rights are identical, or even necessarily parallel, to the ongoing one for African American civil rights. But as figures from this week’s series like Bayard Rustin and Lillian Smith (among so many others) remind us, the fights for justice and equity around issues of sexuality, gender, and so many others are at the very least deeply interconnected with those of race, and are in any case vital civil rights fights on their own terms. In recent months, Gunter has emerged (on Twitter and beyond) as one of the most vocal and vital voices on issues of gender, sexuality, and sex. I can’t wait to read her book The Vagina Bible and continue learning from her expertise and activism.5)      JoséAntonio Vargas: That’s just one of many posts in which I’ve highlighted Vargas’ inspiring and courageous voice, writing, and activism. To be honest, it feels a bit as if his voice had receded a bit in recent years (I could be totally wrong on that and welcome other perspectives as always!), which is doubly frustrating as I can’t imagine a moment where he and all he does and supports are more needed. Again, every issue and movement is distinct, but to me the fight for undocumented immigrants is one of the central civil rights battles of the 21st century. In that, as in so many other conversations, Vargas remains an essential voice and leader.Next series starts Monday,BenPS. What do you think? Other contemporary voices you’d highlight?

January 24, 2020: Expanding Civil Rights Memories: Gordon Parks

[For this year’s MLK week series, I’ll highlight under-remembered figures, histories, and stories that can expand our collective memories of the Civil Rights Movement. Leading up to a special weekend post on 21st century voices!]In June 2015, I dedicated a weeklong series to the amazing photographer, author, filmmaker, activist, and American Gordon Parks. He still needs far better remembering, to expand our collective memories of the Civil Rights era and for many other reasons. Here are links to those five posts:1)      The week started with a few thoughts on the MFA exhibition Gordon Parks: Back to Fort Scottthat kicked off my interest in Parks and his work;2)      On Tuesday I highlighted three exemplary projects in Parks’ career as a talented and groundbreaking photographer;3)      On Wednesday I wrote about his autobiographical novel The Learning Tree (1963) and its film adaptation (1969), both of which remind us of the vital need to expand our canon beyond To Kill a Mockingbird;4)      On Thursday I used Parks’ role as director of the first two Shaft movies to think about the problems and possibilities of Blaxsploitation films;5)      And on Friday I took a step back to think about the complicated, crucial artistic genre of portrait photos (for a lot more on photography and Parks, see the work of Professor John Edwin Mason, for whose book on Parks I can’t wait!).Special post this weekend,BenPS. What do you think? Civil Rights figures, histories, or stories you’d want to add to our collective memories?