“I TOO YEARN for universal justice,” wrote Zora Neale Hurston in her autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road, “but how to bring it about is another thing.” The black novelist’s remarks prefaced a passage where she grappled with the historical legacy of slavery in the African-American experience. Perhaps unexpectedly, Hurston informed her readers that she had “no intention of wasting my time beating on old graves with a club.”
Hurston did not aim to bury an ugly past but to search for historical understanding. Her 1927 interview with Cudjoe Lewis, among the last living survivors of the 1860 voyage of the slave ship Clotilda, contains an invaluable eyewitness account of the middle passage as told by one of its victims. Yet Hurston saw only absurdity in trying to find justice by bludgeoning the past for its sins. “While I have a handkerchief over my eyes crying over the landing of the first slaves in 1619,” she continued, “I might miss something swell that is going on in” the present day.
Denne historien er fra May 2022-utgaven av Reason magazine.
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Denne historien er fra May 2022-utgaven av Reason magazine.
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THE REAL THREAT IS AN ISOLATED CHINA
DECOUPLING FROM TRADE WILL MAKE THE U.S. POORER AND CHINA MORE TOTALITARIAN.
Against Our Own Best Souls'
SISTER HELEN PREJEAN ON HERLIFE ASA WITNESS ON DEATH ROW
'THE POLITICS HAVE COME TO US'
HOW A CHRISTIAN CHARITY IN EL PASO ENDED UP AT WAR WITH THE TEXAS GOVERNMENT FOR HELPING UNDOCUMENTED IMMIGRANTS
MATERIEL LOSS
HOW THE U.S. MILITARY BUSTS ITS BUDGET ON WASTEFUL, CARELESS, AND UNNECESSARY 'SELF-LICKING ICE CREAM CONES'
'NOT A SUICIDE PACT'
HOW A 1949 SUPREME COURT DISSENT GAVE BIRTH TO A MEME THAT SUBVERTS FREE SPEECH AND CIVIL LIBERTIES
HOW MUSK CAN HELP TRUMP CUT TRILLIONS
DURING PRESIDENT DONALD Trump’s first term in office, the national debt increased by $8 trillion—due, in large part, to huge spending hikes that Congress passed and Trump signed.
THE IMPROBABLE RISE OF MAGA-MUSK
IS ELON MUSK A REACTIONARY WITHA DEFECTIVE BULLSHIT METER OR THE BEST PART OF THE SECOND TRUMP ADMINISTRATION?
A Free-Range Family
RIGHT NOW, CHILDHOOD is intensely meh. Maybe you read the recent report in The Journal of Pediatrics that said that as kids' independence and free play have gone down, their anxiety and depression have been going up.
Educulture Wars
THE CULTURE WAR is costing school districts billions, according to a report released in October 2024 by the UCLA Institute for Democracy, Education, and Access. The report surveyed superintendents at 467 school districts nationwide about extra expenditures they undertook because of increased conflict over culture war issues such as critical race theory, book chal- lenges, gender-related debates, and other politicized topics. The report estimates that such fights cost school districts around $3.2 billion during the 2023-2024 school year.
Q&A Penny Lane
PENNY LANE'S NEW Netflix documentary, Confessions of a Good Samaritan, delves into her life-changing decision to donate a kidney to a stranger. Known for her thoughtful and provocative storytelling, Lane has explored human connection and empathy in films such as Hail Satan? and The Pain of Others. Last October she spoke with Reason's Nick Gillespie and shared her emotional, physical, and philosophical experience with anonymous kidney donation and the challenges that came with it.
