Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Act of Infamy Against Japanese Americans

How a Human Rights Champion Gave in to Racist Suspicion After Pearl Harbor

In recent months, president-elect Donald Trump has said he is considering setting up a registry to track Muslim Americans and foil jihadist plots from being hatched in the United States. This registry, he and his aides have claimed, is grounded in precedent: Franklin Roosevelt’s administration detained approximately 120,000 Japanese nationals and Japanese Americans in response to Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.

Coincidentally, this February 19 marks the 75th anniversary of FDR’s Executive Order 9066 setting up the camps. The Franklin D. Roosevelt Library in upstate New York is devoting …

By Matthew Dallek | January 18, 2017

How Alpine Yodeling Mutated Into American Blackface Minstrelry

Vestiges of the Racist Entertainment Persist in Art and Politics

By Daniel H. Foster and Anne Bramley | December 27, 2016

In 1822 the Austrian emperor Franz I and his ally Tsar Alexander I of Russia held a meeting in a remote valley of the war-torn Tyrolese Alps. They were entertained …

When Bigoted Humor Isn’t Just a Joke

White Comedians Tiptoeing Around Racial Taboos Are Adding Insult to Injury

By Raúl Pérez | September 19, 2016

Over the last decade, I’ve studied the changing nature of race-talk among comedians, from the civil rights era to the present. Specifically, I’ve been interested in examining the use of …

American Segregation Started Long Before the Civil War

How the Founders’ Revolutionary Ideology Laid the Groundwork

By Nicholas Guyatt | September 12, 2016

Segregation remains an intractable force in American life, more than 60 years after the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education ruling outlawed racial separation in America’s schools. The …

Where Do Racism and Sexism Intersect at the Office?

Businesses Can Build More Inclusive Workplaces by Recognizing the Nuances of Bias

By Serena Does and Margaret Shih | July 6, 2016

While the U.S. currently has a black president and a woman just made history by clinching the Democratic presidential nomination, both racial minorities and women still face significant barriers in …

How Big Data Can Make Us Less Racist

Computing Power Can Help Us Make More Efficient Decisions About Who is Friend or Foe

By Bhagwan Chowdhry, Sanjiv Das, and Barney Hartman-Glaser | April 28, 2016

Donald Trump wants to ban all Muslims from entering the United States and has called for a wall to keep out Mexicans, whom he has called rapists and criminals. Many …

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