January/February 2013

Tilting at Windmills

by Charles Peters

Langley’s Bartlebys I’m sure you’re sick of hearing about “the talking points,” but it’s fascinating to discover that the real culprit was not Susan Rice or a sinister White House plot, but, according to Siobhan Gorman and Adam Entous of the Wall Street Journal, a daylong debate at the CIA involving “more than two dozen… Read more »

Wholesome Millennials—Black, Brown, and White

by Phillip Longman

Prevailing stereotypes about America’s youth, and particularly about young African Americans, are often wildly off base, either because they were never true, or because they have failed to keep up with the reality of generational change. Below is a selection of social indicators showing ways in which today’s younger generation exhibits substantially more positive behaviors… Read more »

Color-Blind Medicine?

by Phillip Longman

In 2002, the Institute of Medicine published an oft-cited and controversial report entitled Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care. The report concluded that members of minority groups, even when fully insured, tend to receive substandard care from their doctors. It cited disparities in how often whites and minorities received even routine… Read more »

To Live Longer, Move to a New Zip Code

by Phillip Longman

Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” campaign emphasizes the importance of physical activity for combating obesity, a point she has driven home by dancing alongside school kids to Beyoncé’s workout video. But another kind of movement may also be important to your chances of living to a ripe old age: moving to a new zip code. Between… Read more »

COIN Operated

by Laura M. Colarusso

In Iraq and Afghanistan, General David Petraeus applied all the lessons learned in Vietnam—except for the one that mattered most.

A House Divided

by Thomas J. Sugrue

Why do middle-class blacks have far less wealth than whites at the same income level? The answer is in real estate and history.

Prison’s Dilemma

by Glenn C. Loury

Even if every convict were rightly sentenced, America’s vast, racially skewed incarceration system would still be morally indefensible.

Deconstructing Reconstruction

by Nicholas Lemann

The tumultuous decade that followed the Civil War failed to enshrine black voting and civil rights, and instead paved the way for more than a century of entrenched racial injustice.

Introduction: Race, History, and Obama’s Second Term

by Paul Glastris

In the summer of 2011, under siege from both the left and the right for his efforts to broker a budget deal to avoid a debt default, Barack Obama defended his leadership with a telling historical analogy. He noted that the Emancipation Proclamation, a copy of which hangs on his Oval Office wall, outlawed slavery… Read more »

Lincoln Died for Our Sins

by Jelani Cobb

The opening scene of Steven Spielberg’s cinemythic portrait of the sixteenth president features President Abraham Lincoln seated on a stage, half cloaked in darkness, and observing the Union forces he is sending into battle. It’s an apt metaphor for the man himself—both visible and obscure, inside the tempest yet somehow above the fray. Lincoln was… Read more »

Lincoln: No Hero to Native Americans

by Sherry Salway Black

The Emancipation Proclamation was in many ways a tremendous step forward for human rights, but it didn’t bring any new rights to Native Americans. In fact, Abraham Lincoln is not seen as much of a hero at all among many American Indian tribes and Native peoples of the United States, as the majority of his… Read more »