Nicholas Mitchell
@nicholasemitchell.bsky.social
Academic, Cultural Theorist, culture critic, Essayist, Author, Contributing Writer at MS NOW. Researcher of education, ethics, policy, civil rights, hate studies. My posts represent my views and not my employer. Reposts do not = endorsements.
Gonna put this on my office wall to help ground my writing.
Adam Serwer@adamserwer.bsky.social · yesterdayAs a writer I try to remember that the fact that something annoys me personally does not necessarily make that thing important enough to write about
Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey is a metaphor for the imperial boomerang, y'all.
My theory of COVID trauma is that society having to go from zero to creating a personal hygiene curriculum of survival, the isolation of the quarantine, & watching it all become another culture war issue impacted the culture to the point where opposing science is now a common vice signal.
The Fig Economy@figgityfigs.bsky.social · last wk.One of my Crank Theories of Everything, at least of Everything in the Recent Past, is that we are dealing (badly) with COVID trauma we’d mostly prefer to pretend never happened.
My latest with @ms.now on the intersection of law, teacher freedom speech, and hostile learning environments. www.ms.now/opinion/oreg...
Opinion | I study school curricula. Here's what the case of the Oregon anti-trans book display is really about.
Nicholas Mitchell: We are seeing repeated clashes over which social values and knowledge get elevated to curriculum
ms.now
Something that is missing from 21st century conversations about bigotry is the sheer amount of people who make money by being merchants of discord on the internet. Supplying bigots with talking points and phony outrage that feeds their bigotry itch is big business for a lot of media companies.
Adam Serwer@adamserwer.bsky.social · 3w agoThis is the way it’s been done for centuries now. No one cared until we started paying people to be racist on social media.
One of the particular Black Culture Horrors that sits at the center of Get Out is very old fear of finding yourself in a white environment, regardless of professed politics, that rapidly turns hostile. The film speaks to a culturally specific manifestation of a universal fear- being hunted
Omar Wasow@owasow.bsky.social · 3w agoGet Out is an partly liberal film with notable Black nationalist / conservative themes: terrible consequences when dating across the color line, two faced white liberals as villains (“I would have voted for Obama a third time”), rewards to in-group solidarity.
@victorerikray.bsky.social @mjsdc.bsky.social Am I mistaken or does this essay from the justice department basically say that they are rhetorically changing disparate impact liability but not actually changing anything about how it works in practice? www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...
Opinion | Putting the Civil Rights Act back on track
The Trump administration’s fight against unlawful disparate-impact liability is good for business and the Constitution.
washingtonpost.com
Assimilation debates are so weird in a Creole culture like the United States.
Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias.bsky.social · last mo.As we move toward the Sesquicentennial, @jerusalem.bsky.social defends assimilation against its leftist critics as well as those on the right who are skeptical it happens. I ask if it wouldn’t make sense to bring back more forceful measures in this regard. www.slowboring.com/p/the-case-f...
Bigotry loves to cosplay as "concern"
Parker Molloy@parkermolloy.com · last mo.Now that the government’s persecution of trans people has gone beyond sports and medicine for teens, where are all the people who insisted they weren’t "anti-trans" but just had some “reasonable concerns"? www.readtpa.com/p/reasonable...
The "but I'm one of the good ones" mentality is near insanity.
What makes transphobia unique as a form of bigotry compared to others is that you cannot write and enforce a transphobic law that does not require destroying the same rights for cisgender folks and transphobes knowingly harm themselves and erode their own rights just to hurt trans folks.
My latest essay with @msnownews.bsky.social on the mandating of Bible readings in the public school curriculum in Texas. www.ms.now/opinion/texa...
Opinion | Fundamentalists may come to regret forcing the Bible into Texas classrooms
Nicholas Mitchell: The people who are clamoring the most to bring the Bible into schools may be the least pleased.
ms.now
As a guy who dabbles in social commentary, I think it's always pretty interesting for one of the pioneers of a form of social commentary to discuss the current state of the discipline.
Bob Chipman ("MovieBob")@bobchipman.bsky.social · last mo.NEW BIG PICTURE - "Video Essays Are Starting To Suck?" 👀 ...And What Does It Have To Do With Apu? 🤔 youtu.be/OfLuBSS--qI?...
With the birthright citizenship decision looming, I thought I'd repost this essay I wrote about the concept of heritage Americans www.ms.now/opinion/heri...
Opinion | The fight between Vivek Ramaswamy and "heritage Americans"
Nicholas Mitchell: Like all forms of bigotry, the "heritage American" idea is an incoherent concept.
ms.now
I simply cannot understand why pundits at the prestige outlets, podcast hosts, and politicians seem to ignore the fact that all three of Trump's voter coalitions were multi-racial. Maybe it's an inconvenient fact that raises uncomfortable questions they don't want to address?
Bob is spot on and id like to add the third Way Clinton people reacted like this to Obama and his technocratic but charismatic brand of coalition politics when he arrived in the 2008 primaries. Now that is "centrist" and they are crashing out a bit when challenged. Sunrise, sunset, y'all.
Bob Chipman ("MovieBob")@bobchipman.bsky.social · last mo.It feels weird NOW because it's the "centrist" position of Establishment Dems 40 years later; but in 92 running as the embodiment of "Grown-up former Woodstock kids who proudly protested Nam and got high but also like their 401Ks and 2.5 cars now" was EXOTIC for back then 🤣
Check out my new #Juneteenth essay with @ms.now on the most consequential contribution of Black culture to America: Liberal multiracial democracy
My latest essay with @ms.now on Black Fatigue and the importance of Juneteenth to the current crisis facing America. My latest essay with MS now www.ms.now/opinion/june...
Opinion | The spirit of Juneteenth can lead us out of this perilous political moment
Nicholas Mitchell: Juneteenth is a reminder not to despair
ms.now
@davesrants.com One word that'll change the way you see American food. Louisiana
Dave@davesrants.com · 2mo agoI’d love to go to Mexico for the food but this stuff from the yanks is bananas. American food is a cheeseburger and chips, the stuff you put on a kids menu because it’s so bland they’ll eat it.
Archived Jewish newspapers are robust primary sources for descriptions of Jim Crow life outside of the Black community.
Joel S.@joelhs.bsky.social · 2mo agoWorth noting that in 1921, the American Yiddish-language press described the anti-Black Tulsa massacre as a “pogrom,” because they knew that was the word that would best make their immigrant Ashkenazi Jewish readers understand what happened. ingeveb.org/blog/the-mos...
Watching American bigots fanboy over the race riots in Belfast is not surprising.
Pretty much said this was going to happen in my @ms.now essay on the Callais Decision. The attempt to Gut title VII of the Civil Rights Act has begun. www.cbsnews.com/news/justice...
DOJ finds EEOC violated civil rights laws with guidelines that pressured employers to make race-based decisions
The Justice Department accused the EEOC of violating civil rights laws by issuing guidelines that effectively pressured employers to make race-based considerations in hiring and promotions.
cbsnews.com
Dude Bros trying to coin "hr lady politics" as some form of economic populist critique is why I assert in my book that any political ideology can engage in bigotry.
Once you understand how Bigotry works and how bigots thinks, everything they do becomes predictable. And you end up saying this A LOT.
Toby Buckle@polphilpod.bsky.social · 2mo agothis is my life
Fascists are bigots and bigots cosplay their bigotry as anything they think will work to convince people to trust them. They lie very well.
Noah Berlatsky@nberlat.bsky.social · 2mo agofascists lie all the time, not least about their own motives.
What makes transphobia so deranged is that the cisgender bigots who adopt it have to knowingly destroy their own civil rights protections in order to harm trans people. Anti-transgender bigots are literally out here advocating for their own oppression because they hate trans people for existing.
Toby Buckle@polphilpod.bsky.social · 2mo agoan hour after this was posted, a labour minister told parliament that customers should "alert member of staff" if a trans person walks into the "wrong toilet"
Of all the forms of bigotry that I have studied, anti-queer bigotry and especially Transphobia is the most deranged
Eric Michael Garcia@ericmgarcia.bsky.social · 2mo agoReminder this Pride Month that the more than 40% of transgender adults have attempted suicide and 81% of transgender adults in the U.S. have thought about suicide. williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/press/transp...
It's almost been a year since my first book "On Bigotry" was published by @bloomsburyacademic.bsky.social . @liberalcurrents.com & @counterpunchmedia.bsky.social gave it positive reviews. This book is for anyone who wants to push bigotry back into the fringes of society, where it belongs. #booksky
