06/12/2020

We Step Aside: American Histories of Racism and Activism

Historians are speaking at a furious pace about the context of racism in America

This week, rather than posts from either our regular bloggers or guests, The Scholarly Kitchen is stepping off the stage to instead spotlight research and researchers writing about systemic racism from around the globe and from multiple disciplinary perspectives. As the blog of the Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP), the mission of The Scholarly Kitchen is to highlight information and insights from the dynamic world of scholarly communications: research and scholarship sits at the center. We have linked to open content or reproduced where licenses allow. Next week, we will post reflections and readings about our industry. Please also read last week’s statement from the SSP Board of Directors and Co-Chairs of the Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Committee, “Reaffirming our Commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion."

Monday, we featured a February 2020 issue of The BMJ on racism and medicine. Tuesday, we featured a 2017 article, “Libraries on the Frontlines.” Wednesday, we featured an article in Gizmodo, “Why are There So Few Black Physicists?” Yesterday. we featured an article from The Conversation about the deaths of indigenous people in police custody.

Today, we feature two historians writing in the The Atlantic. Ibram X. Kendi’s essay “The American Nightmare” describes “the racial pandemic within the viral pandemic.” Kendi points to deep histories of race and public health, exemplified by Frederick Hoffman’s 1896 Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro, a key social science text of the early twentieth century:

Please select this link to read the complete article from The Scholarly Kitchen.