Tag: little room
‘Working Class’ Does Not Equal ‘White’
That the words working class are synonymous in the minds of many Americans with white working class is the result of a political myth. As the award-winning historian Blair LM Kelley explains in her new book, Black Folk: The Roots of the Black Working Class, Black people are more likely to be working-class than white people are.
Kelley’s Black Folk opens our minds up to Black workers, narrating their complex lives over 200 years of American history. Kelley looks
The Book That Broke Judaism—And Tried to Put It Back Together
In the early 1970s, American Jews were, on the whole, centrist and conventional. Most were married, and most to other Jews. Their largest religious denomination was the Conservative movement, with its bland, spacious suburban synagogues, representing the middle ground between fusty tradition and full-forced reform. This was a community that seemed to have settled into a comfortable status quo, steadily assimilating in the postwar years and ascending into the middle class.
Still, there were signs that when it came to
No One Really Knows Why People Stutter
Okay, here comes our waiter. I stare at the silverware. He clicks his pen. I’m always the last to order. Sometimes my mom tries to help me by tossing out what she thinks I want.
“Cheeseburger, John?”
“… Yyyy-uhh … yyyueaah,” I force out.
If I’m lucky, there are no follow-up questions. I’m rarely lucky.
“And how would you like that cooked?” the waiter asks.
“… … … … Mmm-muh … mmm-edium.”
His face changes. I want it medium
The Conservative Women Radicalizing Amish Literature
On a chilly morning this past January, the writer Lucinda J. Kinsinger strapped her baby daughter into her car seat and drove two-plus hours from her home in rural Oakland, Maryland, to Waynesboro, Pennsylvania. She was headed to a day-long women writers’ gathering at a private residence, where the atmosphere ended up being part networking event, part craft workshop, part casual mom hang (a trio of babies sat gumming toys for the duration). All clad in floor-length dresses, the 15
When the Punishment Doesn’t Fit the Joke
This is an edition of Up for Debate, a newsletter by Conor Friedersdorf. On Wednesdays, he rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.
Question of the Week
What norms should govern jokes in our society? What, if anything, makes a joke harmful? What harm, if any, is there in punishing people for jokes or chilling the expression of jokes? How has humor improved
The Simple Anti-COVID Measures We’re Not Taking
This is an edition of Up for Debate, a newsletter by Conor Friedersdorf. On Wednesdays, he rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Soon after, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.
Question of the Week
Say you received $1 billion to spend on improving the world. How would you spend it? Why?
Email your thoughts to [email protected]. I’ll publish a selection of correspondence in an upcoming newsletter.
Conversations of
Canadian Truckers Polarize American Commentators
This is an edition of Up for Debate, a newsletter by Conor Friedersdorf. On Wednesdays, he rounds up timely, intriguing conversations and solicits reader responses to one question of the moment. Every Friday, he publishes some of your most thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.
With another Valentine’s Day just behind us, I’m reminded of the profound changes in social conceptions of love, marriage, sex, and romance across centuries, and the smaller changes that I’ve witnessed personally during