Author: TheGuardian

“Hate has no place in America.” So tweeted President Joe Biden, when he announced that he would sign new legislation to address the rising tide of racist hate crimes against people of Asian descent in the United States. Biden’s claim is, of course, a fantasy – or, perhaps more charitably, an aspiration. Whatever it is, it is certainly not a statement of fact. Hate has plenty of places in America; it has had a comfortable home in the marrow of the nation’s bones for longer than “America” has even existed. Indeed, the United States would not exist as we...

The Los Angeles Public Library kicked off its celebration of AAPI Heritage Month on May 4, featuring its “TEENtastic Tuesdays” with a performance from a local youth band The Linda Lindas. But it was not until a couple weeks later that their set exploded over social media, when the LAPL posted their performance “Racist, Sexist Boy” to its social accounts. Mila, 10, had barely heard of the coronavirus when a boy in her school said his father told him to stay away from Chinese people. “It was my first experience of racism, and I didn’t really know how to...

“Tuesday, September 11, 2001, dawned temperate and nearly cloudless in the eastern United States.” So begins the report of the 9/11 commission, which investigated the terrorist attacks 20 years ago with bipartisan support. Will there be a similarly limpid introduction to a similarly weighty (567 pages) study of the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on 6 January 2021? Not if Republicans can help it. The formation of a January 6 commission passed the House of Representatives on Wednesday evening thanks to the Democratic majority and 35 Republicans. But 175 Republicans voted against it. It will be...

The Israeli air force has destroyed a tower block in Gaza City housing the offices of the Associated Press and Al Jazeera in what has widely been decried as an attack on press freedom. The airstrikes on May 15 – the sixth consecutive day of hostilities between Israel and Hamas – came roughly an hour after the Israeli military ordered people to evacuate al-Jalaa tower. There was no immediate explanation beforehand for why the 15-story building was targeted. As well as the two international media organisations, the high-rise was home to several other media outlets, offices including several internet...

“Lower-class culture is pathological.” So claimed American political scientist Edward Banfield in his 1970 book The Unheavenly City. For Banfield, unlike the middle class, “the lower-class person lives from moment to moment… unable or unwilling to take account of the future or control his impulses.” Poverty was the product of people “not troubled by dirt and dilapidation” or by “the inadequacy of public facilities such as schools, parks, hospitals and libraries.” In many ways, Banfield was a voice from the past, echoing the arguments of early 20th-century eugenicists and racial scientists. But he became influential in shaping conservative thinking...