Reading Losurdo’s Stalin book has opened my eyes to just how horrific things were for black folks from the end of Reconstruction to the start of WWII in particular.
The book is largely taking claims / slander aimed at the Stalin-era Soviet Union and showing how it was largely untrue but also how things were way worse in the West. I know in one section he brings up how the prison system in the US South in the period I mentioned was pretty much just what anti-communists think the gulags were (and of course mostly it was black men who suffered). I don’t recall the exact context in which Losurdo brings up lynchings, though. I remember the focus was on how white society in the south wholly participated in it, not like it was just isolated incidents of just a few participants (lynchings were advertised in the newspapers in advance and often hundreds or thousands of people would show up).
Would you recommend any other Stalin reading as essential before Losurdo's take?
I haven't read much in detail about Stalin to be honest, but I am wary of starting reading about him with a polemic (but then, all history is polemic - so, idk).
Researchers at Stanford University and the University of Southern California found that racial segregation in the country’s 100 biggest school districts, which serve the most students of color, has increased by 64 percent since 1988. Economic segregation, or the division between students who receive free or reduced lunch and those who do not, increased by 50 percent since 1991.
School busing for the purposes of desegregating school districts was something that developed in the aftermath of the Civil Rights Movement; and white people fucking hated it. They rioted all over but especially in places like Boston. In other parts of the country private evangelical schools (not explicitly segregated but de facto, as these were and still are often nearly 100% white) exploded in popularity.
The courts were able to keep these desegregation programs in place through the 70s and 80s, but the white folks were relentless in trying to get them overturned and by the time you get into the 90s, they had been pretty successful in rolling back this one meager form of progress.