Mark Naison

How to Deal With Racists on the Job and In Your Family: A Message for White People

By Mark Naison (June 15, 2020) Right now, your Black sisters and brothers are depending on you to make this country a safer place for them to live, work and raise their children. That can only happen if white people hold other white people accountable for behavior which makes Black people feel isolated, stressed out, and in danger. There is…
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Why “Demilitarizing Law Enforcement” Will Make the Country Safer

By Mark Naison (June 9, 2020) If we want to have a society where life expectancy and infant mortality are not at the bottom of advanced nations, and where 50% of the wealth doesn’t accrue to the top 1 percent, we have to gradually shift public funds from prisons and policing to education, health care, and affordable housing. As we…
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An Historian’s Thoughts on the Uprisings in Our Cities

By Mark Naison (May 30, 2020) As an historian, I am am hardly surprised at the uprisings taking place in cities throughout the country. The murder of George Floyd pushed people filled with rage at their position in Trump’s America over the edge. It is not just that repeated murders of unarmed Black men and women, by police or self…
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What If You Opened the Economy and Nobody Came?

By Mark Naison (April 20, 2020) As protests against state wide shutdowns to prevent the spread of COVID-19 continue to erupt in many states, people are missing one key point. So long as people continue to die in large numbers from COVID-19 and our health care system is stressed well beyond capacity, a large percentage of the population will continue…
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The Importance of Leaving Footprints: The Lesson of the Slave Narrative and “Footnote Four”

By Mark Naison (November 11, 2019) During the last few years, it has been a matter of extreme frustration to me that I have been able to do little to prevent our country from “going off the rails.” I saw what was coming four years ago, warned people about it, and had virtually no influence on anybody that didn’t already…
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Letter to the President of Georgia Southern University Regarding Book Burning

By Mark Naison (October 13, 2019) Letter to the President of Georgia Southern University regarding book burning at his school President@georgiasouthern.edu Kyle Marrero President, Georgia Southern University Dear President Marrero As a historian of race in the United States, who has written 7 books on the subject, and a professor for 49 years at one of the nation’s major universities,…
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A Glimmer of Hope on September 11

By Mark Naison (September 11, 2019) As I watched the Twin Towers fall from the my 6th Floor Seminar room in Dealy Hall at Fordham, I knew that our country would be tested as it never had been since the multiple crises of the 1960’s Would we come out of this terrible ordeal , which would include the deaths of…
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Advice to Young People: Don’t Normalize Racism

By Mark Naison (August 19, 2019) If there was a piece of advice I would give to young people, it would be the following: Don’t normalize racism. Speak out against it and challenge it wherever you see it, whether it is in a classroom, a dormitory, a locker room or at your family dinner table. Do so with kindness when…
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White Supremacy has Always Been Behind White Terrorism in the US

By Mark Naison (August 12, 2019) When I think of the ideology of white supremacy–which has affected everything in US History from immigration policy, to citizenship, access to voting rights, marriage laws, the ability to play in professional sports leagues, and much much more– what makes the largest impression, in the context of the El Paso shooting, is how it…
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Choosing Non-Violence in an Awful Time

By Mark Naison (August 3, 2019) As I sit here in shock and mourning over the mass murders in El Paso, once again engineered by a white supremacist, I feel compelled to share some thoughts about why, when I decided to start a new organization to fight racism, I wanted it to be strictly non violent. There are two reasons…
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No Panic at the Supreme Court

A highly detailed vector illustration of the US Supreme Court building. (Made up of well over 1,000 pieces.)

By Mark Naison (July 27, 2019) Last week, I had the opportunity to spend time with someone who just left a position as a law clerk to a Supreme Court Justice. There are many things I learned from the conversation that I can’t share publicly, but two things stood out that I can pass along First, an atmosphere of civility…
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