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Eric Foner

Wednesday 21st of January 2026

Affirmative action I have yet to meet the white male in whom special favoritism (getting a job, for example, through relatives or an old boys' network, or because of racial discrimination by a union or an employer) fostered doubt about his own abilities. Eric Foner, “Hiring Quotas for White Males Only” © 2017 Kwiple.com
Politics If “the personal is political” was the slogan of the 1960s, docudramas seem to assume that the political is unfailingly personal. Eric Foner, “The Televised Past” © 2017 Kwiple.com
Resisters say Maintaining the energy of popular mobilizations takes precedence over devotion to any individual. Nor is there a need for a single “party line”: abolitionists and feminists both divided into a host of small groups. Eric Foner, “Teaching the History of American Radicalism in the Age of Obama” © 2017 Kwiple.com
Resisters say Self-imposed silence is as debilitating to a democracy as censorship.  Eric Foner, “The Most Patriot Act”  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Selfie Although the word “radicalism” is often applied to those on the right as well as the left, I announced at the outset that, since we had only one semester, I planned to focus on what might be called left-wing radicalism. Those students who wanted exposure to right-wing radicalism, I added, could enroll in any class in Columbia's business school. Eric Foner, DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University © 2017 Kwiple.com
Slavery [Gale] Norton [George W. Bush's Secretary of the Interior] describes slavery as a “bad fact,” legal parlance for an irrelevancy that inconveniently muddies the judicial waters, like smog on a day when a corporate polluter is defending itself in court. Eric Foner, “Southern Comfort” © 2017 Kwiple.com
Snapshot He's a mainstream Democrat. We got the change that he wanted, which was minimal. But he campaigned on a promise of change with a capital C, with the backing of large numbers of people — whom he then demobilized. Barack Obama portrayed by Eric Foner © 2017 Kwiple.com
Snapshot This is how the Republiican Party has gotten votes for fifty years. Trump is just tearing off the mask. Now he just says right out the racism that was only barely hidden for so long. Donald Trump portrayed by Eric Foner (2016) © 2017 Kwiple.com
Socio-economic mobility Despite our rhetoric, equal opportunity has never been the American way. For nearly all our history, affirmative action has been the prerogative of white men. Eric Foner, “Hiring Quotas for White Males Only” © 2017 Kwiple.com
 
Supreme Court The current court's concept of equal protection has essentially boiled down to supporting white plaintiffs who claim to have been disadvantaged by affirmative action. Eric Foner, “Partisanship Rules” (2001) © 2017 Kwiple.com