Richard White, Stanford University

I’m a Gilded Age historian who has drawn parallels between our current moment and the late 19th century, two periods known for staggering economic inequality and sweeping technological change.

But much of the coverage of the murder of Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, and Luigi Mangione, the man accused of killing him, has given me pause.

As many journalists and pundits would have it, both Thompson and Mangione appear to have wandered into the New York borough of Manhattan from the late 19th century.

In their interpretation, the two Gilded Ages are no longer running on parallel tracks. They have collided, mixing their occupants and baggage into a chaotic mess.

When I and most other historians talk about parallels between the Gilded Age and today, the comparisons are structural. They reflect broad conditions affecting millions of people. It’s when pundits pull particular examples from the past to explain the actions of individuals today that trouble arises.

We haven’t been here before

New York Times columnist Bret Stephens casts Thompson as a character out of a Horatio Alger novel: a working-class hero who pulled himself up by the bootstraps. Also writing in The New York Times, sociologist Zeynip Tufekci comes close to making Luigi Mangione a reincarnation of Alexander Berkman, the anarchist who tried to assassinate industrialist Henry Clay Frick. Over in The New Yorker, Dhruv Khullar suggests that in its arbitrariness and callousness, the prototype for the U.S. medical system, which Mangione excoriated in his manifesto, originated somewhere in the Gilded Age.

Today’s historians and journalists obviously think the past has much to teach their fellow citizens. And their motives are sensible: They want to push back against the idea that the past is irrelevant, that everything important has occurred in the past 15 minutes – a view reflected in a favorite phrase of President-elect Donald Trump to describe whatever crisis du jour is afflicting the United States: “We’ve never seen anything like it.”

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So comparisons between two periods can serve as a brake on hasty claims that everything has changed and that the current moment is unprecedented. But in my view, specific comparisons often make a categorical mistake. They substitute modern beliefs and judgments for those of people in the past.

In the immediate aftermath of the murder, Tufekci wrote that “The currents we are seeing are expressions of something more fundamental. We’ve been here before. And it wasn’t pretty.”

Wait, slow down: “We” have not been here before. The major, most obvious – and virtually always ignored – difference between the Gilded Age and our own time is that we did not live in it. None of us were alive in the late 19th century. The people who were alive back then didn’t think like us or act like us. Finding structural similarities does not turn writers into Nostradamus, able to discern the signs and predict the future.

It is all too easy to use the past as a tool for driving home lessons derived from modern beliefs or ideologies. Without knowing much about either Thompson or Mangione – let alone anarchists or Horatio Alger heroes – Mangione becomes the equivalent of a 19th-century avenger of the working class, while Thompson is a modern “Ragged Dick,” rising to his post through pluck and hard work.

Most popular and political appeals to history are not just superficial, they are also quite ahistorical. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the courts.

Jonathan Gienapp’s new and brilliant book, “Against Constitutional Originalism,” eviscerates what he describes as the sloppiness, ahistoricism and anachronisms of the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative members, who often justify their decisions by invoking what the nation’s founders intended. According to Gienapp, their core sin is simple: They are ventriloquists putting their modern ideas in the founders’ mouths and claiming they have recovered original meanings.

Emerging from the morass

This ahistorical thinking runs across the political spectrum. It comes from asking the wrong questions, and thinking that structural similarities produce roughly identical outcomes.

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The two periods share more than soaring inequality and vast technological change. There were attacks on racism and resurgent racism; mass immigration and backlash against it; frequent swings in party control; economic booms and busts; a dearth of bold leadership; failures in governance; and outbursts of violence.

Both eras also experienced declines in lifespans, environmental deterioration that has affected health, and the efforts of the well-to-do to seal themselves off from the diseases of the less fortunate.

But often left out is the fact that the Gilded Age confronted these issues; it was also, paradoxically, a period of reform. Beginning at the end of the 19th century, lifespans increased, childhood mortality fell, epidemic diseases declined, and public health produced remarkable results.

Now, that trajectory has reversed. Death and disease are at the heart of the murder of Brian Thompson, who was on his way to meet with investors hoping to profit from a company whose calculated decisions sentenced some people to suffer for the gain of others.

Useful questions might be: How did the Gilded Age escape its crises? And why did solutions that seemed to gradually improve health and well-being for most people over generations cease to work? How did UnitedHealthcare, the people who profit from it and those eager to invest in it come to be?

There is a history there.

Richard White, Professor of American History, Stanford University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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STM Daily News is a vibrant news blog dedicated to sharing the brighter side of human experiences. Emphasizing positive, uplifting stories, the site focuses on delivering inspiring, informative, and well-researched content. With a commitment to accurate, fair, and responsible journalism, STM Daily News aims to foster a community of readers passionate about positive change and engaged in meaningful conversations. Join the movement and explore stories that celebrate the positive impacts shaping our world.

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D. Alex Quistberg, Drexel University

Over 60 pedestrians and cyclists have been killed each year in Philadelphia in recent years.

Compared with other big cities, Philadelphia’s death rate for both pedestrians and cyclists is higher than New York and Chicago but lower than Los Angeles and Houston.

Across the U.S., more pedestrians and bicyclists are killed or seriously injured today than any time over the past 40 years. Over 7,500 pedestrians and over 1,100 bicyclists died in traffic collisions in 2022, the most recent year with available data, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

As an injury epidemiologist in Philadelphia who studies pedestrian and bicyclist injuries in the U.S. and Latin America, I want to share several evidence-based ways that Philadelphia can make walking, biking and getting around the city safer for everyone.

Protect bike lanes

Protected bike lanes have physical barriers that prevent drivers from entering the bike lane to park or pass other drivers.

They are particularly useful on high-volume cycling corridors and offer cyclists much more protection than lanes that are merely painted but have no physical barriers or lanes with flexible posts that can be driven over.

Flexible posts, for example, were unable to block the collision that killed Barbara Friedes, chief pediatric resident at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, in Center City in July 2024 when a drunk driver sped through the bike lane where Friedes was bicycling.

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Research suggests protected bike lanes can improve safety for pedestrians and drivers too. This is likely because they tend to cause drivers to slow down.

The Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia and other local bike safety advocacy groups have called for the city to replace unprotected lanes with protected lanes and also add protected bike lanes to more roadways that currently don’t have any.

In October 2024, the city announced it will install concrete barriers to protect the bike lanes on Spruce and Pine streets in Center City, including where Friedes was killed. That same month, the City Council unanimously passed a “Get Out the Bike Lane” bill that increases the fines for drivers who stop or park in a bike lane.

Slow drivers down

Traffic-calming measures are engineering and road design strategies that slow vehicles down, make pedestrians more visible to motorists and provide safer crossing areas.

They include speed humps, curb extensions and protected intersections, as well as 20 mph speed zones.

Automated speed enforcement, which involves cameras that capture the license plates of drivers who are speeding, has led to major reductions in speeding and serious collisions on Roosevelt Boulevard. The street, which runs through North and northeast Philadelphia, has been named one of most dangerous roads in the country in various analyses by news and transportation organizations. Due to this success, the city plans to expand automated speed enforcement to Broad Street in 2025 and potentially other locations in the future.

Traffic-calming measures can benefit all road users by reducing traffic congestion so drivers and public transit riders face fewer delays. They can also boost nearby businesses by increasing foot traffic and making business corridors more pleasant for shoppers.

Encourage fewer cars on the road

Philadelphia can adopt more policies that promote walking or biking over driving. These include open streets or ciclovías, where streets are closed down to motor vehicle traffic and opened to cyclists and pedestrians. Philadelphia occasionally does this on stretches of 18th Street and Walnut Street in Center City.

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Increasing parking fees can also reduce traffic congestion. Parking fees generally do not reflect the true cost of driving in cities, which includes maintaining parking spaces and infrastructure. The low cost of parking is essentially a subsidy to drivers. While there are fears that reduced parking hurts business owners, substantial evidence indicates businesses benefit from increased foot and bicycle traffic.

The city could also reduce the number of parking spaces and implement congestion pricing, which involves charging fees to drive in certain areas of a city to reduce traffic congestion.

This may be a challenge, considering the recent experience of New York City, which spent decades preparing for congestion pricing only to have it blocked by the governor, though it seems it now has a chance of being implemented. How much success New York has with congestion pricing will likely determine the feasibility in Philadelphia and other U.S. cities.

Improve public transportation

Expanding public transportation and lowering or eliminating fares can also help protect pedestrians and cyclists by reducing car use. I believe these measures could help ensure the other policies mentioned above are effective.

However, Philadelphia’s public transportation is currently in a critical state. Facing funding shortfalls due to years of declining ridership, the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority has proposed service cuts and significant fare increases beginning Jan. 1, 2025. Gov. Josh Shapiro has spared the system from these cuts for now by flexing federal highway funds, but long-term solutions are needed to ensure the survival and revival of public transportation in Philadelphia.

Addressing gun violence, drug use and other crimes may also make public transportation in Philadelphia safer and more attractive. While violent crimes on Philadelphia’s public transportation have dropped dramatically in 2024, four people have lost their lives on SEPTA vehicles so far this year.

Collect better data

Considering the increase in road traffic deaths in Philly since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, substantial efforts are needed to reach the city’s Vision Zero goal of reducing road traffic deaths to zero by 2030.

In my view, this includes better data on transportation use and which interventions and policies are working and which are not.

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Road safety surveillance could be improved in Philadelphia and across Pennsylvania by linking crash records to other data, such as hospital and clinical data of crash victims, as well as insurance costs to better understand the burden of road traffic injuries on the city and the state.

Data is also key to ensuring public policies are implemented equitably. The Vision Zero plan includes a focus on lower-income neighborhoods and those with higher proportions of racial and ethnic minorities. Those areas have three times as many serious injuries and deaths as other neighborhoods, and road traffic injury and deaths rates are 30% higher among people of color compared with white residents.

D. Alex Quistberg, Associate Research Professor, Urban Health Collaborative, Drexel University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The Bridge is a section of the STM Daily News Blog meant for diversity, offering real news stories about bona fide community efforts to perpetuate a greater good. The purpose of The Bridge is to connect the divides that separate us, fostering understanding and empathy among different groups. By highlighting positive initiatives and inspirational actions, The Bridge aims to create a sense of unity and shared purpose. This section brings to light stories of individuals and organizations working tirelessly to promote inclusivity, equality, and mutual respect. Through these narratives, readers are encouraged to appreciate the richness of diverse perspectives and to participate actively in building stronger, more cohesive communities.

https://stmdailynews.com/the-bridge

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Lynnette Mawhinney, Rutgers University – Newark and Leana Cabral, Columbia University

Tracey, a high school teacher in the Philadelphia School District, remembers the hurtful comments she heard from parents when she started her career over a decade ago as a young Black teacher in what was then a predominantly white area of southwest Philly.

“I can recall white parents making comments saying, ‘Oh, this young Black teacher who doesn’t have children herself – how is she supposed to teach my child?” she said. “And I’m like, what does my race and the fact that I don’t have children have to do with me educating your child?”

Tracey’s frustrations mirror those of other Black teachers in Philadelphia.

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the teaching profession faced what has been referred to as the Great Teacher Resignation. A national survey found that 64% of teachers were less satisfied with teaching after the pandemic compared with prior to the pandemic, and 74% would not recommend teaching as a career.

In Philadelphia, a great resignation of Black teachers started well before the pandemic and continues today. The decrease in numbers of Black teachers in the district continues despite research that demonstrates Black teachers’ positive impact on Black students’ experiences in school and academic outcomes, as well as their positive impact on all students.

We are a professor of urban education and a Ph.D. in sociology and education who research Black teacher attrition and other issues involving Black teachers and Black students.

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In 2021, we were part of a small research team that interviewed 30 Black teachers who either currently or formerly worked in the School District of Philadelphia. Tracey and other names used in this article are pseudonyms to protect the anonymity of our interview participants. This study was done in partnership with Research for Action, a Philadelphia-based nonprofit education research group focused on racial and social justice. Our findings were recently published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Black Studies.

We wanted to understand, from the teachers’ perspectives, why so many Black teachers are leaving the district and what the district can do to support and retain them.

Black teachers have ‘grown weary’

In 2000, there were 4,059 Black teachers in the district. That number had dwindled to 2,866 by 2022.

It’s not an issue that is unique to Philadelphia. An education researcher at Penn State University found that between 2022 and 2023, the attrition rate for Black teachers across Pennsylvania was well over double that of white teachers.

“Black public school educators in Philadelphia have grown weary, for good reason,” wrote education scholar and author Camika Royal in her 2022 book “Not Paved for Us: Black Educators and Public School Reform in Philadelphia.”

Our interviews suggest a key reason for this weariness has to do with experiences of racism within the larger school district that affect Black teachers across the system, but manifest differently depending on their schools’ locations.

Segregated, underfunded schools

The Black teachers we interviewed who taught in neighborhoods with a majority of Black residents said they faced systemic racism through lack of resources, including books and classroom materials, for their students.

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Philadelphia is one of the most racially divided cities in the U.S.. Among the nation’s 30 largest cities, it ranks second after Chicago in terms of residential segregation, according to researchers at Brown University. Schools reflect these neighborhood racial divides.

“I request things all the time and don’t get them,” said Nina, a middle school teacher in a majority Black neighborhood, “Well, there wasn’t enough books for all the kids. So, what I’m supposed to do? Now I have to go online, find my own resources and things like that.”

Racial microaggressions

Black teachers who taught in majority white sections of the city, meanwhile, spoke of their frustration with being the targets of chronic racial microaggressions.

Examples of these microaggressions included hearing white parents complain about a Black teacher being assigned to teach their child, and working with white colleagues whom they felt ignored or actively avoided speaking to or acknowledging them.

“I’m walking down the hall and I say ‘Hello,’” one mid-career teacher reflected. “If it’s just me and a white colleague and we’re passing each other in the hallway … then they don’t say anything to me. But the person behind me who was white, they’ll say something to them before (the other person) even say(s), ‘Good morning.’”

Racial microaggressions toward Black teachers is certainly not a new phenomenon. Nor is it limited to Philadelphia.

A recent nationwide survey also found that racial microaggressions are a major reason Black teachers across the U.S. are leaving teaching at high rates.

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Support and validation

Despite the many systemic issues and experiences of racism that Black teachers reported to us, most of the participants in our study – 25 out of 30 – were current teachers in the district.

In other words, they had, so far, stayed in the profession.

These teachers reported they kept teaching because they were committed to students, particularly students of color.

“I stay because our (Black students), they need to see (Black teachers) in the classroom,” said Mila, a veteran teacher for whom teaching was her third career.

Many of the teachers also found support and motivation through affinity groups that provide them opportunities to meaningfully connect to other Black teachers. These groups are established by fellow teachers in the district but are organized independently of the district.

“What allowed me to stay was finding networks,” said Simon, another veteran teacher in the district. “And then the network kind of made me find my niche, find my voice, find who I was, validate me.”

Keeping Black teachers in the classroom

Education scholar Bettina Love argues that school districts and school officials should “stop trying to recruit Black teachers until you can retain the ones you have.”

Some meaningful efforts are underway. The Center for Black Educator Development, founded in Philadelphia, works to recruit and retain Black teachers both in Philadelphia and across the country. Other nationwide organizations, such as the Black Teacher Project based in Oakland, offer fellowship and space for supportive affinity groups.

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School districts or administrators can offer Black teachers physical spaces, financial resources and dedicated time to meet with other Black teachers to discuss racism – including ways to resist it – along with self-care. This can help prevent an exodus of the Black teachers who have remained in the profession.

Lynnette Mawhinney, Professor of Urban Education and Senior Associate Dean for Strategic Academic Initiatives, Rutgers University – Newark and Leana Cabral, Ph.D. Candidate in Sociology and Education, Columbia University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

STM Daily News is a vibrant news blog dedicated to sharing the brighter side of human experiences. Emphasizing positive, uplifting stories, the site focuses on delivering inspiring, informative, and well-researched content. With a commitment to accurate, fair, and responsible journalism, STM Daily News aims to foster a community of readers passionate about positive change and engaged in meaningful conversations. Join the movement and explore stories that celebrate the positive impacts shaping our world.

https://stmdailynews.com/

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