Why 2020 Isn't Quite 1968

Throughline

NPR

Society & Culture, History, Documentary

4.7 • 15K Ratings

🗓️ 18 June 2020

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Protests, racial divisions, political polarization, and a law-and-order president – it's easy to draw comparisons between 2020 and 1968. But, Adam Serwer, who covers politics at The Atlantic, says that a much better point of comparison actually starts a century earlier – 1868. This week, we share an episode we loved from It's Been A Minute with Sam Sanders that explores a moment when white Republicans fought for years for the rights of Black Americans, before abandoning them to pursue white voters.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everyone, I'm Randand Fattah.
0:02.0	I'm Ramteen Arablui.
0:03.5	And today we have a special episode for you from our friends over at NPR's podcast.
0:08.5	It's been a minute with Sam Sanders.
0:11.0	Given all the recent protests across the country and the world,
0:15.0	a lot of people have been drawing comparisons between 2020 and another to Maltruis year in American history,
0:21.0	1968.
0:23.0	And last week, Sam dug deeper into that comparison through a fascinating conversation
0:28.0	with Adam Surwer of the Atlantic.
0:31.0	Drawing out how this moment is both similar and different,
0:34.0	and while we may have to go much further back in time to find an even better comparison.
0:40.0	When we come back, 1968, and now.
0:58.0	Support for NPR in the following message come from Simon and Schuster,
1:06.0	publishers of the American story, Conversations with Master Historians by David Rubenstein.
1:11.0	Discussions include David McCullough on John Adams, Ron Chernau on Alexander Hamilton,
1:16.0	Doris Kerns Goodwin on Abraham Lincoln, Taylor Branch on Martin Luther King Jr,
1:20.0	and many other conversations about America, available now where books are sold.
1:25.0	Throughout America's history, small choices have compounded into big inequalities.
1:30.0	I'm Manouch Zomerodi, how injustice gets ingrained.
1:34.0	That's on the Ted Rady Hour from NPR, subscribe or listen now.
1:55.0	Right now you are looking for something to explain the crazy that is 2020,
2:00.0	a global pandemic, a near-great depression, and the largest wave of protests we've seen in this country for years, if not decades.
	...

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