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The 10 Most Popular Articles of 2019

Loyal subscribers of The Highlighter are discerning readers. Here are the 10 favorite articles of 2019.

Read one or all of them. Please enjoy!

The Tyranny Of The Ideal Woman

In this outstanding essay, Jia Tolentino explains how capitalism, patriarchy, and technology lead many women into a perpetual process of optimizing. Advancing in your career means scarfing down kale salads every day at Sweetgreen while checking work email. Exercising focuses less on health and more on looking taut. Barre, with its “rapid-fire series of positions and movements,” offers the most efficient path. Only once you’ve made it can you enjoy Lululemon, whose pants, according to the founder (a man), “just actually don’t work” on “some women’s bodies.” (20 min) (Issue #204) (112)

Confronting Racism Is Not About the Needs and Feelings of White People

Highlighter favorite Ijeoma Oluo is back, this time sharing her painful experiences leading anti-racism workshops. Often, conversations on racial equity center white voices, white tears, and white fragility — thereby attacking the dignity of people of color. Ms. Oluo writes, “The white attendees decide for themselves what will be discussed, what they will hear, what they will learn. And it is their space. All spaces are.” (6 min) (Issue #188) (101)

How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation

A year ago (#124), I featured the article, “Millennials Are Screwed,” which challenged stereotypical notions that millennials are lazy and spend too much money on avocado toast. This provocative article by Anne Helen Petersen offers a theory about why millennials have trouble doing errands, registering to vote, and preparing food. They’re burned out from adulting because they’ve spent all their energy optimizing their lives. (34 min) (Issue #175) (97)

Dear White Teacher

Chrysanthius Lathan is a Black teacher and instructional coach at a middle school in Portland who is tired of supporting her white colleagues to maintain high behavioral expectations for their students. In particular, Ms. Lathan wants to know why her colleagues are sending so many Black and Brown students to her classroom for timeout. So she asks the students, and the answer is clear: The teachers are scared. They’re scared of the kids, and of being seen as racist, and of asking for help. (13 min) (Issue #208) (92)

Samantha, White Nationalist

Before Samantha joined the alt-right and became a white nationalist, she grew up in New Jersey and Florida, worked at Chipotle, and volunteered for the Obama campaign. Then Samantha met Richie, who cooked and danced and played the guitar. She fell in love. At first it didn’t matter that Richie quoted 4chan and made anti-Semitic remarks. But when he began arguing for racial purification and announced, “I’m a fascist,” that was too much. Samantha left Richie — that is, until she decided to look into some of his beliefs, to find out where he had gone wrong. Five days later, after watching YouTube videos and reading articles online, Samantha changed her mind: She wanted to become an advocate for the white race, too. (35 min) (Issue #217) (77)

Choosing A School For Raffi

Keith Gessen is a successful writer who lives in Brooklyn with his wife and 4-year-old son, Raffi. Like many white liberals, Mr. Gessen has read Nikole Hannah-Jones and therefore wants to send Raffi to a racially diverse kindergarten. But when theory becomes reality, he finds out that choosing a school is not easy. (18 min) (Issue #202) (76)

Happiness Makes Us Miserable

Being happy is in, and being anything else is out. In our era of positive psychology, if you’re not happy, that just means you’re not working hard enough to pursue peak experiences and curate your Instagram feed. This article explains how the definition of happiness has changed over the years, leading us to feel anxious and depressed for experiencing the normal range of human emotions. Sadness, after all, is only negative if we think it is. (13 min) (Issue #220) (67)

The Problem With Growth Mindset

All good theories in education eventually get debunked. Or at least things seem that way. A few examples: the marshmallow test, the 30-million word gap, the 10,000-hour rule, and my favorite, grit. Now growth mindset, which focuses on the malleability of intelligence, might be on the chopping block. Apparently 30 years of research by psychologist Carol Dweck is not showing up in the same way in classrooms across the country. Prof. Dweck says educators are oversimplifying her theory, misappropriating growth mindset as the new self-esteem. This is likely true; after all, educators do enjoy repeating buzzwords over and over again. (15 min) (Issue #184) (63)

It Was Never About Busing

Nikole Hannah-Jones unpacks how busing became coded language among white people who opposed school integration. Instead of saying they didn’t want their kids to attend school with Black children, they said they preferred “neighborhood schools,” when decades of discrimination protected separate and unequal educational opportunities for their families. (19 min) (Issue #205) (61)

America Wasn’t a Democracy, Until Black Americans Made It One

In this brilliant essay, Nikole Hannah-Jones argues that 1619, not 1776, should mark the beginning of our nation’s history. Slavery, rather than the Declaration of Independence, more accurately explains the foundation of the United States. Despite their centuries-long subjugation, Black Americans have shaped our country’s experience, Ms. Hannah-Jones emphasizes. She writes, “Black Americans have been, and continue to be, foundational to the idea of American freedom. More than any other group in this country’s history, we have served, generation after generation, in an overlooked but vital role: It is we who have been the perfecters of this democracy.” (34 min) (Issue #205) (61)


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