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Theres a crisis of citizenship in America.

Most people dont see many opportunities to participate meaningfully in our political process, and many others feel alienated from it altogether. Thats a dangerous place for any democracy to be.

One of the biggest challenges facing American politics is polarization. The public is increasingly split along partisan lines, and the very idea of Americanness who counts as an American and who doesnt seems hopelessly muddled. But its precisely because were so divided that now is a great time to ask what citizenship means and how we might revive it.

Danielle Allen is a political theorist at Harvard University who has been thinking about these issues for a long time. Last month, she wrote a feature essay in the Atlantic with a big question at the center: How can Americans become citizens again?

The implication is that we stopped being citizens at some point, or simply lost faith in our institutions.

According to Allen, the informal system of norms and rules that governs our political process has collapsed as the environment has become more fragmented and extreme. At the same time, the hollowing-out of our political institutions has left society disunited, disorganized, and raw. So not only is the public increasingly divided, most people see no pathway to change.

I spoke to Allen about how we got here, what democratic citizenship actually means, and what it will take to bridge the chasm at the center of our politics. A lightly edited transcript of our conversation follows.

What does it mean to be a citizen of a democracy?

Thats a big question, but Id say that it means an opportunity to be empowered and to become a co-author of our collective way of life. Typically, we exercise that opportunity for empowerment through participation in political institutions. But we also get to exercise that opportunity just by contributing to shaping our shared culture.

So its active participation, in your mind, that separates democratic citizenship from citizenship in a non-democracy?

Yeah, I think thats right. The point of being a democratic citizen is that you are part of the sovereign, you are part of the governing body. And the only way to actually fulfill that role is through participation. That may come in the form of voting or running for office, but it might also mean working with neighbors to shape and influence your local community.

You say that Americans have to become citizens again. When did we stop being citizens?

I think its been eroding for the last half-century or so. And I think the biggest indicator that its eroded is how little respect we have for Congress. Congress has an approval rating that hovers around 20 percent. It hit a low of about 9 percent in 2013, I believe. And our disrespect for Congress is disrespect for ourselves, because the national legislature is an extension of our own democratic power. Its the form our power takes. So if we disrespect that body, we disrespect our own democratic empowerment.

There are lots of reasons why we landed in this place. In your essay, you focus on the 1970s as a crucial period in which things started to go downhill. What happened?

There are a whole lot of things that changed, but thats really a period when the power moved away from Congress. And my focus is on the economic part of the story. That was a point in time where economic policy shifted from a focus on fiscal policy, the question of what budgets Congress sets, to a question of monetary policy, where you have this independent entity, the Federal Reserve, which isnt elected and isnt really accountable to voters, setting the economic direction for the country.

Suddenly, the entirety of our economy is being managed by this independent body, and thats a massive reduction of power for Congress and therefore a reduction of the publics ability to control their economic fate. And all of this coincides with the increasing privatization of public life and with lots of social transformations that generate culture wars over sex and abortion and gay rights and drugs and so on. And that in turn leads to more partisanship and more hatred for fellow citizens, and this undercuts the connections that support a functioning democracy.

Lets step back a bit and then well circle back to this part of the story. The American founders had this idea of township democracy, where citizens shared a physical space and politics was mostly about local issues. Is their idea of citizenship even conceivable in the world we now inhabit? Do we need to completely rethink the concept of citizenship?

We need to do a lot of rethinking. The founders got a lot wrong and a lot right. We cant straightforwardly transplant their idea of citizenship into our own circumstances. Their concept of citizenship depended on an elite having stewardship over the entire community, and weve rightly blown that idea to bits. Were now committed to a more inclusive picture of democracy, where everybody gets to participate in power or at least thats the idea.

But I dont think we can abandon the idea that local citizenship matters. We need avenues of participation and pathways to empowerment at all levels of our society. And in particular, what really matters is that we find ways of making sure that structures of governance align with the communities who are affected. People, in other words, have to be involved in decisions that will directly impact their lives and their communities.

Theres also the reality that the founders were building a republic by and for white property-owning males. There was a convergence of interests that doesnt exist in todays multiethnic society, and so the idea of unity, if not quite impossible, feels quixotic. At the same time, there are now more groups competing for political and cultural power, and that creates real, insoluble conflict.

Is there a vision of citizenship that can transcend these differences?

Thats the key question. But I wouldnt say that we dont have a convergence of interests in the contemporary world, although that convergence may be pretty narrow. I think everyone has an interest in empowerment. Everyone should believe that their own sense of fulfillment or completion requires that they not be buffeted by other peoples decisions, that they have some part in shaping the world in which they live. And the only vehicle for achieving that is democracy.

We will never all agree about what to do or whats right and whats wrong, and we shouldnt. But democracy is about this fundamental commitment to the right of empowerment and self-government. This is a shared bedrock interest, and its as nonnegotiable as air or water or any other basic necessity of life.

My hope is that we can inspire this feeling of shared interest in more people.

I guess the question is, how do we do that? How do we get people to buy into that vision?

Well, there isnt one answer to that question. One specific area, which is obviously less fraught than issues around religion or race or sexuality, is the space of civic education. Weve failed ourselves miserably by not providing any kind of civic education in schools for a generation.

And one reason for this is polarization. We cant agree on how to tell the American story. Is it a story of triumph and invention and progress? Or is it a story of enslavement and genocide? The National Governors Association couldnt agree on common standards for social studies because of this disagreement, so it just gets pushed aside.

Im part of a coalition of people working on trying to rebuild civics education, where our first principle is that a diversity of views on this is fine. We have to be able to be honest about our history and its negative parts, and at the same time appreciative of its good parts without letting the honesty pull us into cynicism. I think theres a way to find enough common ground here.

And to be clear, Im not saying this is going to fix everything. Its not. But its part of the picture, and its the kind of thing we have to do better if we want to fix these deep problems that took decades to build and will take decades to overcome.

My worry is that citizenship real citizenship is virtually impossible in a sprawling consumerist society like ours. Our lives are mediated by screens, we rarely interact with people in our own communities, our media environment is designed to stupefy and divide how do we construct a citizenry in the face of all this?

Its definitely challenging, Ill give you that. But lets step back a little. What does it take to have a conception of citizenship that we might share? What does it take to realize it? At the end of the day, I come back to the shared interest in empowerment through participation, in having routes of participation that are actually workable and situated in a culture that actually supports those opportunities.

This leads up back to where we started, which is the feeling people have of not being in control of their own lives or economic future. And as you said, a lot of this started in the 1970s with the increasing privatization of public life. Since then, weve gradually given ourselves over to this neoliberal idea that the state only exists in order to secure the free market.

How in the world do we deal with this?

We have to flip ourselves from a vicious circle to a virtuous circle. We have to reform our institutions so theyre actually worth participating in, at the same time that we rebuild a civil society and a culture that supports participation. But there are some concrete steps I think we have to take to level the playing field.

For one, we have to increase the size of the House and re-weight the balance between populous states and less populous states. We have to bring greater equality to the vote of somebody in California versus the vote of somebody in Wyoming. Theres an enormous disparity right now thats plainly anti-democratic.

I think we need term limits for Supreme Court justices so that we can reduce the politicization of the Court, reduce the notion that every presidential election is an existential struggle. Ranked-choice voting is another institutional reform that I think would help a ton. The anti-democratic structures built into our system are increasing tensions in the country and undermining their own legitimacy.

On the culture side, and theres just no easy way to do this, but we have to inspire a love of democracy. Ultimately, nothing matters if people dont believe in democracy, if theyre not invested in it. And we have inspiring people in our history who gave us that love. Martin Luther King gave a lot of people that love. Barack Obama gave a lot of people that love. Ronald Reagan gave a lot of people that love.

What would you say is the closing message of your essay?

The message I want people to take away is that democracy is worth loving. And when you have a broken democracy, its worth fixing.

And whats the alternative if we cant inspire that love?

There is no alternative. If we lose democracy, then weve lost something great, something of transcendent human value, and no one should want that. So wed better get about fixing it.

View post:
Do Americans still believe in their democracy? - Vox.com

As January comes to a close, here are three pieces from around the web that I particularly recommend. Enjoy!

Representative Darrell Issa in the basement of the Capitol with a painting of Ronald Reagan by artist Steve Penley. Photo By Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call, via Getty Images.

Have you ever heard of Steve Penley? I havent, but then I guess the fact that I dont know his colorfully dappled paintings of US presidents and American flags just means that I dont watch much Fox News.

Penleys art is more than just a regular feature and symbol of all that is patriotic on Fox. You have seen his patriotic paintings all over Fox & Friends, and actually Fox News channeleverywhere you go, we see your pictures hanging up in the halls, the shows cohost, Ainsley Earhardt, enthused to an audience a few years ago, during an appearance by the world-famous painter on the show.

Its all over my radio studio nowwe took em all! another one of the friends, Brian Kilmeade, added. Its brainwashing!

That level of media exposure surely makes Penley one of the countrys most high-profile painters, whether youve heard of him or not. In a funny way, the right-wing mediasphere has a lot more use for artists than its liberal cable-media rivals.

Wetzler wades through a lot of Fox News (so you dont have to) to find the Fox News Theory of Art, and its pretty much what you think it is: Only three kinds of art exist for Fox News: patriotic, stupid, and obscene.

Any way you slice it, its a mainly instrumental view of art: a given artwork gets the spotlight either because it is useful as propaganda for the Fox News worldview; because it serves as an illustration of how dumb and empty-headed liberal elites are; or because it outrages conservative sensibilities, and so can be used to rally the troops for the culture wars.

The favored patriotic aesthetic tends to channel Norman Rockwell by way of Andy Warhol, a late-Pop recycling of comfortingly clichd American symbols. (Like Penley, the late Thomas Kinkadealso took direct inspiration from Warhols Factory and described himself as Warhols heir apparent.) The best you could say of this work is that its probably more aware of how it operates than the art-loving public thatdoesnt watch Fox Newsgives it credit for.

Conservative aesthetics are stereotypically all about taking a stand against decadent experimental art and for real traditional art. Ive made a version of this point before (about neo-Jungian philosopher of the manosphere, Jordan Peterson), but by putting this art into the context of Fox News, Wetzler makes the point even more forcefully: it shows just how classically postmodern this conservative art is, if by that you mean art reduced to hollowed out signifiers, mutable performances, and stripped of any sense of a reality outside of media.

The Fox News view of culture may slam contemporary art as deliberately valuing offense over enlightenment, spectacle over skill, ugliness over beauty. But beneath a very thin Rockwellian veneer, all of this is equally true of the Through-the-Looking-Glass sensibility of Fox Newss rearguard. You cant understand superstar Fox News artist Jon McNaughtons One Nation Under Socialism, a painting of Obama burning the Constitution, outside of the value it puts on offenseaka trolling the libs.

And you cant understand Joe Everson, whose shtick is live-painting the Statue of Libertywhile singing the national anthem, outside of the appeal to spectacle.

Patriot artist, nationally acclaimed flag muralist, and frequent Fox visitor Scott LoBaidos 20-foot-tall image of a musclebound Donald Trump isabout as farfrom the profundities of real traditional art as Andres SerranosPiss Christ.

Whats it all mean? Probably that you should take Fox News art a hair more seriously than it is normally taken. Not in the sense of plumbing it for deep meaningits meaning seems mainly to be its appeal to Fox News audiences. But as simplistic and easily mocked as it is, its much more savvy and finely calibrated to be effective than it gets credit for.

The blur in action: Donald Trump speaking before a luncheon with US and African leaders at the Palace Hotel in New York. Photo by Brendan Smialowski / AFP via Getty Images.

Petrovich, by contrast, reads political meaning in a phenomenon that youve probably seen everywhere and not read much into: the increasing presence of the blur in mainstream political photojournalism. That we dont fall off our chairs when we see this tells us how far we have come, photographically, in a very short time, he writes. We are a long way from Pete Souzas languid, almost classical compositions on the Obama-era White House Flickr account, which in retrospect feel tinged with approaching horror.

Its an observant and nuanced essay, with the implication being that all the blurring is an almost an unconscious aesthetic symptom, registering a widespread, unnamable sense of looming dread. On the other hand, such blurry images are also slightly virtuosic and carry the blush of pure expression. Petrovich writes: I have been told that what I was seeing was just the increased prowess of the telephoto lens, or merely the resurgence of shallow depth of field.

I left the essay thinking it could be both. Photojournalism is in dire straights, images are cheap and everywhere, and it stands to reason that the dedicated professionals who remainwho are going to be focused in high-profile beats like political coverage and disaster reportingfeel pressured to register the individuality of their images with an arty shot. Wonky blurring is one way to do it. Whats interesting is that either wayas a symbol of an audiences general sense of unease, or as a symbol of the photographers intensified need to register their subjectivitywe arrive at the blur through a sense of a system in crisis, just by different routes.

Peter Schjeldahl at the 2011 New Yorker Festival. Photo by Neilson Barnard/Getty Images for The New Yorker.

Like a lot of people, Ive been thinking about New Yorker critic Peter Schjeldahl and what makes him an important figure, since his essay, The Art of Dying, was published last year. Earnests essay puts a commanding knowledge of his subjects writinghe edited Schjeldahls recent book,Hot, Cold, Heavy, Lightto try to explain Schjeldahls Olympian everyman style.

There really are few writers who have the effect Schjeldahl has: his writing is almost untouchably on-its-own. But hes also exceptionally engaging and reader-directed, and focused on connecting the circuits of artist biography and personal experience to make comprehensible a thought, an experience, a way of seeing.

Earnest describes his articles as detective stories about feelings, which gives a name to what I feel about them. He mentions Schjeldahls own account of his method: Looking at art is like, Here are the answers. What were the questions? he once told me. I think of it like espionage, walking the cat backwhy didthathappen, andthat?until eventually you come to a point of irreducible mystery.'

More here:
How Fox News Weaponizes Art + Two Other Illuminating Pieces of Criticism From Around the Web - artnet News

Community Connections:This is a lesson from the Gospel of Moderation

In Christian churches, we often use the word Gospel. Many people know the word means 'good news.'

The good news, originally, was very specifically the good news of a military victory. A pitched battle fought in some distant region of the empire; the legions of Rome defeat their enemy and acquire new territory for Cesar; a runner is dispatched to herald the glorious win -- Gospel! Good News! We Win! Of course, Good News! for the Roman Empire was decidedly bad news for the unfortunate people of the newly-crushed and occupied territory.

I think about that when I use or hear the word Gospel. Our battles today seem far removed from some grim clash between Roman troops and Barbarian hoards. Instead, our current culture wars embroil us in contentious exchanges where words are weapons and the ground we fight over is political, ideological, or theological. We fight fiercely to preserve our freedoms, to protect us from what we fear by conquering -- no, vanquishing -- those who are different, to promote our truth against those who are not only wrong, but dangerously, deadly, wrong.

In polished armor, we take the field with the goal of bringing all of the blessings and prosperity of 'Rome' to the world. And, when we score a point on social media, see our candidate win an election, or divide our denomination and call it Good News, we automatically and ironically become bad news for someone else. In the pursuit of one goal, the opposite results. The consequences for both congregations and culture are devastating. In winning, we are losing.

The New Testament turns the gospel of empire on its head. The good news of God's kingdom isn't fashioned with might and power and wealth, but with sacrifice and surrender and utter humility. From the perspective of God's kingdom, a political, ideological, or theological victory wrought with the same old violent tools of empire (We Win! You Lose!) is no victory at all, but a total capitulation to the darkest, basest, and most sinister parts of our humanity.

In other words, the way we engage is as dear to God as what we engage. More so.

In light of this, let's call for a gospel of moderation. Not a moderation of our views -- as in, your view is too extreme, become more moderate. But rather a moderation of our nature, a tempering of the bloody fierceness with which we hold our views, a pulling back from the brink of war. Rather than assuming those who hold profoundly different perspectives or values than ourselves to be vile, evil enemies to be destroyed, a gospel of moderation would entail listening well, learning and understanding deeply, and recognizing our own perspective is valuable and useful but incomplete, part of the story, but not the entire script. This is true whether we are talking about climate change or road diets, local elections or national, worship music or the Second Amendment.

Communities and congregations that manage a gospel of moderation would certainly be welcome places of respite and good news in the contentious landscape of our current cultural moment. To do this, I (yes, emphatically, I) need to fight a battle indeed. But the battle is internal. It is a battle against my fears and ambitions and prejudices; a fight to die to myself rather than to kill the personhood of another. For local Christian congregations, in Jesus, we have both the model and the living resource to win this fight. Gospel. Good News! We all win.

Michael DeRuyter, lead pastor at the Midland Reformed Church, wrote this op-ed as part of the Daily News' Community Connections initiative.

Read more:
Community Connections: This is a lesson from the Gospel of Moderation - Midland Daily News

A new report has revealed that a prominent white nationalist author, activist and podcaster known as Paul Kersey has in fact worked for more than a decade at mainstream conservative institutions and media outlets under his real name.

According to an investigation by the not-for-profit media outlet Right Wing Watch (RWW), the man who has worked under the Kersey pseudonym is in fact Michael J Thompson.

The Guardian has uncovered additional material that supports reporting by RWW, and further indicates Thompsons role in moulding rightwing activists from a position near the heart of Americas most influential conservative institutions.

The RWW investigation, published on Monday, reveals the work of Paul Kersey, whom it calls a barely underground member of the white nationalist movement and a fixture on the roster of racist media outlets and campaign groups.

But it also shows that Thompson worked under his own name at institutions like the Leadership Institute, its media arm Campus Reform, and WND, formerly World Net Daily, a once-popular conspiracy-minded conservative outlet, as late as November 2018.

It also shows how his WND position allowed him to move in professional circles that included white nationalists, writers from Breitbart and the Daily Caller and prominent Donald Trump supporters including Steve Bannon and Jack Posobiec.

RWW determined Thompsons identity partly through a forensic voice test on audio recordings and partly through emails and testimony provided by Katie McHugh, a former far-right insider and Breitbart writer.

Evidence from McHugh underpinned reporting by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) that showed how Trumps close aide Stephen Miller attempted to insert white nationalist themes into Breitbarts coverage of the 2016 presidential election.

Using the Paul Kersey pseudonym in online columns for outlets like VDare and American Renaissance, Thompson has for years whipped up racist fears about black crime; promoted racial paranoia about a demographic Great Replacement of white Americans; and spread falsehoods about the genetic inferiority of non-whites.

According to RWW, he has run an influential far-right blog, Stuff Black People Dont Like, since 2009. The blog is focused on promoting false white nationalist ideas about race and crime.

He has also regularly appeared as a guest on white nationalist podcasts including Red Ice, The Political Cesspool and Richard Spencers AltRight Radio and is currently the co-host of a podcast produced by a prominent SPLC-designated hate group, American Renaissance.

But in 2010, RWW reports, he was named in a press release from the Leadership Institute as working in their campus services program. The Guardian was able to confirm this by accessing an archived staff page for Campus Reform, the Leadership Institutes online vehicle for the prosecution of on-campus culture wars.

The Leadership Institute is one of the longest-standing institutions in the US conservative movement, focused on training young activists. It claims to have trained 200,000 such young conservatives over 40 years, in skills including public speaking, campaigning and fundraising.

In a series of archived snapshots from the Campus Reform staff page from September 2009 to July 2010, Thompson was listed as campus services coordinator for the western region. This suggests he began his pseudonymous white nationalist blog while employed by the Leadership Institute and its media arm.

Campus Reforms website was established at the beginning of 2009, according to Domain Name System records. It has typically targeted so-called political correctness and professors it deems to be leftists.

Using internet archiving services, the Guardian was able to access the full text of previously unreported Campus Reform articles by Thompson. In the bylines for those articles, written in 2009 and 2010, he is described as a Campus Reform reporter.

In the articles that were archived and accessible, Thompson does not openly use the vocabulary of white nationalism but does explore themes such as race and immigration.

One May 2010 article criticizes Colorado State students for staging a walkout in protest against a hardline immigration law passed in Arizona in 2010 and highlights the involvement of some students with an immigrant rights group, La Raza.

Another bemoans the decision of a Washington state public college, Evergreen State, to fund a visit by the academic and civil rights activist Angela Davis, calling her a Marxist agitator.

Many more articles offer instructions, guidance and assistance to conservative student activists.

Thompson leads with complaints about political correctness; news of anti-abortion, pro-gun and media activism by conservative students; and exhortations to run for student government.

In each case, he appeals to students to reach out to Campus Reform for information, training and organizing assistance.

The Guardian has discovered evidence that Thompson was able to make connections between students and members of the conservative movement.

A February 2011 guest post on the Campus Reform website by a senior at Utah State University describes that students experiences as a sponsored attendee at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), which remains the principal annual gathering of the conservative movement.

The author writes: Michael Thompson, my regional field coordinator worked diligently to put me in contact with individuals and organizations willing to help me with future activism efforts on my campus.

RWW reports that Thompson worked at WND from at least January 2012 to November 2018.

Thompson, American Renaissance leader Jared Taylor and Joseph Farah of WND did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The rest is here:
White nationalist has long worked at conservative outlets under real name - The Guardian

When Justice Singleton was growing up, her father, the late director, writer and producer John Singleton, didnt go out of his way to show her the movies hed made. For awhile she thought he was a football player because he used to talk about how he was drafted into the industry.

But when the now 27-year-old attended a summer program for incoming freshmen of color at Loyola Marymount University, the group was shown a movie of her fathers that shed never seen before Higher Learning, about the struggles of a group of freshmen at the fictional Columbus University in Los Angeles.

When you go on a campus as a black person, Justice Singleton says, it can be really fearful, eye-opening.

The slang, fashion and soundtrack may date Higher Learning as a distinctly 1995 product, but its striking how many of the topics that shape the film are still being grappled with on college campuses and in society at large. Higher Learning examines the rise of white nationalism among young men, the pervasiveness of rape culture, school shootings, racist policing policies, the high price of a university education, binge drinking, sexual fluidity and the treatment of minority athletes in college athletics.

Presaging the culture wars that followed NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernicks sideline protests just a few years ago, there is even a scene in which Fudge, a politically minded senior played by Ice Cube, asks track star Malik Williams, played by Omar Epps, whether he would stand for the national anthem at a football game if he was surrounded by an all-white crowd.

Omar Epps, left, and Laurence Fishburne as student and professor in John Singletons Higher Learning.

(Eli Reed / Columbia Pictures)

These issues are still so prevalent in our society, Epps says today, and [Singleton] was cognizant of all of it.

John Singleton celebrated his 27th birthday five days before the January 1995 release of Higher Learning. Despite his youth, it was already his third project for a major film studio.

Singleton, who died last year at 51 from a stroke, had established himself as a new and formidable talent in Hollywood when Columbia Pictures put out his debut feature Boyz N the Hood in July 1991. The movie received a rapturous response after it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, made over $57 million domestically off an estimated $6.5-million budget and earned the young filmmaker Oscar nominations in the director and original screenplay categories. Before Boyz reached theaters, critic Roger Ebert famously included Singleton as part of the vanguard of what he declared the black new wave. Columbias president Frank Price repeatedly compared Singleton to Steven Spielberg.

John Singleton during the shoot for Boyz N the Hood, which was released in 1991 and earned him an Academy Award nomination for directing.

(Aaron Rapoport / Corbis via Getty Images)

Singletons follow-up, Poetic Justice, was a road film and love story that starred Tupac Shakur and Janet Jackson. Bringing in $27.5 million, it wasnt as successful as Boyz, but Singletons career was still on the rise.

He pretty much had carte blanche, says Stephanie Allain, who was senior vice president of production at Columbia at the time. He could do what he wanted.

Tupac Shakur, left, and Janet Jackson as Lucky and Justice in John Singletons 1993 street romance Poetic Justice.

(Columbia Pictures)

What he wanted was to make Higher Learning, which was partly based on what the South-Central native witnessed during his time as a student at USC.

The film focused on Epps character Malik, an arrogant member of the track team who becomes increasingly attuned to the forces that shape the black experience in America. Ice Cubes character, Fudge, served as the films Afrocentric conscience. Laurence Fishburne portrayed political science professor Maurice Phipps. And rapper Busta Rhymes played a student who got into clashes for playing his music too loud.

Omar Epps, left, and Ice Cube in Higher Learning.

(Eli Reed/New Deal/Columbia Pictures/Kobal/Shutterstock)

Kristy Swanson, who had just starred in the titular role of the original Bufffy the Vampire Slayer movie (five years before the Joss Whedon TV series), played Kristen Connor, a nave Orange County-born woman who begins to explore feminist activism and her sexuality in the aftermath of a rape. Regina King was Kristens roommate, Monet; Jennifer Connelly played lesbian activist Taryn and model Tyra Banks was a track star who became a love interest for Malik.

Pivotal to the films conflict was Michael Rapaports character Remy, an awkward and lonely transplant from Idaho who joins a group of neo-Nazis led by Cole Hauser as Scott Moss. As the school year progresses, racial tensions increase among the student body, eventually exploding in violence.

To watch Singletons Higher Learning 25 years after its release is to watch a messy and often complicated movie. After all, it was trying to cover many messy and complicated subjects in just over two hours. Supposedly Singletons first cut was twice as long, though even that might not have been adequate time for all the ideas that the film attempts to digest.

This issue of tribalism and everybody separating into their little groups, its something that we might want to tease ourselves that weve gotten past in this country, but I feel like now more than ever, its pretty obvious that we havent, says Jay R. Ferguson, the Mad Men and Briarpatch actor who made his film debut in Higher Learning playing the frat boy Billy. Thats just a good reminder that its been going on for way too long and way before Higher Learning came out.

Laurence Fishburne, left, and Omar Epps in Higher Learning.

(Eli Reed/New Deal/Columbia Pictures/Kobal/Shutterstock)

Allain, who is preparing to produce the 92nd Academy Awards show with Lynette Howell Taylor next month, wasnt just one of the few black executives who worked at Columbia Pictures in the early 1990s, she was one of the few black executives in the entire film industry. She was responsible for bringing the Boyz N the Hood script and Singleton to Columbia, and shepherded his two subsequent movies at the studio. She also had a hand in launching the careers of Robert Rodriguez, Justin Simien, Sanaa Hamri, Craig Brewer and Darnell Martin, among others.

John basically taught me how to produce, how to protect the auteurs vision through a lot of arguments, Allain says. I worked for the studio, but I really worked for him too. John was a very persuasive guy. His passion and his intellect pulled you in. You wanted to be a part of it.

Singleton typically wouldnt start writing a film until he was finished with the one he was directing, but his ideas for Higher Learning were already forming as he worked on Poetic Justice. In 1992, the Los Angeles Times visited Singleton on the set of that film. In the midst of shooting, he was also emotionally contending with the Rodney King verdict and the riots that followed. He hinted that the conflicts within his hometown of Los Angeles would inspire his next project.

Its gonna be hard. Cause Im pissed off, he told writer Patrick Goldstein. Its going to be the first movie I do that has white characters. Because Im going to have to deal with a lot of bigger issues, economic issues, issues of class as well as race.

John Singleton on the set of his 1995 film Higher Learning.

(New Deal/Columbia Pictures/Kobal/Shutterstock)

The acclaim and box office success of Boyz N the Hood helped inspire an influx of what were then called hood movies films like Menace II Society and South Central. Just like the increasing popular strain of gangster rap, they purported to show the realities and repercussions of gang life, police brutality and the crack epidemic in L.A.s African American neighborhoods.

Dr. Todd Boyd, then a young professor who had recently moved to Los Angeles to join USCs film department, remembers it as a particularly exciting cultural time in the city. Black filmmakers were hot at that moment, he says. John was in the center of it. Spike [Lee] is from New York and his movies were New York movies But John brought a West Coast sensibility to it. When you consider how N.W.A and Ice Cube and [Dr.] Dre and Ice-T brought the West Coast into the hip-hop equation, John was doing the same kind of thing in film.

Since Higher Learning would be Singletons first movie without a predominantly black cast, it was perceived that there would be broader marketing possibilities and audience growth, which meant Columbia didnt hesitate when he brought them the concept.

Oh my God, they were happy, says Allain. Are you kidding? Theyre like, OK, we have some white people in this one! He was growing as a filmmaker and he felt like he had the ability to give voice to other characters.

As casting for the film began, the only actors attached were Ice Cube and King, who had made their film debuts in Boyz N the Hood. King, who won an Oscar last year for her role in Barry Jenkins If Beale Street Could Talk and recently starred as the detective at the heart of HBOs Watchmen, also played a supporting role in Poetic Justice, while Cube says he turned down the part that eventually went to Shakur in that film.

The offer to play Fudge in Higher Learning coincided with Cubes increasing interest in black history and the Nation of Islam. He was reading books by Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad, as well as learning about the history behind the Black Panthers and Los Angeles gangs. It was a highly political stage in my career, says Cube. I was ready to do a movie and put out a visual match to what I was rapping about.

Stephanie Allain, producer

At a time when shaved heads and close fades were the normal hairstyles for young African American men, the voluminous, throwback Afro that Cube sported in Higher Learning was a striking look. When [Singleton] told me about the character months before, I just knew I wanted to grow my hair out, he says. I wanted to make that statement that this guy is black on the inside and outside.

Fishburne had played Furious Styles in Boyz N the Hood, a role that was based on Singletons father. After Sidney Poitier and Dustin Hoffman turned down the role of the political science professor in Higher Learning, Singleton turned to Fishburne, who was only 34 at the time. Just seven years earlier he had played a student activist in School Daze, Spike Lees film set at another fictional college, the historically black Mission College in Atlanta. For Higher Learning, they aged Fishburnes appearance by whitening his hair and beard, but the actor developed his own distinctive approach to the character.

[Singleton] explained to me that it was kind of generational, the difference between the students point of view and this professors, Fishburne says. I thought about [how] Poitier was from the Caribbean and I thought that would be kind of the way in. I said, Lets make him West Indian, so at least theres a cultural difference.

Fishburne ended up basing his performance on his godfather Maurice Watson, an English and drama professor at Brooklyn College, who was responsible for getting him into acting as a child.

Epps part of Malik was originally going to be played by Shakur Singleton told Vibe magazine at the time that he wanted the two of them to have a creative partnership like Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese. But as the film went into production, Shakur faced charges of sexual assault that eventually sent him to prison. Epps, later known for his starring role in Love and Basketball and his long run on House, had broken through with the film Juice and had replaced Wesley Snipes in the sequel to Major League. Still, this film felt different. It was my first time working with a filmmaker who was just so entrenched into the story and the bigger voice of the film, says Epps, who most recently has been seen on NBCs This Is Us.

Even before the script for Higher Learning was done, Swanson, who was repped by the same agency as Singleton, reached out to meet with the director. Like the character she went on to play, Swanson is from Orange County.

Even though we were both from Southern California, we were able to talk about how we came from very different sorts of lives, Swanson says. There was a lot of humor in our conversation and getting a feel for each other. I could tell he was really studying me and how I spoke and what I had to say. She believes that their conversation ended up shaping the character, even down to her name, Kristen.

Swanson is now one of the entertainment businesss most vocal supporters of Donald Trump, waging daily campaigns on his behalf on social media and getting messages of gratitude from the presidents Twitter account.

As for the role of the skinhead Remy, there are conflicting accounts about whether Leonardo DiCaprio (post-Oscar nomination for Whats Eating Gilbert Grape but pre-global mega fame for Titanic) was at one point officially attached to the part. As shooting neared, Singleton and the casting agents considered Rapaport and Hauser for the role.

I had actually just done a role in a film called Skins where I played a skinhead, so I already looked the part, says Hauser, who is currently one of the stars of Kevin Costners Paramount Network series Yellowstone, and conducted the interview for this story while riding his horse, Duke. When I walked in and met John, he kinda looked at me and I think he really thought I was a skinhead.

Rapaport eventually got the part of Remy, while Hauser was cast as the head of the neo-Nazis, even though he was only 19 years old. The irony was not lost on either of the actors that they were both Jewish.

Before filming began, Singleton developed exercises for the actors to get more in touch with the roles they were playing. He had this thing he called character therapy, Swanson remembers. We sat in a circle almost like you would see at a group-therapy meeting, you know, Hi, my name is . That kind of a thing. Everybody spoke as their character in this therapy circle.

Though Hauser said he got along with cast members like Ice Cube and Busta Rhymes on the Higher Learning set, his physical appearance caused some uncomfortable moments.

John was one of those guys, especially early on, who was doing this more than anybody, where the crew is black down to the catering and the drivers. he says. He was doing a lot for the African American community, especially in Los Angeles at that time. So to be walking around with a shaved head, with tattoos of Invisible Empire on my neck, its not the most, I guess, inviting atmosphere.

Singleton also told Rapaport not to hang out with most of the cast when they werent filming in order to mirror the isolation his character feels. It was not an easy ask for unabashed hip-hop devotee. I was such a fan of Omar Epps and Busta Rhymes and Cube, says Rapaport, who over the years has been a near-constant film and TV presence, most recently as the dad in Netflixs Atypical. I remember Omar Epps had gotten an early copy of Nas first record, Illmatic. I remember walking by their trailer and they were listening to it and I was so jealous.

As the filming went on, the difficult subjects the story examined couldnt help but affect the tenor of the production. It always starts off very optimistic and fun, and then the acting starts to take over and gets you a little more serious says Cube. The more we did it, the more difficult it felt to shoot things. It felt like theres really lines in the sand and thats because you got good actors on all sides of the equation, and you got a director who understands that this tension can be used to bring out better performances.

Director John Singleton in July 2011.

(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

With his comedies Friday, Ride Along, Barbershop and their sequels still in the future, Cube, who at the time of Higher Learning was still actively making music in his post N.W.A career, says he learned everything about screenwriting and directing from Singleton. Hanging out together at Singletons home in Baldwin Hills, the filmmaker told Cube that if he could tell stories so well in his lyrics, he should be doing it in scripts. Singleton not only guided him toward buying his first computer and Final Draft screenwriting software, he coached him through several different scripts until he finished Friday.

Higher Learning was shot on the campus of UCLA during the first half of 1994. (USC denied Singletons request to film it at his alma mater.) Columbia Pictures released the film in January 1995. These days, January is known as a time studios dump the movies they dont have faith in, either critically or commercially, but the executives interviewed for this article say that wasnt the case for Higher Learning.

Nobody thought we better bury this, said Sid Ganis, Columbias then head of marketing who had also worked on Singletons previous films. Not at all.

The film opened on Martin Luther King Jr. weekend and made over $13 million, taking the second spot in the box office rankings, just behind Legends of the Fall. It eventually grossed $38 million in theaters more than Poetic Justice but less than Boyz N the Hood.

Response to Higher Learning was mixed. Critics admired Singletons desire to confront societal problems but felt he relied on too many clichs and shallow depictions to do so. As Kenneth Turan wrote in his review for the Los Angeles Times, Because he accomplished so much so early, it is easy to forget how young John Singleton is. Higher Learning reminds us.

Singleton spent this century specializing in action films like Shaft and 2 Fast 2 Furious. Baby Boy from 2001 marked the last of his so-called hood films. In 2017 he took a deeper look at the L.A. unrest that had initially inspired Higher Learning by producing the documentary L.A. Burning: The Riots 25 Years Later. And he returned to the Los Angeles of his youth as the co-creator of FXs series about the 1980s drug trade, Snowfall. His death came three months before the premiere of the shows second season.

Taraji P. Henson, left, and Tyrese Gibson in a scene from John Singletons Baby Boy.

(Eli Reed / Columbia Pictures)

Higher Learning ends with the word Unlearn appearing over the American flag before the screen fades to black. These days, similarly optimistic phrases of the era like Erase Racism and No Colorlines get little play in discussion of racial dynamics. The emphasis is on getting people to acknowledge the inherent prejudices and biases within themselves, then working to challenge them.

When Higher Learning was released, the Los Angeles Times held a screening of the film for 10 local college students. Afterward USCs Dr. Boyd moderated a conversation between them and Singleton. The director had only graduated a few years earlier, but already the students questioned why he didnt focus more on systematic racism and wondered why his film didnt include the experience of Latino and Asian students.

Recent incidents on college campuses, such as the May 2018 call to campus police by a white student about a black Yale graduate student sleeping in a residence halls common area, have forced the people of the United States to examine their own feelings and assumptions about race. In this political climate theres also been the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement and white supremacist incidents, as well as a continued battle over U.S. immigration policies and affirmative action lawsuits, all forcing difficult but crucial conversations.

As Justice Singleton says, The way the world is, is kind of like a college campus now.

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The sex, gun and race issues presaged by a 1995 John Singleton film - Los Angeles Times