For your homework this week, we have texts to help you delve into the topics we discussed in our Saturday and Sunday shows.

Rather than letting a conservative super-PAC use Rev. Jeremiah Wright as a scare tactic, and the black church as a divisive tool, we decided to try to understand the theological tradition that Jeremiah Wright operates in as a thinker and preacher. Learn more by reading a book by our guest Dwight Hopkins, "Introducing Black Theology of Liberation."

On Sunday, we gathered a compelling panel of young women. These young ladies will be voting in the 2012 election for the first time, and we wanted to know what was important to them. Learn more by reading "A Little F'd Up: Why Feminism is Not a Dirty Word," by one of our three amazing student guests, 19-year-old Barnard College student Julie Zeilinger.

We also highlighted the compelling case of Clarence Aaron, a prisoner serving three life sentences who continues seeking a presidential commutation. Read the ProPublica report, written by our guest Dafna Linzer, which originally drew our attention -- as well as our blog post from earlier this week (which includes video from a 1999 PBS documentary that featured Aaron).

We were also excited to discuss the NAACP's decision to support marriage equality today. Learn more about America's oldest and most influential Civil Rights organization by reading the definitive text by Patricia Sullivan, "Lift Every Voice: The NAACP and the Making of the Civil Rights Movement." And former Senator and presidential candidate Bill Bradley joined us to talk about his new book, "We Can All Do Better."

Speaking of fascinating guests, remember that we'll be welcoming Margaret Cho back to #nerdland next weekend. See you then!

Today is the birthday of Malcolm X. He would have been 87 years old.

Malcolm rarely receives the kind of mainstream press attention that his better known counterpart, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. does. And perhaps that is best. Unlike King, Malcolm has been not been subjected to the ahistorical nostalgia machine of American hero-making. His radicalism remains intact.

Let me be clear by what I mean when I say radicalism.

I do not mean that Malcolm X sought to overthrow the American state. He did not. What he did seek was the undermining the structural inequality on which so many practices of the American state rested. At various points in his political career he advocated for separatism from a country he found irredeemably racist. He also evolved into a more nuanced thinker. He embraced a broad internationalism that sought to hold the United States accountable to world standards for human rights and free democracy.

I do not mean that Malcolm X advocated violence. He did not. Malcolm was a staunch believer in the rights of citizens to defend themselves and their homes. He was, in some ways, a true second amendment theorist who believed that men, women and communities have a right to self-defense when their government fails to adequately protect their lives and families.

I do not mean that Malcolm hated white people. He did not. He often used extreme rhetoric to make a point, to drive a conversation, to clarify his differences with other leaders, and to illuminate the painful realities of urban life and poverty.

When I say "radical," I mean that Malcolm X was unflinching in his insistence on the inherent worth of black life. Malcolm criticized the powerful rather than the powerless. He pointed to the pathologies of the privileged instead of the failings of the oppressed. More than a decade into the 21st century, living in a nation where the majority of babies born today are not white, it is easy to forget just how radical it has been in America to insist on the humanity of black people. Public policy from slavery to Jim Crow to mass incarceration has denied the inherent humanity of black bodies, but Malcolm’s work was consistently on behalf of restoring it.

And because he has been largely rejected by mainstream America, Malcolm’s radicalism has not been co-opted by conservative political movements. His words have not been turned into greeting cards. His image has not been used to sell consumer goods. Malcolm still belongs to those of us who find power and insight in his life and work.

But this doesn’t mean Malcolm has been completely free from historical myth-making. In April of 2011, my dear friend and mentor Manning Marable passed away just days before his greatest and most anticipated work was published. Manning’s triumphant, and Pulitzer Prize-winning text, "Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention," intervenes in the nostalgic image of Malcolm constructed by many of us in the post-civil rights generation.

Those of us who met Malcolm through the prism of popular culture first embraced him as a commodity -- a movie hero, a hat with an "X" -- and embraced him a symbol of our own disenchantment with the crumbling American dream.

Manning’s book challenges the commodity of Malcolm with a thorough, and sometimes uncomfortable, rendering of his life. He reminds us again of Malcolm’s extraordinary capacity for reinvention. Malcolm was born into poverty, madness and racial violence. His youthful arrogance, crime and indulgence led him to jail, but prison was no end for him; through a religious and political awakening, he found freedom in the context of imprisonment. He became an organization man, an orator, a world citizen and a free thinker with a cosmopolitan vision of the world.

Malcolm displayed the capacity to learn, to grow, to discern and to change direction. It takes courage to admit that society’s approach to old subjects has grown rigid and needs to evolve and change. It is hard for leaders to admit that they have been wrong in the past.  His life is a reminder that greatness is not found in arrogant self-righteousness or intellectual hubris, but in the willingness to be open to our own limitations.

As Malcolm’s definitive biographer, Manning Marable was more than an academic, he was an activist. It was Manning’s great wish that his biography would reopen the investigation of Malcolm’s assassination. While writing the book, Manning became convinced that we do not know the whole story. On Malcolm’s birthday, reintroduce yourself to him through Manning’s book. (You can watch a C-SPAN discussion of that book in which I took part here.)

The New Yorker

The New Yorker's next cover.

This was a historic week in the battle for marriage equality in this country. The struggle is not over, but it has a powerful new ally. It got me to thinking about how many times I have written in defense of marriage equality and how many battles we have lost; like the Amendment 1 vote in North Carolina this week.

On our show, we often enjoy going back "into the vault" to find historic moments that speak to our current news cycle. In that spirit, I went into my personal vault and found this piece I wrote for The Nation in October of 2009 in which I detailed the reasons I support marriage equality. In doing so, I was also struck by my reflection on pain of my own first marriage:

I know from personal experience that a bad marriage is enough to rid you of the fear of death. But this experience allows me suspect that a good marriage must be among the most powerful, life-affirming, emotionally fulfilling experiences available to human beings. I support marriage equality not only because it is unfair, in a legal sense, to deny people the privileges of marriage based on their identity; but also because it also seems immoral to forbid some human beings from opting into this emotional experience.

We must do more than simply integrate new groups into an old system. Let's use this moment to re-imagine marriage and marriage-free options for building families, rearing children, crafting communities, and distributing public goods.

Since I first wrote this piece, I married my soul mate, moved to a new city, started a new academic job, and begun hosting this show. Huge changes! Yet, so much of what I wrote in that column about the inequality facing loving LGBT couples hasn't changed at all. I hope to look back someday very soon, and remember this week as the beginning of the end of second-class citizenship for so many of the people I love.

We were truly thrilled to have the gracious and graceful Misty Copeland in #nerdland today, leaving us all dreaming of being ballet dancers.  Your first homework assignment is to get Kristen Hall and Anne Kennedy’s "Ballerina Girl," and read it to a child -- whether they be your own, a niece, a neighbor, or kids at a local school, girl or boy.

Daniel Gross lit up #nerdland with his claim that America is actually better off today than in the past two decades. Read his provocative piece, "Myth Of Decline: U.S. Is Stronger and Faster Than Anywhere Else" and his similarly-themed new book, "Better, Stronger, Faster: The Myth of American Decline...and the Rise of a New Economy."

We highlighted the case of Florida mother Marissa Alexander, who faces 20 years in prison for (it seems) firing a bullet into the ceiling to stop an attack from her abusive husband. That led to a discussion about the laws affecting domestic violence survivors when they finally try to stand their ground. To learn more about the complex and difficult issues of violence and the law, read Sokoloff and Pratt’s edited volume,  "Domestic Violence at the Margins: Readings on Race, Class, Gender, and Culture," and Silja Talvi’s heartbreaking stories in "Women Behind Bars: The Crisis of Women in the U.S. Prison System."

For my footnote I mounted a defense of race and ethnic studies programs.  Read more about the complex history of these programs in Noliwe Rooks’ "White Money/Black Power: The Surprising History of African American Studies and the Crisis of Race and Higher Education."

And of course, don’t forget to visit "MHP" guest Kathleen Hall Jamieson’s new project, FlackCheck.org, a website that by its own description,

...uses parody and humor to debunk false political advertising, poke fun at extreme language, and hold the media accountable for their reporting on political campaigns.

Check out the site, and get your truth on! Happy reading, and I'll see you next week.

We kicked off our conversation this morning by asking about the importance –- or irrelevance -- of foreign policy accomplishments for presidential candidates. We used the political science metaphor of “waltzing before a blind audience.”  To learn more about this theory and the challenges to it, read Aldrich, Sullivan and Borgida’s classic 1989 piece, “Foreign Affairs and Issue Voting: Do Presidential Candidates "Waltz Before A Blind Audience?” from The American Political Science Review.

We had an extended conversation about the difficulty and the promise of building lasting strategic coalitions among African American civil rights organizations and LGBT rights organizations. For an insightful and exquisitely researched take on how difficult and important this issue really is, read Cathy Cohen's "The Boundaries of Blackness: AIDS and the Breakdown of Black Politics." During this conversation, I mentioned Bayard Rustin, architect of the March on Washington. Read his collected writings in "A Time on Two Crosses."

It was terrific to share the table with the University of Pennsylvania's Kathleen Hall Jamieson today -- so terrific that she’s coming back tomorrow! Jamieson is the co-author of "The Obama Victory: How Media, Money, and Message Shaped the 2008 Election,” a must-read as we prepare for the 2012 elections.

Finally, we really did have fun theorizing about the lessons of love and politics that can be gleaned from President Obama’s youthful missives. But there is no better way to get to know the man who is the president than to read his autobiography, "Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance."

Don’t forget to tune in tomorrow, when we'll welcome groundbreaking ballerina Misty Copeland to #nerdland! Happy reading!

We tackled some very big, very serious issues this weekend.

I was honored to invite Mona Eltahawy to join the show on Saturday. Her provocative article from Foreign Policy is a must read for your homework. Take time to read “Why Do They Hate Us?”, and the rejoinders and critiques of the piece as well.
 
We also took time to discuss the re-authorization of the Violence Against Women Act. Jacqueline Pata, executive director of the National Congress of American Indians, highlighted the specific ways that domestic violence and sexual assault impact Native American women. Learn more about how women with few resources are impacted by violence in this thoughtful collection of essays, "Domestic Violence at the Margins: Readings on Race, Class, Gender, and Culture."
 
On Sunday’s show, we tackled the difficult ethical and policy issues associated with the death penalty. To learn more about how Americans have thought about the death penalty throughout our history as a nation read this insightful text, "America's Death Penalty: Between Past and Present."

And as we noted earlier, riots gripped Los Angeles in the aftermath of the non-guilty verdict of officers whose vicious beating of Rodney King was caught on tape. Rodney King has written a new book, "The Riot Within: My Journey from Rebellion to Redemption."

Have a great time reading! We will see you next week in #nerdland.

Yelp

The Village Inn in Virginia Beach, VA.

Teaching political science, writing for The Nation and hosting a political TV show have distorted my perception of the importance of electoral politics to ordinary Americans. People in my world pore over the latest polls and are breathless with anticipation nearly every Tuesday. But for most Americans, politics is background noise. On a cool, rainy Monday in April, I spent the afternoon at the Village Inn diner in Virginia Beach talking with the locals who frequent this retro community institution, which serves breakfast all day and bakes its pies fresh every morning.

Virginia will be critically important in 2012. Democrats will focus on black voters in Richmond, liberals in the DC suburbs and the growing Latino vote throughout the state. Republicans will press in rural areas, small towns along the North Carolina border and conservative areas on the western edge of the state. Both parties are likely to flood Virginia Beach, Hampton and Norfolk—a densely populated purple region, rich in swing voters and conveniently located a day trip away from the Beltway. I figured if there was anywhere to find politically attuned Americans, it would be in a place that will shortly become the center of the electoral universe. During my hours at the Village Inn, I encountered people with widely varying levels of political knowledge and sharply divergent points of view.

A small-business owner in his 40s bemoaned the idea that Americans would be forced to “choose between food and jail” if the individual mandate of the Affordable Care Act is allowed to stand. “How can the government force us to buy insurance if we can’t afford it?” This man was sufficiently informed to know that healthcare reform is under Supreme Court review, but he clearly didn’t understand the consequences associated with the individual mandate. Violating the mandate will carry a small fine, not prison time.

I spoke with a military mom whose son had just returned from a tour in Afghanistan. This spunky, 50-something white woman explained that she was a Republican but voted for President Obama in 2008. “Not this time, though,” she told me forcefully. “I am sick of him putting other countries before America.” She said that she learned a lot from Glenn Beck during the past four years, and she said she was disgusted by the president’s lies. She did not question his citizenship, just his honesty.

A few feet away, a large, multiracial, intergenerational group pushed together several tables to accommodate their dinner plates and their notebooks. They were part of the local Virginia Beach Democratic Committee and were meeting to discuss their strategies to help re-elect the president. They told me confidently that the Tidewater area in Virginia would help Obama once again turn Virginia blue in 2012. Each was an ardent Obama supporter, and several asserted that he would someday be understood as America’s best and most effective president.

A pair of undecided voters explained their opposition to both candidates in conscientious and accurate detail. How could they be expected to support the president when his military base closings were having a negative economic impact in their communities? Why would they trust Mitt Romney to look out for the interests of working families when his joke about a $10,000 bet made him seem so out of touch with their lives? In their view, neither candidate seemed to really get it.

What seemed more important than their varying ideas and information was the simple reality that they were all eating in the same local diner. Black, white, Latino, Democrat and Republican neighbors were choosing from the same menu and gathering at the same place. I sat in a booth talking with an older black man and his daughter about their unyielding support of the president. He mentioned that his last name was Chapman. An elderly white woman in the neighboring booth immediately interrupted. “Chapman! I’m a Chapman,” she exclaimed. Despite her disgust for Obama, which she shared with me in curt, dismissive tones, she warmed immediately to Mr. Chapman, and they chatted amicably across the banquette.

Having grown up in Virginia in the immediate post–civil rights era, I do not take this kind of racial and partisan integration in public space lightly. Virginia may be a border state, but it was also the Confederacy’s capital. The residue of segregation coated the experiences of my childhood. I couldn’t help smiling to see an interracial hipster couple: the girlfriend leaned across the aisle to ask the severely groomed Navy seaman if they should order the chicken and waffles he’d just finished eating.

Both Romney and Obama have Virginia highlighted as a battleground state. But it didn’t feel like a place where people were battling one another; it felt like a place where they were groping for some kind of common ground. Every single person was worried about jobs. Every single person was concerned about fairness. No one was particularly moved by the abortion debate. Every single person thought that at least one part of their government (either the president or Congress) was manipulating them and lying to them. Every single person felt reluctant to broach political conversations with neighbors or co-workers who, they suspected, disagreed with them. There was a respectful armistice at the Village Inn, but I am worried about the ways that 2012 may divide, rather than unify, this community and others like it.

A diverse democracy requires us to be able to live near one another, to come together in public space and to engage across differences. In the coming months the people of Virginia will have their local airwaves bombarded with campaign messages, many of them negative, accusatory and even apocalyptic in their claims about the other side. My greatest hope is that during it all, these people will still be willing to have pie with one another at the local diner.

Ed. note: This column first appeared in The Nation on Wednesday.

This morning in #nerdland, we discussed the critical importance of Latino voters to the 2012 elections. The issues driving Latino vote choices in this election are complex. I encourage you to bookmark NBCLatino and read it often during this campaign. One of my favorite academic texts on this topic is Matt Barreto’s "Ethnic Cues: The Role of Shared Ethnicity in Latino Political Participation."

#nerdland was stoked to have Majora Carter at the table to talk about environmental justice this morning. I first fell in love with this issues a few years ago I taught a course on environmental justice. My co-instructor was Professor Kimberly Smith, whose fantastic book, "African American Environmental Thought: Foundations," you should read. Also, check out the My Plastic-free Life blog of another of our guests today, Beth Terry.

I took a moment to comment on the racial discrimination lawsuit facing ABC’s "The Bachelor." My favorite critical text about reality television comes from media critic (and prior #nerdland guest) Jenn Pozner. Check out her great read, "Reality Bites Back: The Troubling Truth About Guilty Pleasure TV."

The most emotional segment for me, as you may have seen, was the discussion concerning sexual assault in the military with Congresswoman Jackie Speier, attorney Raul Reyes and Ariana Klay, who survived sexual assault during her time in the Marine Corps. Compare reports on the topic from the U.S. Department of Defense to those of Protect Our Defenders.

Finally, we spent a little time discussing the Tea Party movement. Easily the best academic text on this political phenomenon is Jill Lepore’s "The Whites of Their Eyes: The Tea Party's Revolution and the Battle over American History."

Have a great week! And happy reading.

This morning in #nerdland, we asked about how racial considerations might impact the re-election of President Obama. We were drawing on the research of Don Kinder and Allison Dale-Riddle, who found compelling evidence that the racial animus of white voters influenced the 2008 election outcome. In "The End of Race? Obama, 2008, and Racial Politics in America," they argue that racial resentment is still a potent political force.

We gave you an update on Trayvon Martin. This case is now in the courts and will work its way through the system. But many of us are still struggling with trying to understand issues of race, justice, and  gun laws in our country. A terrific new article in The Atlantic explores the somewhat surprising history of race and gun control. Read the Atlantic essay from last September, “The Secret History of Guns.”

I was thrilled to invite Kathrine Switzer to the table this morning! She offered important insights and perspectives on Title IX, women and girls in sports, and the potentially bring future we are facing. After weeks of “war on women” conversations, it was really uplifting to hear someone optimistically assess the future of girls. Read more about her life and work in her book, "Marathon Woman." And since women athletes still have a complicated relationship with sports and fitness, especially when it comes to body image, I recommend one of my favorite texts on this topic: "Built to Win: The Female Athlete as Cultural Icon."

In my discussion of the controversial public art “cake” exhibit in Sweden this week I mentioned the so-called Venus Hottentot. If you don’t know the history of Sara Baartman and her role in world history, read "Sara Baartman and the Hottentot Venus: A Ghost Story and a Biography" by Clifton Crais and Pamela Scully.

And one last assignment: please read more about our amazing "Foot Soldiers," Bridge the Gulf, and watch today's segment below, after the jump. See you tomorrow morning at 10am! Stay nerdy, my friends.

Washington Post

The world would be a better place without grades. My opposition to assigning them grows to a near-religious fanaticism at this point in the semester, when my desk, kitchen counter and handbag are overflowing with students’ papers that must be graded. They call to me at night, those earnest words and eager political analyses from young people, awaiting my assessment.

But not grading these mini-masterpieces would not lessen my workload. In fact, it would complicate teachers’ lives if we could no longer array our students along an alphabetic continuum.

Without grades, we would be forced to offer detailed, critical assessments of our students’ strengths and weaknesses, both to them and to future schools and employers. We would need to pay closer attention to their process and their progress rather than just their final products.

Grades encourage students to focus on the external assessment of a single person — or a small group of people — rather than on true exploration and learning. What would happen if students were free to experience classes, retain information and build connections without fear that their futures hung in the balance of a single imperfect product?

Students often feel deflated when their best efforts lead to only mediocre grades. I feel for the ones who complain: “But I worked soooo hard!” It’s true that some students can put forth great effort but achieve only average results, while others can barely lift a finger and manage near-perfection. An A for effort barely soothes the C at the end of the semester.

There is an inverse relationship between maximizing grades and exploring intellectual interests. A conscientious student focused on her future, who knows that she must demonstrate mastery through good grades, is less likely to try something challenging, to take the hard class or to venture into unfamiliar territory. Educators want students to take the hardest classes, to attempt the tough skill, to risk the great failure. How can they when their futures hang in the balance of a B?

And let’s face it, grades are not very good predictors of accomplishment, curiosity, happiness or success. Remember President George W. Bush assuring Yale’s Class of 2001 that the C students could aspire to the Oval Office?

I borrow my philosophy of education from Antoine de Saint-Exupery, the author of “The Little Prince”: “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.” Grades get in the way of our longing for the sea and encourage us to put down anchors safely near the shore. Let’s see what happens when imaginations are unfettered by the terror of a C.

Ed. note: This column appeared first in today's Washington Post as part of their fourth annual "Spring Cleaning" series.

OK, #nerdland, we talked taxes today to lead off the show, so I think you already know what your tax-related "MHP" Homework is -- file! You have until Tuesday, April 17 this year. Don’t pull a Romney; get those 1040s completed and sent off.
 
Once you’ve fulfilled your civic duty, curl up with a little light reading on other topics from today's show.

If you really love cars, you will enjoy James Flink’s detailed account of how the automobile came to dominate American culture, public policy, and politics at the turn of the 20th century. Find "America Adopts the Automobile, 1895-1910" either online or at your local library. Also, if you really want to know how the car fundamentally altered the landscape of America’s cities, you should know the work of Robert Moses, who was profiled in this 2007 New York Times piece.

And of course, you can’t talk cars without talking Detroit. And we *did* talk Detroit today. Read my colleague Todd Shaw’s terrific book on Detroit politics, "Now is the Time! Detroit Black Politics and Grassroots Activism."

In our second hour, we brought you the voices and stories of transgender Americans. #nerdland guest Kate Bornstein is an author of multiple, fantastic, highly readable and often hilariously engaging books about gender identity in America. Check out Bornstein’s "Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation"  -- and Kate’s latest, "A Queer and Pleasant Danger: The true story of a nice Jewish boy who joins the Church of Scientology and leaves twelve years later to become the lovely lady she is today."

When I teach gender identity in my college courses, I often assign the bracing and revealing novel "Stone Butch Blues," by Leslie Feinberg. This text is not about transgender identity per se, but it is a brutally honest account of gender nonconformity within gay communities. To learn more about the political, social and economic agenda of transgender Americans visit the website for the National Center for Transgender Equality, where one of our guests today, Mara Keisling, is the executive director.

And if you want to get seriously nerdy, read about the new HUD LGBT rule we discussed today on the Federal Register.  Folks, this exciting document is the kind of thing we use for sources around here! And finally, if you haven’t visited the “Texts from Hillary” tumblr, now is the time!
 
See you next week. Keep it nerdy.

For months, we have been reporting on the assaults on women’s reproductive rights initiated and sustained by Republican legislators in states across America. But this week, the “war on women” conversation took a turn as Hilary Rosen’s comments about Ann Romney shifted the focus to the issue of women’s work both inside and outside the home.

So #nerdland hosted a bipartisan conversation today about women, work and motherhood. It is a complicated and important issue, one that goes far beyond the mythical “mommy wars.” You'll find some additional resources in this week's Homework:

• The American Association of University Women this week released state-by-state rankings for equality of pay between men and women workers. The report is a reminder that when we get beneath the rhetoric we find a very clear reality: women’s labor is devalued compared to men’s work.
• One of the most valuable texts I’ve ever read on subject of women and work is Jacqueline Jones’ "Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family from Slavery to Present." It is a careful history that forces us to reconsider all the ways women have worked in America. Women’s stories are very different when they are told by women without economic and racial privilege.
• And I just love this one: "The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How It Has Undermined All Women." It is an utterly irreverent and brilliant look at how American culture idealizes motherhood in ways that have little connection with the experiences of real women who are loving, working, struggling, failing, and succeeding in their roles as parents.
• After our update and discussion about Trayvon Martin, I took some time to talk about the brutal history of racial violence in America. In particular, I highlighted the 1921 Tulsa race riot. To learn more about the Tulsa riots read Scott Ellsworth’s "Death in a Promised Land: The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921."
• We spent much of our second hour today exploring the complicated, heartbreaking and enraging issue of sex trafficking. To learn more about this issue, which still receives far too little attention, check out Siddharth Kara’s "Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery."
• Finally, whether you are a runner or just like to take a stroll around the block, you will want to get to know my "Foot Soldier" today (and my guest next week!) Kathrine Switzer. Read her memoir, "Marathon Woman: Running the Race to Revolutionize Women's Sports."

See y’all tomorrow at 10am ET. (Not next week, as I accidentally said at the end of the show. Whoops!)