Alexander H. Jones

Gene Nichol’s Righteous Grief

by Alexander H. Jones | Apr 25, 2023 | Politics | 2 comments

“Lessons from North Carolina” is a phrase that in a recent political context seems unlikely to be edifying. After all, the last 12 years have seen our state transmogrify into an exemplar of modern-day retrogression. But somehow Gene Nichol has managed to...

The GOP Base is Hurting the GOP’s Ability to Win Elections

by Alexander H. Jones | Apr 20, 2023 | Politics | 4 comments

Jesse Helms never lacked pariahs to demonize. Building a political career when the legacy of segregation echoed powerfully in North Carolina, Helms promoted various Black political figures as villains in the drama of American politics. In 1984, he released dozens of...

A New Wave of Aggression from the Religious Right

by Alexander H. Jones | Apr 14, 2023 | Politics | 7 comments

Ronald Reagan’s “Evil Empire” speech had little to do with the Soviet Union. Delivered to the National Association of Evangelicals, the bulk of Reagan’s address was a feast of red meat for the Republican base’s 1980s fixations: drugs,...

The Human Consequences of Tricia Cotham

by Alexander H. Jones | Apr 6, 2023 | Politics | 4 comments

There have been many personal critiques of state Rep. Tricia Cotham’s character. They are well deserved, and I hope you’ll read them. But rather than her self-pitying political opportunism, I want to focus on the consequences that the newly minted...

Republicans Are Projecting Their Own White Fragility Onto Our Schools

by Alexander H. Jones | Mar 27, 2023 | Politics | 1 comment

The North Carolina Capitol building cost our state over $532,000, a sum so gargantuan in the 1830s that it rendered the state legally bankrupt. Labor costs for the project, however, came in at zero. The explanation for this paradox is that our government forced...