Thursday Mixes

All photos courtesy of Alex Tizon and his family

My Family’s Slave

Alex Tizon

She lived with us for 56 years. She raised me and my siblings without pay. I was 11, a typical American kid, before I realized who she was.

The ashes filled a black plastic box about the size of a toaster. It weighed three and a half pounds. I put it in a canvas tote bag and packed it in my suitcase this past July for the transpacific flight to Manila. From there I would travel by car to a rural village. When I arrived, I would hand over all that was left of the woman who had spent 56 years as a slave in my family’s household.

洛拉：我家的奴隶

Alex Tizon

她与我们家人一起生活了五十六年。她带大了我和我的兄弟姐妹，从早到晚做饭做清洁，从来没有工资。十一岁的我，一个典型的美国孩子，意识到她其实是我们家的奴隶。

她的骨灰装满了一个黑色塑料盒子，如烤面包机一般大小，重三磅半。去年七月，我用一个帆布口袋把这个盒子包起来，装在行李箱里，横越太平洋，飞去了马尼拉。我要从那里坐车去一个小乡村，去把这个在我家为奴五十六年的女人的骨灰交出去。

When Your Child Is a Psychopath

Barbara Bradley Hagerty

The condition has long been considered untreatable. Experts can spot it in a child as young as 3 or 4. But a new clinical approach offers hope.

This is a good day, Samantha tells me: 10 on a scale of 10. We’re sitting in a conference room at the San Marcos Treatment Center, just south of Austin, Texas, a space that has witnessed countless difficult conversations between troubled children, their worried parents, and clinical therapists. But today promises unalloyed joy. Samantha’s mother is visiting from Idaho, as she does every six weeks, which means lunch off campus and an excursion to Target. The girl needs supplies: new jeans, yoga pants, nail polish.

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At 11, Samantha is just over 5 feet tall and has wavy black hair and a steady gaze. She flashes a smile when I ask about her favorite subject (history), and grimaces when I ask about her least favorite (math). She seems poised and cheerful, a normal preteen. But when we steer into uncomfortable territory—the events that led her to this juvenile-treatment facility nearly 2,000 miles from her family—Samantha hesitates and looks down at her hands. “I wanted the whole world to myself,” she says. “So I made a whole entire book about how to hurt people.”

The Explosion in Manchester

The Editors

U.K. police said at least 22 people are dead and 59 injured following the incident at Manchester Arena.

Here’s what we know:

—Greater Manchester Police said 22 people are dead and 59 injured following reports of an explosion at the Manchester Arena.

—Authorities are treating the explosion as a terrorist attack, believing the incident to be carried out by a lone male. The attacker, who reportedly detonated an explosive device, is said to have died at the arena.

—The venue was the scene of an Ariana Grande concert. British Transport Police said there were “reports of an explosion within the foyer area of the stadium” at 10.35 p.m. local time, but Manchester Arena said the incident occurred “outside the venue in a public place.”

—This is a developing story and we’ll be following it here. All updates are in Eastern Standard Time (GMT -4).

How People Decide Whether to Have Children

Olga Khazan

A guide for those on the fence

Isabel Caliva and her husband, Frank, had already “kicked the can down the road.” The can, in their case, was the kid conversation; the road was Caliva’s fertile years. Frank had always said he wanted lots of kids. Caliva, who was in her early 30s, thought maybe one or two would be nice, but she was mostly undecided. They had a nice life, with plenty of free time that allowed for trips to Portugal, Paris, and Hawaii.

“I wasn’t feeling the pull the same way my friends were describing,” she told me recently. “I thought, maybe this isn’t gonna be the thing for me. Maybe it’s just going to be the two of us.”

At times, she wondered if her lack of baby fever should be cause for concern. She took her worries to the Internet, where she came across a post on the Rumpus’ “Dear Sugar” advice column titled, “The Ghost Ship that Didn’t Carry Us.” The letter was from a 41-year-old man who was also on the fence about kids: “Things like quiet, free time, spontaneous travel, pockets of non-obligation,” he wrote. “I really value them.”

An Apple employee poses with a personal computer in 1986. — Corbis Historical / Getty

Why American Workers Now Dress So Casually

Deirdre Clemente

The office was, until a few decades ago, the last stronghold of fashion formality. Silicon Valley changed that.

Americans began the 20th century in bustles and bowler hats and ended it in velour sweatsuits and flannel shirts—the most radical shift in dress standards in human history. At the center of this sartorial revolution was business casual, a genre of dress that broke the last bastion of formality—office attire—to redefine the American wardrobe.

Born in Silicon Valley in the early 1980s, business casual consists of khaki pants, sensible shoes, and button-down collared shirts. By the time it was mainstream, in the 1990s, it flummoxed HR managers and employees alike. “Welcome to the confusing world of business casual,” declared a fashion writer for the Chicago Tribune in 1995. With time and some coaching, people caught on. Today, though, the term “business casual” is nearly obsolete for describing the clothing of a workforce that includes many who work from home in yoga pants, put on a clean T-shirt for a Skype meeting, and don’t always go into the office.

Why Some Women Choose to Get Circumcised

Olga Khazan

An anthropologist discusses some common misconceptions about female genital cutting, including the idea that men force women to undergo the procedure.

I recently had a conversation that challenged what I thought I knew about the controversial ritual known as “female genital cutting,” or, more commonly, "female genital mutilation."

FGC, as it is abbreviated, involves an elder or other community member slicing off all or part of a woman’s clitoris and labia as part of a ceremony that is often conducted around the time that the woman reaches puberty. Many international groups are concerned about FGC, which is practiced extensively in parts of Africa and the Middle East and is linked to infections, infertility, and childbirth complications.

Organizations such as the United Nations have campaigned against the practice, calling for its abolition as a matter of global health and human rights. But despite a decades-old movement against it, FGC rates in some countries haven't budged. While younger women are increasingly going uncut in countries such as Nigeria and the Central African Republic, according to a survey by the Population Reference Bureau, in Egypt more than 80 percent of teenagers still undergo the procedure.

A victim of domestic violence at a safe house in Nevada County, California — Rich Pedroncelli / AP

Mother, Wife, Slave

Sarah Jeong

Lola and the universality of women’s exploitation

“Having a slave gave me grave doubts about what kind of people we were, what kind of place we came from,” Alex Tizon wrote in his Atlantic essay “My Family’s Slave.”

A thousand objections can be leveled against that piece, and in the few days since it was published, those objections have materialized from all quarters. It’s a powerful story, and its flaws and omissions have their own eloquence. For me, the most important failure is that Tizon seems to attribute Lola’s abuse entirely to another culture—specifically, to a system of servitude in the Philippines—as though he believes, This doesn’t happen in America. But that system is not only in America, it’s everywhere. It ensnares not only immigrants, but everyone.

"We Can't Walk Away From This Truth"

Mitch Landrieu

New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu explains to his city why four monuments commemorating the Lost Cause and the Confederacy had to come down.

Last week, the City of New Orleans finished removing four monuments—to Confederate President Jefferson Davis, Generals P.G.T. Beauregard and Robert E. Lee, and the postwar battle of Liberty Place. The removals occasioned threats, protests, and celebrations. On Friday, Mayor Mitch Landrieu explained to his city why he had concluded that the monuments needed to come down.

-Yoni Appelbaum

The soul of our beloved City is deeply rooted in a history that has evolved over thousands of years; rooted in a diverse people who have been here together every step of the way—for both good and for ill.

It is a history that holds in its heart the stories of Native Americans—the Choctaw, Houma Nation, the Chitimacha. Of Hernando de Soto, Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, the Acadians, the Islenos, the enslaved people from Senegambia, Free People of Color, the Haitians, the Germans, both the empires of France and Spain. The Italians, the Irish, the Cubans, the south and central Americans, the Vietnamese and so many more.

President Donald Trump — Jonathan Ernst / Reuters

Trump’s Budget Is a Cruel Con

Derek Thompson

The president’s tax-and-spend plan isn’t just a reversal of his campaign promises. It’s also a deeply unpopular blueprint for the country.

President Donald Trump’s first major budget proposal comes out on Tuesday, but many of the details are already public. The budget would reverse several of Trump’s campaign promises—like his pledge to preserve Medicaid and Social Security—by dismantling welfare for the poor and sick, while ensuring that rich Americans keep more of their income.

At this point, the proposal is just that—a proposal, and Congressional Republicans, some of whom have balked at the president’s blueprint, hold the power of the purse. But if followed, the plan would reportedly cut anti-poverty programs by $1.7 trillion over the next 10 years in an attempt to balance the budget, according to the The Washington Post and Axios. In addition to $800 billion in cuts to Medicaid—which comes directly from the House’s Obamacare replacement—the budget would also let states use “work requirements” to limit eligibility and spending on programs like SNAP (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, previously known as food stamps), CHIP (the Children’s Health Insurance Program), and Social Security Disability Insurance. There is little question that these policies would raise the number of uninsured Americans (the Congressional Budget Office’s estimates suggest by more than 20 million), expose more households to medical bankruptcy, and push more families into poverty.

Why America Needs a Slavery Museum

Paul Rosenfeld

A wealthy white lawyer has spent 16 years and millions of dollars turning the Whitney Plantation into a memorial to the nation's past.

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Why the White, Working Class Voted for Trump

Tynesha Foreman and Nicolas Pollock

New data and analysis from PRRI and The Atlantic suggests that it was cultural anxiety more than economic distress that fueled white, working-class support for Trump.

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Church Militant: A Right-Wing Media Empire in the Making

Daniel Lombroso

A Catholic news outlet is fighting to save Americans from sin, while its founder grapples with his own complicated past.

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Thursday Mixes

About the Author

Most Popular

My Family’s Slave

洛拉：我家的奴隶

When Your Child Is a Psychopath

The Explosion in Manchester

How People Decide Whether to Have Children

Why American Workers Now Dress So Casually

Why Some Women Choose to Get Circumcised

Mother, Wife, Slave

"We Can't Walk Away From This Truth"

Trump’s Budget Is a Cruel Con

Why America Needs a Slavery Museum

Why the White, Working Class Voted for Trump

Church Militant: A Right-Wing Media Empire in the Making

Thursday Mixes

Latest Video

Trump Scandals Are Good for Putin

About the Author

Most Popular

My Family’s Slave

洛拉：我家的奴隶

When Your Child Is a Psychopath

The Explosion in Manchester

How People Decide Whether to Have Children

Why American Workers Now Dress So Casually

Why Some Women Choose to Get Circumcised

Mother, Wife, Slave

"We Can't Walk Away From This Truth"

Trump’s Budget Is a Cruel Con

Why America Needs a Slavery Museum

Why the White, Working Class Voted for Trump

Church Militant: A Right-Wing Media Empire in the Making