What Rick Perlstein thinks about America
American historian of the American conservative movement; author of Before the Storm (2001), Nixonland (2008), The Invisible Bridge (2014) and Reaganland (2020). Writes Rickipedia, a newsletter on politics, history, culture and jazz.
Rick Perlstein did not write this page.
We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.
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2 dated positions, 2026, in their own words. Our reading of what Rick Perlstein has said — not written or endorsed by them.
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Their wordsBecause, if there ever was an actual affirmative cultural content to "whiteness"that didn't actually signify "not a member of a degraded caste", a concept of "white genius" that didn't make you sound like one of Stephen Miller's favorite accounts on X, it inheres in the style of jazz invented by "white" Americans from rural backgrounds in the 1970s and into the '80s.
↗...in which the Rickipedian breaks deeply felt personal principle.rickperlstein.substack.com 1st of 2 in this piece
- 5 weeks earlier
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Their wordsAAVE was how the enslaved forever integrated into English a more African than "Western" (a word I despise) connection of mind to body, and body to nature nature (as expressed by James' point about his body register changes in the atmopshere, except in his donnish argot); and a more African conception of musicality, especially rhythmic but also tonal ("melisma," the musicologists call it); not to mention an African conception of parody and play as a mode of human interconnectedness.