Featured
Walker downplays racism in historic Georgia Senate campaign while casting Warnock as divisive. By and
Herschel Walker made racism a top general election campaign issue in Georgia’s competitive Senate campaign this week with a new TV ad that extols the promise of America and accuses his Democratic opponent, Sen. Raphael Warnock, of encouraging division.
“Sen. Warnock believes America is a bad country full of racist people,” Walker, a Republican, says straight to camera, following images and soundbites of Warnock and other prominent Democrats discussing the existence of systemic racism. “I believe we’re a great country full of generous people. Warnock wants to divide. I want to bring us together.” Read more
Related: Democrats’ midterm momentum isn’t slowing. By Jenifer Rubin / Wash Post
Political / Social
White Fear: How the Browning of America Is Making White Folks Lose Their Minds a book by Roland Martin and Leah Lakins. Bookshop.org
For two centuries, the deep-seated fear that many white people feel–of losing power, of losing economic standing, of losing a particular “way of life”–has been the driving force behind American politics and culture. And as we approach a future where white people will become a racial minority in the US, something estimated to occur as early as 2043, that fear is only intensifying, festering, and becoming more visible. Are we destined for a violent clash? What can we do to step into our country’s inevitable future, without tearing ourselves apart in the process? Read more
Jackson mayor: Federal infrastructure funding ‘insufficient’ to address city’s water system problems. By Olafiminan Oshin / The Hill
The mayor of Jackson, Miss., Chokwe Antar Lumumba (D), said on Sunday that federal infrastructure funding is “insufficient” to address “30 years of deferred maintenance and accumulated challenges” associated with the city’s water system. During an appearance on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” moderator Margaret Brennan noted that Jackson received $42 million from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) last year, adding that President Biden stressed during the signing of the bill the importance of preventing a reoccurrence of water crises in cities such as Jackson and Flint, Mich. Read more
Related: EPA inspector general is probing Jackson, Mississippi, water crisis. By , and / NBC News
Harris on voting rights: ‘Everything is on the line in these elections in just less than two months.’ By Chloe Folmar / The Hill
Vice President Harris expressed concern over threats to voting rights and democracy in an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” aired on Sunday, during which she emphasized the importance of getting out the vote for the midterm elections. “
Everything is on the line in these elections in just less than two months,” she said while discussing voting rights. Harris stressed that the issue is high on the Biden administration’s agenda and that the president will “not let the filibuster get in the way” of signing bills into law that make it easier to vote. “Because what is happening in our country … they are passing laws making it more difficult for people to vote,” said Harris. Read more
Joe Biden’s historic speech was too damn nice: No hand of friendship to fascists. By Chauncey Devega / Salon
Biden’s generosity is admirable — but this is the moment to confront the fascists and defeat them forever
America, Biden said, was “at an inflection point” and must choose “to build a future or obsess about the past, to be a nation of hope and unity and optimism or a nation of fear, division and of darkness.” It was impossible, he said, to be “pro-insurrectionist and pro-American,” calling for the rejection of “political violence” and a willingness to accept “the results of free and fair elections” rather than seeing politics as “total war.” This was remarkable truth-telling, yet at crucial moments the president was simply too generous toward those who refuse to respect democracy or the rule of law: Read more
Related: History will judge Republicans who stay silent about the big lie. By Robert Reich / The Guardian
Related: You Can’t Talk About MAGA America in Hushed Tones. By Jamelle Bouie / NYT
DC mayor declares public emergency over migrant arrivals from Arizona and Texas. By Sonnet Swire / CNN
Bowser announced in a news conference a new government office tasked with the local response to arriving migrants that will also support new arrivals who are seeking asylum.
Daring to Speak Up About Race in a Divided School District. By Daniel Bergner / NYT
What happened when a superintendent in northern Michigan raised the issue of systemic racism?
“All people of color,” Long typed, “need us to stand with them to clearly state that we condemn acts of systematic and systemic racism and intolerance.” Long, who is 56, is Lebanese American, with olive-toned skin, a cascade of dark hair and the sturdy build of a woman who, a few decades ago, competed in the discus and javelin in college. She does not identify as white, but she wrote as if she did. She passes for white on and near the peninsula, where she has lived and worked as a teacher and school administrator since the 1990s. She keeps her ethnicity mostly to herself. Read more
How has affirmative action shaped higher education? The Supreme Court might ban it for good. By Tiffany Cusaac-Smith / USA Today
In a few weeks, the Supreme Court will hear a challenge to race-conscious admissions policies at two universities, the latest chapter in the contentious history of affirmative action in higher education.
For decades, affirmative action has been used to improve equity and diversity in workplaces and colleges. But the two lawsuits from Students for Fair Admissions, an anti-affirmative action group founded by conservative legal strategist Edward Blum, accuse the University of North Carolina and Harvard of discriminating against Asian American students and giving unfair preference to Black and Hispanic applicants – challenging decades of legal precedent. In the lawsuit against UNC, the group says the school also discriminated against white applicants. Read more
Bernard Shaw, CNN’s Lead Anchor for 20 Years, Dies at 82. / NYT
He covered the Gulf War, anchored convention coverage and asked a revealing question of Gov. Michael Dukakis during a presidential debate in 1988.
Known for his steadying influence at the anchor desk and from the field, Mr. Shaw had worked at CBS News and ABC News before he left the comfort of broadcast news to take a career gamble by joining Ted Turner’s fledgling Cable News Network in 1980. He was one of the first Black anchors of a network evening news program, following Max Robinson, who became a co-anchor of ABC News’s “World News Tonight” in 1978. Read more
Ethics / Morality / Religion
Religion and Samuel Alito’s time bomb. By Andrew Koppelman / The Hill
An irresponsible sentence that Justice Samuel Alito wrote eight years ago may now excuse religious people from nearly every legal obligation they have, so long as a hypothetical, nonexistent government program could substitute for it.
That became clear this week when Judge Reed O’Connor declared in Braidwood Management v. Becerra that employers with religious objections may offer health plans without drugs that prevent transmission of HIV, contraception, the HPV vaccine and screenings and behavioral counseling for STDs and drug use. The employers claim that providing such coverage makes them complicit in homosexual behavior, drug use and sexual activity outside of marriage. Read more
What Church Splits Can Teach Us About a Dividing America. By Russell Moore / Christianity Today
As in the past, one can learn about our nation’s political divisions by looking at our religious ones
An uncanny number of people are imagining the looming collapse of the United States. Some speak openly of preparing for “civil war,” while others crow about the need for a “national divorce” between red and blue states. Most, though, whisper these thoughts. They look at a country seemingly at the breaking point and begin to wonder whether we may indeed be heading for a national conflict of some kind. To answer such questions, perhaps even the most secular Americans should look to a religious phenomenon that has proven in years past to be a leading indicator of our nation’s future: church splits. Read more
Christian nationalism is getting written out of the story of January 6. By Joyce Dalsheim and Gregory Starett / The Conversation
When they entered the Senate chamber on Jan. 6, 2021, a group of insurgents stopped and bowed their heads in prayer to consecrate the building and their cause to Jesus. When the Senate reconvened later, its chaplain, retired Navy Adm. Barry Black, also prayed, but called the insurgents’ actions a “desecration of the United States Capitol building.” Both sides appealed to the Christian God as the authority for their actions and values. Read more
Related: Baptist leader speaks out: ‘Christian nationalism is not Christianity.’ By John Avlon / wfmznews
For a Black Jesuit in the US, racism is a crucible. By Patrick Saint-jean / NCR
The following is an excerpt from The Crucible of Racism: Ignatian Spirituality and the Power of Hope (Orbis Books) by Patrick Saint-Jean, SJ.
The second way we can enter into a deeper relationship with Jesus during this stage of The Spiritual Exercises is by relating Christ’s suffering to the pain we see in the world around us. Instead of retreating into a life of comfort and privilege, we allow the suffering of others to become real to us. “Everything,” wrote Ignatius, “has the potential of calling forth in us a deeper response to our life in God.” As we take this to heart, we do not turn away from the reality of injustice in our world. Read more
Related: Embodied Faith with Sho Baraka. By Rasool Berry / Christianity Today
Historical / Cultural
Black Historians Know There’s No Such Thing as Objective History. By Keisha N. Blain / New Republic
Recent critiques of “presentism” fail to see that we can’t divorce the past from the present—and that supposedly objective scholarship has long promoted racist narratives and suppressed Black history.
In Raoul Peck’s documentary I Am Not Your Negro, writer James Baldwin observes, “History is not the past. History is the present. We carry our history with us. To think otherwise is criminal.” Baldwin’s remarks succinctly capture our relationship to the past. They also address the role of “presentism”—the use of a present lens to interpret the past—within the historical profession. Read More
New Jersey hopes to ‘elevate the stories of Black New Jerseyans’ with the Black Heritage Trail. By Claretta Bellamy / NBC News
The trail will contain historical markers to promote awareness and appreciation for Black history, culture and heritage in the state. A marker reads “Enslaved Africans once sold here,” commemorating a site where slaves were bought and sold on the Camden, N.J., waterfront in 2020.
Gov. Phil Murphy signed Bill A2677 into law Wednesday, which gives the New Jersey Historical Commission $1 million to develop the Black Heritage Trail, a path highlighting Black historical markers and sites in the state. The commission will begin designating sites on the trail under the guidance of Secretary of State Tahesha Way and the New Jersey Black Cultural and Heritage Initiative Foundation, according to the commission’s executive director, Sara Cureton. Read more
U.S. Changes Names Of Places With Racist Term For Native Women. By Mead Gruver / HufPost
The U.S. government has renamed hundreds of peaks, lakes, streams and other geographical features that carry a racist and misogynistic term.
The U.S. government has joined a ski resort and others that have quit using a racist term for a Native American woman by renaming hundreds of peaks, lakes, streams and other geographical features on federal lands in the West and elsewhere. New names for nearly 650 places bearing the offensive word “squaw” include the mundane (Echo Peak, Texas), peculiar (No Name Island, Maine) and Indigenous terms (Nammi’I Naokwaide, Idaho) whose meaning at a glance will elude those unfamiliar with Native languages. Read more
The Culture War Is Chasing Teachers Away, Leaving Kids Shortchanged. By Nathalie Baptiste / HuffPost
About 300,000 teachers have left their jobs since 2020. Conservatives targeting those who support racial justice and LGBTQ students are making the shortage even worse.
When James Whitfield, the Black principal at Colleyville Heritage High School in Texas, wrote a letter to the Grapevine-Colleyville Independent School District in the days after the murder of George Floyd in 2020, he received only positive feedback. “Education is the key to stomping out ignorance, hate, and systemic racism,” he wrote. One year later, he would be out of a job. Read more
FBI file shows bureau kept tabs on Aretha Franklin’s activism, a common focus during the Civil Rights era. By Eliott C. McLaughlin / CNN
There “ain’t no way” the highest domestic law enforcement agency in the country was keeping tabs on Aretha Franklin — but they were.
Ibram X. Kendi’s ‘Magnolia Flower’ weaves a Black and Native love story. By Char Daston / Wbez News
The new picture book adapts a story by Zora Neale Hurston for young readers.
It’s the 1860s on a tropical island teeming with animals and flowers. This is where a Black freedom-seeker and a Cherokee woman fleeing the Trail of Tears make their home. They have a daughter, Magnolia, who grows up and falls in love on the island. That story of freedom, trauma, family, and nature was originally written by the Harlem Renaissance author Zora Neale Hurston. Now, it’s been adapted into a children’s book: Magnolia Flower by Dr. Ibram X. Kendi. The book is illustrated by Loveis Wise. Read more
‘Sidney’ Tackles The Not-So-Comfortable Conversations About A Black Cinema Icon. Candice Frederick / HuffPost
It’s not about sensationalizing or even tarnishing the reputation of Sidney Poitier. Rather, the new documentary honors his humanity — every facet of it.
Director Reginald Hudlin’s “Sidney,” which explores the life and career of the late Sidney Poitier, actually has those conversations. It does so unflinchingly and candidly. And it includes a variety of equally respected heroes of Black cinema who are compelled to reckon with the full portrait of Poitier, a man who both aspired and inspired just as much as he frustrated and disappointed. “Sidney” premiered at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival, and will be released on Apple TV Plus on Sept. 23. Read more
Esther Cooper Jackson, early activist for civil rights, dies at 105. By Emily Langer / Wash Post
Esther Cooper Jackson, a civil rights activist, feminist and onetime member of the Communist Party who was regarded by the end of her life as an elder stateswoman of the American left, died Aug. 23 at a nursing facility in Boston.
Raised in a middle-class Black family in Arlington, Va., Ms. Jackson began her career as a civil rights activist in the 1940s, when she went to Alabama as a volunteer with the Southern Negro Youth Congress. She helped organize voter-registration drives and became executive secretary of the organization, which was notable for including women in leadership positions. The group’s civil rights work presaged that of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in the 1960s. Read more
Sports
Playing Through Fire: Athletes in an Age of Reaction. By Dave Zirin
On this week’s episode of the Edge of Sports podcast, a talk about the role of the athlete during times of political upheaval.
Social movements tend to arise within the world of sports during periods of upsurge and upheaval. But what about times of authoritarianism, dictatorship, or even fascism? What is the social role of the athlete during periods of reaction? I recently had the pleasure of giving a talk at the 2022 Socialism conference in Chicago, where I addressed all of these questions. This week’s episode of the Edge of Sports podcast is a recording of that talk. Listen here
Cultural taxidermy, not appropriation: the trophies in sports no one wants to talk about. By Tim Thompson / Salon
Sports fans flaunting Indigenous headdresses or performing the “tomahawk chop” reinforce an insidious message
While the pushback to the use of Indigenous imagery is nothing new, most chalk it up to a disagreement over — or sensitivity to — cultural appropriation. The term has been used to describe when a member of one culture takes elements of another culture to use as an accessory (or repurpose entirely) without accreditation or even going so far as to denigrate its origins as somehow lesser. However, cultural appropriation doesn’t capture the full scope of the problem. Read more
Looking for More Frances Tiafoes. Futterman / NYT
Frances Tiafoe’s rise to the top echelon of tennis is an inspiration, but tennis officials are trying to build a U.S. system that relies less on kismet to produce a Black champion.
Black American men have not had a Grand Slam champion to look up to since Arthur Ashe in the 1970s, and have had precious few billboard-worthy top Black players to admire. Maybe one day they will have Frances Tiafoe, who is Black and played one of the most compelling matches in U.S. Open history Friday night, coming up just short in the semifinals against Carlos Alcaraz of Spain. Even in the loss, Tiafoe, who is 24 years old, announced himself, last night and all week, as a potentially transformative star. Read more
Two Barbers, a YouTube Channel and the Truth About Race at the Racetrack. By Joe Drape / NYT
Two entrepreneurial barbers with video cameras are documenting the overlooked characters of thoroughbred racing, with an emphasis on Black grooms and trainers.
Harper asked Dixon what had changed in horse racing. “This may get me in trouble,” Dixon said, looking over his shoulder and lowering his voice. “I’m the only Black man at the end of a shank. It’s sad but true. Real grooms got pushed out.” It was the sort of candid, just-between-us moment that has made Harper and Davis’s YouTube documentary series, The Real Players Inside the Backstretch, a must-see for those who own, breed, train, ride, groom, bet on or just love thoroughbred horses. Read more
Deshaun Watson must undergo treatment and have clinicians say ‘he’s on right path’ for suspension to be lifted. By Jonathan Jones / CBS Sports
For as long as he’s an NFL player, Cleveland Browns quarterback Deshaun Watson must have team-approved massage sessions with approved therapists. That’s according to the settlement he reached with the NFL over the summer, per three sources familiar with the matter. Within about 10 days after the settlement was reached, Watson had to undergo a professional evaluation by behavioral experts that would then determine and map out a treatment plan. Though we don’t know the details of that plan due to privacy laws, but it was stressed to me by one league source that this is treatment and not counseling, if that distinction makes a difference. Read more
Site Information
Articles appearing in the Digest are archived on our home page. And at the top of this page register your email to receive notification of new editions of Race Inquiry Digest.
Click here for earlier Digests. The site is searchable by name or topic. See “search” at the top of this page.
About Race Inquiry and Race Inquiry Digest. The Digest is published on Mondays and Thursdays.
Use the customized buttons below to share the Digest in an email, or post to your Facebook, Linkedin or Twitter accounts.