Featured

Between Kanye and the Midterms, the Unsettling Stream of Antisemitism. By Michael Paulson and Ruth Graham / NYT

Simon Taylor was on his way to an appointment in Flatbush when he pulled into a local filling station one afternoon last week. It was a lovely fall day in Brooklyn, but as he began to fuel up, the climate turned sour: Another customer, spotting the skullcap atop Rabbi Taylor’s head, launched into an expletive-laden rant about how much he hated Jews, and then, when the rabbi photographed his license plate, started chasing him with an upraised fist.

For Jews in America, things are tense indeed. Next week’s midterm elections feel to some like a referendum on democracy’s direction. There is a war in Europe. The economy seems to be teetering. It is a perilous time, and perilous times have never been great for Jews. Read more

Political / Social

Has America Outgrown Affirmative Action? By Spencer Bokat-Lindell / NYT

In 2003, the Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O’Connor cast the deciding vote to save affirmative action. The dream of a united multiracial nation, she believed, required that the path to higher education be open to every American, which justified the consideration of race as one factor among many in university admissions — at least for a while. In 25 years, she predicted, affirmative action would no longer be necessary.

Nineteen years later, the Supreme Court is considering whether that expiration date should be preserved or pushed forward. If the conservative majority’s reaction to oral arguments on Monday was any indication, The Times’s Adam Liptak reported, race-conscious admissions could soon be a thing of the past. Why has the debate over affirmative action become so contentious in recent years, and has the policy really become obsolete? Here’s what people are saying. Read more

The GOP made gains among Latino voters in 2020 but Democrats remain the party of choice for upcoming midterms. By Mary Lehman Held / The Conversation

As the second largest U.S. demographic group, Latinos are a significant political force that could determine the elections in the key midterm battleground states of Arizona, Colorado and Nevada.

Not surprisingly, the anticipated impact of Latino voters has forced Democrats and Republicans to develop messages that not only resonate but also drive turnout on Election Day. That is easier said than done. One thing is clear. Latino voters are turning out in record numbers. In 2020, Latinos cast an estimated 16.6 million votes, an increase of 30.9% over their turnout in the 2016 presidential election. If Latino communities are to be adequately represented in our democracy, then the complexity of those communities needs to be understood. Read more

Wes Moore Is the Most Overlooked Candidate in the Midterms. By Walter Shapiro / The New Republic

He’s almost sure to win his campaign in Maryland, which would make him just the third Black man elected governor in the U.S. and set him on a path as a rising star in the Democratic Party.

The 44-year-old Wes Moore may well be the most important first-time candidate on the ballot this year who isn’t receiving much national coverage. It is hard to squeeze much breathless drama out of race in which Moore leads his Trump-loving, right-wing challenger, Dan Cox, by a better than 2-to-1 margin, according to a late-October Baltimore Sun poll. Outgoing moderate two-term GOP Governor Larry Hogan has not only refused to endorse Cox but has called him a “QAnon whack job.” Read more

The Political Attack on the Native American Vote. By Sue Halpern / The New Yorker

Voters on Navajo, Apache, and Hopi reservations helped swing Arizona for the Democrats in 2020. In response, the Republican governor and state legislature have curtailed ballot access for an already marginalized constituency.

There are close to five million Native Americans of voting age in the United States, but only sixty-six per cent of them are registered to vote. Young said that he previously chose not to participate in American elections because the state and federal governments—he called them “colonizers”—had oppressed his people for centuries, extracting their timber, minerals, and ore, and leaving them to languish on land stripped of its value. “I just felt that our votes didn’t matter,” he told me. In 2020, Native Americans, who comprise six per cent of the Arizona population, voted in numbers never before seen and are largely credited with turning the state blue. According to the Associated Press, voters on the Navajo and Hopi reservations cast seventeen thousand more votes in 2020 than they had four years earlier, a majority of them for Biden, who won the state by about ten and a half thousand votes. Read more

Asian Americans have some of the highest levels of support for abortion rights — and it’s driving them to vote. By Sakshi Venkatraman / NBC News

“When Roe v. Wade was overturned, I remember you could hear this eerie silence for women, especially immigrant women, across the United States,” one voter said. “So that’s what’s really driving me to the polls.”

Health care is the top priority Asian American voters are taking to the ballot box, according to the 2022 Asian American Voter Survey; experts say a big reason for that is the overturning of of Roe v. Wade and the mounting restrictions on reproductive rights across the country. With studies finding that Asian American and Pacific Islanders show some of the highest levels of support for abortion rights, community leaders are expecting this issue to drive Asian Americans to the polls — many for the first time ever. Read more

How Fetterman drew Oprah into the race against Oz. By Otterbein / Politico

The longtime talk show host helped launch Oz’s career on TV, but she’s backing his opponent in the Pennsylvania Senate race.

John Fetterman and his allies have been trying to nab Oprah Winfrey’s endorsement for months. On Thursday, they landed their target, as the superstar announced at a virtual get-out-the-vote event that she is supporting the Democrat in Pennsylvania’s critical race for the Senate. “I said it was up to the citizens of Pennsylvania and of course, but I will tell you all this, if I lived in Pennsylvania, I would have already cast my vote for John Fetterman for many reasons,” Winfrey said. Read more

New York City Ballot Measures Promise to “Attack” Institutional Racism. What Does That Actually Mean? By Maggie Duffy / Mother Jones

A product of more than a yearlong process, the changes will be in front of voters this week.

A response to the racial reckoning in the summer of 2020 over police brutality and to a pandemic that disproportionately impacted Black and brown New Yorkers, the New York City Racial Justice Commission was formally established in March 2021 as a first-of-its-kind group given a two-year mandate to “embed equity into the City’s planning, programming, and auditing processes.” The charter revision commission was assigned the mammoth task of proposing amendments to the municipal constitution that would begin the process of rooting out structural racism in the city’s government. Read more

Older, White and Wealthy Home Buyers Are Pushing Others Out of the Market. By Ronda Kaysen / NYT

The share of first-time buyers fell to 26 percent, plummeting to the lowest level in four decades, when a real estate trade association began tracking such data.

American home buyers are older, whiter and wealthier than at any time in recent memory, with first-time buyers accounting for the smallest share of the market in 41 years, the National Association of Realtors found in its annual profile of home buyers and sellers. White buyers accounted for 88 percent of home sales during the survey period, up from 82 percent during the same period a year earlier, reaching the highest level in 25 years, according to the association’s findings. The new findings add weight to a hard truth that many young families have experienced as they struggle to save money to buy a home, competing in the most brutally competitive housing market in modern history: They have been elbowed out by buyers who have something they might never have — all cash. Read more

MSNBC Cancels ‘The Cross Connection’ After Tucker Carlson Verbally Attacks Host. Sara Boboltz / HuffPost

“Political violence is increasing, and it’s becoming inherently more dangerous to speak the truth,” former host Tiffany Cross said in a statement.

“The Cross Connection with Tiffany Cross” is no more. Tiffany Cross announced Friday that MSNBC canceled her Saturday morning news program after a less than two-year run. The move came after Cross had become a target of attacks from Fox News and pundit Tucker Carlson. Cross said in a statement that she was “disheartened” to learn of the decision, which came “abruptly, surprising many of us.” Read more

How 2 Black radio hosts ended up owning the ‘White Lives Matter’ trademark. By Matt Adams / NPR

As of Oct. 28, Ramses Ja (left) and Quinton Ward, hosts of the Civic Cipher radio show, own the trademark “White Lives Matter.”

During Paris Fashion Week, the rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, hosted a “secret” catwalk event where models wore T-shirts displaying the phrase “White Lives Matter.” Ye had planned on selling the shirts before eventually dropping off boxes filled with the tops at homeless encampments in Los Angeles, never officially releasing the design. Now, anyone trying to sell a White Lives Matter shirt or use the phrase for monetary gain will be handed a cease-and-desist letter by two Black radio hosts who have filed for the trademark. Read more

Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs to acquire cannabis businesses for up to $185M. By Stephon Sykes / CNBC

Hip-hop mogul and businessman Sean “Diddy” Combs is venturing into the world of cannabis.

Combs has agreed to acquire licensed cannabis operations in New York, Massachusetts and Illinois from Cresco Labs Inc. and Columbia Care Inc., in a deal worth up to $185 million. The transaction marks Combs’ first investment in cannabis and will create the country’s first minority-owned, vertically integrated multi-state cannabis company, as well as the world’s largest Black-owned cannabis company, according to a release from Combs and the companies. Read more

Ethics / Morality / Religion

In existential midterm races, Christian prophets become GOP surrogates. By Michelle Boorstein / Wash Post

Lance Wallnau used to be a corporate marketer who privately believed that power lay in prophetic revelation. Then came 2015, and he began sharing a word from God: Donald Trump was “anointed.”

In July, Wallnau prayed over Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) before a cheering Atlanta arena audience. By early September, he was at a conference outside Colorado Springs with Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.). And, a few days after that, here he was in the suburbs of Harrisburg, Pa., for GOP gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano, whom he compared with George Washington at Valley Forge. Read more

Reconciliation or Antiracism? Featuring Christina Edmondson, Darrell Brock and Chad Brennam / Christianity Today Podcast

Helping churches answer the biblical call to racial justice and unity. A virtual roundtable presented by CT and Seminary Now.

Racism, antiracism, critical race theory, color-blindness, diversity, reconciliation. Discussion and debate on these issues abound in the church today. Regardless of what language or labels we use, a crucial question looms: What is the biblical call to racial unity and justice? Recently, CT and Seminary Now convened a virtual roundtable featuring a dynamic panel of Christian thought leaders on matters of race, justice, and discipleship. Pastor Derwin Gray, author of How to Heal Our Racial Divide, and educators Christina Barland Edmondson and Chad Brennan, authors of Faithful Antiracism, were joined by New Testament theologian Darrell Bock, who moderated the webinar. Listen here

Texas Churches Violate the Law Ahead of Tuesday’s Election, Experts Say. By Jeremy Schwartz, Jessica Priest and Perla Trevizo / The Texas Tribune

Churches in Texas invited Beto O’Rourke and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick to speak to their congregations before the 2022 midterms, raising questions about the effectiveness of the Johnson Amendment.

Tax law experts told ProPublica and The Texas Tribune that the pastors’ support of the candidates in their sermons violated the Johnson Amendment. The experts also raised concerns about what appeared to be the churches’ failure to give equal time to their opponents. O’Rourke is facing Republican Gov. Greg Abbott in the general election, and Patrick is being challenged by Democrat Mike Collier. Read more

Historical / Cultural

Sherman’s March Toward Reparations. A Little-Known Civil War Story Illuminates America’s Broken Promise to Black America By Bennett Parten / Zocalo

Historian Bennett Parten traces an oft-forgotten story from U.S. General William T. Sherman’s march through Georgia in 1864: the incident at Ebenezer Creek where the American case for reparations began. Illustration by Be Boggs.

This story of fire and arms obscures an arguably more important story: Sherman’s famous March doubled as the largest emancipation event in American history, accomplishing on the ground what Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation could do only on paper. It broke the back of the planter class, destroyed Confederate morale, and legitimized the freedom of thousands. And it’s here, deep in Georgia, along a slow-moving body of water known as Ebenezer Creek, where the American case for reparations began. This oft-forgotten origin story is one of the lasting legacies of Sherman’s great March, even if it’s also perhaps the least understood. Read more

‘Black Wall Street’ Was Burned Down in 1921, but It’s Being Revived. By Peter Coy / NYT

The Black neighborhood of Greenwood in Tulsa, Okla., was so prosperous at the start of the 20th century that Booker T. Washington, the educator and author, called it Negro Wall Street, which later morphed into Black Wall Street.

A white mob burned it down in 1921 and killed hundreds of people. Now there’s an effort to revive Black Wall Street, creating opportunities for Black venture capitalists and entrepreneurs not just in Tulsa but also across the United States. I recently interviewed Ashli Sims, a longtime Tulsa resident who is leading the project. Read more

Black Women at Columbia University before Brown v. Board. By Hettie Williams / AAIHS

Teacher and students in a classroom at Whittier Primary School, Hampton, Virginia” [Between 1899 and 1900] (Courtesy of LOC)

In as early as 1901, Black students began entering Teachers College, Columbia, coming from historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) in the South, including Tuskegee, Saint Augustine’s, and Howard University. Many of the hundreds of Black students who entered Teachers College, Columbia first attended summer programs at Teachers College (TC), but several also matriculated and earned their undergraduate degrees at TC before the institution became a graduate and professional school. Read more

How Saidiya Hartman Changed the Study of Black Life. By Elias Rodriques / The Nation

A conversation with writer about her pathbreaking book Scenes of Subjection and how our understanding of race has changed in the last two decades.

Saidiya Hartman has shaped studies of Black life for over two decades. Her first book, 1997’s Scenes of Subjection, argued that slavery was foundational to the American project and its notions of liberty. Her follow-up, 2006’s Lose Your Mother, combines elements of historiography and memoir in exploring the experience and legacy of enslavement. Here she first used a speculative method of writing history given the silences of the archive. And her most recent book, 2019’s Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments, examines the revolution of everyday life enacted in the practices of young Black women and queer people that created and sustained expansive notions of freedom. Read more

Film About the Abuse of People of Color Becomes a Teaching Tool. By Liann Herder / Diverse Issues in Higher Ed.

Alton Sterling. Philando Castile. It was July 2016, and the list of Black men and women killed by police had grown by two names in just two days.

For teacher and producer Brandi Webb, those names were the last straw. She began work on a passion project, creating a film that would illustrate the violence and oppression experienced by people of color in the U.S. Her idea was to place the country on trial using its own system of justice and laws. By examining history with a criminal law book at hand, Webb found evidence to charge the U.S. with kidnapping, child abuse, cruel and unusual punishment, harassment and stalking, and manslaughter, among other offenses. She compiled the charges and released her film, Betrayal of a Nation, in 2021. Part documentary, part dramatic storytelling, the film’s unique format and premise caught the attention of teachers, who recognized that Webb’s work could be impactful in the classroom. For a year and a half, Webb collaborated with educators to create the 3E Program for Social Justice and Change, which begins its official roll out on November 15. Read more

Louis Armstrong’s Last Laugh. By Alan Scherstuhl / NYT

Private recordings, heard in the new documentary “Louis Armstrong’s Black & Blues,” add a further dimension to the artist.

The tapes are thrilling, revelatory, wrenching: the warm-gravel voice of Louis Armstrong, perhaps the most famous voice of the 20th century, speaking harsh truths about American racism, about the dehumanizing hatred he and millions of others endured in a world he still, to the end, insisted was wonderful. He tells the stories — of a fan declaring “I don’t like Negroes” to his face; of a gofer on a film set treating him with disrespect no white star would face — with fresh outrage and can-you-believe-this? weariness. The public can hear these stories, privately recorded by Armstrong as part of his own lifelong project of self-documentation, in the Sacha Jenkins documentary “Louis Armstrong’s Black & Blues” (streaming on Apple TV+). Read more

Lena Horne becomes first Black woman honored with Broadway theater. By Li Cohen / CBS News

Lena Horne became the first Black woman in U.S. history to have a Broadway theater named in her honor on Tuesday. Horne, called a “fearless agent for change” by New York’s governor, was a Brooklyn-born singer and actress whose career spanned decades and broke barriers.

The venue now bearing her honor was built in 1926 as the Mansfield Theatre and got its first renaming in 1960 to pay tribute to New York Times drama critic Brooks Atkinson. On Nov. 1, it officially became the Lena Horne Theatre. “Six,” a musical about the six wives of Henry VIII, is now being performed at the venue. Read more

‘The Hair Tales’ Review: A Hulu/OWN Docuseries on Black Women’s Hair. By Angie Han / Hollywood Reporter

Tracee Ellis Ross interviews Oprah Winfrey, Issa Rae, Ayanna Pressley and more about their personal “hair journeys” and the politics and meaning of Black women’s hair in a new show from Onyx Collective.

In the first few minutes of Hulu and OWN’s The Hair Tales, host Tracee Ellis Ross lays out her aims. “My hope is that these conversations that we have create more space for belonging and self-actualization,” she says. “It can feel like it’s just a conversation about hair. But it’s not. Especially not for Black women.” “It never is,” her interview subject, Oprah Winfrey, agrees. And so it goes: Over six episodes, the docuseries invites Black women to discuss all things hair-related, from their individual memories to the decades or centuries of history leading up to them, to the idea of hair as a method of self-expression or a reflection of social change. Read more

Sports

The NFL’s number of Black team presidents is rising. By Jason Reid / Andscape

In 2022, three Black people were hired to run franchises: ‘We feel like we’re moving in the right direction. ’Shown is Denver Broncos team president Damani Leech who is one of three Black team presidents hired by NFL teams in 2022. RJ Sangosti/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images

In 2022, the number of Black NFL team presidents has increased from one to four. The first Black female team president in league history, Sandra Douglass Morgan of the Las Vegas Raiders, is among the newcomers. The workforce in the league’s New York City headquarters looks like America, and there are Black people under Goodell who have their hands on the levers of power. Of the 17 highest-ranking officials in NFL football operations, nine are Black. Eight of the nine have vice president-level titles or higher, and the group is led by a Black man: Troy Vincent, executive vice president of football operations. Read more

Astros win World Series as Dusty Baker finally manages a champion. By Chelsea James / Wash Post

When it was finally happening, when the decades of disappointment in October were finally about to lead to joy in November, a calm settled over Houston Astros Manager Dusty Baker.

His players embraced him. The fans chanted his name. One fan down the right field line held a sign that read “a date with Dustiny,” and perhaps that was exactly what it was. Because Baker said later he thought that after all he had been through, all the hirings and firings, near misses and long waits, he had a feeling this would be the year, his third World Series try, 20 years after the first. Read more

Jeff Bezos And Jay-Z Reportedly Might Buy The Washington Commanders. Jazmin Tolliver / HuffPost

The billionaire businessmen are in talks about the possible joint venture.

The Amazon founder and multibillionaire has expressed interest in purchasing the Washington Commanders in a potential joint bid with music industry mogul Jay-Z, Bloomberg and The Washington Post reported Thursday. Bezos — who has a net worth of $114 billion — has ties to the area, as he owns the Washington Post newspaper and has a home in the area. Jay-Z, a former co-owner of the Brooklyn Nets, also represents several NFL athletes under his company, Roc Nation Sports. The Grammy-winning rapper — who has a net worth of $1.3 billion — also launched a multiyear partnership with the league in 2019 to produce entertainment for events, including Super Bowl halftime, as well as social justice initiatives to strengthen the community through football and music. Read more

Nets Suspend Kyrie Irving Indefinitely After Antisemitic Movie Post. By Tania Ganguli / NYT

Irving posted a link to an antisemitic movie last week but had not apologized until hours after the Nets suspended him for a minimum of five games.

Irving had declined to apologize despite fierce backlash, but late Thursday night, hours after the Nets suspended him, he relented in a post on Instagram. “To All Jewish families and Communities that are hurt and affected from my post, I am deeply sorry to have caused you pain, and I apologize,” Irving said in the Instagram post. The Nets said Irving would be suspended without pay for a minimum of five games and “until he satisfies a series of objective remedial measures that address the harmful impact of his conduct.” Read more

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Important Current Stories On Race In America

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