Featured
Black Theology Sings of Freedom. By Dante Stewart / Christianity Today
To be black and to be Christian is to remember the brutality of our experience and the brilliance of our resistance.
Our history cries out: cries of little babies torn from their homeland; of mothers and fathers jumping overboard to escape from hell; of bruised and abused bodies; of broken promises and policies; of beautiful children lifeless in the streets and over social media.
I have come to see that theological reflection often begins at the place of tears and pain. It is in this place that black people have had to struggle. It is here that we have had the audacity to survive, to sing. And we in America today can’t understand this song without understanding the brilliance of black theology. I wouldn’t be able to make it in this cruel world without it. Read more
Related: 25 Black Theologians Who Have Grown Our Faith. By Kate Shellhuff / Christianity Today
Related: What the Black Church Can Teach Us About Lent. By Kimberly Deckel / Christianity Today
Political / Social
University of North Carolina moves to ban ‘diversity, equity and inclusion’ statements in anti-woke backlash. By Kendall Tietz / Fox News
The University of North Carolina (UNC) moved against encroaching woke culture and voted to ban diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) statements and politically preferential hiring.
“We believe in a race blind, meritocratic society with high standards and that’s what has traditionally produced excellence in the United States,” Xu told Fox News Digital. “When we saw wokeness and DEI infiltrating the medical profession, that’s when we became concerned because medicine is the one place where everybody knows, liberals, conservatives, independents, that you need the most qualified doctor to get the best outcome.” Read more
Related: University of Texas puts diversity programs on hold, drawing backlash. By Suzanne Gamboa / NBC News
Related: Florida bill would target diversity studies at state universities. By Rose Horowitch / NBC News
America, Right-Wing Censors and the ‘Battle for the Next Century’ By Charles M. Blow / NYT
From left, Senator Marco Rubio, Representative Chip Roy, Gov. Ron DeSantis and Chris RufoCredit…From left to right: Erin Schaff/The New York Times; Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times; Maddie McGarvey for The New York; Chona Kasinger for The New York Times
Chris Rufo, the man who orchestrated the attack on critical race theory, underscored a new focus this month. “Conservatives must move the fight from ideology to bureaucracy,” he tweeted. “We’ve won the debate against CRT; now it’s time to dismantle DEI.” D.E.I. stands for diversity, equity and inclusion, a concept that goes far beyond just the racial prism of critical race theory and moves into the worlds of ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, age and class. What Rufo is proposing is the distorting and demonizing of legitimate practices and areas of academic inquiry. Read more
In Jackson, Mississippi, how can a separate criminal justice system be equal? By Jade A. Craig / USA Today
Supporters of House Bill 1020 claim it would help reduce crime in the state capital. But it would threaten the principle of one person, one vote.
The Mississippi House of Representatives recently passed a bill that would create a separate court system and an expanded police force for the city of Jackson. Jackson, the state’s capital city, has an 83% Black majority, among the highest of any major city in America. The Mississippi House has a white supermajority. The bill’s proposed “Capitol Complex Improvement District” would include all of the city’s majority-white neighborhoods. Read more
How Clarence Thomas went from a left-wing Black radical to one of the Supreme Court’s most conservative judges. By James Pasley / Business Insider
According to political scientist Corey Robin, he saw his role as being to “explain to African Americans that there is very little that the government can do for them.”
It’s Not a “National Divorce.” It’s a Call for One-Party Authoritarian Rule. By Matt Ford / The New Republic
Marjorie Taylor Greene’s idea for America to “separate by red states and blue states” isn’t just dumb and harmless. It’s also a window into a dangerous vision that’s ascendent in the Republican Party.
Greene’s call, however, is not a cure for the disease in our body politic but a symptom of it. Every call for the United States to break apart or divide itself based on the political factions of the moment are built on a fantasy. In that fantasy, the proponents get to live in a world where everything they want comes true, and the perceived opponents finally get the self-inflicted comeuppance that they and their ideas deserve. Greene’s vision is not just about realizing conservative policy ideas—it is an authoritarian rejection of democratic government itself. Read more
Reviving the Southern Black Labor Movement. By Erica A. Smiley and Keesha Gaskins Nathan / The Progressive
Southern Black workers have a long record of forming unions to press their demands for justice—we once again need to build power at work as we have in the past.
In modern times, Black workers, especially in the South, remain central to rebuilding a labor movement that challenges reactionary forces and white supremacy. Far-right extremists are more emboldened than ever to undermine democracy and dismantle the steps toward justice set in motion during the Civil Rights era. We’ve been especially heartened that the South is increasingly seeing some of the most important labor upsurges in the country. From the organizing drive among Amazon workers in Alabama to the rubber tire workers subjected to unsafe conditions in South Carolina. Not to mention, the painters in Georgia, the public sector municipal workers in Virginia as well as the auto workers seeking to unionize facilities in Alabama and Mississippi. Read more
Report: Black married couples face heavier tax penalties. By Jaclyn Diaz / NPR
Black married couples, in general, pay more in tax costs than white, married couples, according to a new report by the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center.
Officially, the U.S. tax code is considered race blind, William Gale, one of the report’s authors, told NPR. “But what we’ve suspected, and what we found, was that the income tax can still impose differential burdens on Black and white households” because of several factors, he said. Researchers with the nonprofit think tank found that Black couples were more likely to face marriage penalties (46% to 43%) and less likely to receive marriage bonuses (36% to 43%) than white couples. Read more
Top executives at the largest companies are white men. Here’s why. By Jessica Guyum and Jayme Fraser / USA Today
Chris Womack grew up in the segregated South with whites-only restrooms and water fountains. After school, he caught fish and picked collard greens for dinner. On Sundays, he went to church with his mother and grandmother, who taught him that education and hard work could unlock doors that racism slammed shut.
Womack unlocked one of those doors in 2021 when he became the first Black CEO of Georgia Power, the largest subsidiary of Southern Company. Southern Company announced in January that he would take charge of the whole organization later this year during the utility holding company’s annual meeting. The appointment will make him one of four Black CEOs in the S&P 100, the nation’s 100 top publicly traded companies. Read more
Ethics / Morality / Religion
Harvard, National Council of Churches, Reform Jews seeking reparations blueprint. By Adelle M. Banks / RNS
‘This is not a mere research paper,’ said the Rev. Cornell William Brooks, a Kennedy School professor and former president of the NAACP.
A professor and students at Harvard Kennedy School are joining forces with prominent Christian and Jewish organizations to develop a faith-based blueprint to advance the possibility of reparations for African Americans. The National Council of Churches and the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism have become a client of several students in the school’s “Creating Justice in Real Time” course and hope by the end of the semester to create new ways — such as resources for congregations and proposed legislation for Congress — to move conversations into action. Read more
The anti-racist Mormon trying to teach his fellow LDS church members. By Rachel Martin / NPR
James Jones is a Black Mormon who is using his church’s theology to teach anti-racist principles to fellow church members.
When he was around 12 years old, James was ordained into what is called the priesthood, which is what all Mormon boys and men deemed worthy get to be part of. It allows them to perform sacred rituals. But it wasn’t always this way. James is Black, and until 1978, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints prohibited Black people from participating in the priesthood. These days, the LDS Church has no racial restrictions, and church leaders have repeatedly condemned racism generally, although they’ve never acknowledged its past racist policies as a mistake. Read more
How John and Alice Coltrane’s music inspired a vision for American Hinduism. By Murali Balaji / RNS
They were two of the religion’s most impactful and unique gurus in its evolution into an American way of life. Alice Coltrane in 1987. John Coltrane in 1963. Photo by Frans Schellekens, left, and Gelderen, Hugo van / Anefo
More than 50 years after his death, John Coltrane is rightfully recognized as a giant in American music, a visionary who innovated jazz and made an indelible impact on subsequent generations of musicians in a wide variety of genres. Alice Coltrane’s impact as a jazz musician might not have been as legendary as her husband’s, but she emerged as a multigenre force over her 40-year music career before her death in 2007. For all the accolades and tributes the pair have received in making their mark in music and popular culture, and becoming outsized in their role as Black history makers, the Coltranes had an arguably equal impact in reimagining American Hinduism. Read more
Historical / Cultural
The White Press & Jim Crow. By Justin Laing / AAIHS
Sign created by white neighbors who wanted to keep Black people out of Sojourner Truth housing projects. Sign reads: “We want white tenants in our white community,” Detroit, Michigan, 1942 (Library of Congress)
Within a frame of a two competing ideas of the United States “one liberal, the other illiberal,” Journalism and Jim Crow examines how white publishers of Southern newspapers, enriching themselves from the exploitation of Black people in all manner of ways, mainly through convict leasing programs and debt peonage, used their media platforms to establish and perpetuate the violence of Jim Crow (p.305). Central to this was an effective program of white terrorism intended to severely limit, if not eliminate, a Black press fighting for a new, multi-racial, liberal America, the negative consequences of which are still with us today. Read more
Florida’s Stop Woke Act is latest in a long history of censoring Black scholarship. By Darryl Robertson / Andscape
Two boys work in the Freedom Press Office in Hattiesburg, Mississippi in July 1964. The Freedom Press’s were a part of the Mississippi Project, a campaign to increase Black voter registration in the South. CORBIS/Bettmann Archive
America has been declaring war on Black education since this country’s beginnings. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ Stop Woke Act and criticism of an Advanced Placement class in African American history is part of a pattern of white people in power censoring Black scholarship, literature, and intellectuality. Running against this centurieslong tide of censorship is Black resistance – both within the classroom and outside of it. W.E.B. Du Bois, in his 1935 opus, Black Reconstruction in America, devoted a chapter to showing how white educators falsified American history. The iron fist of Jim Crow made it unlawful for teachers to engage with civil rights and Black culture materials inside classrooms. Read more
Mayor Levar Stoney on preserving history while tearing down Confederate statues. By Jonathan Capehart / Wash Post Podcast
Once the capital of the Confederacy during the Civil War, Richmond recently took down its last major city-owned confederate memorial.
In this conversation recorded for Washington Post Live on Feb. 15, Levar Stoney, the mayor of Richmond, talks about why he ordered his city to remove statues commemorating the Confederacy, the various efforts to whitewash American history in states across the country, and what guides him as a leader. Listen here
The Campus Walkout That Led to America’s First Black Studies Department. By Farrell Evans / History
The 1968 strike was the longest by college students in American history. It helped usher in profound changes in higher education.
In late 1968 at San Francisco State College, African American students led a 133-day on-campus strike, the longest of its kind in U.S. history. One of their primary goals was to force the school’s administration to establish the nation’s first Black Studies department. Prior to the strike, the university had briefly offered a smattering of courses focused on the African American experience through other departments. But the Black Students Union, driven by the racial turbulence of the 1960s, wanted its own department with a degree program and a full-time Black faculty teaching about the history, culture and contributions of their own people. They called for a curriculum that went beyond traditional Euro-centric views and better reflected Black perspectives. Read more
Angela Davis ‘Can’t Believe’ Ancestry Discovery About Mayflower Relative. By Chrissy Callahan / Today
The political activist appears in the latest episode of “Finding Your Roots” and learns things she “can’t get used to.”
The author and symbol of the Black Power movement presents the show’s host, Henry Louis Gates Jr., with two questions about her ancestry during the episode. The “Finding Your Roots” team follows the paper trail back to Davis’ fourth great-grandfather, Stephen Darden, who was born in colonial Virginia and served in the Revolutionary War (and played the drums). The news astounds Davis, as she connects her ancestor’s time in the war with her own activism. “I’m going off the top of my head! You just threw information at me,” she says, laughing. Davis then grapples with learning Stephen Darden became a slave owner after moving to Georgia. Read more
Octavia Butler’s American parables are a realistic sci-fi vision of life after apocalypse. By Tom Deignan / NCR
America’s belated embrace of author Octavia Butler has come at a fitting but disturbing time.
Butler, a California native and MacArthur “genius” whose prescient oeuvre includes widely anthologized stories, more than a dozen novels and a Library of America volume, once wrote about a period of upheaval she dubbed “the Apocalypse” or, more bitterly, “The Pox.” That time was the 2020s. Late last year, Hulu released an eight-episode TV series based on Butler’s celebrated 1979 novel, Kindred, about a contemporary Black woman who periodically travels back in time to the 1830s, witnessing and experiencing the brutalities of slavery endured by her ancestors. Read more
NAACP Image Awards 2023: Here Are All The Winners. By Kimberly Richards / HuffPost
The 54th NAACP Image Awards kicked off in front of a live audience for the first time in three years.
The two-hour special, hosted by Queen Latifah, aired live on BET on Saturday night from the Pasadena Civic Auditorium in Pasadena, California. The show hasn’t had a live audience since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. Last year’s show was partially virtual with a few live appearances from presenters, award winners and honorees, such as Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” scored a big win at Saturday’s ceremony, taking home the award for Outstanding Motion Picture. Will Smith won the Outstanding Actor in a Motion Picture award for “Emancipation.” Viola Davis, a newly minted EGOT winner, won the award for Outstanding Actress in a Motion Picture. Read more
Sports
Bill Russell documentary ‘Legend’ features all facets of Celtics great. By Jeff Zillgitt / USA Today
If you don’t know much about Bill Russell – the person and the player – then the new Netflix documentary, “Bill Russell: Legend,” is for you.
If you know Russell’s story, this documentary filled with rare video footage and insight from the NBA’s biggest stars, is also for you. The two-part, 200-minute documentary directed by accomplished filmmaker Sam Pollard tells the story of the NBA’s greatest winner and steadfast champion of racial and social justice. Weaving Russell’s story through the prism of his early life, emergence as a basketball star in college for San Francisco and in the NBA for the Boston Celtics and his steadfast pursuit of equality, Pollard shines a light on one of the most important athletes of the 20th century. Read more
‘Creed III’ Review: Michael B. Jordan Directs a Rock-Solid Sequel. By Owen Gleiberman / Variety
In a sports drama that feels like a thriller, Jonathan Majors once again proves his mettle as Adonis’ ominous friend-turned-boxing-foe.
Jordan, working from a script by Keenan Coogler and Zach Baylin (the story is by Ryan Coogler, who also serves as a producer), shows dramatic finesse in his staging of the Adonis/Dame relationship, showcasing it as a broken brotherhood that speaks to larger disruptions — the tug between loyalty and violence in dispossessed childhoods. “Creed III” is a sports drama that feels like a thriller with an urgent conscience. It’s a far more dynamic movie than the proficient but formulaic “Creed II,” even if it can’t match the soulful filmmaking bravura of the first “Creed.” Read more
How will Black quarterbacks use their influence? By William C. Rhoden / Andscape
Star players at the NFL’s most glamourous position could have a major impact on the league if they chose to use their power
In August 2016, Colin Kaepernick demonstrated the influence a starting NFL quarterback could have when he began taking a knee during the playing of the national anthem. Kaepernick’s bold action, designed to protest police violence against Black people, sparked worldwide protests that went beyond the NFL. But as younger African American quarterbacks enter the league and lead their teams to success, will they use their influence, as Kaepernick did, to make changes that owners have otherwise resisted: hiring Black head coaches, making guaranteed contracts a fact of life? Read more
Serena Williams, Brittney Griner honored at NAACP Image Awards. By Lorenzo Reyes / USA Today
A pair of sports icons were honored at the 54th NAACP Image Awards. Retired women’s tennis megastar Serena Williams and Phoenix Mercury center Brittney Griner were each recognized Saturday at the awards show, which was held in Pasadena, California.
Widely considered the best female tennis player of all-time, Williams, 41, retired from tennis after the 2022 U.S. Open to focus on her family. Griner, 32, missed the entire 2022 WNBA season after she was imprisoned in Russia for possession of hash oil. On Tuesday, Griner officially re-signed with the Mercury, marking her return for her 10th season in the WNBA. Read more
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