Featured
This is no culture war: Republicans are waging a war on democracy. By Chauncey Devega / Salon
In reality, today’s Republican Party is waging a fascist war against multiracial democracy
America is not mired in a culture war. In reality, today’s Republican Party and larger “conservative” movement are waging a fascist war against multiracial pluralist democracy and human freedom. Ultimately, to not understand how the so-called culture war is actually a fascist war against American democracy is to almost ensure being rolled over by those evil forces. Read more
Political / Social
The Boys Who Cried ‘Woke!’ By Jamelle Bouie / NYT
President Donald Trump signed a bill in 2018 that altered the way some banks were regulated, with predictable consequences. Credit…Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA, via Shutterstock
As soon as it was clear that Silicon Valley Bank would not survive the weekend, conservative influencers and Republican politicians had a culprit in sight. Wokeness. The governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, also spoke to Fox News about the collapse of the bank, and he also blamed the bank’s diversity programs. “I mean, this bank, they’re so concerned with D.E.I. and politics and all kinds of stuff. I think that really diverted from them focusing on their core mission,” he said. The real story behind the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank has much more to do with the political and economic environment of the previous decade than it does with wokeness, a word that signifies nothing other than conservative disdain for anything that seems liberal. Read more
There is no secret plan: First they came for trans people. By Chauncey Devega / Salon
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) discussed her legislation named the Protect Childrens Innocence Act on Capitol Hill September 20, 2022 in Washington, DC. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
If you listen closely, people will tell and show you who they really are, what they actually believe, and by doing so reveal their true character. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s speech at CPAC (and the larger pattern of attacks on the LGBTQ community by the right-wing) is part of a strategy known as stochastic terrorism, where a malign actor uses repetition, coded language and overt threats, humor, and other rhetorical moves to stigmatize an entire group of people as a way of encouraging violence against them. When said outcome takes place, those same actors will then deny any connection to the lethal events they incited. Read more
The MAGA-fication of North Idaho College. By Charles Homans / NYT
Brent Regan, right, the chairman of the Kootenai County Republican Central Committee, with Todd Banducci, a trustee for North Idaho College.Credit…Margaret Albaugh for The New York Times
For most of the past two years, the college’s governing board has been a volatile experiment in turning grievances into governance. Trustees backed by the county Republican Party hold a majority on the board. They have denounced liberal “indoctrination” by the college faculty and vowed to bring the school administration’s “deep state” to heel and “Make N.I.C. Great Again.” Read more
Black Voters in Chicago Look for a Candidate and a Path Forward on Fighting Crime. By Julie Bosman / NYT
Brandi Johnson, a 29-year-old private security officer, has not decided which of the two candidates for mayor will get her vote.Credit…Jim Vondruska for The New York Times
As Brandi Johnson left a restaurant recently in Bronzeville, long a center of Black culture on Chicago’s South Side, she did not hesitate before naming the issue that would determine her vote for the city’s next mayor: crime.These voters are being aggressively wooed with starkly different appeals by the candidates who made the April runoff. Paul Vallas, a former schools executive, is campaigning largely on a pro-police law-and-order message. Brandon Johnson, a county commissioner, has touted a plan that views crime as a problem with solutions that go well beyond policing. Read more
St. Petersburg’s structural racism study authors are eager to see action. By Colleen Wright / Tampa Bay Times
Gwendolyn Reese, African American Heritage Association of St. Petersburg president, says she’s eager to see Mayor Ken Welch move forward with efforts to ensure equal treatment for the city’s Black residents. [ JEFFEREE WOO | Times ]
Mayor Ken Welch promised in his inaugural address that he would oversee a city where people from all backgrounds benefit from a booming economy that is leaving many behind. The city’s first Black mayor was armed with a study completed a month earlier by his predecessor that described how people of his color and their communities have long faced discrimination and neglect. It outlined five steps the city could take immediately to begin righting historic wrongs. Read more
Sewage Crisis in Alabama’s Black Belt Spawns Complaint. By Adam Mahoney / Capital B
A civil rights complaint brought to the Environmental Protection Agency alleges that the state of Alabama has perpetuated the problem in Black towns.
In Alabama’s Black Belt, many residents have to hold their breath every time they attempt to flush their toilets because there’s a great chance that sewage will be sent back through their toilet bowls, bathtubs, and sinks. A group of environmental justice organizations filed a civil rights complaint last week against the state of Alabama, contending that this public health and environmental justice issue is deliberately maintained by public policy. The complaint, filed by the Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice and the Natural Resources Defense Council, alleges that the state has discriminated against Black communities in how it distributes money for wastewater treatment systems. Read more
Guidelines Warn Against Racial Categories in Genetic Research. By Carl Zimmer / NYT
Grappling with the deep history of racism in Western science, the National Academies of Science on Tuesday released guidelines recommending that scientists not use race as a category in genetic studies.
The guidelines, produced in response to a directive from the National Institutes of Health, noted that racial categories were poor proxies for genetic diversity and that social and environmental factors, like poverty and injustice, were often overlooked. The 239-page document came out of months of work by a team of geneticists, social scientists and historians. Read more
San Francisco to consider Black reparations plan, including $5 million per person. By CBS News
A controversial draft reparations proposal that includes a $5 million lump-sum payment for each eligible Black person could make San Francisco the first major U.S. city to fund reparations, though it faces steep financial headwinds and blistering criticism from conservatives.
Tuesday’s meeting of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors will include a presentation by San Francisco’s African American Reparations Advisory Committee, which released its draft report in December. The $5 million-per-person payment is among more than 100 recommendations ranging from offering grants to buy and maintain homes to exempting Black businesses from paying taxes. Read more
Man serving 400-year prison sentence exonerated after new probe finds wrongful conviction. By Kiara Alfonseca / ABC News
Sidney Holmes, 57, who has served more than 34 years of a 400-year prison sentence has been released after the state of Florida reinvestigated the case and determined he did not commit armed robbery.
“I can’t put it into words,” said Sidney Holmes, now 57, in an interview with ABC affiliate WPLG after he was exonerated and freed on Monday. “It’s overwhelming.” According to Broward County State Attorney Harold F. Pryor, a thorough reinvestigation of the 1988 armed robbery case that led to Holmes’ conviction “raised reasonable doubts about his guilt.” Read more
Sudden unexpected infant deaths surged among Black babies in 2020. By Deidre McPhillips / CNN
Each year, thousands of babies die suddenly and unexpectedly, and more than 3,300 young lives were lost in 2020. Rates remained stubbornly high in the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, even as overall infant mortality dropped to a record low.
A study published Monday in the journal Pediatrics found that the rate for Black babies spiked in particular, widening an already stark disparity. While the SUID rate for White babies dropped to the lowest it has been since 2017, the rate for Black babies in 2020 was the highest it has been since then. Rates that were already about two times higher for Black babies in 2017 grew to nearly three times higher in 2020, the study found. Read more
Ethics / Morality / Religion
Mormons know how the Church sanctioned racial exclusion. That policy has a paper trail. By Jana Riess / RNS
Paul Reeve’s new book argues the decision to ban Blacks from priesthood and the temple began with Brigham Young but wasn’t fully entrenched until the early 1900s under Joseph F. Smith. “Let’s Talk About Race and Priesthood” cover with Paul Reeve, left, and Darius Gray, right. Courtesy images
Paul Reeve: The book is structured around the way that I have come to understand the history, which came in three phases. First, we had open priesthood and temples, then segregated priesthood and temples, and then in June of 1978 a return to the universal roots of the faith. So the book’s structure is driven by the evidence. Even in 2023, there’s still an existing narrative that the racial restrictions were in place from the beginning. That they traced back through the foggy mists of time into the eternities, that God put them in place and human beings had nothing to do with it. Read more
Young people flourish where faith leaders see color. By Nabil Tueme / RNS
If you ask young people to leave race at home, you might as well tell them to stay home, too.
It’s a common phrase used by those who bemoan race as a focal point of social issues in the U.S. today. This doesn’t necessarily mean they’re racist — most of them are dissatisfied with the way minority racial groups are treated in America — but they are torn about whether an increased focus on race can truly make a positive difference. For those on the fence, a new study from Springtide Research Institute sheds light on the benefits of emphasizing race for America’s most diverse generation to date — Gen Z. The study, called “Navigating Injustice: A Closer Look at Race, Faith & Mental Health,” found that young Americans ages 13-25 want to talk about race and their racial identities. Read more
Five charts that explain the desperate turn to MAGA among conservative white Christians. By Robert P. Jones / RNS
White Christians’ attempt to halt their demographic slide has fostered two narratives of American life.
“The End of White Christian America” was published in July 2016, just as Donald Trump was securing the Republican nomination for president and the Make America Great Again worldview was supplanting policy considerations within the GOP. If we overlay the current ethno-religious composition of our two political parties onto the generational cohort chart, we see a stunning result. In terms of its racial and religious composition, the Democratic Party looks like 20-year-old America, while the Republican Party looks like 80-year-old America. Read more
For FBI legend J. Edgar Hoover, Christian nationalism was the gospel truth, argues new book. By Bob Smietana / RNS
In ‘The Gospel of J. Edgar Hoover,’ Stanford professor Lerone Martin details how the longtime FBI director shaped the belief in America as a Christian nation.
In his book, Martin documents how Hoover saw anyone who upset the status quo and pushed for goals like “love, justice, and the brotherhood of man” or “personal freedom” as part of an atheistic communist plot. He used the power of his office to investigate those who opposed him, including religious leaders like the National Council of Churches and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Read more
Historical / Cultural
Museums and Universities Pledge to Return Native American Remains. By Logan Jaffe, Mary Hudetz and Ash Ngu / ProPublica
Until this year, the University of Kentucky’s William S. Webb Museum of Anthropology had never returned any of the more than 4,500 Native American human remains in its collections. That is about to change.
The University of Kentucky is among more than a dozen U.S. schools and museums that have pledged to redouble their efforts to return the human remains and belongings — in some cases numbering in the thousands — that were taken from Native American gravesites. Institutions have also publicly acknowledged the harm inflicted on tribal communities by continuing to keep ancestral remains and cultural items, including after the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act called for them to be returned to tribes. Read more
Native American powwow returns to U-Md. to showcase culture, history. By Dana Hedgpeth / Wash Post
Hundreds of attendees came to the first powwow since the start of the pandemic at the school in College Park
Lynne Dyer, 58, awoke at sunrise Saturday, determined to showcase her Native American culture. A member of the Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape tribe in Delaware, she drove about 90 miles to attend a Native American powwow at the University of Maryland in College Park. “Anytime we can spread our knowledge of who we are and share our culture and history, it’s a great chance to raise awareness about Native Americans,” Dyer said while wearing her traditional regalia. “I want to be a part of that.” Read more
The Mississippi Delta is pushing civil rights tourism to help protect its past. By Debbie Elliott and Kirk Siegler / NPR
Johnny Thomas, mayor of tiny Glendora, Miss., runs a small civil rights museum dedicated to the Emmett Till story.
On a remote country highway running along the railroad tracks in Money, Miss., a historical marker stands on a corner where nature has overrun a building. It’s what’s left of Bryant’s Grocery, the store where Emmett Till, a 14-year old Black teenager visiting from Chicago, allegedly flirted with the white female shopkeeper in 1955, a violation of the Jim Crow segregation code. Preservationists say now is the time to protect these endangered landmarks, and get firsthand accounts of the history before memories fade and structures collapse. They’re hopeful new federal investment in the region can help make civil rights tourism an economic driver in the Delta and contribute to lifting communities out of deep-seated poverty. Read more
Awards shows, like the Oscars, know they lack diversity. So why are they so slow to change? By
Year after year, the conversation surrounding mainstream awards shows is the same: Where’s the diversity?
Even in a record-setting year like 2023 – which has so far seen Beyoncé become the most awarded artist in Grammy history and features the most Asian nominees in a single year at the Oscars – questions about these shows’ commitment to equity persist. Many have criticized this year’s Academy Awards – which took place Sunday – for failing to recognize Black female talent. The Grammys snubbed Beyoncé for its heralded album of the year award, instead awarding Harry Styles, in a move that stunned fans and critics alike. And at the BAFTAS, essentially the UK’s Oscars, every winner this year was White. Read more
Related: Everything Everywhere All at Once’ Is Big Winner at the Oscars. By Brooks Barnes / NYT
Sports
NFL Owners Are Making an Example of Lamar Jackson. By Jemele Hill / The Atlantic
Teams are always looking for a top-tier quarterback, but the Baltimore Ravens star is garnering surprisingly little interest.
Quarterback thirst is a perennial issue in the NFL—where most teams struggle to fill football’s marquee position—but that isn’t helping the former league MVP Lamar Jackson. Jackson’s ongoing contract dispute with the Baltimore Ravens has morphed into a good, old-fashioned power struggle that pits players’ interests against the hypocrisy and stubbornness of NFL owners, who are desperate to reset the market now that quarterbacks are successfully using their leverage to attain precedent-setting contracts. Historically, most NFL players’ contracts have been partly contingent upon their staying healthy and maintaining their skills, but quarterbacks in particular have been seeking and receiving fully guaranteed contracts. Read more
Related: Lamar Jackson not having an agent gives teams reason to stay away. By Max Molski / NBC Sports
James Blake’s success, influence in tennis continue after his standout career. By Andrew Jones / Andscape
Blake has become the only Black tournament director at the ATP or WTA level
When you are one of the best, most exciting tennis players in the world for a generation, finding the energy to enjoy a post-playing career can be a challenge. But for James Blake, the skills he showcased on the tennis court for more than a decade have been consolidated into a period as enthralling as the superbly timed inside-out forehands and marvelous mobility he showed as a professional. The former world No. 4 has transformed into a fresh, knowledgeable and eager commentator for ESPN’s Grand Slam coverage of the Australian Open, Wimbledon and the US Open. Blake has also been captivated by the rapid growth of pickleball to become one of the sport’s headline proprietors, co-owning The Lions in Milwaukee with former Milwaukee Bucks owner Marc Lasry. Read more
Africa’s basketball stars are making their mark on the NBA. By Daniel Renjifo / CNN
At the start of the 2022-2023 season, NBA rosters included 16 players born in Africa, while 35 of the league’s 120 international players had at least one African parent. Shown is Joel Embiid of the Philadelphia 76ers who drives past Bam Adebayo of the Miami Heat at Wells Fargo Center on February 27, 2023, in Philadelphia.
When the Toronto Raptors faced the Philadelphia 76ers last October, it was the first time an NBA court had been shared by three players from Cameroon: Joel Embiid, Pascal Siakam and Christian Koloko, who have all taken part in the Basketball Without Borders camp. Raptors president Masai Ujiri was born in Nigeria and in 2010 became the first African general manager in US professional sports when he joined the Denver Nuggets. He joined the Raptors in 2013 and won the NBA championship with them in 2019. The team’s current roster features eight Africans – more than any team in the NBA. Read more
Building an all-Black World Baseball Classic team. By Clinton Yates / Andscape
What if the United States fielded a team of Black Americans? Here’s who would make the cut. Shown are New York Yankees players Aaron Judge (left) and Giancarlo Stanton (right) who look to the stands before throwing out baseballs during a spring training workout Feb. 20 in Tampa, Florida. David J. Phillip/AP Photo
Let’s give this thought experiment a spin. For what it’s worth, this was first suggested to me way back in 2018 by Jerry Lorenzo, the fashion designer, former agent of Matt Kemp. For the purposes of this exercise, let’s just say everyone is available, reasonably healthy and in their 2023 careers. We’re having fun with this. It’s not some grand declaration of anything other than a good time ahead of what promises to be an exciting tournament. It’s pitcher-heavy because that’s how most rosters are built for this, but with a decent amount of variety. Let’s build a squad. Read more
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