Featured
This Is How the Republican Party Got Southernized. By Jamelle Bouie / NYT
In 1969 a young aide in the Nixon White House, 28-year-old Kevin Phillips, published “The Emerging Republican Majority.” Phillips had worked as a strategist on Richard Nixon’s 1968 campaign, the experience of which supplied much of the material for his book.
These voters were repulsed, Phillips wrote, by the Democratic Party’s “ambitious social programming and inability to handle the urban and Negro revolutions.” Together, Phillips’s death and Scalise’s near ascension to the speakership form an interesting synchronicity. On one hand, we have the intellectual father of the Southern strategy, who died estranged from the political party he helped shape. On the other, we have the rise, however brief, of a lawmaker who represents the total success of that strategy. Read more
Related: The GOP’s ‘southern strategy’ mastermind just died. Here’s his legacy. By Greg Sargent / Wash Post
Related: Republican Jeff Landry wins the Louisiana governor race, reclaims office for GOP. By AP and NPR
Political / Social
Now Is the Moment for Biden’s Age to Be an Asset. By Lydia Polgreen / NYT
President Biden’s experience certainly should have prepared him for this moment of crisis in Israel and Palestine.
This track record as a leader over an extraordinary and volatile stretch of human history, coupled with his unstinting support for the Jewish state, would make Biden the ideal messenger, should he choose to be, for the counsel Israel needs in the aftermath of Hamas’s brutal and lawless assault: A full-scale ground invasion of Gaza would almost certainly be a colossal mistake and a trap. Read more
Related: Israel Is Walking Into a Trap. By Hussein Ibish / The Atlantic
Tanya Chutkan, an Unflinching Judge in the Trump Jan. 6 Trial. By Robert Draper / NYT
Judge Chutkan, who grew up in a prominent Jamaican family and has extensive trial experience, has been thrust into the limelight. She shows no sign of being intimidated by it.
On the day Judge Tanya S. Chutkan was randomly selected to preside over former President Donald J. Trump’s trial on charges of conspiring to overturn the 2020 election, she called a childhood friend in Jamaica, Christine Stiebel. Judge Chutkan, who is not especially religious, said to her friend, as Ms. Stiebel recalled it: “Chris, please pray for me. I’ve got the case.” Read more
“Deprogramming” the Trump cult: Is it too late to “humanize those who worship at the altar of MAGA”? By Chauncey Devega / Salon
Hillary Clinton says MAGA voters need to be saved from themselves. Experts on exactly what that might take
In an attempt to better understand Hillary Clinton’s warnings about the Trump MAGA cult, her recent suggestions about deprogramming its members, and what potentially comes next, I asked a range of experts for their insights and reactions: Read more
RFK Jr., West independent bids leave both parties fretting about 2024. By Hanna Trudo / The Hill
Democrats and Republicans alike are watching with concern amid signs that voters are gravitating toward independent candidates as frustration with the two-party system reaches a boil.
The moves reflect the extent to which certain politicians are aiming to harness voter antipathy toward the Democratic and Republican parties, a development that poses major challenges for next year’s likely White House nominees, President Biden and former President Trump. Read more
Anti-affirmative action activist targets 3 more law firms’ diversity fellowships. By Nate Raymond / Reuters
Anti-affirmative action activist Edward Blum speaks to reporters at the “Rally for the American Dream-Equal Education Rights for All,” ahead of the start of the trial in a lawsuit accusing Harvard University of discriminating against Asian-American applicants, in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S., October 14, 2018.
An anti-affirmative action group whose lawsuits pushed two major law firms to recently alter fellowships they offered law students to help bolster diversity in their ranks on Thursday said it was considering suing three more unless they did the same. Read more
Related: The Worst DEI Policy in Higher Education. By Conor Friedersdorf / The Atlantic
A Trump-Appointed Federal Judge Just Ruled a Texas County Violated the Voting Rights Act. By Julia Lurie / Mother Jones
On Friday, a Trump-appointed federal judge struck down an electoral map in Galveston, Texas, saying it violates the Voting Rights Act and amounts to “egregious” discrimination against Black and Latino voters.
“This is not a typical redistricting case,” wrote Judge Jeffrey Brown in a 157-page ruling. “What happened here was stark and jarring…the enacted plan denies Black and Latino voters an equal opportunity to participate in the political process and to elect a candidate of their choice.” Read more
Colorado officer who confronted Elijah McClain found guilty of criminally negligent homicide. By , and
A Colorado jury Thursday convicted one of two officers charged in the 2019 death of Elijah McClain, a Black pedestrian who was put in a chokehold and injected with a powerful sedative, and it acquitted the other officer.
The jury convicted Aurora Police Officer Randy Roedema of criminally negligent homicide and third-degree assault. Former Aurora officer Jason Rosenblatt was acquitted. Both had been charged with reckless manslaughter, as well as the lesser charges of criminally negligent homicide and assault. Read more
Historically Black colleges weigh solutions as threats to campus security multiply. By David Steele / Andscape
Separate shootings last week at Morgan State and Bowie State, two historically Black colleges in Maryland only 35 miles apart, have raised a fresh round of concerns in the HBCU community, which has been grappling in recent years with an increasing number of security risks.
Incidents of gun violence, coupled with racist threats and local risks occurring daily, have put HBCUs on alert individually and collectively as students, faculty, staff, administrators and families are forced to figure out how to fit safety in with every other educational goal. Read more
Do Early R.S.V. Vaccine Trials Have a Henrietta Lacks Story? By Charles M. Blow / NYT
Respiratory syncytial virus, or R.S.V., is a nasty bug. It’s the leading cause of hospitalizations among American infants and results in thousands of deaths among the elderly each year.
The new vaccines have been thoroughly tested in accordance with today’s clinical trial standards. But this breakthrough has a history, one tangled up in questions of medical ethics and racial exploitation. A fascinating report published this week in Undark, a nonprofit digital magazine affiliated with M.I.T. (I’m a member of the magazine’s advisory board), found that in the 1960s, some of the first and youngest subjects to receive experimental shots, in a clinical trial of early attempts to develop R.S.V. vaccines, were Black and poor children, some in foster care. Read more
California creates nation’s first ‘Ebony Alert’ to find missing Black children. By Jonathan Franklin / NPR
Tens of thousands of Black youth and women go missing across the U.S. each year. But their cases hardly ever grab national headlines, let alone receive the attention and resources dedicated to finding them.
The state of California is taking steps to address that, creating a new statewide alert system to help locate and bring attention of missing Black children and young Black women — being the first in the nation to do so. Read more
Van Jones Says He Was Going To Be Put ‘In An Early Grave’ After Receiving $100M From Jeff Bezos. By Samantha Dorisca / Afrotech
With great power comes great responsibility. CNN contributor Van Jones felt the weight of this statement after receiving $100 million from Amazon Founder Jeff Bezos.
Ethics / Morality / Religion
In new book, James Baldwin emerges as a prophet for our time. By Yonat Shimron / RNS
Greg Garrett, a professor at Baylor University, wants to introduce a new generation of readers to the writer of short stories, novels and plays who believed America can do better.
Greg Garrett, who is white, teaches Baldwin’s work in his literature, creative writing, film and theology classes. Now he has written a book, “The Gospel According to James Baldwin: What America’s Great Prophet Can Teach Us About Life, Love, and Identity.” Read more
Florida faith leader: Black history toolkit gains interest outside the state. By Adelle M. Banks / RNS
What the Rev. Rhonda Thomas started as a state-focused response has attracted interest in a far wider stretch of the country than she ever imagined.
When the Rev. Rhonda Thomas decided to create a toolkit to help teach Black history outside the public school system — after Florida legislators approved revisions to its required instruction — she expected Black churches like her own would be the ones to use it. Thomas, the executive director of Faith in Florida, was correct but not entirely so: Some Florida congregations that aren’t predominantly Black are using her organization’s list of books, videos and documentaries, along with faith leaders from more than 20 other states. Read more
Esau McCaulley: Are We There Yet? By Heather Thompson Day / Christianity Today Podcast
In ‘How Far to the Promised Land?’ theologian Esau McCaulley traces his family’s epic journey of faith, humanity, and redemption.
This week, Heather sits down with Viral Jesus Hall of Famer Esau McCaulley to discuss his powerful new book, How Far to The Promised Land? Esau explains why it is important to reexamine the idea of Black excellence, and he encourages us to remember that we are a part of a story that started long before us and will continue long after. Read more and listen here
SCOTUS Is Helping The Christian Right Undermine The Force Of Anti-Discrimination Law. By Pauline Jones and Andrew Murphy / TPM
It is increasingly clear from the nation’s highest court that religious objections can invalidate anti-discrimination protections and provide popular intolerance with an end run around the law.
When the Supreme Court ruled in 303 Creative v. Elenis in 2023 that a businessperson could not be compelled to create art that violates their religious beliefs – specifically, a wedding website for a same-sex ceremony – supporters of the decision celebrated it as a victory for freedom of religion and expression. But contrary to these claims, the Supreme Court’s decision does not protect the freedoms of all Americans. Rather, it represents the culmination of a decadelong strategy by conservative Christians – known sometimes as the Christian right – to use the courts to limit the freedoms of groups of Americans of whom they disapprove. Read more
Historical / Cultural
When White Leaders Said the Quiet Part Out Loud. Famous quotes advocating racism. By William Spivey / The Good Men Project
I was thinking of Sen. Tim Scott today and his claim that “America is not a racist country.” I thought of some of America’s leaders who repeatedly proved why Tim Scott was wrong. Here are some quotes from Presidents, Senators, Governors, and a Supreme Court Chief Justice. Please read the quote and see if you can guess who the author is before revealed at the end of the quote. Read more
How Jesmyn Ward Is Reimagining Southern Literature. By Imani Perry / NYT
The novelist is competing with giants like William Faulkner, while mapping territory all her own.
Ward is a MacArthur Fellow and a two-time winner of the National Book Award. According to the norms of literary culture, writers of her stature are not supposed to live in places like DeLisle; they tend to make their homes in publishing’s metropolitan centers. Ward’s new novel, “Let Us Descend,” which will be published later this month, offers a sensorially and emotionally thick account of an enslaved existence in the antebellum South. Read more
‘The Burial’ Review: A Mississippi Courtroom Drama. By Glenn Kenny / NYT
Jamie Foxx and Tommy Lee Jones deliver bravura performances in this Maggie Betts film about a funeral-home proprietor in financial trouble.
Directed by Maggie Betts from a script she wrote with Doug Wright, “The Burial” develops into a lively courtroom drama with wide-ranging pertinence. Of course its two lead actors give the bravura performances you’d expect from them, but they don’t eat the scenery — they take the material seriously and invest in it with welcome nuance. Read more
How Racism Doomed Kim Novak and Sammy Davis Jr.’s Relationship in 1950s: ‘I Was Told Not to See Him.’ By Eric Andersson / People
The new book ‘Hitchcock’s Blondes’ reveals details about the two Hollywood stars’ brief romance
“I reached a point with the indignities, the injustices, the nastiness, the racial abuses . . . where I wanted to get the whitest, the most famous chick in the world and just show ’em,” Leamer quotes Davis as telling his friend and biographer, Burt Boyar. Davis, however, actually started to fall for Novak. Read more
Hollywood’s minority writers fear diversity to fall further down the agenda after strike. By Danielle Broadway / Reuters
After the Writers Guild of America approved a new three-year contract with major studios, Hollywood writers from underrepresented groups, many nervous about their job security in the rapidly changing industry, aim to refocus studios’ attention on increasing diversity.
The WGA represents 11,500 film and television writers, but many minority members – people of color, LGBTQ+ individuals, disabled people and women – hoped the negotiations would have made diversifying the business a priority. The Guild’s demands did not directly address diversity. But WGA West board member and negotiating committee member Angelina Burnett said the contract talks were meant to protect everyone’s economic stability. The new contract was approved on Monday. Read more
Rudolph Isley, Founding Member Of Isley Brothers, Dies At 84. By AP and HuffPost
The music legend helped perform such raw rhythm and blues classics as “Shout” and “Twist and Shout” and the funky hits “That Lady” and “It’s Your Thing.”
A Cincinnati native, Rudolph Isley began singing in church with brothers Ronald and O’Kelly (another sibling, Vernon, died at age 13) and was still in his teens when they broke through in the late 1950s with “Shout,” a secularized gospel rave that was later immortalized during the toga party scene in “Animal House.” The Isleys scored again in the early 1960s with the equally spirited “Twist and Shout,” which the Beatles liked so much they used it as the closing song on their debut album and opened with it for their famed 1965 concert at Shea Stadium. Read more
Black Music Sunday: Celebrating Fela Anikulapo-Kuti and the birth of Afrobeat. By Denise Oliver Velez / Daily Kos
On Oct. 15, 1938, Fela Kuti (full birth name Olufela Olusegun Oludotun Ransome-Kuti), later to be known as Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, was born in Abeokuta, Nigeria. Very few musicians can be pointed to as having “birthed” a particular music genre; Fela was one of them. He is almost universally credited with having created what is known globally as “Afrobeat.” Though Fela would join the ancestors on Aug. 2, 1997, at the age of 58, his impact on music and politics would live on. Read more and listen here
Sports
You just feel hopeless’: Twenty years after St. Joe’s historic hoops run, an absence haunts the team. By Dana O’Neil / The Athletic
Twenty years ago, Martelli and his Saint Joseph’s Hawks captivated college basketball, the team from a tiny Catholic school rolling to a 27-0 start and eventually into the 2004 Elite Eight. Two players from that team were drafted in the first round, a feat nearly as improbable as the Hawks’ run.
One, Jameer Nelson, played 14 years in the NBA and is now the assistant general manager with the Philadelphia 76ers G League team, the Delaware Blue Coats. The other, Delonte West, has been, the last anyone’s heard, living outside of a 7-11 in Alexandria, Va. This story addresses mental health and addiction and may be difficult to read or emotionally upsetting. Read more
Reviving the spirit of FAMU’s greatest athlete, Althea Gibson. By Eddie Jackson / Tallahassee Democrat.
Tennis great Althea Gibson graduated from Florida A&M University in spring 1953, she made history as the first black Wimbledon champion.
On August 28, 1950, when Gibson became the first Black American to break the color barrier at the West Side tennis club at Forest Hills, Queens, New York, she was in her freshman year at FAMC. And although she won her first game and was leading in the second, a thunderstorm postponed the event to the next day where she eventually lost. But her performance signified an end as well as a beginning of a new tennis world to come. Read more
Andscape roundtable: Why Colorado Buffaloes coach Deion Sanders has taken over college football. By Andscape Staff
Andscape senior editor Erik Horne, writer-at-large William Rhoden and senior columnist Clinton Yates and Jean-Jacques Taylor, president of JJT Media Group and author of Coach Prime: Deion Sanders and the Making of Men, sat down in Boulder, Colorado, to discuss the phenomenon of Colorado Buffaloes coach Deion Sanders. In the video, the group discusses: Read more and listen here
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