Featured
What the Black Struggle Tells Us About the Israel-Hamas War. By Zak Cheney-Rice / New York Magazine
In 1955, Mamie Till-Mobley changed American politics by using grief as a catalyst for human rights. By making Black grief a spectacle that could not be ignored, she hoped that society might feel moved to start treating Black people as full human beings.
Where grief is abused so routinely by those in power, the response that’s most consistent with the highest ideals of the Black freedom struggle, with the Black legacy that loves justice and sides with oppressed people, is to wrest its meaning from the exploiters and channel it toward a humane end to the occupation and to apartheid. Read more
Related: Israel Is About to Make a Terrible Mistake. By Thomas L. Freidman / NYT
Related: An Evolving Moral High Ground in the Israel-Gaza War. By Charles M. Blow / NYT
Political / Social
A crisis of moral clarity: There’s no contest between Trump and Biden — why are Americans confused? By Chauncey Devega / Salon
In the Age of Trump, Republicans now believe that presidential moral leadership is increasingly unimportant
In response to Israel’s war against Hamas, President Joe Biden and the now criminally indicted leading Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump have demonstrated very different models of leadership. The stark differences between the two leaders are another example of how America’s democracy crisis is not “just” a political problem: It is a moral and cultural sickness that is far greater than any one political leader, political party, or political movement. Read more
Related: Trump and today’s repulsive politics echo George Wallace in 1968. By George F. Will / Wash Post
The warning signs for Democrats about Black voters in 2024. By Stephen Shepard / Politico
Democrats are about to find out how worried they need to be about Black voter support.
After a lot of hand-wringing in recent years, elections next month in Mississippi and Virginia — two Southern states with large Black populations — will offer one final, robust read going into 2024 on the extent of the slippage among Democrats’ most reliable bloc of voters. The warning signs have been flashing. President Joe Biden’s approval rating with Black voters has dropped disproportionately compared with white voters, polls show, driving down his overall numbers. Last week’s election of a Republican governor in Louisiana, the first in eight years, suggested diminished voter enthusiasm in the areas with the largest Black populations. Read more
Even Tim Scott’s supporters are ‘disappointed’ in his campaign. By Natalie Allison and Burgess Everett / Politico
Scott’s polling is down, his super PAC is in retreat and his hometown newspaper is cheering on Nikki Haley instead.
After months of staying out of the conversation, the South Carolina senator is now sputtering below 2 percent in national polls. On Saturday, Scott’s hometown newspaper called for the Republican field to coalesce not around Scott, but rival South Carolinian Nikki Haley, to take on Donald Trump directly. Even some prominent Scott fans are beginning to acknowledge Scott’s presidential campaign has been a disappointment, and that his path forward appears dim. Read more
Sen. Laphonza Butler says she won’t run in 2024 for California Senate seat. By and
Laphonza Butler, a Democrat who was appointed this month to fill the seat of Dianne Feinstein of California, said Thursday that she won’t seek a full Senate term next year.
Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom appointed Butler, the first openly LGBTQ person to represent California in the Senate, after Feinstein’s death last month at age 90. She was sworn in Oct. 3. “Knowing you can win a campaign doesn’t always mean you should run a campaign,” Butler said in a statement. Read more
Travis King, Army private who fled to North Korea, charged with desertion. By Jennifer Hansler / CNN
Travis King, the US Army private who fled to North Korea in July, has been charged by the Army with desertion, among other crimes, according to a charging document seen by CNN Thursday.
King, who was released from North Korean custody and returned to the United States last month, was charged with a series of other alleged offenses, including possession of child pornography, assaulting fellow soldiers, and disobeying a superior officer, according to the document. He was charged with eight counts total. Read more
Ibram X. Kendi’s Anti-Racism. Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor / The New Yorker
The historian espoused grand ambitions to dismantle American racism, but the crisis at his research center suggests that he always had a more limited view of change.
Kendi told me that he saw the center as part of the Black Studies tradition: as “a place where we, through our work, are contributing to structural change.” But though Kendi evokes the aspirations of some of his staff to be involved in movement work, the Center for Antiracist Research was not a movement organization. In this light, Kendi’s center is another example of missed opportunity from the protest movement of 2020. It’s also more evidence that the stalled progress from that movement may be a consequence of trying to weave a strategy for radical social transformation through nonprofit organizations. Read more
The Attorney With a Private Jet Winning Lawsuits Against Giants: Willie E. Gary Fame and Net Worth. By Sagarika C / MSN
Recently showcased in the movie “The Burial” and earning him the title of ‘Giant Killer’ Willie E. Gary’s story of rags-to-riches has seen him earn a $50 million net worth, to live the American dream.
Through sheer determination and unwavering perseverance, he transcended his circumstances to become one of the most successful and influential lawyers in the country. The legal eagle with his own private jet has been known for winning against some of the biggest corporations in America, including Walt Disney. Born in a family of sharecroppers, Gary defied all odds to become not just successful, but also a highly visible lawyer in the United States, and has also evolved into a motivational speaker. Read more
One Black Family’s Sobering Fight to Keep Their Land. By Nick Schager / Yahoo
With Silver Dollar Road (Oct. 20, Prime Video), Oscar-nominated I Am Not Your Negro director Raoul Peck adapts Lizzie Presser’s ProPublica article, “Their Family Bought Land One Generation After Slavery. The Reels Brothers Spent Eight Years in Jail for Refusing to Leave It” (published in collaboration with The New Yorker).
Nonetheless, journalistic rigor is not this documentary’s strong suit. The story of a North Carolina clan struggling to retain their familial land in the face of intense developer pressure, it paints a warm portrait of relatives sticking together through thick and thin. When it comes to its central legal struggle, though, it leaves out so many crucial details that it cuts itself off at the knees. Read more
Breast cancer is deadlier for Black women. A study of mammograms could help close the gap. By Ap and Andscape
Are 3D mammograms better than standard 2D imaging for catching advanced cancers?
A clinical trial is recruiting thousands of volunteers — including a large number of Black women who face disparities in breast cancer death rates — to try to find out. People like Carole Stovall, a psychologist in Washington, have signed up for the study to help answer the question. “We all need a mammogram anyway, so why not do it with a study that allows the scientists to understand more and move closer to finding better treatments and ways of maybe even preventing it?” Stovall said. Read more
Related: New study says AI chatbots perpetuate racism in health care. By AP and Andscape
HBCUs are behind the effort to study the genetic variants that affect Black people. By Ap and NBC News
Organizers said there’s a clear need for the project, pointing to research showing that less than 2% of genetic information being studied today comes from people of African ancestry.
Scientists are setting out to collect genetic material from 500,000 people of African ancestry to create what they believe will be the world’s largest database of genomic information from the population. The hope is to build a new “reference genome” — a template to compare to full sets of DNA from individuals — and better understand genetic variants that affect Black people. It could eventually translate into new medicines and diagnostic tests — and help reduce health disparities. The initiative was launched Wednesday by Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee, as well as Regeneron Genetics Center, AstraZeneca, Novo Nordisk and Roche. Read more
Ethics / Morality / Religion
The Black Madonna makes her mark in the least religious state in the US. By Damian Costello / NCR
On the right is “Black Freedom, Black Madonna & the Black Child of Hope,” original digital art by Raphaella Brice, and on the left is the Juneteenth mural of the piece on the south-facing exterior wall of the Fletcher Free Library in Burlington, Vermont. (Courtesy of Raphaella Brice)
On the side of the public library in the biggest city in the least religious state in the U.S., the Virgin Mary holds the infant Christ. “Black Freedom, Black Madonna & the Black Child of Hope,” a 16-by-12-foot mural on the south-facing exterior wall of the Fletcher Free Library in Burlington, Vermont, is the creation of Raphaella Brice, a 26-year-old Haitian American artist who is drawing deep from the font of her cultural identity and faith. In the process, she’s injecting new spiritual energy into a state often imagined to be strictly secular. Read more
Christianity And Human Dignity. By Henry Karlson / Patheos
Throughout his ministry, Jesus promoted human dignity. Jesus went to those who were denied it by society.
This is one of the reasons why religious and secular authorities did not like him: they saw his actions as undermining their power, a power which in part, centered upon a construction of society which supported and promoted a few and denigrated the rest. Instead of disassociating with those treated, if not actually deemed, as subhuman because of what they did (such as prostitutes and tax collectors), or because of their social status (such as the Samaritans and the poor), Jesus joined himself in solidarity with them. He proclaimed their inherent human dignity, but showing that God’s love was for them as much as it was for those whom society idolized. Read more
Antisemitic Violence and Its Shameful Defense. By Mike Cosper / CT
Christians must care for both Israeli and Palestinian victims of war—and that means actively rejecting hatred of the Jewish people. A protester holds up a sign at the All Out for Palestine rally in Times Square.
One day after Hamas’s Simchat Torah massacres in Israel, crowds gathered at a rally in Times Square promoted by the Democratic Socialists of America. “Our resistance stormed illegal settlements,” shouted one speaker, “and paraglided across colonial borders.” The crowd responded with rousing cheers. To be horrified by the slaughter of Israeli innocents doesn’t require denying the suffering of the Palestinian people. And caring for Palestinian innocents doesn’t require being cold or numb to the horrors of antisemitism and Hamas. Read more
Historical / Cultural
Retelling U.S. History With Native Americans at the Center. By Alan Taylor / NYT
A new account by the Yale historian Ned Blackhawk argues that Native peoples shaped the development of American democracy while being dispossessed of their land.
“How can a nation founded on the homelands of dispossessed Indigenous peoples be the world’s most exemplary democracy?” This is the provocative question with which Ned Blackhawk opens his important new book, “The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History.” A historian at Yale and a member of the Te-Moak Tribe of Western Shoshone, Blackhawk rejects the myth that Native Americans fell quick and easy victims to European invaders. Instead, he asserts that “American Indians were central to every century of U.S. historical development.” Read more
Related: Seeds of Native Knowledge Grow in North Carolina. By Jacey Fortin / NYT
Exhibit of Black dolls offers lesson in legacy of slavery, racism. By Victor Barroco , Allie Weintraub, and Ashley Ennis / ABC News
An upstate New York museum is featuring homemade dolls depicting African American life as an homage to their makers and as a jumping off point into the history of oppression faced by the Black community.
“These dolls were made between the 1850s and the 1940s,” Allison Robinson, associate curator of exhibitions for the New-York Historical Society, told ABC News. “It allows you to relate to people who really went through overt oppression and racism within their lifetime, from the height of American slavery to the early years of the American Civil Rights Movement. And how these dolls proved to be a way to counter that, and resist that.” Read more
The Visual Power of Black Rest. By Emily Lordi / The New Yorker
Black people are generally pictured as doing anything but relaxing—as being attacked, or agitating, or performing. The Black Rest Project aims to widen the lens. “Sin Don’t Live Here,” 2017. Photograph by Daveed Baptiste
The exhibition, on view at 20 Cooper Square through October 22nd, features Black people in various states of repose (as well as unpopulated interiors and landscapes), from New York to Pujehun, Sierra Leone. The show is part of a broader initiative called the Black Rest Project, through which partner organizations including the Maroon Arts Group, in Columbus, Ohio, and Commissioner, in Miami, will explore the complexities of rest for Black people, and challenge the binary assumption that one can either slow down or make a living, can either struggle or sleep (a myth encoded in the activist mandate to “stay woke”). Read more
Watch “ABC Tried to Bury This James Baldwin Interview. Four Decades Later, It’s Blisteringly Relevant.” on YouTube.
Buried by ABC at the time, the segment has resurfaced over four decades later, revealing a unique glimpse into Baldwin’s private life—as well as his resounding criticism about white fragility, as blisteringly relevant today as it was in 1979. Watch here
How Max Roach fused jazz and hip hop. By American Masters and PBS
Max Roach was excited by the premise and promise of rap when it first hit the music scene. Roach was introduced to the burgeoning genre by his godson and hip hop pioneer Fab 5 Freddy, and would later collaborate with him.
“The fact that he saw that vision before it became cool in the early nineties, for you to mix your hip hop and your jazz together, shows how ahead of the curve he was,” said Questlove. Watch here
Colman Domingo Is Civil Rights Activist Bayard Rustin in Netflix’s Powerful Rustin Trailer. By Tommy McArdle / People
Colman Domingo shines light on activist Bayard Rustin’s importance in the U.S. civil rights movement in the new biopic, in theaters Nov. 3 and streaming Nov. 17
Colman Domingo is bringing attention to a major figure in the American civil rights movement in his latest movie. On Thursday, Netflix released the new trailer for Rustin, a biopic starring Euphoria actor Domingo, 53, as Bayard Rustin, the man who worked as one of the main organizers for the August 1963 March on Washington. Read more
Sports
Rio Ferdinand: Soccer needs to ‘quickly’ address lack of diversity in leadership roles, says Manchester United great. By Zayn Nabbi / CNN
Manchester United and England great Rio Ferdinand said soccer’s leadership structures need to “quickly” address issues around diversity and representation as “decisions are being made by people that don’t have a complete understanding or empathy with the people that are actually on the football pitch.”
According to a 2023 report by the Black Footballers’ Partnership, 4.4% of management-related positions in English soccer’s four professional leagues – Premier League, Championship, League One and League Two – were held by Black employees, rising from 3.7% in 2022, a real term increase of eight jobs. Read more
Inside the complicated rivalry of Tua Tagovailoa and Jalen Hurts. By Tim McManus and Marcel Louis-Jacques / ESPN
“Guys recognized [Hurts is] a gamer and a great quarterback, but I think guys had a feeling that Tua could throw the ball better,” former walk-on wide receiver Mac Hereford said. “They wanted the guy who was going to throw more.
“There’s a picture of them together with their arms around each other: It was Mac Jones, Tua and Jalen. They weren’t acting,” Hereford said. “They were around each other and they were happy. It didn’t matter who did this or who did that. You got that vibe that they were boys, and not just football teammates.” Now they’re adversaries — no longer competing for the same position, just for the same goal. “I’ve got a lot of respect for him, for who he is as a person, who he is as a player,” Tagovailoa said, “and I wish him the best of luck as we play him.” Read more
Four-time NBA champion Andre Iguodala retires after 19 seasons. By Marc J. Spears / ESPN
Andre Iguodala, a four-time NBA champion with the Golden State Warriors, has announced his retirement nearly two decades after entering the league.
The 2015 NBA Finals MVP told Andscape on Friday morning that he is retiring from the NBA. In 19 seasons, Iguodala averaged 11.3 points, 4.9 rebounds and 4.2 assists in 1,231 games. The 2012 All-Star said he turned down interest from the Warriors and several other teams before deciding to retire. Read more
Swim safety advocates aim to overcome historic racial inequities. By Isabella Jibilian / PBS
Learning how to swim is a rite of passage for many, but a surprising number of American children can’t swim. Part of that comes down to access and restrictions rooted in racism that have kept generations of swimmers out of pools. Isabella Jibilian of Rhode Island PBS reports. Watch here
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