Featured
The Black Tax: why have African Americans been cheated by the system for so long? By Veronica Esposito / The Guardian
In a new book, historian Andrew W Kahrl looks at the many systemic ways that prejudicial and harmful practices have affected financial stability.
Property value assessment may not sound like the most thrilling of topics, but according to historian Andrew W Kahrl’s new book The Black Tax, it represents a hugely important piece of structural inequality in the US, one that implicates a wide range of topics, including the process of gentrification, the quality of public schools and other amenities, and maintenance of local infrastructure.
Kahrl argues that for decades now the assessment process for homes has been used prejudicially against African Americans, leading them to pay more than their fair share in property tax despite receiving fewer benefits than those living in white-dominated areas. These unequal taxes have had all sorts of downline repercussions, making them a “missing piece” of the puzzle when it comes to inequality in the US. Read more
What to Know About State Laws That Limit or Ban D.E.I. Efforts at Colleges. By Anna Betts / NYT
Diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives have become a target of conservatives across the nation, with several states passing laws against them. Image CNS
Diversity programs at colleges have come to play a powerful — and increasingly controversial — role in academic and student life. Supporters of the initiatives have said they are a good way to foster inclusion, recruit and retain people of color, and repair decades of exclusionary policies. They also argue that the efforts help students from all backgrounds succeed. Many college officials feel they need D.E.I. offices for this. Read more
Related: Is Inclusion Possible on Campuses Today? By Katherine Mangan / Chronicle of Higher Ed
Related: UT Austin students protest school’s DEI layoffs amid state ban. By Char Adams / NBC News
Political / Social
Biden to speak at Morehouse College commencement, sparking faculty concerns. By , and
The decision has raised some objections from faculty members, and administrators are set to host a forum about it Thursday.
Morehouse College is set to announce that President Joe Biden will deliver its commencement address on May 19, but some faculty members have raised concerns about the decision, according to two people familiar with the matter and an email to faculty members reviewed by NBC News. Read more
Related: Biden’s problem with younger voters isn’t only about Gaza. By Phillip Bump / Wash Post
What Donald Trump Fears Most. By David Axelrod / The Atlantic
A potential reckoning that he has spent a lifetime eluding could be coming.
Donald Trump’s biographers all seem to agree that he didn’t get a lot of love from his father. But what Fred Trump did impart to his son was an indelible lesson: There are two kinds of people in the world—killers and losers—and like his father, Donald had to be a killer. In Fred Trump’s dark vision, all of life was a jungle in which the strong survive and prosper and the weak fall away. The killers take what they want, however they need to take it. Rules? Norms? Laws? Institutions? They’re for suckers. The only unpardonable sin in Trumpworld is the failure to act in your own self-interest. Read more
Related: The Supreme Court Should Rule Swiftly on Trump’s Immunity Claim. By Liz Cheney / NYT
Hakeem Jeffries quietly wrests control from Mike Johnson. By Andrew Solender /Axios
Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) found himself in an unusual position for a minority leader last week: It was he, not the House speaker, who had the ultimate power to decide whether legislation came to the floor.
Why it matters: Democrats got everything they wanted – a $95 billion foreign aid bill, the credit for passing it, and adversaries more divided than ever. In their telling, that total victory wasn’t a sure thing. Read more
Summer Lee beats primary challenger after facing pressure over Israel-Gaza. By Colby Itkowitz and Dylan Wells / Wash Post
Rep. Summer Lee, a far-left Democrat who has been critical of Israel’s military actions in Gaza, prevailed in Tuesday’s Pennsylvania primary election, which epitomized larger intraparty tensions over the Middle East and served as a test of Democratic voters’ attitudes about the war.
The race in Pennsylvania’s 12th District was considered a first test for the “Squad” of left-wing, progressive Democrats in Congress, some of whom face primaries this summer. But Lee’s race failed to attract the heavy outside spending from pro-Israel groups that is expected in future Democratic primaries, most notably against Rep. Jamaal Bowman in New York and Rep. Cori Bush in Missouri. Read more
The hard truth about Rainbow PUSH and why the Rev. Frederick Haynes III quit after 3 months. By Michael Eric Dyson / Chicago Sun Times
PUSH is in a financial shambles, and Haynes was in place to succeed a man, Jesse Jackson, whom many don’t want succeeded. The Rev. Frederick D. Haynes III (left) greets the Rev. Jesse Jackson before speaking in Dallas on Feb. 1. Haynes recently stepped down after three months as Jackson’s successor at the helm of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition. L.M. Otero/AP Photos
When the Rev. Dr. Frederick Douglass Haynes III announced his sudden resignation as head of the Jackson-conceived Rainbow PUSH Coalition after only three months at the helm, Jackson acolytes and defenders dismissed Haynes’ skills and dedication and subtly implied he wasn’t up to the job. The issue is not that Haynes isn’t an eagle; the problem is, too many around Jackson expected Haynes to be a parrot. Read more
Do implicit bias trainings on race improve health care? Not yet – but incorporating the latest science can help hospitals treat all patients equitably. By Nao Hagiwara and Tiffany Green / The Conversation
There is increasing evidence that implicit bias – non-conscious attitudes toward specific groups – is a source of racial inequities in certain aspects of health care, and lawmakers are taking note.
Since the tragic murder of George Floyd in May 2020, wherein a Black man was killed by police, several U.S. federal and state legislators have introduced proposals declaring racism as a public health crisis. In March 2024, four U.S. senators led a resolution calling out the “implicit racial and ethnic biases within the health care system, which have an explicit impact on the quality of care experienced by members of racial and ethnic minority groups.” Read more
World News
Kenyan Pastors Are Praying for Haiti. They’re Also Shaping the Police Mission to Save It. By Andy Olsen / CT
President William Ruto commissioned church leaders to meet with Haitian law enforcement, military representatives, and a gang leader to discuss Kenya’s security mission.
In a sky-blue conference room at the Weston Hotel, three Kenyan pastors joined Haitian and American ministry leaders and Kenya’s first lady, Rachel Ruto, to plead for divine assistance for the beleaguered Caribbean country. They prayed for the 2,500-person multinational police force Kenya has volunteered to lead to help Haitian law enforcement. At one point, meeting participants told CT, group members wept. Read more
Why some South Africans are rethinking Nelson Mandela’s legacy. By Keith B. Richburg / Wash Post
At a time when the world seems sorely lacking in global statesmen — larger-than-life figures who manage to shape world events, transcend national borders and become universally admired — I always hark back to Nelson Mandela.
But more than a decade after his death in 2013, Mandela’s legacy is undergoing something of a reassessment in his country. Less than the canonized figure he remains in the West, Mandela to many young South Africans is linked to today’s problems — searing poverty, widespread unemployment and a yawning racial economic gap. The ruling party he led, the African National Congress, has lately become more identified with corruption and incompetent management than the liberation struggle. Read more
March for Gaza: Black Perspective Of The Rally For Palestinians. By Tory Russell / Newsone (January 2024)
Every activist in the U.S. should know by now that if you’re going to Washington then you better have your demands ready, and last weekend’s March for Gaza rally did. It was exactly what you would expect, too. A whole lot of keffiyehs, black hoodies with white fists on them and even a couple of pink hat feminists were there. It was a typical march in D.C. and honestly, I was confused by it and here’s why. Read more
A Friend of Obama Who Could Soon Share the World Stage With Trump.
David Lammy, center left, in Tottenham, the area of north London where he grew up and is now his parliamentary district. After Britain’s next election, David Lammy is likely to be foreign secretary. He’s setting out a “progressive realist” policy — and forging ties on the U.S. right, just in case.
A son of Guyanese immigrants who grew up poor in working-class London, he spent summers with relatives in Brooklyn and Queens, working at Con Edison, before earning a master’s degree at Harvard Law School and befriending Barack Obama, for whom he canvassed in Chicago during his first presidential campaign. Read more
Ethics / Morality / Religion
Christian nationalism is a grave threat to America. By Cathy F. Young / The Fulcrum
While pursuing a master of divinity degree at the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary, I took a course titled “Christianity and the Holocaust.” I learned that Hitler’s strategy to build loyalty and support within German churches was masterful. Eventually, Germany’s government rule and religion became one.
We know the rest of the story of Hitler and his followers’ persecution of Jews, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Blacks, disabled people, gays, trade unionists and people who were of Roma, Sinti and Slavic descent. Sadly, only a handful of German clergy confronted Hitler. It’s now 34 years since my seminary graduation. I feel called to stand with other pastors throughout America in speaking out against another movement seeking to fuse government and religion. The threat is Christian nationalism. Read more
Related: The Line Between Good and Evil Cuts Through Evangelical America. By David French / NYT
Concerns over antisemitism rise as Passover begins. By Jason DeRose / NPR
The Anti-Defamation League issued a report earlier this year that included nearly 3,300 anti-Semitic instances in the final three months of last year.
Perhaps most acute on this first day of the Jewish holiday is the ongoing situation on college campuses. Read more
Related: American Christians Should Stand with Israel under Attack. By Russell Moore / CT
First African American cardinal recalls time when Black Catholics could not study in U.S. seminaries. By Courtney Mares / CNA
As the Catholic Church’s first African American cardinal was honored at a U.S. seminary in Rome, he recalled the legacy of faith and perseverance of Black Catholics in America, including at a time when they were not accepted by U.S. seminaries.
Cardinal Wilton Gregory, the archbishop of Washington, received this year’s Rector’s Award at an April 11 banquet at the Pontifical North American College, where seminarians from across 99 dioceses in the U.S. live while studying for the priesthood in Rome. In an interview with CNA before the award ceremony, Gregory pointed out that in the 19th century, African Americans who had a vocation to the priesthood were sent to study in Rome and then to serve as missionaries in Africa because at the time they were not allowed to enter U.S. seminaries. Read more
The Rev. Cecil Williams, who turned San Francisco’s Glide Church into a refuge for many, has died. By AP and The Grio
Rev. Cecil Williams of the Glide Memorial Church of San Francisco is shown during a Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day march in downtown San Francisco in Jan. 1986. Williams, who with his late wife turned Glide Church into a world-renowned haven for poor, homeless, and marginalized people, died Monday at age 94.
Williams and his wife, Janice Marikitami, who passed away in 2021, appeared in Will Smith’s film “The Pursuit of Happyness,” which was based on the life of a homeless father and son who once found help at Glide Memorial Church. Williams died Monday at his home in San Francisco surrounded by friends and family, Glide said in a statement. A cause of death was not given. Read more
Historical / Cultural
Juneteenth or Jefferson Davis? Ala. state workers may have to choose. By Rachel Hatzipanagos / Wash Post (Image Britannica)
The Conservative Who Turned White Anxiety Into a Movement. By Ari Berman / The Atlantic
Pat Buchanan made white Republicans fear becoming a racial minority. Now Donald Trump is reaping the benefits.
In may 1995, Pat Buchanan appeared at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., to announce an immigration policy that would become the centerpiece of his presidential campaign. “We have an illegal invasion of this country,” Buchanan warned. To resist it, he called for a “Buchanan Fence” patrolled by the military along the southern border, a five-year moratorium on legal immigration, and a constitutional amendment that would deny citizenship to children born in the U.S. to undocumented parents. Read more
William Strickland, a longtime civil rights activist, scholar and friend of Malcolm X, has died. By Michael Casey / ABC News
William Strickland, a longtime civil rights activist and supporter of the Black Power movement who worked with Malcolm X and other prominent leaders in the 1960s, has died. He was 87.
Strickland, whose death April 10 was confirmed by a relative, first became active in civil rights as a high schooler in Massachusetts. He later became inspired by the writings of Richard Wright and James Baldwin while an undergraduate at Harvard University, according to Peter Blackmer, a former student who is now an assistant professor of Africology and African American Studies at Easter Michigan University. Read more
Galvanizing the American Public, ANC and Anti-Apartheid. By Jessica Ann Levy / AAIHS
A group of union members and civil rights activists in Smyrna, Georgia protesting the Shell Oil Company’s continued business with South Africa in spite of apartheid (Georgia State University Library Digital Collections)
This year marks thirty years since the end of South African Apartheid. In April 1994, following nearly half a century of Apartheid, South Africans elected veteran anti-apartheid activist and African National Congress (ANC) president Nelson Mandela to serve as the country’s first Black head of state. Since its founding in 1912, the ANC (originally named the South African Native National Congress) has maintained ties with other organizations based outside South Africa. One of the earliest connections made by the ANC was with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), whose charter served as inspiration for the ANC’s charter. Read more
New Documentary Portrait Of Trailblazing Florida Teacher. By Peter Greene / Forbes
Film maker Boaz Dvir has created “Class of Her Own,” a documentary focusing on a challenging and inspiring tale of transformative teaching in Florida. It’s an instructive look at one trailblazing teacher’s work in Florida.
Gloria Jean Merriex grew up in Gainesville, Florida. Gainesville is a city of extremes; on the one hand, it’s the home of the University of Florida and has many of the features of a big college town; on the other hand, the southern and eastern neighborhoods of Gainesville are home to crushing poverty. Charles Duval Elementary School was located in the center of an eastern neighborhood plagued with crime and poverty. Read more
Duke Ellington would be 125. D.C. still dances to his tune. By Larry Tye / Wash Post
Duke Ellington, orchestra leader, in New York in May 1943. (Gordon Parks/Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division)
On April 29, the world will celebrate D.C. native Duke Ellington’s musical wizardry on the 125th anniversary of his birth. A stylish giant of American music, Ellington wrote and performed jazz suites and movie scores, sacred concert pieces, scenes and sketches — based on everything from Shakespeare to Tchaikovsky. But it isn’t his piano playing, orchestra conducting, score arranging or even the 6,000 tunes he composed on his Steinway Grand that form his most compelling legacy. Read more
50 Cent now owns the second biggest Black-owned production studio in the world: report. By Dollita Okine / face2faceafrica
Curtis Jackson, also known as 50 Cent, has officially opened his G-Unit Film & TV Studios in Shreveport, Louisiana. At a ceremony that was attended by hundreds of Shreveport residents and supporters on Thursday, Mayor Tom Arceneaux awarded the entrepreneur a key to the city, further expanding his entertainment empire.
50 Cent expressed his excitement about the event, saying, “And I want to remind you that betting on me is not a gamble. It’s a sure thing because together we will make history.” Read more
Sports
College Basketball, Caitlin Clark And Black Women’s Impact. By Jewel Clark and Rachel Wilson Patterson / Newsone
As former college basketball players, we are grateful that more eyes are watching, respecting and enjoying women’s college basketball. However, we are equally troubled by the manner in which the history of women’s basketball has been inaccurately represented during the Caitlin Clark craze.
Prior to the creation of NCAA women’s basketball, the Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW) existed. Two former players, Lynette Woodard (3,649) and Pearl Moore (4,061) scored more points than Caitlin Clark (as of mid-February 2024). Since then, Clark did break Woodard’s record. However, there has been very little media attention on the great contributions of Woodard and Moore to the game of basketball. It is almost as though they have been erased from history. Far too often, the contributions of black women are seemingly wiped from the history books. Read more
Related: Lack of Black WNBA players with a signature shoe is a gigantic problem. By Mike Freeman / USA Today
NFL draft confirms Black quarterbacks as face of the league. By Jason Reid / Andscape
Once prevented from participating in the game, Black quarterbacks are now running it. USC quarterback Caleb Williams participates in pro day at USC in Los Angeles on March 20.
For the second time in as many years, two Black quarterbacks are expected to be selected among the top three picks in the three-day NFL draft that begins here Thursday, and three could go in the first round. In the last two NFL seasons, African American signal-callers were selected as the first- and second-team Associated Press All-Pro quarterbacks, and Black passers won both the AP league MVP and the Super Bowl MVP awards. The league’s best player is a Black quarterback. The league’s best newcomer is a Black quarterback. Read more
Black coaches in NCAA men’s basketball have a deeper bench but a quieter voice. By William C. Rhoden / Andscape
The days of the outspoken John Thompson, John Chaney are gone but there are more Black coaches than ever. North Carolina State Wolfpack coach Kevin Keatts (left) and Pittsburgh Panthers coach Jeff Capel (right) meet before the game Feb. 7 at PNC Arena in Raleigh, North Carolina.
A couple of weeks ago, the college basketball community was shocked when John Calipari announced that he was leaving University of Kentucky and going to the University of Arkansas. The shock for me was that in all the talk about who would replace Calipari at Kentucky, not one Black coach’s name was mentioned. Read more
Who is the NBA GOAT: LeBron or Jordan? For current players, longevity is narrowing the gap. By Sam Amick and Josh Robbins / The Athletic
So while our (anonymous) NBA player poll was released Monday, with a record 142 players weighing in on some of the most interesting questions surrounding their league, we decided to dive even deeper into the age-old GOAT discussion because there’s a fascinating voting trend that simply must be explored.
While Michael Jordan won the “Greatest of All Time” category for the third consecutive time, his once-massive lead over LeBron James has shrunk significantly with every passing poll. This time around, James almost took the mantle. The data speaks loud and clear… Read more
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