Featured
Can this firm invest in only Black women? This case will decide. By Julian Mark / Wash Post
The legal firepower on both sides of the Fearless Fund case reflects the disparate views on the nature of discrimination and the role of history in shaping public policy. Fearless Fund CEO Arian Simone, center, speaks March 14 outside the U.S. Supreme Court. She co-founded the fund in 2018 to address the chasm in venture capital for start-ups run by women of color.
They might be courtroom adversaries, but Arian Simone swears she and the man suing her venture capital firm want the same thing: an America where race does not matter. The difference is that Simone believes race-specific initiatives like the Fearless Fund are essential to achieving that ideal. Given that Black-owned start-ups secured less than 1 percent of the nation’s VC spending last year, she said, “I can’t stop.”
But the conservative activist driving the lawsuit, Edward Blum, says racial equity is not one-sided. That’s why he insists that the fund’s grant program for Black women is discriminatory, in one of the most-watched civil rights cases since he was on the winning side of the landmark Supreme Court decision that overturned race-conscious college admissions. Read more
Related: Next front in the attack on affirmative action: State diversity programs. By Julian Mark / Wash Post
Related: Are White Women Better Now? What anti-racism workshops taught us. By Nellie Bowles / The Atlantic
Political / Social
2024 election poll: Trump vs. Biden and what Republicans and Democrats fear. By Domenico Montanaro / NPR
The fear factor is real in America, but Democrats and Republicans are scared for the country’s future for different reasons, the latest NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll finds.
They also believe very differently about what children who will inherit that future should be taught. Looking at this year’s presidential election, the survey also found big shifts with key voter groups, along generational, racial and educational lines. It also explored how third-party candidates and so-called “double haters” — who have unfavorable ratings of both President Biden and former President Donald Trump — could affect the race. Finally, it finds a jump in Republicans now believing Trump has done something unethical, as he continues to contend with dozens of criminal charges and legal troubles. Read more
Related: Morehouse College pushes the White House for ‘direct engagement’ ahead of Biden’s speech. By and
Jurors hear all about what a conniving piece of sh** Donald Trump is. By Christopher Nerney / Daily Kos
Things started off with a bang Tuesday at Donald Trump’s criminal trial in Manhattan as Justice Juan Merchan announced he was holding the insurrection-instigating former president in contempt for violating a gag order and fining him a total of $9,000. Merchan also reminded the defense that throwing Trump in jail for further violations remains a viable option.
And now Trump is trapped in a shabby courtroom that he can’t even storm out of, listening to people read texts that mock him and question his wealth, and hearing testimony regarding his multiple extramarital affairs. And closing his eyes isn’t making any of it go away. Read more
Related: Trump is the Ultimate Gang leader. By John Feffer / The Nation
Related: Nixon, Trump and What Justice for All Means in America. By Kevin Boyle / NYT
Related: Why Are Prominent Republicans Who Despise Trump Voting for Him Anyway? By Matt Lewis / Daily Beast
White Supremacists March Freely In Charleston While Cops Attack, Arrest Pro-Palestinian College Protesters. By Zack Linly / Newsone
Over the weekend, members of the white supremacist group Patriot Front marched through the streets of Charleston, West Virginia, chanting white nationalist nonsense and holding up a banner that read, “America is not for sale.”
Meanwhile, hoards of police officers have been ever-present at the pro-Palestinian protests that have erupted at college campuses across the country, where hundreds of students have been arrested. Read more
Related: The Caucasian’s guide to a whiter America. By Michael Harriot / The Grio
Related: The Media’s Shameful Coverage of the College Antiwar Protests. By Alex Shephard / TNR
Federal judges strike down La. congressional map with second Black-majority district. By Maegan Vazquez and Patrick Marley / Wash Post
Louisiana state Sen. Cleo Fields (D), who served in Congress in the 1990s, has declared his candidacy for a new majority-Black congressional district created in January by the Legislature. The new map, which greatly alters the district currently represented by U.S. Rep. Garret Graves, was rejected by a federal three-judge panel on Tuesday.
The ruling is the latest in a broader set of legal challenges to electoral maps across the South. The outcome of these suits is likely to play a crucial role in deciding which party controls the House next year. The Supreme Court is expected to rule soon in a South Carolina case and could get involved in the Louisiana case. Read more
Young Latinos who could decide the 2024 race are disillusioned by the candidates. By , and
NBC News spoke to young Latino students in Arizona, Pennsylvania and Georgia, states where their voting bloc could sway the 2024 presidential election.
Young Latino voters in key swing states have the numbers to potentially sway the 2024 presidential election. But interviews with nearly two dozen young Latino students on college campuses in battleground states revealed many are currently unmotivated to back a candidate or even cast a ballot. Read more
Study: Racial Segregation In Public Schools Is Widespread. By Daniel Johnson / Black Enterprise
The practice of “educational redlining” combined with school districts who aggressively enforce their zoning rules has resulted in elite public schools being stratified along the lines of race.
According to a new study from Available To All, an education nonprofit, equal access to a quality education has declined, and has resulted in the return of segregation to public schools in America. The study found that this occurs due to legally enshrined segregation and enrollment policies that have a discriminatory effect in practice. Read more
Hampton University Shows the Role HBCUs Play in Strengthening the Black Family Is Crucial. By Delano Squires / The Heritage Foundation
Hampton University’s 42nd Annual Conference On The Black Family proves that when it comes to “Black love”, the school is a model for other HBCUs.
The event, which took place March 20-24, was hosted by the university’s National Center for Black Family Life and brought together scholars, pastors, counselors, and other presenters who are all committed to the same goal: increasing the number of stable marriages and intact families in the Black community. Read more
Related: HBCU Xavier of New Orleans moves closer to establishing a medical school. By AP News
Bakari Sellers: We Are in a Dark Moment. By Tim Miller / The Bulwark Podcast
In the very hot summer of George, Breonna, and Ahmaud, we seemed to be on the brink of a third Reconstruction. But that moment from 2020 was lost. Now, we’re in a time when people like Tucker and Charlie Kirk talk about racial equality as white oppression. Bakari Sellers joins Tim Miller today. Listen here
This Majority-Black City Has a Water Crisis That Privatization Won’t Fix. By Lylla Younes / Mother Jones
Jackson, Mississippi, residents demand a say “in the redevelopment of our water and sewer system.”
In the summer of 2022, heavy rainfall damaged a water treatment plant in the city of Jackson, Mississippi, precipitating a high-profile public health crisis. The Republican Governor Tate Reeves declared a state of emergency, as thousands of residents were told to boil their water before drinking it. For some, the pressure in their taps was so low that they couldn’t flush their toilets and were forced to rely on bottled water for weeks. Read more
World News
How unconditional support for Israel became a cornerstone of Jewish American identity. By Yonat Shimron / RNS
A new book shows how those who dissented were effectively sidelined.
A new book by Babson College historian Marjorie Feld looks at the long history of American Jewish dissent on Israel, which, she argues, has increasingly been silenced by the mainstream U.S. Jewish establishment. Feld’s book, “The Threshold of Dissent,” shows how, over the course of the past century, unconditional support for Israel became the de facto position of American Jewish institutions. Read more
Related: Bernie Sanders Accuses Israel Of Ethnic Cleansing In Gaza’s ‘Humanitarian Disaster.’ By
Related: Some US Christians adopt peacemaker role as Israel-Hamas war continues. By Marc Ramirez / USA Today
The End of South African Apartheid: An Interview with Dr. Athambile Masola. By Tiana U. Wilson / AAIHS
Dr. Masola is a writer, researcher, and award-winning poet based in the Department of Historical Studies at the University of Cape Town. She received her PhD from Rhodes University.
In today’s post, Black Perspectives’ Senior Editor Tiana U. Wilson interviews Dr. Athambile Masola on her research interests, methods, and her thoughts on South Africa since the ending of apartheid thirty years ago. Read more
South Asian groups work to break cultural, religious stigmas around domestic violence. By
In Sexual Assault Awareness Month, advocates hope to reshape the conversation around intimate partner violence within the diaspora.
In a survey of nearly 500 South Asian immigrants in the U.S., nearly half (48%) reported experiencing physical domestic violence in their lifetime, according to a 2021 study published in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence and cited by survivor advocacy organization South Asian SOAR. Read more
Haiti’s transitional council names a new prime minister. By AP and NPR
A surprise announcement that revealed Haiti’s new prime minister is threatening to fracture a recently installed transitional council tasked with choosing new leaders for the gang-riddled Caribbean country.
Four of seven council members with voting powers said Tuesday that they had chosen Fritz Bélizaire as prime minister, taking many Haitians aback with their declaration and unexpected political alliance. The council members who oppose Bélizaire, who served as Haiti’s sports minister during the second presidency of René Préval from 2006 to 2011, are now weighing options including fighting the decision or resigning from the council. Read more
Ethics / Morality / Religion
75 Christian leaders urge president, Congress, churches to act on racism, poverty. By
Issues related to racism are now being fiercely debated across the country, and many people of color are fearful that racism is getting worse,’ reads their statement.
“People of color continue to suffer problems related to race — high rates of death during childbirth, for example, and fear of gun violence and hate crimes as they go about their daily lives,” reads the statement titled “God’s Call to Action Against Racism and Poverty in 2024.” “Issues related to racism are now being fiercely debated across the country, and many people of color are fearful that racism is getting worse.” Read more
Who Would Jesus Vote For? By Bill Lueders / The Bulwark
A look at one effort to persuade people of faith not to pick Donald Trump.
Faith Forward is the resurrected form of a similar campaign, Faith 2020, that operated during the last presidential election and the 2022 midterms. The group purports to have “played a significant leadership role in informing the public amidst rampant disinformation” from Trump and his administration, as well as organizing events in December 2022 that helped Rev. Raphael Warnock win his runoff election against Trump-backed nutcase Herschel Walker. Read more
It’s a Good Time to Start Worrying About Christian Nationalism. By David Corn / Mother Jones
In response to rising concern among liberals and others about the spread of Christian nationalism, conservative voices have been pressing a counterattack, claiming all this fretting is just lefty hysteria from secularists who are not willing to acknowledge the role of Christianity in American society and who want to brand all politically active Christians as extremists.
The anti-anti-Christian nationalists’ effort to cast libs as the-sky-is-falling worrywarts is either naive or a purposeful effort to deflect attention from this threat to civil society. And though it usually is best to avoid dependence on one data point, allow me to zero in on a single tweet that appeared recently to highlight the danger. Read more
Historical / Cultural
The Racist Origins of America’s Broken Immigration System. By Felipe De La Hoz / TNR
How a little-known, century-old law perpetuated the odious notion that certain types of immigrants degrade our nation’s character
What this meant, in practical terms, was a system geared toward prioritizing the immigration of white Northern Europeans in direct response to the heyday of Southern European immigration at the turn of the century. This was accomplished through a national immigration quota of only 2 percent of any given country’s immigrant population in the United States as of the 1890 census—right before recent waves of European arrivals—and effectively banned Asian immigration entirely. In doing so, the law codified ethnic preferences, and it was soon bolstered by the newly created Border Patrol. In effect, the United States of 1890 was the one that was to remain, untainted by the now-romanticized steamships at Ellis Island. Read more
Deb Haaland Confronts the History of the Federal Agency She Leads. By Casey Cep / The New Yorker
As the first Native American Cabinet member, the Secretary of the Interior has made it part of her job to address the travesties of the past.
Haaland grew up hearing about St. Catherine’s not only from her grandmother but also from her mother, who was sent there as well. Each generation had stories of hardship and separation. Now Haaland has made listening to similar stories a central part of her job. In the summer of 2021, just months after being sworn in as Secretary of the Interior, she launched the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative to investigate the schools—at the time, there was not so much as a comprehensive list of them, let alone a full roster of students—and to consult with tribes about how to make amends for the harm that the schools caused. Read more
Photographer Rahim Fortune Examines Heritage, Ritual, and Black Culture’s Enduring Traditions in the American South. By Allison Schaller / Vanity Fair
A profound sense of timelessness surrounds Fortune’s new book, Hardtack, comprised of portraits and landscapes photographed over a decade. Praise Dancers, Edna Texas, 2022 By Rahim Fortune
It’s only been nine years since photographer Rahim Fortune began his professional career, but in that time he’s grown into one of the industry’s leading contemporary portraitists and documentarians. Through his camera lens, Fortune explores American identity with his striking black-and-white images, primarily taken in the American South. Read more
She broke racial barriers as a Vegas showgirl. At 97, she’s still dancing. By Amanda Fortini / Wash Post
Anna Bailey was the first Black woman to integrate an all-White chorus line on the Strip — and helped transform the city during the struggle for civil rights
On a Sunday afternoon this month in North Las Vegas, Anna Bailey could be found at the back of the Aliante Casino, Hotel and Spa’s theater rehearsing her moves. Bailey, a dancer who has had a pioneering and historic career, had emerged from a half-century retirement to perform in a revival of “Follies.” Although you would never have guessed by watching her that the 97-year-old had not performed since the 1970s. Read more
Black Nominees at the 2024 Tony Awards. By Shanelle Genai / The Root
From musicals to plays, Black thespians such as Alicia Keys, Leslie Odom showed up and showed out this season!
The 2024 Tony Awards, hosted by Ariana DeBose, will air LIVE on Sunday, June 16, 2024 at 8p.m. ET on the CBS and streaming live and on demand on Paramount+. Now let’s get into our nominees. Read more
Edward Dwight Aims for Orbit at Last. By Matt Richtel / NYT
Six decades ago, Mr. Dwight’s shot at becoming the first Black astronaut in space was thwarted by racism and politics. Now, at 90, he’s finally going up.
Edward Dwight is going to space, finally. In the coming weeks, as conditions allow, Mr. Dwight is expected to be part of a six-person crew heading beyond Earth’s orbit on the latest mission of Blue Origin, the space company founded by Jeff Bezos. Read more
Sports
Anthony Edwards’ dunk on Kevin Durant was a passing-of-the-torch NBA moment. By David Dennis Jr. / Andscape
The poster cemented the Minnesota Timberwolves guard as the future and left Durant empty-handed
Minnesota Timberwolves guard Anthony Edwards’ series-ending dunk on Phoenix Suns forward Kevin Durant on Sunday, completing the Timberwolves’ four-game sweep over the Suns, was not peaceful. It was a violent, explosive dunk that grabbed the torch flame-first and cemented Edwards as the future, while leaving Durant empty-handed at the twilight of his career. Read more
Kenny Smith Earns More As A TNT Host Than He Did In The NBA. By Samantha Dorisca / Afrotech
Kenny Smith has become a familiar face in sports broadcasting, and he’s being fairly compensated for his contributions.
His background in sports can be traced back to his playing days on the basketball courts of the University of North Carolina, according to the National Urban League. Upon graduating with a degree in Industrial Relations, he would be drafted to the Sacramento Kings as a sixth overall draft pick in 1987, ESPN reports. On Oct. 14, 1987, Smith signed a multi-year contract with the team, RealGM mentions. Read more
LeBron James faces a summer of big decisions after the Lakers were sent packing. By Ben Golliver / Wash Post
Jamal Murray ended the Los Angeles Lakers’ so-close-and-yet-so-far season by reprising his favorite role as late-game assassin.
For LeBron James and the Lakers, the dramatic ending prompted a double serving of déjà vu: Murray broke their hearts for the second time in a week, and the Nuggets eliminated them from the playoffs for the second consecutive season. James walked directly off the court without stopping to acknowledge the Nuggets, stepping straight into an offseason in which the 39-year-old superstar must decide whether to re-sign with the Lakers; find a new home in free agency; orchestrate a team-up with his 19-year-old son, Bronny; or give further thought to retirement. Read more
Travis Clayton: Why the Buffalo Bills picked a player in NFL Draft who has never played football. By Ben Morse / CNN
The transition from rugby to football has proven tough in the past. Jarryd Hayne and Christian Wade both left rugby near the peak of their powers to try their hand on the football gridiron, with both failing to make it long term. Former Welsh international Louis Rees-Zammit will try to make it work with the Kansas City Chiefs this season after switching sports earlier this year.
With the 221st overall pick and the first pick of the seventh round, the Bills selected Travis Clayton, a former rugby player from the United Kingdom. From Basingstoke in England, Clayton is one of 16 players in this year’s International Player Pathway program – an NFL scheme which allows athletes from across the globe to try to reach the league. Read more
HBCUs built gymnastics teams. Success is starting to come. By Glynn A. Hill / Wash Post
Fisk gymnast Morgan Price won the all-around national title at the USA Gymnastics women’s collegiate national championships April 13. (Fisk athletics)
In February 2022, Fisk announced that it would launch the first HBCU artistic gymnastics program that fall. By spring, a 16-year-old Price had graduated high school early and switched her commitment to Fisk. There, she would compete under an African American coach for the first time. And she relished the community around her, surrounded by teammates who could do her lashes, hair and nails the way she liked. Read more
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