Featured
“Pride paradox”: Sociologist Arlie Hochschild on Trump’s manipulation of white working class voters. By Chauncey Devega / Salon (Image WAMU)
“Trump brilliantly prospected for white, blue-collar shame, found it, converted shame to blame and set it on fire”
Wth slightly more than a month until Election Day, the polls show that Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are basically tied. Political scientists, historians, and other experts are describing the 2024 presidential election as one of the closest in modern American history. For those outside of the so-called MAGAverse, Trump’s popularity, even after more than eight years, remains a riddle. Unfortunately, the future of American democracy may be decided by their inability to break the Trump Code. The mainstream news media’s failure to decipher Trumpism has repeatedly led them to normalize the wantonly corrupt ex-president’s extremely malignant behavior.
In her new book “Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame, and the Rise of the Right,” leading sociologist and author Arlie Hochschild has taken on the task of trying to explain Trump’s powerful appeal for and power over “white working class” voters and other downwardly mobile Americans. She argues that Trump speaks to their grievances, pain, rage, and feelings of lost pride, manhood, purpose and honor. Read more
Political / Social
Why 45,000 dock workers are striking. By Ellen Ioanes / Vox (Image WSJ)
Workers at ports on the East and Gulf Coasts went on strike Tuesday following a breakdown in negotiations between the union representing them, the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA), and the organization of international shipping companies that employ them.
Approximately 45,000 workers walked off the job at 12:01 am, making it the most significant strike the union has engaged in since 1977. On Tuesday, workers at 36 different ports stopped work after their six-year contract with the United States Maritime Alliance (USMX) expired — and depending on how long the work stoppage lasts, it could have a monumental impact on the US economy. Read more
Related: What products could be affected by the port strike? By Kate Gibson / CBS News
Tim Walz wins the nice guy debate. By Heather Digby Parton / Salon
The two men obviously came into the debate with some very specific performance strategies and they both did what they needed to do.
Vance obviously decided that his goal was to shed the intellectual extremist “cat ladies” persona and portray himself as the smart conservative who wrote “Hillbilly Elegy.” Walz clearly wanted to highlight his record and show his wonky side with lots of details. He came across as less polished than Vance but effectively made his points on the issues the campaign wanted him to raise even if his performance wasn’t as slick. Read more
Related: “Focused on the future”: Vance dodges Jan. 6 questions at debate. By Griffin Eckstein / Salon
The Trump Campaign’s Lies Are Hurting Haitians Across The Country. By
Officials in Pennsylvania, Indiana and Alabama are combating an uptick in threats and hatred toward the Haitian immigrants.
When former President Donald Trump got on the presidential debate stage earlier this month and baselessly accused Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, of eating their neighbors’ pets, it was largely seen as the moment he lost the debate to Vice President Kamala Harris. After all, the rumors had already been proved false by local and state leaders, many of them fellow Republicans. But instead of backtracking or apologizing, Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), ramped up the attacks. In the weeks following the debate, Vance would repeat the racist lie so many times that Springfield schools received bomb threats and Haitian immigrants lived in constant fear of intimidation and assault because they suddenly had a target on their backs. Read more
Related: The Trump campaign strategy to demonize Haitian immigrants. By B.A. Parker et al. / NPR
Related: Oops, They Did It Again: The Mainstream Media Buries Trump’s Outrage. By Michael Tomasky / TNR
America Eats Its Young. By Jesse Hagopian / The Progressive
Racist lies against Haitians and the suppression of history are devouring our youth.
Since last year, my kids are facing a lot of problems at school, like they were bullied by other kids,” says Marc, a Haitian immigrant with two young children living in Springfield, Ohio. He was too frightened by recent events there to give his full name to the media. “I had to move to another neighborhood because I was scared for them, and they were very traumatized, especially after all these things they’re saying in social media, that we’re eating dogs . . . . Even local officers say there’s no evidence.” Read more
The New Yorker Endorses Kamala Harris for President. By The Editors / The New Yorker
The Vice-President has displayed the basic values and political skills that would enable her to help end, once and for all, a poisonous era defined by Donald Trump.
And so the choice is stark. The United States simply cannot endure another four years of Donald Trump. He is an agent of chaos, an enemy of liberal democracy, and a threat to America’s moral standing in the world. Kamala Harris—who has shown herself to be sensible, humane, and liberal-minded—is our choice for the Presidency. At the National Constitution Center, in Philadelphia, a few weeks ago, the American people were able to see both the stakes of this election and the vast differences between the candidates. The right choice—the necessary choice—is beyond debate. Read more
Ta-Nehisi Coates Defends Palestinian Voices After CBS Correspondent Labels Him An ‘Extremist.’ By Sharelle Burt / Black Enterprise
CBS Mornings host Tony Dokoupil is getting the side-eye on social media over some awkward questions about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict toward author Ta-Nehisi Coates, the Washington Post reports.Coates appeared on the CBS morning show on Sept. 30 to promote his new book, “The Message,” which showcases Coates’s trip to the Israeli-occupied West Bank and how his experience heightened his criticism of “apartheid” in Israel. Read more
Related: The Appalling Attack on Ta-Nehisi Coates Is a Massive Media Failing. By
What the Ku Klux Klan Looks Like in 2024. By William Spivey / Levelman
They have several names with a single goal
White supremacists have leaders and followers with entirely different agendas. The leaders have economic goals that can only be accomplished by mobilizing the masses. The followers are filled with resentment, hatred, and jealousy. They think someone is taking something from them that is rightfully theirs. The Klan, in times past, was more of a grassroots organization. Hundreds of local chapters (Klaverns) had loose relationships with a national body. The Klan today is more top-down driven, with the followers mimicking official policy without being able to articulate why. Read more
Why legacy admissions bans have exploded in the US. By Blake Jones / Politico
California is the latest state to prohibit colleges from providing preferential treatment to children of alumni.The Supreme Court dealt a devastating blow to diversity advocates last year when it gutted affirmative action. It also gave them ammunition. The decision supercharged efforts to outlaw legacy admissions at universities, which had eluded every state but Colorado. Now, four more states — including California — have banned giving preference to the children of alumni, several more have introduced proposals to prohibit the practice, and members of Congress from both parties have floated a federal prohibition. Read more
Related: Will banning legacy admissions level the playing field? By Safia Samee Ali / Newsnation
World News
After Iran’s attack on Israel, the Biden White House is desperately trying to avert a wider war in the Mideast. By , , , and
The last time Iran fired a barrage of missiles at Israel, in April, U.S. officials persuaded Israel to pull back from a large-scale response.
The administration has worked around the clock for the past year trying to avoid a direct clash between its ally Israel and Iran. But now, administration officials are facing a potential worst-case scenario, as the latest attack by Iran will inevitably trigger a retaliation by the Israeli military. Such a chain reaction could possibly pull in the United States, as it helps to defend Israel, and other countries in the region. Read more
Lebanon Is Not a Solution for Gaza. By Gershom Gorenberg / The Atlantic
Now Israel is fighting the war it planned for—alongside the one it refused to see coming and still hasn’t brought to an end.
Despite the thunder of the bombs in Lebanon; despite the stunning assassination of Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah; despite the suddenly renewed image of omniscient Israeli intelligence and a boost in domestic popularity for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the war in Gaza has not ended. Hamas still holds 101 Israeli hostages, dead or barely alive. Gaza is devastated—nine out of 10 of its people displaced, by one estimate. Netanyahu’s government still has no announced plan for who will rule Gaza on the day after the fighting ends, or for how it will end. Fighting the war that you prepared for is not a solution for the war you refused to see coming. Read more
How Russians Serve the State: In Battle, and in Childbirth. Anton Troianovski / NYT
President Vladimir Putin is throwing ever more resources at two interlocked priorities: recruiting more soldiers and encouraging bigger families.
What the Kremlin wants from Russians now boils down to two things. Men should join the army. Women should have more children. In recent months, the Russian government has doubled sign-up bonuses for contract soldiers and blanketed the airwaves, social media and city streets with recruitment ads. And a new law allows criminal suspects to avoid trial if they sign up to fight. At the same time, President Vladimir V. Putin has decreed that increasing births is a national priority, an effort that entered a newly repressive phase last week with a bill that would outlaw any advocacy for a child-free lifestyle. Read more
Ethics / Morality / Religion
The Evangelicalism of Jimmy Carter. By Daniel K. Williams / Christianity Today
The former president, who turns 100 on Tuesday, was elected while serving as a Southern Baptist deacon. But he was never fully welcomed by white evangelicals as one of our own.
When Jimmy Carter spoke about his faith in Christ while campaigning for president in 1976, many evangelicals were ecstatic. No previous presidential candidate had claimed to be “born again” or spoken so openly about his relationship with Jesus. Nor had any welcomed journalists to his adult Sunday school class, which Carter continued to teach even while running for the White House. But then again, no other presidential candidate was a deacon in a Southern Baptist church. Read more
How Two Billionaire Preachers Remade Texas Politics. Ava Kofman / NYT
They control Republican politics in the state. Now they’re poised to take their theocratic agenda nationwide.
Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks, billionaires who have made their fortunes in the oil industry. Over the past decade, the pair have built the most powerful political machine in Texas — a network of think-tanks, media organizations, political-action committees and nonprofits that work in lock step to purge the Legislature of Republicans whose votes they can’t rely on. Cycle after cycle, their relentless maneuvering has pushed the Statehouse so far to the right that consultants like to joke that Karl Rove couldn’t win a local race these days. Read more
In warning for Trump, evangelical Christian leaders urge ‘biblical principles’ on immigration. By Jack Jenkins / RNS
The letter had cautions for both parties, but its authors appeared especially frustrated by the Trump campaign’s recent rhetoric regarding immigration policy and immigrants.
More than 200 evangelical Christian leaders, moderates as well as influential conservatives, have signed an open letter urging the presidential candidates of both parties to reflect “biblical principles on immigration.” While challenging both parties, the letter signals particular discomfort with the approach taken by former President Donald Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, to the issue. Read more
How yesterday’s Black Christian nationalists planted the seeds for a Black utopia. By Kathryn Post / RNS
Aaron Robertson’s ‘The Black Utopians: Searching for Paradise and the Promised Land in America,’ is out Tuesday (Oct. 1).
Before he was a Rhodes Scholar, translator and writer published in the New York Times, Aaron Robertson was a Baptist kid attending dozens of churches in the metro Detroit area. Despite this peripatetic religious upbringing, it took until 2019 for Robertson to encounter his native city’s Shrine of the Black Madonna, a United Church of Christ congregation that birthed a Black nationalist commune. Read more
Supreme Court flooded with prayers for relief from groups eager to promote religion. By
Religious interest groups are queuing up a series of high-profile appeals at the Supreme Court this fall that could further tear down the wall separating church and state, seeking to take advantage of a friendly 6-3 conservative majority that has rapidly pushed the law in their favor in recent years.
Catholic groups are challenging a New York State requirement that health insurance plans cover medically necessary abortions, for instance. A group of Muslim and Eastern Orthodox parents in Maryland want to opt their elementary school children out of reading books about gender and sexuality. And a Tampa synagogue hopes to advertise its annual ice-skating themed Hannukah celebration on public buses. Read more
Historical / Cultural
Tulsa Race Massacre Update: DOJ Review Called Long Overdue. By Bruce C.T. Wright / Newsone
A federal civil rights review of one of the worst instances of violence motivated by anti-Black racism in U.S. history is being greeted by cautious optimism more than 100 years after the “act of racial terrorism” took place. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) on Monday announced it intended to launch a formal review of the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 when white supremacists destroyed a thriving Black business district and killed hundreds of people in the Oklahoma city. Read more
Trump Thinks Harris’s Sisterhood Is a ‘Sorority Party.’ He Should Think Again. By Charles M. Blow / NYT
A few weeks ago during the presidential debate, Donald Trump chided Kamala Harris for not attending Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to a joint meeting of Congress in July because, Trump said, “She was at a sorority party of hers. She wanted to go to the sorority party.”
Harris’s sisterhood and its peer organizations are anything but frivolous. Trump’s flip remark illustrated just how little he seems to understand the centers of power within the Black community and how valuable they may be in this election. Informally known as the Divine Nine, there are five historically Black fraternities and four historically Black sororities that are officially organized as the National Pan-Hellenic Council. All but one were formed over a century ago, in the years following the Supreme Court’s heinous (and ultimately defunct) Plessy v. Ferguson decision that helped both to enshrine the “separate but equal” principle and to legitimize Jim Crow. Read more
‘Good Times’ Star John Amos Died 6 Weeks Ago, His Son Reveals. By Amanda Bell / Tvinsider
John Amos, best known for his work on Good Times and other classic television series and films, has died at the age of 84. Amos reportedly died on August 21 of natural causes.
In a statement provided to The Hollywood Reporter, his son Kelly Christopher Amos announced, “It is with heartfelt sadness that I share with you that my father has transitioned,” he said in a statement. “He was a man with the kindest heart and a heart of gold… and he was loved the world over. Many fans consider him their TV father. He lived a good life. His legacy will live on in his outstanding works in television and film as an actor.” Read more
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs hit with a wave of 120 new sexual assault allegations. By and
A Texas-based attorney said he’s representing more than 100 accusers in a series of new lawsuits he’ll file against Diddy.
Sean “Diddy” Combs is facing dozens of new allegations of sexual assault in a series of lawsuits set to be filed. At a news conference held Tuesday, Texas-based attorney Tony Buzbee said he is representing 120 accusers with allegations against the entertainment mogul that go back more than 20 years. “We will expose the enablers who enabled this conduct behind closed doors. We will pursue this matter no matter who the evidence implicates,” Buzbee said during the news conference. Read more
Sports
Dikembe Mutombo, shot-blocking NBA center and humanitarian, dies at 58. By Harrison Smith / Wash Post
A top prospect out of Georgetown, he became an eight-time all-star, served as the NBA’s first global ambassador and was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame.
Dikembe Mutombo, a shot-blocking, finger-wagging basketball Hall of Famer who dominated on defense at Georgetown and in the NBA, turning opponents away from the rim while building an off-court legacy through his humanitarian work in Central Africa, died Sept. 30 in Atlanta. He was 58. The cause was brain cancer, according to a statement from National Basketball Association Commissioner Adam Silver. The statement did not say where Mr. Mutombo died. Read more
Related: A ‘heart of gold’ – Mutombo’s humanitarian legacy. BBC Sport Africa
A reporter keeps asking about Caitlin Clark. Players want her banned. By Ben Strauss / Wash Post
In a thrilling but delicate moment for the WNBA, a journalist’s focus on Clark is stirring tension among players and the press.
With Bronny in tow, LeBron James finds ‘pure joy’ as 22nd season dawns. By Ben Golliver / Wash Post
As the big 4-0 looms, James finds new life thanks to son Bronny and a rejuvenating experience at the Paris Olympics.
When James opened his 22nd season at Lakers media day Monday, the nagging ennui was gone. In its place, he said, was “pure joy.” Even though the NBA’s oldest player will turn 40 on Dec. 30, James said he was reinvigorated by his run to a gold medal at the Paris Olympics and is intent on cherishing his time with 19-year-old son Bronny, whom the Lakers selected with the 55th pick in June’s draft. Read more
Coco Gauff Helps Naomi Osaka After She Retires From Match With Back Injury. By Madison Williams / SI
What a beautiful moment of sportsmanship.
Tennis players are forced to retire from matches with injuries all the time, but American Coco Gauff did something during Tuesday’s China Open match vs. Naomi Osaka of Japan that fans aren’t always used to seeing. When Osaka retired with a back injury in the second set, Gauff first approached Osaka to hug her and say “I’m sorry, are you OK?” Gauff then walked over to Osaka’s bench and asked if she could assist her opponent off the court. Osaka was clearly in pain, so Gauff wanted to help. Read more
Site Information
Articles appearing in the Digest are archived on our home page. And at the top of this page register your email to receive notification of new editions of Race Inquiry Digest.
Click here for earlier Digests. The site is searchable by name or topic. See “search” at the top of this page.
About Race Inquiry and Race Inquiry Digest. The Digest is published on Mondays and Thursdays.
Use the customized buttons below to share the Digest in an email, or post to your Facebook, Linkedin or Twitter accounts.