Featured
How Music and Art Have Helped Black Americans Weather Troubling Times. By Brandon Tensley / Capital B
Creative expression has helped us to endure racism and offers us a way forward in a new Trump era. Nearly 60 years after the March on Washington (left), demonstrators again filed down Constitution Avenue, this time to protest the murder of George Floyd. (Associated Press; Alex Brandon/Associated Press)
In 1975, Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes laid down a melodic mandate that applies to our times: “Wake up, everybody / No more sleepin’ in bed,” Teddy Pendergrass, the former lead singer of the group, commands. “No more backward thinkin’ / Time for thinkin’ ahead / The world has changed so very much / From what it used to be.”
“Wake Up, Everybody” meditates on bigotry, poverty, and other hardships that plagued Black Americans after the Civil Rights Movement, when Richard Nixon rode into the White House and championed policies that chipped away at Black prosperity and criminalized Black communities. But the song, which mirrors the social consciousness of Marvin Gaye’s 1971 anthem “What’s Going On,” does something else, too: It shines a light on how Black Americans have long responded to political chaos by leaning into the arts. Read more
Black Voters Terrified Trump’s Presidency Will Bring Hate And Violence, Poll Finds. By Bilal G. Morris / Newsone
The air is thick with unease, a quiet tension that hangs heavy in Black communities across the nation. It’s not just the sting of defeat after rallying behind Kamala Harris—it’s the looming fear of what a second Trump presidency could unleash. For many Black Americans, the memories of Trump’s first term are not distant; they’re vivid and visceral, etched with the scars of hate and violence that now Black people feel could return with a vengeance.
During the 2024 presidential election, Black voters again showed that they are America’s most aligned voter block by appearing in force and voting for Kamala Harris, but she lost. Now, a Donald Trump victory has left Black voters terrified that a second Trump presidency will bring about hate and violence. According to a recent report by the 2024 American Electorate Voter Poll, Black Americans overwhelmingly fear a Trump second term. Read more
Related: The Case For Optimism in Trump’s America. By Ben Ulansey / Medium
Political / Social
How freaked out should we be about Trump’s Cabinet? By Megan McArdle / Wash Post
President-elect Donald Trump has wasted no time announcing his picks for who will lead his administration. Many of his appointments to the MAGA Cabinet have shocked Congress and the nation alike — most notably his controversial choice of Matt Gaetz, who resigned from Congress on Wednesday, for attorney general.
Could things get any weirder? I’m joined by my colleagues James Hohmann and Theodore R. Johnson to discuss Trump’s out-of-the-ordinary nominations. Read more
The key voter shifts that led to Trump’s battleground state sweep. By Steve Kornacki / NBC News
Analysis: Across the states that decided the election, Trump made further inroads with rural and blue-collar voters while cutting into key parts of the Democrats’ base.
For President-elect Donald Trump, there’s a clear story that runs through each of the seven battleground states that he swept on his way to recapturing the White House. He managed to drive up even further what were already sky-high margins with his white, blue-collar base while harnessing historically broad nonwhite voter support to erode the Democratic base in cities and diversifying suburbs. And for Vice President Kamala Harris, the battleground picture is one of regression — a widespread failure to match Joe Biden’s 2020 performance, with her gains largely isolated to areas centered on the wealthier, college-educated white voters who increasingly make up her party’s backbone. Read more
Trump wants to end ‘wokeness’ in education. He has vowed to use federal money as leverage. By Collin Binklley / ABC News
Donald Trump’s vision for education revolves around a single goal: to rid America’s schools of perceived “ wokeness ” and “left-wing indoctrination.”
The president-elect wants to forbid classroom lessons on gender identity and structural racism. He wants to abolish diversity and inclusion offices. He wants to keep transgender athletes out of girls’ sports. Throughout his campaign, the Republican depicted schools as a political battleground to be won back from the left. Now that he’s won the White House, he plans to use federal money as leverage to advance his vision of education across the nation. Trump’s education plan pledges to cut funding for schools that defy him on a multitude of issues. Read more
Related: Trump abolishing Education Department spells doom for Black America. By April Ryan / The Root
Related: A Trump win, an urban high school and an American identity crisis. By Greg Jaffe / Wash Post
Socioeconomic status explains most of the racial and ethnic achievement gaps in elementary school. By Eric Hengyu Hu and Paul L. Morgan / The Conversation
For decades, white students have performed significantly better than Black and Hispanic students on tests of academic achievement. Explanations for these achievement gaps include poverty and systems that result in discrimination. Others cite struggles to learn English. And some folks believe that some groups simply don’t value education.
Our new report shows that gaps in achievement between white, Black and Hispanic students in elementary school are primarily explained by differences in family socioeconomic status. That is, kindergartners from families with similar economic resources and educational backgrounds – among other factors – later displayed similar levels of achievement. This was true regardless of their race or ethnicity. Read more
Black infant mortality rate more than double the rate among white infants: CDC. By Mary Kekatos and Harika Rayala / ABC News
Infant mortality rates remained relatively unchanged from 2022 to 2023, but racial and ethnic disparities still persist, new provisional federal data released early Thursday finds.
The U.S. provisional infant mortality rate in 2023 was 5.61 infant deaths per 1,000 live births, unchanged from the 2022 rate, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). The report also found that infants born to Black mothers still died at much higher rates than those born to white and Asian mothers — more than double the rate of white infant mortality, according to the CDC. Read more
Jay-Z’s Shawn Carter Foundation Launches Empowering Financial Education Program At HBCUs. By Jazmin Tolliver / HuffPost
The music icon’s Champions for Financial Legacy program will kick off in the spring. Here are the historically Black universities that could benefit.
Jay-Z is breathing life into the curriculum of historically Black colleges and universities in a major way. The Shawn Carter Foundation announced the launch of its Champions for Financial Legacy program Wednesday at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. The financial education initiative will empower students at HBCUs and the surrounding communities by providing tools for managing personal finances in the real world. Read more
World News
Zelenskyy says Ukraine must try to ensure war ends next year through diplomacy. By Reuters
Zelenskyy advocates for diplomacy but said Putin was not interested in a peace deal. Russia suggests it could engage in negotiations if led by Trump.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said Ukraine must do all it can to ensure the war with Russia ends next year through diplomacy, commenting at a decisive moment after Donald Trump’s U.S. presidential election win and Russia’s grinding battlefield gains. However, Zelenskyy said Russian President Vladimir Putin was not interested in agreeing to a peace deal, and argued it was convenient for Moscow to sit down to talk while continuing to fight. Read more
Donald Trump and the art of world leader bromances. By Kim Hjelmgaard / USA Today
Trump’s allies overseas may be expecting him, for a second time, to reorient foreign policy away from global alliances and toward their politically populist, in some cases authoritarian, priorities.
“It’s nice,” President-elect Donald Trump said in July from the campaign trail, “to get along with someone who has a lot of nuclear weapons.” He was talking about North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un, who has ruled that country for more than a decade through a policy of isolation, indoctrination and repression that includes, the U.N. says, the mass starvation of his own people. “He’d like to see me back, too,” Trump said of Kim. “I think he misses me, if you want to know the truth.” Young males − the so-called bro vote − helped propel Donald Trump to the presidency, pollsters and political scientists say, partly because of their concerns over immigration, economic opportunities, multiculturalism and perceived assaults on traditional family values and masculinity. Read more
Democrats Who Voted Against Harris Due to Gaza Were Foolish. By Kermit Zarley / Patheos
Many Arab American Democrats voted against Vice President Kamala Harris for president—either not voting at all or voting for Republican Donald Trump—due to anger toward her for not taking a more Palestinian position about the ongoing Israeli war in Gaza against Hamas.
I believe Ms. Harris had made an important mistake when asked if she disagreed with anything President Joe Biden had done during his presidency. She paused before answering, as if she had not thought about that question. She then answered that she did not have any disagreements with Biden. Read more
Masses of residents flee homes in Haiti’s capital as gangs ratchet up violence. By AP
Masses of residents fled a running battle Thursday between gang members and police in one of the few neighborhoods of Haiti’s capital that hadn’t already been fully taken over by gangs, as violence flared amid political turmoil.
Families frantically packed mattresses and furniture into cars and carried their belongings on their heads as they left the Solino neighborhood, one of a handful of areas in Port-au-Prince where a coalition of gangs, called Viv Ansanm, and police were locked in a violent firefight over the past several days. “We barely made it out,” said 52-year-old Jean-Jean Pierre, who carrying his son in his arms as he fled the neighborhood with throngs of people. “I’ve lived here 40 years of my life and I’ve never seen it this bad.” Read more
Ethics / Morality / Religion
Between Faith and Fight: What Motivated Latino and Black Christian Men to Back Trump. By Harvest Prude / Christianity Today
Frustrated with status quo politics, minority voters turned to Trump for economic and social stability.
Rodriguez, the president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, has supported Trump in the past three presidential races and prayed at his inauguration. But this year, he saw more Hispanic Christian men take his side. “I can’t deny the fact that the bro factor … was there,” said Rodriguez, who pastors New Season church in Sacramento, California. “It has to do with a man who was down, literally down, bleeding in front of the entire world, and he gets up.” Read more
Related: Latino evangelicals praise Donald Trump as president-elect. By Sarah McCammon / NPR
The ultimate answer to why Donald Trump won: White Christians. By Chauncey Devega / Salon
In an attempt to make sense of Trump’s victory, our collective emotions in this time of trouble and dread, what this election reveals about American values and character, and what comes next when Trump takes power in January, I recently spoke with a range of experts.
Robert P. Jones is the president and founder of Public Religion Research Institute. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller “The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy and the Path to a Shared American Future,” as well as “White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity.” Read more
Related: Christianity and Power. By Vance Morgan / Patheos
Related: Christians Torn: Even Those Who Voted For Trump Feel Unease. By Elisa Johnston / Patheos
Historical / Cultural
Hundreds of 19th-century skulls collected in the name of medical science tell a story of who mattered and who didn’t. By Pamela L. Geller / The Conversation
Morton was a physician and naturalist who lived in Philadelphia from 1799 until the end of his life in 1851. A lecture he delivered to aspiring doctors at the Philadelphia Association for Medical Instruction outlined the reasons for his cranial compulsion:
“I commenced the study of Ethnology in 1830; in which year, having occasion to deliver an introductory lecture on Anatomy, it occurred to me to illustrate the difference in the form of the skull as seen in the five great races of men … When I sought the materials for my proposed lecture, I found to my surprise that they could be neither bought nor borrowed.” He would go on to acquire almost 1,000 human skulls.
Morton used these skulls to advance an understanding of racial differences as natural, easily categorizable and able to be ranked. Big-brained “Caucasians,” he argued in the 1839 publication “Crania Americana,” were far superior to small-skulled American Indians and even smaller-skulled Black Africans. Many subsequent scholars have since thoroughly debunked his ideas. Read more
Malcolm X’s family files $100 million wrongful death lawsuit, claims cover-up of his murder. By Tesfaye Negussie / ABC News
The Black resistance leader was assassinated in NYC in 1965.
Ilyasah Shabazz, Malcolm X’s daughter, who represented her family at a New York City press conference, and her lawyers claim that they have uncovered new evidence that they believe will prove that the NYPD and FBI conspired to kill Malcolm X. “We fought primarily for our mother, who was here,” Ilyasah Shabazz said of Betty Shabazz, who died in 1997, from the site of the former Audubon Ballroom, where her father was killed. “My mother was pregnant when she came here to see her husband speak; someone who she just admired totally and to witness this horrific assassination of her husband …” Read more
Erykah Badu likes chasing unreachable goals. Here’s why. By Rachel Martin / NPR
A note from Wild Card host Rachel Martin: Before we started recording our interview with Erykah Badu, I did what I always do with guests — I reminded Badu about the game and how this isn’t going to be a “normal interview.” She responded: “I don’t do normal interviews.”
And it definitely wasn’t. She sees the world differently than most people. And I don’t mean to get all woo woo, but it’s like she’s inhabiting a different plane of existence. Things are more colorful there. Like a kaleidoscope of what is and what could be. Her music is like that too. Badu’s breakout album, Baduizm, came out in 1997 and defied all the regular categories of music. Read more
This American couple moved to Costa Rica. Then they found a Central American country they liked even better. By
CoCo, who was working as a project manager at a taekwondo studio at the time, started researching online. Soon they had purchased $69 one-way tickets to Costa Rica. Three months later, in May 2021, they were starting a new life in Central America.
That move — to the mountainous town of Atenas west of Costa Rica’s capital of San José — was CoCo’s first time leaving the United States. And while Deitrick and CoCo loved Costa Rica and the peace they found there, three years later their journey took another unexpected turn — south to Panama. Read more
Related: Black in Portugal. A Journey from Modest Roots to a Thriving Community.
Sports
Deion Sanders after Colorado win: ‘Scary’ how good Buffaloes could be. By Brent Schrotenboer / USA Today
Colorado football coach Deion Sanders issued another warning of sorts after his team crushed Utah on Saturday at home, 49-24.
His team is two wins from landing in the Big 12 Conference championship game but still hasn’t really performed the way he’d like. Remember what he told the world after being hired in Boulder two years ago? “We comin.” The Buffaloes (8-2) are still on their way. “We haven’t even put it all together yet,” Sanders said at his postgame news conference in Boulder. “Like we haven’t even played our best game. That should be in itself scary. Like man, when I said, `We comin,’ we still coming. We never stopped coming. We are coming, and we ain’t nearly there yet.” Read more
The sad, silly spectacle of Jake Paul and Mike Tyson. By Sally Jenkins / Wash Post
The Mike Tyson vs. Jake Paul charade had a lesson about true power vs. pixels, if you could get through all the nonsense.
In one corner of Jerry Jones’s sun palace in Arlington, Texas, was a 58-year-old with true scars and flaws, a man who still showed a hint of real menace as he won the first round of this strange, tinny exhibition Friday night. Whose demons showed even when he smiled. Who had bleeding ulcers. Who did prison time for rape. Who grew up in tenements of Brownsville in Brooklyn, where his mother did sex work to feed him. Who became the undisputed world heavyweight champion at 20 and whose 50 wins, with 44 knockouts, were nothing compared with his battering youth and his battles with drugs. You want something real, read his autobiography, “Undisputed Truth,” if you can bear it.
In the other corner, a 27-year-old vlogger from the suburb of Westlake, Ohio, without a single discernible real-world experience or accomplishment, who was born the year Tyson bit Evander Holyfield’s ear off. In 2017, Paul released the track “It’s Everyday, Bro,” in which he championed his burgeoning internet following with lines such as this: “It’s everyday, bro, with the Disney Channel flow, 5 mill on YouTube in six months, never done before.” And don’t forget this immortal couplet: “And I just dropped some new merch and it’s selling like a god, church.” Read more
Related: A young journalist lobs Mike Tyson a softball — and gets a reality check. By Des Bieler / Wash Post
Billionaire Michael Jordan Tears Through $64 Million Worth Properties Amid Secret Hunt for New Home, As per Reports. B Pritish Ganguly / Essentially Sports
After dominating the hooping arena for almost two decades, Michael Jordan, with $3.5 billion net worth, is now a business mogul.
As we saw in his the last dance documentary, MJ lead a lavish lifestyle. Mansions are one of his essential costs. And over the years, he’s amassed a portfolio worth around $60 million, filled with extravagant properties. Recently, after finally letting go of his Chicago mansion, it was speculated that MJ was on the hunt for something new. And it looks like that search has brought him to a rather exotic location. Read more
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