Featured
Tucker Carlson Brought TV Racism Into The 21st Century. att Shuham and Christopher Mathias / HuffPost
The sudden departure of cable’s top news host shocked the country. But his legacy won’t disappear so quickly.
He used his prime-time slot to deliver talking points that were manufactured on the internet’s most noxious message boards and websites, normalizing them for a nightly audience of millions. Carlson’s message sounds familiar at this point because of its dominance in politics: America’s liberal elite, he spent years alleging, is destroying the country by subverting white people’s place atop the U.S. political hierarchy.
“Let me just state, unequivocally, the country’s being stolen from American citizens as we watch,” he said in 2021, during a discussion of undocumented immigrants in the United States. The liberal watchdog group Media Matters has kept an ongoing tally of such racist one-liners. It runs to dozens of pages. Read more
Related: How Tucker Carlson Stoked White Fear to Conquer Cable. By Nicholas Confessore / NYT
Political / Social
The corporate attack on democracy. By Chauncey Devega / Salon
Fox has not been cowed or humbled by the Dominion lawsuit and settlement. It most certainly will not stop serving as the de facto propaganda outlet of the Republican Party.
Contrary to what many people had hoped and wished for, Dominion Voting Systems’ settlement in its defamation lawsuit against Fox “News” for nearly 800 million dollars — the largest defamation settlement in United States history — is not some great victory for American democracy. In many ways, the outcome is a reminder of how corporate power and greed are antithetical to and actively undermine real democracy. Read more
Why Kamala Harris Matters So Much in 2024. By Thomas L Friedman / NYT
There are three things that absolutely cannot be allowed to happen: Israel cannot be allowed to turn into an autocracy like Viktor Orban’s Hungary; Ukraine cannot be allowed to fall to Vladimir Putin; and Donald Trump cannot be allowed to occupy the White House ever again.
If all three were to happen, the world that I want to leave my children and grandchildren could completely collapse. Make no mistake, the vice presidency is really going to matter in an election that is really going to matter. Because I don’t want Biden to win this election with 50.1 percent. I want it to be a landslide rejection of Trumpism and the politics of division. Read more
Sen. Ron Wyden asks Harlan Crow for list of Clarence Thomas gifts. By Zoe Richards / NBC News
Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon requested a full inventory of Harlan Crow’s gifts to Thomas over the years, as well as supporting tax documents.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden on Monday asked conservative billionaire Harlan Crow to provide a full account of extravagant undisclosed trips, gifts and payments he has made to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas over the years. In a letter to Crow, Wyden, D-Ore., requested a complete inventory of Crow’s gifts to Thomas over the years, along with evidence that Crow had complied with federal tax law. Read more
In wake of Ralph Yarl shooting, Black teens face fear and resignation. By Lauren Lumpkin, Emmanuel Felton and Mark Shavin / Wash Post
Tyrell Monroe, 13, and his brother Justin Monroe, 12, in their neighborhood in Washington. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post)
Justin Monroe is not quite a teenager yet. The 12-year-old likes playing basketball and laughing at his big brother’s jokes. He’s not exactly sure what he wants to be when he grows up, but he can see himself as a business owner. What the sixth-grader does know is that “not all cops are actually going to help you in the situation that you’re in,” he said, recalling his mother’s advice. Like many Black moms, Katrice Fuller, has had “the talk” with her young sons. It’s a rite of passage for Black children, the somber conversation about the special rules they must adhere to when talking to police, where to place their hands when pulled over in a traffic stop, tips on how to avoid becoming a target. People are more likely to think they’re dangerous, they’re told, so be careful. Read more
Related: Who is afraid of Ralph Yarl? By Chauncey Devega / Salon
How UNC students view the lawsuit threatening affirmative action. By Reuters and NBC News
Students at UNC say the university should do more to correct its blemished record on race.
In a bustling sunken courtyard at the center of the University of North Carolina’s Chapel Hill campus, a group of students handed out slips of papers with a warning for their peers. “Is diversity at UNC important to you? It’s under threat,” the handouts read. The message came ahead of U.S. Supreme Court rulings in a pair of affirmative action cases this spring, which could drastically alter how race is considered in admissions at North Carolina’s flagship university and other colleges. Read more
AP Black history course will change after months of political discourse, College Board says. By AP and NBC News
The College Board said in a statement it will commit to provide an “unflinching encounter with the facts.”
The College Board says changes will be made to its new AP African American studies course, after critics said the agency bowed to political pressure and removed several topics from the framework, including Black Lives Matter, slavery reparations and queer life. In a statement on Monday, the College Board said the development committee and experts charged with authoring the Advanced Placement course “will determine the details of those changes over the next few months.” Read more
Sheriff’s Office in Rural Kentucky Hires Detective Who Killed Breonna Taylor. Kevin Williams and
Myles Cosgrove, who was fired by the Police Department in Louisville, Ky., after the fatal raid on Ms. Taylor’s apartment, has a new job in Carroll County in northern Kentucky. Shown are About two dozen demonstrators protesting the hiring of Myles Cosgrove on Monday outside of the Carroll County courthouse.Credit…Jon Cherry for The New York Times
Mr. Cosgrove, who is white, was fired by the Louisville Police Department in the aftermath of the nighttime raid, which prompted a wave of protests across the country in the spring and summer of 2020. An F.B.I. report found that he had fired the shot that killed Ms. Taylor, a Black 26-year-old emergency room technician who had hoped to become a nurse. Read more
Florida just expanded private school choice. Here’s what it could mean for public education. By Laura Pappano / Huffpost
In March, Florida became the latest state to dramatically broaden access to public money for private schooling. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legislation making vouchers, worth about $8,500 each, eventually available to all K-12 students, regardless of family income or whether a child has ever attended public school. The vouchers would also be available to home-schooled students, and the ESAs could be used to pay for expenses beyond tuition. But, what can school choice mean for public schools? Read more
At many HBCUs, just 1 in 3 students are men. Here’s why that matters. By Naomi Harris and Skylar Stephens. Wash Post
There’s a dearth of men at many of the nation’s historically Black colleges and universities.
Whether it’s sociology at Claflin University or media law at North Carolina Central University, sometimes there are few to no men in the classes. The faces of the marching bands at places like Howard University are overwhelmingly female. And at Xavier University of Louisiana, all of the male freshmen fit into just one dorm. The university has two, larger dorms for women. Those are symptoms of a broader problem: At many of the nation’s HBCUs, just 1 in 3 undergraduate students are men. It’s true at some of the largest public institutions, including Texas Southern University, and some of the most-selective private ones, such as Howard University. Read more
Don Lemon Ousted From CNN in Move That Left Him ‘Stunned.’ Michael M. Grynbaum, John Koblin and
Mr. Lemon, one of the network’s most recognizable stars, had been under scrutiny since an uproar over on-air remarks he made about women and aging in February.
In an announcement that Mr. Lemon said left him “stunned,” CNN on Monday declared an end to its longtime relationship with Mr. Lemon, a star anchor who was a fixture of the network’s prime-time lineup before enduring a short but controversial tenure as a morning show co-host. Read more
Harry Belafonte, calypso star and civil rights champion, dies at 96. By and
The iconic “Day-O” singer died at his home in New York City, his longtime spokesperson said.
Belafonte’s legacy as an arresting, charismatic singer and actor, which was sealed with the release of the landmark album “Calypso” in 1956, spanned more than six decades. Belafonte received most of the major honors the U.S. reserves for its revered artists and performers, among them the Kennedy Center Honors in 1989, the National Medal of Arts in 1994, the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2000, the BET Humanitarian Award in 2006, the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP in 2013 and the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award from the Motion Picture Academy in 2014. Read more
Related: The Harry Belafonte Speech That Changed My Life. By Charles M. Blow / NYT
Ethics / Morality / Religion
Muslim students lead protest for adequate prayer space at New York’s Baruch College. By Heerea Kaur Rikhraj / RNS
Thursday’s protest, coming on the final day of Ramadan, was one of the larger weekly protests students have organized over the past two months.
Loud chants carried through the main plaza at Baruch College in the early afternoon on Thursday (April 20) as a group of around 40 students protested near the Office of Student Life. The students, a majority of them Muslim, were calling on the administration to offer better, more accessible interfaith spaces. Read more
The Damage of Division. By Mike Cosper and Nicole Martin / Christianity Today Podcast
Remembering the Holocaust with our Jewish neighbors, lamenting the present in racially divided America, and searching for faithfulness and hope in the church.
Many people know nothing about the Holocaust, says special guest Dr. Malka Simkovich in this week’s episode of The Bulletin. Even if they do know, they’ve heard 6 million deaths is an exaggeration. It might be hard to believe this is true, until you read the news about the recent shooting of 16-year-old Ralph Yarl. These two particular tragedies are linked by a common heartbreaking thread: the danger of turning people into abstractions. Read more
How has the Tree of Life shooting changed my life? One victim’s impact statement. By Beth Kissileff / RNS
This is a memorial inside the locked doors of the dormant landmark Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood on Wednesday, Oct. 26, 2022. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)
It’s kind of a ridiculous assignment: Use words to describe and contain the fear and anxiety that have engulfed me, my family, my synagogue, my entire Squirrel Hill neighborhood since a gunman unleashed his hatred on Oct. 27, 2018, at the Tree of Life Synagogue, blocks from my home, killing 11 Jews. Do this in such a way that a judge will be able to take your feelings into account when sentencing a defendant. It can’t be done, honestly — there is no way to convey the overall tenor of my life, the feelings of sadness and despair that have overcome me and lead me to sob uncontrollably at times. Read more
Florida’s Catholic bishops criticize DeSantis for lowering death penalty threshold. By Kate Scanlon / NCR
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill April 20 that will eliminate the state’s requirement that juries in capital punishment cases agree unanimously to recommend death sentences, lowering the number of jurors needed to hand down a death sentence to the lowest threshold of any U.S. state.
Florida’s Catholic bishops criticized the legislation, SB 450, which reduces the number of jurors needed to recommend a death sentence from 12 to eight. “It is revealing that Governor DeSantis is now suddenly pushing full-force to expand Florida’s death penalty, just as he’s expected to formally announce a presidential bid,” Vaillancourt Murphy said. “It is not lost on us that people with political aspirations often use executions as a way to gain political support. The death penalty should not be used to score political points. Human beings should not be used as political pawns — including human beings on death row.” Read more
Historical / Cultural
Without Indigenous History, There Is No U.S. History. By Ned Blackhawk / Time
Pueblo Indigenous people at the Ceremonial Cave of the Frijoles Canyon in New Mexico. George Rinhart—Corbis/Getty Images
It is time to build a new foundation for American history. Its old paradigms have grown thin and worn. For so long, the field’s exclusive focus on Europeans and their descendants has left us with more problems than answers. Generations of other imperialists, for example, preceded the Puritans, who we have been told governed a commonwealth in the “wilderness.” Similarly, histories that celebrated pioneers upon western “frontiers” have remained incomplete without attention to broader tales of expansion and empire. If history provides the common soil for a nation’s growth and a window into its future, it is time to reimagine U.S. history and to do so outside the tropes of discovery that have often bred exclusion and misunderstanding. Read more
Black Soldiers and their Families’ Activism during the Antebellum Era. By Holly A. Pinheiro / AAIHS
Contrabands coming into camp in consequence of the proclamation, 1863 (NYPL)
Collectively, these northern Black families demonstrated, throughout the antebellum era, that they were essential agents of societal change. Whether it was racist social norms or various state and federal anti-Black laws, northern Black families repeatedly fought their appearances in the pursuits to uplift each other while simultaneously challenging the pervasiveness of systematic racism in numerous free states. Read more
Related: Black Burials and Civil War Forgetting in Olustee, Florida. By Barbara A. Gannon / AAIHS
Related: The Families of the Louisiana Native Guards. By Anthony J. Cade II / AAIHS
Black and White Descendants of Robert E. Lee Met for a Reunion at the Arlington House in Virginia. By Sharell Burt / Black Enterprise
Descendants of Confederate General Robert E. Lee and descendants of slaves owned by Lee pose for a photo during a reunion at Lee’s former plantation home, the Arlington House, at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia, on April 22, 2023. (Photo by Stefani Reynolds / AFP) (Photo by STEFANI REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images)
The celebration, called “Finding Our Voice,” drew a crowd of about 100 people. Stephen Hammond, the organizer and the descendent of a Lee family slave, said this has been a lifelong goal of his. “It’s important that we get to know one another because our ancestors existed in this space together,” Hammond said, according to GBH News. He also said there is power in connecting. Read more
Related: Fort Lee will be renamed Fort Gregg-Adams to honor Black Army pioneers. By Emma Sanchez / NBC News
The enslaved artisan behind Thomas Jefferson’s newly restored Va. estate. By J. Michael Welton / Wash Post
Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest estate in Forest, Va., by Lynchburg, is nearing the end of a 34-year restoration process. (Travis McDonald)
When the first phase of the 34-year restoration of Poplar Forest, Thomas Jefferson’s private retreat in rural Virginia, is celebrated Friday, it will reveal more than the third U.S. president’s gifts as an architect. It will also lift a veil on the complex relationship between Jefferson, who enslaved more than 600 people over the course of his life, and John Hemings, the finish carpenter who carried out his enslaver’s wishes in walnut, poplar and pine. Read more
The Woman Shaping a Generation of Black Thought. By Jenna Wotham / NYT
Christina Sharpe is expanding the vocabulary of life in slavery’s long shadow — peeling back the meaning of familiar words and resurrecting neglected history.
The book Sharpe is best known for, “In the Wake: On Blackness and Being,” landed in the fall of 2016, just as the final delusions of a post-racial America were disintegrating amid the rise of white nationalism. The book begins with a stark declaration: Black death is foundational — even necessary — to American democracy. Death, literally, but also spiritually, culturally, socially. Sharpe is not the first academic, poet or artist to assert that the negation of Black humanity that began with the Middle Passage is still animating American life, but she offered a new metaphorical framework for understanding how. Read more
Why this new romantic comedy with Black leads has captured hearts around the world. By Char Adams / NBC News
Black social media users are falling in love with Hulu’s new British rom-com “Rye Lane.” Shown are David Jonsson as Dom and Vivian Oparah as Yas in “Rye Lane.”Chris Harris / Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures via Hulu
These are just a few ways that viewers have described “Rye Lane,” Hulu’s new British rom-com starring Vivian Oparah and David Jonsson. It’s not just the bright, fun energy of this film, viewers on social media say, it’s seeing two Black people fall for each other, breaking away from typical romantic comedies where Black best friends to white protagonists are relegated to the sidelines. Read more
Two Chefs on Keeping Alive, and Redefining, Soul Food. By Korsha Wilson /NYT
At their restaurants in New York and Chicago, Shenarri Freeman and Erick Williams are celebrating the cuisine in their own ways.
The canon of soul food and Southern food is the product of a melding of American ingredients and memories of dishes from places once called home. When, over the course of decades, the Great Migration moved thousands of African Americans across the country toward the North and the West, foods like fried chicken, collard greens and black-eyed peas traveled as well, creating the genre known as soul food. Now more than a hundred years removed from the beginnings of the Great Migration, the chefs Shenarri Freeman, 30, and Erick Williams, 48, are celebrating and redefining soul food. Ms. Freeman, raised in Richmond, Va., is the executive chef at Cadence, a plant-based, Southern-inspired restaurant in Manhattan, and will soon be opening Ubuntu, a vegan African restaurant, in Los Angeles. Read more
Sports
Black QBs will rule this NFL draft. In 1999, they represented change. By Michael Lee / Wash Post
Quarterbacks Tim Couch, Daunte Culpepper, Donovan McNabb, Cade McNown and Akili Smith during the 1999 NFL Draft. (Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)
On Thursday night, Bryce Young, CJ Stroud and Anthony Richardson are expected to become the first trio of Black quarterbacks since that year to be drafted in the first round. But this time feels different. Most of the battles their predecessors fought have been won. The unwarranted questions about the Black quarterback’s acumen, desire and leadership aren’t asked as often and certainly not as loudly. Read more
‘It’s our duty to give back’: Giannis Antetokounmpo and family’s charity inspired by his late father. By Marc J. Spears
After Charles Antetokounmpo’s death, the Milwaukee Bucks star and his brothers set out to inspire ‘on a global level.’ Shown are Brothers Giannis Antetokounmpo (left) and Thanasis Antetokounmpo (right) of the Milwaukee Bucks react to a 3-point shot during the second half of a game against the Chicago Bulls at Fiserv Forum on April 5 in Milwaukee. Stacy Revere/Getty Images
The Charles Antetokounmpo Family Foundation, a charitable nonprofit organization, was launched on June 24, 2022. The foundation operates in “places central to the Antetokounmpo family journey” — Charles Antetokounmpo’s native Nigeria, Greece and in the U.S., where three of his five sons play for the Bucks organization. The foundation invests in local nonprofits and change-makers in those three countries with hopes of making a “a global movement for sustainable social change.” The foundation offers aid to widows, disaster victims, refugees, immigrants, as well as those who need education, shelter, food and mental health assistance. Read more
Herb Douglas, Olympic Medalist Inspired by Jesse Owens, Dies at 101. By Frank Litsky / NYT
Herb Douglas during his college career at the University of Pittsburgh. He won the bronze medal in the long jump at the summer Olympics in London in 1948, the year he graduated. Credit…Detre Library & Archives/ Heinz History Center
Herb Douglas, an Olympic medalist who was inspired as a youth by Jesse Owens, emulated him as a track and field star and then honored his memory by creating an international sports award in Owens’s name, died on Saturday in Pittsburgh. He was 101 and the oldest living U.S. Olympic medalist. Read more
Deion Sanders at Colorado: Sights and sounds from Coach Prime’s snowy, sold-out CU debut. By David Ubben / The Atheletic
Campus is already abuzz Friday afternoon like Saturday holds a high-stakes game against a rival, not an intrasquad scrimmage. The team apparel store is full of fans ripping items off the shelves.
Nothing is going faster than the $74.99 black and white Coach Prime hoodies that signify the arrival of a man who turned Colorado from a 1-11 college football afterthought into a main attraction overnight. The juice in the program has been immediate, though no one has been able to taste the fruit yet. Saturday’s spring game sold out — 45,000 paid $10 for tickets at a place where no more than 17,800 had attended a spring game. Usually, tickets are free. This same event in 2021 and 2022 drew less than 2,000 fans. Season tickets have sold out, too. That hasn’t happened since 1996. 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.