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Race Inquiry Digest (Aug 12) – Important Current Stories On Race In America

August 12, 2021

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Follow the money: Understanding the deep roots of Donald Trump’s coup attempt. By Chauncey Devega / Salon 

Donald Trump and his allies and followers were involved in a conspiracy against American democracy, the Constitution, the general welfare and the rule of law. Trump may have been president by title, but not in spirit or through his actions. At almost every opportunity he betrayed the presidential oath and worked to undermine the United States and its interests.

Trump and his regime debased America’s democracy and political culture, elevating neofascism and white supremacy in an attempt to create a new form of apartheid.  The damage Trumpism caused to American society has created a full-blown political and social crisis. Matters are so dire that many observers, including President Biden, have described the Age of Trump and beyond as the greatest threat to American democracy since the Civil War. Read more 

Related: Thwarting the Republican Backlash Against Democracy. By Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis / The Nation

Related: How Democrats can neutralize the biggest threat to democracy. By Jennifer Rubin / Wash Post

Political / Social

Merrick Garland: It is time for Congress to act again to protect the right to vote. By Merrick Garland / Wash Post

In a column published after his death, Lewis recalled an important lesson taught by Martin Luther King Jr.: “Each of us has a moral obligation to stand up, speak up and speak out. When you see something that is not right, you must say something. You must do something.” On this anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, we must say again that it is not right to erect barriers that make it harder for millions of eligible Americans to vote. And it is time for Congress to act again to protect that fundamental right. Read more 

Related: Texas Republicans move to arrest statehouse Democrats thwarting their voter suppression schemes. By Hunter / Daily Kos

Related: John Roberts and the Supreme Court might block anything Democrats do on voting right. By Tierney Sneed / CNN

Related: Senate adjourns until September without advancing voting rights legislation. By Mike DeBonis / Wash Post 

The ominous reason why Republican opposition to Biden’s infrastructure spending crumbled. By Amanda Marcotte / Salon

With surprising haste for the U.S. Senate, the Democratic majority passed a $3.5 trillion blueprint for a budget reconciliation bill in the early hours of Wednesday morning, just after passing a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill. And Democrats could not be more excited, as the blueprint covers a whole host of long-standing priorities, from fighting climate change to creating universal prekindergarten. The blueprint was largely written by Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who released a statement calling it “the most consequential piece of legislation for working people, the elderly, the children, the sick and the poor since FDR and the New Deal of the 1930s.” Read more 

Related: Senate Democrats Begin $3.5 Trillion Push for ‘Big, Bold’ Social Change. By Emily Cochrane / NYT 

The GOP’s death cult comes for the children, By Sophia Tesfaye / Salon

There is little doubt that the pandemic has exacerbated the fears parents have about their children’s well-being. The typical parental anxiety now comes with worries about the latest delta variant of COVID-19 —which appears to spread more easily in children than the initial coronavirus outbreak — questions on whether their children are going to have to wear masks when they go back to school, and anticipation for a yet-to-be approved vaccine for children under 12. Read more 

Reparations can’t wait for Congress. Try the local option. By Robin Rue Simmons / Wash Post

This year, Congress may finally vote on reparations — a bill to study how African Americans might be compensated for centuries of enslavement and its vestiges, which wreaked untold economic damage that continues to this day. Thirty-two years after H.R. 40 was introduced, a bill passed out of the House Judiciary Committee in April for consideration by the full House. But given the Senate filibuster and Republican hostility, an executive order is a more promising path to a reparations victory for Americans of African descent. Read more 

Biden nominee would be first Black man to hold top federal prosecutor job in Manhattan. By Reuters / NBC News

President Joe Biden on Tuesday nominated veteran prosecutor Damian Williams to be the U.S. attorney for Manhattan, which would put him in charge of one of the most high-profile federal prosecutor offices in the country. Biden also announced seven other U.S. attorney nominations, including the Eastern District of New York as well as the Eastern and Western districts of Virginia. If confirmed by the U.S. Senate, Williams would become the first Black man to oversee the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. He currently serves as chief of a securities task force in that office. Read more 

Biden must act to get racism out of automated decision-making. By ReNika Moore / Wash Post

In 1956, the Eisenhower administration launched the multibillion-dollar Interstate Highway System, creating a transportation network that indisputably paved the way for immense economic growth. But it also exacted a devastating cost: The new highways were often routed through older, thriving communities, displacing more than 1 million Americans — the vast majority of whom were Black and low-income. In some cities, they cut off Black neighborhoods from quality jobs, schools and housing, solidifying racial and economic segregation. The impact of this disruption is still felt today. Now, the Biden administration is involved in a similarly game-changing investment — the development of artificial intelligence. Despite Biden’s announced commitment to advancing racial justice, not a single appointee to the task force has focused experience on civil rights and liberties in the development and use of AI. Read more 

Racism, diversity in the military: Republicans ignore Black troops. By Anthony G. Brown / USA Today

After a reckoning on systemic racism, we knew the backlash wasn’t far behind. Many Republicans have made clear their political strategy moving forward is to attack institutions putting in the work to promote diversity, inclusion and equity. Our military is just the latest flashpoint. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, gave an impassioned defense this summer of critical race theory and ensuring our armed forces represent the face of the country they protect. He was attacked by lawmakers such as Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., and conservative media personalities claiming he was simply posturing. Former President Donald Trump later even called for his resignation. Read  more    

Cleveland residents look to take police reform into their own hands. By Emmanuel Felton / Wash Post

There was a time when Brenda Bickerstaff believed the Justice Department could fix this city’s police department. When Bickerstaff’s brother was shot and killed by police in January 2002, the Cleveland Division of Police was already under federal investigation, and officials had interviewed her as part of the probe. She remembers thinking she had found the people who were going to help her family get justice. But 20 years and two federal probes later, Bickerstaff thinks it’s time for residents to take the lead in transforming the only police department in the nation that has entered into federal oversight twice. She is now part of a group of Black women pushing a reform effort that includes, among other things, a November ballot initiative for a civilian oversight panel that would have the authority to fire problem officers. Read more 

Black Colleges, From the Start, Were Given Less and Expected to Do More. By Anthony Abraham Jack / NYT

“The Blacker the college, the sweeter the knowledge,” the old saying goes. And with the recent appointments of Nikole Hannah-Jones and Ta-Nehisi Coates at Howard University, one may hear it with renewed vigor. When looking at the history of Black colleges, however, one can extend the maxim to include “the harder fought the battle.” From their inception, colleges established to educate the descendants of enslaved people have been given less and expected to do more. Read more 

Tuskegee descendants, hip-hop anthems and hustlers are all being deployed to convince Black people to get vaccinated.  By Lonnae O’neal / The Undefeated

With the coronavirus Delta variant surging and many people citing the Tuskegee Syphilis Study to justify mistrust why they haven’t gotten a shot, the descendants of the men in that study gathered in Washington recently to deliver a message: Keep the Tuskegee name out of your mouths. That effort is part of a wave of campaigns, from national to hyperlocal, leveraging Black gathering places, organizations and cultural touchstones to educate and urge Black people to get the shots. They acknowledge the justifiable history of distrust in the public health system, and try to answer it with myriad approaches. Read more 

Gates Foundation awards $1 million to improve math education for Black students K-12. / The Grio

Bob Hughes, director of K-12 Education at the Gates Foundation told theGrio exclusively, the organization decided to focus on math because it noticed that “learning loss in math is even greater than learning loss of literacy” and the pandemic only widened the gap. The philanthropy consortium announced on Wednesday that grantees representing a diverse and impressive cohort of organizations will receive funding to make Algebra 1 more accessible, relevant, and collaborative for students who are Black, Latinx, English Learners, and/or experiencing poverty.  Read more 

For Black Mothers, Joy Is a Weapon. By Leah Wright Rigueur / The Atlantic

My first two children entered the world to the sound of my laughter—peals of uncontrollable laughter. When my third child was born on a cruelly hot night last summer in a sterile delivery room, his experience was no different. My reaction to birthing a child may have seemed bizarre to a besieged and battle-weary hospital staff in the midst of a pandemic, but I believe that my joy was a normal response to my scenario. Celebratory joy felt particularly appropriate for the occasion given the reality of Black mothers’ experiences in America: a global health pandemic, a nationwide racial reckoning, and horrifying rates of Black maternal mortality. Read more 

Historical / Cultural

No Common Ground” Makes the History of Confederate Monuments Clear By Eric Herschthal / The New Republic

In the year since the murder of George Floyd by a white police officer, and the mass protests that followed, Confederate monuments have come down with astonishing speed. According to a February 2021 report by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which keeps the most exhaustive database of Confederate symbols nationwide, 94 monuments were taken down in 2020—nearly twice as many as in the four years prior combined. Read more 

The Black Reporter Who Exposed a Lie About the Atom Bomb. By William J. Broad / NYT

“Loeb Reflects On Atomic Bombed Area,” read the headline in The Atlanta Daily World of Oct. 5, 1945, two months after Hiroshima’s ruin. In the world of Black newspapers, that name alone was enough to attract readers. Charles H. Loeb was a Black war correspondent whose articles in World War II were distributed to papers across the United States by the National Negro Publishers Association. In the article, Mr. Loeb told how bursts of deadly radiation had sickened and killed the city’s residents. His perspective, while coolly analytic, cast light on a major wartime cover up. Read more 

An Undersung Master of Jazz Gets His Day. By Sheldon Pearce / The New Yorker

The multi-instrumentalist and composer Brian Jackson is a lesser-known musical pioneer. Born and raised in Brooklyn, he picked up an appreciation for jazz from his parents, and he studied music as a child in Fort Greene. In 1969, at sixteen, Jackson went to Lincoln University, in Philadelphia, where he met the then-twenty-year-old poet Gil Scott-Heron. Both had enrolled at Lincoln because Langston Hughes had gone there, and both played the piano. Read more 

Sports

Giannis Is What Happens When N.B.A. Dreams Come True. By Mirin Fader / NYT

The following are excerpts from “Giannis: The Improbable Rise of an NBA MVP” by Mirin Fader. Each morning, Giannis Antetokounmpo would take one last look at the master bedroom in his apartment. He’d make sure the pillows were perfectly fluffed, just in case his parents would somehow arrive in the United States from Greece later in the day. He’d head to the Cousins Center, the Milwaukee Bucks’ practice facility, hope humming inside him. Read more 

$6M in NBA grants go to Black-owned businesses and youth-focused groups. By Curtis Bunn / NBC News

he NBA Foundation was born out of the 2020 social justice movement that followed the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis by a police officer. The Milwaukee Bucks protested by not playing in a playoff game after the shooting of Jacob Blake by police in nearby Kenosha, Wisconsin, and the reverberations from their stand inspired the league to create the foundation. “The league came together and focused on economic opportunity for Black youth, ages 14 to 24,” Greg Taylor, the foundation’s executive director, said. “I think in many ways the NBA has a tremendous history around being involved in issues of social justice and civil rights, and the origin of the foundation is standing on that history. Read more

Olympic Gold Medalist Sherone Simpson and Sports Psychologist Dr. Candice Williams Weigh In on the Mental Fragility of Some Black Female Athletes.  By Rae Williams / Atlanta Black  Star

Jamaican Olympic track and field gold and silver medalist Sherone Simpson is no stranger to the mental pressure of sports.  “It is very important that we know when the time comes to leave a sport, or when we know that we are not at our best and we have to take a break.  Because that break is what will help the athlete to get back stronger,” Simpson said.  “Especially on the big stage — World Championships, Olympics — as athletes we have to be mentally ready. It’s not all about being physically prepared, but also we have to make sure that our mental state is intact,” Simpson added.  Read more

Coco Gauff’s tennis success has given her a platform. She wants to use it. By Liz Clarke / Wash Post

Coco Gauff was 9 or 10, as she recalls, when her mother gave her a journal, explaining that it was important she have a private place to write down her feelings or anything she wanted. Gauff has kept a journal ever since, scribbling a few sentences when she has the urge, skipping entries for weeks at a time and writing expansively on other occasions. But Gauff said she never understood the true value of journaling until the past few weeks — a span in which a coronavirus diagnosis scuttled her participation in the Tokyo Olympics, gymnast Simone Biles withdrew from most of her competitions and Gauff reflected on the mental health challenges and weight of expectations shouldered by professional athletes. Read more 

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