Featured
Learning and Healing in the Archive of Black Thought. By Edna Bonhomme / The Nation
Farah Jasmine Griffin’s memoir Read Until You Understand doubles as a syllabus, taking readers on a personal tour through Black intellectual history.
February marked the 10th anniversary of Trayvon Martin’s death. Since the killing of the 17-year-old, the raw outpouring of public grief and rage in Black communities has created new—and at times discordant—social movements targeting racial discrimination. But there has also been a backlash in the struggle over how the US public should learn and remember its violent history.
“He was there on Friday night, and then he was not,” writes professor Farah Jasmine Griffin in Read Until You Understand. She is referring to her father, who died at the age of 45, when she was just 9. “How do we recover from grief through reading?” Griffin asks. Her answer is that, through the “profound wisdom of Black life and literature” (to quote a portion of the book’s subtitle), one might find some measure of fortitude and solace. Read more
Political / Social
How will the Inflation Reduction Act help Black communities? Garren Keith Gaynor / The Grio
In an interview with theGrio, Cecilia Rouse, chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisors, called the IRA a “historic piece of legislation” and emphasized the economic benefits for Black households.
“In this historic moment, Democrats sided with the American people and every single Republican in the Congress sided with the special interests in this vote,” said President Biden in his remarks at the IRA signing ceremony. “We can protect the already powerful or show the courage to build a future where everybody has an even shot. That’s the America I believe in.” Read more
St. Louis combats opioid crisis as overdose deaths skyrocket among Black Americans. By John Yang and Mike Fritz / PBS
More Americans died from drug overdoses last year than ever before. And while deaths are up across nearly every demographic since the start of the pandemic, there’s been an especially alarming spike in overdose deaths among Black Americans. John Yang reports from St. Louis on the growing public health crisis. Read more
Are Latino voters really moving right? The end of Roe may muddy the picture. By Salome Gomez-Upegui / The Guardian
Latinos support reproductive rights by large margins – and that could prove a powerful mobilizing tool in the midterms
Historically, Latinos have focused on issues such as economics, jobs, education and immigration to determine their vote – areas in which the GOP believes it has an upper hand among more moderate voters. However, the quickly changing landscape of sexual and reproductive rights in the United States might influence what matters most to Latino voters. Abortion bans are expected to have a greater effect on women of color, and Latina women account for about 25% of abortion patients in the US. Read more
Black Mississippi Residents Sue Police Department for Racial Harassment. By Kalyn Womack / The Root
The lawsuit states the city is under its own martial law with Black citizens as hostages.
Five Black residents of Lexington, Mississippi have filed a lawsuit against the police department for infringing upon their constitutional rights and racially targeting them, according to documents obtained by USA TODAY. Previously, the department’s police chief was fired for bragging about shooting and killing Black people in a racist rant. This suit was nearly inevitable. Read more
2 Former Minneapolis Officers Say They Rejected Plea Deals In George Floyd Killing. By Steve Karnowski / HuffPost
Tou Thao and J. Alexander Kueng are charged with aiding and abetting both second-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter in Floyd’s death.
Two former Minneapolis police officers charged in George Floyd’s killing told a judge Monday that they have rejected plea deals that would have resulted in three-year sentences, setting the stage for trial in October. Tou Thao and J. Alexander Kueng are charged with aiding and abetting both second-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter in Floyd’s death. They and Thomas Lane were working with Derek Chauvin when he pinned Floyd’s neck with his knee for more than nine minutes as the 46-year-old Black man said he couldn’t breathe and eventually grew still. Read more
Black farmers say Inflation Reduction Act reneges on promises. By Khristopher J. Brooks / ABC News
Lester Bonner, a tobacco farmer in Virginia, opened his mailbox one morning last June to find a letter from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The five-page missive said the remaining balance on a $50,000 federal loan he’d received to help him buy his farm would soon be wiped clean. “It was going to release the greatest burden of my life,” Bonner, 75, told CBS MoneyWatch. “That’s what’s been setting me back this whole time.” It’s been more than a year since Bonner, who is Black, got that letter from the USDA, but his loan still hasn’t been forgiven. Now he believes it will never be erased. Read more
California becomes first state to break down Black employee data by lineage. By Jaclyn Diaz / NPR
California is the first state to require its agencies to present a separate demographic category for descendants of enslaved people when collecting state employee data. According to a recently signed law, the State Controller’s Office and the Department of Human Resources can start collecting this information as soon as Jan. 1, 2024. These demographic categories will include African Americans who are descendants of people who were enslaved in the United States and Black employees who are not descendants of people who were enslaved in the United States. Read more
Byron Allen aims to add more inclusion in the news and media industry through purchase of Black News Channel. By
In July, Allen was approved by a Florida bankruptcy court to buy BNC for $11 million from the network’s former owner Shahid Khan. BNC is now part of Allen Media Group’s company portfolio of 12 television networks, including the Weather Channel. The acquisition also brought a change to the network’s name: it now goes by TheGrio, the West African term for storyteller. In a recent interview with CNN, Allen said that he wants the channel to be more inclusive, and that he doesn’t think there’s a need for a “Black news channel,” but rather a “good news channel.” He added that TheGrio will be “more focused on lifestyle, entertainment, news and sports.” Read more
Building Black Medical Schools. By Denise Hawkins / Diverse Issues in Higher Education
Between the late 1800s and the early 1900s, there were 13 historically Black medical schools that operated in seven states, from Louisiana to Pennsylvania, according to the JAMA Network article. They shuttered after the Flexner Report, but before they did, the schools collectively graduated more than 700 Black doctors, the researchers found. Today, there are four historically Black medical schools in operation: Meharry Medical College, Howard University College of Medicine, Morehouse School of Medicine, and Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science. More are planned. Read more
Ethics / Morality / Religion
J. Deotis Roberts, a pioneer of Black theology, dies at 95. By Harrison Smith / Wash Post
The night of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in 1968, the Rev. J. Deotis Roberts was attending a conference at Duke University, listening to German theologian Jürgen Moltmann present a paper on the theology of hope. Dr. Roberts, a soft-spoken Baptist minister and theology professor at Howard University in Washington, had spent years wrestling with philosophical questions about God, existence and meaning. Now he began to wonder what Moltmann’s theology — what any theology — had to say to “a hopeless people” living in an age of anger and despair. Read more
Catholic Order Struggles to Raise $100 Million to Atone for Slave Labor. By Rachel L. Swan / NYT
Jesuits established a trust to answer for their history of enslaving Black people. But frustrated descendants tell Rome the order is “not delivering in deed.”
A prominent order of Catholic priests vowed last year to raise $100 million to atone for its participation in the American slave trade. At the time, church leaders and historians said it would be the largest effort by the Roman Catholic Church to make amends for the buying, selling and enslavement of Black people in the United States. But 16 months later, cash is only trickling in. Read more
Interfaith summit dreams of America as a potluck, not a battlefield. By Bob Smietana / RNS
Hundreds of interfaith campus leaders gathered in Chicago to reimagine America as a potluck, where everyone is welcome — rather than a melting pot.
“People are desperate for a place to talk about things like politics where it’s not going to get too aggressive,” said DeLeon, a student at the University of North Florida, where she works with the school’s interfaith office. “Everyone has morals, everyone has these codes of value. And I think there’s so much more similarity than difference. We just have to look for it and be intentional about it.” Read more
The God I Know Is Not a Culture Warrior. By Tish Harrison Warren / NYT
Sometimes, in order to retain a “remembrance of God,” I have to take a break from our societal discourse around faith, which can minimize who I imagine God to be. Practices like gathered worship, silence, reading the Scriptures and prayer remind me that if God is real, there are far more interesting, lasting and confounding things about God than what can be captured in our public discourse. Read more
Historical / Cultural
American Democracy Was Never Designed to Be Democratic. By Louis Menand / The New Yorker
The partisan redistricting tactics of cracking and packing aren’t merely flaws in the system—they are the system.
To look on the bright side for a moment, one effect of the Republican assault on elections—which takes the form, naturally, of the very thing Republicans accuse Democrats of doing: rigging the system—might be to open our eyes to how undemocratic our democracy is. Strictly speaking, American government has never been a government “by the people.” Read more
How Policing Black Women’s Bodies Built the Modern City. By Simon Balto / AAIHS
In a statement both unfair and true, I wish Anne Gray Fischer’s The Streets Belong to Us had come out a decade ago
These questions about gender, and the ways gender intersects with race and class, are Fischer’s central concerns as she interrogates the history of policing. Primarily though not exclusively focused on the cities of Los Angeles, Boston, and Atlanta, The Streets Belong to Us is about the ways police power was not just mapped upon, but built upon the bodies of Black women. As Fischer reminds us, “it is not enough to say that women are also policed or differently policed. Women’s bodies are an important and overlooked site on which police power—and the modern city—have been built” (4). Read more
Academy apologizes to Sacheen Littlefeather, who refused an Oscar on Marlon Brando’s behalf. By Scottie Andrew / CNN
Sacheen Littlefeather had only 60 seconds to speak at the 1973 Academy Awards. In her brief speech, she refused the Oscar for best actor on behalf of Marlon Brando, faced a mixture of loud boos and cheers, and defended the rights of Native Americans on national TV. Almost 50 years later, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is formally apologizing to Littlefeather for the mistreatment she experienced during her speech and in the years to follow. Read more
Julius Eastman’s Great Expectations. By David Hajdu / The Nation
The neglected music of a revolutionary 20th-century composer continues to shock and awe.
Eastman appears never to have been much interested in technical particulars. As Renee Levine Packer recounts, he learned the piano easily as a child growing up in Ithaca, N.Y. After a year of study as a piano major at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, he applied for a transfer to the composition program, and the application posed the question “What is your ultimate goal in studying music?” Eastman answered: “To obtain wisdom.” Read more
All comedy is Black: How Richard Pryor killed the white comedian. By Michael Harriot / The Grio
Richard Pryor is the template for all stand-up comedy. Not only was he better at making people laugh than anyone has ever been at anything, but his greatness is also as incomprehensible. It can’t be contextualized by watching his stand-up or looking at his career accomplishments. Even those old enough to remember him at the height of his illustrious career cannot grasp how funny he was. Richard Pryor was the greatest. Richard Pryor is the greatest. And as long as people stand on stage and attempt to make people laugh, Richard Pryor will always be the greatest. His greatness overflows the concept of time. Read more
Solange Knowles becomes the first Black woman to compose music for NYC Ballet. By Claretta Bellamy / NBC News
Singer and songwriter Solange Knowles can soon add ballet composer to her impressive list of accomplishments. The New York City Ballet announced Monday that Knowles, 36, is composing music for its Fall Fashion Gala, making her the first Black woman to have composed a score for a production. The event, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary, will debut Sept. 28 at Lincoln Center in New York City. It will honor actor Sarah Jessica Parker, the ballet’s vice chair. Read more
Snoop Dogg Launches ‘Snoop Loopz’ Breakfast Cereal. By Jazmin Tolliver / HuffPost
From his own wine line to branded cannabis, Snoop Dogg isn’t shy about embarking on new business endeavors. And now, the West Coast rapper is introducing his own breakfast cereal — Snoop Loopz. Not to be mistaken with the childhood classic Froot Loops, the iconic artist’s eponymous breakfast treat will be sold at various grocery stores through his Broadus Foods business, which he shares with fellow business mogul and rapper Master P. Read more
Sports
NBA Won’t Host Election Day Games In Effort To Increase Voter Turnout. By Lydia O’Connor / HuffPost
For many Americans living in states with strict voter suppression laws, Election Day is their only chance to cast a ballot.
The NBA announced Tuesday that it won’t host any basketball games this upcoming Election Day to encourage voter turnout. “The scheduling decision came out of the NBA family’s focus on promoting nonpartisan civic engagement and encouraging fans to make a plan to vote during midterm elections,” the league said in a tweet. Read more
In His Football Return, Deshaun Watson Tries a New Move — Contrition. By Jenny Vrentas / NYT
Accused of sexual misconduct by more than two dozen women, Watson said he was “truly sorry.” His lack of remorse had been cited as part of the rationale for his six-game regular-season suspension.
After a 19-month absence from football, Deshaun Watson started an N.F.L. preseason game on Friday night. Before the game began, the Cleveland Browns quarterback did something else that had been nearly as long coming: He apologized for the first time since more than two dozen women said he sexually assaulted or harassed them in massage appointments. As Watson took the field, met by boos from the sparse crowd at Jacksonville’s TIAA Bank Field, a league adviser was continuing to weigh his eligibility for the upcoming regular season. Read more
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