Featured

“I didn’t know she was Black”: Kamala Harris, Donald Trump and skin-color racism. By Mohammad Ali Salih / Salon

Jesse Jackson’s campaign to replace “Black” with “African American” ended with 2020. Now we see its ugly aftermath

Ten presidential campaigns ago, in 1984, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who was almost universally described by media and politicians as the first Black man to run a serious major-party campaign for president, also ran a parallel campaign — against being identified by his skin color. Jackson was among the first major public figures to identify himself as “African-American” rather than “black,” and for the next few decades, many among media people, politicians and the public followed suit, adopting that term. America seemed poised to end one of its ugliest features: identifying its people by the color of their skin.

“Black does not describe our situation,” Jackson said. “We are of African-American heritage. To be called black is baseless.” This new term, he argued, possessed “cultural integrity” and would put those Americans who embraced it in their “proper historical context.” Read more

Editor’s Note: The American “one-drop rule,” where any African ancestry assigns you to the “Black” race has considerably advantaged this community in the United States by expanding the variety of people considered in the group regardless of place of origin. Kamala Harris falls within this rubric. Whether this argues for using “Black” instead of place of origin, e.g. Kamala Harris would be a Jamaican-Indian American, is an open question.

Political / Social

Harris introduces a muscular progressivism. By Jennifer Rubin / Wash Post

Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz have reset the presidential race, turned the campaign into a joyous crusade and given voters a real alternative to MAGA dystopia.

(Those pundits who wanted Biden to dump her from the ticket or thought she was the weakest alternative to him should be eating crow.) Something else is afoot, however. Harris is recapturing issues Republicans have traditionally featured. She touts the eye-popping drop in crime, the tough Biden-Harris border bill and the administration’s vigorous defense of Ukraine against the Russian menace. Read more

Nine Years of Trump Is a Warning We Must Heed. By Jamelle Bouie / NYT (Image CNN)

Apart from Donald Trump, the basic problem of the Republican Party’s so-called fever — the extent to which it has been captured by nihilists and ideological extremists — is that the party is untethered from any electoral dynamic that might force it to moderate its behavior.

The United States will always have a conservative party, but American democracy needs that party to be committed to the maintenance of our democratic institutions. Read more

Teamsters’ Black Caucus Endorses Harris While Parent Union Stays Silent. By Maggie Astor / NYT

The move aligns the caucus with other big organized-labor groups, but the Teamsters president, who spoke at the Republican convention, has indicated he is open to backing Trump.

The National Black Caucus of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters union endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for the presidency on Tuesday, setting it apart from its parent union, which has declined to make an endorsement and whose president spoke at the Republican National Convention. Read more

Never mind the immunity ruling. Trump can be prosecuted for Jan. 6. By Richard Lazarus / Wash Post

Richard Lazarus is the Charles Stebbins Fairchild Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.

The Supreme Court’s recent opinion in Trump v. United States can be fairly — and sharply — criticized for defining the scope of presidential immunity far too broadly. But nothing in the court’s ruling places former president Donald Trump above the law for his alleged criminal acts in trying to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. In fact, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.’s opinion offers a surprisingly clear road map for the successful felony prosecution of Trump. The case against him is now back before U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, and she should follow that clear pathway without further delay. Read more

Ilhan Omar wins primary after other ‘Squad’ members Bush, Bowman lost. By Ken Tran / USA Today

Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., beat back a primary challenger Tuesday in a closely watched race after two of her progressive colleagues lost their own primary bids this year in the face of massive spending from pro-Israel groups.

The Minnesota lawmaker’s victory came after Reps. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., and Cori Bush, D-Mo., all members of the informal group of House lawmakers known as the “Squad,” were booted by more moderate Democrats. Each has been a vocal critic of Israel’s actions in Gaza as the Israel-Hamas war rages on, but Omar entered Tuesday’s race on firmer footing than her fellow lawmakers. Read more

At the Center of the Right-Wing Revival? Hating Immigrants. By Isabela Dias / Mother Jones

To national conservatives, immigrants seem to hold no value unless fully assimilated. And no one drove that point home more forcefully at the inaugural conference than Amy Wax, a controversial University of Pennsylvania law professor, who made a “cultural case for limited immigration.”

Conservatives, she offered, should push for an approach that preserves the country’s identity as a “Western and First World nation” and considers the “practical difficulties of importing large numbers of people from backwards states.” Read more

New College tosses hundreds of books, many on LGBTQ issues, race and women’s rights. By Matt Lavietes / NBC News

A public college in Florida tossed hundreds of books in the trash this week, with many of the discarded titles appearing to be related to LGBTQ issues, race and women’s rights.

The book titles that are visible in the photos include “Cures: A Gay Man’s Odyssey,” “Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe,” “Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom,” “Feminist Thought” and “Race Music: Black Cultures From Bebop to Hip-Hop.” Read more

World News

Biden says admin is ‘closer than we’ve ever been’ to cease-fire deal in Middle East. By Timothy H.J. Nerozzi / Fox News

Biden made the surprise announcement after signing a proclamation establishing a national monument in memorial of the Springfield 1908 Race Riot — a live event to which he arrived noticeably late.

“One of the reasons I was late for y’all is because I was dealing with the cease-fire effort in the Middle East,” Biden told the guests and reporters inside the Oval Office. “And we are closer than we’ve ever been.” A senior Iranian security official has warned that Iran will attack Israel if its talks with Hamas for a cease-fire in Gaza fall apart, a report says. Read more

Possible goals behind Ukraine’s attack on Russian soil : State of the World from NPR. By Michel Martin and Greg Dixon / NPR

A Ukraine’s Humvee armored military vehicle drives past a burning car on a road near the border with Russia, in the Sumy region of Ukraine, on August 14. Roman Pilipey/AFP via Getty Images

Ukraine’s attack into Russian territory surprised many. Including, it would seem, the Russians themselves. But what are the strategic goals Ukraine is hoping to achieve with this move? We hear from a retired U.S. lieutenant general. Listen here

Venezuelans Mourn Loved Ones Killed in Protests, and Last Shreds of Democracy. By Julie Turkewitz / NYT

The nation is in anguish as it buries its dead and enters a new era of authoritarianism.

The country’s authoritarian leader, Nicolás Maduro, had claimed victory, despite overwhelming evidence that the opposition candidate had won. Then he sent security forces to crush dissent.Now, Venezuela is in mourning, not just for the roughly 24 people dead amid violent demonstrations but also for the last shreds of a long-tattered democracy. Whatever small spaces still existed for resistance in the country are vanishing by the day, if not the hour, as an angry Mr. Maduro pummels an electorate that tried to vote him out. Read more

37 Square Feet That Show Brazil’s Racist Past. By Ana Ionova / NYT

In Brazil, rooms for maids, a vestige of the country’s history of slavery, are disappearing or being transformed as the country confronts deeply ingrained inequities.

Maid’s rooms have been a fixture in Brazil’s homes for generations, a vestige of its long history of slavery and a tangible marker of inequality in a country where, after abolition, many affluent families relied on low paid, mostly Black domestic workers to clean, cook and care for children. Some worked around the clock for pennies; others toiled only in exchange for room and board. But Brazil is undergoing a reckoning with its legacy of enslaving people and how this painful past has shaped everything from the economy to architecture. Read more

Ethics / Morality / Religion

Evangelicals for Harris? Democratic ticket draws surprising support. By Liam Adams / USA Today

Harris’ campaign has drawn out more direct support from those who may have sympathized with Democrat ideals but might not have gone out of their way to endorse Biden’s former candidacy.

Those kind of faith leaders have now unified around Harris through groups like Evangelicals for Harris. With backing from a mix of progressive-to-moderate voices, Evangelicals for Harris has sought to offer a counter narrative to evangelicals’ overwhelming support for Trump. Read more

Project 2025’s Christian Nationalist Roots Exposed In Secret Recording. By David Kurtz / TPM

The nonprofit Centre for Climate Reporting ran a journalistic sting operation on Project 2025 architect Russ Vought, who was the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget in the Trump administration and has been at the forefront of preparing for the takeover of the federal government in a Trump II presidency.

They lured Vought to a Washington, D.C., hotel last month and surreptitiously recorded him. CNN, among others, has an abbreviated write-up of CCR’s report. Read more and listen here .

Granddaughter of the Late Rev. Billy Graham: Christians Who Support Donald Trump are Causing People to Turn Away From Christianity. By Dave Malyon / Knewz

The late Reverend Billy Graham’s granddaughter, Jerushah Duford, has suggested that Donald Trump’s Christian followers are deterring people from the faith. Knewz.com has learned that Duford made this statement in a prerecorded video address at an Evangelicals for Harris conference and said recording is believed to have reached an estimated 40,000 people.

I was thinking this morning that if you told me 10 years ago that I would be taking an active role in politics, I’d have laughed. But then I had to stop and realize this is so much more than politics,” Duford said. “In 2016, when a man bragged about assaulting women, various leaders of my faith then propped up this man as a poster boy for godly manhood and leadership. “This broke my heart as I have watched — quite frankly, for the last eight years — people who were curious about Jesus and His teachings [have] done a 180 and walked in the other direction from my faith,” the daughter of Virginia “Gigi” Graham Tchividjian (Billy Graham’s oldest daughter) said. Read more

At Buddhist-Christian dialogue, finding solidarity amid shifting religious landscape. By Michael Woolf / RNS

In a polarized country renegotiating the role of religion in civic life, interfaith partnerships are critical.

Recently, a group of more than 30 Buddhists and Christians gathered to form relationships and discuss ways to collaborate as part of the National Buddhist-Christian Dialogue. As one of the Christian participants, representing the American Baptist Churches USA, I participated in the dialogue against the backdrop of white Christian nationalism. Read more

Historical / Cultural

Meet Richard Theodore Greener, Harvard’s first Black graduate who was accepted into the school as an “experiment.” By Prosper Kuzo / Face2Face

Greener was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1844 but moved with his family to Boston in 1853.

Richard Theodore Greener, the first Black graduate from Harvard University, made history in 1870. An African-American scholar, diplomat, professor, and lawyer, Greener broke numerous barriers throughout his life, including becoming the first Black member of the American Philological Association and the first Black diplomat to serve in a white country. Read more

Healing a Dark Past: The Long Road to Reopening Hospitals in the Rural South. By Aallyah Wright / Capital One

When a rural hospital closes, there’s usually no turning back. Yet, these communities in Mississippi, Georgia, and Tennessee worked across racial lines despite painful histories.

From 1990 to 2020, 334 rural hospitals have closed across 47 states, which disproportionately affect areas with higher populations of Black and Hispanic people. Since 2011, hospital closures have outnumbered new hospital openings. In Brownsville, they’ve been able to do the impossible: reopen a full-service hospital. They’re not the only ones. Read more

The Civil-Rights Era’s Great Unanswered Question. By Julian E. Zelizer / The Atlantic

Sitting at a table before the committee members, with television cameras capturing her every word, Hamer recounted how she had been attacked and beaten in the Winona, Mississippi, jail for her voting-rights activities.

She concluded her address with these words: All of this is on account we want to register, to become first-class citizens, and if the Freedom Democratic Party is not seated now, I question America. Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, where we have to sleep with our telephones off the hooks because our lives be threatened daily because we want to live as decent human beings, in America?

That question has haunted the nation ever since. In this November’s election, all American voters will get the chance to answer Hamer’s question. We can hope they will provide a better answer than Democrats did in 1964. Read more

Bronze statue of John Lewis replaces more than 100-year-old Confederate monument. By Ron Harris / ABC News

A large bronze statue of the late civil rights icon leader and Georgia congressman John Lewis was installed Friday, at the very spot where a contentious monument to the confederacy stood for more than 110 years in the town square before it was dismantled in 2020.

Lewis was known for his role at the front lines of the Civil Rights Movement and urged others to get in “good trouble” for a cause he saw as vital and necessary. In DeKalb County where the Confederate monument stood for more than a century, protesters have invoked “good trouble” in calling for the swift removal of the obelisk. Read more

How the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument Can Help Us Reckon With Racial Trauma. By Jewel Wicker / Capital One

The Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument spans two states and three sites: Graball Landing in Glendora, Mississippi; the Tallahatchie County Courthouse in Sumner, Mississippi; and the Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ in Chicago.

These locations represent where Till’s body was found along the Tallahatchie River, the courthouse where two white men were acquitted by an all-white jury of Till’s lynching, and the church that hosted his funeral — which included an open casket viewing, a horrifying reflection of the violence visited upon the child. The monument is managed by the National Park Service. Read more

‘Kind of Blue’ at 65: Miles Davis Kind of Blew It With His ‘Greatest Ever’ Jazz Album. By Colin Fleming / The Daily Beast

“Kind of Blue” is widely considered the best jazz album of all time: 65 years later, one can’t help but wonder if that’s only because it’s the least challenging.

It didn’t take long after its release on August 17, 1959, for Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue to ascend to a throne it has yet to vacate in all of the decades that have followed. With its scepter, came a title: Greatest Jazz Album of All Time, an honorific that most people who are not hardcore jazz people have left more or less unchallenged. If there is an album that people begin—and perhaps end—a jazz record collection with, it’s Kind of Blue, which is both a worthy thing—for it’s not hard to delight in what Kind of Blue offers over the full course of a lifetime—and a less-than-ideal reality. Read more

7 Times Black Music Was Code For Freedom: The Evolution Of Black Revolutionary Music. By Matthew C. Allen / Newsone

Hidden and not, Black music has historically been used as a tool for Black liberation and Black power. In 1939, not even three-quarters of a century after Black people took their final steps in this country as slaves, Billie Holiday released “Strange Fruit.” It was an uncoded charge against white American domestic terrorism–and a departure from the love songs the popular jazz singer had been known for. The song carried no intention of masking its commentary about lynchings in America.

Today, both secretly and boldly, Black music has continued to challenge racism and the conditions foisted upon them—from the Staple Singers’ songs like “I’ll Take You There” to almost all of Bob Marley’s songs and all of Gil Scott Heron’s work including “The Revolution Will Not be Terrorized,” to Lauryn Hill’s 2014 “Black Rage,” the powerful remix of “My Favorite Things.” Hip Hop as a genre was a direct response to the socio-economic conditions facing Black communities in urban America, and it became a powerful tool for social commentary and political expression. Read more

Sports

Remembering Florence Griffith-Joyner’s Legendary Career. By Stephanie Holland / The Root

With world records that still stand and an unforgettable style, Flo-Jo is still one of the most influential Black women of the last 40 years

Florence Griffith-Joyner is one of the most dynamic athletes of our time. Her domination on the track is a legend that very few modern sprinters can live up to. It wasn’t just that she was the fastest woman in the world, it was her one of a kind style, timeless beauty and star presence that set her apart from other sports stars. Read more

Inside The Business of The Harlem Globetrotters. By Jabari Young / Forbes

Harlem Globetrotters circa 1926

Keith Dawkins, president of the Harlem Globetrotters and Herschend Entertainment Studios, discusses the reinvention of the nearly 100-year-old brand with Forbes senior writer and ForbesBLK editorial lead Jabari Young at the Nasdaq MarketSite. Listen here

The push to strip Jordan Chiles of her Olympic medal smells awfully foul. By Sally Jenkins / Wash Post

The court that ruled against Jordan Chiles is a hive of cronies and insiders, established and steered by the IOC and various sports federations as cover.

Four seconds — that was the basis the CAS panel used to revoke the bronze medal in floor exercise awarded to Chiles by an actual panel of Olympic gymnastics judges who were there. Gharavi’s panel gave it to Ana Barbosu of Romania, and you knew the verdict reeked of corruption, even if you just didn’t know quite where to look for it. Read more

Stephen A. Smith’s $25 Million Demand Got Robert Griffin III & Samantha Ponder Fired, Claims Ex-ESPN Employee. By Balraj Singh Babrah / Essentially Sports

Stephen A. Smith has been one of the most notable analysts in the ESPN network. He’s also quite a respected personality among all other sports analysts. His fame has reached a point where he has become a big name for the network when it comes to basketball.

“There is a certain broadcaster who wants to be paid $25 million a year and ESPN seems determined to figure out a way to do it. And there are rumors. I hope they are untrue. But there are rumors that they’re trying to figure out a way to get Stephen A. Smtih on the NFL coverage. so could this just be ‘we can take the 4 million or 3 million or 5 million we’re paying to Samantha Ponder pay someone else 500,000 to host the show,’” Read more

Black People: Australian Breaking Prof is A Mockery. By Noah A McGee / The Root

The Black community expressed disappointment in the competition and wished it better represented a breaking style of dance that was created by Black people.

While there was no shortage of laughter and jokes in the Black community after the debut of breaking in the Paris Olympics, there were just as many critics who had smoke for the competition — specifically surrounding the performance of Australian b-girl Rachael “Raygun” Gunn after learning of her background. Read more

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