Featured
How Hip-Hop Became America’s Poetry. By John McWhorter / NYT
John McWhorter is a Columbia University linguist who explores how race and language shape our politics and culture.
This month, America celebrates the 50th anniversary of hip-hop. Most of the country first encountered this musical revolution with the release of the national hit “Rapper’s Delight” in 1979. But America is celebrating more than just a musical form. It’s celebrating the moment when rap gave America back its poetry.
So when we celebrate the 50th anniversary of hip-hop, we don’t merely celebrate the invention of a new musical form. We celebrate the one that made America — regardless of whether we recognize it — mad for poetry all over again. Read more
Related: How Hip-Hop Conquered the World. By Wesley Morris / NYT
Related: How Hip-Hop Changed the English Language Forever. NYT Magazine Interactive
Related: Dear Hip Hop: A Letter to the Hip Hop Generation. By Charles Allen Ross / AAIHS
Political / Social
“He learned from studying Hitler’s speeches”: Leading civil rights lawyer on 20 ways Trump is a copy. By Steven Rosenfeld / Salon
Burt Neuborne, one of America’s top civil liberties lawyers, says Trump is copying Hitler’s early rhetoric
In When at Times the Mob Is Swayed: A Citizen’s Guide to Defending Our Republic, Burt Neuborne mostly focuses on how America’s constitutional foundation in 2019—an unrepresentative Congress, the Electoral College and a right-wing Supreme Court majority—is not positioned to withstand Trump’s extreme polarization and GOP power grabs. However, its second chapter, “Why the Sudden Concern About Fixing the Brakes?,” extensively details Trump’s mimicry of Hitler’s pre-war rhetoric and strategies. Read more
Guns, Republicans and “manliness”: We all suffer from the right’s mental health crisis. By Kirk Swearingen / Salon
Republican men seem massively troubled about their masculinity — and that’s literally causing death and suffering
So many American conservatives live in a seemingly incessant state of fear — about books and experts and science and liberals and immigrants and independent women and people of color and people with different sexual preferences or gender identities — that it’s no wonder they appear mentally and emotionally unhealthy. Then there are the evangelical and fundamentalist Christians who form the most reliable MAGA Republican base: Their alleged belief in Jesus Christ has become so warped they now perceive their savior in the person of our twice-impeached, four-times-indicted ex-president. None of this signals a group of well-adjusted human beings Read more
Related: 7 ways MAGA Republicans differ from other Republicans. By Aaron Blake / Wash Post
Federal judges rule against provisions of GOP-backed voting laws in Georgia and Texas. CBS News
Federal judges in Georgia and Texas have ruled against key provisions of two controversial election laws passed two years ago as the Republican Party sought to tighten voting rules after former President Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 presidential contest.
U.S. District Judge Xavier Rodriguez struck down a provision of Texas’ law requiring that mail voters provide the same identification number they used when they registered to vote. He ruled the requirement violated the U.S. Civil Rights Act because it led to people being unable to cast ballots due to a matter irrelevant to whether they are registered. Read more
Proud purple to angry red: These Florida residents feel unwelcome in ‘new’ Florida. By Tom McLaughlin / USA Today
David Lucas, left, unwittingly became the poster child for urban renewal in the early 1960s when he was a small child. His father, Harold Lucas, at right, was shopping for fishing poles in Sears on Beach Street in Daytona Beach when a man asked if it was OK if he photographed his son.
David Lucas grew up listening to his 90-year-old father’s stories of how cruel the world was to Black people in decades past. While the 60-year-old Lucas has been spared much of what his father’s generation endured, he’s been getting an unexpected reality check on how some things have yet to improve for minorities. The flurry of bills passed in Tallahassee over the past two years that impact voting, immigration, education, guns and LGBTQ+ people has left his head spinning. “I just don’t understand how they can make so many changes so fast,” Lucas said. “As a Black man it’s alarming because we have so many different fronts we have to fight.” Read more
White college grads are Democrats’ new firewall. Will they hold in 2024? By Ruy Teixeira / Wash Post
This group is not a lock for Biden.
It’s well-established that Democrats have been doing better with White college graduates, even as they have been slipping with non-White and working-class voters. Between the 2012 and 2020 elections — two elections with very similar popular-vote margins — Democrats’ advantage among White college graduates improved by 16 points, while declining by 19 points among non-White working-class voters who didn’t graduate college. However, most White college graduates are not liberal; this is true only of White college Democrats, who have indeed become much more liberal over time. But White college graduates as a whole are not particularly liberal. Read more
Who is Vivek Ramaswamy, on center stage at Republican debate? By Marisa Lati / Wash Post
Biotechnology entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, a wild-card candidate with no previous experience in elected office, will stand center stage at the first Republican presidential debate in Milwaukee on Wednesday.
He is polling at about 9 percent, behind former president Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in the crowded field. Because Trump is skipping the debate, DeSantis and Ramaswamy will get the middle two positions on the stage. Here’s what we know about Ramaswamy’s history and policy positions. Read more
Related: In Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republicans Have Something New. By Benjamin Wallace-Wells / The New Yorker
Related: Why Is a Hindu GOP Candidate Pushing Christian Nationalism? By Manisha Sunil / The Daily Beast
As the 2024 election revs up, Asian Americans rise as a powerful voting bloc. By Sahil Kapur / NBC News
They’re America’s fastest-growing demographic, and they delivered a turnout jump in swing states that proved crucial to Joe Biden’s victory in 2020. Both parties have taken note.
Asian American voter turnout spiked in 2020, surprising many political observers, and proved crucial to President Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory. In battleground Georgia, Asian American turnout jumped by a startling 84% from the previous presidential election. Two years later, Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., sought to capitalize with an unusual move in his ultra-competitive contest: He produced ads in Mandarin, Korean and Vietnamese to mobilize Asian American voters. He carried 78% of that vote in the runoff and won. Read more
A right-wing sheriffs group that challenges federal law is gaining acceptance around the country. By TJ L’Heureux, Adrienne Washington, Albert Serna Jr. Anisa Shabir and Isaac Stone Simonelli / ABC News
A national group of sheriffs that claims the top law enforcers in American counties are not bound by federal law has successfully spread its doctrine to dozens of states in recent years. n this photo provided by the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, Klickitat County Sheriff Bob Songer talks in his office in Goldendale, Wash., AP
“The sheriff is supposed to be protecting the public from evil,” the chief law enforcement officer for Barry County, Michigan, said during a break in the National Sheriffs’ Association 2023 conference in June. “When your government is evil or out of line, that’s what the sheriff is there for, protecting them from that.” Read more
Conservative activist sues 2 major law firms over diversity fellowships. By Julian Mark and Taylor Telford / Wash Post
The American Alliance for Equal Rights, which led the campaign against affirmative action in college admissions, filed lawsuits against Perkins Coie and Morrison & Foerster. Shown is Affirmative action opponent Edward Blum in front of the Supreme Court in Washington in October. (Shuran Huang for The Washington Post)
The American Alliance for Equal Rights filed lawsuits Tuesday against Perkins Coie in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas in Dallas, and against Morrison & Foerster in the Southern District of Florida in Miami. Both lawsuits allege the law firms’ diversity fellowships excluded applicants based on their race, and both demand that the programs be shut down. Read more
Supreme Court asked to hear Virginia high school admissions case concerning race. By Reuters and NBC News
A parents group backed by a conservative legal organization asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday to consider whether an admissions policy aimed at diversifying an elite Virginia high school is racially discriminatory.
The board eliminated a standardized test from its admissions process, capped the number of students from each of the district’s middle schools and guaranteed seats for the top students from each. After the overhaul, the share of Black and Hispanic students increased, but the percentage of Asian American students fell to 54% from 73% in the first year. Read more
Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders targets teachers over African American Studies. By Laura Clawson / Daily Kos
Seven months after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis banned his state’s schools from teaching Advanced Placement African American Studies courses, someone in Arkansas appears to have realized that there was political hay to be made from picking the same fight.
In January, Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders issued an executive order wildly mischaracterizing critical race theory in the course of banning it from the state’s schools. According to her, “Critical Race Theory (CRT) is antithetical to the traditional American values of neutrality, equality, and fairness. It emphasizes skin color as a person’s primary characteristic, thereby resurrecting segregationist values, which America has fought so hard to reject.” Critical race theory does not emphasize skin color as a person’s primary characteristic, and in fact its main focus is on society, laws, and institutions rather than individuals. Read more
Related: Arkansas Confiscates Schools’ African American Studies Materials. By Zack Linly / Newsone
Buffalo shooting witnesses file lawsuit over trauma they endured. By Geoff Bennett and Sam Lane / PBS
Last year, a white gunman killed ten people in a racist shooting at a grocery store in a predominantly Black area of Buffalo, New York.
The gunman, now serving a life sentence, drove 200 miles to target that community. Last week, 16 witnesses of the tragedy filed a lawsuit over the trauma they endured. Geoff Bennett discussed the case with Fragrance Harris Stanfield and attorney Eric Tirschwell. Read more
Ethics / Morality / Religion
Robert Jones’ new book roots white supremacy in 500-year-old papal decree. By Yonat Shimron / RNS
The Doctrine of Discovery shaped the way America’s white, European Christian settlers saw themselves and their mission and gave rise to uncontrollable outbursts of violence.
Many Americans have long accepted that slavery was America’s original sin. But what if it wasn’t? What if that original sin stretches back 500 years to the forced removal and, in many cases, extermination of Native Americans by America’s white European settlers? And what if there’s a religious decree, dating back to the late 15th century, that gave divine sanction to the robbery, enslavement and violent oppression of nonwhites? That’s the argument pollster Robert P. Jones makes in his new book, “The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy and the Path to a Shared American Future.” Read more
When Donald Trump divides the house at church. By Clarence Page / Chicago Tribune
As a voting bloc, evangelical Christians have expressed such an airtight loyalty to former President Donald Trump that moderates are bracing themselves in this election cycle like a family that dreads a disagreeable uncle’s presence at dinner.
“Almost every congregation that I know is either divided or tense about these sorts of political controversies coming out of the Trump years,” said Russell Moore, a former Southern Baptist leader and current editor in chief of Christianity Today, a publication founded by Billy Graham and widely considered to be evangelicalism’s flagship magazine. Read more
Related: America’s Church Authority Crisis Didn’t Start with Trump. By Bonnie Kristian / CT
Related: Why Christian Nationalism makes American Christians less Christlike. By Andrew Whitehead / RNS
Donald Trump’s last line of defense: Ramp up the “transactional antisemitism.” By Chauncey Devega / Salon
They are going to attack.
Donald Trump is under siege. He faces 91 criminal charges and potentially hundreds of years in prison for his many alleged crimes in connection with Jan. 6 and his coup attempt. Trump and his forces will respond to this challenge to his power and authority. Just when their targets are tired and exhausted, they will attack — again and again and again. The attacks will consist of racism, antisemitism, misogyny, disinformation, misinformation, violence, stochastic terrorism, fearmongering, white victimology and conspiracy theories. They will involve brute force. The plans are open and public, lacking subtlety and guile. Read more
Once a Force in Harlem, the Oldest Black Church in New York Hangs On. By Mia Jackson / NYT
The sanctuary, constructed like an auditorium, of the present-day Mother African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church building on 137th Street.Credit…Flo Ngala for The New York Times
In the 227 years since its birth, Mother African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church — the oldest Black church in New York State — has served as a stop on the Underground Railroad, a haven for Black artists and intellectuals during the Harlem Renaissance and an amphitheater for civil rights activism during the 1950s and ‘60s. Read more
I left the church — and now long for a ‘church for the nones.’ By Perry Bacon Jr. / Wash Post
I’m currently a “none” or, more precisely, a “nothing in particular.” But I want to be a something.
Howard Zinn at 101: Needed Now More Than Ever. By Eleanor J. Bader / The Progressive
As attacks on teaching the true history of the United States increase, it is important to remember the impact of Howard Zinn. (1922-2010)
“We will reclaim our history and our country,” Trump declared, and pledged that the nation would steer clear of books, films, and videos, “like those of Howard Zinn, that try to make students ashamed of their own history.” Indeed, Zinn has been a rightwing target since his most popular book, A People’s History of the United States, was first published in 1980; it has now been reprinted more than 150 times in at least a dozen languages and has sold more than two million copies. Read more
Related: Florida’s Black History attacks form part of larger nationwide assault. By Alia Wong / USA Today
The Scary Third Meaning of Freedom. By Felicia Wong and Michael Tomasky / TNR Podcast
Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Jefferson Cowie on the deep, twisted roots of American oppression. Shown is George Wallace of Alabama who campaigns for president In 1968
Vanderbilt historian Jefferson Cowie has written several highly influential volumes in his career, including Stayin’ Alive, about the 1970s, and The Great Exception, on the New Deal. This year, he struck gold with his newest work, Freedom’s Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power. In April, it won the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction. It’s a historical look at Barbour County, Alabama—the birthplace, as it happens, of segregationist Governor George Wallace—and how the white people there imposed their will on Native and Black Americans. Read more and listen here
For true national unity, the Confederate Memorial at Arlington must go. By Charles Lane / Wash Post
Members of the United Daughters of the Confederacy at the Confederate Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery in 1922. (Library of Congress)
The 32-foot-tall Confederate Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery is planned to be removed. The public can offer ideas on the huge bronze sculpture’s ultimate disposition, starting at a Wednesday meeting. But it is supposed to come down by Jan. 1, 2024, pursuant to findings of a bipartisan national commission, which Congress established in 2021 after the police murder of George Floyd and nationwide racial justice protests. Read more
How the words of ‘I Have a Dream’ soared and challenged the nation 60 years ago. By John Avlon / CNN
In the pantheon of the greatest American speeches, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech stands alongside the best of Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Kennedy and Reagan — the only non-president to reach such rarified air.
Clarence B. Jones was present at the creation, playing a unique role as its initial drafter, the last living participant in the speech’s inception and liftoff into legend, 60 years ago this month. Jones was a young aide to King, a lawyer who doubled as speechwriter. Now 92, he is the author of a new memoir called “Last of the Lions: An African American Journey in Memoir.” A few weeks ago, I spoke with Jones — sharp and full of surprising asides — to get his eyewitness account of how the “I Have a Dream” speech came about. Read more
Related: Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream’ speech 60 years later resonates. By USA Today Staff.
Related: March on Washington highlights the different paths to activism by Black churches. By AP and the Grio
Don’t listen to the critics: reparations for slavery will right historical wrongs. By Kenneth Mohammed / The Guardian
A new report meticulously analyses the true cost of the transatlantic slave trade, showing how past and present are bound together. The Zomachi memorial in Ouidah, Benin. The coastal town in west Africa was at the centre of the slave trade in the 17th and 18th centuries. Photograph: Yanick Folly/AFP/Getty Images
Delving into a deeply unsettling chapter of history and seeking to reshape the discourse, a groundbreaking report, Reparations for Transatlantic Chattel Slavery in the Americas and the Caribbean, has calculated that Britain owes a staggering sum of £18.6tn. Other nations with a legacy of slaveholding, such as the US, Portugal, Spain and France, also stand accused of owing trillions. The total economic toll is thought to be as high as $131tn (£103tn). The revelation lays bare the enduring ramifications of the transatlantic slave trade and the struggle for reparative justice on a global scale. Read more
A Black man’s brutal murder has faded from a Texas town’s memory. By Emanuel Felton / Wash Post
The family of James Byrd gathers in June to mark the 25th anniversary of his murder in Jasper, Tex. (Callaghan O’Hare)
On a June evening in 1998, three White men chained a Black man by his ankles to the back of a pickup truck and dragged him for several miles down a twisting country road in this small East Texas town, decapitating him in the process. The next day, pieces of James Byrd’s body were found all along the route. What happened next — a deluge of national media attention and the passage of federal and state hate-crimes legislation named after Byrd — cemented Jasper’s place in America’s long history of racial terror against Black people. But now, 25 years later, the horrific attack that once galvanized this community is barely discussed. Read more
The Met Announces Harlem Renaissance Exhibition for 2024. By Zachary Small / NYT
Artworks on loan from historically Black institutions will make the show one of the largest surveys of the era in nearly 40 years. “Woman in Blue,” by William H. Johnson, is being lent by the Clark Atlanta University Art Museum for the Met’s exhibition “The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism.”Credit…via Clark Atlanta University Art Museum
Even before joining the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the curator Denise Murrell was dreaming up an exhibition dedicated to the Harlem Renaissance — one that would unite Black artists dedicated to “radical modernity,” as she described it, from New York to Paris and beyond. On Tuesday, the museum announced that very exhibition, “The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism.” It will open on Feb. 25, run through July 28 and include a trove of paintings from historically Black colleges and universities around the country. Read more
Soul Music Legend Al Green Releases Absolutely Perfect Lou Reed Cover. By Ed Mazza / HuffPost
It’s his first new single in five years.
Soul legend Al Green released his first new track in five years, putting his own spin on Lou Reed’s 1972 classic “Perfect Day.” “I loved Lou’s original, the song immediately puts you in a good mood,” the Rock & Roll Hall of Famer wrote on social media. “We wanted to preserve that spirit, while adding our own sauce and style. I hope this song accompanies you through your perfect days.” Read more and listen here
What Kind of Artist Was Wayne Shorter? By Richard Brody / The New Yorker
A new documentary shows that music was just one facet of the great jazz saxophonist’s gift.
One thing that emerges in Dorsay Alavi’s three-part documentary “Wayne Shorter: Zero Gravity” (out on Amazon Prime this Friday) is that the late, great jazz saxophonist and composer was, not to put too fine a point on it, a nerd. Born in Newark in 1933. In 1959, at the age of twenty-six, he was invited to join the drummer Art Blakey’s hard-bop band, the Jazz Messengers, for which he soon became the main composer. His compositions revealed themselves to be as distinctive as his improvisations. In 1964, he joined Miles Davis’s new quintet and immediately became its leading composer as well. Read more
Sports
Deion Sanders, be it by sermon, commercial or YouTube, can still sell anything. By Christopher Kamrani / The Atheletic
Deion Sanders steps out of the car onto the tarmac and greets a familiar face. There’s that smile that’s netted him millions of dollars in endorsements going back five decades.
Six days after Colorado sold out Folsom Field for its spring football game, Sanders is bound for yet another keynote speaking engagement, this time in Minneapolis for the 2023 National Forum for Black Public Administrators. The 56-year-old former two-sport athlete who has captivated attention spans since the early 1990s is a Pro Football Hall of Famer, brash personality and head football coach. Read more
Sha’Carri Richardson is back and a world champion. By Matenzie Johnson / Andscape
With 100-meter dash victory at the World Athletics Championships, Richardson starts a new chapter
After cruising to a first-place finish in the semifinals of the women’s 100-meter dash at the World Athletics Championships on Sunday, a race in which she emphatically wiped her brow before crossing the finish line, Sha’Carri Richardson was asked by a reporter what expectations she had for herself as the world anticipated her return to competitive track and field. “I’m not worried about the world anymore,” Richardson said Sunday in Budapest, Hungary. “I’ve seen the world be my friend. I’ve seen the world turn on me. At the end of the day, I’ve always been with me. God has always been with me. Read more
Simone Biles is back — and still doing what other gymnasts don’t even try. By Emily Giambalvo / Wash Post
Simone Biles performs on the balance beam at the U.S. Classic earlier this month. (Kamil Krzaczynski/AFP/Getty Images)
Before Simone Biles began the first routine of her anticipated return this month, the moment held significance: The biggest star in gymnastics had decided to compete again after a two-year layoff following a profoundly public disappointment at the Tokyo Olympics. By the time the U.S. Classic ended, with Biles winning comfortably, her status as the world’s most dominant gymnast seemed restored and secure. Read more
Shohei Ohtani is doing things on a baseball diamond that scramble the mind. By Joe Posnanski / Wash Post
As a hitter, he leads or is tied for the lead in the American League in triples, home runs, walks, on-base percentage and slugging percentage. As a pitcher, he has allowed fewer hits per game than any other — batters are hitting only .185 against him, the lowest batting average against in all of baseball.
He truly might be the best hitter and best pitcher — at the same time. There is no precedent in Major League Baseball. The closest thing was Babe Ruth, who devoted baseball fans will know was a great pitcher before he became a legendary slugger. But even the Babe did not do what Ohtani is doing. He more or less stopped pitching once he became an everyday player. There were great pitcher-hitter combinations in the Negro Leagues, such as Bullet Rogan and Martin Dihigo. But, alas, they spent their careers in the shadows before Jackie Robinson. Read more
Love of the game keeps Howard University golfer in pursuit of a pro career. By Mia Berry / Andscape