Featured
The Blindness of ‘Color-Blindness.’ By Drew Gilpin Faust / The Atlantic
When the Supreme Court heard oral arguments on the future of affirmative action, I knew I had to be there. Drew Gilpin Faust is a former president of Harvard University, where she is the Arthur Kingsley Porter University Professor.
I needed to be in the room. I wanted to witness the next chapter in a story that mattered to me, one that I had even been a part of. And as a historian, I wanted to be there as it happened—I had to see and hear firsthand what I once thought was unimaginable. Affirmative action has been implemented in its various forms for well over half a century, for 75 percent of my existence, for nearly 40 percent of the years since the Emancipation Proclamation. The policy has changed the human landscape of our country, and especially that of higher education, where I have spent most of my life. Must read
Related: Applying to College, and Trying to Appear ‘Less Asian.’ By Amy Qin / NYT
Georgia Runoff
CNN Poll: Warnock holds a narrow edge over Walker in final undecided Senate contest. By and Edwards-Levy / CNN
In the final undecided Senate contest of 2022, Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia holds a narrow lead over Republican challenger Herschel Walker among those likely to vote in a runoff election Tuesday, according to a new CNN Poll conducted by SSRS.
The survey shows that Walker faces widespread questions about his honesty and suffers from a negative favorability rating, while nearly half of those who back him say their vote is more about opposition to Warnock than support for Walker. Voters’ modestly more positive views of Warnock and a firmly committed base of supporters appear to boost the incumbent in the new poll. Read more
Related: What White Voters See in Herschel Walker. By Dante’ Stewart / NYT
Related: Georgia Voters Defy Efforts to Suppress Them. By Charles M. Blow / NYT
Related: Georgia Voters Break Senate Runoff Turnout Record — Again. By Mary Papenfuss / HuffPost
Related: Asian American voters could help decide the Senate runoff in Georgia, experts say. By /NBC News
Political / Social
Trump Embraces Extremism as He Seeks to Reclaim Office. By Peter Baker / NYT
As he gets his presidential campaign underway, Donald J. Trump has aligned himself with forces that used to be outside the mainstream of American politics.
Former President Donald J. Trump once again made clear on Thursday night exactly where he stands in the conflict between the American justice system and the mob that ransacked the Capitol to stop the peaceful transfer of power nearly two years ago. He stands with the mob.
“Trump is doubling down on his extremist and cult leader profile,” said Ruth Ben-Ghiat, author of “Strongmen: From Mussolini to the Present” and a history professor at New York University. “For someone of Trump’s temperament, being humiliated by people turning away from him will only make him more desperate and more inclined to support and associate with the most extremist elements of society. There is no other option for him.” Read more
Related: The Table for Trump’s Antisemitic Banquet Was Set Long Ago. By Bret Stephens / NYT
The Self-Destruction of Ye. By Charles M. Blow / NYT
“Billionaire Maker of Ugly Shoes and Oversize Jackets Ends Career With Reckless Mouth.”
Let me first say this: West, who now goes by Ye, should have become a pariah when he was talking about slavery as a choice, making a mockery of Black ancestors whose suffering was anything but a choice. No one would choose rape for oneself or for a mother, daughter or sister. No one would choose the noose or the lash. No one would choose a body torn apart by dogs or starved into madness. He should have become a pariah when he gushed over Donald Trump in the Oval Office and said of his MAGA hat: “There was something about when I put this hat on — it made me feel like Superman.” But nothing. The deals continued. The legend grew. Read more
Related: Kanye West Is Suspended From Twitter After Posting a Swastika. By John Yoon / NYT
Biden, Demoting Iowa and Prizing Diversity, Wants S.C. as First Primary. Katie Glueck and Epstein / NYT
Michigan would become the fifth primary. The plan came as the president asked that “voters of color have a voice in choosing our nominee much earlier in the process.”
The plan, announced by party officials at a dinner Thursday in Washington, signals the end of Iowa’s long tenure as the Democrats’ first nominating contest, and it represents an effort to elevate the diverse, working-class constituencies that powered Mr. Biden’s primary victory in 2020. The move would also be a reward for South Carolina, the state that saved Mr. Biden’s candidacy two years ago after he came in fourth in Iowa and fifth in New Hampshire, both of which are smaller and have a higher percentage of white voters. Read more
Related: Rep. Jim Clyburn survives leadership challenge. By Scott Wong / NBC News
MSNBC’s cancellation of Tiffany Cross sends a chilling signal. By Karen Attiah / Wash Post
To be a Black public figure who chooses to be honest about white supremacy in this country is dangerous business. And there is no starker example of that than Tiffany Cross — whose show, “The Cross Connection,” was canceled last month by MSNBC, and whose contract with the network wasn’t renewed.
Cross, a former D.C. bureau chief for BET Networks and an associate producer for CNN, was named host of “The Cross Connection” in late 2020. The show aired Saturday mornings and was one of the higher-rated weekend political shows for the network. It was also one of the few shows left on a major news network that centered the voices of Black people and others of color. Cross focused on matters domestic and international, doing shows, for instance, on global diaspora movements. Read more
As Fed raises interest rates, mortgage fairness plummets. By Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy / USA Today
You have a fair shot at getting a mortgage – if you’re white or Asian. For every other race, “mortgage fairness,” which is already at low levels, could be sinking further.
That’s according to an analysis of 350 million mortgage applications from 1990 to 2021 through the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act. The data shows that fairness for Black and Native American mortgage applicants may plunge to “almost housing crisis levels,” if historical patterns mirror what happened when interest rates surge, according to an analysis by fintech company FairPlay AI, shared exclusively with USA TODAY. Read more
Pediatric surgery is less common for children of color, study finds. By Nada Hassanein / USA Today
Latino, Black and Asian children are less likely to undergo elective surgeries compared with white children, according to a recent study.
The study, published in the Journal of Pediatric Surgery, analyzed data on more than 200,000 children from a national health survey of parents. Roughly 10,000 of those children reportedly had surgery. Between 40% and 60% fewer surgeries were reported by parents of Black, Asian and Latino children, and Latino children were more likely to have emergency surgery. The research shows children of color could be suffering amid delays in important surgical interventions, experts say. Read more
Ethics / Morality / Religion
Walker, Warnock, and the Epic Battle for Georgia’s Soul. By Garrison Hayes / Mother Jones
Two wildly different visions of Christianity are on the ballot in the critical Senate run-off.
During recent trips to Georgia to visit family and friends, it became clear that in addition to voting red or blue, voters also will be choosing between two wildly different visions of Christianity itself, as embodied by these two dramatically contrasting candidates: One, whose religious lineage traces directly from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the civil rights movement; the other, who preaches the gospel of right-wing Christian nationalism, where the waters between church and state are muddy and the topics of conversation revolve around incendiary culture war politics. Mother Jones readers don’t need me to point out which is which. Christianity itself, in other words, is on the ballot in Georgia. Read more
Related: White Evangelical Love for Herschel Walker. By Brian Gilmore / Goodmenproject
Ye’s Trump dinner is a high point for Catholic nationalists’ influence campaign. By Jack Jenkins / RNS
The meeting of Ye, Nick Fuentes and Donald Trump was a win for an extreme, Catholic-leaning subset of Christian nationalism. Shown is Nick Fuentes, right-wing podcaster, center right in sunglasses, greets supporters before speaking at a pro-Trump march, Nov. 14, 2020, in Washington.
“Trump is really impressed with Nick Fuentes,” Ye said in the video, which has since been deleted. A few seconds later, Ye pivoted to a different topic: faith. “Since we know, and all the Christians in America that love Trump know, that Trump is a conservative, we’re going to demand that you hold all policies directly to the Bible,” Ye said. While the meeting at Trump’s club drew national outrage because of Fuentes’ antisemitic and white supremacist views, it was a win for an extreme subset of Christian nationalists who knit together virulent anti-immigrant and anti-LGBTQ sentiment, opposition to abortion and, in many cases, overt forms of antisemitism and white nationalism. Read more
Related: On Blacks and Jews in the Kanye Era. By Darvio Morrow / Newsweek
Ye, Kyrie and the Black Hebrew Israelite elephant in the room. By Michael Brown / Christian Post
If you live in a major city in America, then you have probably been well aware of the Black Hebrew Israelites for a few decades. But for many other Americans, their numbers, their influence, and their beliefs are coming as quite a revelation.
Their outfits, which looked like a cross between Star Wars and some type of angelic garb, were striking. However, it was their words which struck harder. They were quoting the Bible and some other books, even using occasional Hebrew words. Immediately, I realized who they were. They taught that they were the original (and true) Israelites and that white Jews (like me) were not real Jews. Rather, we were the manifestation of Satan. Read more
Black Religion and Political Thought. By Joseph Winters / AAIHS
In this well-researched and beautifully-written text, “How Religion Transformed Radical Though From Black Power to Black Lives Matter,” Terrence L. Johnson conjures and gathers a series of Black thinkers and activists – such as Audre Lorde, Toni Cade Bambara, Ella Baker, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and Stokely Carmichael—to demonstrate how radical Black thought refuses narrow conceptions of the political that would limit freedom to the protection of rights and reduce solidarity to the horizon of the US nation-state. Underlying Johnson’s return to the religiosity of Black radical thought is a sense of the inadequacies of liberalism, especially those strands of political liberalism associated with John Rawls. While liberalism tends to promote universal conceptions of equality, inclusion, and fairness, liberal thinkers downplay how “race, class, and gender circumscribe the terms of liberty and equality.” Read more
Historical / Cultural
California Panel Sizes Up Reparations for Black Citizens. By Kurtis Lee / NYT
The state is undertaking the nation’s most ambitious effort so far to compensate for the economic legacy of slavery and racism.
A nine-member Reparations Task Force has spent months traveling across California to learn about the generational effects of racist policies and actions. The group, formed by legislation signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2020, is scheduled to release a report to lawmakers in Sacramento next year outlining recommendations for state-level reparations. “We are looking at reparations on a scale that is the largest since Reconstruction,” said Jovan Scott Lewis, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who is a member of the task force. While the creation of the task force is a bold first step, much remains unclear about whether lawmakers will ultimately throw their political weight behind reparations proposals that will require vast financial resources from the state. Read more
Their wealth was built on slavery. Now a new fortune lies underground. By Julie Zauzmer Weil / Wash Post
In Virginia, the land still owned by the Coles family could yield billions from uranium. Does any of that wealth belong to the descendants of the enslaved. Clockwise from top left: Isaac Coles, Carole Coles Henry, Edward Coles, Walter Coles V (New York Public Library, Joshua Lott/The Washington Post, Library of Congress, Justin Ide for The Washington Post, Washington Post illustration)
The racist history behind Georgia’s runoff elections. By Nicole Ellis and Rachel Liesendahl / PBS
Georgia’s Dec. 6 runoff election pitting Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock against Republican Herschel Walker is historic for having two Black candidates representing major parties on that state’s ballot. But the voting law that mandated a runoff when neither candidate won a majority in November’s election is actually a vestige of racist legislation.
Since the 1960s, Georgia’s majority voting law has required a candidate get 50 percent of the vote or more in order to be declared the winner, and was introduced by a staunch segregationist legislator named Denmark Groover. Even now, the law “makes it more difficult for any group which forms a minority in the population to elect its candidates of choice,” regardless of the candidates’ ethnicity, historian and California Institute of Technology professor Morgan Kousser told the PBS NewsHour’s Nicole Ellis. Read and listen here
Jackson water crisis explained: A history of poverty, neglect, racism. By Emily Le Coz, Daniel Connolly Hadley Hitson Evan Mealins / USA Today
Mississippi’s largest water system was flawed from the start and worsened over the years as the capital city declined and politicians pointed fingers.
A USA TODAY Network investigation reveals that the foundation for these current failures was laid decades ago and problems compounded as the city evolved. Since then, city leaders and state officials alike have abandoned civility in lieu of finger pointing and steered the system into a collision course with disaster. The reporting found a complex story of population decline, poverty, racism, politics, mismanagement and theft. But key details emerged that, when pieced together, paint a portrait of a water system that was flawed from the start and worsened exponentially over the years as those in power seemingly lost control. Read more
Texas Latino scholar wins John Lewis Award for History and Social Justice. By Edwin Flores / NBC News
Trinidad Gonzales, a history and Mexican American studies professor, has helped spotlight a century-old massacre on the Texas border that was only recently acknowledged by the state.
The award, established in 2021, is named after Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., the renowned civil rights leader who served in Congress from 1987 until his death in 2020. The annual award recognizes a historian for leadership and professional historical contribution to public culture and social justice. “I didn’t even know I was nominated — it just came out of nowhere,” Gonzales said Friday in an interview. “Those are some very big shoes to try to fill, so I’m humbled by whoever nominated me, thinking I was worthy.” Gonzales is a co-founder of Refusing to Forget, an award-winning educational nonprofit founded by a team of professors that spotlights the history of state-sanctioned killings of Mexicans and Mexican Americans on the Mexico-Texas border from 1910 to 1920. Read more
Black Music Sunday: Celebrating Changó and Iansã! By Denise Oliver Velez / Daily Kos
When writing about Chucho Valdés’ 81st birthday in October, I talked about his composition La Creación (The Creation), which celebrates the Orisha. He took a bow and a masterful solo in this amazing performance at Lincoln Center in New York City. Shown are dancers dancing the Orisha in Cuba.
To open its 2014-15 season, Jazz At Lincoln Center welcomes the world premiere of a work by managing and artistic director Wynton Marsalis. Ochas, for big band and Afro:Cuban percussion, features special guests in the commanding pianist Chucho Valdés and percussionist, vocalist and Santería priest Pedrito Martinez. With the Jazz At Lincoln Center Orchestra, they blend jazz with the traditional folkloric and religious music of Cuba. Jazz Night In America explores how the new suite of music came to be. Read and listen here
How Ahmad Jamal Expanded the Spatial Frontiers of Jazz. By Richard Brody / The New Yorker
New, previously unissued recordings reveal the pianist’s innovations at a critical moment in the evolution of jazz.
The new releases of previously unissued recordings by the pianist Ahmad Jamal and his trio, from 1963 through 1966, “Emerald City Nights: Live at the Penthouse,” is among the jazz events of the year. (The two double albums are out on LP, CD, and digitally, from the new Jazz Detective label.) The Penthouse, a club in Seattle, was a prime musical venue in the sixties (it’s where John Coltrane’s live-in-Seattle recordings were made). In recent years, the producer Zev Feldman, working with Charlie Puzzo, Jr., whose father owned the club, has been bringing out treasures from the club’s vaults. These new albums, delights in themselves, are also crucial elements in the intellectual history of jazz. Read more
‘Emancipation’ Review: Will Smith in a Brutal Journey. By Manohla Dargis / NYT
The actor stars in this Civil War-era drama directed by Antoine Fuqua and inspired by a shocking photograph of an enslaved man.
For much of the period drama “Emancipation,” the promise of its title seems cruelly out of reach. In 1863, freedom seems near-impossible for the enslaved Black Americans in the Old South, whether they’re working on its plantations or running through its swamps. That promise, though, is about all that this movie’s resilient hero has during a relentless, brutal, grim journey that takes him across a hellscape filled with terror and suffering. Read more
Rosa Parks: new documentary sheds light on a misunderstood figure. By David Smith / The Guardian
In The Rebellious Life of Mrs Rosa Parks, an often simplified icon of civil rights is given an expansive and deserving tribute.
Based on a biography by Jeanne Theoharis, the film is a riposte to popular culture’s reductive habit of framing a person’s life and legacy in a single headline – in Parks’s case, the quiet seamstress who refused to give up her seat on a crowded bus to a white passenger in Montgomery, Alabama, one winter evening in 1955. The Rebellious Life of Mrs Rosa Parks is now available on Peacock, and MSNBC. Read more and watch the official trailer.
Sports
Colorado Buffaloes name Deion Sanders as head coach. By Pete Thamel / ESPN
Deion Sanders will be the next coach at Colorado, the school announced Saturday night, instantly making him one of the most compelling hires in college football this generation.
Sanders comes with just three years’ experience coaching college football, as he went 27-5 at Jackson State. The Tigers (12-0) completed an undefeated regular season Saturday with a 43-24 blowout of Southern for the SWAC championship. He informed his team of his departure soon after Saturday’s win. He is still slated to coach Jackson State in the Celebration Bowl on Dec. 17 against North Carolina Central, sources told ESPN. Read more
What the Jerry Jones Photo Reveals About the NFL. By Jemele Hill / The Atlantic
A 1957 image of the Dallas Cowboys’ owner highlights long-standing inequities in the NFL.
If you’re wondering why, in professional football, so few Black coaches get hired and Black players struggle to be heard, you can learn a lot from a 65-year-old image of Jerry Jones. In a 1957 photo published late last month by The Washington Post, the future owner of the Dallas Cowboys, then 14, stood among a group of white teenagers who were blocking six Black students from desegregating his Arkansas high school. Read more
The U.S. World Cup Team Is Notably Diverse, but the Pipeline Needs Help. By Kurt Streeter / NYT
In some ways, things haven’t changed much in American soccer. Shown is Desmond Armstrong, the first U.S.-born Black man to play for the United States in the World Cup, runs an economically and racially diverse youth soccer program in Nashville.
You may well have never heard of him, but Desmond Armstrong is a pioneer. In 1990, he became the first Black player born in the United States to represent the country in a World Cup game. Never mind that the United States, then returning to the World Cup after a four-decade hiatus, was humbled by Czechoslovakia in a 5-1 loss. By starting as a defender for the Americans that June day in Italy, Armstrong signaled that his home country could produce elite players who weren’t white. Read more
How we got here with Kyrie Irving, explained. By Damon Young / Wash Post
As I’m writing this, Kyrie Irving just returned from an eight-game suspension from the Brooklyn Nets for being “unfit to be associated” with the team.
He’s on the right side of many progressive causes — helping to build a solar water center in Pakistan, buying a house for George Floyd’s family, donating food and N95 masks to the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in the Dakotas, giving $1.5 million to help supplement the incomes of WNBA players. And he does this without being a self-conscious NBA politician like his former teammate LeBron James or a rebranded phony like his idol, the late Kobe Bryant. But Irving is also wildly susceptible to the sort of unhinged conspiracy theories found in the internet’s hairiest rabbit holes. This is how a grown man, in the 21st century, comes to believe that the Earth is flat. And what leads him to go on Instagram, and “like” a post. Read more
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