And surely Florida is a testing ground. Most likely, it’s only a matter of time before conservative groups in other states use their institutional power to attack AP African American studies as well.

The history of the African American experience in the United States can’t ever be eliminated. But the bastions of white power in this country are doing their damnedest to eradicate it. In 2020, the whole world watched a White police officer eradicate George Floyd on camera. Diversity and inclusion programs are being eradicated from schools and corporations. Now, a state is using its power to eradicate the (elective!) inclusion of the African American experience in education. Read more 

Related: Ron DeSantis Likes His Culture Wars for a Reason. By Jamelle Bouie / NYT

Related: DeSantis’ Rejection of African American Studies Has Historical Roots. By Ashley Robertson Preston / Capital B

Related: The Democratic Party’s Political Gift to Ron DeSantis.  By Stephania Taladrid / The New Yorker

Political / Social

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Teachers say parents, laws are changing how they teach race and gender. By Hannah Natanson / Wash Post

A report published by the RAND Corporation on Wednesday found that of a nationally representative sample of 8,000 teachers, one-quarter said they had revised their instructional materials or teaching practices to limit or exclude discussions of race and gender. The report also found that some teachers were more likely than others to alter their lesson plans — including teachers of color, high school teachers and educators in suburban school districts. And the report found that teachers are feeling direct pressure from parents to shift their teaching habits. Read more

Related: Here’s the AP African American Studies course Florida rejected. By Marc Caputo / NBC News

Related: National faculty group ‘appalled’ by Florida’s stand on critical race theory. By Divya Kumar / Tampa Bay Times 

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Are Standardized Tests Racist, or Are They Anti-racist? By Neil Lewis Jr. The Atlantic

Yes

Once again, it’s admissions season, and tensions are running high as university leaders wrestle with challenging decisions that will affect the future of their schools. Chief among those tensions, in the past few years, has been the question of whether standardized tests should be central to the process. Proponents  have long argued that standardized tests are biased against low-income students and students of color, and should not be used. But those who still endorse the tests make the mirror-image claim: Schools have been able to identify talented low-income students and students of color and give them transformative educational experiences, they argue, precisely because those students are tested.  Read more 

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The Biden administration is finally ready to show teeth on housing discrimination. By Rachel M. Cohen / Vox

HUD hopes its new rule to combat segregation will last longer than Obama’s. Shown is HUD Secretary Marcia Fudge who testifies before the Senate appropriations subcommittee on May 12, 2022. Ting Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images

A new regulation is meant to give that desegregation mandate some teeth. The Biden administration’s housing department proposed a new rule last week that would require virtually all communities across the US to create plans to address local housing discrimination or face a penalty, including the potential loss of billions of dollars in federal funding. Essentially, any city or county that accepts HUD grant money — large and small, rural, urban, and suburban — would have to comply. Read more 

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Unbought and Unbossed: The Racism That Comes With The Fight For Reproductive Rights. By Nicole Moore / HuffPost 

Reproductive health care organizations have a well-documented history of anti-Black racism. In recent years, Black women working at Planned Parenthood have written open letters, leaked recordings and spoken with journalists about the hostility they faced on the job.

In October, I filed a lawsuit against Planned Parenthood after I was fired for speaking up about structural racism within the 106-year-old organization. In January 2020, I became the first multicultural brand engagement director at Planned Parenthood’s national office in New York. Like Chisholm, I felt empowered to use my status as “the first” to help others. Read more

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The life-and-death consequences of the shortage of Black psychiatrists. By Amanda J. Calhoun / Slate

We are in the midst of an adolescent mental health crisis. But Black youth have been in crisis for decades. Black youth suicide rates are rising faster than any other racial/ethnic group in America. Black youth ages 13 and younger are twice as likely to die by suicide compared to their white peers. Yet Black youth are less likely to access and remain in mental health care. Attention is often focused on cultural stigma in the Black community or lack of economic resources. What is rarely talked about is the racism that Black youth experience within the health care system. Read more 

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In an HBCU first, Howard awarded $90 million military research contract. By Susan Svrluga / Wash Post

The school will become the first historically Black institution to lead one of the Pentagon’s 15 university-affiliated research centers

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The Church Was Meant to Enjoy Its Diversity, Not Wish It Away. By Helen Lee and Michelle Ami Reyes / CT

America is set to be minority white by 2045. Evangelicals need to stop thinking that’s a bad thing.

In the North American church, there is evidence of postures and preferences that aren’t in alignment with God’s example and intent. According to a 2018 survey by the Public Religion Research Institute, “A majority (54%) of white evangelical Protestants say that becoming [a] majority-nonwhite nation in the future will be mostly negative.” When the family of God prefers that its composition remain largely monoethnic, fissures and a reduced witness are inevitable. Read more 

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How Southern California helped birth white Christian nationalism. By Yonat Shimron / Religion News

Part memoir, part history of Southern California’s formative role in the rise of the religious right, Bradley Onishi’s new book traces his growing estrangement from the faith he once zealously championed.

It also examines the Christian nationalist beliefs that he first encountered in Southern California but are now thought to be fueling a movement in Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and in the eastern parts of Washington and Oregon, sometimes called the American Redoubt, where white Christian supremacists are building a refuge. Read more

Related: The Rise of Spirit Warriors on the Christian Right. By Katherine Stewart / TNR

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Editorial: Republican agenda hardly reflective of Catholic values. By NCR Editorial Staff / NCR

A monitor in Statuary Hall displays Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-California, as he sits in the House chamber at the start of a 10th ballot to elect a speaker at the Capitol in Washington Jan. 5. (AP/J. Scott Applewhite)

When Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California was finally elected speaker in the early morning hours of Jan. 7, it was only after the conservative wing of his party forced a series of concessions that will actually make it harder for the new GOP majority to govern. Buckle your seatbelts. It’s going to be a wild ride. And any hints we have of some kind of actual Republican agenda indicate that important tenets of Catholic social teaching will be missing from the chaotic mix. Read more 

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USCCB official: The church must admit its role in destroying Native American culture. By Dan Stockman / GSR

A makeshift memorial for the dozens of Indigenous children who died more than a century ago while attending a boarding school that was once located nearby is displayed under a tree July 1, 2021, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. (AP photo/Susan Montoya Bryan, File)

The sin of the Catholic Church’s role in the federal government’s attempt to destroy Native American culture through boarding schools must be examined, acknowledged and dealt with, a church official says. The fact that the schools operated mainly in the late 1800s, when times were different, makes it no less a sin, said Fr. Mike Carson, assistant director for the Subcommittee of Native American Affairs at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Read more 

Historical / Cultural

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How some enslaved Black people stayed in Southern slaveholding states – and found freedom. By Viola Franziska Muller / The Conversation

For generations, the Underground Railroad has been the quintessential story of resistance against oppression. Yet, the story is incomplete.

What is far less known is that the majority of enslaved people who fled Southern slavery before the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation never crossed the Mason-Dixon line to freedom in the Northern states. Instead, they remained within the slaveholding Southern states. In my book “Escape to the City: Fugitive Slaves in the Antebellum Urban South,” my research reveals that the resistance of Black people in the antebellum South was much larger and much more active than we have thought. Read more 

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Louis Congo: Ex-Slave and Executioner of Louisiana. By Menika Dirkson / AAIHS

On November 21, 1725, African slave Louis Congo was freed and made a salaried public executioner in Louisiana by the Company of the Indies. The corporation chose him because French colonists considered executions carried out by a “negro” the most effective and debasing punishment white criminals could receive in the “wild” and “unruly” colony. For twelve years Congo served as New Orleans’ public executioner in which he whipped, tortured, amputated, and executed anyone sentenced to physical punishment or death by the justice system. Read more 

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The Poetry of a Prison Uprising. By Elias Rodriques / Dissent Magazine

A new book of poems from a workshop at Attica in the 1970s reveals how prisoners resisted the dehumanizing effects of incarceration.

When the Smoke Cleared: Attica Prison Poems and Journal ed. by Celes Tisdale Duke University Press, 2022, pp. 152  reminds us, those coalitions must find ways to make their work sustainable in the face of the intransigence and opposition of the prison. Read more 

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It was admirable when Tony Dungy was inducted to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2016, for he followed sideline luminaries Bill Parcells, John Madden, Hank Stram, George Allen and Marv Levy as coaches so honored before him in the 2000s.

It was anything but when Dungy accepted a speaking invitation Friday at the March for Life on the National Mall. For at the annual and largest gathering of the nation’s abortion foes, he followed on its podium, over the years, Sen. Jesse Helms, antiabortion extremist Randall Terry and Donald Trump, among others. Yet Dungy went ahead with his speaking engagement, using his athletic celebrity coupled with his religiosity as deodorant for a theme of intolerance. Read more 

Related: Tony Dungy’s anti-LGBTQ history gets renewed attention after controversial tweet. By Mark Lavietes / NBC  News

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Ben Shelton is adding his name to America’s Black tennis talent to watch. By Andrew Jones / Andscape

Among the successful Black Americans at the Australian Open, the 20-year-old son of a former professional has made the most surprising run

Instrumental to Shelton’s moxie is his father, Bryan Shelton, a former ATP player who reached as high as No. 55 in the rankings in 1992 and coached his son at Florida. In the last two decades, Bryan Shelton has transformed himself from a reputable pro player into one of the premier tennis coaches in the nation. He coached Georgia Tech to a women’s national championship in 2007 before coaching his son to a men’s title at Florida in 2021. Shelton’s game allows him to join or even eclipse Frances Tiafoe as the latest Black American male trying to rise into the Top 10. Read more 

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