Featured
GOP state attorneys general shift affirmative action battle lines to the workplace. By Wyatte Grantham-Phillips and Geoff Mulvhill / PBS
Thirteen Republican state attorneys general are cautioning CEOs of the 100 biggest U.S. companies on the legal consequences for using race as a factor in hiring and employment practices, demonstrating how the Supreme Court’s recent ruling dismantling affirmative action in higher education may trickle into the workplace.
The state attorneys general sent a letter to the CEOs on Thursday arguing that the controversial June ruling declaring that race cannot be a factor in college admissions — consequently striking down decades-old practices aimed at achieving diverse student bodies — could also apply to private entities, like employers. “Treating people differently because of the color of their skin, even for benign purposes, is unlawful and wrong,” they wrote. The GOP officials also suggested that Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs could be a form of discrimination. Read more
Related: How Affirmative Action Changed Their Lives. By Sabrina Tavernise / NYT podcast
Political / Social
Clarence Thomas Cited My Work In His Affirmative Action Opinion. Here’s What He Got Wrong. By Allison Sewart / HuffPost
I was appalled that a book I’d written about the impact of education was used to uphold the Supreme Court justice’s anti-affirmative action argument. We are in a sad moment when cherry-picked information now passes as fact.
Thomas’ concurrence in the court’s June 29 decision, which struck down affirmative action in college admissions, argues that “meritocratic systems have long refuted bigoted misperceptions of what black [sic] students can accomplish.” The concurrence cites details from my book about Dunbar, an extraordinary, academically rigorous, once legally segregated high school in Washington, D.C., where Black students thrived for a century. Read more
Related: The Myths Of Merit Scholarships. By Peter Greene / Forbes
Related: Clarence Thomas and the price of feigned originalism. By Sabrina Haake / Salon
Public Universities That Accept More Than 50% Of Students Who Apply. Shaun Harper / Forbes
While these 30 universities ought to be applauded for the access they offer to so many Americans, it’s important to acknowledge which citizens disproportionately benefit. On average, 64% of undergraduates on these campuses are white. Given that the average admit rate is 75%, selectivity can’t be used to justify the lack of racial diversity in student bodies at these institutions – so, what is the explanation?
Taken together, these numbers show that flagships and other highly-respected public universities aren’t as exclusive as many people might think; that Black undergraduates are underrepresented on these campuses; and that these 30 institutions know how to find Black students when they want them to play on football and basketball teams. Read more
Related: HBCUs revise admissions policies amid expected surge in applications. By Lauren Lumpkin and Corinne Dorsey / Wash Post
Florida is hurting as it becomes ‘where empathy, decency and kindness go to die. By Adam Nichols / Raw Story
Younger Floridians are fleeing the state in record numbers and business dollars are drying up as the state is increasingly seen as the place “where empathy, decency and kindness go to die,” a columnist wrote Friday.
“Gov. Ron DeSantis and his obedient Republican legislature have made bullying and attacking the vulnerable the hallmarks of their goverance,” wrote Jennifer Rubin in the Washington Post. And It’s having a demonstrably negative effect. The American Community Survey showed in June that 674,740 people left Florida for another state in 2021, Rubin said. More than any other state. She wrote, “In February, USA Today reported, ‘Florida may be the most moved to state in the country, but not when it comes to Gen Z. They are the only generation that chose to exit Florida, with an outflux of 8,000 young adults.”‘ Florida’s universities and colleges have seen an increase in staff departures, with 1,087 resigning from the University of Florida alone in 2022, she wrote Read more
Related: Why Republicans are trying to rebrand white nationalism right now. By Chauncey Devega / Salon
Tim Scott is the longshot candidate raising the most cash. By Jessica Piper / Politico
GOP candidates hoping to knock off Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis raised a combined $21 million from donors in the second quarter — underscoring just how difficult it is to break out of the pack.
Sen. Tim Scott reported $5.8 million in receipts, followed by Nikki Haley at $5.3 million. For Scott, the figure was relatively strong compared to the field but less than he raised in his best quarter of his most recent Senate campaign. The Senator also spent more than he raised over the quarter. He still had $21 million cash on hand, largely thanks to his strong history of fundraising as a senator, a metric in which he is ahead of DeSantis and close to Trump. Read more
Jesse Jackson to step down as head of Rainbow PUSH civil rights organization. By AP and NPR
The Rev. Jesse Jackson plans to step down from leading the Chicago civil rights organization Rainbow PUSH Coalition he founded in 1971, his son’s congressional office said Friday.
A spokesperson for U.S. Rep. Jonathan Jackson confirmed the long-time civil rights leader would be retiring from the organization. The elder Jackson, a civil rights leader and two-time presidential candidate, plans to announce his decision on Sunday during the organization’s annual convention, Rep. Jackson told the Chicago Sun-Times. Read more
Mississippi discriminates against Black residents with appointed judges, Justice Department says. By Emily Wagster Pettus / AP News
U.S. Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division speaks, June 1, 2023, in Jackson, Miss.
A new Mississippi law discriminates against residents of the majority-Black capital city of Jackson by requiring the appointment of some judges in a state where most judges are elected, the U.S. Justice Department said in court papers filed Wednesday. The department is seeking to join a federal lawsuit the NAACP filed against the state shortly after Republican Gov. Tate Reeves signed the law in April. Kristen Clarke, the department’s assistant attorney general for civil rights, said in a statement that Mississippi lawmakers created “a crude scheme that singles out and discriminates against Black residents” in Jackson and Hinds County, where the city is located. Clarke said the law creates a “two-tiered system of justice” with judges and prosecutors chosen by state officials. Read more
Tennessee Arrests Klan Leader on Same Day It Honors 1st Grand Wizard. By Michael Daly / Yahoo News
Three years ago, the Tennessee state Senate voted 20-to-9 to keep July 13 a Day of Special Observance marking the birthday of Nathan Bedford Forrest, a millionaire slave trader, Confederate general, mass murderer of more than 200 Black Union POWs, and the first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.
At a July 13 press conference, Columbia police reported that 38-year-old Daniel Walls and an unnamed 17-year-old had been arrested for allegedly plastering “bias rhetoric flyers” on three black churches there.
An online bio reports that Walls joined the Klan in 2009 and joined a succession of chapters, ascending to the second-highest rank, Knights of the Great Forrest, and then the top, the Knights of the Midnight Mystery. Read more
More Mothers Are Dying. It Doesn’t Have to Be This Way. By Veronica Gillspie-Bell / NYT
After Tori Bowie, an elite athlete, died in May, the reality of the health risk to Black women posed by childbirth was once again in the spotlight. The maternal mortality rate for Black women in America is, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2.6 times that for white women.
Now a recently published study in the medical journal JAMA has revealed that the U.S. maternal mortality rate — already the highest among peer nations — has increased for all racial and ethnic groups. Maternal outcomes in the United States are a public health crisis, and they are only getting worse. We know the data. We need to focus on the solutions. Read more
Robert Smith’s Latest Deal Just Made Him $4.6 Billion Richer. By Jasmine Browley / Essence
The wealthiest Black man in America just became richer.
Robert F. Smith, who’s worth a reported $8B, closed a deal with IBM that included the sale of Apptio, a software company that Smith’s private equity firm Vista Equity Partners owns. The sell is valued at a reported $4.6 billion, which is a 142 percent return on investment. Read more
Historical / Cultural
How Confederate migration spread white supremacy in the West. By Todd A. Price / USA Today
As a graduate student at University of California Irvine, Patrick A. Testa wondered why there were Confederate monuments in Southern California. Now he knows the reason. Slaveholding Confederates settled in the area after the Civil War.
Testa, a political economist at Tulane University, is a co-author of a new study that shows how the migration of elite Southerners in the decades after the Civil War shaped parts of the western United States. “It’s striking,” Testa said. Relying on hard data, the teams of scholars showed a mathematical correlation between elite Confederate settlers and Confederate monuments, lynchings, sundown towns, racial segregation and even increased police violence against African Americans. Read more
This 93-year-old Hilton Head woman is in a legal battle for land her family has owned since the Civil War. By Nicquel Terry Ellis / CNN
Josephine Wright and her late husband, Samuel Wright Sr., moved from New York to Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, nearly 30 years ago to seek peace and relaxation on a family-owned property.
The 1.8-acre parcel of land had been in her husband’s family since the Civil War and it was there that they carried on family traditions, hosted Thanksgiving and Christmas gatherings, planted trees and bushes and built a porch, Wright said. Wright, who is 93, acquired the deed to the land in 2012 after her husband died in 1998, her granddaughter, Tracey Love Graves, said. Now, Wright’s beloved land is at the center of a legal battle with a property developer looking to build a residential development next door. According to The Post and Courier, Georgia-based Bailey Point Investment, LLC is planning to construct 147 homes. Read more
The little-known publisher who tutored Hubert Humphrey about racism. By Samuel G. Freedman / Andscape
Cecil Newman’s work with the Minnesota politician helped convince Democrats to finally embrace civil right
Newman had more than a typical journalist’s interest in political news. The young mayor of Minneapolis, Hubert Humphrey, was scheduled to address the delegates that afternoon, and he was expected to defy both the moderate president, Harry Truman, and the bloc of Southern segregationists known as the “Dixiecrats” by calling for the Democratic Party to fully embrace civil rights in its platform for the first time. Ever since meeting Humphrey earlier in the decade, Newman had been his friend, political ally and tutor about racism in America. Read more
In ‘When Crack Was King,’ Donovan X. Ramsey looks back on the drug epidemic. By Tonya Mosley / NPR
On Sept. 5, 1989, President George H.W. Bush appeared on live television to discuss what he called the nation’s “gravest domestic threat.” Sitting at his desk in the oval office, Bush held up a bag of crack cocaine that had been seized in a park across from the White House, saying: “It’s as innocent looking as candy, but it’s turning our cities into battle zones.”
In his new book, When Crack Was King: A People’s History of A Misunderstood Era, Ramsey examines the crack epidemic of the 1980s and early ’90s from the points of view of four people who lived through it — and considers the lasting harm inflicted on the Black community by the government’s response. For Ramsey, who grew up in Columbus, Ohio, the story is personal. Read more
Colson Whitehead Returns to Harlem, and His Hero Returns to Crime. By Walter Mosley / NYT
“Crook Manifesto,” set in the 1970s, finds the “Harlem Shuffle” protagonist Ray Carney drawn back into the game in order to score Jackson 5 tickets for his daughter.
This is a story of survival without redemption, where the next generation loses some of the well-honed instincts that have built this world. Whitehead’s hero, the furniture salesman and opportunistic small-time criminal Ray Carney, is older than he was when we last met. He has retreated from his practice of working in the “secondary economy.” But outside his successful furniture business’s showroom window, Harlem is stirring with the unease of change and oppression. Read more
André Watts, internationally acclaimed pianist, dies at 77. By Emily Langer / Wash Post
He was catapulted to fame at 16 by his performances under Leonard Bernstein — and sustained his celebrity for more than half a century
Mr. Watts, the son of an African American soldier and a Hungarian refugee of World War II, was often described as one of the first Black classical musicians to reach stardom on the international stage. For his part, he rejected the terms “Black” and “White” — “they’re both inaccurate,” he remarked — and said that “a person’s color should be recognized as a means of physical description, and then dismissed.” Read more
Black Music Sunday: Songs that honor Ida B. Wells’ crusades for justice. By Denise Oliver Velez / Daily Kos
Ida B. Wells—the anti-lynching crusader, women’s rights activist, voting rights advocate, and journalist—was born into enslavement on July 16, 1862 in Holly Springs, Mississippi.
As I sit here today, watching the resurgence of anti-Black hate groups, “white nationalism” denial from Sen. Tommy Tuberville, hate legislation from the Republi-Klan Party, book banning in the name of fake anti-CRT mania, daily news stories of anti-Black and -POC police brutality, and the rolling back of women’s rights, I feel like it is time, once again, to turn to music that narrates history, celebrates our hard-won victories, honors our freedom fighters, and moves us to keep on fighting that good fight. Read more and listen here
Jay-Z honored with career-spanning exhibit at Brooklyn Public Library. By Variety and NBC News
Billed as an homage to Jay’s influence on culture, music, business and social justice, the exhibit is a sprawling history of his life and career.
It’s a sprawling history of his life and career that extends into two floors of the museum, containing recordings, clothing, artifacts from his career, audio tours, tons of video and most of all, a living testament to his remarkable accomplishments over the past three and a half decades. Read more
Colorism is driving women of color to use harmful skin lightening products, says new study. By Char Adams / NBC News
Most skin-lightening products are used for medical purposes, but sometimes they’re used to conform to beauty standards informed by skin tone.
Skin lightening, also called whitening or bleaching, is a multibillion-dollar industry with products that can damage the skin and that, researchers say, promote a dangerous message about beauty and social value. But people who use these products — primarily marketed to women — seldom understand the health risks of using the over-the-counter chemicals, Northwestern University researchers found in a study recently published in the International Journal of Women’s Dermatology. Read more
Sports
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: “There are times when you don’t have any choice but to speak the truth.” By Jim Axelrod / CBS News
At the age of 76, he’s got other things to think about, which he’s sharing on the online platform Substack, on a wide range of interests. “I’m just gravitating to things that intrigue me,” he said.
Speaking his truth has always been a guiding principle for him. Born in New York City, he was still known as Lew Alcindor as he learned the game on courts in East Harlem. “At 14, I was 6’10”. I crept up to seven feet in the next year or so.” But more than his game developed there. So did his world view. “What I learned about Black pride and Black history would not have happened if I wasn’t raised here in New York and had my roots in Harlem,” he said. Read more
How Cowboys owner Jerry Jones found a sucker in Clarence Thomas. By Mike Freeman / USA Today
What you need to understand most about the story of Jerry Jones giving Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas a Super Bowl ring, is that in doing so Jones accomplished something he’s done for decades: manipulate power, or the powerful, for his own benefit. Few NFL owners understand power − how it works, how to use it, how to take it, how to create it − like Jones. Other owners are rich; Jones is rich and a shark. Sharks like him know what a sucker looks like. He found one in Thomas. Read more
Tommy Tuberville couldn’t be racist. He coached football. By Candace Buckner / Wash Post
Gabby Douglas announces gymnastics comeback. By Christopher Brito / CBS News
Three-time Olympic gold medalist Gabby Douglas has announced she’s making a return to competitive gymnastics.
In her first Instagram post since August, the 27-year-old gymnast wrote Thursday that she “did a lot of journaling, reflecting, soul searching and found myself back where it all began.” Douglas said she found “peace” after many years of having an “ache” in her heart. Read more
Chris Eubanks’s Wimbledon run ends. His next chapter is just starting. By Ava Wallace / Wash Post
Reputations, as Eubanks learned this month, can change overnight. The 27-year-old capped a career-altering few months Wednesday with a 4-6, 6-1, 6-4, 6-7 (7-4), 1-6 loss in the Wimbledon quarterfinals to world No. 3 Daniil Medvedev, who advanced to face top-ranked Carlos Alcaraz in a semifinal Friday.
Eubanks’s ranking will land somewhere in the 30s after Wimbledon, status that will award him different treatment at tournaments and probably more respect in the locker room. He has a hard road ahead — he has been gobbling up ATP rankings points and ascending like a rocket ship because his starting point, rankings- and points-wise, was low. The challenge will be defending them and being consistent on tour with more eyes watching. Read more
Meet the thrilling Reds, turbo-boosted by Elly De La Cruz: ‘A new generation, a new era.’ By C. Trent Rosecrans / The Athletic
De La Cruz is unlike anyone ever seen on a baseball field. The 6-foot-5 switch-hitter has just three categories listed on MLB.com’s StatCast page for his percentile rankings: 98th percentile for maximum exit velocity, 98th percentile for arm strength, and 100th percentile for sprint speed. That means he hits the ball just about as hard as anyone in the game, throws the ball nearly as hard as anyone in the game and is faster than anyone else in the game.
The Reds have gone 22-8 since De La Cruz was called up June 6. He’s been the turbo button for a Reds team that has come out of nowhere to do unexpected, exciting, break-neck things nearly every night. Read more
Florida A&M to forgo future Orange Blossom Classic games, says athletic director. By Brandon King / HBCU Sports
Throughout its initial 44-year run from 1933 to 1978, the Orange Blossom Classic cemented itself as one of the preeminent postseason HBCU Classics.
Revived in 2021, the Orange Blossom Classic is now one of the crown jewels of the early portion of the HBCU football season, with Florida A&M and Jackson State now part of the series. However, in an interview with HBCU GameDay, FAMU athletic director Tiffani Dawn-Sykes indicated the school declined an invitation to return to the Orange Blossom Classic. Read more
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