Featured
Legal Scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw: We Must Reclaim Critical Race Theory from Right-Wing Fearmongering / Democracy Now
We speak with pioneering scholar and activist Kimberlé Crenshaw about the growing Republican effort to ban critical race theory — an academic field that conservatives have invoked as a catchall phrase to censor a variety of curriculums focusing on antiracism, sex and gender. Crenshaw has launched what she calls a “counterterrorism offensive” against the Republican efforts with a “summer school” inspired by the Freedom Summer movement of the 1960s. The school debunks the “bothsidesism” debate Crenshaw says is upheld by mainstream media, and highlights the importance of critical race theory in building a multiracial democracy. “There’s no daylight between the protection of our democracy and the protection of antiracism,” says Crenshaw. Listen and watch here.
Political / Social
Abortion, racism and guns: How white supremacy unites the right. By Tamara Kay and Susan L. Ostermann / Salon
Do things change? An early version of the racist “great replacement” theory drove the campaign to outlaw abortion
White supremacy was one of the primary motivations behind the first movement to outlaw abortion in the United States. In 1858, the American Medical Association (AMA), led by Horatio Storer, launched a crusade to end abortion across the country. Prior to this period, abortion was legal in all U.S. states. Storer and white male physicians not only wanted to push women midwives — often Black, indigenous and immigrant women — out of the newly developing medical profession, but also had another, more sinister aim: these men wanted white male Protestants to politically control the country. Read more
Why this “originalist” Supreme Court would disappoint the founders. By William M. Treanor / Slate
Last month, the Supreme Court relied on its view of the Constitution’s original meaning in its landmark decisions involving abortion rights, gun rights, and religious freedom. None of these decisions, however, was actually consistent with originalism. They each failed to recognize a critical element of how the founders understood the Constitution: the founders believed courts should defer to precedent. Read more
House passes protection for same-sex, interracial marriages with bipartisan support. By Marianna Sotomayor , Leigh Ann Caldwell and Paul Kane / Wash Post
A bill that would federally protect same-sex marriages sailed through the House on Tuesday with bipartisan support, a historic moment that marks a capstone to the nation’s quarter-century evolution on LGBTQ rights and a response to fears that an emboldened Supreme Court was poised to take away hard-won civil rights. Forty-seven Republicans joined all Democrats in support of the Respect for Marriage Act that also would protect interracial marriage and repeal the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as between one man and one woman. Read more
Fake news speaks many languages, but it’s particularly fond of Spanish. By Lizette Alvarez / Wash Post
Fake news speaks many languages, but it’s particularly fond of Spanish. An epidemic of Spanish-language right-wing disinformation that spiked around the 2020 election on social media platforms, and in some big-city AM radio stations, is revving up again ahead of the fall midterms. Two years ago, before the 2020 presidential election, Spanish-language videos and news stories smeared Joe Biden as a communist. After the election, disinformation campaigns accused Black Lives Matter of spurring the Jan. 6 insurrection and bolstered the lie that Biden stole the election. Mixed in with all this were warnings that coronavirus vaccines were dangerous. Read more
Philadelphia reaches a ‘devastating’ 300 homicides for the year. By Emily Shapiro / ABC News
Also among this year’s victims are a 16-year-old boy who was fatally shot three times in the face and a 17-year-old boy gunned down near his high school in the middle of the afternoon. “Every act of gun violence is an unspeakable tragedy. The fact that our city has lost 300 souls to date this year is devastating,” Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney told reporters Tuesday. “The surging gun violence that we’ve seen in our city and cities across the country pains us all.” Read more
Relatives of Breonna Taylor and Jacob Blake Went to Ohio to Protest. Then the Cops Came After Them. By Samantha Michaels / Mother Jones
It has not ended. Last month, the police in Akron, Ohio, fatally shot Jayland Walker dozens of times after a traffic stop. A family mourned. Protests followed. For Bianca Austin and Jacob Blake Sr., the shooting brought back bad memories. Austin’s niece was Breonna Taylor, the 26-year-old woman who was fatally shot during a botched police raid on her home in Louisville, Kentucky, in 2020. Blake’s son Jacob Blake Jr. famously survived a police shooting in Kenosha, Wisconsin, months later. Since then, Austin and Blake Sr. have become close friends and colleagues, forming an organization called Families United that seeks to support people who have lost loved ones to police violence. They’ve traveled all over the country, protesting with and consoling relatives and friends of Daunte Wright, Cameron Lamb, and others. Read more
Pro-Israel hardliners spend millions to transform Democratic primaries. By Chris McGreal / The Guardian
Representative Donna Edwards of Maryland. Hardline groups have spent millions to oppose her primary bid.
Critics accuse Aipac and its allies of distorting Democratic politics in part because much of the money used to influence primary races comes from billionaire Republicans. Aipac has spent $6m on Tuesday’s contest in Maryland, more than any other organisation, to oppose Donna Edwards, who served eight years as the first Black woman elected to Congress from Maryland before losing a bid for the Senate in 2016. Read more
Senate Confirms Michelle Childs To Powerful D.C. Circuit Court Of Appeals. BJennifer Bendery / HuffPost
The Senate voted Tuesday to confirm Michelle Childs to a lifetime seat on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, making her the fourth Black woman to ever serve on the powerful court in its 130-year history.
Childs’ confirmation to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals isn’t exactly sloppy seconds. It’s considered the most powerful federal court in the country after the Supreme Court. It regularly takes up cases that the Supreme Court doesn’t consider, and it often makes the final decisions on some of the most important cases in the country, particularly those involving Congress and the executive branch. Read more
After 246 years, Marines set for their first Black four-star general. By Rachel Chason and Dan Lamothe / Wash Post
Lt. Gen. Michael E. Langley, whose confirmation hearing is scheduled for Thursday, has been tapped to lead the U.S. forces in Africa.
Langley has served in Afghanistan, Somalia and Japan. He has held top jobs at the Pentagon and led U.S. Marine Corps Forces Europe and Africa. He currently oversees Marine forces on the East Coast. Gaskin described him as straightforward, deeply competent and not the “beating-on-the-table” kind of Marine. Read more
Ethics / Morality / Religion
Black women from 20 to 78 share how faith impacts their abortion views. By and
Some say the decision aligns with their faith, while others advocate for freedom of choice.
Some Black women religious leaders, churchgoers and others in Christian communities said they were figuring out how to think about the ways abortion squares with their faith following the Supreme Court’s decision last month to strike down more than 50 years of having a constitutional right to abortion. NBC News interviewed eight Black women in churches across the country about the role religion plays in their views of their reproductive rights, a nuanced topic that is rarely discussed in the Black church. While some women advocate for control over their own bodies, others use the Bible as a foundation for their beliefs to condemn abortion. Read more
Related: Democrats Navigate Nuanced Views on Abortion Among Black Voters.
The Gospel and All That Jazz. By Joy Marie Clarkson / Christianity Today
A theologian (and amateur musician) explores the connection between them.
William Edgar’s new book, A Supreme Love: The Music of Jazz and the Hope of the Gospel, is itself a work of love. Edgar, professor of systematic theology at Westminster Theological Seminary, describes himself as a “decent amateur” of jazz who has played, studied, and written about it not from any career aspirations but out of a lifelong attachment. He is an amateur in the truest sense of the word’s origin, the French amateur: “one who loves.” This affection spills out of the margins, inviting readers to dive into a subject presented with joyful attention to detail and collegial warmth. Read more
SCOTUS and the Catholic Authoritarian Vanguard. By Piotr H. Kosicki / The Nation
How a nativist interpretation of the religion seized our institutions.
Are Roman Catholics seeking to bring down American democracy? This might seem a strange question to pose during the presidency of Joe Biden, only the second Roman Catholic ever to govern the United States. Yet, try counting the number of times in the course of this Supreme Court term that Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Amy Coney Barrett have clearly revealed themselves to be fundamentalist Catholics. Much ink was spilled during Barrett’s confirmation process over the likely consequences of the Catholic hyper-majority she would assure on SCOTUS. If we count the Catholic-baptized Gorsuch, the hyper-majority is undeniable: seven, in a court of nine. But the problem isn’t Catholicism itself (Sonia Sotomayor, after all, is one of those seven, and she practices the religion); it’s a nativist, nationalist, racist, sexist Catholic authoritarianism that now holds sway among the majority of lifetime appointees to the highest appellate authority in the republic. Read more
Historical / Cultural
The White Liberals’ Burden. By Eve Fairbanks / The Atlantic
Many Afrikaners welcomed the end of apartheid, but 30 years on, they’ve found Black-majority rule in South Africa hard to live with.
When i first arrived in South Africa, in 2009, it still felt as if a storm had just swept through. For most of the 20th century, the country was the world’s most fastidiously organized white-supremacist state. And then, in one election, in 1994, it became the first modern nation where people of color who’d been dispossessed for centuries would make the laws, run the economy, write the news, decide what history to teach—and wield political dominance over a substantial white minority.
Over the decade I lived in South Africa, I became fascinated by this white minority, particularly its members who considered themselves progressive. They reminded me of my liberal peers in America, who had an apparently self-assured enthusiasm about the coming of a so-called majority-minority nation. As with white South Africans who had celebrated the end of apartheid, their enthusiasm often belied, just beneath the surface, a striking degree of fear, bewilderment, disillusionment, and dread. Read more
Excavation of graves begins at site of colonial Black church. By Ben Finley / Religion News
If human remains are found in the plots that are being targeted, DNA tests and analyses of bones will be conducted, said Jack Gary, Colonial Williamsburg’s director of archaeology.
Archaeologists in Virginia began excavating three suspected graves at the original site of one of the nation’s oldest Black churches on Monday, commencing a months-long effort to learn who was buried there and how they lived. The First Baptist Church was formed in 1776 by free and enslaved Black people in Williamsburg, the colonial capital of Virginia. Members initially met secretly in fields and under trees in defiance of laws that prevented African Americans from congregating. Read more
Related: Descendants of possible Tulsa massacre victims can now give DNA to help identify remains. CBS News
Emmett Till’s Chicago home will get historic preservation funds. By AP and NPR
Emmett Till left his mother’s house on Chicago’s South Side in 1955 to visit relatives in Mississippi, where the Black teenager was abducted and brutally slain for reportedly whistling at a white woman. A cultural preservation organization announced Tuesday that the house will receive a share of $3 million in grants being distributed to 33 sites and organizations nationwide that are important pieces of African American history. Read more
When Tribal Nations Expel Their Black Members. Philip Deloria / New Yorker
Tribal censuses around the start of the twentieth century split people living among Native communities into groups that were separate but by no means equal. Photograph from Oklahoma Historical Society
Clashes between sovereignty rights and civil rights reveal an uncomfortable and complicated story about race and belonging in America. The Muscogee people, also referred to as Creeks, were among the tribes that once enslaved people of African descent and that were required, in the wake of the Civil War, to accept them as tribal citizens. Read more
Poet Sonia Sanchez received the Edward MacDowell Medal. By Hillel Italie / PBS
Shown is Sonia Sanchez and Dr. Nell Painter, chairwoman of the McDowell’s board.
The poet, activist and educator Sonia Sanchez is this year’s winner of the Edward MacDowell Medal, a lifetime achievement honor started in 1960 and previously given to Robert Frost, Toni Morrison and Stephen Sondheim among others. “I had tears in my eyes as I learned about this award,” Sanchez, 87, said in a statement released Sunday by MacDowell. “When I consider my dear friend, Sister Toni (Morrison), and so many others who have been given this award, I feel so welcomed to be part of that group. It is a great honor to be this year’s awardee. Read more
Wendell Pierce on the role of a lifetime in ‘Death of a Salesman.’ By Robin Rose Parker / Wash Post
Wendell Pierce, 58, is an actor and activist best known for his roles in the HBO dramas “The Wire” and “Treme,” and more recently in Amazon Prime Video’s “Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan.” (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.) This fall, as “The Wire” celebrates its 20th anniversary, Pierce will star in the revival of Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman,” becoming the first Black actor to take on the classic role of Willy Loman on Broadway. Pierce divides his time between New York, Los Angeles, and his native New Orleans. Read more
Abbott Elementary’s Success Is Just the Beginning for Quinta Brunson. By Rebecca Ford / Vanity Fair
Brunson is the most recognizable face associated with Abbott, in which she stars as elementary school teacher Janine Teagues, who, alongside her fellow teachers, attempts to do the best for the students in her underfunded Philadelphia school. But Brunson is also the series creator and a writer on the show, which is inspired by her own mother, who was an elementary school teacher. Read more
Urban Bush Women founder, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, wins Gish Prize. By Neda Ulaby / NPR
A pioneer in the world of dance has been awarded one of the largest cash prizes for artists in the United States.
Jawole Willa Jo Zollar founded the dance ensemble Urban Bush Women in 1984. It was one of the first major dance companies composed entirely of female African-American dancers. Almost immediately, it was a sensation in the dance world. Revolutionary at the time – and still cutting edge — Zollar’s choreography synthesizes movement from modern dance and traditional folk African dance styles with the kind of text and shouted language the company describes as “the urgent dialogue of the 21st century.” Read more
Sports
Roy Jones Jr., Dual Citizen of Russia & US, Takes Big Step to Free Brittney Griner: “…Willing to Do a Prisoner Exchange.” By Satagni Sikder / Essentially Sports
Legendary boxer, Roy Jones Jr. has proposed a potential prisoner exchange between Russia and the United States to free WNBA superstar Brittney Griner. The 53-year-old boxing legend holds dual citizenship in both America and Russia. Therefore, he has been using his connections in Moscow to try to free Brittney Griner, who has been detained in Russia for drug possession for about four months now. Read more
At 100, Rachel Robinson is still looking toward tomorrow with the Jackie Robinson Museum. William C. Rhoden / Andscape
The long-awaited opening is the continuation of not only keeping her husband’s legacy alive, but her determination and ferocity
On Tuesday, close friends and family will gather at a Manhattan apartment to celebrate a monumental American milestone: the 100th birthday of Rachel Isum Robinson. Another milestone will take place seven days later on July 26: the long-awaited opening of the Jackie Robinson Museum in lower Manhattan. Read more
At long last, the Olympic injustice done to Jim Thorpe is corrected. By David Maraniss / Wash Post
As a member of the Sac and Fox Nation who grew up in the Indian Territory of what would become Oklahoma, and who burst into athletic stardom at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania, Thorpe endured more than his share of indignities during his life, before and after he earned the title of “greatest athlete in the world” at the Summer Games in Sweden. But the loss of his records and medals was the one that hurt him most, setting Thorpe and his family and supporters on a long and at times seemingly futile quest for simple justice. Read more
Iman Shumpert has an athlete’s mindset in acting: “I fell in love with that fight or flight feeling.” By D. Watkins / Salon
From music to a role on “The Chi,” the NBA champion shares why he’s getting into all sides of entertainment
Scotty Pippen Jr and Shareef O’Neal chase NBA dream amid long shadows. By Claire de Lune / The Guardian
The LA Lakers’ Summer League team included a pair of NBA scions whose Hall of Fame fathers are inevitably casting shadows over their professional prospects
Scotty Pippen Jr and Shareef O’Neal are two such shadow-dodgers, and they just so happened to end up on the same NBA Summer League roster this month. The two hit the Las Vegas circuit to play for one of the other most ubiquitous Los Angeles institutions: the 17-time champion Lakers. Both Scotty Jr and Shareef’s dads are retired NBA supernovas: Scottie Pippen and Shaquille O’Neal, both household names, Hall of Famers and NBA champions many times over. Read more
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