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The Supreme Court struck down admissions programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina that used race in college admissions Thursday.
The Ruling: Read the full text of the Supreme Court’s affirmative action decision.
The Dissent: The Most Blistering Lines From The Supreme Court’s Affirmative Action Dissents. By Sara Bodoltz / HuffPost
A Critical Summary: The End of Affirmative Action. By Jelani Cobb / The New Yorker
Military Academies: Affirmative Action—but Only for Military Academies. By Spencer Ackerman / The Nation
Legacy Admits: Affirmative Action For White People? Legacy College Admissions Come Under Renewed Scrutiny. By Collin Binkley / HuffPost
Colorblindness and Equal Protection: Colorblind Constitution’: Supreme Court wrangles over the future of race in the law. By Lawrence Hurley / NBC News
The Supreme Court Turns ‘Equal Protection’ Upside Down. By The Editorial Board / NYT
Asian Americans: Some Asian Americans say affirmative action ruling used the group as ‘pawns.’ By and
Race Conscious Work Programs and Hiring Practices: With affirmative action gutted for college, race-conscious work programs may be next. By Elena Moore / NPR
Affirmative Action Ruling May Upend Hiring Policies, Too. By Noam Scheiber / NYT
Black Justices: In Affirmative Action Ruling, Black Justices Take Aim at Each Other. By Abbie VanSickle / NYT
Political / Social
Is racism a big problem? Black and white Americans don’t agree. By Phillip M. Bailey and Terry Collins / USA Today
As President Joe Biden and Congress have failed to deliver on promises of police accountability and amid a conservative-led backlash against diversity, equity and inclusion policies, many Black Americans are uplifting a centuries-old debate around reparations for slavery as the clearest pathway to racial equality.
Ahead of the July Fourth holiday, more than 45% of Americans said racism is a big problem or the biggest problem facing the United States, according to a new USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll. About 38% of respondents said racism is a problem but not one of the biggest facing the nation. Only about 14% of Americans said racism is not a problem. Read more
Sorry Obama, Donald Trump is actually proof that some people are “above the law.” By Chauncey Devega / Salon
If nobody was truly above the law in America, Donald Trump would not have been rewarded for his lifetime of crimes
During the last few weeks since Donald Trump’s indictment(s) and arrest(s) in New York and then Miami, Barack Obama was not the only person among America’s elites (and everyday people as well) to have told the same fib and white lie about how “nobody is above the law in America” and “that justice is blind”. That chorus was and is very loud and large. Read more
Education Secretary Rips Loan-Forgiven Republicans After College Debt Ruling. By Ben Blanchet / HuffPost
Education Secretary Miguel Cardona knocked Republican lawmakers for accepting “millions of dollars” for their businesses through COVID-era loans after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down President Joe Biden’s student debt relief program on Friday.
Cardona, who criticized the Supreme Court for ruling “against students and families across the country,” argued that the conservative court substituted itself for Congress before he then went after the GOP. Read more
Republicans’ Anti-Woke, Anti-Vote Crusade Has Crashed Into the Constitution. By Charles M. Blow / NYT
Before the dust had cleared on the 2020 election, Republicans in statehouses across the country had already regrouped and coalesced around a core crusade — revived and revitalized — that was anti-woke and anti-vote.
If they couldn’t control the highest rungs of power, they would look to exert control over Americans’ lives at the lower rungs. They would come to insert themselves into the most intimate of activities — between voters and ballots, between families and doctors, between teachers and students. Read more
State of Inequality: How deeply does our health care system discriminate? By Mark Kreidler / Daily Kos
Since before the country’s formation, unequal health based on race, from inferior care and treatment to shorter life spans, has been part and parcel of American history. Surveys in recent decades have enabled researchers to bring those disparities into sharper and sometimes harrowing focus.
According to the report, which was released this month by the Leapfrog Group, America’s A-graded hospitals—so denoted because of their superior record of keeping patients safe from preventable harm—do no better at reducing racial health disparities than hospitals at the bottom of the scale. Read more
He crushed the bar exam, but the legal profession remains disproportionately White. By
Graham’s score, 309, placed him above 94% of the test takers. In most states you would have to get at least a 260 score on the bar exam to pass.
The majority of US lawyers, at 81%, are White, followed by 5.8% who are Hispanic and 5.5% who are of Asian descent, the American Bar Association reports. The number of Black attorneys remains low in part due to the cost of law school, expensive test prep courses for the LSAT and the bar exam, as well as the amount of personal responsibilities Black students have, diversity advocates told CNN. Read more
What Will It Really Take To Address The Crisis Of Missing And Murdered Native Americans? By
The Department of Justice said it’s increasing resources around historically ignored crimes against Native people. But will that help?
Over the past few years, there’s finally been more light shed on the thousands of missing and murdered Native Americans and Alaska Natives whose stories have gone underreported and uninvestigated, devastating Native families and communities. The disturbing trend, which predominantly impacts women and children, sparked the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women movement, led by organizers who paint red handprints on their mouths to symbolize their solidarity with affected families. Read more
Mississippi Capitol Police changes rules on use of force after shootings. By Jon Schuppe / NBC News
The state agency will expand its jurisdiction in Jackson this weekend despite efforts to block the move in court.
The Mississippi Capitol Police, which shot four people in the first few months of an expanded crime-suppression mission in the city of Jackson, has issued new guidelines for when officers can use force against the public. The state agency quietly revised its use-of-force rules in late April, after NBC News found that it had deployed aggressive street units last summer without modernizing policies to reflect its new mission. Read more
An unlikely provocateur, Miss Texas, takes on the state’s GOP leaders. By Molly Hennessy-Fiske / Wash Post
Miss Texas, Averie Bishop, blows kisses as she rides in a parade on June 12 in Fairfield, Tex. Bishop, the first Asian Miss Texas, made a three-day trip to visit local businesses and emcee a local pageant. (Sergio Flores/for The Washington Post)
The day of the school shooting that killed 19 children and two teachers in Uvalde, Tex., last year, Averie Bishop posted a TikTok video, sobbing. “These things happen all the time and nothing changes,” she said. After the Supreme Court overturned abortion rights, following her home state’s own restrictions, she posted again: “When you live in Texas and all you wanted was a hot girl summer, but now you have a ‘no reproductive rights’ summer.” Read more
Ethics / Morality / Religion
Notes on faith: Can the U.S. be saved? The Black prophetic voice holds the hope of true liberation / The Grio
In pressing times like these, Rev. Calvin Taylor Skinner reflects on how the Black prophetic voice continues to provide guidance.
Supreme Court LGBTQ ruling: Neil Gorsuch has a problem with telling the truth, in 303 Creative v. Elenis. By Ian Millhiser / Vox
Gorsuch hands a victory to the Christian right by making false claims about an important First Amendment case.
On Thursday, Justice Neil Gorsuch released a 26-page opinion venting outrage about a legal dispute that does not exist, involving websites that do not exist. Yet this case, built on imaginary grounds, will have very real consequences for LGBTQ consumers, and for anti-discrimination laws more broadly. All of the Court’s Republican appointees joined Gorsuch’s opinion in 303 Creative v. Elenis. In the past, Christian right advocates have sought sweeping exemptions from state and federal civil rights laws, rooted in their expansive notion of “religious liberty.” Often, these lawsuits claimed that the Constitution’s safeguards for people of faith allow anyone who objects to LGBTQ people on religious grounds to defy any law prohibiting anti-LGBTQ discrimination. Read more
Black Catholics react to Supreme Court affirmative action decision. By Nate Tinner-Williams / NCR
Demonstrators protest outside of the Supreme Court in Washington June 29, after the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in college admissions, saying race cannot be a factor. (AP/Jose Luis Magana)
Anthony G. Brown, a Black Catholic serving as attorney general of Maryland, also criticized the decision, saying it “jeopardizes the progress made over several decades in our pursuit of diversity and equity.” Brown’s comments echoed those seen in an amicus brief from various Catholic colleges and university administrators submitted to the Supreme Court last fall, which noted that racial diversity “improves educational outcomes and fosters the spiritual development of [the schools’] students consistent with their Catholic values.” Read more
Historical / Cultural
California slavery reparations task force sends final report to uncertain fate in Legislature. By Jermy B. White and Sejal Govindarag /Politico
From left, state Sen. Steven Bradford, Secretary of State Shirley Weber, task force member Lisa Holder and Assemblymember Reggie Jones-Sawyer hold up the task force’s final report. | Haven Daley/AP Photo
A California task force Thursday presented its first-in-the-nation attempt to address the legacy of slavery to lawmakers who must decide whether to pursue a wide range of proposed remedies, including payments to descendants of enslaved people. The recommendations of the reparations task force, the product of months of research and public hearings, face an uncertain fate even in a Legislature with a Democratic supermajority and a governor supportive of the commission’s work. Read more
Related: California’s History of Slavery and Slave Revolts. Yale University Press Podcast
Related: Reparations for Black Californians? Here’s what that would look like. By Kayla Jimenez / USA Today
What the Birthright-Citizenship Debate Is Really About. By Martha S. Jones / The Atlantic
It’s about more than immigration.
When my Google Alerts sounded this past week, I knew that birthright citizenship was again lighting up in the news. My interest in debates over birthright is professional and abiding: I’m a historian who in 2018 published a book, Birthright Citizens, that traced this approach to national belonging from its origins in debates among Black Americans at the start of the 19th century to 1868, when the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment established that, with a few exceptions, anyone born on U.S. soil is a citizen. Read more
Related: What Frederick Douglass Knew That Trump and DeSantis Don’t. By Jamelle Bouie / NYT
Benjamin E. Mays – Champions of Civil and Human Rights in South Carolina. A Digital Exhibition by the Department of Oral History at the University of South Carolina
Interviewee: Dr. Benjamin Elijah Mays (August 1, 1894–March 28, 1984)
Interviewer: Grace McFadden Date: 1982
Editor’s note: ” Against the Advise of My Elders,” is an interview that Dr. Mays gave where he articulates how he overcame the oppression of his day. Strategists looking for answers of how to deal with the recent roll back of opportunity should take heed. Read more
Christine King Farris, sister of Dr. Martin Luther King, dies at 95. By Devon M. Sayers and Justin Gamble / CNN
Martin Luther King III, Rev. Bernice King’s brother, also remembered his aunt, writing on Twitter, “Aunt Christine embodied what it meant to be a public servant,” and that his aunt, just like his dad, spent her life fighting for equality and against racism.
“She defied the odds that held back too many marginalized communities – going on to become a civil rights leader and acclaimed author,” he wrote. “We will truly miss my Aunt but know that she leaves behind a tremendous legacy that will outlive us all and we commit to carrying that legacy on for future generations,” MLK III added. Read more
Lisa Cortés on her film exploring Little Richard’s legendary rock’n’roll legacy. By Amna Nawaz and Maea Lenei Buhre / PBS
A new documentary, “Little Richard: I Am Everything,” tells the story of one of rock and roll’s founding stars.
It premiered earlier in 2023 at the Sundance Film Festival. That’s where PBS NewsHour co-anchor Amna Nawaz sat down with director Lisa Cortés to discuss the film for our arts and culture series, CANVAS. The film “Little Richard: I Am everything” is available to stream online now on Apple TV and Amazon Prime Video. Read more and listen here
Sports
SCOTUS’s affirmative action decision: Ball or bust for Black athletes. By Kevin B. Blackstone / Wash Post
Eleven UCLA students, all Black males, stood 10 years ago before a campus building that housed programs geared toward diversity. They stared into a video camera and questioned whether their would-be alma mater was truly committed to the ideal of inclusiveness.
“When we have more national championships than we do Black male freshmen,” organizer Sy Stokes, a junior then, declared in a video that went viral, “it’s evident that our only purpose here is to improve your winning percentage. So now Black high school kids can care less about grades, just as long as the number on the back of their jersey doesn’t fade.” Read more
Shohei Ohtani is the best baseball player in the world. Who is No. 2? By Neil Greenberg / Wash Post
Mookie Betts, Ronald Acuña Jr. and Aaron Judge. (Ashley Landis, Brynn Anderson and Lindsey Wasson/AP)
How can we determine possible candidates? While not perfect, we can use the weighted average of wins above replacement from FanGraphs — a comprehensive measure of offensive and defensive skills, as well as factors such as playing time and position — for the past three seasons, including this one. Read more
Related: Yankees Pitcher Throws M.L.B.’s First Perfect Game Since 2012.
Simone Biles Signals a Return to Elite Gymnastics.
Biles, a seven-time Olympic medalist, last competed at the Tokyo Games in 2021, when she withdrew from some events because of a mental block.
Biles, 26, is listed among the participants in the U.S. Classic, which is scheduled for Aug. 5 near Chicago and is a warm-up competition for the national gymnastics championships to be held Aug. 24-27 in San Jose, Calif. Her entry came without fanfare; it is uncertain whether she can regain the form that earned Biles four Olympic gold medals, and seven overall, including the all-around title at the Rio de Janeiro Games in 2016. Read more
He’s young, Black, and chasing his dream on the fringes of pro golf. By Gene Wang / Wash Post
Marcus Byrd often survives paycheck to paycheck on the APGA, one of professional golf’s satellite tours. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
Byrd, who was born just outside Washington in Cheverly, Md., failed to make the cut at the Wells Fargo Championship but followed a 6-over-par 77 in the first round with a 71, finishing ahead of major championship winners Jordan Spieth and Zach Johnson, among others. A little more than a week later, he was back in the Washington area playing at a charity event in Prince George’s County, in part to keep his game sharp. Read more
Venus Williams’ love affair with Wimbledon, tennis a historic sight. By Dan Wolken / USA Today
Venus Williams, who turned 43 this month, is a five-time Wimbledon champion, but that’s not the only reason history will remember her at the All-England Lawn Tennis Club.
When the Wimbledon draw is released Friday, one name should stand above all others in terms of sheer appreciation to see it there again. For the 24th time, Venus Williams is playing the tournament that more than any other has defined her historic career. And hopefully it’s a fitting tribute to the most unlikely story tennis has ever seen. Read more
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