Featured – How Should Democrats Counter Racist Politics? By making it the central moral issue of their campaigns. By Mary Harris / Slate Podcast
In 1990, David Duke ran for Senate in Louisiana, appalling the Republican establishment and freaking out the Democratic consultant class. Duke didn’t win—but he did well enough to feel emboldened, and a year later he launched a campaign for Louisiana governor. The coalition that formed to defeat Duke has some advice for anyone trying to squelch racist policies and rhetoric today. Guest: Tim J. Wise, author of the books White Like Me: Reflections on Race From a Privileged Son and Dear White America: Letter to a New Minority. Listen here
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Denying Racism Supports It. Refusing to address and acknowledge the prejudices in our country is a big part of the problem. By Charles M. Blow / NYT
Last week, much of America wrestled with whether to label the president racist after he published racist tweets about four congresswomen of color, demonstrating once again in the most overt terms that he is indeed a racist. And yet many, including those in the media, struggled with whether or not to label his tweet, and by extension Donald Trump himself, as racist. Read more
On Being Told to ‘Go Back.’ By Rann Miller / The Progressive
Being told to “go back” reveals the desire of white America to bleach away the blood stains of its original sin: slavery. And there’s been a long line of efforts to do that. In the decades after Emancipation, as the number of free black people increased, white men created the American Colonization Society (ACS) to address the “problem” that slavery had caused. The group began to send freed blacks to the colony on the African coast that would become Liberia in 1822; eventually thousands of former slaves inhabited the new land. Read more
Black and Red: When modern conservatives associate activists of color with communism, they’re drawing on a racist history that goes back over 100 years. By Rebecca Onion / Slate
On Monday, Sen. Lindsey Graham went on Fox & Friends and called the “Squad”—the four freshmen representatives and women of color currently being targeted by President Donald Trump—“a bunch of communists.” The language sounded familiar to some. “Since at least the 1950s,” activist Bree Newsome Bass said on Twitter, “ ‘communist’ has become a popular coded word for n—-r. Read more
NAACP delegates call Trump “unfit to serve,” vote unanimously for impeachment. By Jon Queally / Salon
National delegates for the NAACP voted unanimously on Tuesday for a resolution calling for impeachment proceedings against President Trump, with the group’s head calling him “unfit to serve” in the nation’s highest office. The vote took place at the civil rights group’s annual convention taking place this week in Detroit. Read more
Wray: ‘Majority’ Of Domestic Terror Arrests This Year Motivated By White Supremacy. By Nicole Lafond / Talkingpointsmemo
FBI Director Christopher Wray told lawmakers on Tuesday that the majority of the arrests his team has made this year related to domestic terrorism have been motivated by white supremacist ideology. Read more
Why a Black Preacher Is Fighting for Control of a Neo-Nazi Group. By Adam Popescu / NYT
A pitched leadership battle is taking place inside one of the country’s oldest neo-Nazi groups. On one side, a true believer is pushing to attract new members and expand the ranks. On the other, a black former Baptist preacher is hoping to destroy the hate-spewing group from the inside. Read more
7 States Step Up Efforts To Fight Violence Against Indigenous Women. By Melodie Edwards / NPR
Native girls and women are more likely than average to be the victim of a violent crime. Now, seven states are taking early steps to help better identify and locate Native crime victims. Lynette Grey Bull, director of Not Our Native Daughters, is a survivor of attempted murder by an intimate partner. The organization educates the public about solutions to violence in Indian Country. Read more
Power Up: Biden course corrects on ’94 crime bill as his race record is scrutinized. By Jacqueline Alemany / Wash Post
COURSE CORRECTION: Former senator Joe Biden, whose support for the controversial 1994 crime bill he co-authored as Senate Judiciary Committee chair may be one of his biggest liabilities, is today rolling out what experts say amounts to a partial reversal of that landmark legislation. Read more
Jim Crow’s Last Stand: The Death of the Non-Unanimous Jury. Video by Sean Mattison / The Atlantic
The legacy of Jim Crow continues to loom large in the United States. But nowhere is it arguably more evident than in Louisiana. In 1898, a constitutional convention successfully codified a slew of Jim Crow laws in a flagrant effort to disenfranchise black voters and otherwise infringe on their rights. “Our mission was to establish the supremacy of the white race in this State to the extent to which it could be legally and constitutionally done,” wrote Judiciary Committee Chairman Thomas Semmes. Watch here
Two extraordinary exonerations show the failure of our justice system. By Editorial Board / Wash Post
SEVENTY CONVICTED murderers had their guilty verdicts thrown out last year, the highest number since researchers at the University of Michigan Law School began tracking exonerations in 1989. African Americans were disproportionately represented among them, which is unsurprising given that over the past 30 years blacks have been seven times more likely to be wrongfully convicted of homicide than whites. Read more
Black families once lived off their southern farmland. Their descendants are struggling to hold onto it. By Korsha Wilson / Wash Post
Melinda Hyman and William Palmer III, are fighting to preserve ownership of their great-great-grandfather’s farm. They remember visiting their great-great-grandfather’s small farm here when they were children. “He had orchards of pear and apple trees and some cattle,” Palmer remembers. Emmanuel Freeman purchased the 1,000 acres of land after the Civil War, building a modest life out of the few liberties the country afforded black people at the time. Read more
The Disturbing Return Of Race Science Has Been Festering For Decades. By Nick Robins-Early / HuffPost
The defeat of the Nazis helped discredit race science, which through fields such as eugenics had fueled the belief that some human beings are inherently inferior. Scientists from around the world came together after World War II to condemn the ideology that had led to the Holocaust, and to expose its main tenets as irrational and unscientific. But race science never really disappeared. Read more
My parents proudly worked for the US Postal Service. Don’t destroy it. Actor Danny Glover / USA Today
Today, the U.S. Postal Service is under pressure to slash costs in ways that would be devastating for customers and employees of all races — but especially African Americans. For black families like mine, the Postal Service has long been one of the few reliable paths to the middle class. Read more
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