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An Important Message From the Editor – Dr. Ronald J. Sheehy

Dear Followers of Race Inquiry:

As you know, the most consequential election in our lifetime will take place this November. Race Inquiry has paid special attention to contrasting the differences between the two candidates, Biden and Trump, among other issues.

During this interim period and beyond, Race Inquiry will provide content, free of misinformation, that will be important for voters to consider as they choose a candidate.

Therefore, I am asking you to share the Digest with as many friends and family as possible during this period before the election.

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Dr. Ronald J. Sheehy, Editor

Political / Social

Biden takes lead over Trump in Fox News poll for the first time since October 2023. By Nicholas Liu / Salon

Biden saw the biggest swing in his favor from independents, who said that he has more integrity than Trump

President Joe Biden can celebrate some good news for his re-election campaign — a new Fox News poll finds the incumbent enjoying the support of 50% of potential voters and a two point lead of Donald Trump. Read more

The Apprentice Is the Skeleton Key to Understanding Trump. By Will Leitch / New York Intelligencer

Ramin Setoodeh, the co-editor-in-chief of Variety and the author of Apprentice in Wonderland, which came out on Tuesday is a deep dive into The Apprentice, which ran for 14 seasons from 2004 to 2015 and repackaged and reintroduced Trump to a national audience.

What Setoodeh instantly found most remarkable was how obsessive Trump himself was about the show and how eager he was to talk about it: Setoodeh would end up doing six interviews with Trump about The Apprentice, interviews that typically went for hours with Trump watching and narrating old clips deep into the night. “He is never happier than when he talks about that show,” Setoodeh told me. “He is only dark and angry when politics comes up.” I spoke with Setoodeh about his time with Trump, the history of The Apprentice, and how reality television is the only prism through which Trump can truly be understood. Read more

Bragg Has Been Deluged With Threats Since Trump’s Conviction. By Nia Prater / New York Intelliogencer

In their initial response, Manhattan prosecutors argued against removing the gag order owing to a need to “protect the integrity of these proceedings” through the sentencing process. (Trump is due to be sentenced on July 11.) But Friday, the Manhattan district attorney’s office offered an additional rationale in a new filing to Judge Juan Merchan, citing increased threats against Alvin Bragg and other people connected to the case.

Since his involvement in the case began, Bragg has been subjected to seemingly endless vitriol from Trump. The Daily News reported that the district attorney has received hundreds of hateful and racist messages since Trump was convicted, calling him the N-word and threatening his life. In one message received from Portland, Oregon, the sender posted a photo of Bragg’s face next to a noose with the words “I am past the point of just wanting them in prison.” Read more

Is This the End of the Clarence Thomas Court? By Matt Ford / The New Republic

In Friday’s ruling on domestic violence and the Second Amendment, the other eight justices rejected his approach to originalism.

Two years ago, Justice Clarence Thomas led an originalist revolution of sorts to expand the Second Amendment. The 6–3 decision that he authored in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen set up a narrow history-and-tradition test that invalidated any gun restriction without a “historical analogue.” Read more

The Israel Trip That Made Jamaal Bowman — And Could Cost Him His Reelection. By Calder McHugh / Politico

In late 2021, Jamaal Bowman stepped out of a tour bus into the heat in Hebron. The then-rookie New York congressman was visiting the H2 area of the ancient city in the West Bank, which remains under Israeli military occupation with barbed wire-covered checkpoints every few blocks.

Bowman left profoundly demoralized. “There are streets they cannot walk and places they cannot go, simply because they are Palestinian,” he wrote, sharing a picture of himself posing with the students. “When I asked about their dreams, their answer was simple: freedom. The occupation must end.” Read more

Liberalism Under Siege. Win McCormack / The New Republic

Is the American experiment doomed?

Robert Kagan, historian and resident scholar at the Brookings Institution, is not befuddled by the question of what liberalism is, leastways not liberalism in the context of American political history, past and current. Liberalism, as Kagan writes in his new book, Rebellion: How Antiliberalism Is Tearing America Apart—Again, is exactly the philosophy originated by the British political thinker John Locke (building on previous writings of Thomas Hobbes) and embodied in America’s Declaration of Independence, as well as its Constitution and Bill of Rights. As the opening of the Declaration goes, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among them are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” Read more

Backlash against DEI spreads to more states. By Erika Bolstad / Daily Kos

In at least 22 states, the legislature has enacted legislation, or public universities have set policies prohibiting or modifying DEI measures at state university systems, according to a running tally in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Anti-DEI laws have had a chilling effect on higher education wherever they’ve been enacted, said Irene Mulvey, the president of the American Association of University Professors, a nonprofit membership association of faculty and other academic professionals. Read more

Is It Possible to Desegregate the Nation’s Biggest School System? By Troy Closson / NYT

A major lawsuit against racial inequality in New York City’s public schools is moving forward. Already, local districts in the city were trying different measures to diversify schools.

It is the story of many American cities. Despite decades of efforts, school districts have made little progress on desegregation. In dozens of places, racial divides have grown more pronounced. A growing wave of litigation — including the affirmative action cases involving Harvard and the University of North Carolina last summer — has challenged the fairness of policies intended to create more diverse student bodies. But recently, New York City has become the unlikely focus of renewed efforts to reduce racial segregation in public schools. Read more

NC A&T’s Chancellor-Elect Vows To Exceed Expectations. By Ashlei Stevens/ Black Enterprise

A civil engineer from a rural southern town has been tapped to lead the nation’s largest historically Black college and university (HBCU). James R. Martin II has been named the 13th Chancellor of North Carolina Agriculture & Technical State University (A&T) in Greensboro, N.C.

The University of North Carolina (UNC) System Board of Governors’ Committee on Personnel made the announcement June 21 at a press conference, noting that Martin is an “accomplished academic, administrator and civil engineer” who has served at three large public research institutions: Clemson University, Virginia Tech, and the University of Pittsburgh, where he is currently vice chancellor of STEM Innovation and Research. Read more

World News

President Joe Biden: ‘All the bad guys’ globally are rooting for Donald Trump. By Brett Samuels / The Hill

President Biden said in a new interview there is evidence China is meddling in the upcoming U.S. election, quipping that “all the bad guys” are rooting for former President Trump in November’s race.

“There is evidence that meddling is going on,” Biden told Time magazine in an interview published Tuesday, declining to go into greater detail. Read more

“The Night Won’t End”: New Film Investigates Civilian Killings in Gaza and U.S. Backing of Israeli Assault. Democracy Now

The Night Won’t End, a new documentary from Al Jazeera English, takes an in-depth look at attacks on civilians by the Israeli military in Gaza and the United States’ role in the war.

The film follows three Palestinian families as they recount the horrific experiences they have endured under relentless Israeli assault, including the family of 6-year-old Hind Rajab, the young Palestinian girl who made headlines when it emerged in January that she had been trapped in a car with family members killed by Israeli ground troops, and the Salem family, who first lost dozens of family members in an Israeli airstrike and then additional family members who were executed by Israeli soldiers. Read more and watch here

As President Takes Oath, 4 Challenges for South Africa’s New Government. By John Eligon / NYT

For the first time since the fall of apartheid, the nation must rely on a coalition of rival parties to govern. Can they get along enough to pull the country out of its crises?

With a humility stemming from his party’s electoral disappointment, President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa was sworn in for a second term on Wednesday, conceding bluntly to the government’s failure to cure a nation that remains deeply divided and economically fraught in the three decades since the end of apartheid. Read more

Ethics / Morality / Religion

Louisiana’s Ten Commandments Law Signals a Broader Christian Agenda. By Rick Rojas, David W. Chen and Elizabeth Dias / NYT

Gov. Jeff Landry wants his state to be at the forefront of a national movement to advance legislation with a Christian worldview.

The crowd at Our Lady of Fatima Catholic School in Lafayette, La., applauded Gov. Jeff Landry as he signed bill after bill this week on public education in the state, making it clear he believed God was guiding his hand. One new law requires that transgender students be addressed by the pronouns for the gender on their birth certificates (“God gives us our mark,” he said). Another allows public schools to employ chaplains (“a great step for expanding faith in public schools”). Then he signed into law a mandate that the Ten Commandments be hung in every public classroom, demonstrating a new willingness for Louisiana to go where other states have not. Last month, Louisiana also became the first state to classify abortion pills as dangerous controlled substances. Read more

How Christian nationalism is going under the radar in this election. By Paul A. Djupe / RNS

As the nonreligious population grows, many Americans are socially insulated from crucial political realities.

Some far-right Christian lawmakers have proposed that nonreligious Americans are not fit to govern because, without Christ, they are “evil.” Is it possible, given their relative lack of concern about such statements, that nonreligious Americans don’t know what Christian nationalism is? In fact, it may be expected. As the nonreligious population grows, and as people increasingly choose where they live based on religion and politics, this group has less exposure to conservative Christian politics. While many nonreligious Americans today are aware of the political stakes and players, substantial minorities are socially insulated from religious forces and their effect on political realities as we head toward the 2024 election. Read more

Relative: In Trump we trust: religious right on crusade to make their man president. By David Smith / The Guardian

Greg Abbott’s School Voucher Crusade Is Three Decades in the Making. by Jeremy Schwartz / ProPublica

Greg Abbott has campaigned against members of his own party who do not support voucher programs. This fall, he may finally get the votes needed to pass a bill — a win for the Christian conservative donors who have spent decades lobbying for it.

The governor’s voucher crusade represents the culmination of more than three decades of work by Christian conservative donors, whose influence in Texas politics has never been more pronounced. They have poured millions of dollars into candidates and helped lead or fund a network of organizations, such as the influential Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank, to galvanize Republicans around the issue. Read more

Historical / Cultural

These Badges Shed New Light on the Enslaved Workers Who Built Charleston. By Sarah Kuta / Smithsonian Magazine

Many of these badges have been lost to history. But one collector, Harry S. Hutchins Jr., spent his life gathering as many as he could find.

Starting in the late 17th century, enslavers in Charleston, South Carolina, began hiring out their enslaved laborers to earn some extra money. From 1783 onward, they were required to register these workers with the city and pay a fee. In return, they received badges listing various occupations, such as servant, carpenter, porter or mechanic. Enslaved individuals sewed the badges onto their clothing and were required to wear them at all times. Read more

The site of the first free Black town in the U.S. is being rebuilt near St. Augustine. By C. Isaiah Smalls II / Miami Herald

Soldiers reenact a battle at Fort Mose. Located just outside of St. Augustine, Fort Mose was the first free, Black settlement in what would become the United States of America. Florida Park Service

Established in 1738, the town sat just a few miles north of St. Augustine, the oldest city in the country, until the Spanish sold Florida to the British in 1763. And while this history lay dormant for years until the mid-80s, its importance to not only Florida but this country will be enshrined forever once the reconstruction of the fort is finished in 2025. Read more

Three Evangelical ‘Founding Fathers’ and Their Complicated Relationships to Slavery. By Robert Caldwell III / CT

A new book steers between full condemnation and “men of their time” dodges.

How should white evangelicals think about slavery and past evangelical heroes who affirmed its practice? A new book by historian Sean McGever, Ownership: The Evangelical Legacy of Slavery in Edwards, Wesley, and Whitefield, helps us process these matters with historical accuracy and Christlike humility. Read more

How 99 Black Americans Gained—Then Lost—Land on an Idyllic Georgia Island. By Ruth Murai / Mother Jones

On Skidaway Island, off the coast of Georgia, “not one blade of grass feels out of place.” The average price of a home in The Landings was more than $800,000 in 2022. The community boasts a spa, four clubhouses, five swimming pools, and six golf courses. Although Black people are the majority in nearby Savannah, on Skidaway Island 93 percent of the population is white.

It’s hard to tell now, but this wealthy white enclave used to be home to a Black utopia. In 1865, a promise was made to newly freed people, the promise of “40 acres and a mule.” For thousands, that was made real. The Center for Public Integrityfound that at least 99 men and women were issued federal documents entitling them to land on the island. But as the latest episode of Reveal details, it was later all taken back from them as white Southerners sought pardons from President Andrew Johnson, who granted many of them and returned plantations back to the enslavers. Read more

Paying reparations for slavery is possible – based on a study of federal compensation to farmers, fishermen, coal miners, radiation victims and 70 other groups. By Linda J. Bilmes and Cornell William Brooks / The Conversation

As Americans celebrate Juneteenth, legislation for a commission to study reparations for harms resulting from the enslavement of nearly 4 million people has languished in Congress for more than 30 years.

Though America has yet to begin compensating Black Americans for past and ongoing racial harms, our new research published in the Russell Sage Foundation Journal in June 2024, refutes one of the key arguments against making reparation payments – that they would be too difficult and expensive for the federal government to administer. We discovered hundreds of cases and analyzed more than 70 programs in which the federal government pays what we term “reparatory compensation” to millions of Americans. Read more

Let’s Examine the Link Between MAGA and the Old South. By Thom Hartman / The New Republic

We face a second insurrection in this country today, and most people have no idea how closely it’s modeled on the first one.

The people who’ve captured the Republican Party envision a day when they won’t have to even pretend that they’re engaging in good-faith political discussions or negotiations because they will have outlawed, sidelined, or intimidated their opposition into impotence and silence. They’re using our political system this election year, in other words, so they can seize enough power to destroy our political system. And they have a model they’re using for what they want to replace it with: the Confederacy. Read more

In 1964, the Klan killed three young activists and shocked the nation. By Susan Levine / Wash Post

Even in a decade marked by hatred and violence, what happened here on a sultry June night 60 years ago shocked the nation for its brazenness.

The three activists had arrived to check on the latest church burning. But before the sun rose the next morning, Mickey Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman would all be dead, ambushed by the Ku Klux Klan as they were heading out of Neshoba County. It took a massive FBI mobilization 44 days to find the brutalized bodies. It took years for even a modicum of justice. Read more

Angela Bofill, R&B balladeer with a dreamy, dynamic voice, dies at 70. By Harrison Smith / Wash Post

Beginning in the late 1970s, she landed eight songs in the R&B Top 40, including “This Time I’ll Be Sweeter” and “Too Tough.”

Angela Bofill, a classically trained singer who became an R&B hitmaker in the late 1970s and ’80s, singing lush ballads and torch songs that showed off her expansive three-and-a-half-octave range, died June 13 in Vallejo, Calif. She was 70. Read more

Sports

Why Willie Mays, not Babe Ruth, was baseball’s greatest player. By Chris Isidore / CNN

Among students of baseball, there has long been widespread belief that Willie Mays was the game’s greatest all-around player.

That might come as a surprise to those who are casual fans, or not fans at all, when they read obituaries this week that describe Mays, who died Tuesday at the age of 93, as the greatest. Babe Ruth was the common answer to the game’s “greatest player” title starting more than 100 years ago, when he smashed home run records and lifted the popularity of the game to the point it became known as the national pastime. And Ruth’s exploits as a Herculean slugger came after part of his career was as one of baseball’s top pitchers, making him a rare two-way great. But Mays achieved greatness in many more aspects of the game than Ruth, even if he never threw a pitch. Read more

For Black baseball, game at Rickwood Field is tribute to past, hope for future. By Andrew Golden / Wash Post

Nostalgic matchup between Cardinals and Giants, two days after Willie Mays’s death, caps a week of celebration of what was and what could be.

Here in Birmingham, nestled between 12th Street West and Second Avenue West, is one of the prized relics of Black baseball history — and baseball as a whole, for that matter. Rickwood Field, established in 1910, was home to the Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro Leagues, then the Birmingham Barons, a Class AA minor league team. This week, it was home to a celebration of Black baseball. Read more

Caitlin Clark’s name has been used to push bigotry – and she finally pushed back. By Arwa Mahdawi / The Guardian

While some of Clark’s fans are accusing her fellow players of jealousy, a certain group of galaxy-brains has decided that the star is actually a victim of reverse discrimination.

On Thursday, Clark addressed the issue more directly when a writer from the Athletic asked her how she feels about her name being weaponized. “It’s disappointing,” Clark said. “The women in our league deserve the same amount of respect, so people should not be using my name to push those agendas.” It’s a bit of a wishy-washy statement, but it’s something. Clark should be applauded for finally speaking up. Read more

Carl Lewis says Jess Owens documentary on Juneteenth is ‘very timely’. By Tyler Dragon / USA Today

Sports are a microcosm of society. Perhaps there’s no better example of that than when Jesse Owens competed in the 1936 Berlin Olympics in the heart of Nazi Germany, persevered and won four gold medals in what is still an American track and field record for most gold medals earned at a single Olympics.

A new documentary about the late track and field legend called “Triumph: Jesse Owens and the Berlin Olympics” premieres June 19 on the History Channel. Read more

ESPN has offered Stephen A. Smith $18 million deal. By Andrew Battifarano / New York Post

ESPN does not want one of its biggest personalities to leave the sports behemoth.

The network has offered “First Take” talking head Stephen A. Smith a five-year, $90 million deal ($18 million per year) to remain at ESPN with his contract expiring in 2025, according to Puck News. ESPN reportedly pitched to William Morris Endeavor (WME), the agency that represents Smith, on the idea that he could become the highest-paid talent at the Worldwide Leader. Read more

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