Featured
The 1619 Project and the Long Battle Over U.S. History. By Jake Silverstein / NYT
Fights over how we tell our national story go back more than a century — and have a great deal to teach us about our current divisions.
The story of a country designed by Providence and set marching on the righteous path by leaders of pure and noble purpose fails to make sense of this moment, which requires a deeper examination of our founding paradox. It’s a particularly American irony that the effort to do so has been deemed a “divisive concept” and banned from the classroom in 12 states. We may need, instead, legislation that requires us to study divisive concepts, beginning with the most basic one of all: All men are created equal. As Quarles and others have explained, our founding concept of universal equality, in a country where one-fifth of the population was enslaved, led to an increase in racial prejudice by creating a cognitive dissonance — one that could be resolved only by the white citizenry’s assumption of Black inferiority and inhumanity. It’s an unsettling idea, that the most revered ideal of the Declaration of Independence might be considered our original divisive concept. Read more
Related: What ‘Structural Racism’ Really Means. By Jamelle Bouie / NYT
Related: Democrats can win the debate over critical race theory. Here’s how. Max Boot / Wash Post
Political / Social
White supremacists declare war on democracy and walk away unscathed. By Carol Anderson / The Guardian
American democracy’s most dangerous adversary is white supremacy. Throughout this nation’s history, white supremacy has undermined, twisted and attacked the viability of the United States. What makes white supremacy so lethal, however, is not just its presence but also the refusal to hold its adherents fully accountable for the damage they have done and continue to do to the nation. The insurrection on 6 January and the weak response are only the latest example. Read more
Can Stacey Abrams Save the Democrats—Again? By Steve Freiss / Newsweek
More than 1,000 ticket-buying fans bathe Stacey Abrams in adulation the minute she steps into the spotlight at the cavernous Chevalier Theatre in the Boston suburb of Medford in late October. She waves with both hands, sits down in a deep leather chair and flashes her famous gap-toothed grin until the standing ovation subsides and the sixth stop on her three-month, 12-city national speaking tour can start. That evening’s moderator, NPR host Meghna Chakrabarti, says she’s awed to be “sharing the stage with one of the great defenders of democracy,” and tees up Abrams to deliver her core message: that efforts to suppress voting rights, particularly of people of color and young voters, are a scourge in this country that must be fought. And with that, the former Georgia State Representative and current Democratic breakout star gets to work. Read more
Ted Cruz Talks About Joe Rogan Being ‘President’ Of Texas If State Secedes From U.S. By Mary Papenfuss / HuffPost
“If there comes a point where it’s hopeless, then I think we take NASA, we take the military, we take the oil,” Cruz told an audience at Texas A&M University. In a startling address to constituents, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) recently talked about controversial COVID-19 conspiracist Joe Rogan becoming the “president” of Texas if the state secedes from the union. “I’m not there yet,” Cruz told an audience last month at Texas A&M University about Texas seceding from the United States — popularly known as “Texit.” Read more
Blue States, You’re the Problem. Johnny Harris and
It’s easy to blame the other side. And for many Democrats, it’s obvious that Republicans are thwarting progress toward a more equal society. But what happens when Republicans aren’t standing in the way? In many states — including California, New York and Illinois — Democrats control all the levers of power. They run the government. They write the laws. And as we explore in the video above, they often aren’t living up to their values. In key respects, many blue states are actually doing worse than red states. It is in the blue states where affordable housing is often hardest to find, there are some of the most acute disparities in education funding and economic inequality is increasing most quickly. Read more
Related: Black Voters Want Better Policing, Not Posturing by Progressives.
Brittney Cooper’s Truth-Telling Is Too Much For The Cowardly Right-Wing Mob. Lawrence Ross / HuffPost
Dr. Brittney Cooper, a professor at Rutgers University, has been under attack by the right-wing ecosystem in the past month for her remarks on the corrosive power of white supremacy and the need to eradicate it. Cooper is one of America’s leading academics on race and gender, and she represents a younger generation of Black academics who speak truth to power beyond the ivy walls, without the usual social niceties that mute the message. She recognizes that a system of white supremacy and misogyny wants to destroy her, destroy Black people, and destroy Black women, and she is not vague in talking about its strategy and tactics. Read more
Winsome Sears, a Black Republican, winning in Virginia doesn’t rule out race as a big factor. By Jonathan Capehart / Wash Post
Race mattered in the Virginia governor’s election, and not in a good way. The fact that a Republican Black woman, Winsome E. Sears, was elected lieutenant governor, alongside the Republican gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin, doesn’t take away from that ugly reality. A Jamaican immigrant who joined the Marines to defend this country, Sears was a member of the Virginia House of Delegates from 2002 to 2004 before her recent win, in which she became the first woman and first Black woman elected to the lieutenant governor post. There is no denying the symbolic power of seeing a Black woman in that job. Read more
Conservative school board wins may deliver chilling effect on racial equity efforts. By Laura Meckler and Timothy Bella / Wash Post
Ben & Jerry: White people need to fight racism, police abuse. Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield / USA Today
When police abuse Black people, it’s not a Black problem. It’s a white problem. While Black people bear the brunt of police brutality, it’s white people who allow this racism to continue. Ours is a majority white society. White people elect the officials who appoint police chiefs. Police chiefs are overwhelmingly white. The people we pay to protect and serve are killing and brutalizing Black people before our very eyes. And we’re letting them get away with it. As uncomfortable as it makes us feel, our inaction feeds and perpetuates injustice. Some of us claim to be neutral, but the reality is that neutrality preserves the status quo. If we’re not actively fighting against it, we are allowing the horrors to continue. White people need to act. We need to use our power to end injustice. Read more
Kamala Harris’s approval rating falls to 28%, a historic low for any modern vice president. By Jake Lahut / Yahoo News
A new poll from USA Today and Suffolk University released on Sunday contains a grim snapshot of public sentiment toward the Biden administration. President Joe Biden has been on a months-long slide toward historically poor polling numbers, but yesterday’s USA Today/Suffolk poll was even worse for Vice President Kamala Harris. Biden’s approval rating hit yet another a new low, this time at 38%, but Harris’ dropped to 28%. Read more
‘It’s a disgrace’: Progressives take aim at Buffalo mayor’s DNC post. By David Siders and Holly Otterbein / Politico
In the general election, Brown, a four-term incumbent, orchestrated a well-funded write-in campaign, appealing to both moderate Democrats and Republicans who had no candidate on the general election ballot. The viability of his effort kept several top New York Democrats, including Gov. Kathy Hochul, on the sidelines. Earlier this year, the state Democratic Party chair, Jay Jacobs, faced blowback from progressives when, asked about Democrats failing to endorse Walton, he answered with an analogy involving former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke. Read more
North Carolina Appeals Courts May Find Discrimination Against Black Jurors for First Time. By Jacob Biba / The Intercept
“North Carolina is often billed as a racially moderate state compared to other southern states,” H. Timothy Lovelace Jr., a law professor at Duke University, said. “So in some ways it really is striking that state courts in North Carolina have historically been so reluctant to tackle the issue of jury discrimination.” That could soon change. North Carolina’s Court of Appeals and Supreme Court are currently reconsidering Batson claims in the cases of two Black men from Forsyth County who have strong claims that prosecutors discriminated against Black jurors. If the appellate courts rule in their favor, the men will receive a new trial. The Batson claims in Holden’s case will be reheard in trial court and could return to the Court of Appeals. Read more
Police Hurt Thousands of Teens Every Year. A Striking Number Are Black Girls. By Abbie Vansickle and Wethua Li / The Marshall Project
Black youths make up the majority of kids on the receiving end of police violence — and a striking number of them are girls, an investigation by The Marshall Project found. There is no comprehensive national database of violent interactions between police and civilians. But when we looked at data for six large police departments that provided detailed demographic information on use-of-force incidents, we found nearly 4,000 youngsters 17 and under experienced police violence from 2015 through 2020. Almost 800 of the children and teens — roughly a fifth of the total — were Black girls. White girls were involved in about 120 cases, representing only 3% of use-of-force incidents involving minors. Read more
Lessons from a ‘violence interrupter’ as shootings continue to ravage Chicago. By Deena Zaru / ABC News
As gun violence continues to skyrocket in Chicago, the police, experts and city officials are scrambling for answers, but few understand gun violence like Reggie Woods. Woods lost family, friends and community members to shootings, and was once a perpetrator of gun violence himself. He is now on the front lines of prevention as a street outreach worker or “violence interrupter” for the violence prevention team at UCAN Chicago, a social services organization that serves youth. Read more
As COVID vaccines for kids become available, who ensures equity? By Nada Hassanein / USA Today
From living in pharmacy deserts to neighborhoods without pediatric care, underserved children, often Black and brown, face complex barriers to getting the shots. And they have been most vulnerable to COVID-19. Since the start of the pandemic, Black, Hispanic, American Indian and Alaska Native children were hospitalized more often than white children, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 37% of children ages 5 to 11 hospitalized with COVID-19 were Black, and 31% were Hispanic, compared with 22% white, according to a CDC analysis. Underlying conditions were most often asthma or obesity,the report found. Both conditions disparately affect children of color. Read more
We’re redefining what leadership looks like’: Asian Americans show rapid rise in US politics. By Maya Yang / The Guardian
After a series of historic wins across the US last week, Asian Americans will now serve as mayors and city council members in large cities including Boston, Seattle, Cincinnati and New York, signaling the rapid rise in Asian American political power. The victories mark a significant step forward for a diverse community that has seen historically low representation in political offices and in the last two years has borne the brunt of a rising tide of pandemic-driven anti-Asian sentiments. Shown is Michelle Wu who speaks to supporters at her election night event in Boston Tuesday. Read more
What a $50 Million Donation Did for One H.B.C.U. By Gina Cherelus / NYT
If colleges have been among the most disrupted institutions during the pandemic, they have also been centers of hope and resilience. At Prairie View, a historically Black university, some of that optimism has been magnified by a $50 million donation from MacKenzie Scott, the former wife of Jeff Bezos, who has quietly given billions of dollars to underfunded organizations since 2020. The president of Prairie View, Ruth Simmons, is using the money for initiatives to reignite the campus, including starting a writing program, opening a center for race and justice, increasing the university’s endowment and reserving $10 million for a grant program from which some students are already benefiting. Read more
Historical / Cultural
Wilmington marks 123 years since coup and massacre. By Scott Neuman / NPR
On Nov. 10, 1898, a mob descended on the offices of The Daily Record, a Black-owned newspaper in Wilmington, N.C. The armed men then moved into the streets and opened fire as Black men fled for their lives. Finally, the rabble seized control of the racially mixed city government. It expelled Black aldermen, installed unelected whites belonging to the then-segregationist Democratic Party and published a “White Declaration of Independence.” Historians have called it a coup d’etat. The number of people who died ranges from about 60 to as many as 250, according to some estimates. Shown are Members of the Grand Lodge of South Carolina who carry soil collected in honor of Joshua Halsey to his gravesite at the Pine Forest Cemetery in Wilmington, N.C., on Nov. 6. Great-granddaughters of Halsey attended the service, where the Rev. William Barber II eulogized Halsey. Read more
Remembering the Black lifesavers of Pea Island. By Bill Rhoden / The Undefeated Video
The talented watermen and former slaves made history while serving the U.S. during Jim Crow
In 1880, the Outer Banks Pea Island Lifesaving Station was the nation’s only station entirely manned by Blacks. Led by Richard Etheridge, the men earned a reputation for skill and courage during Reconstruction, a time of prejudice and racial tension. Watch here
Enslaved Revolutionary Women: An Author Interview with Karen Cook-Bell. By Karen Cook Bell . AAIHS
On March 5, 1770, a twenty-three-year-old woman, her eight-month-old daughter, and her husband escaped from bondage in Leacock Township in Pennsylvania. This unnamed fugitive woman was not the only one who tried to escape from slavery; one-third of all runaways during the Revolutionary Era were women and girls. Despite this number, the stories of these enslaved and fugitive women and the contributions they made to the cause of liberty have rarely been told. In her new book Running From Bondage: Enslaved Women and Their Remarkable Fight for Freedom in Revolutionary America (Cambridge University Press; July 1, 2021), historian Karen Cook-Bell aims to rectify this historical omission. Read more
What would be 43-year wrongful imprisonment could be near end. By CBS News
A Kansas City man who’s been jailed more than 40 years for a triple murder adamantly and repeatedly denied having anything to do with the crime during testimony Monday in an evidentiary hearing that could lead to his freedom. If he winds up being released, his confinement would become the longest wrongful imprisonment in Missouri history, CBS News’ Win Ansley points out. Read more
Open carry by Black self-defense groups predates Black Panthers. By Javonte Anderson / USA Today
Though the Black Panther Party was not established as a militia, its members promoted Black armed self-defense because of rampant police brutality. As a political organization, the Panthers established many programs to support low-income communities, but they remain largely defined by their willingness to bear arms and threaten violence to combat racism. One of the nation’s most prominent Black armed self-defense groups was established for a single purpose: to protect civil rights workers. Organized in 1964 in Bogalusa, Louisiana, the Deacons for Defense and Justice was the “most sophisticated” example of Southern Black militancy, Simon Wendt wrote in his book “The Spirit & The Shotgun.” Read more
Alice Childress Finally Gets to Make ‘Trouble’ on Broadway. By Maya Phillips / NYT
Alice Childress created Wiletta Mayer, the protagonist of her 1955 play, “Trouble in Mind,” to paint a realistic portrait of what it was to be Black in the theater industry. Or to be more accurate: She wanted to portray what it is to be Black in theater, because 66 years later, as the play opens on Broadway in a Roundabout Theater Company production, the words Childress wrote remain just as relevant. Read more
Terence Blanchard’s opera: “Fire Shut Up in My Bones.” By CBS News
The Metropolitan Opera in New York opened its 2021-2022 season with a production by jazz trumpeter and composer Terence Blanchard. “Fire Shut Up in My Bones” is an interpretation of the memoir written by “Sunday Morning” contributor Charles Blow, in which he describes his anguish growing up in small-town Louisiana in the 1970s and ’80s. “What drew you to Charles Blow’s story?” “It was the notion of being isolated in your own community.” Blanchard, who began playing the trumpet when he was nine, related to the feeling of having a kind of dual existence: “Out in the street, hanging with your friends, and then being that kid who has to break away from that and walk to the bus stop with his horn in his hand on a Saturday. You know, it wasn’t a cool thing to do in my neighborhood.” Read more
Sports
Milwaukee Bucks are the first NBA champions to visit the White House since 2016. By James Doubek / NPR
President Biden welcomed the reigning NBA champions, the Milwaukee Bucks, to the White House on Monday, making them the first NBA champions to visit since 2016. “In sport and in a democracy, unity perhaps is the most elusive thing and the most necessary thing,” Biden said. “But that’s who this team is, they’re unified. That’s who we are as a nation.” Biden praised the “power of a team’s example in not just winning the title,” adding that players “took a stand for justice and peace in the wake of Jacob Blake’s shooting in Kenosha, Wis. Read more
More Black head coaches doesn’t mean college basketball’s problem is solved. By Jessie Washington / The Undefeated
Excuse me for not handing out high-fives over the increase in Black college basketball head coaches this season. Pardon my lack of excitement over more opportunities arising from the murder of George Floyd. Let’s wait and see whether real equal opportunity has arrived. As the season begins Tuesday, 34 of the 61 newly hired men’s Division I head coaches are Black. After taking replacements and firings into account, that means a net gain of 14 Black coaches. There are now 110 Black head coaches, up from 95 last season. Wait, hold your applause — there are 358 coaches in men’s Division I basketball. Only 31% are Black, up from 27% last season. Meanwhile, more than half of the players are Black. And the higher you go in college basketball, in terms of quality and prestige of programs, the coaches get whiter and the rosters get Blacker. Shown is Hubert Davis who is introduced as the new men’s head basketball coach at the University of North Carolina at Dean E. Smith Center on April 6. Read more
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