Featured
4 largest cities in America will be led by Black mayors. By Nicole Chavez / CNN
Pictured, from left to right, are Los Angeles Mayor-elect Karen Bass, New York City Mayor Eric Adams, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner.
Phyllis Dickerson, CEO of the African American Mayors Association, said Black mayors bring a different perspective to public office and can identify not only problems they have experienced, like the need for public housing and food insecurities, but solutions to those issues. She believes having the four cities led by Black people will have a positive impact locally and nationally. “When you have the top four cities at the table, with the administration, I think that the conversation is definitely going to land where it needs to be,” Dickerson said. Read more
Related: Karen Bass is first woman elected Los Angeles mayor. By Reis Thebault / Wash Post
Political / Social
Hakeem Jeffries on course to become first Black party leader in Congress. By Martin Pengelly / The Guardian
New York Democrat, 52, is favorite to succeed Nancy Pelosi after declaring candidacy for House minority leader
Hakeem Jeffries of New York was on course on Friday to be the first Black party leader in Congress, declaring his candidacy for House minority leader after securing key endorsements to succeed Nancy Pelosi, the current speaker who announced her withdrawal from leadership on Thursday. Democrats will cede control of the House in January, after midterm elections in which Republicans performed less well than expected but still took the lower chamber. Jeffries announced his candidacy after Democrats moved swiftly to head off internal battles and let a new, younger generation take the controls. Read more
National Opinion Polls on Affirmative Action: Inflaming an Issue that is Divisive Enough. By Shirley J. Wilcher / Diverse Issues in Higher Ed.
On October 22nd, the Washington Post reported in bold letters, that “Over 6 in 10 Americans favor leaving race out of college admissions, Post-Schar School poll finds.” The subtitle, albeit written in much smaller text, states, “But an equally strong majority backs programs to boost racial and ethnic diversity among students.” While the poll attempts to reflect the nuance of public attitudes towards affirmative action in admissions, it misses the mark. The problem with polls, as is clear in the Washington Post story, is that the result depends upon the question asked. If you ask if respondents oppose admitting students based on their race, the majority will predictably say “Yes.” If you ask if respondents support diversity on college campuses the answer may be the opposite. Read more
“I don’t want to be a vampire, I want to be a werewolf”: Herschel Walker campaign gets more bizarre. By Igor Derysh / Salon
“I’ve got to say, it’s some rambling incoherence taken to Olympian levels,” said MSNBC host Joe Scarborough
“I was here watching a stupid movie late at night hoping it’s gonna get better, it don’t get better but you keep watching anyway. Cause the other night, the other night I was watching this movie — I was watching this movie called “Fright Night,” “Freak Night” or some type of night but it was about vampires,” he said. “I don’t know if you know but vampires are some cool people, are they not?” “But let me tell you something that I found out: a werewolf can kill a vampire, did you know that?” he added. “I never knew that. So I don’t want to be a vampire anymore, I wanna be a werewolf.” Walker went on to describe the plot, explaining the kids in the film got an actor to try to kill the vampire in their attic, before making a comparison to Warnock. Read more
Related: Judge allows Saturday voting in Ga.’s Senate runoff after Warnock suit. By Matthew Brown / Wash Post
Donald Trump Is (Still) President of White America. By Erin Aubry Kaplan / Politico
The culture of white supremacy has gone fully mainstream. And Trump has presided over this phenomenon as the official culture-warrior-in-chief.
This is actually worse than it sounds. Even very “woke” Americans tend to see white supremacy as an isolated dynamic synonymous with racism, the “bad” America. But what many people don’t realize is that white supremacy is a culture that is much broader and deeper than that. It is about racialized power, an assumed authority of white people (chiefly men) to set and enforce the social and moral order as they see fit, often in the service of values that on their face sound noble, like tradition or family. Read more
Related: Trumpism will not magically vanish. By Fareed Zakaria / CNN Video
Related: How Gerrymandering Hurt Black Voters in the Midterms. By Aallyah Wright / Capital B
Mitch McConnell Votes Against Interracial Marriage Despite Asian Wife. By Darragh Roche / Newsweek
McConnell, who is white, is the husband of former U.S. Secretary for Transportation Elaine Chao, the first woman of Asian heritage to be appointed to a presidential cabinet.
The Kentucky Republican was one of 37 GOP senators who opposed a motion to advance on the Respect for Marriage Act (RFMA), but the procedural vote succeeded with a bipartisan majority of 62, with one senator not voting. Read more
A federal judge blocks Florida’s anti-‘woke’ law in universities. By Becky Sullivan / NPR
In a 139-page order issued Thursday, Tallahassee U.S. District Judge Mark Walker excoriated the Republican-led bill and blocked it from taking effect in the state’s public universities.
“The State of Florida’s decision to choose which viewpoints are worthy of illumination and which must remain in the shadows has implications for us all,” Walker wrote. “But the First Amendment does not permit the State of Florida to muzzle its university professors, impose its own orthodoxy of viewpoints, and cast us all into the dark.” Read more
Related: Moms for Liberty-backed school board members fire superintendent, ban critical race theory.
Racial disparities in fertility care have persisted for years. Here’s why. By Randi Richardson / NBC News
Research shows that it’s common for Black women to start fertility treatment after experiencing infertility for multiple years, whereas their white counterparts usually seek care sooner. And Black women are often in their late 30s or early 40s when they start, older on average than white women. Michelle Obama started IVF when she was 37, and Tyra Banks, Kandi Burruss, Angela Bassett and Gabrielle Union started treatments when they were in their 40s. The delay in care may contribute to higher rates of death in Black newborns conceived with fertility treatment versus white newborns, NBC News reported last month. An October 2022 study in the journal Pediatrics found the neonatal mortality rate in Black moms using fertility treatments was four times higher than in white moms. (When fertility treatments aren’t used, the neonatal mortality rate in Black moms is two times higher than in white moms.) Read more
Related: Black infants die at record rates. Kansas birth workers try to keep them alive. By Rose Conlon / NPR
Jackson, Mississippi, takes step forward in addressing water crisis. By Meredith Deliso / ABC News
The city council approved an interim agreement with the EPA.
Decades of issues with the city’s water system came to a head in August, when historic flooding damaged a major pump at the main water treatment facility in Jackson, leaving around 150,000 of the city’s mostly Black residents without drinkable water. In the weeks since, city officials, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Justice have been working on reaching a “judicially enforceable solution” to “deliver safe and reliable drinking water for the people of Jackson,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said during an update earlier this week. “We are moving with a sense of urgency,” Regan said. Read more
Ethics / Morality / Religion
Black museum religion exhibit features Little Richard’s Bible, Rev. Ike’s suit. By Adelle M. Banks / RNS
The first special exhibition to focus specifically on religion since the museum opened includes photos and artifacts accompanied by quotations of famous African Americans.
Musician Dizzy Gillespie embraced the Baha’i faith and its belief in universal humanity — a concept he saw reflected in jazz, which he viewed as a blending of musical elements from Africa and Europe. Activist Angela Davis, faced with the horror of bombings by white supremacists as a youth in Birmingham, Alabama, took part in interracial discussion groups at her church. Singer Tina Turner practiced both recitations of the Lord’s Prayer and chants of Buddhist Scripture. The religion and resiliency of Black Americans are featured in “Spirit in the Dark: Religion in Black Music, Activism and Popular Culture,” a new exhibition of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. “Spirit in the Dark,” which opened Friday (Nov. 18), is the first special exhibition to focus specifically on religion since the museum opened in 2016. Read more
Scholars outline history of the Pharisees and roots of harmful anti-Jewish stereotypes. By Dhris Seeman / NCR
“Christ Among the Pharisees” by Jacob Jordaens, circa 1660 (Wikimedia Commons/Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille)
Every religion has its demonology. When Malcolm X made this observation to Alex Haley as they collaborated on what was to become his posthumous autobiography, his immediate target was the antisemitic teaching promoted by Elijah Muhammed, from whose sect he had recently broken. His refusal to exempt any faith from the tendency to demonize others in order to validate itself remains as painfully relevant today as it was in 1965. How did the Pharisees become Judaism’s demonic essence in Christian eyes? As several of the contributors document, the process began with the Gospels, which regularly use the Pharisees as negative foils for Jesus and his followers. Sometimes the evangelists anchor this unflattering contrast in disagreements over historically specific practices; on other occasions, the Pharisees’ antagonism is left unexplained or is ahistorically lumped together with that of other unrelated groups. Read more
“Like a little elementary school child”: Trump dumped by spiritual adviser as evangelicals turn. By Samaa Khullar / Salon
“He used us to win the White House,” former evangelical advisory board member Mike Evans says
Key evangelical figures who once backed former President Donald Trump withdrew their support after he announced his third White House bid on Tuesday. One televangelist, who served as a spiritual adviser to the former president and once said he was “a supernatural answer to prayer,” changed his tune, telling supporters that Trump acts like a “little elementary schoolchild” and that his juvenile focus on minor issues was stopping him from achieving larger goals. Read more
Historical / Cultural
Black Families and the Wilmington Massacre of 1898. By DJ Polite / AAIHS
The Wilmington Massacre of 1898 remains one of the clearest demonstrations of white supremacy and Jim Crow violently erasing the progress and promise of African America. In Wilmington, North Carolina, a white mob was dissatisfied with winning statewide office on a blatantly race-based fear campaign. Alexander Manly, an African American newspaper editor had dared to challenge the sexual mores that underpinned Jim Crow violence by suggesting that white women engaged in sexual relations with Black men voluntarily. Local African American politicians were ousted from office by force. The homes were raided for good measure. African American families were in effect, displaced, becoming domestic refugees in a nation they held citizenship. Read more
Related: Wilmington, North Carolina, 1898: Prelude to a Riot. PBS Video
Kanye West’s antisemitism is bad for business. Now how about Henry Ford? By Rebecca Sonkin
German diplomats award Henry Ford, center, Nazi Germany’s highest decoration for foreigners, the Grand Cross of the German Eagle, in Detroit in 1938. (Associated Press)
For the moment, it seems, antisemitism is bad business in the United States. And yet, to drive around my hometown of Detroit is to wonder whether this news has arrived. Henry Ford, the most prominent, virulent antisemite the nation has ever known, is omnipresent in Detroit. Yes, Ford is famous for implementing the moving assembly line and founding the automaking business that put the Motor City on the map. But Ford was also a powerful driver of anti-Jewish hatred, using his wealth and influence to promote antisemitism in the interwar era, before World War II and the Holocaust. Most confounding, Detroit is home to a prosperous Jewish community of about 70,000. And yet, silence on this subject prevails. Where is the local opposition to living under the name of the man who helped inspire the mastermind of the Holocaust? Where is the Jewish campaign to make the name Henry Ford a losing business proposition? Read more
Imani Perry Wins National Book Award for ‘South to America.’ By Elizabeth A. Harris / NYT
Imani Perry won the National Book Award for nonfiction on Wednesday for “South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation,” in which Perry, a professor of African American studies at Princeton, travels to the American South, where she is from, to examine race, culture, politics and identity. The book “straddles genre, kicks down the fourth wall, dances with poetry, engages with literary criticism and flits from journalism to memoir to academic writing,” Tayari Jones wrote in The New York Times Book Review. Any attempt to classify it “only undermines this insightful, ambitious and moving project.” Read more
Michelle Obama says Americans weren’t ready for her natural Black hair. By Jonathan Edwards / Wash Post
She wanted to wear braids but said she straightened her hair as the U.S. ‘adjusted’ to a Black first lady
Sports
NFL referees penalize Black players for celebrating far more than white players. By Dwayne Bray / Andscape
Recent flag on Carolina Panthers receiver DJ Moore was not an aberration. Wide receiver DJ Moore (left) of the Carolina Panthers reacts after removing his helmet following a touchdown late in the fourth quarter against the Atlanta Falcons at Mercedes-Benz Stadium on Oct. 30 in Atlanta.
The 15-yard penalty led to a missed extra point attempt and ultimately a loss in overtime. The referees got it wrong and never should have flagged Moore, who was outside the end zone when he took off his helmet. And perhaps most disturbing, the penalty was part of a pattern in which Black players in the NFL are disproportionately penalized for “excessive” celebrations. An Andscape examination of data on unsportsmanlike conduct penalties found that since 2018, 19 out of 21 — 90% — of the flags for celebrating have gone against Black players, who along with biracial athletes make up 68% of NFL rosters. Only 9% of the calls were on white players, who are 25% of the league. Read more
So much for the WNBA’s diversity in the coaching ranks. By Caron J. Phillips / Deadspin
Five vacancies, five white coaching hires — the WNBA needs a Rooney Rule. The diversity that the league’s commissioner once boasted about is gone.
In just a matter of months, the WNBA lost three of the six Black head coaches it boasted, as white coaches filled all five of the league’s offseason vacancies. Ironically enough, the opposite is taking place over in the NBA. The league currently has 16 Black coaches, which is more than half — and a new record. And when you add Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra to the mix — the first Asian-American coach in NBA history — it means that 17 of the league’s 30 franchises are coached by men of color. Read more
The First H.B.C.U. Gymnastics Team Is Aiming Even Higher. By Andrea Williams / NYT
Fisk University put a gymnastics team together after sensing an opportunity to encourage Black women to compete in the college sport.
In early August, a video of a group of female gymnasts stretching, tumbling into a foam pit, and smiling for a group selfie went viral. En route to amassing nearly one million views on TikTok, the video was picked up by several news outlets. The athletes were clearly talented — their aerials and back layouts on balance beam stuck without even a glimpse of a wobble. But there was something more notable about the young women in the video: They compete at Fisk University in Nashville, on the first intercollegiate gymnastics team at any historically Black college or university. Read more
Related: Team from Black college quits tournament after racial abuse. By Jay Reeves / AP News
Bronny James’ complicated reality, where recruiting meets great expectations. By Dana O’Neil / The Athletic
“Hey, you recruiting Bronny?” he asked. “You gonna get him?” He just wanted to know about Bronny. Everyone wants to know about Bronny.
Bronny — given name LeBron James Jr. — is, like his famous L.A. Lakers father or a Brazilian soccer star, a single-name phenomenon. He is a 6-foot-3 combo guard with a sweet shot and a good head for the game, a senior at Sierra Canyon in Southern California, a school that, thanks to LeBron’s production company, had its basketball team featured in a docuseries. Bronny has 6 million Instagram followers. His summer circuit did not just include games at the regular recruiting camp outposts of North Augusta, South Carolina and Las Vegas; he played in televised games in London, Rome and Paris. Bronny has a Nike deal and a Beats By Dre contract that includes a commercial with the tagline “The Chosen One vs. The Chosen Son.” Read more
Lewis Hamilton Reflects on His Next Step. By Ian Parkes / NYT
His contract is about up with Mercedes, but he has no intention of stepping away. Besides, he has so much more to do, especially on social issues.
Lewis Hamilton is far from finished with Formula 1. “It’s not forever, but something inside is telling me, ‘You’re not done yet. You’ve got to keep pushing. You’ve got more to do, more to achieve,” the seven-time champion said in an interview. He has just one year left on his contract with his team, Mercedes, but will start talks with Toto Wolff, the team principal, during the winter on a new deal. Although it is hard to imagine that either side will walk away, it does raise the question of Hamilton’s future. He will be, after all, 38 years old next season. Read more
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