Featured
Splendid Isolation: The Unsung Generation. By Ronald J. Sheehy, Editor / Race Inquiry Digest
A world apart yet alive within itself—Black teachers, soldiers, and families finding grace behind the veil of segregation.
In 1940s Tampa, everyone knew where the city stopped. No sign said colored or white, but the streets did the talking. Officially sanctioned city boundaries drew invisible lines through neighborhoods and hearts. Yet within those limits, my parents’ generation built a world of order, dignity, and grace—a parallel universe sustained by teachers, churches, and determination.
I offer this essay not to minimize the cruelty of segregation, but to honor the generation that made meaning inside its walls. My parents were born at the dawn of the twentieth century—children of Reconstruction, grandchildren of slavery. They came of age in a country that denied them equality but not purpose. From that paradox, they forged a culture of excellence that carried their children, and eventually the nation, toward freedom. Read more
The Week’s Top Stories
Political / Social
There’s Still a Shared American Story, and JD Vance’s Blood-and-Soil Vision Isn’t It. By Colin Woodard / NYT
There is a battle raging across America (and soon in the halls of the Supreme Court) over what it means to be an American and what our nation should aspire to be. It’s part of a war between two stories of nationhood that we’ve been waging since the United States was created 249 years ago.
One vision is civic. It says that we Americans may lack a common history, religion or ethnicity, but what we share are the ideals in the Declaration of Independence: Each human has a natural and equal right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. To be American, in this tradition, is to create a society dedicated to making these ideals a reality. The other vision — an animating force inside the Trump administration — is exclusive and ethnonationalist. Vice President JD Vance laid it out explicitly in a speech this summer: a national identity based not on ideals, but on privileged heritage and bloodlines. Read more
Related: JD Vance’s Sickening Nostalgia for One of America’s Most Hateful Eras. By Ross Rsenfeld / TNR
Verdict Number One: America Has Big-Time Buyer’s Remorse About Trump. By Michael Tomasky / TNR
Elections are the one opportunity we have to see what the people think. And what they think is clear: Trump sucks.
In an election that provided, as elections invariably do, a jillion takeaways, let’s not lose of sight of what is obviously and toweringly takeaway number one: Americans have developed a big-time case of buyer’s remorse about Trump, and a very solid majority of them despise what Trump has perpetrated against America. Read more
Related: The Wildest Democratic Victories You May Not Have Heard About. By Jennifer Bendery / HuffPost
Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani Wins Historic NYC Mayoral Race: “The Future Is in Our Hands.” By Amu Goodman / Democracy Now
Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani won the New York mayoral race, defeating former Governor Andrew Cuomo. A year ago, Mamdani was polling at just 1%, but on Tuesday he became the first New York mayoral candidate to win over a million votes since the 1960s.
On Tuesday night, Zohran Mamdani addressed supporters who packed into the Brooklyn Paramount. He began his speech by quoting the late labor leader and socialist Eugene Debs: The sun may have set over our city this evening, but, as Eugene Debs once said, I can see the dawn of a better day for humanity. Read more
Related: Mamdani’s youth momentum goes past New York. It’s national. By Elena Moore / NPR
Related: Mamdani’s global city clashes with Trump’s nationalist project. By Ishaan Tharoor / Wash Post
Make No Mistake: Trump Is an Albatross. By Jamelle Bouie / NYT
As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump is a phenomenally effective vote-winner, capable of turning out millions of otherwise infrequent voters to deliver the White House and Congress to the Republican Party. But as president, Trump has been an albatross around the neck of his party. Shown is Mikie Sherrill
The results, then, are a marked contrast to the accommodation, capitulation and outright surrender of prominent individuals and institutions in the face of Trump’s demands. They also serve to remind us of what ought to be a fundamental maxim of democracy: that there is no singular “people” and there are no permanent majorities. Read more
Related: Trump’s America is governed by necropolitics. By Chauncey Devega / Salon
Related: MAGA crumbles under the weight of its own hypocrisy. By Robert Reich / AlterNet
Mayor of Orange County Will Run for Florida Governor as a Democrat. Patricia Mazzei / NYT
Jerry Demings, the mayor of Orange County, Fla., has filed to run for governor next year as a Democrat, expanding the field of candidates seeking to replace Gov. Ron DeSantis, a term-limited Republican.
Mr. Demings has led the county, home to Orlando and one of the few places in the state that still lean left, since 2018. Three years ago, his wife, former Representative Val Demings, ran unsuccessfully against Senator Marco Rubio, who later became President Trump’s secretary of state. Mr. Demings is a former Orange County sheriff and a former police chief in Orlando, Florida’s fourth-largest city. Read more
Barack Obama Is Now Not So Sure America Can Survive Under Donald Trump. By Ethan Cotler / The Daily Beast
Obama and his aides are revising his strategy of maintaining a low-key public presence.
“He doesn’t want to be the leader of the party—he was the leader of the free world. But it feels like sometimes he’s got to speak his mind,” an insider said. Top Democratic officials and operatives told the outlet that Obama has struggled to return to the public stage to defend his views. But Trump’s calls to indict and shutter Democratic institutions have stoked his fears, according to CNN. Read more
Trymaine Lee Calls Out The Media’s Lack Of Coverage As Violence Against Black People Rises. By Taryn Finley / Newsone
This year marked the fifth anniversaries of the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and 280 other Black people who died at the hands of police. Worldwide protests and nationwide promises seemed to signal a shift — if not for real change, at least more awareness around these stories.
But between the Trump administration’s renewed attack on anyone not white and male and fewer Black journalists in consistently shrinking newsrooms, there’s been noticeably less coverage around violence against Black people. And that isn’t due to a decrease in these cases. In fact, since 2020, the number of Black people killed by police has increased. In 2024, that number was 341, according to Mapping Police Violence. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Trymaine Lee said in an interview that this speaks to “the precarity of our existence.” Read more
The end of federal food aid could hit Black Americans hardest. By Terry Tang, Jaylen Green and Graham lee Brewer / AP
Two federal judges ruled nearly simultaneously on Friday that President Donald Trump’s administration must continue to fund SNAP, the nation’s biggest food aid program, using contingency funds during the government shutdown. But officials said it was too late to stop recipients from losing benefits on Saturday and that restoring them could likely take at least one week.
One in eight Americans use SNAP but its halt will disproportionately hurt Black Americans like Hilaire. Black people are 12.6% of the population but more than a quarter of SNAP recipients, the largest overrepresentation of any ethnic or racial group.. Other racial groups get SNAP at rates lower than their overall share of the population. Read more
Related: Why Republicans think it’s okay to starve poor people. By Oliver Willis / Daily Kos
Education
Priced Out Of The Mecca: The Emotional Cost Of Belonging At A Black University In A White City. By Duwayne Portis / Newsone
A historically Black university, world-renowned for its cultural and political influence, now sits at the epicenter of D.C.’s gentrification.
On a bright fall morning, Georgia Avenue looks like a city in transition. Coffee shops with sleek glass facades spill onto sidewalks once lined with soul food diners and record stores. Strollers glide past the storefronts, pushed by new residents who, only a decade ago, might have thought twice about moving into the area. And just across the street, Howard University students, most of them young and Black, are running to class, juggling backpacks, SmarTrip cards, and long commutes. Read more
Related: Howard University announces $80 million gift from MacKenzie Scott. By Lauren Lumpkin / Wash Post
An anti-KKK law was used to end a scholarship for Black students. By Anumita Kaur and Praveena Somasundaram / Wash Post
The Reconstruction-era civil rights law was designed to stop conspiracies between government officials and private entities to deny Americans equal protection under the law.
A scholarship once reserved for Black students at a California university is now available to all after a White student and a right-wing nonprofit alleged it violated a federal anti-Ku Klux Klan law. The case’s use of the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, signed into law to protect the rights of African Americans in the South, is a novel approach that attorneys for the plaintiffs touted as a victory for equality and a possible blueprint for future challenges. Read more
Public schools nationwide adopt growing oppression-focused history curriculum. By Peter D’Abrosca / Fox News
Public schools across the country are directing teachers to use curriculum resources from a nonprofit that teaches American history through the lens of racial and sexual oppression.
The Zinn Education Project (ZEP), named for the late radical 1960s professor Howard Zinn, pushes controversial resources and lesson plans to teachers for students as young as pre-K, all the way up to grade 12. ZEP boasts that its curriculum has been adopted by more than 176,000 teachers, who have downloaded more than 765,000 lessons for their students, according to its website. The organization hosts a Teach Truth Day of Action annually, which is co-sponsored by the NEA, America’s largest teachers union, and other organizations. Read more
World
How Maduro Future-Proofed His Dictatorship. By Javier Corrales / NYT
For years, observers have been predicting the fall of President Nicolás Maduro. But the Venezuelan dictator has clung to power, even in the face of one of the worst economic contractions in modern history, sagging approval ratings, overwhelming electoral setbacks and severe international financial sanctions.
Mr. Maduro’s survival offers critical insight on why it is so difficult to bring down autocracies. Autocratic resilience is not accidental. It’s the result of steady repression and the co-opting of political and economic institutions. Read more
Trump Boat Bombings Worsen as New Horror Shakes Experts: “Alarm Bells.” By Greg Sargent / TNR
Remember the Southern Command admiral who resigned two weeks ago? Hill Republicans haven’t heard from him—and they don’t apparently want to.
Since then, we’ve heard nothing about why Holsey stepped down. Yet in those two weeks, Trump’s campaign has only gotten more brazen and horrifically lawless. He ordered the bombing of four more boats this week, killing 14 more people, for a total of around 60 killed, even as the administration still refuses to share key intelligence or elaborate on its supposed legal rationale. Read more
Related: U.N. Says Strikes on Boats Trump Claims Are Smuggling Drugs Are Illegal. Nick Cumming-Bruce / NYT
Trump Threatens Military Action in Nigeria Over Protections for Christians. Pranav Baskar / NYT
Accusing Nigeria of not doing enough to protect Christians from violence, President Trump said he had ordered the Pentagon to prepare for action.
Mr. Trump said in a post on social media that he was instructing the Pentagon “to prepare for possible action” to wipe out “Islamic Terrorists” in the country. “If we attack,” he wrote, “it will be fast, vicious, and sweet, just like the terrorist thugs attack our CHERISHED Christians!” Read more
Related: Why is Donald Trump threatening military intervention in Nigeria? By Eromo Egbejule / The Guardian
Communities in Hurricane-Ravaged Jamaica Still Cut Off as Death Toll Climbs. By Frances Robles / NYT
The authorities have yet to reach dozens of areas in Jamaica, raising the question of how many people really died in last week’s storm.
The death toll in Jamaica from Hurricane Melissa rose to 28 on Saturday, even as the authorities and humanitarian workers acknowledged that they had yet to reach dozens of communities that were hardest hit by the devastating storm. The Jamaican government said on Saturday night that nine more deaths had been identified since the previous tally of 19. Additional reports of possible fatalities are still being verified, a government statement said. Read more
Ethics / Morality / Religion
African Methodist Episcopal Church launches nationwide food drive in response to SNAP benefit cuts. RNS Press Release
The Council of Bishops of the African Methodist Episcopal Church has issued a call to action for all AME congregations to launch a November Food Drive in response to the partial funding of SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) benefits by the Federal government, effective November 1, 2025.
This policy change is expected to leave millions of families across the United States vulnerable to food insecurity. In keeping with its historic mission to serve the spiritual and physical needs of all people, the AME Church is mobilizing its congregations to collect canned goods and shelf-stable food items throughout the month of November. Read more
The most horrifying religion case to hit the Supreme Court in years is also one of the hardest. By Ian Millhiser / Vox
Damon Landor suffered one of the most blatant and obvious violations of his religious liberty imaginable.
Landor is Rastafarian and, as part of his religious devotion, does not cut his hair. According to his lawyers, he kept this vow for more than two decades, and his hair grew long enough to fall “nearly to his knees.” Then, while he was serving a five-month prison sentence for a drug-related crime in 2020, prison officials handcuffed him to a chair, held him down, and shaved his head. Read more
Pope Leo Rebukes Donald Trump On Migration With Christ’s ‘End Of The World’ Warning. By Yesim Dikmen / HuffPost
Pope Leo called on Tuesday for “deep reflection” about the way migrants are being treated in the United States under President Donald Trump’s administration and said the spiritual needs of those in detention needed to be respected.
Speaking to reporters in Castel Gandolfo, his residence outside Rome, the pope was asked about immigrants detained at a federal facility in Broadview, near Chicago, who have been refused the opportunity to receive holy Communion, an important religious obligation. Read more
Mike Johnson Has Lost the Moral Narrative. By William J. Barber and Jonathan Wilson-Hargrove /Ourmoralmoment
MAGA’s Mike Johnson built his whole political career on an appeal to the moral high ground. Raised in Shreveport, Louisiana’s Southern Baptist culture, he was a member of the first generation of Southerners to inherit the Religious Right’s framing of reactionary politics as “religious” rather than “racist.”
Strom Thurmond and George Wallace had told Johnson’s parents that segregation was a political good that godly people must use political power to defend. Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson taught Johnson’s generation to pursue the same control of government in the name of “traditional values.” Read more
Related: Mike Johnson’s Christian Values: Children Starve, Pedophiles Skate. By Michael Tomasky / TNR
Historical / Cultural
Jefferson and the contradictions behind ‘All men are created equal.’ By Michael Kranish / Wash Post
Jefferson enslaved more than 600 Black people in his lifetime, yet he wrote the Declaration’s best-known words that “all men are created equal.”
Jefferson, who had recently turned 33, had been accompanied in his journey only by his valet, the enslaved 14-year-old Robert Hemings. Robert was the Black half brother of Jefferson’s wife, Martha, who was White. Robert had become extraordinarily close to Jefferson and was among a small number of enslaved people at Jefferson’s plantations who could read and write (and on at least one occasion signed his name as Hemmings.) Robert’s then-3-year-old sister, Sally, would become the mother of six of Jefferson’s children, researchers at Monticello have concluded. Read more
Wilmington 1898: How a white supremacist coup erased Black political power in NC. By EJI / USA Today
In the late 1890s, Wilmington, North Carolina, a port city between the Atlantic’s barrier islands and the banks of the Cape Fear River, became an island of hope for a new America.
Residents of the city’s thriving Black community made themselves a political force, exercising the rights of citizenship guaranteed to them after the Civil War by the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments. Across the South, such activity had triggered deadly white violence against Black voters, organizers, and officeholders in the decades since the war. But in Wilmington, a city of 20,000, the votes of 8,000 Black men helped a rare biracial “Fusion” alliance elect candidates of both races. Read more
In Search of the Simpsonville Massacre.
In 1865, two dozen Union soldiers, all formerly enslaved, were ambushed and killed along a road in Kentucky. Archaeologists are still searching for their remains.
On either Jan. 22 or 23 of 1865, about 80 soldiers from Company E of the Fifth U.S. Colored Cavalry set out from Camp Nelson, Ky., to Louisville with 900 head of cattle. They had been enslaved until recently; now they were fighting for the Union as free men. Forty men walked in front of the herd and 40 walked behind. On Jan. 25, as the rear guard was passing through a wooded section along the Shelbyville Road (now Highway 60), about 25 miles east of Louisville, they were ambushed by Confederate guerrillas, or bushwhackers. Read more
A ‘Woke’ Military Won World War II. By Ed Gitre / Time
President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth are continuing their war on “wokeness” in the military. On Oct. 28, Trump bragged to Navy personnel aboard the U.S.S. George Washington that the military was no longer “politically correct.”
Yet there is a crucial flaw in this thinking: It’s predicated upon a common misunderstanding of American military history. The standard narrative credits President Harry Truman with desegregating the military by executive order in 1948. In reality, however, desegregation began years earlier. It was initiated by the War Department, under Secretary Henry Stimson and the army’s Chief of Staff George Marshall, both of whom Hegseth admires. This timeline means that the ultimate “woke” move helped contribute to America’s proudest military victory. Read more
Sports
NBA should do right by these basketball pioneers before it’s too late. by Candace Buckner / Wash Post
Few former ABA players are left. As a documentary film shows, it wouldn’t take much for the lucrative league to step up for them. Julius Erving — center and pictured with, from left, Connie Hawkins, Marvin Barnes, Charlie Scott and George Gervin — said of his former ABA peers, “You got players that got screwed.”
There are a few important things to consider if you watch “The Waiting Game,” the 2024 film that documents the fight for aging players of the defunct American Basketball Association to receive financial recognition from the NBA. For starters, just know that James Jones, a six-time ABA all-star, is still driving an Uber in Las Vegas. Read more
In a tale of two GOATs, Michael Jordan’s aura trumps Tom Brady’s thirst. By Jerry Brewer / Wash Post
While the basketball legend doles out his mystique in a calculated way, the Hall of Fame quarterback mortgages his in a desperate need for attention.
There’s a difference, you know, between mystique and exposure. Between presence and visibility. Between Jordan and Tom Brady. Both possess unassailable athletic greatness. This season, both are talking on television. Jordan refuses to do too much. Brady, to his detriment, can’t get enough. One treats appearances like cherished currency. The other needs an intervention before overdrafting from his checking account. Read more
The ups (DeSean Jackson) and downs (Michael Vick) of two first-year HBCU head coaches. By William C. Rhoden / Andscape
The former NFL teammates came together for a matchup they could have never envisioned. Each left with something different.
Delaware State defeated Norfolk State 27-20 at Lincoln Financial Field Thursday in a blustery midweek football matchup between a pair of HBCU rivals. This was the first time two historically Black colleges played each other at Lincoln Financial Field, which is the home of the NFL’s Philadelphia Eagles. The game was also a deeply personal matchup between two former NFL teammates, rivals and friends. It was a game between two first-year head coaches whose respective institutions hope to use their celebrity to change the fortunes of two moribund football programs. Read more
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