Featured
It’s one of the most radical and prophetic speeches in American history. And nobody knows about it. By John Blake / CNN
In mid-19th-century America, when public speaking was a form of mass entertainment, Frederick Douglass was a rock star.
Standing-room-only crowds greeted him in the US and in Europe. People wept as he recounted the horrors of slavery or erupted in laughter as he mimicked his former slave master. White spectators openly gushed about Douglass’ “muscular, yet lithe and graceful” 6-foot, 200-pound frame, his “full and rich” baritone, and compared him to an “African prince.”
When people talk today about Douglass’ speaking prowess, they often cite his defiant “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” address. But he gave another speech that deserves wider recognition because Douglass spoke with uncanny precision about the kind of debates we’re having now about race, immigration, and what makes America exceptional.
The speech is called “Composite Nation” and in it Douglass tackles a question that lurks behind many of the current political debates in the US: Is the country better off having a multitude of races, ethnic groups and religious beliefs? Or would it, and other nations, fare better with a homogenous population where most people look alike and share the same religious beliefs? Read more
Related: (1867) Frederick Douglass Describes The “Composite Nation.” Contributed by Black Past
Related: Watch “Frederick Douglass’ Composite Nation” on YouTube
Political / Social
Teenagers Are Telling Us That Something Is Wrong With America. By Jamieson Webster / NYT
We’ve long known that suicide can be contagious without quite understanding how or why. In my practice as a psychoanalyst in New York, I recently worked with a 13-year-old girl whose friend had committed suicide during the pandemic and who had begun to feel suicidal herself. Teenagers are notoriously suggestible to peers, who buffer their nascent sense of self, so the 54 percent increase in suicides in the 10-to-24 age group between 2007 and 2020 is a serious cause for alarm.
Article after article shows us that America’s teenagers aren’t doing well, without putting their finger on what is wrong beyond issues of individual “mental illness” and the usual bugbears trotted out — social media, video games, the weakening of the family unit. But what are the teenagers telling us is wrong? Read more
Why Senate control could hinge once again on Georgia runoff. By Max Greenwood / The Hill
Control of the Senate could once again come down to a familiar scenario: a runoff election in Georgia.
Even after Republican nominee Herschel Walker ran up against allegations that he paid for his then-girlfriend to have an abortion more than a decade ago — which he has denied — polling still shows a tight race between him and Sen. Raphael Warnock (D). Neither candidate is breaking 50 percent support, leaving both parties to confront the possibility that the fight for the Senate could head into overtime. Read more
Related: The GOP dealt conservative Georgia voters a dud with Herschel Walker. By Arick Wierson / NBC News
Democrats won’t get as much Obama as they want in the midterms. But he has some other plans. By Edward-Isaac Dovere / CNN
Requests for Barack Obama are pouring in from Democrats around the country – candidates are desperate for his help in what they feel is an existential midterms battle, one in which each race could help determine control of Congress and governments in the states. To these candidates, American democracy itself is on the line. And while Obama agrees with them on the stakes, many of those invitations are about to get turned down. That cautious approach comes as Obama tells people his presence fires up GOP opposition just as much as it lights up supporters, that he has more of an impact if he does less and that he can’t cloud out the up-and-coming generation of Democrats. Read more
Kanye West, Herschel Walker and the politics of toxic Black men. By Karen Attiah / Wash Post
America seems to love tragic, toxic Black men.
But no matter what happens, as long as our culture rewards anti-Blackness and misogyny, we will be sure to see more Wests and Walkers. It’s a dark state of affairs, for sure. The deeply corrosive thing about Walker and West is that the attention placed on their antics sucks up all the oxygen from the Black male public figures who are pushing the culture and society forward, rather than dragging us back. Here are three of them that are in the news this week: Read more
Related: Kanye West’s Posts Land Him in Trouble on Social Media. By Stuart A. Thompson / NYT
Related: The Exploitative Anti-Blackness of Kanye West. By Charles M. Blow / NYT
Stacey Abrams faces challenges in governor’s race. Is Black voter turnout one of them? By Sabrina Rodriquez / Wash Post
People attend Divine 9 Day of Action, an event aimed at reaching voters to cast their ballot in November for Stacey Abrams as the next governor of Georgia. (Kevin D. Liles for The Washington Post)
Inside a local bar and restaurant here, a packed room of nearly 100 Black business leaders and community members welcomed Stacey Abrams with loud cheers and applause. After laying out her plans for everything from health care to education, the Democratic nominee for Georgia governor made an admission: While she loved the support they were showing, she needed it to extend beyond those willing to come out to her events. Read more
How Race Became the Central Issue in Many School Board Elections. By Giulia Heyward / Capital B
Lower down on many ballots are local contests where race — and how it’s taught in the classroom — is a hot-button issue.
The impending midterm elections could have a dramatic impact on several hot-button issues, from reproductive rights to immigration. But further down the ballot, another battle is brewing. In school board elections, contentious matters of race and identity have become defining issues in many local campaigns. Conservative groups have been funneling money into school board races and backing candidates who support “parental rights” in instituting book bans, restricting curriculum, and limiting classroom discussions about systemic racism and gender identity. The growing influence of these groups, such as Moms for Liberty, has attracted a wave of school board candidates who now are pushing back. Read more
The ‘Sleeping Giant’ That May Decide the Midterms.
Credit…Verónica G. Cárdenas for The New York Times
The choices made by Latino voters on Nov. 8 will be crucial to the outcome in a disproportionate share of Senate battleground states, like Arizona (31.5 percent of the population), Nevada (28.9), Florida (25.8), Colorado (21.7), Georgia (9.6) and North Carolina (9.5). According to most analysts, there is no question that a majority of Hispanic voters will continue to support Democratic candidates. The question going into the coming elections is how large that margin will be. Read more
Joe Biden Calls On Los Angeles Officials Involved In Racist Remarks To Resign. Sebastian Murdock / HuffPost
Los Angeles City Council President Nury Martinez and three other Los Angeles officials were recorded mocking a colleague and his Black son and making other racist remarks. Councilmembers Gil Cedillo and Kevin de León participated in the conversation, along with Los Angeles County Federation of Labor President Ron Herrera. In audio clips published Monday by the Los Angeles Times and Knock LA, Martinez can be heard derisively saying that fellow city councilmember Mike Bonin, who is white but has a Black child, “thinks he’s fucking Black.” Read more
Biden pot pardon to help with War on Drugs’ harms to Black people. By Alana Wise / NPR
President Biden announced this month an executive order to pardon federal, simple marijuana possession charges for thousands of Americans – an important first step, advocates say, to reversing decades of uneven drug enforcement policy that has historically burdened Black communities. “Sending people to prison for possessing marijuana has upended too many lives and incarcerated people for conduct that many states no longer prohibit,” Biden said in a statement last week. “And while white and Black and brown people use marijuana at similar rates, Black and brown people have been arrested, prosecuted, and convicted at disproportionate rates.” Read more
Related: Ending the war on marijuana is crucial for racial justice. By Jenifer Rubin / Wash Post
Related: We need to talk about marijuana’s potential harm to youths. By Leana S. Wen / Wash Post
Alabama Sen. Tuberville equates descendants of enslaved people to criminals. By Juliana Kim / NPR
Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., compared descendants of enslaved people to criminals on Saturday at a rally for former President Donald Trump, drawing intense backlash for promoting a racist narrative.
In front of an overwhelmingly white crowd in Minden, Nevada, Tuberville criticized Democrats for being “pro-crime.” “They want crime because they want to take over what you got. They want to control what you have. They want reparations because they think the people that do the crime are owed that,” Tuberville added. “Bull****! They are not owed that.” Read more
Related: NAACP Slams Sen. Tuberville For ‘Utterly Sickening’ Racist Remark. By Lydia O’Connor / HuffPost
Related: Republicans can’t keep getting away with racist and sexist comments. By Jenifer Rubin / Wash Post
Supreme Court declines racial bias claim from Texas death row inmate. By John Fritze / USA Today
The Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to hear the case of a Texas death row inmate who claimed he was denied a fair trial because members of the jury opposed interracial marriage.
Andre Thomas, who is Black, killed his wife, who is white, their 4-year-old son and her 13-month-old daughter in 2004. He was convicted of murder and sentenced to death in 2005. Three jurors indicated their opposition to interracial marriage on questionnaires, including one who wrote that he “vigorously oppose(d) people of different racial backgrounds marrying” and that he did not believe “God intended for this.” Before the trial, Thomas’ defense attorneys questioned only one of the three jurors. Read more
Prosecutors drop charges against Adnan Syed. By Anastasia Tsioulcas / NPR
Adnan Syed (center), leaving court on Sept. 19. He was released after a judge overturned his conviction in the 1999 murder of Hae Min Lee.
Prosecutors in Baltimore have dropped charges against Adnan Syed, the man who was released from prison last month after having served 22 years for the murder of Hae Min Lee, his former girlfriend. Lee’s death and Syed’s conviction were the subject of the hit podcast Serial. In a press conference Tuesday afternoon, the state’s attorney for Baltimore, Marilyn Mosby, said that recently tested DNA completely exculpated Syed from the crime: “His DNA was excluded,” Mosby said. She declined to say if any other known suspects may be implicated in the recent DNA testing, saying that the investigation is ongoing. Read more
Ethics / Morality / Religion
Even Christians who are Democrats are abandoning the Social Gospel. By Ryan Burge / RNS
Survey data show that church attendance, not party, is more likely to determine how Christians view the kingdom.
About a decade ago, the conservative commentator and radio show host Glenn Beck told listeners to “look for the words ‘social justice’ or ‘economic justice’ on your church website. If you find it, run as fast as you can.” In essence, Beck was telling his followers to reject a strain of Christian theology that dates back at least 100 years in the United States: the Social Gospel. Read more
The Southern Baptist Convention’s Deal With the Devil. By Sarah Posner / The Nation
The roots of the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe go back 50 years, when zealots preaching a gospel of misogyny and homophobia—led by an accused sexual predator—took over America’s largest Protestant denomination.
That transformation has reverberated throughout our politics, as Southern Baptists have forged unprecedented alliances with Catholics and other conservative Christians in a quest to drive progressive advances back to the margins, much as they had driven liberals out of their own denomination. In the years since the takeover, the homophobic, transphobic, and patriarchal views cemented in official Southern Baptist statements have become the gospel of the denomination and its 14 million members, a bellwether for tens of millions of other evangelicals, and the lodestar of the Republican Party, whose leaders have sought the moral imprimatur of popular Southern Baptist leaders. Read more
PBS docs depict Frederick Douglass’ and Harriet Tubman’s paths of freedom, faith. By Adelle M. Banks / RNS
‘Religion for both Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass was the foundation in many ways of who they are,’ said co-director Stanley Nelson.
Frederick Douglass called the Bible one of his most important resources and was involved in Black church circles as he spent his life working to end what he called the “peculiar institution” of slavery. Harriet Tubman sensed divine inspiration amid her actions to free herself and dozens of others who had been enslaved in the American South. The two abolitionists are subjects of a twin set of documentaries, “Becoming Frederick Douglass” and “Harriet Tubman: Visions of Freedom,” co-productions of Maryland Public Television and Firelight Films and released by PBS this month (October). Read more
Saved by Grace’: Evangelicals Find a Way Forward With Herschel Walker. By Elizabeth Dias / NYT
The time had come for the Christian supporters of Herschel Walker to make a way where there seemed to be no way.
It was the morning after the Republican senate candidate’s ex-girlfriend came forward to say he had paid for her to have an abortion, though he supports banning the procedure without exception. Dozens of people gathered in a fluorescent hall of First Baptist Atlanta, a prominent Southern Baptist church. Pastor Anthony George sat on a platform, with Mr. Walker at his right hand. The pastor recalled God’s protection of King David, the ancient Israelite king, and claimed similar promise for Mr. Walker. The candidate shared a testimony of how Jesus changed his life. The pastor invited people to the front to pray for him. Read more
Historical / Cultural
Will America’s midterms in 2022 replicate 1866? By Manisha Sinha / CNN
Why I hope 2022 will be another 1866
Midterm elections are usually not history-making stuff. Few have been memorable. But in the 2022 midterms, as in the 1866 elections, the fate of American democracy hangs in the balance. If there is a moment from history that our current political moment most resembles, it is the 1866 midterm elections, held a year after the end of the Civil War. We must hope that the midterm elections of 2022 might engender that unusual political wave and resemble the 1866 midterms, when the party in power, the Republicans in this instance, won decisive majorities in both houses of Congress. (The two political parties have long since flipped political and ideological roles.) Read more
“We Have Faced Threats This Big Before”: Rachel Maddow’s New Podcast Is a History Lesson on American Democracy Under Assault. By Joe Pompeo / Vanity Fair
In vivid, narrative style, the MSNBC host’s latest audio series, Ultra, transports listeners to the early 1940s, when right-wing extremism flourished not only on the airwaves, but in the halls of Congress. “Move over, Marjorie Taylor Greene!”
So you make it about 23 minutes into the episode, feeling like you’re in Amelia Earhart and D.B. Cooper territory, when finally you start to realize what you’re actually doing there: Of COURSE this business about Senator Lundeen and the mysterious plane crash was apparently somehow related to a Nazi agent infiltrating Congress as part of a plot to overthrow the US government. That’s the gist of Ultra, which drops Monday, an eight-episode weekly audio series about the little-remembered Great Sedition Trial of 1944. MSNBC bills the podcast as “the all-but-forgotten true story of good, old-fashioned American extremism getting supercharged by proximity to power. When extremist elected officials get caught plotting against America with the violent ultra right, this is the story of the lengths they will go to…to cover their tracks.” Read more
What Indigenous Peoples’ Day means to Native Americans. By Harmeet Kaur / CNN
For centuries, the US celebrated Christopher Columbus as the intrepid explorer who discovered the Americas – a symbol of the American ideals of entrepreneurship and innovation.
The story of the Italian navigator taught to generations of schoolchildren is shrouded in mythology. But for the Indigenous peoples who inhabited the Americas long before Columbus ever arrived, Columbus and his namesake holiday represent something much more sinister: the violent colonization of their lands and the brutal treatment of their people. The movement to replace Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples’ Day has been decades in the making. As a result of advocacy by Native American activists, many states and localities now observe the second Monday in October as Indigenous Peoples’ Day instead of – or in addition to – Columbus Day. That shift has since reached the federal level – last year, President Joe Biden became the first president to formally acknowledge Indigenous Peoples’ Day. Read more
Mamie Clark’s Unsung Contribution to Brown v. Board. By Lacey P. Hunter / AAIHS
The success of the Brown case is frequently linked to the work of psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Clark, whose studies on Black children made plain the far-reaching impact of racial segregation on their development.
Greater emphasis, however, is placed on the field work of Kenneth Clark to complete the experiment designed by Mamie Clark. Kenneth’s involvement with the study of children, however, began with Mamie. Her academic research during her time as a master’s student at Howard University, and later as a doctoral student at Columbia University, laid the foundation for the social psychology research that supported the Supreme Court’s decision to desegregate schools. In fact, Mamie Clark’s testimony before the Supreme Court was pivotal in rejecting the evidence given by prominent psychologist, and her former dissertation advisor, Henry A. Garrett, who affirmed the idea that Black children were simply inferior to their White counterparts. Read more
Americans See More Interracial Relationships in Advertising. By Deborah Block / VOA news
Actors portray a biracial family in an ad for the Old Navy clothing retailer. (Courtesy Old Navy)
A happy interracial family hugging each other while wearing apparel from clothing retailer Old Navy. A smiling Black man giving his white girlfriend an engagement ring in a State Farm insurance ad. And a biracial couple and their kids on a road trip in a vehicle made by Hyundai. These are among the increasing number of advertisements selling everything from cereal to prescription drugs that portray the American family in ways few companies and advertising agencies would have dared a generation ago. More than 50 years after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down laws banning interracial marriage, a growing number of ads feature interracial couples with biracial children. Read more
Tracee Ellis Ross talks new docuseries ‘The Hair Tales.’ By Jacqueline Laurean Yates / GMA
Tracee Ellis Ross joined “Good Morning America” this week to discuss her upcoming docuseries “The Hair Tales.”
Premiering on Hulu and OWN Oct. 22, the six-part series focuses on all of the facets of a Black woman’s hair. It also includes stories of how hair has impacted each of the show’s guests in terms of identity, creativity and how they are perceived. “It’s an exploration on the identity of Black woman told through the metaphor of our hair, so using hair as sort of an organizing principal to talk about our humanity,” Ross told “GMA.” “It really is about the joy and the celebration and the discovery of the identity of Black women … so often that identity is decontextualized in our world and also told through struggle and hardship, but there’s so much joy and so much beauty.” Read more
Watch “Why Don’t Black People Breakdance Anymore?” on YouTube / By Ralph Crowder
A cultural critique of modern day Hip Hop and it’s lack of historical preservation in Black America. The art form of “Breakdancing” has skipped a generational relationship with the youth of it’s originators, as is now set to make an International debut as an Olympic Sport in 2024. The Walk Series features a unique view of this and other conversations which impact the media lens of perspective within Black Communities. Watch here
Sports
Tommy Tuberville made $25m off Black men. God forbid they get anything back. By Andrew Lawrence / The Guardian
The former Auburn football coach earned a small fortune thanks to Black athletes. As a US senator he has shown them little but contempt
Speaking at a Trump rally in western Nevada on Saturday, Tuberville blasted Democrats as crime enablers who risked destroying the republic by engaging with Black Americans in an overdue conversation about reparations. If the past half-century of college football has taught us anything, it’s that the system, rather than helping Black players, exploits them to enrich old white coaches. And like those coaches, the bulk of them decidedly mediocre, Tuberville mastered the hokey art of ingratiating himself with Black families and promising their sons a better life – as long as they did precisely as he said. While that bargain notionally worked out for some signees, not least the 29 Auburn players who reached the NFL during Tuberville’s time in charge of the Tigers, scores more got very little. Read more
Related: Tommy Tuberville is racist. How many college coaches are like him? By Mike Freeman / USA Today
A lost generation of Black coaching talent. By Dave Sheinin / Wash Post
Clarence Shelmon and scores of other Black assistants never got the chance at head coaching jobs — or the generational wealth that comes with those opportunities
His dream of becoming an NFL head coach, which he had harbored for 21 years as an assistant in the league — the last 10 of which, with the Chargers, produced five playoff appearances and just one losing season — was officially deceased. Primary cause of death: pride. Secondary cause of death: institutional bias. “In terms of the [NFL’s] hiring practices, there didn’t seem to be a real good path to my aspirations,” Shelmon recently recalled in his living room. “… When you know you’ve gone as far as you’re going to be able to go, not based on your abilities but just based on how [others] look at you — as a man of color — then there comes a time when [you decide], ‘I shouldn’t have to take this.’ When you have the stress and knowledge of all that goes on, it’s a burden that you carry. … So, if you don’t like it, leave. And that’s what I did.” Read more
Celtics Coach Ime Udoka Rose Fast and Fell Hard. Scott Cacciola and / NYT
Weeks after the Celtics abruptly suspended Udoka for the season, it’s still not entirely clear why. Some who have known him are struggling to make sense of the situation.
Only a few months after he led his team to the brink of a championship, the Celtics suspended him for a year under mysterious circumstances, leaving the team in turmoil just weeks before the start of a new season. An interim coach has taken over, but confusion has taken hold: No one is saying publicly what happened, and people who know Udoka are wondering how he — a well-respected former player who used to work for FedEx — could be in this much trouble. Read more
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