Featured

The College-Admissions Merit Myth. By Adam Harris / The Atlantic

The system is not about lining people up from best to worst and taking the top ones. It’s more like a lottery, says the sociologist Natasha Warikoo.

Tomorrow, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in two cases that could end America’s experiment with affirmative action in higher education. The challenges to the admissions programs at Harvard and at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill—both brought by Students for Fair Admissions, a coalition of unnamed students assembled by the conservative legal strategist Edward Blum—argue that the institutions discriminate against Asian American students, and that eliminating the use of race in admissions would fix the problem.

In her new book, Is Affirmative Action Fair? The Myth of Equity in College Admissions, Natasha Warikoo, a sociologist at Tufts University who has spent years examining race-conscious admissions, assesses the positions of those for and against affirmative action, and argues that we’re asking the wrong questions about how students get into college. By exalting merit, Warikoo warns, Americans have developed a skewed perception of the process—a perception that leads to challenges such as the one before the Court.

I spoke with Warikoo about her book, the Supreme Court hearing, and how we can better understand admissions. Read more

Political / Social

The Next Generation of House Leadership. By Felicia Wong and Michael Tomasky / The New Republic Podcast

Hakeem Jeffries on the priorities of tomorrow’s Democratic leaders

Hakeem Jeffries, a representative for New York’s 8th congressional district, is a rising star in the Democratic Party and the likely front-runner to succeed Nancy Pelosi as House leader. He’s also quite the policy wonk, as co-hosts Felicia Wong and Michael Tomasky learn in episode six of How to Save a Country. What drives the chair of the House Democratic Caucus, and what’s his vision for the next generation of leadership? Listen here

Barack Obama Mercilessly Mocks Herschel Walker With A ‘Thought Experiment.’ By Lee Moran / HuffPost

The former president also torched the Donald Trump-backed GOP candidate with a reworked version of his iconic slogan.

At a campaign rally for Walker’s Democratic rival, Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), Obama acknowledged that Walker was “a heck of a football player” and “amazing, one of the best running backs of all time.” But that doesn’t make him the best person to represent Georgia, the former president argued. Obama imagined people seeing Walker in the airport or hospital and allowing him to fly the airplane or do surgery because of his success on the football field. “You wouldn’t say that,” said Obama. Obama said “the opposite is true, too” in that people may have liked him as a president but wouldn’t want his “slow, old, skinny behind” on the football field. “You’d have to scrape me off the field,” he cracked, before flipping his “Yes, we can” slogan to: “No, I can’t. No, I can’t.” Read more and watch here

“We regret to inform you” that Donald Trump is cashing in on white America’s death wish. By Chauncey Devega / Salon

Donald Trump’s superpower: He understands white America’s impulse toward self-destruction — and mainlines it

Donald Trump is a white terrorist. This is true in both the literal sense and on a more metaphorical level. As part of Trump’s coup plot he incited his followers to attack the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. It’s also true that throughout his presidency and beyond, Trump and his agents have used the propaganda tactic known as “stochastic terrorism” — in which a leader encourages violence while maintaining vaguely plausible deniability. This is part of a larger pattern of behavior. Trump’s behavior and rhetoric repeatedly emphasize destruction, violence, conspiracy theories, apocalyptic imagery and threats of other dire outcomes if he and his neofascist movement are not returned to power. Read more

American Jews start to think the unthinkable. By Dana Milbank / Wash Post

Flowers and stars line outside the Tree of Life Congregation in Pittsburgh in 2018 after a shooter opened fire during services. (AP /Gene J. Puskar)

On the holiest night of the Jewish year earlier this month, my rabbi looked up from his Kol Nidre sermon — a homily about protecting America’s liberal democracy — and posed a question that wasn’t in his prepared text: “How many people in the last few years have been at a dining room conversation where the conversation has turned to where might we move? How many of us?” He was talking about the unthinkable: that Jews might need to flee the United States. In the congregation, many hands — most? — went up. Read more

Joe Biden’s Student Loan Forgiveness Doesn’t Do Enough For Black Women. By Nicole Lynn Lewis / HuffPost

Black women carry the highest amount of student loan debt and are the most likely to be underpaid and underemployed.

As the Department of Education rolls out debt relief applications to borrowers this month, now is the time to have honest conversations not only about the communities most impacted by the student loan crisis, but also the partisan politics that obstructed college affordability in the first place. Black women borrowers occupy a precarious position within the American education system. Black women seeking degrees are more likely than any other demographic group to rely on student loans, and Black students as a whole possess more student loan debt on average than any other racial demographic. Read more

Medical debt hits Black Americans especially hard and can affect access to care. By Noam Levey / NPR

Diagnosed with cancer five years ago, Monica Reed of Knoxville, Tennessee, was left with nearly $10,000 in medical bills she couldn’t pay. Medical debt is more prevalent among the Black community in Knoxville, than among whites.

Health care debt in the U.S. now affects more than 100 million people, a KHN-NPR investigation found. But the toll has been especially high on Black communities: 56% of Black adults owe money for a medical or dental bill, compared with 37% of white adults, according to a nationwide KFF poll conducted for this project. The explanation for that startling disparity is deeply rooted. Decades of discrimination in housing, employment, and health care blocked generations of Black families from building wealth — savings and assets that are increasingly critical to accessing America’s high-priced medical system. Read more

LeBron James Calls On Elon Musk To Address ‘Scary AF’ Explosion Of ‘N Word’ On Twitter. By Mary Papenfuss / HuffPost

“So many damn unfit people saying hate speech is free speech,” James tweeted.

The Network Contagion Research Institute, which analyzes hundreds of millions of messages across social media platforms, discovered that use of the racist slur on Twitter spiked nearly 500% over the 12 hours after Musk closed the deal to purchase the company for $44 billion, The Washington Post reported. Musk has railed in the past at Twitter’s content restrictions on misinformation and hate speech, characterizing it as biased and unjustified censorship. But unfettered content could be bad for his new business and even in some cases vulnerable to lawsuits. Read more

Dear Kanye: No, you are not a white man. By Dante’ Stewart / Andscape

Who can save a man who believes self-hatred is the way of salvation?

After weeks — years, really — of being forced to endure yet another iteration of Ye’s foolishness, I want to ask him: Bruh, is it really worth it? When Ye rolled out “White Lives Matter” shirts at his Paris fashion show earlier this month, I shook my head. While some thought he was trolling, I saw the stunt as an example of self-hatred and shame. Then came the interviews. Ye spewed his anti-Blackness, antisemitism, and misogyny to anyone who would listen, from Tucker Carlson Tonight on Fox News and Drink Champs to British broadcaster Piers Morgan and MIT research scientist Lex Fridman. After watching his erratic and dangerous ramblings, I wondered, “Can he survive this?” But then, almost as quickly, I asked myself, “Do I actually want him to? Read more

Ethics / Morality / Religion

Nearly half of Americans say they want a ‘Christian nation.’ By Olivier Knox and Caroline Anders / Wash Post

An empty sanctuary awaits parishioners on Palm Sunday at Saint Mary’s Catholic Church on April 5, 2020, in Richmond, Va. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)

Against the backdrop of ever more Republicans espousing far-right “Christian nationalism,” a new poll showing 45% of Americans say the United States should be a “Christian nation” might be eye-popping evidence of a tectonic shift in public attitudes about government and religion. But the Pew Research Center survey in question, which is fascinating, convincingly makes the point that there are many vastly different interpretations of what that expression means, while comfortable majorities want daylight between politics and faith. Sixty-seven percent of all adults, for instance, say churches should stay out of politics, while 77% say they should not endorse candidates for elected office. Read more

Related: As Christian nationalism digs in, differing visions surface. By Jack Jenkins / RNS

Mike Pence says Americans don’t have a right to freedom from religion. By Brandon Gage / Alternet

Former Vice President Mike Pence claimed during a Wednesday appearance on Fox Business that the First Amendment to the United States Constitution does not protect Americans from having other people’s faiths forced upon them.

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances,” it states. In fact, there are no references to a supreme being anywhere in the Constitution, because the Founding Fathers were adamantly opposed to centralized religious power as well as requiring individuals to subscribe to any particular denomination. Read more

Why some Latino evangelicals feel neither political party align completely with their beliefs. By Nicole Chavez / CNN

Pastor Luis Cabrera of South Texas, left, Rev. Gabriel Salguero of Orlando, Florida, center, and Pastor Manuel Mendoza of Greenville, South Carolina, right.

Cabrera is part of a growing group of Latino faith leaders who are not shying away from politics anymore, claiming they grew frustrated over how the values and morals they preach have been lost to many people in America. “I was tired of the condition of the nation and the church. I was seeing how everything was just shifting and I saw the evil in this land,” Cabrera said. But contrary to White faith voters, Latino faith voters are not synonymous with Republican. Much like the overall bloc of Latino voters, neither party appears to have a monopoly on Latino faith voters who identify as Protestant. An estimated 42% of Hispanic Protestants identify as independent, 33% as Democrat and 20% as Republican, PRRI data shows. Read more

Environmental Train Wreck: Houston’s Black Churches Fight Pollutants. By Phoebe Suy Gibson / Christianity Today

Leaders and activists petition to hold a railway company to account for decades of carcinogen use.

Long before two cancer clusters were discovered in their Houston neighborhood, residents and fledgling activists met in churches and community centers across the Greater Fifth Ward, slowly building what would become a groundswell of environmental justice work in one of the city’s historically Black communities. “It was all God’s doing,” said James Joseph, a minister at Lyons Unity Missionary Baptist Church and the founder of the Fifth Ward’s Neighborhood Enrichment Xchange. “He planted me here.” The northeast corner of Houston is home to communities like Fifth Ward, Kashmere Gardens, and Trinity–Houston Gardens—African American neighborhoods with churches dotting most street corners. For decades, residents have been calling attention to the area’s compounding environmental issues, from drainage problems and air pollution to poor water quality. Read more

Calvin Butts, leader of Harlem’s historic Abyssinian Baptist Church, dies at 73. By Adelle M. Banks / RNS

Butts was known for his outspokenness on issues ranging from misogyny in rap music to the need to address HIV/AIDS.

The Rev. Calvin O. Butts III, the senior pastor of New York’s historic Abyssinian Baptist Church, who followed in the footsteps of prominent Black ministers and paved his own path of leadership in education, health and political circles, died Friday (Oct. 28), his church announced. “It is with profound sadness, we announce the passing of our beloved pastor, Reverend Dr. Calvin O. Butts, lll, who peacefully transitioned in the early morning of October 28, 2022,” the church stated on its website and on Twitter. “The Butts Family & entire Abyssinian Baptist Church membership solicit your prayers.” Read more

Historical / Cultural

“The Devil’s Half Acre”: How one enslaved woman left her mark on education. By Michelle Miller / CBS News

In Virginia’s capital city, trapped between a railroad yard and an interstate highway, a renewed landscape has unlocked the legacy of a stolen people.

“I was doing research to learn more about the slave trading district down here,” said journalist Kristen Green. That research led to one woman whose story haunted Green for nearly a decade. “I just couldn’t forget Mary Lumpkin,” she told CBS News. “Like, once I learned about her, I thought her story was so important and needed to be shared.” On assignment in 2011 for the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Green reported on the very place that enslaved woman lived, the nation’s largest African American burial ground, a final resting place for some 200,000. It’s right next to the grounds of a jailhouse known as “The Devil’s Half Acre,” now buried under cobblestones and 15 feet of filled dirt. “They tore down the building and covered it up. Only the foundations remain,” Green said. Read more

Private papers reveal the tactics that helped SCOTUS uphold the use of affirmative action. By Joan Biskupic / CNN

In this Sept. 25, 1978 file photo, Allan Bakke is trailed by news and television reporters after attending his first day at the Medical School of the University of California at Davis.

The first time the Supreme Court upheld the use of affirmative action in college admissions, nearly 45 years ago, the justices spent months strategizing, forming back-channel alliances and trading passionate pleas up until the final days of negotiations. Then, just days before the June 1978 decision was released, one justice wrote in a private account, “all hell broke loose.” Private papers of deceased justices, including the first Black justice, Thurgood Marshall, reveal the tactics among the nine that produced the 1978 decision and how competing factions tried to steer the outcome. Read more

‘We can never forget’: Till movie sparks renewed conversations about the nation’s racist past. By Claretta Bellamy and Candice Williams / NBC News

Emmett Till’s tragic death in 1955 is a reminder of the “depths of ugliness” that still exists, said Eddie S. Glaude Jr., a professor at Princeton.

With the release of director Chinonye Chukwu’s “Till,” the conversation of the nation’s racist history and violence toward Black people is being revisited. The film retells the tragic story of 14-year-old Emmett Till, who was brutally abducted, beaten and killed by two white men for allegedly whistling at a white woman, Carolyn Bryant Donham, in 1955. Told through the perspective of his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, played by actress Danielle Deadwyler, the film shows how Till’s death became a symbol of Black injustice that helped sparked the civil rights movement. Deadwyler told NBC News that the telling of Till’s story today is just as important as it was decades ago. Read more

The Rock Goes Back to Black. By Lauren Michele Jackson / The New Yorker

“Black Adam” and the slippery identities of Dwayne Johnson.

Johnson, the child of a Samoan mother and a Black father, had the skin to fit in, but he chafed at the conceit. “I wanted to be a heel in the worst way,” he would recall in his 2000 memoir, but “I wasn’t comfortable with the notion of perpetuating stereotypes.” Stepping out with his new crew for the first time, in 1997, Maivia presented himself as among but not of them, telling the crowd, “Joining the Nation wasn’t a Black thing. It wasn’t a white thing.” As his story progressed, he took from the Nation what he needed to shed Rocky Maivia and reinvent himself as the Rock, a “trail-blazin’, eyebrow-raisin’ ” cuss known for smack talk calibrated to titillate and offend. “You are all unintelligent pieces of trailer-park trash,” he spat. “Do you smell it?” Read more

Sex, Race, and Gender in Bounce Music Culture. By Hettie Williams / AAIHS

“We’re bouncing the whole time,” states Big Freedia—a gender non-conforming rapper and entertainer born Freddie Ross, Jr.— who is considered to be one of the key figures in the current popularization of bounce music, a sub-genre of rap. NEW ORLEANS, LA- JAN 23 2016:

For Big Freedia, bounce is about “being able to dance and be free.” Though Beyoncѐ Knowles is highly effective at commodifying the culture, as evidenced by her latest hit, “Brake My Soul,” a bounce-inspired song that includes Big Freedia’s voice on the track, she did not invent bounce music, and Cardi B did not invent twerking. Freedia, in a video titled “Big Freedia, Explains the Ins and Outs of Bounce Music,” goes on to define the genre of bounce as “up-tempo, call-and-response, heavy base, ass-shaking music.” Read more

Louis Armstrong’s Black & Blues’ Review: In His Own Words. By Lisa Kennedy / NYT

Personal tapes and letters bring fresh insights into the jazz great as a musician and a Black man.

In Louis Armstrong’s study in the Queens home he shared with his fourth wife, Lucille, bookshelves were filled with reel-to-reel recordings he made as a sort of audio diary. Those tapes and his letters — read by the rapper Nas — lay the foundation for the director Sacha Jenkins’s documentary “Louis Armstrong’s Black & Blues.” By foregrounding the gravel, grace and salty frankness of Armstrong’s voice, and mining an archival mother lode of audio and video interviews and clips, Jenkins delivers a bountiful portrait of one of the 20th century’s superstars — on Armstrong’s own terms. Read more

50 Years Ago, Stevie Wonder Heard the Future. NYT Staff

On the anniversary of the landmark 1972 album “Talking Book,” musicians who made it and artists who cherish it share their stories.

In 1972 — half a century ago — Stevie Wonder reinvented the sound of pop by embracing all he could accomplish on his own. He released two albums that year: “Music of My Mind” in March and then, less than eight months later, on Oct. 27, the even more confident and far-reaching “Talking Book.” “Talking Book” was a breakthrough on multiple fronts. It demonstrated, with the international smash “Superstition,” that Wonder didn’t need Motown’s “hit factory” methods — songwriters and producers providing material that singers would dutifully execute — to have a No. 1 pop blockbuster. Read more

Black Music Sunday: Halloween is the the perfect time to enjoy these spooky tunes. By Denise Oliver Velez / Daily Kos

The White House is lit with orange light as a group of “skeletons” perform at the North Portico of the White House in Washington on Oct. 31, 2009.

It’s that time of year again, filled with Halloween spooks, witches, and goblins, and tricks and treats like candy corn. Unsurprisingly there are lots of tunes across Black music genres that deal with spells and spooks and witchcraft, including voodoo, hoodoo, and black cat bones. This Black Music Sunday, we’re getting into Halloween music mode, with some jazz and blues that speak to the spirits of the season. Read more and listen here

Sports

Dusty Baker Laments Lack Of US-Born Black Players In World Series. By Kristie Reiken / HuffPost

“What hurts is that I don’t know how much hope that it gives some of the young African-American kids,” the Houston Astros manager told The Associated Press.

Dusty Baker grew up watching Black stars shine in the World Series, paving his path to a life devoted to baseball. When he leads the Houston Astros in Game 1 of the World Series against the Philadelphia Phillies on Friday night, the AL and NL champions will play without any U.S.-born Black players for the first time since 1950, shortly after Jackie Robinson broke the Major League Baseball color barrier. It’s a fact that deeply disturbs the 73-year-old Baker, one of two Black MLB managers, who has spent his entire life either playing or coaching baseball. Read more

A Tough Start in Texas Turned Jimmy Butler Into an N.B.A. All-Star. By Scott Cacciola / NYT

Butler is impossible to miss as the fiercely competitive star of the Miami Heat. But he got his start at a small junior college in Texas after bigger schools overlooked him.

At Tyler Junior College, a leafy two-year school about 100 miles southeast of Dallas, Fulce was among the teammates who came to understand how seriously Butler treated the combative art of one-on-one basketball. It was the most pure distillation of his competitive drive. “If you ask him to play one-on-one and you’re not really ready to play one-on-one with him, don’t do it,” Fulce said, “because it’ll mess up your relationship with him.” By now, Butler has cemented his reputation as one of the league’s best two-way players, a six-time All-Star with an eight-figure salary who has positioned Miami as a perennial title contender. In his spare time, he works as a global pitchman for a low-calorie beer and drinks expensive coffee. Read more

Kyrie Irving Says He’s Not Antisemitic After Tweeting Link To Controversial Movie. By Keith Reed / The Root

Irving on Thursday night tweeted a link to an obscure movie from 2018 based on an even more obscure book written in 2015, both of which traffic in antisemitic themes. Nets owner Joe Tsai released a statement Friday night distancing himself and the team from Irving’s Tweet, which linked to the Amazon page for a movie called “Hebrews To Negro: Wake Up Black America.”

It’s hard to put anything Irving says into meaningful context but we can’t ignore that his tweet came at the end of a week in which Kanye West’s fashion empire and personal fortune got Hulk smashed after he made, then repeatedly defended antisemitic remarks of his own. It also came on the same day that racists decided to mark Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter by testing content moderation boundaries, flooding the site with antisemitic posts and reportedly pushing use of the n-word up 500% in 12 hours. Read more

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