Featured
The Man Behind Critical Race Theory. By Jelani Cobb / The New Yorker
As an attorney, Derrick Bell worked on many civil-rights cases, but his doubts about their impact launched a groundbreaking school of thought.
Vinay Harpalani told me, “Someone asked him once, ‘What do you say about critical race theory?’ ” Bell first replied, “I don’t know what that is,” but then offered, “To me, it means telling the truth, even in the face of criticism.” Harpalani added, “He was just telling his story. He was telling his truth, and that’s what he wanted everyone to do. So, as far as Derrick Bell goes, that’s probably what I think is important.” Shown is Derrick Bell (1930-2011) – Harvard University. Read more
Political / Social
Abortion Has Never Just Been About Abortion. By Thomas B. Edsall / NYT
Some of the scholars and journalists studying the evolving role of abortion in American politics make the case that key leaders of the conservative movement in the late 1970s and early 1980s — among them Richard Viguerie, Paul Weyrich, Phyllis Schlafly and Jerry Falwell Sr. — were seeking to expand their base beyond those opposed to the civil rights movement. According to this argument, conservative strategists settled on a concerted effort to politicize abortion in part because it dodged the race issue and offered the opportunity to unify conservative Catholics and Evangelicals. Read more
Joe Manchin can’t delay any longer. He must choose between voting rights and the filibuster. By Jennifer Rubin / Wash Post
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), chair of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee, forged a deal with the full backing of Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) that contains provisions to, as NPR reports, “make Election Day a public holiday, ensure that every state offers same-day voter registration, set minimum federal standards on mail voting and ban partisan gerrymandering.” The bill also includes Manchin’s flexible voter ID requirements and “protections to insulate nonpartisan state and local officials who administer federal elections from undue partisan interference or control.”
News reports suggest President Biden is ready to start lobbying Democrats for a filibuster exception or reform. If that is true, his relationship with Manchin and his persuasive skills could well determine whether 2020 was our last fair, free and reliable federal election. It is no exaggeration that Manchin’s entire legacy and America’s democracy hang in the balance. Read more
Related: The Manchin-Klobuchar Bill Could Save Democracy. By Norm Ornstein and Dennis Aftergut / The Atlantic
Twitter Users Taunt ‘Biggest Loser’ Larry Elder After He Was Trounced In California Recall. By Ed Mazza / HuffPost
In the end, the California recall effort to oust Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) didn’t come close and people on social media took every chance to let Larry Elder know it. Elder became the face of the Republican side of the recall election with his vow to repeal mask, COVID-19 vaccine and testing requirements in schools and workplaces. But voters weren’t interested. As of midnight in California, with 70 percent of the vote counted, nearly two out of three voted to keep Newsom in office. Elder was selected as a replacement on 2.2 million of the nearly 9 million ballots counted. Elder’s critics on Twitter were only too happy to share the news: Read more
The Resilience of India Walton. By Raina Lopez / The Nation
A nurse, community organizer, former executive director of a community land trust, and democratic socialist, Walton stunned the political establishment by beating four-term incumbent Byron Brown in Buffalo’s Democratic mayoral primary in June. Brown, a onetime ally of former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, was heavily favored to win. Brown became Buffalo’s first Black mayor in 2006. If Walton prevails in the general election, she will be the city’s first woman mayor and the first socialist mayor of a sizable US city since 1960. Read more
Boston Mayor’s Race Narrows, With a Progressive in the Lead. By Ellen Berry / NYT
Michelle Wu, an Asian American progressive who has built a campaign around climate change and housing policy, sailed to a first-place finish in Boston’s preliminary mayoral election on Tuesday, winning 33 percent of the vote in a city that for nearly 200 years has elected only white men. As a front-runner, Ms. Wu, 36, marks a striking departure for this city, whose politics have long turned on neighborhoods and ethnic rivalries. Read more
Black farm workers allege in federal lawsuit their former employer hired white laborers for higher pay. By The AP and NBC News
Six Black farmworkers in Mississippi say in a new lawsuit that their former employer brought white laborers from South Africa to do the same jobs they were doing, and that the farm has been violating federal law by paying the white immigrants more for the same type of work. Mississippi Center for Justice and Southern Migrant Legal Services filed the federal lawsuit Wednesday on behalf of the six workers against Pitts Farm Partnership, which grows cotton, soybeans and corn in the Mississippi Delta’s Sunflower County. Read more
Former Minneapolis police officers charged with violating George Floyd’s civil rights plead not guilty. By Holly Bailey / Wash Post
Four former Minneapolis police officers charged in the death of George Floyd pleaded not guilty Tuesday to separate federal charges that they violated the man’s civil rights during the fatal arrest in May 2020. But the federal judge overseeing the matter delayed decisions on several major issues in the case, including whether the former officers will be tried jointly and when the trial might take place. Read more
The Tragedy of America’s Rural Schools.
Outdated textbooks, not enough teachers, no ventilation — for millions of kids like Harvey Ellington, the public-education system has failed them their whole lives. One Saturday afternoon in late May, a few days before the end of his junior year, Harvey Ellington plopped onto his queen-size bed, held up his phone and searched for a signal. The 17-year-old lived in a three-bedroom trailer on an acre lot surrounded by oak trees, too far into the country for broadband, but eventually his cell found the hot spot his high school had lent him for the year. He opened his email and began to type. “Good evening! Hope all is well! Congratulations on being the new superintendent for the Holmes County Consolidated School District.” Read more
How the United States Can Better Care for Mothers and Babies. Paid Post by Phillips/ NYT
The United States has the highest maternal mortality rate of 11 developed countries, with Black moms disproportionately impacted. These organizations are doing something about it — and you can help.
Charles Johnson and his wife, Kira, were looking forward to the birth of their second son, Langston. After a routine C-section, mother and child seemed healthy at first, but in the recovery room Johnson saw signs that his wife was not well. He pleaded for help, yet 10 hours went by before doctors determined that she was bleeding internally. “Kira died on the emergency room table,” says Johnson’s friend Stacey D. Stewart, the chief executive officer and president of March of Dimes, a nonprofit that works to improve the health of all mothers and babies. “This was absolutely preventable.” Read more
Emily’s List Selects Laphonza Butler, First Woman Of Color, To Lead Organization. By Deepa Shivram / NPR
EMILY’s List, a political organization that helps fundraise and elect Democratic women who support abortion rights, has selected former Kamala Harris senior adviser Laphonza Butler as its next president. Butler will be the first woman of color, and the first mother, to lead the group in its 36-year history. Butler, the organization’s third president, grew up in Magnolia, Miss., and attended Jackson State University, a historically Black university. Read more
Historical / Cultural
Martin Luther King’s Long-Standing Critique of Police Brutality. By Jeanne Theoharis / The Atlantic
In a lesser-known part of his March on Washington speech, Martin Luther King Jr. proclaimed, “We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality.” Many people, upon hearing this, might assume that King was simply referring to the violence wreaked by the police department in Birmingham, Alabama, and its commissioner, Bull Connor, during the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s desegregation campaign that spring. But King understood that police brutality—like segregation—wasn’t just a southern problem. Read more
Anti-Communism and A Raisin in the Sun. By Denise Lynn / AAIHS
Lorraine Hansberry is largely known as the playwright of A Raisin in the Sun who tragically died young. Recent scholarship by Imani Perry and Soyica Diggs Colbert and others has uncovered Hansberry’s devotion to radical politics and her circle of friends and artists in and around the American Communist Party. While popular culture might remember her as a writer committed to civil rights, the FBI saw her as a national security threat. Read more
Why I Write. By Charles M. Blow / NYT
One of my favorite aunts was desperately poor, like many people I knew in rural north Louisiana. I don’t know how much money she had or made. I only know the shadow of need that stalked her. She seemed, like many members of my family, one paycheck or severe injury away from insolvency.
When I visited my aunt, I was working at The New York Times. I had been poor, but I no longer was. And yet, it was important to me then, and remains important to me now, that I remained connected to that poverty, so that I could write about it from a genuine place. Read more
The Question Michael K. Williams Asked Me Before Every Season of ‘The Wire.’ By David Simon / NYT
The second season of our fledgling HBO drama in Baltimore did not shoot its first frame of film before one key cast member was in the writers’ offices, scripts in hand, showing his disappointment. “Why are we even doing this?” Michael K. Williams asked.
At first, I misapprehended the depth of Mike’s complaint, assuming — as is often true — that an actor was simply counting his character’s lines and hoping for more screen time. Read more
Sports
In love with the struggle: The Ben Wallace story. The Undefeated Video.
Before the Detroit Pistons legend became a Basketball Hall of Famer, he faced enormous challenges growing up in Lowndes County, Alabama. Watch here
Paul Pierce, Chris Webber lead deep class inducted into Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame. By Ben Golliver / Wash Post
The Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame enshrinement ceremony returned home to Springfield, Mass., on Saturday to welcome a deep class of inductees whose careers shaped all aspects of the sport.
After the 2020 ceremony was postponed and eventually relocated to Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, Conn., many of basketball’s biggest names, including Michael Jordan, Julius Erving and Charles Barkley, converged on MassMutual Arena to welcome NBA stars Paul Pierce, Chris Bosh, Chris Webber, Ben Wallace, Toni Kukoc and Bob Dandridge into the Hall of Fame. Also inducted were NBA coaches Bill Russell, Rick Adelman and Cotton Fitzsimmons; women’s stars Pearl Moore, Yolanda Griffith and Lauren Jackson; WNBA executive Val Ackerman; NCAA coach Jay Wright; African American pioneer Clarence Jenkins; and scout Howard Garfinkel. Read more
Maia Chaka Is The First Black Woman To Officiate NFL Game. By Dana Farrington / NPR
Maia Chaka has made history as the first Black woman to officiate an NFL game. She said ahead of Sunday’s game between the New York Jets and the Carolina Panthers that it would be a proud moment. “This historic moment to me is an honor and it’s a privilege that I’ve been chosen to represent women and women of color in the most popular sport in America, proving that I can defy the odds and overcome,” Chaka said in a video released by the NFL. Read more
HBCUs ring up nearly a billion dollars in exposure through success in sports. By David Squires / The Undefeated
As college students head back to their classrooms, the enrolled — as well as alums — at three historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) can add some extra hop, skip and jump to their steps due to the unprecedented successes of their schools’ athletic programs.
That’s because — despite students being away from campuses and games either not played or played without audiences — North Carolina A&T, Norfolk State and Texas Southern combined to rack up nearly three-fourths of $1 billion in exposure, according to number crunchers and athletic officials at the three HBCUs and one of the conference offices. Read more
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