Featured
Mississippi’s Dry Run for Eco-Apartheid. By Kate Aronoff / The New Republic
The water crisis in Jackson, Mississippi, was thoroughly preventable. And it’s a vision of a disastrous future.
It’s also hard to overstate the sheer level of contempt Republican state governors and legislatures have for the Democratic cities within their borders—especially if those cities happen to be majority Black. When the city government of Jackson requested $47 million to repair its water systems after last winter’s crisis, it got just $3 million. “The city of Jackson is grateful for the support that we are now receiving from the state,” Mayor Chokwe Lumumba told reporters this week. “We’ve been going it alone for the better part of two years when it comes to the Jackson water crisis.” Biden has put the ball in the court of Republican Governor Tate Reeves, saying he’s given the state government “everything there is to offer.” Reeves, a Conservative Political Action Conference regular, denied funds for Jackson to make upgrades in the past and blamed city officials for their water troubles. Read more
Related: The endgame to Jackson’s water crisis? ‘Black death.’ By W. Ralph Eubanks / CNN
Related: Documenting Environmental Racism. By E. James West / AAIHS
Political / Social
The Justification for Joe Biden’s Speech. By David Frum / The Atlantic
So much of it was true.
President Joe Biden last night used the backdrop of Philadelphia’s Independence Hall to accuse his political opponents of betraying American democracy. The complaints from GOP leaders are loud. How dare Biden use this birthplace of the republic to speak that way about former President Donald Trump and his tens of millions of supporters? He briefly drew a distinction between those Trump-loyal Republicans and the bulk of the Republican Party. But that was a mere courtesy, because he almost immediately added, “There’s no question that the Republican Party today is dominated, driven, and intimidated by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans.” Biden presented the 2022 ballot question as a stark choice between right (his party) and wrong (the party that has become Trump’s party). Read more
‘They are human beings’: Chicago mayor welcomes migrants bussed by Texas. By Ed Pilkington / The Guardian
The mayor of Chicago, Lori Lightfoot, has vowed to welcome immigrants bussed to the city from the Mexican border, as the hard-right governor of Texas opened a third front in his confrontation with the Biden administration and Democratic sanctuary cities. Lightfoot delivered a defiant speech on Thursday in which she accused Governor Greg Abbott of cruelty and racism, and pledged to respond to the Texan’s controversial scheme by greeting the released migrants with open arms. Read more
What Happened to the White Working Class? By Barbara Ehrenreich / The Nation
Downward mobility plus racial resentment is a potent combination with disastrous consequences.
The white working class, which usually inspires liberal concern only for its paradoxical, Republican-leaning voting habits, has recently become newsworthy for something else: according to economist Anne Case and Angus Deaton, the winner of the latest Nobel Prize in economics, its members in the 45- to 54-year-old age group are dying at an immoderate rate. While the lifespan of affluent whites continues to lengthen, the lifespan of poor whites has been shrinking. Read more
3 Racially Discriminatory Maps And One Illegal Partisan Gerrymander Could Help GOP Win The House. By Paul Blumenthal / HuffPost
These maps are likely to cost Democrats between five and seven House seats.
Earlier this year, federal judges found that the congressional district maps adopted in Alabama, Georgia and Louisiana failed to provide enough representation for their respective state’s Black populations. In July, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled the state’s district map to be an illegal partisan gerrymander. Nevertheless, these four maps, all drawn and adopted by Republican politicians, will be in use for the 2022 midterm elections. These racially discriminatory maps and illegal partisan gerrymander are likely to cost Democrats between five and seven seats in the House. Read more
Ron DeSantis Is Mounting An Ideological Revolution Inside Florida School Boards. By Nathalie Baptiste / HuffPost
In 18 counties across the state, the Trump wanna-be is backing far-right candidates that seek to mount a culture war inside Florida schools.
Last month, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.), who has transformed himself into a Donald Trump wanna-be and is widely considered a 2024 presidential contender, took the unprecedented step of endorsing school board candidates in dozens of different districts across the state. Of the 29 candidates he vouched for, 25 of them were successful or headed to run-offs — even in blue counties. DeSantis’ decision to influence the outcome of nonpartisan races in Florida’s primary is all a part of his self-described “education agenda.” Read more
Related: The Pandemic Erased Two Decades of Progress in Math and Reading. By Sarah Mirvosh / NYT
Bank of America Tests No-Down-Payment Mortgages in Black and Hispanic Neighborhoods. By Jenny Gross / NYT
The pilot program aims to help first-time buyers in several neighborhoods obtain affordable loans.
Under the trial program, which was announced on Tuesday, Bank of America will offer loans to people in certain predominantly Black and Hispanic neighborhoods in Charlotte, N.C.; Dallas; Detroit; Los Angeles and Miami. Eligibility for the program, which is called the Community Affordable Loan Solution, is based on income and location, and requires no mortgage insurance. Read more
Monkeypox disparity: Black, Hispanic people more cases, fewer vaccines. By Nada Hassanein / USA Today
Black and Hispanic people are disproportionately contracting monkeypox virus – but fewer are getting the vaccine, according to early data.
About 17,400 cases of the virus have been identified across the nation since May. Black people make up about a third of cases, compared with their 12% share of the overall population, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. Similarly, Hispanic or Latino people make up about 32% of cases, despite making up 19% of the population, according to data as of Aug. 14. Read more
Ethics / Morality / Religion
Trump should fill Christians with rage. How come he doesn’t? By Michael Gerson / Wash Post
Much of cosmopolitan America holds to a progressive framework of bodily autonomy, boundless tolerance and group rights — a largely post-religious morality applied with near-religious intensity. But as a religious person (on my better days), what concerns me are the perverse and dangerous liberties many believers have taken with their own faith. Much of what considers itself Christian America has assumed the symbols and identity of white authoritarian populism — an alliance that is a serious, unfolding threat to liberal democracy. Read more
Related: Why Christian nationalism is unchristian. By Thomas Reese / NCR
Related: Is Christian republicanism the best cure for Christian nationalism? By Jesse Smith / RNS
Texas’s latest democratic backslide is of Biblical proportions. By Karen Attiah / Wash Post
Under a new state law, public schools here now “must display in a conspicuous place in each building … a durable poster or framed copy of the United States national motto, ‘In God We Trust.’ ” The main requirements are that the signs must have been donated to the school, and they have to display both the U.S. and the Texas flags. God and country, in other words. But even if you think that message is appropriate for public education (and I don’t), some follow-up questions still come up in our multicultural, faith-diverse country: In whose God do we trust? And who’s “we,” anyway? Read more
Meet the Scholar-Activist Who Changed Baptist Minds on Race. By Nathan Finn / Christianity Today
T. B. Maston’s views on integration were controversial at his seminary. Today, they deserve a fresh hearing.
In the years before the Civil War, the major evangelical denominations divided into regional factions based in part upon their views of human enslavement. The DNA of each new Southern denominational tradition was imprinted with racism, casting a long shadow over their subsequent development. There were dissenters within the SBC who rejected the racist assumptions of their tradition and encouraged a more prophetic posture against racial segregation. Arguably, the most prominent among them was T. B. Maston (1897–1988), who taught ethics at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary from 1925 until a coerced retirement in 1963, occasioned by his views on race. Read more
In latest ‘gOD-Talk’ discussion, Black millennials discuss hip-hop and faith. By Religion News Service
Panelists participate in the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture “gOD-Talk 2.0: Hip-Hop and #BlackFaith,” recorded in New Orleans. (Photo by Ashley Lorrain)
The artists, Big Freeddia, Neelam Hakeem and Brandan “BMike” Odums, were part of a dinner and dessert panel discussion examining the intersection of hip-hop music and Black faith released online on Aug. 14. Filmed in New Orleans for “gOD-Talk 2.0: Hip-Hop and #BlackFaith,” the panel was the seventh installment in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture “gOD-Talk” series. It continued an in-person and online series of discussions about the spirituality of Black millennials, Black religion and technology and African American belief and sexuality. Read more
Historical / Cultural
Reparations could heal America. By Vox Staff / Vox
How the US can create a better future by reconciling the past.
How have slavery and Jim Crow policies compounded into injustices like housing inequality, health disparities, generational wealth gaps, and a fractured society? In this multimedia project, Vox explores how reparations have worked globally and what they might look like for Black Americans in the United States. Read more
White and Black: A Historian Traces African-American Influences in the United States. By Drew Gilpin Faust / NYT
A Review: AFRICAN FOUNDERS How Enslaved People Expanded American Ideals By David Hackett Fischer
During more than half a century as a professor and a scholar, David Hackett Fischer has published 11 books, received multiple awards for his teaching and won a Pulitzer Prize. Now he has delivered the long-promised “companion volume” to “Albion’s Seed,” a work that appeared in 1989 to both acclaim and searing criticism. “African Founders: How Enslaved People Expanded American Ideals” has much in common with its predecessor. Like “Albion’s Seed,” it is more than 900 pages long, encompassing an almost unimaginable breadth of research, information and ambition. Read more
World’s Richest Negro Girl’ inspired media ridicule, fascination, alarm. By Sudney Trent / Wash Post
Sarah Rector was 11 when oil was discovered on her land in Oklahoma in 1913. Her sudden wealth became the object of racist news coverage. Shown is Sarah Rector with her nephew, Charles E. Brown Jr., in 1960 (Family photo)
Rector, whose relatives had been enslaved by Creek Indians and later lived among the tribe’s membersin Oklahoma, was just 11 in 1913 when Black Gold was discovered on her allotment of tribal land. Rector became instantly wealthy. A guardian was appointed to manage young Sarah’s income, and a judge oversaw the guardian. Along with the oil, the checks began flowing, as if by magic, to the Rectors, who, illiterate and barely scraping by, knew little about managing money. Read more
How Black washerwomen in the South became pioneers of American labor. By Kim Kelly / Wash Post
Washerwomen, El Paso, Tex., circa 1897. From “A Tour Through the New World America”, by Prof. Geo. R. Cromwell. [C. N. Greig & Co., London, circa 1897]. Artist Unknown. (The Print Collector/Getty Images)
The 19th-century Northern U.S. textile industry was almost entirely White. It wasn’t until 1866, a year after Emancipation, that formerly enslaved Black female workers were able to launch a widespread work stoppage of their own — and by doing so, jump-start a wave of Black-led labor organizing that would spread through multiple industries and set the stage for decades of labor struggles to come. Read more
Ken Burns Explores America’s Inaction During the Holocaust. By Joseph Berger / NYT
“The U.S. and the Holocaust,” coming to PBS Sept. 18, examines the reasons behind the country’s inadequate response to Germany’s persecution of Jews.
As recounted in “The U.S. and the Holocaust,” Ken Burns’s latest deep dive into America’s past, Otto Frank tried desperately to seek sanctuary in the U.S. for his family “only to find,” the narration says, “like countless others fleeing Nazism, that Americans did not want to let them in.” Seeing no other recourse, he arranged for the construction of the Franks’ ill-fated hide-out in Amsterdam. Premiering on Sept. 18 and airing over three nights on PBS, “The U.S. and the Holocaust” aims to upend other longstanding historical assumptions as well, and also draw a thematic line connecting past tragedies and current struggles. Read more
The First A.P. African American Studies Class Is Coming This Fall. By Anemona Hartocollis / NYT
The new course will undergo a pilot program in 60 schools, as the debate over how to teach history becomes ever more divisive.
The College Board is jumping into the fray over how to teach the history of race in the United States with a new Advanced Placement course and exam on African American studies that will be tried out in about 60 high schools this fall. The course is multidisciplinary, addressing not just history but civil rights, politics, literature, the arts, even geography. If the pilot program pans out, it will be the first course in African American studies for high school students that is considered rigorous enough to allow students to receive credit and advanced placement at many colleges across the country. Read more
Fight over future of library that sparked civil rights ideas. By Travis Loller / AP and ABC News
A fight is brewing in Tennessee over a legendary civil rights and labor organizing center whose alumni and supporters include Rosa Parks and Eleanor Roosevelt
Barack Obama wins Emmy for narrating national parks series. By AP and ABC News
Barack Obama has an Emmy Award to go with his two Grammys
The former president won an Emmy Award on Saturday to go with his two Grammys. Obama won the best narrator Emmy for his work on the Netflix documentary series, “Our Great National Parks.” The five-part show, which features national parks from around the globe, is produced by Barack and Michelle Obama’s production company, “Higher Ground.” Read more
John Legend Bet on Himself. By Michael Schuylman / The New Yorker
The singer-songwriter and Instagram Dad talks about his next album, his time as a management consultant, and his falling out with Kanye West.
Born in 1978, John Stephens renamed himself John Legend even before he had a record deal, in what he describes as a “bet on myself.” His eighth studio album, which comes out this week, embraces the wager: it’s titled, simply, “Legend.” We spoke about songwriting during a pandemic, his extremely online family life, the loss of his and Teigen’s expected third child, religion, President Biden’s crime policies, and what happened between him and Ye. Our conversation has been edited and condensed. Read more
Sports
Lewis Hamilton: The F1 Superstar on Controversies, Racism, and His Future. By Chris Heath / Vanity Fair
When Lewis Hamilton became a Formula 1 driver, success came quickly, but an easy sense of belonging did not.
“I didn’t feel like I was welcome,” he tells me. “I didn’t feel like I was accepted. God knows how many of these drivers say: ‘This is not what a Formula 1 driver is. That’s not how you behave. This is not how you do it. Tattoos? No! A Formula 1 driver doesn’t have tattoos! A Formula 1 driver doesn’t have a personality—and piercings!’ ” Hamilton carried on regardless, doing things his own way, and it can’t be said to have worked out too badly. He is now one of most famous athletes on earth, even more so since Netflix’s documentary series Formula 1: Drive to Survive brought his sport to a new audience, particularly in the U.S. He has won a record-equaling seven world championships, and when it comes to driving cars like these around 200 miles an hour, some would argue he’s the best there’s ever been. Read more
In Jackson, Miss., football goes on despite the water crisis. By Stephan Bisaha / NPR
Rain, shine, dry faucets or low water pressure, in the South the game must go on.
Some residents in Jackson, Miss., have been without running water for days, while others have been under a boil water notice for more than a month. But unreliable water has been a way of life in Jackson for years and that wasn’t enough to stop football fans from seeing the season open between two division III Jackson schools — Millsaps College, playing as the home team, and Belhaven University as the away team. Read more
Marcus Freeman is 36. He’s Also in Charge at Notre Dame. By Alan Blinder / NYT
Freeman’s first full season as a head coach will unfold in one of the most high-profile institutions in American sports. First up: No. 2 Ohio State, Freeman’s alma mater.
Marcus Freeman spent years as a coach to watch: a star linebacker at Ohio State who played in the N.F.L. before he emerged as one of the college game’s defensive wizards. It turned out that Freeman’s first head coaching job, announced in December, would be one of the most pressurized gigs in American sports: leading the football program at Notre Dame, which claims 11 national titles and has won at least 10 games in five consecutive seasons. Read more
Why LeBron James Is Worth $100 Million to the Lakers, Win or Lose. By Sopan Deb / NYT
If all James did was win basketball games, that would be more than enough. But his value goes beyond the court.
Even if James is not retiring, he is just 1,325 points behind Abdul-Jabbar for first on the N.B.A.’s career scoring list, giving the Lakers an opportunity to cash in on that chase through apparel and other such sales. James has scored at least that many points in every season except 2020-21, when he played in just 45 games because of injuries. “If we go back, it was Kobe, it was Magic, it was Kareem,” Erving said. “It was Wilt. It was Jerry West. Elgin Baylor was the greatest — he was my favorite. So they’ve always had a guy who fans locally and globally could identify with, and LeBron is that guy for the Lakers.” Read more
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