Featured
The “Faces” of Black Conservatism Tell Us Everything—About the GOP. By Elie Mystal / The Nation
Republicans’ embrace of Kanye West and Herschel Walker says more about how the GOP thinks about Black people than it does about Black conservatism in America.
I don’t agree with Black Republicans. I think they are wrong on their policy prescriptions for America. I think many of them are entirely too tolerant of the systemic racism that plagues our society, even to the point of complicity. I think, when pressed, they too often resort to the victim blaming that runs through that core Republican ethos of “I got mine, why can’t you get yours?”
If I were a normal Black conservative right now, I’d be pissed. The GOP has turned its back on them and instead given the mic to carnival barkers who couldn’t marshal a coherent argument for tort reform if you gave them a cup of hot coffee and cue cards. Instead, the most prominent Black conservative in the country right now, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, was seen yukking it up and posing for pictures with Herschel Walker. Read more
Related: Right-wing hypocrisy is never hypocrisy. It’s a coherent belief system. By Laura Clawson / Daily Kos
Related: Republicans double down on hate and fear, never mind midterm losses. Joan McCarter / Daily Kos
Political / Social
How a Perfectly Normal New York Suburb Elected a Con Man. By Steve Israel / The Atlantic
Democratic complacency, Republican extremism, and media decline helped George Santos take over my old congressional district.
On Election Night, Republicans swept all four of Long Island’s House seats. Democrats didn’t realize the severity of the loss, however, until The New York Times revealed that Santos had lied about his education, work experience, philanthropic pursuits, and finances, among other things. This was no familiar case of a politician embellishing around the edges: Santos appeared to have made himself up. On Monday, he admitted that he’d engaged in serial falsehoods, but said that he intended to join the House majority anyway. Read more
Democrats, Feeling New Strength, Plan to Go on Offense on Voting Rights. By Reid J. Epstein / NYT
After retaining most of the governor’s offices they hold and capturing the legislatures in Michigan and Minnesota, Democrats are putting forward a long list of proposals to expand voting access.
The most popular Democratic plan on voting access is to join the 20 states that have already enacted or approved automatic voter registration, a system that adds anyone whose information is on file with a government agency — such as a department of motor vehicles or a social services bureau — to the voter rolls unless they opt out. Oregon, which in 2016 became the first state to adopt the practice, had the highest percentage of voter turnout in the country last month, a distinction held in recent elections by Minnesota. Read more
Bennie Thompson and Liz Cheney are the Jan. 6 committee’s unusual dynamic duo. By Eugene Robinson / Wash Post
Reps. Bennie G. Thompson and Liz Cheney have radically different political philosophies and life experiences. But with Thompson as its leader and Cheney as his second-in-command, the House Jan. 6 committee has conducted one of the most impressive congressional investigations the nation has ever seen.
The responsibility of learning and telling the story of the 2021 Capitol insurrection brought these partisan opponents together as chair and vice chair of the Jan. 6 committee. Their separate forewords to the committee’s final report, released Thursday, tell what united these unlikely partners. Read more
Kamala Harris, a Very Turbulent Year in America, and the Challenge of Being First. By Molly Jong-Fast / Vanity Fair
In an interview with Vanity Fair, the vice president discusses protecting abortion rights post-Roe and tackling immigration, along with how, as a woman of several firsts—from DA to AG to VP—she hopes to “create a path and widen the path for others.”
The Dobbs decision, in June, was one of the most crucial moments of Harris’s historic term as vice president, which began in the aftermath of the January 6, 2021, attacks and is now approaching the midway point, a time to reflect on challenges and accomplishments, such as the passing of the Respect for Marriage Act—a bill that became more urgent in light of Clarence Thomas threatening same-sex marriage rights while striking down Roe. Read more
Related: Texas busses migrants near Kamala Harris’ residence on Christmas Eve. By Giulia Heyward / NPR
Georgia shows the growing power of Asian American voters. By Li Zhou / Vox
The group, once again, had strong turnout — a sign that 2020 was no anomaly.
While Georgia’s overall voter turnout didn’t change much between the 2018 and 2022 midterms, at least one group saw some pretty significant gains: Asian American and Pacific Islander voters. According to Emory University political scientist Bernard Fraga, the percentage of eligible AAPI voters who participated in Georgia’s November elections went from 34.9 percent in 2018 to 37.4 percent in 2022, making for the biggest jump of any group this cycle. Read more
Related: Defining ‘Asian American’ is complicated. Who gets left behind? By Meena Venkataramanan / Wash Post
Related: Casinos Target a Vulnerable Clientele: Older Asian Gamblers. Nicole Hong and
Why Are So Many Black Men Shot in New Haven? By Nicholas Dawidoff / The Atlantic
I moved back to New Haven in 2012, to begin work on a book about the neighborhood consequences of structural disparity, including violence.
New Haven really is representative of what remains a persistent American problem, from Trenton to Philadelphia to Baltimore and on across the heartland: fully formed working-class neighborhoods without any well-paying work. In all the years since I was a kid playing baseball, while well-endowed universities in places like New Haven—and their graduates—have become wealthier than ever, their straitened next-door neighbors have suffered a generational lack of opportunity and all the dangers that come with it. The universities have conceived no postindustrial solution, and neither has anybody else. Read more
COVID death data hides true toll on Black, Hispanic, Indigenous people. By Betsy Ladyzhets, Shaena Montanari, and Rachel Monahan / USA Today
The true toll of the COVID-19 pandemic on many communities of color is worse than previously known.It’s not always easy to identify a COVID-19 death. If someone dies at home, if they have symptoms not typically associated with the disease or if they die when local health systems are overwhelmed, their death certificate might say “heart disease” or “natural causes” when COVID-19 is, in fact, at fault. New research shows such inaccuracies also are more likely for Americans who are Black, Hispanic, Asian or Native. The true toll of the COVID-19 pandemic on many communities of color – from Portland, Oregon, to Navajo Nation tribal lands in Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, to sparsely populated rural Texas towns – is worse than previously known. Read more
‘The weight of being a Black student feels so heavy right now.’ By Emily Davies / Wash Post
The shooting of three students at U-Va., who were all Black, has hit hard a tight-knit community on campus. From left, Devin Chandler, Lavel Davis Jr. and D’Sean Perry, the three U-Va. football players who were killed in a shooting Nov. 13.
At this school, all of campus mourned the loss of the three Black undergraduate student-athletes — Lavel Davis, D’Sean Perry and Devin Chandler. But the pain has been especially acute for many Black students, who have learned to lean on one another at a majority White school in a mostly White city with a racist history that has, in many ways, extended to the present. Read more
How Black activists in Northern Virginia transformed the way children learn to read. By Sarah Carr / Wash Post
First-graders sound out spelling words at Hunt Valley Elementary School in Springfield, Va., on Nov. 18. (Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post)
Ethics / Morality / Religion
White House Wishes Black Families A Happy Kwanzaa On Holiday’s First Day. Sanjana Karanth / HuffPost
President Joe Biden commemorated the seven-day holiday honoring African heritage and Black American culture.
President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and their spouses wished a happy Kwanzaa to those celebrating, as the first day of the holiday honoring African heritage and Black American culture kicked off on Monday. “Jill and I wish everyone a happy Kwanzaa,” Biden said in a video with the first lady, adding that they “give thanks to the rich heritage of African Americans, which is deep in the story of our nation.” Read more
Race, Religion, and The History Behind ‘Heathen.’ By Hayley Madi / AAIHS
“A Negro camp meeting in the South,” wood engraving, August 10, 1872 (Wikimedia Commons)
Heathen: Religion and Race in American History, by Kathryn Gin Lum, argues that the label of “heathen” denotes a broad and elastic category that has been applied to vastly different people all over the world by white Christian Americans seeking to define themselves in juxtaposition to a presumably inferior “other.” Though the term heathen eventually fell out of common usage in favor of a racialized social hierarchy, its foundational concepts remained. Significantly, Heathen is about continuity as much as it is about change. Gin Lum sees the notion of heathen as part of “a modernist project which has developed alongside imperial beliefs about the Other” (17). Read more
Republicans will “get crushed”: Evangelicals sour on “elementary schoolchild” Trump’s 2024 bid. By Maya Boddie / Alternet
A “silent majority” that supported Donald Trump in his 2016 and 2020 presidential runs is now quietly bowing out, Vanity Fair reports.
However, despite Trump keeping several promises to evangelical voters during his term — including nominating conservative judges to the Supreme Court and successfully overturning Roe v. Wade as a result — it may not be enough to win the voting bloc over again. Last month, Washington Times Columnist Everett Piper penned an article in which she expressed that Trump is “hurting…not helping” evangelicals. She said, “the take-home of this past week is simple: Donald Trump has to go.” “If he’s our nominee in 2024, we will get destroyed,” Piper added. Recently James Robinson, a prominent televangelist compared Trump to a “little elementary schoolchild.” Read more
Historical / Cultural
Was the Civil War Inevitable? By David W. Blight / NYT
A historian of the conflict traces the path to disunion in the 1850s — and the lessons it holds for our own era of deep division.
Authoritarianism is an American historical tradition, newly energized and threatening our republican existence. In coming elections, we shall see whether our 21st-century democracy will live or die honestly, whether we, too, are heading for collapse or renewal through politics, law or civil conflict. How we answer such challenges will determine whether it is 1857 again in America. Even if it is, we need to remember that antislavery advocates did not merely lay down in front of the juggernaut of Dred Scott; they mobilized and fought back — over race, rights and their future. Read more
Yale Creates Scholarship for HBCUs As Slavery Reparations. By Nicole Duncan-Smith / Atlanta Black Star
Yale University will now provide financial assistance to students graduating from a local Connecticut high school to attend any historically Black colleges or universities of their choosing.
The award is a part of an initiative started over the last few years, which aims to provide a form of reparation to Black people for the institution’s participation in American slavery. Recipients of the scholarship will have to go to school out of state, as there are no HBCUs in The Constitution State. Read more
Whoopi Goldberg again claims Holocaust wasn’t originally about race. By Ll Cohen / CBS News
In the interview with The Sunday Times, Goldberg – whose real name is Caryn Johnson and goes by a self-given name she has said comes from a Jewish relative – said there is division about whether Judaism is a race or a religion. That’s when the interviewer noted that to the Nazis, it was a race, hence the Holocaust, which resulted in the deaths of an estimated 6 million Jews. “That’s the killer, isn’t it” Goldberg responded. “The oppressor is telling you what you are. Why are you believing them? They’re Nazis. Why believe what they’re saying?” Read more 
This is the year we were done with Kanye West – but what does that really mean? By Melanie McFarland / Salon
Why did people put up with the hip-hop icon’s anti-Blackness, misogyny and antisemitic “free thinking” for so long?
Kendrick Lamar’s New Chapter: Raw, Intimate and Unconstrained. By Mitchell S. Jackson / NYT
In partnership with his longtime collaborator, Dave Free, the greatest rapper of his generation is pushing himself — commercially and creatively — onto unexpected terrain.
A Jazz Album Made to Last. By Nathan Heller / The New Yorker
Paula West’s “Temptation” was a word-of-mouth hit in 1997. Twenty-five years later, it’s still just about perfect.
I first heard the jazz singer Paula West’s début album, “Temptation,” not long after it came out, in 1997, and it gave me the conviction that adulthood might be an interesting place to live. I was barely thirteen, but the confidence with which West sang buoyed my own. Her style, precise and wistful, let in breezes from a mature world. “Temptation” turns twenty-five this year, and what strikes me at the milestone isn’t just my conviction that the album remains as dazzling as ever but the realization that, in twenty-five years, I have never once stopped listening to it, never taken it from frequent rotation. Read more
How Megan Thee Stallion’s court battle highlights misogyny targeting Black women. By Lauren Barron-Lopez / PBS
‘I Wanna Dance With Somebody’ fact check: Whitney Houston’s true story. By Melissa Ruggleri / USA Today
Spoiler alert! The following discusses plot points from the new biopic “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” and the real life of Whitney Houston. Stop reading if you haven’t seen it yet and don’t want to know.
The scope of Whitney Houston’s life is so immense, it’s no wonder that many moments in “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” are depicted in rapid succession. The film (in theaters now) was made with the cooperation of Houston’s estate, as well as her mentor, music mogul Clive Davis, imprinting it with a stamp of authenticity (and a bounty of her gorgeous pop songs). Still, creative license abounds in the most hallowed of biopics, so we sought clarity on several moments that made us say “hmm.” We enlisted an expert to assist: the film’s director, Kasi Lemmons, who spent 17 months immersed in the making of “I Wanna Dance With Somebody.” Here’s what Lemmons had to say. Read more
A pioneering Black author’s novel takes us to a Wakanda-like civilization. By Michael Dirda / Wash Post
Pauline Hopkins’s ‘Of One Blood,’ originally published in 1903, is an exceptionally entertaining book with a serious subtext
Hopkins was a pioneering Black intellectual, playwright and magazine editor who used her considerable literary talents to rally support for the cause of racial justice. In “Of One Blood,” the last of her four novels, she blends multiple subgenres into what is an exceptionally entertaining work of popular fiction, albeit one with a serious subtext: race. Read more
The luxury tax assessed on Black women. Hargrove / Andscape
We have to calculate a brand’s history even as we covet that new bag
The cost of luxury is higher for Black women. Not because the actual price goes up when a Black woman walks into a designer boutique. But because Black consumers also have to add in the cost of a brand’s anti-Black history. So often the weight of a brand’s wrongdoing lands on Black women, leaving us to add it to the calculation of whether our desire for a high-status item gives us status. Start with the history. Brooks Brothers profited from outfitting enslaved people, their enslavers, and then Union soldiers during the Civil War. Designer Coco Chanel was a Nazi informant. Daimler AG, which makes Mercedes-Benz, used forced labor, including prisoners of war and concentration camp inmates, to build vehicles for the German military. Read more
Sports
Roberto Clemente remains Latino legend 50 years after death. By Associated Press
Clemente died at age 38 on Dec. 31, 1972, when his plane crashed off Puerto Rico as he was delivering relief supplies to earthquake victims in Nicaragua.
Fifty years after his death, Roberto Clemente, the skillful outfielder with the Pittsburgh Pirates, remains one of the most revered figures in Puerto Rico and Latin America. His graceful flare and powerful arm were unrivaled in his era, but his humanitarian efforts are perhaps his greatest legacy. Half a century after he played, many of today’s Latino baseball players credit him for paving the way. Read more
How David Fizdale went from the NBA sidelines to the Utah Jazz’s front office. By Marc J. Spears / Andscape
The former head coach transitioned to an associate general manager role that has helped him become a better husband and father
There was a collective head scratch across the NBA when the Utah Jazz tweeted June 29, “We have hired David Fizdale as associate general manager.” The former NBA head coach with the New York Knicks and Memphis Grizzlies? The two-time NBA champion as an assistant coach? The 48-year-old who was on the Los Angeles Lakers’ bench last season? Yes, that David Fizdale. “I got ‘WTFs’ with exclamation points texts,” Read more
Milwaukee Bucks’ Jrue Holiday gives the NBA important history through Black Wall Street the Board Game. By Marc J. Spears / Andscape
Each player in the league received the game, which teaches about the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre and the once-thriving Greenwood District. Shown is Milwaukee Bucks guard Jrue Holiday (left) who displays Black Wall Street the Board Game with the game’s co-founder Sinclair Walker (right). Black Wall Street
Milwaukee Bucks guard Jrue Holiday and his wife, Lauren, gave every NBA player the second edition of Black Wall Street the Board Game. About 450 games were given as gifts to all 30 NBA teams. Through the Holidays’ JLH Fund, they also gave the makers of the Black Wall Street board game a grant to support their Black-owned business. Read more
Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross leaves board of anti-racism group he founded. By Dwayne Bray / Andscape