Featured – Inciting Hatred Is Trump’s 2020 Game Plan. By John Nichols / The Nation
Donald Trump is not an electoral mastermind. He is something far more dangerous: a persistent political grifter who is desperately, shamelessly determined to maintain his grip on the presidency that he assumed after losing the 2016 popular vote by almost 3 million ballots. The attacks on Ilhan Omar are just a foretaste; he will turn with increasing frequency to racism and xenophobia to divide and conquer Democrats. Read more
Welcome to the Fourth Reich: Donald Trump’s assault on the rule of law will not end well. By Chauncey DeVega / Salon
As we have seen throughout Trump’s presidency — and as we see now in Robert Mueller’s report, with its extensive litany of borderline corruption and its numerous instances of blatant obstruction of justice — the president and his allies disregard the law whenever it is inconvenient, and enforce it with callous cruelty when it serves their goals. Read more
Tiger Woods Can’t Be Apolitical in the Age of Trump and Kaepernick. By David Zinn / The Nation
Much has changed since the last time Tiger was victorious at Augusta. Back in 2005, it was still possible for Tiger Woods to play the role of the apolitical athlete: to be primarily a brand. Tiger, like one of his mentors, Michael Jordan, was a Picasso at the art of eliding anything of substance. In particular, after his ill-fated foray in branding his racial identity as “Cablinasian.” Read more
Review: Aretha Franklin’s long-awaited ‘Amazing Grace’ gospel film arrives in theaters. By Melissa Ruggieri / AJC
For 46 years, devotees of the soul-gospel-pop icon wondered if they would ever see “Amazing Grace,” the visual accompaniment to Franklin’s 2 million-plus selling album of the same name (and still considered the biggest selling live gospel album of all time). Read more
‘When They See Us’ Trailer: Ava DuVernay’s Central Park Five Mini-Series Features Felicity Huffman. By Bruce Fretts / NYT
Thirty years ago today, a female jogger was beaten and raped in Central Park. Five young men of color were unjustly convicted of the crime, only to be exonerated in 2002. Now the story of the so-called Central Park Five has been turned into a Netflix mini-series, and the first full trailer for it has just been released. Read and watch here
The Complexities of the Black Vote. By Charles M. Blow / NYT
In a way, I think that you could make a case that there are two black Americas among the people descended of the enslaved in this country: The sons and daughters of the Great Migration and the sons and daughters of the people who stayed in the South. “Watching the @PeteButtigieg announcement from South Bend. Crowd seems very large, very impressive but also very white — an obstacle he will have to overcome.” Read more
Warren approaches breakout with black voters. By Laura Barron-Lopez / Politico
When Elizabeth Warren got a question on housing discrimination at a campaign event this week, she went into full wonk mode — and the diverse crowd packed into a middle-school auditorium ate it up. The Massachusetts Democrat’s policies and focus on racial inequality have sparked intense interest from black activists. Read more
Why the Notre Dame fire is getting the attention America’s burned black churches never could. By George Johnson / NBC News
We can learn a lot from the things we consider important — or which we have been conditioned to think are important. We travel the world, often without truly understanding the historical damage of the sites we’re exploring. Read more
Arkansas To Remove Confederate Statue In U.S. Capitol, Add Johnny Cash, Daisy Bates. By Ed Mazza / HuffPost
Arkansas is replacing its century-old statues in the U.S. Capitol with more modern figures: American music legend Johnny Cash and civil rights hero Daisy Lee Gatson Bates. Read more
Ancestry.com Pulls Ad That Whitewashes Slavery With Interracial Romance. By Elyse Wanshel / HuffPost
The commercial, set in the Civil War era, features a white man asking a black woman to escape to the North with him so they can “be together.” Watch here
Can Black Evangelicals Save the Whole Movement? By Molly Waorthen / NYT
African-American spiritual leaders are talking about racism — and some white churchgoers are listening.Some of the Christian right’s most prominent leaders have split over Mr. Trump’s racist, xenophobic rhetoric. They disagree over how to fulfill the earthly duties of Christians. Read more
Beyoncé’s “Homecoming” transforms the concert film into an artistic, historic moment. By Melanie McFarland / Salon
In “Homecoming: A Film by Beyoncé,” which dropped Wednesday on Netflix, it is the moment when she pauses after a burst of bleacher-thundering, catwalk stomping choreography to belt out a slow, luscious version of the Black National Anthem, “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing” accompanied by soaring stringed instruments. Read more
How I learned to love my afro hair: ‘I went from tolerating it to enjoying it’ By Emma Dabiri / The Guardian
I remember being told in my mid-teens that I was “lucky I was pretty”, which meant I could “almost get away with being black”. I still got the jokes about needing a flash to take a photograph of me, or the classic likening of my complexion to dirt, but it was my hair that remained unforgivable. Read more
Dwyane Wade Supports His Gay Black Son, And Here’s Why It Matters So Much. By Joshua Mackey / Blavity
The Union-Wade family went to Miami Pride. Why does this bear repeating? Because they took their bevy of beautiful, black children to not only show support to the LGBTIA+ community, but to also support one of their own — little Zion Wade, who identifies as gay. Even though father Dwyane Wade couldn’t be there, his visible support of his son through social media speaks volumes. Read more
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