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Melania Trump and the Hypocrisy of White American Motherhood
Over the last few years, much of the conversation around Melania Trump has hinged on her foreignness—both in the literal sense, and in the ways she breaks from White House traditions: She’s a former lingerie model, the first first lady in more than two centuries to be born outside of the U.S., and the only…
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With $200 Million in Investment, JP Morgan Chase Hopes to Make Black Detroit Flourish
If you google how Detroit is doing, one of the first words you’ll find in the headlines is “comeback.” The city has bounced back from bankruptcy and its downtown area, in particular, is now booming. But the question of economic recovery is also one of equity: Namely, will longtime black Detroit residents, who stayed in…
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Chicago Police Release Video of Jussie Smollett Meeting Police With Noose Around His Neck
New video released by the Chicago police late Monday night shows that when officers went to investigate a possible hate crime against actor Jussie Smollett in January, the former Empire star greeted them still wearing a long piece of tangled rope around his neck. The video, taken by a police bodycam, shows one of Smollett’s…
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For Some Reason I Can’t Put My Finger On, Donald Trump Doesn’t Support Reparations
I don’t mean to shock you. After all, here you were, minding your business, reading a blog and thinking about all the things you could eat for lunch (Burrito bowl? Salad, out of respect for the summer body that will get here…maybe in 2021? Steak-Umms?) or the places you could travel if you weren’t in…
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No More ‘Great White Hopes’: Study Reports Women and Men of Color Are Just as Electable as White Men
It’s a word that trails women and people of color like a stray dog: “electability”—a word that’s become a catch-all code for nebulous concerns that certain candidates just don’t (or can’t) inspire voters to turn out at the polls as much as others. But, as a new study suggests, if those concerns are tethered to…
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Pete Buttigieg Faces the Ire of Black South Bend Residents After Fatal Police Shooting
Through the early days of the 2020 presidential campaign, Pete Buttigieg, Mayor of South Bend, Indiana, has had trouble getting black voters to come to his events. That was not the case on Sunday—but then again, this wasn’t a campaign stop. Buttigieg took a break from campaigning last week following a mounting backlash in his…
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A New Toni Morrison Documentary Gives the World’s Greatest Living Writer Her Flowers, and Plants New Seeds
Toni Morrison had to figure out a way to talk to Muhammad Ali. It was the mid-’70s and at the time, she was his editor, tasked with bringing his autobiography to the world. But Ali wouldn’t speak to her—deferring instead to whatever man was in the room. Her longtime friend, author and activist Angela Davis,…
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The Last Black Man in San Francisco Remembers the Heart of the City
Reading the script for The Last Black Man in San Francisco was like experiencing an earthquake, actor Johnathan Majors says. Strange at first, even surreal. “The whole ground is shifting. If you look at it…it actually seems impossible,” Majors tells me over the phone. “At the end of the script. It was like, things have…
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'An Idea Whose Time Has Come': Congress Hears the Case for Reparations on Juneteenth
The contributions of African Americans to this country—and the matter of what the federal government still owes them for those contributions—will take center stage on Capitol Hill today as the House hears H.R. 40, a bill that proposes a commission on reparations be formed. “We know that it’s not just white men that built build…
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With Blanco Brown’s ‘The Git Up Challenge,’ 2019 Is Truly the Summer of the Yee-Haw Agenda
Where TikTok goes, so do the Billboard charts. This was true of “Old Town Road,” Lil Nas X’s ubiquitous smash, which has been sitting pretty atop Billboard’s Hot 100 for the past 10 weeks. And it may soon be true of Blanco Brown’s “The Git Up,” another impossibly catchy country tune that has quickly been…
