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UNCF Announces First African-American Chair of Its Board; Black Twitter Responds With Surprise and Confusion
On Monday, the United Negro College Fund announced that Milton Jones. Jr, a businessman and civic leader in Atlanta, had been named chairman of the UNCF board. It would have been an interesting, though not that remarkable, bit of news—except that UNCF pointed out in the first line of the press release announcing it, that…
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Maryland Legislators Vote to Pay the State's HBCUs $577 Million Over the Next Decade in Massive Civil Rights Settlement
Four historically Black universities and colleges in Maryland will benefit from a $577 million settlement related to a federal lawsuit first brought against the state 15 years ago—that is if Gov. Larry Hogan doesn’t veto the settlement agreement again. Maryland’s state legislators voted on Wednesday to approve a measure to pay out the settlement to…
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TD Bank Teller in Connecticut Refuses to Allow Black Woman to Withdraw $1,000
Racism in America just keeps trucking on in ways big and small. A Black woman who is the president and founder of the Connecticut Parents Union says she was recently denied a withdrawal of just over $1,000 from a business account she holds at TD Bank because a teller at a branch of the bank…
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Watch Whiteness Work: A White Man Kills 6 Asian Women, and a White Cop Says He 'Had a Bad Day'
It’s already been a heartbreaking and devastatingly unrelenting year of blatant, dehumanizing and violent acts of racism. It’s echoed four years of ever-escalating incidents in the same vein, not to mention centuries of a state of rotten affairs that is as American as apple pie. I don’t know about you, but I’m exhausted and completely…
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Tamir Rice’s Mother Calls Out Tamika Mallory, Then Shaun King Wades In, Exposing More Fractures in the Movement Against Police Brutality
A speech made by Until Freedom founder Tamika Mallory during a performance at the Grammys on Sunday has set off yet another wave of public dissension from people who’ve lost loved ones in high-profile cases of police brutality. Over the last year, Tamika Mallory and her group have been a notable presence leading protests, sit-ins…
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Wondering When You’ll Get Your Stimmy? Here’s What the Big Banks Say
Though President Biden signed a landmark $1.9 trillion stimulus bill into law last Thursday, many Americans are still waiting to receive their portion of the COVID-19 relief funds. The White House said that people could expect to start seeing the money in their bank accounts by last weekend, which indicated an understanding of just how…
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Texas Legislators Add to the Republican Party’s Ongoing Rush of Voter Suppression Bills
Republican-led state legislatures have openly been waging war on voting access in the wake of their presidential candidate’s defeat in the 2020 elections. Texas, which tried its very hardest during those elections to curb voters’ access to the ballot box, has now come through with its own slate of voter suppression legislation. On Monday, Republican…
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Why Some Reactions to Kirk Franklin's Leaked Phone Call With His Son Are More Concerning Than These Grown-Folks' Business
Let me start by saying that I am not privy to the details or history of the relationship between gospel music heavyweight Kirk Franklin and his 32-year-old son, Kerrion Franklin. Though Kerrion posted audio on Instagram over the weekend of his father yelling, “I will break your fucking neck,” and calling him all kinds of…
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Derek Chauvin’s Lawyer Requests Delay of Trial After Announcement of $27 Million Settlement Awarded to George Floyd's Family
The murder trial of former police officer Derek Chauvin in the death of George Floyd is gearing up to be quite a protracted one. In other words—the process of winning criminal accountability for the heinous killing of 46-year-old Floyd, whose neck Chauvin knelt on for nearly nine minutes last May, is unlikely to be smooth…
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North Carolina Elementary School Showcases #KeepSlavery and #SlaveryForever Messages From 4th-Grade ‘Historical’ Assignment
Anyone trying to claim that educational institutions across the U.S. are just innocently bungling the teaching of America’s history of slavery rather than deliberately continuing a centuries-long practice of justifying and diminishing the inhumane treatment of enslaved Black people in this country are, to put it plainly, pissing on our faces and telling us it’s…