race
Kansas senator and nephew of famed author Alex Haley: Why hide our nation’s historical ‘Roots?’
Forty-five years ago this month, the televised miniseries “Roots,” based on a book written by Alex Haley, uncle of Kansas State Senator David Haley (D-Kansas City), premiered. The series reintroduced this nation to a tortured history it has tried to forget. Few people in America have a more interesting vantage point on critical race theory […]
From the battle to preserve American democracy to charter school chaos: The week’s top stories on NC Policy Watch
1. Experts say Black lawmakers are sure to lose seats under new NC legislative maps Two Black incumbent senators in eastern North Carolina have no chance of winning reelection in their newly drawn districts, according to an analysis by UCLA political scientist Jeffrey B. Lewis, who testified for Republicans in the Superior Court redistricting trial […]
Signe Waller and Dr. Marty Nathan, both widowed in 1979 Greensboro Massacre, died last week
Two activists widowed in the 1979 Greensboro Massacre died last week after a lifetime of social justice work. Signe Waller Foxworth and Dr. Marty Nathan both lost their husbands in the 1979 confrontation between Ku Klux Klan members, neo-Nazis and members of the Communist Workers Party. In their separate ways, both women continued to fight […]
State lawmaker: Jim Crow has no place in North Carolina’s constitution
NC must remove stain of white supremacy from its governing document The North Carolina constitution contains an alarming provision from a dark period in our history: a literacy test requirement to keep Black voters from the ballot box. I am determined to finally repeal it. In 1899, the North Carolina legislature amended the state constitution […]
Veteran journalist: I read “The 1619 Project.” Critics need to calm down.
You’d have to be completely out of the political loop—and I suspect you aren’t, if you are reading this—to not have heard of “The 1619 Project” and the brouhaha surrounding it. A publication of journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones and The New York Times, “1619” first appeared in an August 2019 issue of the New York Times […]
Wisconsin jury finds Rittenhouse not guilty on all counts
Kyle Rittenhouse, the white teenager who shot three people, killing two of them, during Black Lives Matter protests in downtown Kenosha, was found not guilty of all the charges against him on Friday. The Kenosha County jury in the Rittenhouse murder trial found that Rittenhouse acted in self-defense when he fatally shot Joseph Rosenbaum […]
New state-by-state scorecard gives NC failing marks for racial and ethnic disparities in healthcare
Researchers at the Commonwealth Fund released a new national report this morning (“Achieving Racial and Ethnic Equity in U.S. Health Care”) that looks at how each U.S. state is performing in providing access to healthcare to people of different races and ethnicities. The disappointing, but unsurprising, conclusion: just about everyone is doing a lousy job. […]
Mockery of justice: Jury deciding fate of Ahmaud Arbery’s killers highlights a nation’s failure to prevent racist jury strikes
The law promises a “race-neutral” process for choosing juries. Yet, last week, the nation watched as a jury of eleven whites and just one Black person was seated to hear the case of the three white men accused of hunting down and killing Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man who was jogging through a residential neighborhood. […]
Republican lawmakers take on diversity training, decry “indoctrination” at UNC-Chapel Hill
Republican state lawmakers are taking issue with equity, diversity and inclusion programs at UNC-Chapel Hill. In a letter this week to UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz, N.C. House Majority Whip Jon Hardister (R-Guilford) cited a piece in Carolina Review, the campus conservative publication, about the UNC Office of Fraternity and Sorority Life mandating a training […]
Congressional Democrats seek support services for survivors of Native American boarding schools
WASHINGTON — Democratic lawmakers are pushing federal agencies to provide support for survivors of and communities affected by American Indian boarding school policies, the decades-long practice of forcibly sending Native American children to faraway boarding schools that rejected their tribal cultures. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Rep. Sharice Davids (D-Kansas) sent a request this month […]
UNC-Chapel Hill Journalism dean stepping down
Susan King, dean of the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media at UNC-Chapel Hill, will step down at the end of this year. In a message to faculty Tuesday, King said she never intended to stay in the position for more than a decade. A search for her successor will be launched this week, […]
Author Theodore Johnson offers a hopeful and patriotic take on combating American racism (video)
In his profound and exhilarating new book, “When the Stars Begin to Fall: Overcoming Racism and Renewing the Promise of America,” author, scholar, and former U.S. Navy Commander Theodore Johnson persuasively argues that racism is both alive and healthy in our country and a profound – even existential – threat to its democracy. Happily, however, […]