Still catching up on links since Independence Day! As always, we encourage you to share this post with friends, students, colleagues, etc. A link does not imply agreement or endorsement by the Council of Independent Colleges.
Recent links:
- Jake Bleiburg, “Judge dismisses lawsuit seeking reparations for the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre,” The Associated Press (July 9, 2023): LINK. “An Oklahoma judge has thrown a lawsuit seeking reparations for the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, dashing an effort to obtain some measure of legal justice by survivors of the deadly racist rampage.”
- Adam Serwer, “The Most Baffling Argument a Supreme Court Justice Has Ever Made,” The Atlantic (July 7, 2023): LINK. “The Fourteenth Amendment authorized race-conscious remedies for discrimination against Black people. The people who wrote the amendment understood it that way…but that is not the outcome [Clarence] Thomas wanted, so [the Court] waved it away as irrelevant.”
- Jesse Naranjo, “She Broke the News that the U.S. Catholic Church Sold Enslaved People. She’s Still going to Mass.” Politico (July 7, 2023): LINK. In an interview, Rachel Swarns discusses her new book, The 272: The Families Who Were Enslaved and Sold to Build the American Catholic Church, which “focuses on the lives of the Mahoneys, one of many families enslaved and sold by the Jesuit priests.”
- Rashad Shabazz, “Police treatment in black and white —report on Minneapolis policing is the latest reminder of systemic racial disparities,” The Conversation (July 6, 2023): LINK. “More than three years after [George] Floyd’s brutal death and the global protest movement that sprang from it, a June 2023 Justice Department report found that Minneapolis police use excessive force…discriminate against Black people…discriminate against Native Americans, etc.”
- Rachel Louise Martin, “Chronicle of a Battle Foretold: How One Town Went to War Over Desegregation,” Literary Hub (July 5, 2023): LINK. In a narrative excerpt from A Most Tolerant Little Town: The Explosive Beginning of School Desegregation, the author shows how one rural town in Tennessee buckled under desegregation measures from the federal government.
- Collin Hinkley, “Affirmative action for White people? Legacy college admissions come under renewed scrutiny,” The Associated Press (July 4, 2023): LINK. After the Supreme Court decision that struck down affirmative action in college admissions, some activists and politicians are placing renewed pressure upon the nation’s universities to put an end to legacy preferences: the practice of favoring applicants with family ties to alumni.
- Joseph Jones, “‘We the People includes all Americans —but July 4 is a reminder that democracy remains a work in progress,” The Conversation (June 30, 2023): LINK. While the U.S. Constitution begins with the words “We the People,” and not “I, the ruler,” America’s founders did not trust everyone’s ability to equally participate in the new democracy. “We the People” has changed over time.
- Uma Mazyck Jayakumar and Ibram X. Kendi, “‘Race Neutral’ Is the New ‘Separate but Equal,'” The Atlantic (June 29, 2023): LINK. “Today, racial inequities prove that policies proclaimed to be ‘race neutral’ are hardly neutral. Race, by definition, has never been neutral. In a multiracial United States with widespread racial inequities in wealth, health, and higher education, policies are not ‘race neutral.'”
- Jessica Norwood, “What Would an Economy that Loved Black People Look Like?” Nonprofit Quarterly (June 28, 2023): LINK. A financial activist and reparative capital investor analyzes how the nation can shift its financial policies, practices, and infrastructure into an economy that can sustain change by dismantling the systems that have “obstructed Black communities from building generational wealth.”
- Luis Andres Henao, “Black nun who founded first African American religious congregation advances closer to sainthood,” AP News (June 23, 2023): LINK. Mother Mary Elizabeth Lange, a Black Catholic nun who founded the United States’ first African American religious congregation in Baltimore in 1829, was recognized last week by Pope Francis “for her heroic virtue” and is a step closer to being considered a “venerable servant” of the Catholic Church.
- Richard Delgado, “On the Importance of Critical Race Theory—and the Delusional Attacks On It,” Literary Hub (June 21, 2023): LINK. “Three authors of books out on Critical Race Theory—Richard Delgado, Aja Martinez, and Victor Ray—discuss the cultural and legal landscape in a post-2020 world. From receiving hate mail, to fielding calls to ban teaching CRT in schools, these authors’ experiences and research offers insight into current debates around teaching race in America.”
- Tom Lasseter, “More than 100 U.S. political elites have family links to slavery,” Reuters (June 27, 2023): LINK. In an examination, a team of journalists found that among America’s political elite, five living U.S. presidents, two Supreme Court justices, eleven governors, and 100 legislators descend from ancestors who enslaved African Americans.