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Racism in America - Page 1  Racism prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against a person or people on the basis of their membership in a particular racial or ethnic group, typically one that is a minority or marginalized.

Learn more about racism in America, the events, the laws, the violence and how racism helped shape America.
Racism in the United States has been widespread since the colonial era. Legally or socially sanctioned privileges and rights were given to white Americans but denied to all other races. The KKK, white mobs and other white supremacist groups have killed more Americans than terrorist have. The KKK may have given up their sheets for suites and changed their name to the alt-right or other names to hide who they are, but at their core, they are white people who hate black people, people whose skin is not white and Jews. White Racist Have Been Killing and Terrorizing Black People for Over 150 Years; if black lives mattered in America, the KKK and other white supremacist groups would be branded as the domestic terrorist groups they are and government resources would be devoted to combating them. #WhiteSupremacist, #WhiteNationalist, #RightWingExtremists, #KKK,#Racism, #Hate
Opinion by Atlanta Black Star News

A news article from more than three decades ago resurfaced on social media this week, igniting a firestorm due to incendiary comments by Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

At the heart of the controversy are Ginni Thomas’s comments to The Washington Post in 1991 concerning hot-button issues such as abortion and affirmative action, which critics argued at the time would likely come to influence Clarence Thomas’ judicial opinions over time.

The 33-year-old article, with the headline “The Nominee’s Soul Mate,” reveals Ginni Thomas discussing her staunch conservative views at length, prompting renewed scrutiny many decades later, with growing calls for transparency regarding her ongoing involvement in her husband’s work.

But that’s not all.

Fresh allegations of racism also resurfaced from the era, with many social media users voicing outrage over insensitive remarks in the same article by Ginni Thomas’ relatives, who said they were shocked in 1987 when Ginni told them she was planning to marry a Black man.

“I can guarantee you I was surprised when I found out she was going with a Black man,” Ginni Thomas’s uncle Ralph Knop said from his Iowa farm house, according to the Post. “It was unusual for us.”
Christian Dedmon described by one victim as ‘the sickest’ of six former officers who pleaded guilty to torturing two Black men
Associated Press

A fourth former Mississippi sheriff’s deputy has been sentenced for his part in the racist torture of two Black men by a group of white officers who called themselves “the Goon Squad”. Christian Dedmon was sentenced on Wednesday to 40 years in federal prison, hours after Daniel Opdyke was sentenced to 17.5 years.

Dedmon, 29, did not look at the victims as he apologized and said he would never forgive himself for the pain he caused.

All six of the white former officers charged in the torture pleaded guilty, admitting that they subjected Michael Corey Jenkins and Eddie Terrell Parker to numerous acts of racist torture in January 2023 after a neighbor complained that the men were staying in a home with a white woman.
Story by Ny MaGee

*A Texas attorney sent a “threatening and harassing letter” to a Black federally appointed judge, and he was subsequently fired from his law firm.

According to the Houston Chronicle, Ben Aderholt, a Houston-based attorney, called Judge Erica Hudges a “political animal" in the letter.

“Who do you think you are? Running against a Democrat, a highest rated judge,” Aderbolt wrote, the Black Information Network reports. “Political animals who treat our judiciary as political games should be soundly defeated.”

Hudges, who is running for Houston's 151st Judicial District, told FOX 26 she was "shocked and surprised to receive that letter."
Opinion by Tim Dickinson

Former President Donald Trump's campaign is running online advertising to raise cash for 2024 - and a portion of that ad spending is monetizing pro-Nazi content on the streaming service Rumble, Rolling Stone has observed.

In a short video ad that plays before select videos on Rumble, Trump makes a pitch to the MAGA masses to help him counter "crooked Joe Biden" by donating to his 2024 campaign: "I am very humbly asking if you could chip in $5, $10, or even $25." Trump vows that donors will help him "win back the White House" and "make America great again, greater than ever before, I promise you that."

On Monday, Trump ads were being served up at the beginning of a new Rumble video by the reactionary broadcaster Stew Peters. In that video, Peters touts Hitler as "a hero" for the horrific Nazi book burnings of the 1930s, calling the violent display of cultural erasure "awesome." Peters even advocates a modern reenactment of the fiery Nazi spectacle, seeking retribution against what he falsely paints as a Jewish-led conspiracy to "make us surrender" to LGBTQ acceptance and sexual "degeneracy."
Story by Carl Gibson

Voters shouldn't be so distracted by former President Donald Trump's mountain of legal issues that they overlook his pattern of racist behavior, according to a Washington Post columnist.

The Post's Jennifer Rubin — a traditional conservative who describes herself as "NeverTrump" — wrote in a recent column that the media's assumption that the former president will win over more voters of color in this election than in his two previous bids for the White House unfairly glosses over his "casual racism." As evidence, she pointed to Trump's recent statements saying Black voters liked him because of his multiple criminal indictments and mug shots, and his echoing of Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler when he accused immigrants of "poisoning the blood of our country."

"Likewise, he left no doubt about his noxious bigotry toward immigrants at his unhinged rant at the Conservative Political Action Conference," Rubin wrote, referencing Trump saying immigrants from "Africa," Asia" and "the Middle East" were "destroying our country."

"His plan to round up and deport millions of undocumented immigrants goes hand in hand with his effort to dehumanize them," she added.
Story by Alex Griffing

Benjamin Goggin, NBC News’s deputy tech editor, defended his report on Nazis receiving a “friendly reception” at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference after CPAC publicly called it “false, misleading, and grossly manipulative.”

Goggin noted in his report that CPAC has long had to deal with far-right extremists trying to infiltrate the conference, but in past years would quickly eject those with explicit ties to neo-Nazis, like Nick Fuentes.

“But this year, racist conspiracy theorists didn’t meet any perceptible resistance at the conference where Donald Trump has been the keynote speaker since 2017,” Goggin wrote, adding:

At the Young Republican mixer Friday evening, a group of Nazis who openly identified as national socialists mingled with mainstream conservative personalities, including some from Turning Point USA, and discussed so-called “race science” and antisemitic conspiracy theories.

Goggin also reported on other easily identifiable figures with ties to neo-Nazis he saw at CPAC, including one “with an official badge” from the event.
Story by Chris Willman

Paramore, not surprisingly, is balking at the idea of singularly getting an honor from the Tennessee legislature celebrating the band's Grammy accomplishments, after the GOP-led House snubbed fellow winner Allison Russell for a similar resolution.

"The blatant racism of our state leadership is embarrassing and cruel," singer Hayley Williams as part of a lengthy statement. "Myself, as well as Paramore, will continue to encourage young people to show up to vote with equality in mind."

The actions of the Tennessee legislature made headlines and drew the attention of music fans nationwide after the two artists got different receptions, with many wondering aloud if the impetus behind the different treatment was evident just in the side-by-side photos of the two artists.

The band's statement to media, first published Friday by the Tennessean, began: "This week, Rep. Justin Jones put forth resolutions to honor my band, Paramore, and another local-to-Nashville artist, Allison Russell, on our recent Grammy wins (as far as I can tell these resolutions have no legal weight to them. They're like a big high five or when the whole restaurant joins in to sing you "Happy Birthday")."
Story by Jo Shaw

A recent publication has highlighted the purported extent of racism and bigotry within Congress. Multiple Republican legislators have faced scrutiny for recent remarks that are deemed to transgress into racist and bigoted territory. Representative Torres recently asserted that “Trumpism serves to embolden extremism” and underscored recent incidents and statements from Republican lawmakers that are considered to have overstepped boundaries.

“Trumpism” Is Encouraging Racism in Congress
A recent article published by the New York Times has highlighted multiple instances where GOP lawmakers had made controversial comments about their Democratic counterparts. The article quotes a statement made by Democratic Representative Ritchie Torres: “The nature of Trumpism is to embolden extremism.”

Republicans Are Crossing Lines
Torres explained, “Whether it’s badgering an Asian witness about his ethnic loyalties, or dehumanizing a cabinet secretary, or accusing a Muslim woman of treason, or describing a Black man as a thug, Republican members of Congress are crossing lines that should never be crossed.”

Rep. Greene Insults Somalian Born Representative
Torres was responding to a series of events that were reportedly highlighting the level of racism that was occurring in Congress. Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has recently been criticized for attacking her Democratic colleague Rep. Ilhan Omar over her Somali origins. In a mistranslation of a social media post, Greene accused Omar of supporting Somalia over the US.
Story by By ED WHITE, Associated Press

A Republican lawmaker in Michigan lost his committee assignment and staff Monday, days after posting an image of a racist ideology on social media.

House Speaker Joe Tate, a Democrat who is Black, said he will not allow the House to be a forum for “racist, hateful and bigoted speech.”

State Rep. Josh Schriver, who is white, shared a post on X — formerly known as Twitter — that showed a map of the world with Black figures greatly outnumbering white figures, along with the phrase, “The great replacement!”

The conspiracy theory says there’s a plot to diminish the influence of white people.

Schriver, who represents portions of Oakland and Macomb counties, can vote on the House floor. But Tate removed him from a committee and told the House Business Office to oversee his staff members, who still can assist constituents.
Story by Victor Tangermann

Earlier this week, multi-hyphenate billionaire Elon Musk endorsed a tweet suggesting Black students at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) have lower IQs and shouldn't become pilots. "It will take an airplane crashing and killing hundreds of people for them to change this crazy policy of DIE," he tweeted, intentionally mixing up the letters of the acronym for "diversity, equity, and inclusion." Civil rights groups were understandably horrified at the billionaire's racist comments.

"The only thing anyone needs to hear from Musk about diversity in the workplace is an apology," Marc Morial, president and CEO of the National Urban League, told NBC News, calling his statements "abhorrent and pathetic." In his tweets, Musk appeared to imply that HBCU students shouldn't be allowed to become pilots. However, neither his statement nor the tweet he was responding to stand up to virtually any degree of scrutiny, from made-up average IQ numbers to wrongfully correlating high SAT scores with high IQ.

Musk also claimed that a United Airlines program that allows students at three HBCUs to interview to become a pilot meant that the airline had "prioritized DEI hiring" over "safety," a demonstratively false statement that only further highlights his twisted worldview.
Story by Brad Reed

Georgia, Louisiana, and Alabama — three states that were part of the Confederacy that was founded in part to maintain the institution of slavery — are now at the forefront of a new effort to rebel against court rulings aimed at securing the voting rights of Black Americans.

The Atlantic's David Graham writes that those three states' Republican-led state legislatures have, in recent months, shown a defiant attitude toward legal mandates that they redraw their voting maps so as not to dilute the power of Black voters in their states.

Although Graham said it would be possible to dismiss one of these states' resistance to court orders as an aberration, he thinks that having three states engaged in the same conduct makes it part of a dangerous trend.
Story by Sean O'Driscoll

Donald Trump has continued to target two Black election workers even after they were the subject of "vile and racist" threats from his supporters, a prosecutor has filed in court. Trump listed one of them as being among the "monsters" who had stolen the 2020 election and "doubled down" on his attacks after the pair testified before the January 6 committee, the court filings show.

Mother and daughter, Ruby Freeman and Wandrea "Shaye" Moss were falsely accused of using suitcases of ballots to add votes for President Joe Biden at an Atlanta voting center during the 2020 presidential election. The prosecutor's filing shows for the first time that prosecutors intend to introduce evidence about Freeman and Moss into the Trump election fraud trial. Allegations that Trump's comments prompted racist abuse could be bad news for the former president. His trial will be before a jury in Washington, D.C.
Story by Kathleen Culliton

The political party who put forward speaker nominations including a man who believes critical race theory should be "defunded" and another who described himself as Ku Klux Klan chief David Duke, but "without the baggage," is racist, a former White House reporter contends.

Salon columnist Brian Karem Thursday compared the Grand Old Party's "clown show" effort to elect a speaker of the House with the antics of a former U.S. President, who currently faces criminal charges in two states and the District of Columbia.

"The party is racist, misogynistic, anti-poor, elitist, delusional and greedy for power at all costs," Karem wrote. "That also perfectly describes Trump. This is his spirit writ large, trying and failing on another grand scale."

Karem only fleetingly references the role Trump played in choosing the House's next speaker — his anti-Emmer screed torpedoed the moderate Republican's chances of claiming the position — by describing Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) as a "a full-on Donald Trump sycophant."

Johnson has already been dubbed "MAGA Mike" for his efforts in trying to overturn the 2020 election, which included echoing false fraud claims and leading an amicus brief filed in Texas to overturn the results.
Eric Levenson Sara Smart
By Eric Levenson, Sara Smart, Nouran Salahieh, Isabel Rosales and Andy Rose, CNN

CNN — The White gunman who killed three Black people in a racially motivated attack at a Dollar General store in Jacksonville, Florida, on Saturday legally purchased the two firearms he used in the shooting earlier this year, Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters said in a news conference Sunday.

The gunman, identified as 21-year-old Ryan Christopher Palmeter, bought a handgun in April and an AR-15-style rifle in June, the sheriff said. He lived with his parents in nearby Orange Park and had no criminal arrest history, although he had been temporarily involuntarily held under the Baker Act in 2017, the sheriff said. “In this situation, there was nothing illegal about him owning the firearms,” he said.

The news conference came a day after Palmeter fatally shot three Black people at the Dollar General store in what authorities say was an anti-Black hate crime. Attorney General Merrick Garland said the Justice Department is investigating the shooting as a hate crime and an act of racially motivated violent extremism.
Story by Calvin Schermerhorn

Key Point: Despite opposition from abolitionists, as president, George Washington signed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 that authorized federal police power to recapture runaway human property. If there was anyone who knew the rewards of slavery, it was George Washington. Over a period of about 50 years, the nation’s first president enslaved about 577 Black Americans, starting when he was 11 years old.

One of them was a Black man named Morris who was skilled in carpentry and became an overseer of other enslaved men and women working on a farm at Washington’s Mount Vernon estate in Virginia. Though Morris’ skills afforded him a few extra benefits, he was still unable to buy what he coveted most – freedom.

Despite the existence of voluminous public records that reveal Washington’s treatment of Morris and other human property he owned, Florida officials want public school educators to instead emphasize Washington’s efforts to abolish slavery. As a scholar of slavery in the U.S., my research has shown that Washington’s efforts to free Black people pale in comparison to how he fought to keep Black people enslaved.

Protesters marched against Florida’s Black history education standards that require lessons that include “how slaves developed skill which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.” CNN’s Carlos Suarez reports on the backlash.
Story by Noah Alcala Bach

As the sun sets over Riverside Drive in Southeast Austin, a cluster of state troopers hits the streets — at one point, five Department of Public Safety SUVs sit at an intersection. They make one traffic stop after another, the gold Texas-shaped emblems on their doors reflecting their red and blue emergency lights.

Paul Ramos, 56, volunteers at Tacos La Sabroza, a food truck next to a Shell station at the corner of East Riverside Drive and Montopolis Drive, in exchange for food. Night after night, Ramos says he sees state troopers pulling people over. “What I see is they pull over Hispanics but they don’t just pull them over, they tell them to get out, they take pictures of their tattoos or they start from bottom to top searching their cars,” Ramos said. “It pisses me off.”
Opinion by Jeet Heer

Even as his bid to become Republican presidential nominee circles the drain, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis can take pride in the fact that he is almost keeping pace with his chief rival in having embarrassing Nazi scandals. Earlier this week, in response to continuing lackluster polling, DeSantis fired 38 staffers. Axios noted that one of those staffers was Nate Hochman, a speechwriter who “secretly created and shared a pro-DeSantis video that featured the candidate at the center of a Sonnenrad, an ancient symbol appropriated by the Nazis and still used by some white supremacists.” Earlier, Hochman and other staffers stirred controversy by sharing a bizarre homophobic and transphobic pro-DeSantis ad (presented as a fan creation even though evidence points to it being another in-house production). This follows hot on the heels of a June scandal when it turned out that Pedro Gonzalez, a pro-DeSantis influencer whose social media voice was being promoted by the Florida governor’s staff, had record of antisemitic, racist and fascist private direct messages.
Story by Milla

A majority of the members of the Florida work group that worked on Florida’s new standards for Black history, including three Black members, did not agree with the sections that drew criticism, claiming they were “purposefully kept in the dark.”

A majority of the members of the Florida work group that worked on Florida’s new standards for Black history, including three Black members, did not agree with the sections that drew criticism, claiming they were “purposefully kept in the dark.”

Dr. Austin continued, “I thought that that was very disrespectful, extremely demeaning, and it supports what people want others to believe about African and African American people.” She added, “It’s the same divide techniques that they used on the plantation. It’s the same, identical thing. They always use methods of dividing the African and African American people. That’s what they do.”
Opinion by Glenn C. Altschuler and David Wippman, opinion contributors

Florida’s Board of Education recently released new Black history standards. They require that middle school students learn “how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied to their personal benefit.” The board also mandated that the high school curriculum for the 1920 Ocoee, Florida Election Day Massacre include “acts of violence perpetrated against and by African Americans.” The new standards, the director of communications for the Board declared, incorporated “all components of African American history: the good, the bad, and the ugly.”

Apparently, Board members don’t know anything about — or want to erase — the actual history of slavery and racism in their state. Here are some facts that should be included in the Florida ­public school curriculum: Between the 16th and 19th centuries, about 12.5 million Africans were transported against their will to the Americas. About 1.8 million of them did not survive the journey, or have an opportunity to become “unpaid interns” and develop skills that could be applied to their personal benefit.
Story by By Nicole Chavez and Justin Gamble, CNN

The College Board said Thursday it “resolutely” disagrees with any notion that enslavement was beneficial for African Americans – a statement coming after some people compared the contents of its Advanced Placement course on African American Studies with Florida’s recently approved Black history curriculum.

“We resolutely disagree with the notion that enslavement was in any way a beneficial, productive, or useful experience for African Americans,” the College Board told CNN on Thursday. “Unequivocally, slavery was an atrocity that cannot be justified by examples of African Americans’ agency and resistance during their enslavement.”

The board’s comments come after Jeremy Redfern, press secretary for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, tweeted on Wednesday what appears to be a screenshot of a portion of the College Board’s AP African American Studies course framework that refers to slavery. The document in part says students should know enslaved people learned trades that they used, once free, to provide for themselves and others.
Story by Cheyanne M. Daniels

Black Americans are under attack, members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) said Thursday, arguing that a slew of efforts from Republicans across the country are an assault on their rights. “Black people are under attack in America, but we are not victims and we are not powerless,” CBC Chairman and Rep. Steven Horsford (D-Nev.) said at a Thursday press event from the Capitol.

“Our fundamental rights are under assault and our very history is being denied. But we will not stand by quietly as it happens. We will never give up when so many people are counting on us to fight for them.” In the last month, the GOP-led state Legislature in Alabama defied a Supreme Court order to create a second majority-Black district, as did the Legislature in Louisiana. In Florida, new education guidelines have been approved by the state Board of Education that require students be told of the benefits people earned because of skills learned as slaves.

As House Majority Leader Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) spoke on the House floor, Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) accused Republican lawmakers of passing bills that are “racist.”

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis continues to defend curriculum changes to how Black history is taught in Florida schools, saying that enslaved Black people “parlayed” skills used in forced labor “into doing things later in life.” President and CEO of the National Urban League Marc Morial and John Kasich join Andrea Mitchell to react. “The idea that you got skills that you could use later in life — there was no later in life but being enslaved, except for maybe the last generations that were freed by the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th Amendment,” Morial says. “The very notion that you're going to engage in sort of a lost cause, revisionist history and try to indoctrinate the young people of Florida with this garbage is going to be resisted.
Story by Travis Gettys

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' "war on woke" has cost the state another event that would have generated millions of dollars for the local economy. Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc., the oldest Black fraternity in the country, is moving its 2025 conference from Orlando due to the 2024 Republican presidential hopeful's "harmful, racist, and insensitive policies against the Black community," reported the Tallahassee Democrat.

"Although we are moving our convention from Florida, Alpha Phi Alpha will continue to support the strong advocacy of Alpha Brothers and other advocates fighting against the continued assault on our communities in Florida by Governor Ron DeSantis," said general president Dr. Willis L. Lonzer III in a press release. The event was expected to generate $4.6 million, according to the intercollegiate fraternity whose membership historical figures such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Thurgood Marshall and Adam Clayton Powell.
Las Vegas Sun

Under the leadership of its governor, Ron DeSantis, and supported by its Republican legislature, Florida is feverishly working to reestablish the numbing segregationist horror of Jim Crow America. Most Americans believe we left this forever. But DeSantis — governor today, presidential aspirant tomorrow — is the determined force behind Jim Crow 2.0.

Beneath the headlines about DeSantis’ effort to block an advanced placement high school course in African American history, his central motive has been largely lost. What Florida’s governor is trying to do is bring back approaches that constitute the foundation from which all manner of freshly bigoted government policies shall spring.
Opinion by Travis Patterson

Fierce criticism has erupted over the music video for country singer Jason Aldean’s “Try That in a Small Town.” Liberals have decried the song’s vigilante themes, especially in light of where the video was shot. The lyrics describe a variety of crimes and unpatriotic or disrespectful behavior and promise: “Well, try that in a small town, see how far ya make it down the road. Around here, we take care of our own, you cross that line, it won’t take long.” The video was filmed at the Maury County Courthouse in Tennessee — the site of the lynching of Henry Choate, an 18-year-old Black man accused of assaulting a White woman in 1927.

This combination smacks of celebrating vigilantism, extralegal “justice” and a deeply sinister and racist chapter of the past in which White communities committed and condoned violence against people of color as a form of political, social and economic control.
Story by Molly Bohannon, Forbes Staff

The largest historically Black fraternity in the U.S. announced Wednesday it would be moving its planned 2025 annual conference out of Orlando after the Florida Department of Education approved controversial new guidelines on African-American history, joining a number of other organizations protesting what the fraternity called Florida’s “harmful and discriminatory policies.”
Story by Robin Zlotnick

They noticed that their next door neighbor was peeking through the window at them.
They waved and smiled at the neighbor, but the guy aggressively ignored them and shut his blinds. Then, as they were about to leave, the neighbor came running out and started yelling at them to stop. "I asked him if there was a problem," OP writes. "He said, 'Yes. I don't know why y'all in our neighborhood but we don't take kindly to thieves and criminals. The police are on the way."

The neighbor ended up calling the police for no reason at all.
The outright racism is potent. But OP kept his cool in the face of wild prejudice and explained to the neighbor that they just bought the house and that they were looking around...their own house.

According to OP, the neighbor was convinced that they couldn't afford to live there.
The neighbor responded that "people like us couldn't afford houses here and that we could save our lies for the police." Holy hell. It doesn't get much more racist than that, folks. We often talk about all the subtle, insidious ways this country remains entrenched in racism, the policies designed to hurt Black people, the structures in place that leave Black populations out of the possibility of achieving success.
Story by Elura Nanos

The white mayor of a tiny Alabama town less than an hour from Selma has argued he should be immune from a civil rights lawsuit, claiming that holding a secret meeting to keep the city’s first-ever Black mayor and five Black city council members out of office is not a sufficiently clear violation of constitutional rights.

Patrick Braxton, along with James Ballard, Barbara Patrick, Janice Quarles, and Wanda Scott, sued the city of Newbern, Alabama and alleged that despite being legally entitled to take office, they were prevented from doing so when white residents “refused to accept” the results of a 2020 election. They argue that Haywood “Woody” Stokes III, Newbern’s white former mayor, conspired with his council, other government officials, and a local bank, to illegally install himself as mayor even after Braxton fairly and legally won the election.
By Nicole Chavez, CNN

CNN — The Florida Board of Education approved a new set of standards for how Black history should be taught in the state’s public schools, sparking criticism from education and civil rights advocates who said students should be allowed to learn the “full truth” of American history. The curriculum was approved at the board’s meeting Wednesday in Orlando.

It is the latest development in the state’s ongoing debate over African American history, including the education department’s rejection of a preliminary pilot version of an Advanced Placement African American Studies course for high school students, which it claimed lacked educational value.
Story by Mike Lillis

Republican efforts to enhance their appeal with minority voters suffered a series of setbacks this week when a pair of GOP lawmakers made racially explosive comments, stirring immediate condemnation from civil rights groups and threatening to muddy the party’s message of big-tent inclusivity.

House Republican leaders have spent much of the year highlighting the party’s advances in recruiting women and minorities, linking a diverse slate of candidates to their success in flipping control of the lower chamber last year. And they retain high hopes of expanding on those gains in the 2024 elections.

But that image-shaping campaign was dealt a hard blow this week when Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) and Rep. Eli Crane (R-Ariz.) gave voice to bigoted sentiments, prompting rebukes from Republican leaders and sparking warnings from some rank-and-file members that the party’s efforts to attract more minorities just got more difficult.
Story by Pretty Honore

The internet is proof that Karens come a dime a dozen. Whether it’s at a park, sauna, or even your own home, there’s sure to be a middle-class white woman who wants it her way.

But today, we’re giving the Karens a break; Instead, we’d like to talk about the Kyles of the world — one of which went viral in a video posted by a social media user by the name of @tr0n_almighty.

In the clip, which has since made its rounds on TikTok and Instagram, Tron called out the Dallas bar after he was refused entry. According to the security guard at the door, Tron was in violation of the bar’s dress code policy, but the viral video tells a different story.
Story by Rhonna Morala

In a bold and controversial move, former President Donald Trump has announced his intention to dismantle all “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (DEI) programs across the federal government. This announcement comes in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling that struck down affirmative action in college admissions, citing violations of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. Trump’s remarks, obtained exclusively by Breitbart News, reveal his determination to enforce the Court’s decision rigorously. Brace yourself as we delve into the details of Trump’s pledge to eliminate DEI initiatives and pursue civil rights claims against institutions engaging in what he deems as “unlawful racial discrimination.”
Story by Ethan Baron, Silicon Valley, San Jose, Calif.

Jul. 2—Complaint after complaint alleging anti-Black racism at Tesla's factory in Fremont has not stopped such abuse and discrimination, with Black workers segregated into the hardest, most dangerous, lowest-paid jobs and subjected to a barrage of racist treatment, language and images, according to claims in recent court filings and employee interviews.

Black workers at the plant — Tesla's biggest California facility, which employs thousands to build its four electric car models — alleged such abuse often began soon after they started, excited at landing a job at the famed automotive pioneer. In declarations filed by more than 200 current and former workers at the factory in connection with an Alameda County lawsuit against Tesla that now seeks class-action status, workers said they quickly learned that working for Tesla meant facing rampant, extreme racism.
Story by Maya Boddie

Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis is proud to run his "War on Woke" 2024 presidential campaign that includes advocating for book bans, anti-LGBTQ+ laws, as well as anti-diversity, equity, and inclusion programs both in schools and the workplace. On Sunday, the 2024 GOP hopeful shared a clip of himself speaking and signing legislation via Twitter, writing, "As of July 1st, DEI is over in the state of Florida."

The governor's tweet comes less than two months after CBS reported he introduced House Bill 999 in May, which would "ban state colleges and universities from using funds to 'promote, support, or maintain any programs or campus activities that espouse diversity, equity, or inclusion [DEI] or Critical Race Theory rhetoric.'
Opinion by Martha S. Jones

When my Google Alerts sounded this past week, I knew that birthright citizenship was again lighting up in the news. My interest in debates over birthright is professional and abiding: I’m a historian who in 2018 published a book, Birthright Citizens, that traced this approach to national belonging from its origins in debates among Black Americans at the start of the 19th century to 1868, when the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment established that, with a few exceptions, anyone born on U.S. soil is a citizen.

On Monday, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, looking to advance his presidential campaign, promised to reverse more than a century and a half of law and policy and, as he put it in a statement, “end the idea that children of illegal aliens are entitled to birthright citizenship if they are born in the United States.” A few days later, a spokesperson for another GOP presidential candidate, Nikki Haley, said she “opposes birthright citizenship for those who enter the country illegally,” and the entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign said he would reform birthright by adding new citizenship requirements. Having lived through more than one such outburst in recent years—the first in 2018, when then-President Donald Trump proposed to do away with birthright—I know that any promise to transform our citizenship scheme is sure to set off a debate.
Story by Joshua Wilburn

The Colorado web designer who the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Friday could refuse to make wedding websites for gay couples cited a request from a "flabbergasted" straight man who says he never even asked to work with her, RadarOnline.com has learned.

The U.S. Supreme Court recently handed down a ruling in a case involving a Christian graphic artist who refused to design wedding websites for same-sex couples. The court ruled 6-to-3 in favor of the artist, Lorie Smith, who argued that her actions were protected under the First Amendment's right to freedom of speech. The case began in 2016 when Smith filed a lawsuit against the state of Colorado, claiming that the state's anti-discrimination law violated her rights.
Story by Jennifer Bowers Bahney
Colorado’s Attorney General Phillip Weiser took on the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that a web designer couldn’t be compelled to create wedding websites for LGBTQ couples, calling the decision a “license to discriminate.” MSNBC’s Simone Boyce asked Weiser what Justice Gorsuch meant when he wrote, “Under Colorado’s logic, the government may compel anyone who speaks for pay on a particular topic to accept all commissions on that same topic.” “What he is trying to say is that here is someone that had a free speech interest that was being implicated in a negative way,” Weiser said. He continued:
Maggie Bell , Lead Organizer, C.L.E.A.R Campaign, New Georgia Project

I grew up in the South, raised by generations of strong, Black women who always told me I'd go to college. I am the first college grad in my family, but to pay for my education, I'm now in so much debt that I can barely imagine the life my degree was supposed to get me. And the Supreme Court just shattered whatever dreams my family and I had about the life I could lead if I graduated college.

Just days after Juneteenth—a holiday celebrating Black liberation from literal bondage—six people I've never met decided that my economic freedom, and the economic freedom of millions of Americans, especially Black folks, is not worth it. Those people had the power to secure Black futures by allowing President Biden's student loan forgiveness plan to stand, and they failed.
Story by Javon L. Harris, McClatchy Washington Bureau

While the deaths of white victims in recent years have spurred numerous changes in South Carolina law, the state’s refusal to pass a hate crimes law sends an “outrageous” message about the value placed on Black lives, some Black lawmakers say.

Since 2016, three bills in South Carolina have become law following the death of a white person, including the Tucker Hipps Transparency Act, the Samantha L. Josephson Rideshare Safety Act and Gavin’s Law. Meanwhile, repeated calls for a hate crimes law — particularly after nine Black people, including a state senator, were killed in 2015 at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston — remain unanswered.
Story by Kalyn Womack

Just two days after being sworn in, a Marion police officer said bye-bye to his new job after a few of his racist social media posts were found, according to the IndyStar. The posts were published before he even got his uniform. The case of 48-hour Officer Chaz Foy is precisely why Black people believe police departments are riddled with racists. You can’t keep racist people from applying for the job but you can certainly screen them to see if they hold bigoted beliefs.

Foy was flagged for two posts he made. One from the top of this month was posted to Facebook with a caption reading, “With gas hitting 4.89 and climbing, let’s all take a moment to appreciate better times.” Those “better times” he referred to were referenced in the picture attached, of George Floyd under the knee of former Minneapolis cop Derek Chauvin. In another post from April 2021, Foy posted a caricature of a Black man titled “Martin Looter King.” Marion Police Department Chief Angela Haley wasn’t having it once these were brought to her attention.
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