Washington Post: The challenges of #BlackGirlMagic at the Olympics

Rio 2016 been filled with #BlackGirlMagic: The 28 million people on average who watched daily in primetime and tens of millions who streamed the games online — to which many analysts chalk up the reduced television audience — saw our screens and Twitter timelines filled with stellar moments of achievement by African American women, offering all Americans the chance to respond with chants of “U-S-A!” to the athletic exploits of black women, and watch our sons, and particularly our daughters, cheer, too.But these games also underscored ongoing challenges in race, representation and athletics in America. Black women — Michelle Carter, Gabby Douglas, Ibtihaj Muhammad, “the Simones” — were, in many ways, the American heroes of these Olympics. But in a painful reminder of the ways in which that hero status can often be conditional, and fleeting, these women, other athletes of color, and by extension we, were also unjustly cast at times as the goat.Read more here.

TNR photo/essay: Black Republicans at the RNC

To say that Donald Trump enjoys wide support among black voters, even those in his own party, would be an overstatement of truly Trumpian proportions. An estimated 18 black delegates attended the Republican National Convention in Cleveland this year—less than one percent of all RNC delegates, and only a third of the number who turned out to support Mitt Romney in 2012. Even among wealthy white scions, it seems, Trump has a race problem.The black delegates who showed up at the convention are acutely aware of their isolation, from both their own communities and their fellow Republicans. “I’m a unicorn,” laughs Henry Childs II, head of the Texas Federation of African American Republicans. Supporting the GOP, he says, has made him “the most hated man in America”—unappreciated by Republicans and held in suspicion by Democrats.So why do it? What drives these men and women to back a candidate who delights in playing the racial provocateur, who has campaigned with a rollicking mix of barking xenophobia and unabashed nativism surpassed only by George Wallace?Read and view the full piece here.

Democrats, 2016 and the fight over Obama's legacy

My latest piece, for The New York Times online:In fundamental ways, the 2016 Democratic primary has been a litigation of the Obama years, and of whether the president’s 2008 campaign vow of “change we can believe in” succeeded or failed.http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/29/opinion/campaign-stops/clinton-sanders-and-the-fight-over-obamas-legacy.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region&region=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region

Killer Mike talks politics, social justice, and Bernie Sanders, too

My interview with Bernie Sanders' hip-hop surrogate Killer MIke.Click here to view.

Three writers wrestle with Obama's racial legacy

BY: TODD STEVEN BURROUGHS

Posted: Feb. 21 2016 3:00 AM

During both of Obama’s terms, and even before, a visible minority of black activists—some prominent, some not, and from different age groups—have criticized their president out loud when they felt their community slighted. They have been, and still are, disappointed because, they say, most of what they have gotten from him is shallow symbolism, while other constituency groups have gotten attention to specific, targeted policies. It seems like a long time ago since those days in 2008 when Barack Obama represented so much to so many, particularly those in the black, sometimes radicalized, grassroots: A new black history was visible, with new opportunities and new freedoms possible.

Eight years later, the experiment in black American democracy is almost finished, and black authors have come forth to discuss Obama and his often-overlooked-by-him constituency. The books areThe Black Presidency: Barack Obama and the Politics of Race in America, by Michael Eric Dyson; Fracture: Barack Obama, the Clintons and the Racial Divide, by Joy-Ann Reid, national correspondent for MSNBC; and Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul, by Princeton professor Eddie S. Glaude Jr.

Read more at The Root.

Warning signs for Hillary in South Carolina

Even before Sen. Bernie Sanders began surging in early state and national polls, the Hillary Clinton campaign viewed South Carolina as her firewall, mainly due to her much higher standing and name recognition with black voters. But there are signs that the Clinton team may be falling behind the Sanders campaign, both in terms of organizing on the ground and exciting black voters, even as former Secretary Clinton maintains a large lead in the polls and prognosticators like FiveThirtyEight.com give her overwhelming odds of winning the state’s primary in two weeks.Read more here.

A 2Live Crew Boss Explains Trump

Fans who braved the Carolina rain to meet Luther “Luke” Campbell this past weekend in Charlotte—including a local DJ who brought seemingly every LP Campbell and his former rap group, 2Live Crew, ever pressed—came to hear about the music and madness of the Miami rap scene, and to collect signed copies of The Book of Luke, Campbell’s new memoir.They left with a dose of Luke’s unique brand of cultural wisdom.The 54-year-old rap pioneer, youth football philanthropist, and legendary party promoter has a decades-long reputation for pornographic lyrics and hypersexual showmanship. He invented the “parental advisory” sticker for music albums after battling Tipper Gore and a host of political adversaries in Washington who wanted to censor rap content because, in Luke’s telling, white kids in the suburbs, and not just black kids in the hood, were listening to it.But he’s also a serious student of American politics, with plenty to say about his disappointment with the Democratic Party, the prospects for a President Kanye West, and the appeal of Donald Trump.Read the rest at The Daily Beast.

Why Black Lives Matter still confounds Democrats

As she watched the recent Democratic debate, former Ohio State Senator Nina Turner felt her party could take great pride in offering the country a substantive discussion, in contrast to the three-ring circus taking place on the other side. But as the lone question relating to the lives of 41.7 million African Americans was tossed to CNN’s Don Lemon, Turner, a political and social activist, was among many African Americans who had reason to cringe.The “black question” was about as facile as it gets, with all due respect to the “real person” chosen to deliver it: “Do black lives matter, or do all lives matter?”Cue the now well-rehearsed responses of the leading Democratic candidates, who in the recent past have been tripped up by their curious failure to prepare to respond to the most notable civil rights movement of the present era. The course correction goes something like this:“Of course black lives matter,” says Senator Sanders in his Brooklyn drawl.“You bet black lives matter!” says Secretary Clinton, with a Midwestern twang.“Black lives matter? Count me in!” Martin O’Malley chimes in, glancing warily around the room as if to make sure no one’s planning a follow-up about his time as Baltimore’s mayor.It’s not that the BLM movement is not important, says Turner. “It is,” she says. “But it seems the pendulum has swung too far to the superficial, and the media continues to perpetuate a misconception that the African-American community is homogeneous and its needs are singular.”Read the rest at The Daily Beast. 

Jon Stewart's lessons for journalists (New York Times)

Journalists can learn from Jon Stewart not to take ourselves too seriously. Stewart succeeded in exposing many of the absurdities of our business, where the pressure to constantly feed the 24-hour news beast (or in some cases, the requirement to stroke an angry and ideologically rigid audience) can lead to moments that are ripe for parody.Read it at The New York Times.

The true story of the South Carolina Confederate flag debate (msnbc.com)

In the wake of the removal of the Confederate Battle flag (and the pole it flew on) from a place of honor on the grounds of the South Carolina state capitol, much of the media has been quick to paint one lawmaker as the hero. That narrative is both simplistic and wrong.Read more here.

Race and the Reformicons (Democracy, a Journal of Ideas, Issue #34, Fall 2014)

The reform conservatives are tackling a number of issues that could change their movement. But there’s one matter on which their silence is notable. A response to E.J. Dionne Jr.Read more here.