Category: Black Issues

New Year’s Eve, Iraq, Lily Tomlin: Your Tuesday Evening Briefing

January 4, 2020
Briefing|New Year’s Eve, Iraq, Equal Pay: Your Tuesday Evening BriefingHere’s what you need to know at the end of the last day of the year.Dec. 31, 2019(Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the sign-up.) Good evening from Times Square, where the ball will drop within a matter of hours to ring in 2020.…

Impeachment, Trade, Self-Care: Your Tuesday Evening Briefing

January 3, 2020
Here’s what you need to know at the end of the day.(Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the sign-up.) Good evening. Here’s the latest.ImageCredit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times1. It was a historic day in Washington as lawmakers unveiled articles of impeachment against President Trump. The move brings a sitting president to the brink…

Why Thousands of Californians Don’t Have Clean Drinking Water

January 1, 2020
California TodayFriday: How segregation lives on in Central Valley water access. Also: A look at Google’s founders.Dec. 6, 2019ImageLala Carbajal in front of an arsenic plant in Lanare that removes arsenic from water. Because of a lack of resources for maintenance, the plant shut down after only three months.Credit...Ryan Christopher Jones for The New York…

Looking for Frederick Douglass in Savannah

December 31, 2019
SAVANNAH, Ga. — Frederick Douglass passed through this elegant Southern city only once, for the briefest of visits — a half-hour whistle-stop on his rail journey to a speaking engagement in Jacksonville, Fla.It was April 1889, just the second foray into the Deep South for the great orator, five decades after his escape from Maryland…

NATO, Tariffs, Cyber Monday: Your Monday Evening Briefing

December 30, 2019
Here’s what you need to know at the end of the day.Dec. 2, 2019(Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the sign-up.) Good evening. Here’s the latest.ImageCredit...Al Drago for The New York Times2. The president expanded his global trade war.He surprised Brazil and Argentina, tweeting that he would impose tariffs on their steel and…

ASAP Rocky Returns to Sweden in Triumph, Without Trump’s Help

December 30, 2019
reporter’s notebookThe rapper’s show in Stockholm on Wednesday came just months after his trial for assault in the country drew international attention.ASAP Rocky performing at the Ericsson Globe in Stockholm on Wednesday night.Credit...Erika Gerdemark for The New York TimesDec. 12, 2019STOCKHOLM — When the rapper ASAP Rocky played an arena show in Stockholm on Wednesday…

Boeing, Jamal Khashoggi, Lost Luggage: Your Monday Evening Briefing

December 30, 2019
Here’s what you need to know at the end of the day.Dec. 23, 2019(Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the sign-up.) Good evening. Here’s the latest.ImageCredit...Anna Moneymaker/The New York Times1. The crisis at Boeing is far from over.The airplane manufacturer’s board of directors ousted Dennis Muilenburg, who came under fire for his handling…

F.B.I. Report, Afghan War, New Zealand: Your Monday Evening Briefing

December 28, 2019
Here’s what you need to know at the end of the day.(Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the sign-up.) Good evening. Here’s the latest.ImageCredit...Tom Brenner/Reuters1. A long-awaited report on the F.B.I. found no anti-Trump plot.The report, by the Justice Department’s inspector general, found serious errors in the F.B.I.’s Russia inquiry — especially its…

Why the ‘Wokest’ Candidates Are the Weakest

December 28, 2019
If the fantasy that Democrats are all zealots were reality, the primary campaign would have turned out quite differently.Dec. 6, 2019Beto O'Rourke attends the 2020 Presidential Gun Safety Forum in Las Vegas in October.Credit...Eric Thayer for The New York TimesDemocrats are too “woke” for their own good, or so goes the argument.“Today’s progressivism is more…

Kamala Harris, Impeachment, Titan: Your Tuesday Evening Briefing

December 28, 2019
Here’s what you need to know at the end of the day.Dec. 3, 2019(Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the sign-up.) Good evening. Here’s the latest.ImageCredit...Al Drago for The New York Times1. The once-cordial relationship between President Trump and President Emmanuel Macron of France quickly turned cold at a celebration of NATO’s 70th…

Overlooked No More: Bessie Coleman, Pioneering African-American Aviatrix

December 26, 2019
In 1921 Coleman became the first black woman in the United States to earn a pilot’s license, then barnstormed around the country thrilling audiences and inspiring later generations.Bessie Coleman in 1923. She learned how to fly in France after no pilot in the United States would give her lessons.Credit...George Rinhart/Corbis, via Getty ImagesDec. 11, 2019Overlooked…

The Death of the Black Utopia

December 26, 2019
New York City embraced willful amnesia when landscapers working at the western edge of Central Park unearthed two coffins in August of 1871. An engraved plate on a richly appointed rosewood coffin identified the deceased as Margaret McIntay, buried two decades earlier at the age of “sixteen years, three months and fourteen days.” A more…

Read Trump’s Letter to Pelosi Protesting Impeachment

December 23, 2019
published a story headlined, “The Campaign to Impeach President Trump Has Begun.” Less than three months after my inauguration, Representative Maxine Waters stated, “I'm going to fight every day until he's impeached.” House Democrats introduced the first impeachment resolution against me within months of my inauguration, for what will be regarded as one of our…

‘I Have a Ph.D. in Not Having Money’

December 23, 2019
Medical school is expensive for everyone. But for low-income students, the hidden costs can be prohibitive.David Velasquez, a third-year medical student at Harvard University, said he had $4.80 left in his bank account after signing up for the MCAT test prep.Credit...Kayana Szymczak for The New York TimesPublished Nov. 25, 2019Updated Nov. 26, 2019David Velasquez learned…

Letter to the Editor: Historians Critique The 1619 Project, and We Respond – The New York Times

December 22, 2019
Five historians wrote to us with their reservations. Our editor in chief replies.Published Dec. 20, 2019Updated Dec. 21, 2019The letter below will be published in the Dec. 29 issue of The New York Times Magazine. RE: The 1619 ProjectWe write as historians to express our strong reservations about important aspects of The 1619 Project. The…

Stuck in the Middle

December 21, 2019
TiesMy daughters and I defy easy labeling. It has taken me a lifetime to realize that we don’t have to declare a single racial identity.Credit...Lucy JonesI gaped at my daughter one morning a few years ago as she tried to creep, unnoticed, out the front door to her bus stop. She was 13 at the…

Thanks, Mom and Dad

December 18, 2019
In the season of gratitude, several successful people reflect on what they most appreciate learning from their parents.Debra Weiner is interviewing 100 newsmakers, thought leaders and other people who’ve made an outsize difference about the most valuable thing their parents taught them. Following are excerpts from a few of those stories, edited and condensed.The Joy…

Ruth Carter and Cynthia Erivo on Clothes, Culture and Self-Expression

December 17, 2019
Admiration SocietyTwo creative people in two different fields in one wide-ranging conversation.Ruth Carter (left) and Cynthia Erivo shot at the Four Seasons Hotel Los Angeles Hotel at Beverly Hills on Oct. 27, 2019.Credit...Joe LeavenworthPublished Dec. 10, 2019Updated Dec. 11, 2019“This has been a long time coming!” said Ruth Carter, 59, in her Academy Award acceptance…

I Oversaw Executions. We Cannot Resume the Federal Death Penalty.

December 17, 2019
Opinion|I Oversaw Executions. We Cannot Resume the Federal Death Penalty.The system has too many flaws for the Trump administration to carry out the executions it has scheduled for Monday.By Jim PetroMr. Petro is a former Ohio attorney general. Dec. 4, 2019The Department of Justice is seeking to carry out the first federal executions in 16…

Cory Booker Jokes Biden ‘Might Have Been High’ When He Made Marijuana Comments – The New York Times

December 16, 2019
Politics|Cory Booker Jokes Biden ‘Might Have Been High’ When He Made Marijuana CommentsAt the Democratic debate, the New Jersey senator sparred with the former vice president over legalizing marijuana. Senator Cory Booker on screen during the Democratic presidential debate in Atlanta.Credit...Demetrius Freeman for The New York TimesNov. 20, 2019Senator Cory Booker, in an attempt to…

Trump Has a Gift for Tearing Us Apart

December 15, 2019
There are a lot of different ways to build walls.By Thomas B. EdsallMr. Edsall contributes a weekly column from Washington, D.C. on politics, demographics and inequality.Dec. 11, 2019Supporters at a Trump rally in Dallas in October.Credit...Jonathan Ernst/ReutersDonald Trump has done everything within his power to activate racial and ethnic animosity in this country. His main…

Inside The World of Interiors, Condé Nast’s Secret Weapon

December 15, 2019
The gold-standard shelter magazine runs on a brass-tacks budget and refuses to kowtow to the internet.Lord of the light box: Rupert Thomas, the editor in chief of The World of Interiors, at the magazine’s office in London.Credit...Tom Jamieson for The New York TimesPublished Dec. 4, 2019Updated Dec. 5, 2019LONDON — To be a magazine reader…

11 New Books We Recommend This Week

December 14, 2019
Editors’ ChoiceReligiously speaking, I’m something of a Christian mutt — the grandson of a Congregational minister, I was raised Presbyterian and educated at an Episcopal high school before converting to Catholicism almost a decade ago. (Before I did, I told a Jesuit friend that I had doubts. “Who doesn’t?” he said.) So the spiritually minded…

9 New Books We Recommend This Week

December 14, 2019
Editors’ ChoiceThere’s a funny moment in Kevin Wilson’s new novel, “Nothing to See Here” — it’s one of two novels we recommend this week — in which a 10-year-old girl tells her new caretaker that she loves reading but had nothing good to choose from at her grandparents’ house, where she and her twin brother…

Black Leader in South Bend Endorses Joe Biden Over Pete Buttigieg – The New York Times

December 12, 2019
Politics|Black Leader in South Bend Endorses Joe Biden Over Pete ButtigiegEmphasizing the country’s need for experienced leadership, Oliver Davis, a longtime council member in the city, has been a frequent critic of Mr. Buttigieg.Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., has struggled to receive support from black voters.Credit...Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesSOUTH BEND,…

‘Broke’ Chronicles a City Out of Cash and Awash in Desperation

December 10, 2019
NonfictionAn abandoned home on Detroit’s east side, 2017.Credit...Erin Kirkland for The New York TimesWhen you purchase an independently reviewed book through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.BROKE Hardship and Resilience in a City of Broken Promises By Jodie Adams KirshnerDetroit does not have the luxury of solving one problem at a time. It has…

At Howard University, Homecoming Is a Pilgrimage

December 10, 2019
Surfacing“Coming to Howard for the first time was seeing the beauty of blackness,” one alumnus said.Written by Bianca LadipoPhotographs by Andre WagnerImageThere’s no limit to how many people can join the celebration — the campus gates never close during the weekend.Credit...Andre D. Wagner for The New York Times“Have you ever seen anything like this?” Ashley…

‘99 Problems but My ABCs Ain’t One’: Jay-Z Sues Over Children’s Book

December 10, 2019
Australia|‘99 Problems but My ABCs Ain’t One’: Jay-Z Sues Over Children’s BookThe Little Homie, a small Australian online retailer, says it is celebrating hip-hop. Jay-Z, who has spoken out about black identity and equality, says it is engaging in theft.Jay-Z and his wife, Beyoncé.Credit...Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images for DisneyNov. 28, 2019SYDNEY, Australia — When the children’s…

Ho Chi Minh City’s Hilarious Side

December 9, 2019
heads upStand-up comedy is sweeping Vietnam’s largest city, often called Saigon, with locals braving open-mic nights in the city’s hippest cafes and bars. Uy Le, above right, is among the local comedians making stand-up comedy a new tradition in Ho Chi Minh City.Credit...Justin Mott for The New York TimesVietnam’s largest metropolis, Ho Chi Minh City,…

Radar Points to a Long-Lost Black Cemetery in Tampa

December 9, 2019
“We feel as though our ancestors are coming back and talking to us,” said a member of a historical committee that is investigating the discovery of about 145 coffins at a high school. Ground-penetrating radar was used to search the site of King High School in Tampa, Fla. Evidence of about 145 coffins was found…