Breaking News

This page features brief excerpts of stories published by the mainstream media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in each source note. Quotation marks are not used.

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• 
• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  9/21/2022
  

  Documentary on the Last Slave Ship to Arrive in the United States Takes on Questions of Memorializing Racist Violence

  Margaret Brown's "Descendant" looks at the effort to preserve and promote Africatown, the Alabama coast community founded by people brought on the last slave ship to dock in the United States. 

• 
• SOURCE: The New Republic
  9/20/2022
  

  The Underground Network of Ministers and Rabbis Aiding Abortion Access Before Roe

  Part of journalist Becca Andrews's new book looks at the Clergy Consultation Service on Abortion, which, before the religious right, offered a faith-based endorsement of abortion rights.

• 
• SOURCE: Texas Tribune
  9/19/2022
  

  At its 50th Reunion, La Raza Unida Asks How to Pass the Torch

  La Raza Unida grew out of civil rights mobilization in the 1960s and worked to mobilize the large, complex, and internally divided communities of ethnic Mexican Texans, focusing on education and voting rights, and struggling to bridge radical and moderate political outlooks. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  9/20/2022
  

  US Neglect of Puerto Rico is in the News, but the Main Historical Relationship has been Abuse

  by Jaquira Diaz

  From forced disruption of native industry through mass sterilization and forced austerity, one writer argues that the only escape from mainland abuse is full Puerto Rican independence. 

• 
• SOURCE: The New Republic
  9/19/2022
  

  Will SCOTUS Revisit the Second Class Citizenship of American Samoans?

  Unique among non-state U.S. territories, people born in American Samoa are not granted citizenship by birth. This legal anomaly traces back to the acquisition of Pacific islands from Spain in a climate of American imperialism and white supremacy. 

• 
• SOURCE: The New Republic
  9/20/2022
  

  Evanston, Illinois Passed a Reparations Program. Can its Liberal Present Confront the Segregated Past?

  by Kari Lydersen

  The Chicago suburb has focused on progams to rectify the harms caused by discrete city actions, specifically generations of housing discrimination that limited Black wealth gains from real estate. Can it make a difference? Will local taxpayers support it? 

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  9/14/2022
  

  Baldwin Lee's Rediscovered Photos Deepen Understanding of the South

  Many white photographers documented the south with a paternalistic frame on their Black subjects. The New York-born son of Chinese immigrants, Lee proceeded from the premise that he knew nothing about the post-Jim Crow South and had to learn. 

• 
• SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
  9/14/2022
  

  UC's Initiative for Free Tuition to Members of Recognized California Tribes Opens Difficult Questions about Native Identity

  Legally, the University of California system can only offer a tuition benefit to members of federally recognized tribes. But this runs afoul of historically complex issues of federal recognition, definitions of tribal membership based in race and ancestry, and the actions of tribes to manage their own membership rolls. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  9/14/2022
  

  Los Angeles to Memorialize 1871 Anti-Chinese Massacre

  Architect Annie Chu describes the task of using design and space to evoke an emotional connection to the victims of mass violence whose identities and stories have been largely lost. 

• 
• SOURCE: Seattle Times
  9/16/2022
  

  New York Museums to Disclose Provenance of Pieces Looted by Nazis

  The Metropolitan Museum has currently identified 53 works as seized or sold under duress by Nazis. It is unclear how many more it will identify in response to a new state law requiring the display of those pieces to disclose the conditions of acquisition. 

• 
• SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
  9/16/2022
  

  Partisan Attacks on Universities Show Administrators Need to Drop the Charade of Political Neutrality

  by Holden Thorp

  A veteral university administrator and scholarly journal editor says that the right is bound and determined to attack universities regardless of how much administrators proclaim their commitment to open debate. They need to embrace the role of truth-seeking instead. 

• 
• SOURCE: CBS News
  9/18/2022
  

  The National Archives' Work to Recover Stolen History

  Donald Trump wouldn't be the first person to face legal jeopardy for holding materials that belong to the national archives. 

• 
• SOURCE: CBC
  9/16/2022
  

  Canadian University Lifts Embargo on Doug Mastriano's Dissertation

  As documented errors in a book Mastriano based on the dissertation became a campaign issue, the university reversed itself and lifted what was apparently an indefinite embargo on the thesis. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  9/16/2022
  

  American Library Association: Book Bans Accelerating

  “It represents an escalation, and we’re truly fearful that at some point we will see a librarian arrested for providing constitutionally protected books on disfavored topics,” said Deborah Caldwell-Stone, the director of the office of intellectual freedom at the library association.

• 
• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  9/16/2022
  

  How True is the History in "The Woman King"?

  "'The Woman King' chooses to make resistance to slavery its moral compass, then misrepresents a kingdom that trafficked tens of thousands as a vanguard in the struggle against it."

• 
• SOURCE: New York Magazine
  9/13/2022
  

  Chait: GOP Door is Now Open to Antisemites

  Since World War II, antisemitic conspiracists have been persona non grata in the party. Now, as the Republicans seek to govern with a shrinking share of the electorate, they're taking any help they can get. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  9/14/2022
  

  David Frum: Who is Really Served by Repatriating Art?

  It's worth asking whether the return of artifacts to Africa from European museums is anything but a public purification ritual, and whether the Euro-American art establishment has given consideration to the politically fraught question of who in present-day Nigeria would control the art. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Conversation
  9/14/2022
  

  Does Disqualifying a January 6 Participant from Office Threaten Democracy?

  Disqualifying particular candidates does nothing to fight the broad-based embrace of election denialism and authoritarianism, and it further deprives voters of the right to repudiate those things at the polls, say three law professors. 

• 
• SOURCE: Democracy
  9/15/2022
  

  Economics is Power, not Math: Why the Dems Should Attack Monopoly

  by Barry C. Lynn

  Until the Reagan Revolution, American politics reflected the understanding that concentrated economic power was corrosive to democracy. Today, the Democrats need to revive that story as a political argument. 

• 
• SOURCE: Al Jazeera
  9/15/2022
  

  Benin Bronzes Have Final German Exhibition Before Repatriation

  "'The recognition of the colonial injustices and the subsequent return of the items “will continue to define our work in the future,' Hermann Parzinger, the president of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation."