What remains abundantly clear is that there are millions of ppl in this country born w/ a set of systemic advantages that afford them wealth, power, & opportunity that they misunderstand as being the result of nothing but their own hard work. This is the myth America is built on. I’ve said this before, but reading that NYT article about Trump’s money & listening to Kavanaugh’s story of himself are reminders that what ppl are able to accomplish largely results from the arbitrary nature of birth & circumstance. None of us inherently *deserve* what we have.

In the final episode of our first season of @Justice_Podcast we sit down for an extended conversation with Ta-Nehisi Coates on race & the politics of mass incarceration. Take a listen! theappeal.org/justice-in-ame… I also just want to take a second to shout out @jduffyrice who is truly the intellectual backbone of this project while I am largely the very enthusiastic hypeman. She is brilliant & tireless & it’s a great feeling when someone who is a great friend also becomes a great colleague

I have a new poem in the Harvard Kennedy School Journal of African American Public Policy. A different sort of venue for a poem, but appreciate them providing the invitation.

This is for my son & thinking about how quickly the world will see him as something other than a child. This is part of a series of poems in the second manuscript thinking through what it means to watch my son discover the world for the first time & what it means to watch the world discover him.

How ppl who call him adorable now might very well call him dangerous when he’s older.

I highly recommend this essay by Eve Tuck to anyone who researches or writes about marginalized communities.

Sometimes in an effort to illuminate injustice, ppl can unwittingly contribute to the idea tht certain communities are defined by their suffering. pages.ucsd.edu/~rfrank/class_… Tuck writes about how Native communities worked w/researchers to illuminate the inhumane conditions many of them lived in.

But after a while they realized they were being portrayed w/o contexts & in ways that made it seem like Native communities were nothing but their suffering.

“If you look at the top 10 blackest states in America, 9 of them don’t let you vote if you’re serving any type of sentence. 5 of the 10 blackest states restrict your right to vote even after you’ve served your sentence.”

New episode of @Justice_Podcast.

itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/jus… In what is surely just a coincidence...

Maine & Vermont are the two whitest states in the country and they are also the only two states that allow people to vote *while* they are in prison.

A lot of ppl are responding to this saying, “But he was also a Rhodes Scholar & Harvard grad!”

I understand the impulse, this is obviously ungirded w/racism, but also...what if he *was* only a rapper? Why would that automatically make him unqualified?

The answer is, it doesn’t.

https://twitter.com/nypost/status/1024809770820280320

When ppl respond to the assertion that being a rapper makes someone unqualified to run for office with the defense “But they received a fancy fellowship & went to an Ivy League school!” it almost legitimizes the implication that being a rapper is itself something to be ashamed of

Every time I leave a jail or a prison after teaching I’m reminded that no matter how much you dress it up, no matter what name you give it, no matter what color you paint the walls, this place is still a cage. It’s still human beings held in a cage. I’ve been thinking a lot about the language we use when discussing prisons. Like is it right to call it a “correctional facility” if it doesn’t do any correcting? And what’s even the implication of “correction”? Who is supposed to be corrected in a system tht actively breaks ppl?

Random fun fact I just learned, when Jefferson originally wrote the Declaration of Independence he said “We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable.” But then Benjamin Franklin come through with the edits & was like “nah fam let’s spice it up” and changed it to “self-evident” Then my man just had to just sit there saying nothing while the whole continental congress edited his work:

“As to myself, I thought it a duty to be, on that occasion, a passive auditor of the opinions of others, more impartial judges than I could be, of its merits or demerits.”

I’m often reminded that even well-intentioned people regularly fall into the trap of blaming teachers, students, & parents in low-income communities for the academic gaps those schools face, without at all accounting for the larger social ecosystem in which those schools operate. ppl are quick to cite low test scores w/o citing closing hospitals. ppl are quick to cite chronic absenteeism w/o citing chronic unemployment. ppl are quick to cite dropout stats w/o citing eviction data. these aren’t peripheral concerns to low-income schools, they are central.

I’ve been joking about it throughout the World Cup, but in all seriousness I think it’s fully possible to interrogate France’s history of colonialism while also celebrating the success of players on the team with African roots. It’s a balancing act we navigate across the diaspora The important thing, I think, is not to operate under any illusion that the success of France’s team will lead to large shifts away from xenophobia throughout the country. The French team winning the World Cup won’t stop discrimination. It won’t give immigrants better housing.

The World Cup is one of the only things not making the world feel like a complete disaster right now. So if you need a break, I wrote about how Brazil is relying on Coutinho, not Neymar, in order to win the tournament for the sixth time in its history. newyorker.com/sporting-scene… Neymar is undoubtedly Brazil’s most talented player, but anyone watching the past three games can see that it’s Coutinho who pulls the strings for this Brazilian side. If Neymar can get back to his best in the knockout rounds, I don’t see them losing.

Yesterday, 9 of the 14 players who touched the field for France were of African or French Caribbean origin. I wrote about how the diverse, integrated imagery of the French team isn’t actually reflective of the country’s contemporary racial politics. newyorker.com/sporting-scene… There’s this quote from former French star Eric Cantona that didn’t make it into the piece but that I think about all the time when I consider the racial makeup of the French team:

“When they win they’re ‘Black, White, Arab’ and when they lose they’re lowlifes from the ghetto.”

I wrote about Kanye, the economics of slavery, and how some black people have always been used as mouthpieces for racist ideas. newrepublic.com/article/148222… Worth resharing:

“The assumptions of white priority, white domination, & white importance underlie every chapter & every theme of the thousands of textbooks that blanketed the country. This is the vast tectonic plate that underlies American culture.”

chronicle.com/article/How-Sc…

The millions of enslaved Africans brought to this country under chain & whip & fear were worth more than every bank, factory & railroad combined. There’s nothing about their bondage that was a “choice” other than the choice by white ppl to make black bodies the national currency. There is *nothing* about being enslaved that was a choice. It was a system predicated upon & maintained by the everpresent threat of violence (via Edward Baptist in ‘The Half Has Never Been Told’)

Today Alabama observes Confederate Memorial Day. Here is what Alabama wrote when they seceded from the Union in 1861. This is what’s being celebrated as an official state holiday in 2018.

They rebuke the “downfall of slavery” and they fear “the lust of half-civilized Africans.” Semi-regular reminder that if you’re a K-12 American history teacher, the declarations of confederate secession should be among the most important primary source documents that you use in your classroom

It’s really something to watch powerful white people enter the marijuana market to make millions while black & brown kids are still locked up for it.

It’s *also* worth remembering that the narrative of prisons being primarily filled with “nonviolent drug offenders” isn’t true. Even if you released every “nonviolent drug offender” in prison you would still have 1.7 million ppl incarcerated, which would be a fifth of the world’s total.

Focusing only on this group also distorts the blurry line between what constitutes as “violent” or “nonviolent” crime.

On this day in 1865 Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox, ending the Civil War.

As a reminder, despite what your textbook said, Lee was not an “honorable man.” He led a treasonous army who fought a war w/ the intention of maintaining & expanding the practice of human bondage. I’m always struck by the irony of people who hold a Confederate flag in one hand & an American flag in the other.

It’s like fam, the Confederacy wanted to *leave* the country you claim to be a patriot to. And it’s those same folks that get mad at Kaepernick for taking a knee...

I’m in Mississippi right now & talking to blacks folks down here is such an important reminder how the narrative of rural black americans is one that often doesn’t get told because it doesn’t fit neatly into our narrow & ill-defined boxes for what working class america looks like It’s been said before but the way ppl talk about the working class in “flyover states” seems to conveniently forget that there are black ppl who live in these places too

And they often have a set of political concerns that aren’t necessarily analogous go their white counterparts

I’ve been thinking about how there was a point in school where I was the only black kid in the class & I wouldn’t ask questions bc I was afraid I’d make black ppl look dumb if I said the wrong thing. I’m only now beginning to understand the implications of that sort of violence. It’s tragic that we live in a country where a child feels like they can’t express their sense of curiosity because they are made to feel like they carry the weight of an entire population of people. That there was no room for questions, only answers, and only the correct answers.

Wouldn’t be a proper New Year’s Day without acknowledging that on this day 155 years ago Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which is one of the most important but misunderstood documents in American history. Here’s why: Contrary to what many people are taught, the Emancipation Proclamation didn’t completely end slavery.

The proclamation was military document that only applied to states that had seceded from the Union. It also left slavery untouched in the border states.

For the @parisreview, I wrote about visiting the National Museum of African American History & Culture with my grandparents and how it reminded me that so much of the violence documented there didn’t happen that long ago. theparisreview.org/blog/2017/12/1… This country tells itself that the worst of racial violence was in the past, but that past is still with us in very real & concrete ways. theparisreview.org/blog/2017/12/1…