Everything’s Political, Including Your Body

Welcome back to Everything’s Political, Capital B’s news, culture, and politics newsletter! Every Thursday, I’ll take a look at recent stories that seem particularly noteworthy.

Here’s what I’ve got for you this week.

Trump Tries to Muddy the Waters on Abortion Rights

Smoke and mirrors. That’s one way to describe former President Donald Trump’s recent statement on abortion legislation. In a video released on Monday, he refused to embrace a specific national limit on abortion, saying instead that “it’s up to the states to do the right thing.” But Trump’s remarks, which came weeks before Florida’s six-week abortion ban is set to kick in on May 1, seemed like little more than an effort to avoid having to weigh in further on a fraught issue, though it’s already clear what he and those in his orbit think about abortion.

Recall, for instance, that one of Trump’s lawyers said in February, “We don’t need a federal ban when we have Comstock on the books.” He was referring to a 151-year-old law that can be used to block abortion-related medications and materials across the U.S. So while the former president is attempting to muddy the waters now, we would be wise to remember that he and his allies have already made plain where they stand on an issue that disproportionately affects Black women, as my colleague Margo Snipe has reported over the past couple of years.

If you’re looking for more context on the abortion fight in the U.S., check out Roe: The History of a National Obsession, the latest book from Mary Ziegler, a leading expert on the issue.

“You Win Some. You Lose None.”

I did a double-take when I saw that the push notification mentioned South Carolina. At first, I thought that there was another development in the sobering racial gerrymandering case out of my home state. But then, I saw that the news was joyous: The South Carolina Gamecocks took home the women’s NCAA basketball championship title, capping a perfect season and making Dawn Staley the first Black Division I basketball coach to finish a season with zero losses.

“You win some. You lose none,” Under Armour wrote in a particularly buzzy post.

But last weekend’s big victory felt like a triumph for the Lady Gamecocks’ Black fans, too. That’s because Staley has been unflinching in her defense not only of her team of largely Black players, but also of marginalized groups more generally. Following the murder of George Floyd in 2020, she wrote a story for The Players’ Tribune telling people to “keep that anger” and “let it fuel you at the ballot box.” She also has been a steadfast ally to transgender athletes, saying, in opposition to Republican lawmakers, that transgender women should play in women’s sports.

Or think of it like this: The Lady Gamecocks’ win felt personal to so many because of the support and visibility that Staley, surrounded by her devoted players, has granted to marginalized Americans at a moment of profound social and political uncertainty. As the LSU Tigers’ Angel Reese said, “As a black woman, I admire what you’ve done! You always checked on me & always loved me like your own!”

The Latest Punching Bag? DEI.

First, the bogeyman was critical race theory. Then, it was “woke.” Now, it’s “DEI.”

U.S. Rep. Greg Murphy of North Carolina, a Republican, has introduced a bill that would deny federal funds to medical schools with diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. The measure, presented about the same time that conservative actors mischaracterized a talk at UCLA’s medical school that touched on structural racism, would make it incredibly difficult for these institutions to promote diversity — a mere 5.7% of doctors are Black — even though studies show that having Black physicians can improve health outcomes for Black patients by bolstering trust and the likelihood of adhering to medical advice. History also reminds us what can happen when there’s no diversity in medicine. Recall the story of Henrietta Lacks, a Black woman whose cancer cells led to breakthroughs in the field — but were harvested without her consent. It took years for her relatives to learn that her tissue had been used for research and for them to receive any sort of compensation.

Charlamagne tha God also has targeted DEI. The radio personality slammed DEI on a recent episode of The Daily Show as “mostly garbage.” The backlash was swift. Though many people, including Black people, take issue with the facile way organizations often grapple with diversity, they also worry that Charlamagne was much too cavalier with his words — that he dismissed the deeper value of diversity (see above paragraph), and that he engaged in the kind of recklessness that gives cover to bad-faith actors who have no desire to confront racial inequality but now enjoy the advantage of saying, See, we’re not the only ones.

New Urgency for Reparations

At least as I see it, Black Americans’ fight for reparations is picking up fresh momentum.

I noted in last week’s newsletter that the two remaining survivors of the Tulsa Race Massacre entered the Oklahoma Supreme Court to renew their push for restitution for the 1921 attack that obliterated “Black Wall Street.” My colleague Aallyah Wright and I also wrote an article last week on Black residents who are trying to thwart Tennessee Republicans’ move to ban reparations.

But there’s another interesting dimension of the reparations struggle that I think is worth pointing out. A team of Black and white clergy members in Boston recently joined together to ask that white churches throw their support behind an effort to get the city to spend $15 billion on reparations. It was a bold appeal to make sure that the onus of confronting the legacy of deep-seated racism doesn’t fall solely on Black Americans.

Together, these stories illustrate the ferocious urgency that many Black communities feel when it comes to addressing the country’s landscape of racial injustice.

Still bowing down to Dawn Staley,

Brandon Tensley

The post Everything’s Political, Including Your Body appeared first on Capital B News.