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☆ Opinion | Young Voters Aren’t Happy With Biden. But Will They Abandon Him?
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-08 | by ( Charles M. Blow | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Are many young people distressed about the war in Gaza? Of the 16 issues the poll asked 18- to 29-year-olds about, those two were ranked last in importance, behind issues such as inflation, immigration, housing and protecting democracy. Indeed, as The Gazette noted, when it comes to the relationship between Biden and young voters, “It’s complicated.”People watching student protests spread across college campuses in recent weeks might be surprised by that notion, but it’s important to remember that reactions to the protests can work in different ways. I believe in students’ right to protest — peacefully — even as I acknowledge that protests are often imperfect, and the actions of some who protest are regrettable. I also understand that protesting students are only a fraction of all students, and students are only a fraction of all young voters.

Persons: Biden’s, Biden, “, — Organizations: Harvard, Harvard Gazette, Gazette Locations: Gaza, Israel

☆ Opinion | Kamala Harris Isn’t Americans’ ‘Momala.’ She’s Our Vice President.
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-01 | by ( Charles M. Blow | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

There’s the Sapphire caricature from “Amos ’n’ Andy,” the emasculating shrew who is rude, meanspirited and prone to fits of rage. There’s the welfare queen — a stereotype popularized during Ronald Reagan’s 1976 presidential campaign — rooted in the toxic combination of promiscuity and work avoidance. And of course, there’s the idea of the angry Black woman, a stereotype that often overlaps and amplifies others. In the American psyche, it’s the Miss Millie story line from Alice Walker’s “The Color Purple,” about someone so blinded by a conception of her own virtue that it doesn’t register when she condescends. She fully believes that it is her right and that her request, politely spoken, must be honored.

Persons: “ Amos ’, Andy, —, Ronald Reagan’s, mammy, Millie, Alice Walker’s “, Sofia Organizations: Sofia Locations: Sofia

In 1968, protests against the Vietnam War reached a climax in Chicago outside the Democratic National Convention, where the police beat and arrested demonstrators — and most likely contributed to Hubert Humphrey’s loss in the general election that November. In this audio essay, the columnist Charles Blow draws a parallel between those events and this year’s convention, which will also take place in Chicago and where protesters are again planning demonstrations. Blow warns the Biden campaign that the growing campus protest movement signals what could come and that the campaign ignores history at its peril. (A full transcript of this audio essay will be available within 24 hours of publication in the audio player above.)

Persons: Hubert Humphrey’s, Charles Blow, Blow, Biden Organizations: Democratic National Convention Locations: Vietnam, Chicago

☆ Opinion | The Ghost of the 1968 Antiwar Movement Has Returned
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-24 | by ( Charles M. Blow | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

At the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, anti-Vietnam War protesters clashed with police officers — whose brutal role in the confrontation was later described by a federal commission as a “police riot” — hijacking the focus of the convention. Those young demonstrators had come of age seeing continual — and effective — protests during the civil rights movement and national mourning after the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy and the Rev. The movement against it began mostly on college campuses and grew. Of course, semesters end and students go home for the summer. But their opposition to the war didn’t end with the academic year.

Persons: John F, Kennedy, Robert F, Martin Luther King Jr, ”, Rennie Davis Organizations: Convention, New York Times Locations: Chicago, Vietnam, America

☆ Opinion | The Kamala Harris Moment Has Arrived
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-17 | by ( Charles M. Blow | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

One of Kamala Harris’s most memorable moments during the 2020 presidential election cycle was when, during a Democratic primary debate, she sharply criticized Joe Biden for working with segregationists in the Senate in their shared opposition to busing. She personalized her criticism, saying: “There was a little girl in California who was a part of the second class to integrate her public schools, and she was bused to school every day. And that little girl was me.”The power in the attack was not only the point being made but that she — a person affected from a group affected — was making it. Although some of Biden’s defenders saw her remark as a gratuitous broadside, there was an authenticity to the way she confronted the issue. The verbal jab also aligned with the national zeitgeist at a time when calls for racial justice and the Black Lives Matter movement were ascendant.

Persons: Kamala Harris’s, Joe Biden, — Organizations: segregationists Locations: California

☆ Opinion | The Necessary Discomfort of Jerrod Carmichael’s ‘Reality’
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-03 | by ( Charles M. Blow | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The comedian Jerrod Carmichael spends a remarkable amount of time in his new HBO series, “Jerrod Carmichael Reality Show,” with his head in his hands like Henri Vidal’s 19th-century statue of Cain after he has killed his brother Abel. Maybe that’s fitting, since the series focuses on Carmichael’s tortured process of coming out, and like many people who bravely take that step, arriving at the realization that, in a sense, the old you must die so that the new you can live. More pointedly, you must kill the you who is false. Coming out isn’t always followed by congratulations and celebrations, even today. Exposing that dilemma to the world is one of the great services Carmichael performs with his series.

Persons: Jerrod Carmichael, “ Jerrod Carmichael, Henri Vidal’s, Cain, Abel, isn’t, Carmichael —, —, Carmichael Organizations: HBO

☆ Opinion | Some Black Voters Are Souring on Democrats. It May Be Part of a Natural Drift.
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-13 | by ( Charles M. Blow | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

“I almost voted for him,” Felicia Lowe, a 55-year-old Black woman, told me on Tuesday as she exited the polling place at the Metropolitan branch of the Fulton County Library. The “him” in that statement is Donald Trump, and Lowe said that she had intended to vote for him the first time he ran for president, but she was diagnosed with cancer and didn’t vote that year. Trump, she said, is “funny as hell.” Her granddaughter, impatiently waiting in her shadow, admonished her, “Nana, no cursing.”Lowe says she’s glad that she didn’t vote for Trump back then because she now thinks “he’s trying to make the white America great, and we should all be included.”

Persons: “, ” Felicia Lowe, Donald Trump, Lowe, impatiently, “ Nana, ” Lowe, she’s, “ he’s, ” Organizations: Metropolitan, Fulton County Library, Trump Locations: Fulton

☆ Why California Democrats Aren’t Voting for Rep. Barbara Lee - The New York Times
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-05 | by ( Charles M. Blow | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

“The perspective, the lens, the representation, the experience of a Black woman from California is badly needed.”That’s what Representative Barbara Lee — a California Democrat vying for the Senate seat held for three decades by Dianne Feinstein — told a television reporter last month about why people should vote for her in the race. On Sunday, before a rally that evening outside a production studio in Los Angeles owned by the former N.B.A. all-star Baron Davis, I asked Lee what she meant by that, since Black people are only about 7 percent of the population of the state. She replied in a way that was both shrewd and true to her career in politics: “I’ve taken everything I know about what it means to be Black in America or brown in America or low-income in America or a woman in America and tried to turn it into policies.”

Persons: Barbara Lee —, Dianne Feinstein —, Baron Davis, Lee, “, ” Locations: California, Los Angeles, America

☆ Opinion | A Protest Against Biden Over the Gaza War
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-01 | by ( ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Donald Trump has never indicated the slightest interest in or concern for the plight of the Palestinian people. His interests lie more in making deals to accrue personal power or make money. But my real concern is for freedom, for environmental stewardship, for American global leadership, for standing up to tyrants, for supporting experts who actually know how to govern. The price of ceding our nation’s leadership to Mr. Trump and the regressive religious and social forces that fuel his popularity is just too high. Keep fighting, keep protesting, but please don’t bring down the diverse, free society that enables us all to fight for what we believe.

Persons: ”, Charles M, Donald Trump, Trump Organizations: Biden, Democratic Locations: Gaza, American

☆ Opinion | Arab American Fury Toward Biden
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-28 | by ( Charles M. Blow | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

On Monday, at a hip Arab coffee shop in Dearborn, Mich., Nihad Awad, a co-founder and the national executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, told me that as a Palestinian American Muslim who voted for Joe Biden in 2020, he feels “betrayed bitterly” over the administration’s position on the war in Gaza. So he was in the Detroit area this week to support the campaign to get voters to choose “uncommitted” in Michigan’s Democratic presidential primary on Tuesday. But as our conversation progressed, it became clear to me that his objective is not simply to send President Biden a message about the war and make him shift his policy, as is the aim of many I spoke with in Michigan in the past few days. Awad wants more. He doesn’t only want Biden to be politically corrected; he wants him politically crushed.

Persons: Nihad Awad, Joe Biden, “, Biden, Awad, Dawud Walid, Jesus Organizations: Islamic Relations, Palestinian, Palestinian American Muslim, Democratic, CAIR’s Locations: Dearborn, Mich, Palestinian American, Gaza, Detroit, Michigan, CAIR’s Michigan

☆ Opinion | The Political Perils of a Black-Jewish Rift Over the War in Gaza
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-07 | by ( Charles M. Blow | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

“There’s no alliance more historic, nor more important, than the alliance between Black Americans and Jewish Americans.”That’s what Marc Morial, the president of the National Urban League, said in 2020 during his organization’s Black-Jewish Unity Week joint event with the American Jewish Committee. But, Morial told me this week, that alliance is “being tested” by diverging views about the Israel-Hamas war. And that divergence could influence the way both constituencies — both of which traditionally support Democrats — approach this year’s elections. The relationship between these two communities is longstanding and hit its stride during the civil rights movement. But it hasn’t been without periods of friction.

Persons: “, ”, Marc Morial, Morial Organizations: Black, Jewish, National Urban League, Jewish Unity, American Jewish Locations: Israel

☆ Opinion | The Dawn of a New Era of Oppression
▼ + stars: | 2024-01-31 | by ( Charles M. Blow | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

I am fascinated, and alarmed, by the swiftness with which periods of backlash take shape after surges of Black progress, and I believe that we have entered another such period. Much of my inquiry on the matter has focused on the period after Reconstruction was allowed to fail and that saw Jim Crow begin to rise. Much of this was embodied by the state of Mississippi, which in 1870 was majority Black. White supremacists in the state developed the “Mississippi Plan” in advance of the state’s 1875 elections to use fraud and the intimidation of Black voters, including through violence, to retake state power from progressives. The plan worked.

Persons: Jim Crow, White, Black, Jason Phillips Organizations: Reconstruction, Mississippi Historical Society, Mississippi Department of Archives, Democratic, Republican Locations: Mississippi

☆ Turning Down Food Aid for Children Is Shockingly Callous - The New York Times
▼ + stars: | 2024-01-17 | by ( Charles M. Blow | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Some of those states have some of the highest poverty rates in the country, including Mississippi, with the highest rate, and Louisiana, where I grew up, with the second highest. When Louisiana rejected the lunch program, a Democrat was still the governor; on Jan. 8, a Republican took over. According to KFF, a nonprofit organization focused on health policy, seven of those states — Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Wyoming — are among those that have not fully extended Medicaid to the poor under the Affordable Care Act. Imagine withholding funding for food that would keep children healthy, while denying people medical care when they get sick. The cruelty of it is almost incomprehensible, but I’m convinced that this is all part of the punitive posture of so many of today’s Republicans — which in this case is meant to punish poverty, to intensify hardships: their version of an economic “scared straight” program.

Persons: —, KFF, I’m Organizations: Democrat, Republican, Affordable, Republicans — Locations: Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Florida, Georgia , Mississippi, South Carolina , Texas, Wyoming

☆ Opinion | An Electorate in Revolt Threatens Biden’s Chances
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-29 | by ( Charles M. Blow | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

I know all the warnings and caveats about polls taken a year before an election. So the choice next year should be clear, but the electorate keeps telling anyone listening that it’s not. The results of a New York Times/Siena College poll released this month showed Biden trailing Trump in five of six important battleground states. A recent NBC News national poll found that Trump was narrowly ahead of Biden. Pretty clearly, voters aren’t satisfied with their choices, but they’re also not rewarding Biden or punishing Trump in the ways that one might expect.

Persons: capably, Joe Biden, Donald Trump, Trump, Biden, they’re Organizations: New York Times, Siena, Biden, Trump, NBC News

☆ Opinion | Debates Over Words Amid War: ‘Antisemitism,’ ‘Anti-Zionism,’ ‘Apartheid’
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-24 | by ( ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

To the Editor:Re “The Question of Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism,” by Charles M. Blow (column, Nov. 16):The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism, adopted by dozens of countries around the world, indeed does define anti-Zionism as antisemitism. To debate Zionism is precisely the problem facing the Jews today and most especially Israelis who live in an absurd world in which the nature of their birthright is called into question, as every single Israeli is born of Zionism. How ironic that in this day and age in the United States, where every minority is protected and words matter more than ever, it is somehow acceptable to define oneself as anti-Zionist, even if Jewish. It is offensive, absurd and deeply antisemitic. As an American Israeli, I cannot stress enough how toxic this concept is to Israelis and how it does nothing to help the cause of peace today.

Persons: Charles M Locations: Israel, United States, American

☆ Opinion | The Question of Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-15 | by ( Charles M. Blow | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +6 min

Last week, I gave a lecture at the University of California at San Diego about politics and social justice. Afterward, as I was signing books, a young Black woman approached my table and whispered a question, asking me what I thought about the horrors playing out in Gaza. Almost all of them described themselves as anti-Zionist, but in our conversations, all of them also condemned antisemitism. When I talked to the pro-Palestinian activists and scholars, I posed a simple question that is often asked: Do you believe that Israel has a right to exist? When I told Greenblatt that none of my interviewees gave a direct “yes” to the right-to-exist question, he said that was “almost indescribably offensive” because he connects any hesitation on the question to historical antisemitism and a denial of the Jewish people’s right to self-determination.

Persons: Jonathan Greenblatt, Defamation League —, ”, I’m, Marc Lamont Hill, “, Hill, Greenblatt, “ There’s, ” Greenblatt, Israel Organizations: University of California, Palestinian, Defamation League, Amnesty, West Bank Locations: San Diego, Gaza, Israel, America, Palestine, East Jerusalem

☆ Opinion | The Joe Biden Re-election Dilemma
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-08 | by ( Charles M. Blow | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Joe Biden should be far and away the favorite to win re-election in 2024. The Democratic Party continues to score electoral victories as voters coalesce on the issue of abortion rights, as we saw in Ohio, Virginia and Kentucky on Tuesday night. But it is not clear at this point whether Biden’s fate is linked to down-ballot candidates or issues. In Ohio, where abortion access and marijuana legalization won, and in Pennsylvania, where a Democratic State Supreme Court justice won, Trump appears to hold an edge in several polls. Biden is polling ahead in Virginia, where Democrats flipped control of the House of Delegates and maintained control of the Senate, but it’s also a state where Democrats have won the last several presidential elections.

Persons: Joe Biden, Donald Trump, Trump, Biden, it’s Organizations: Republican, Democratic Party, Democratic Locations: American, Ohio , Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Arizona

☆ Opinion | I Grew Up in Mike Johnson’s District, Where Kindness Can Mask Cruelty
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-01 | by ( Charles M. Blow | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

I don’t know Mike Johnson, the brand-new speaker of the House of Representatives, but I feel as if I do because we’re from the same neck of the woods. He’s from Shreveport, in Caddo Parish, La., where I was born and where one of my brothers died. He graduated from Louisiana State University. to accept one at Grambling State University, a historically Black college about a half-hour east of Gibsland. He also wrote opinion essays for the newspaper where I cut my teeth as a working journalist, The Shreveport Times.

Persons: Mike Johnson Organizations: Louisiana State University, Grambling State University, Shreveport Times Locations: He’s, Shreveport, Caddo Parish, La, Johnson’s, Gibsland, Bienville

☆ Opinion | Solidarity Between American Activists and Palestinians — Including a Rebuke of Biden
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-25 | by ( Charles M. Blow | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +6 min

There are two pivotal events that seem to have ignited the new era of solidarity between some young American activists and the people of Palestine. The first came in the form of Palestinian activists expressing support on social media for the 2014 protests in Ferguson, Mo., which activists describe as an uprising, not just a series of protests. Around that time, a small delegation of Palestinians even traveled to Ferguson and St. Louis to meet with American activists. It called back to a time when an American figure as notable as Malcolm X spoke out for the Palestinian cause. Even activists who didn’t make these journeys describe coming to this cause in part through personal connections with Palestinians and Palestinian Americans.

Persons: Cherrell Brown, Ferguson, St, Louis, Ahmad Abuznaid, Trayvon Martin, Marc Lamont Hill, Abuznaid, Hill, Malcolm X, Amanda Seales, “ we’re, Biden, Shaun King, King, Maurice Mitchell, ” Tiffany Loftin, Charles, ”, Donald Trump Organizations: American, Palestinian, United, Defamation League, The Daily News, Facebook, Twitter, Working Families Party, Democratic Party, Biden Locations: Palestine, Ferguson, Mo, Israel, Jerusalem, Palestinian American, United Nations, Gaza

☆ Opinion | An Evolving Moral High Ground in the Israel-Gaza War
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-18 | by ( Charles M. Blow | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Yet there’s been an acute debate around this very question here in America in recent days. Most Americans assess this conflict the way they do many others: at arm’s-length and an ocean away. And they do so through the prism of their own sense of fairness and justice. It is a part of who they are and how they think. And it is with that compass that many of them evaluate the broader dispute over Israel’s control of the Palestinian territories and the immediate conflict between Israel and Hamas.

Persons: there’s, Elizabeth Alexander, Andrew W, Trayvon Martin Organizations: Israel, Mellon Foundation, Hamas Locations: America, Israel

☆ Opinion | When Trump Says ‘People,’ He Means ‘His People’
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-27 | by ( Charles M. Blow | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

When he says “our once great country,” he means the country when it most benefited those most devoted to him, at a time when the racial hierarchy was more fixed, the patriarchy was more entrenched, immigrant communities were often whiter and gender identities were more rigid. There’s a reason Trump never attempted to govern as a unifier and isn’t running for re-election as one. It isn’t as simple as saying that Trump wants to drag the country backward. He wants to do something far more destructive: He wants to marry the country’s more intolerant past to a more autocratic future. They idolize Trump because his craven desire for power, and the protection from prosecution that he believes it will provide, would also offer them a ride on his coattails.

Persons: Trump, craven Organizations: Comcast Locations: America

☆ Opinion | What Does America Owe the Victims of Racial Terrorism?
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-13 | by ( Charles M. Blow | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

I met Sarah Collins Rudolph, a small woman nestled into a corded khaki sofa, last month in her darkened living room in Birmingham, Ala. The room is something of a shrine, commemorating the 1963 act of terror that killed four little girls but spared a fifth. She was that fifth little girl. She survived the Ku Klux Klan bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham 60 years ago. In the years leading up to that attack, white terrorists, raging against integration, were detonating bombs in Birmingham so often that the city earned an ignominious nickname: Bombingham.

Persons: Sarah Collins Rudolph, Rudolph Organizations: Klux Klan, Baptist Church Locations: Birmingham, Ala

☆ Opinion | DeSantis Shrank in Ramaswamy’s Shadow
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-24 | by ( Charles M. Blow | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

In a crowded debate, you can tell which candidates are seen as the greatest threat because they take the most incoming fire from their rivals. Watching the DeSantis campaign collapse has been an extraordinarily edifying spectacle. Trump endorsed DeSantis for governor of Florida when DeSantis was struggling against a strong Republican opponent for the party’s nomination. So, there was always something in the DeSantis campaign that knew that he was Macbeth coming to kill his king. He lacks the courage, which is ironic given that DeSantis wrote a book before his run entitled, “The Courage to Be Free.”

Persons: Ron DeSantis, Donald Trump’s, Vivek Ramaswamy, DeSantis, Macbeth, ” Organizations: Republican, Trump, Be Locations: Florida

☆ Opinion | Using Frederick Douglass to Rationalize Slavery? In Florida, Yes!
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-16 | by ( Charles M. Blow | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Last month, the Florida Department of Education announced that grade-school teachers could use videos produced by Dennis Prager’s PragerU Kids in their classrooms. PragerU is no more a university than Trump University was. In fine type at the bottom of its webpage, it admits that “PragerU is not an accredited university, nor do we claim to be. We don’t offer degrees, but we do provide educational, entertaining, pro-American videos for every age.”In reality, PragerU is little more than a propaganda media site. The Southern Poverty Law Center takes an even dimmer view of its credentials, saying, “PragerU seems to be yet another node on the internet connecting conservative media consumers to the dark corners of the extreme right.”

Persons: Ron DeSantis’s, Dennis Prager’s, “ PragerU, ” Organizations: Republican, Florida Department of Education, Trump University, Southern Poverty Law Center Locations: Florida

☆ Opinion | The Montgomery Brawl Was, for Some, a Clarifying Moment
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-09 | by ( Charles M. Blow | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The Alabama Sweet Tea Party. That was one nickname people gave to a brawl this past Saturday on a Montgomery, Ala., riverfront dock, captured in viral videos, after a group of white people attacked Damien Pickett, a Black riverboat co-captain who was trying to clear a berth for his vessel, and a group of Black people came to Pickett’s defense. In some obvious ways the whole episode is sad: The situation should never have descended into violence. The people who were asked to move their boat so that the riverboat could dock in its reserved space should simply have complied. But in other ways, many Black people, in particular, saw it as an unfortunate but practically unavoidable response to what can feel like an unending stream of incidents in which Black people are publicly victimized, with no one willing or able to intervene or render aid.

Persons: Damien Pickett Organizations: Alabama Sweet Tea Party, Black Locations: Montgomery, Ala, United States

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