In “This Isn’t Justice,” Angelina Chapin writes about the indictment of former police officer Brett Hankison on charges of “wanton endangerment” in the killing of Breonna Taylor. Chapin points out that Taylor’s name is not directly referenced in the charges, which center on a shattered glass door in an apartment adjacent to Taylor’s. Chapin writes, “The woman whose death helped to galvanize mass protests and a racial reckoning in America was quite literally erased by the justice system.”
Poynter looks at how the media covered yesterday’s grand jury ruling on the Taylor case. BuzzFeed News rounds up the reaction on social media.
Joshua Briond writes about how the Black Lives Matter movement has been co-opted and commodified in the “Anti-Racist Economy.” Briond singles out books such as White Fragility as being emblematic of this shift, which, Briond argues, has failed to produce real allies: “The liberal anti-racist economy is fundamentally unwilling and ill-equipped to grapple with this and racial[ized] contradictions of capital(ism)—the likes of which Black radicals of the Black radical tradition have theorized and highlighted on for decades now.”
On the Quarantine Tapes podcast, Paul Holdengräber talks with Eddie S. Glaude Jr. about his new book on James Baldwin, Begin Again. Glaude tells Holdengräber: “We have to, in some ways, grab the country by the collar and pull it into maturity. That’s going to require an honest reckoning with what we’ve done.” For more on reading Baldwin in apocalyptic times, see Bookforum’s interview with Glaude in the new issue.
The Washington Post’s executive editor, Marty Baron, has written a memo to staff outlining five guidelines for covering leaked or hacked newsworthy material in the run-up to the presidential election. Looking to atone for the way the paper covered the hacked emails of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta in 2016, Baron asks editors and writers to make “sound and well-considered decisions” rather than simply trying to keep up with competitors.
Tonight, the 92nd Street Y will host Nicholas Lemann and Julian Zelizer discussing Zelizer’s new book Burning Down the House, which looks at how Newt Gingrich’s rise led to a new kind of Republican politics.