National News - Page 39

First college class after affirmative action ruling struggling with feeling their identity doesn’t matter

By Char Adams, Kimmy Yam, Sandra Lilley, Emi Tuyetnhi Tran and Cora Cervantes As a rising high school senior trying to figure out the next several years of her life, Gabrielle Wilson sees Thursday’s Supreme Court decision on race-conscious admissions as a possible hurdle. “I think if affirmative action was taken away, it would make me not as hopeful about getting into the higher institutions I would like to apply for, such as Harvard,” said Gabrielle, 17, who will be a senior at the private De La Salle Institute in Chicago this fall. Gabrielle spoke to NBC News before the Supreme Court decision Thursday that vastly restricts race-conscious

A 2013 Supreme Court decision invited widespread voter suppression laws, experts say

By Char Adams The Black-white voter turnout gap in Alabama and other states has widened in the 10 years since the Supreme Court gutted part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that for decades restricted states from enacting voting policies that stanched Black voter participation, data shows. In 2013, the court ruled 5-4 in Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder that Section 4 of the act was unconstitutional. This meant that the nine states and other smaller divisions once subject to what’s known as “preclearance” due to their histories of voter discrimination no longer had to clear changes to voting access rules with

With Supreme Court Decision, College Admissions Could Become More Subjective

By Anemone Hartocollis In the Supreme Court decision striking down racial and ethnic preferences in college admissions, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. had harsh words for Harvard and the University of North Carolina, calling their admissions process “elusive,” “opaque” and “imponderable.” But the court’s ruling against the two universities on Thursday could lead to an admissions system that is even more subjective and mysterious, as colleges try to follow the law but also admit a diverse class of students. Officials at some universities predicted that there would be less emphasis on standardized metrics like test scores and class rank, and more emphasis on

How the son of sharecroppers helped send the world’s most powerful telescope to space

By Rachel Treisman NASA released the first batch of images from the James Webb telescope this week, wowing the world with never-before-seen views of ancient and distant galaxies. The approximately $10 billion telescope was decades in the making, a partnership with the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency that involved some 20,000 collaborators across 29 countries and 14 U.S. states. It finally launched in December 2021 after a long string of setbacks and delays that led some astronomers to fear it might never get off the ground. Gregory Robinson wasn’t one of them. The career NASA employee was brought in as director of the

Congress and Postal Service unveil stamp honoring John Lewis

By Megan Lebowitz  House leaders and the head of the U.S. Postal Service unveiled a stamp Wednesday honoring the late Rep. John Lewis. The stamp design features a 2013 photograph of Lewis, D-Ga., taken by Marco Grob for Time magazine, the Postal Service said in a news release. The selvage, or a stamp pane’s margin, will feature a 1963 photograph of Lewis taken by Steve Schapiro outside a nonviolent protest workshop. The official dedication ceremony for the John Lewis Forever stamp will take place July 21 at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy said at Wednesday’s event on Capitol Hill. He also said the Postal

Tori Bowie’s death shows how pervasive racial disparities are in maternal health

By Char Adams The death of Olympic track and field star Tori Bowie, who died of pregnancy complications last month, has prompted questions about how a seemingly healthy, financially stable person could face such a tragic outcome. Experts say that the racial health disparities that lead to maternal health complications for Black people persist despite a person’s economic status or clean bill of health. In short, it could happen to any Black person. “Maternal mortality for Black women has nothing to do with health or economic status,” said D’Andra Willis, of The Afiya Center, a Black-centered reproductive justice group. “You could be

With festivals and reflection, America marks Juneteenth

By Daniel Arkin Americans from coast to coast celebrated Juneteenth this weekend, taking to the streets to commemorate the end of slavery after the Civil War. Black people in the U.S. have observed Juneteenth since the late 1800s. In the summer of 2021, after nationwide protests over systemic racism renewed interest in Juneteenth, President Joe Biden signed legislation that made June 19 a federal holiday. The holiday honors the day in 1865 when enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, learned they had been freed — 2½ years after President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. The celebrations included cookouts, parades, line dancing,

Everything you need to know about California’s reparations report

By Curtis Bunn After more than two years of fact-finding, reports and public hearings, the California Reparations Task Force on June 29 will hand over to the California Assembly its extensive report and recommendations for compensation to eligible Black people of California for the harms of slavery. California was not a slave state, but more than 4,000 enslaved Black people were taken there between 1850 and 1860, typically by plantation owners, to work in the gold mines. They settled in California after slavery ended, many creating wealth, buying land and building communities, only to face generations of discrimination, land theft or seizure,

What Is Juneteenth? Here’s Why We Honor the Federal Holiday

By Mckenzie Jean-Phillippe A key American historical event has finally gotten federal recognition: June 19, 1865—the day all people living in the United States, including the formerly enslaved, were officially granted freedom. On June 17, 2021, President Joe Biden signed a bill into law making the day known as Juneteenth a national holiday. “Great nations don’t ignore their most painful moments. They don’t ignore those moments in the past. They embrace them,” Biden said at the White House signing. “Great nations don’t walk away. We come to terms with the mistakes we made. And in remembering those moments, we begin to heal and grow

California skate park is named for Black motorist fatally beaten in police traffic stop

Officials dedicated a California skate park Sunday in honor of Tyre Nichols, a Black man who spent much of his youth in the state and was killed in January in what prosecutors said was a fatal beating by police in Tennessee during a traffic stop. An avid skateboarder, Nichols spent much time as a youth at the park on the outskirts of Sacramento. City officials and others held a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the newly renovated skate park now named for Nichols. Nichols moved to Memphis, Tennessee, shortly before the coronavirus pandemic and lived there with his mother and stepfather. He enjoyed photography

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