Miami Dolphins head coach Mike McDaniel ought to know why he’s being asked about race

Miami Dolphins head coach Mike McDaniel, hired by a team that’s been accused of discriminating against Black men, doesn’t describe himself as Black even though, according to the American rules of race, he is. McDaniel was born in the United States to a white mother and a Black father, which, according to the way race is understood here, makes him Black. That means that the National Football League can conceivably use his hiring as a kind of rebuttal to Brian Flores, the head coach the Dolphins just fired.

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The growing movement to save Black cemeteries

Greenwood Cemetery was the first commercial cemetery serving the black community in St. Louis. But without dedicated caretakers, it fell into neglect and attracted vandals. The Greenwood Cemetery Preservation Association has taken up the cause, like similar organizations around the nation, of preserving these pieces of history.

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Black History Can Do More Than Counter White Racism

Black history is a movement of ideas targeted to redress the long history of anti-Blackness. Anti-Blackness is a totalizing system of thought that positions Black people, including their bodies, culture, and value systems, as bad or dysfunctional. But Black history does more than counter anti-Black ideologies; it also documents the social contexts, experiences, aesthetics, and intellectual pursuits of African Americans. This idea of both countering white racism and writing and creating from one’s standpoint—removed from the white gaze—is central to Black history.

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