Milo Yiannopoulos, a far-right provocateur who actively promoted fringe conspiracies and racial controversies during his tenure in America, was officially deported to Great Britain on August 28, according to the Department of Homeland Security. Mr. Yiannopoulos, an early and staunch supporter of Donald Trump who eventually engaged in anti-Semitic rhetoric, was arrested on Thursday by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport for overstaying his visa. At least, that is the official narrative. A few weeks ago, Yiannopoulos accused loyal Trump supporter Laura Lo0mer of sexually servicing President Trump and waged a public war with rabid conservative podcaster Benny Johnson by accusing him of being a closeted gay man who has engaged in multiple affairs and meddling in the personal affairs of Elijah Schaeffer ,another right wing influencer. Apparently, this so enraged Loomer, Johnson and Schaeffer that each of them apparently vowed to make him pay for his antics. Loomer did seem to be quite the happy pundit last week publicly taking credit for Yiannopoulos’ deportation.

For those of you who know nothing about Milo Yiannopoulos, let me break it down for you. He was previously deported almost a decade earlier after becoming an early and prominent supporter of Mr. Trump’s initial presidential campaign. His influence was fleeting at best. In a 2017 video, he advocated adult sexual relations with boys as young as 13 and seemed to minimize pedophilia by Roman Catholic priests. At the time, such disturbing comments cost him a lucrative book deal, then his position at Breitbar.com and an invitation to speak at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, also known as CPAC. One could argue that it is such a delicious irony that this adamantly anti-Muslim, pro-immigrant crackdown, pro-ICE, pro-deportation individual has now suddenly found himself a victim of such restrictive policies.

The better part of a decade ago, during a 2016 interview on the Joe Rogan podcast, he concluded that sexual relationships between adult men and teenage boys could be “beneficial.” He did not stop there. He said that, in some cases, such sexual relations are often “hugely positive.” He was not done yet. He opined that in many cases these older men often help younger boys “discover who they are.” Yes, you read that correctly! Understandably, condemnation from across the political spectrum was swift. In fact, many of his fellow employees at Breitbart threatened to resign if Yiannopoulos was not terminated for his remarks. He later blamed such perverse comments on “deceptive editing” in addition to his tendency to use “imprecise language.” He eventually added that he absolutely does not support pedophilia and that he had been the victim of sexual abuse as a young child.

WHEW! Well, thank goodness he believes that pedophilia is criminal and is unacceptable! Of course, if he was, in fact, the victim of sexual abuse at the hands of perverted and unscrupulous men, this was terrible, he deserves our sympathy, and the perpetrators deserve prosecution. There is no statute of limitations for pedophilia. Commentary aside, it is inconceivable to me that Yiannopoulos could have even harbored the most remote belief that sexual relationships between adults and children are healthy. They are not, period! Yiannopoulos is not the only guilty person in this sordid saga. It was widely known that he had a history of making outlandish, abrasive, and offensive comments about marginalized groups.

Yiannopoulos, a Greek-born, British-raised, half-Jewish, gay man, has had a deplorable history denouncing, denigrating, and disrespecting others. In fact, he seemed to take perverse and sadistic delight in doing so. Indeed, he has been all too eager to assist in the conservative right’s dirty work. He has routinely hurled vicious and salacious insults at immigrants; Muslims; certain Blacks (in particular Black Lives Matter); gays and lesbians (he says that he is no longer gay); transgendered people; Hispanics; feminists; women in general; people with disabilities; and all those for whom many on the political, social, and cultural right (and far right in particular) reserve an intense disdain, viewing them with a politically and socially jaundiced eye and rabidly labeling them as “the other.” In an interview he informed Tucker Carlson that “mainstreaming homosexuality in the Republican Party is the great regret of my life.”

Yiannopoulos’s own disqualifications, which many in this retrograde audience would accept, were intentionally overlooked, and he received a pass. These are the people for whom racism, anti-Semitism, misogyny, homophobia, xenophobia, etc. are de rigeur. Yiannopoulos also kept his eye on national politics, working on the 2024 presidential campaign of Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, who fell from grace after praising Adolf Hitler and making a series of anti-Semitic comments. on September 1st, he appeared on Piers Morgan Uncensored, a YouTube show presented by Piers Morgan, the British broadcaster and media personality.

He described the experience in the US as “humiliating and disorientating”, “physically degrading” and “frightening.” He further stated that he was “ashamed” of his previous support for Donald Trump, who has pursued a litany of mass deportation throughout his second presidency.“ I didn’t really understand the physical reality of how institutionalized the brutality is in America” he said, adding: “It’s like everybody that’s arrested is an MS-13 gang member, and it hurts a lot more than it looks like on television.” Indeed, blind arrogance and callousness can catch up with people.

Last year, in posts on social media, Yiannopoulos had been a stauch supporter of Trump’s deportation program. In one post, he commented: “There is one concrete thing we must insist on this administration delivering. It matters a lot more than debts measured in imaginary money. We have got to deport millions and millions and millions of people. Without that, nothing else matters.” Oh, the karmic irony and reality that befell him!

Milo Yiannopoulos should have known from the outset that the “inclusion” afforded to him was temporary at best and came with strings attached. He would have to genuflect to his far-right audience and financial benefactors; he could never speak ill of true, genuine racists, homophobes, anti-Semites (if they were conservatives), xenophobes and others who revel in intolerance; and he had to hammer the left ruthlessly by increasingly ramping up his acerbic, acid-tongue rhetoric. By pleasing his benefactors, he would receive ample compensation from right-of-center business groups and conservative political organizations. His recent attacks on the Trump administration and, specifically, his alliance with certain right-wing personalities such as Kanye West, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Nick Fuentes, aroused the wrath of largely intolerant,mainstream conservatives.

Modern-day conservative politics is deeply populated with numerous officials and candidates who have demonstrated fierce and unmistakable allegiance toward Donald Trump and the larger MAGA movement. They expect the commander in chief would reward such loyalty only to recognize the dispiriting and demoralizing realization that he would throw them to the wolves when they needed his support. Mike Pence, Kevin McCarthy, Reince Priebus, Mo Brooks, Ronna McDaniell, Elise Stefanik, etc. all suffered the same fate: Loyalty is something Trump expects to receive, not reciprocate. We can now add Milo Yiannopoulos to the list of the disregarded allies who learned this humiliating lesson.

No one should feel too sorry for Milo Yiannopoulos. Like many fabulists, he is likely plotting his return to the public arena. To quote P.T. Barnum, “a sucker is born every minute.” Thus, we can expect Milo to charm and weave his way successfully into the good graces of some gullible factions looking for a colorful personality, no matter how morally flawed or compromised. Milo Yiannopoulos is well suited for such a task.

Elwood Watson Ph.D. is a professor of History, Black Studies, and Gender and Sexuality Studies at East Tennessee State University. He is a cultural critic, syndicated columnist, and author of the books,: Talkin’ To You, Bro!: Liberate Yourself from the Confusing, Ambiguous Messages of Contemporary Masculinity (Lasting Impact Press, 2021) and Keepin’ It Real: Essays on Race in Contemporary America. https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/K/bo40060337.html (University of Chicago Press 2019)

Dynamic, delightful Dolly Parton, who sold more than 100 million records and whose songwriting power and often ironhanded approach to her career transformed country music, popular music, and the larger entertainment industry, passed away on August 25 at the age of 80.

Following the universally beloved international entertainer and icon’s passing, Parton’s nephew, Bryan Seaver, commented in a video that “Dolly also opened doors for generations of singers, songwriters, musicians, and dreamers from every walk of life and across every continent. By her example, we believed that anything was possible. She never saw a door she couldn’t open, and the doors she opened made and changed history. My family and I have shared a lifetime of beautiful memories with Dolly but so have you. She has always been on your television, your record player, your CD, and on your phone playlist, becoming an extended part of your family, whether you liked it or not.” Everything he stated was profoundly true.

Her life was a female Horatio Alger story! Born into abject poverty in Sevierville, Tennessee, Sevier County in the East Tennessee mountains, at a time when being poor and female was a double disadvantage, she went on to conquer the entertainment industry and the larger world with her talent, charm, wit, authenticity, generosity, and magnetic personality! The fourth of twelve children, Parton was no stranger to adversity. All aspects of her life, from the songs she sang and her specific social activism to her unvarnished downhome wit, occasional ribald humor and fierce independence, personified her impoverished upbringing. Her music and persona connected with numerous individuals suffering in silence or solitude despite the hopeful messages such songs conveyed.

From the outset of her career in the mid-1960s and onward, Parton’s songs dramatically seized on details of her impoverished rural roots in the Appalachian Mountains, details that genuinely defined her perspectives on life, love, and relationships. She inspired later generations of songwriters and performers captivated by her congenial spirit, delicious wit, and down-to-earth homespun wisdom. Being the most successful female country artist of all time and one of the most recognizable artists in the world, Parton wrote thousands of songs that resonated with the public.

Indeed, the most sustaining parts of her legacy are the emotions she deftly captured in song. Some of her most popular hits depicted pivotal situations from her life in contemporary era stories. “Coat of Many Colors” narrates a period in her impoversihed youth when her mother assembled rags to make a coat that her classmates teased her about. The sexy bank teller with “flaming locks of auburn hair” who focused her attention on her husband in “Jolene,” an immensely successful hit that numerous artists have recorded over the decades, was revelatory in its gut-wrenching drama and blatant, heart-aching confession of vulnerability and personal insecurity. She even flirted with disco with her 1977 song “Baby I’m Burning.” The realization that we have outgrown one another was the unmistakable message in “I Will Always Love You,” as she made it clear to her mentor and business manager, Porter Wagoner. The song sold more than 20 million copies when the late mega-successful singer Whitney Houston recorded it for the 1992 film The Bodyguard, further cementing Parton as an influential, genre-defying artist.

Artists such as Tammy Wynette, Patsy Cline, and Loretta Lynn had conquered the pop charts earlier. Lynn, largely considered as the first lady of country music, was indeed an indisputable pioneer of the genre. Nonetheless, it would be hard to deny that Dolly Parton helped take country music (some call it country/pop) to a new level. With her massive crossover signature hit “9–5,” also a hit film, and her smash duet “Islands in the Stream” with co-superstar Kenny Rogers, the impact of her presence was undeniable. By the early 1980s, numerous radio stations switched their format to country music and country music artists such as Eddie Rabbit, Juice Newton, and others were occasionally topping the pop charts. Prior to such a renaissance, the genre had dedicated yet limited appeal outside of rural areas and niche markets. Even today, contemporary artists such as Taylor Swift, Sabrina Carpenter, Beyoncé, and Chappell Roan among others recognize Parton’s influence.

Her public stances on social issues were initially often subtle, although one could begin to discern her position as time progressed. While she never referred to herself as a feminist, her actions demonstrated that she embraced the movement’s philosophy. Her progressive stances were not lost on the Black community. Following Whitney Houston’s death in 2012, Parton invested the royalties she earned from Houston’s cover of “I Will Always Love You” (an estimated $10 million) into an office complex in a Black neighborhood in Nashville, calling it “the house that Whitney built.” Upon her death, numerous Black celebrities and politicians paid homage to Ms. Parton, including former Vice President Kamala Harris, Colman Domingo, Jennifer Hudson, Shaboozy, Debbie Allen, Mickey Guyton, rapper Juicy J, Donna Brazile, Beyoncé, Dionne Warwick and others all recognizing her support of Black issues and causes.

The LGBTQIA+ community, another marginalized population, adored Dolly Parton, and she returned such admiration by telling people that they had the right to be their true selves. She also quietly fostered change using her fortune. In 1986, she opened the Dollywood theme park in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, which became the region’s major job provider. Despite not being a parent, she was unrelenting in her splendid efforts to help children. In 1995, she launched Dolly’s Imagination Library. Originating in her native Sevier County and then expanding throughout the nation, the program mails a book each month to children from birth to age five to encourage literacy and a love of reading. Furthering her altruistic spirit, during the COVID-19 pandemic, she donated $1 million to help fund the development of a vaccine. Her generosity made headlines when she reportedly donated $1 million to Vanderbilt University Medical Center. My own institution was the recipient of her kindness.

A savvy and formidable entrepreneur, her imprint was evident everywhere from food and alcohol to wine, desserts, and clothing. She even opened a truck stop. A hotel bearing her name will open in Nashville later this year. During a 60 Minutes , interview in 2009, she stated, “By the time they think that I don’t know what’s going on, I’ve done got the money and gone.” As she made it clear, she was no “dumb blonde.”

The world has lost an immensely influential icon. Dolly Parton was an artist, humanitarian, philanthropist, businessperson and all-around Renaissance woman who endeared herself to people from varied walks of life as well as across the political spectrum. She was nothing short of an angel during her time on Earth. Her life was nothing short of extraordinary. We will always love and remember you, Dolly. May you rest in peace!

Elwood Watson Ph.D. is a professor of History, Black Studies, and Gender and Sexuality Studies at East Tennessee State University. He is a cultural critic, syndicated columnist, and author of the books,: Talkin’ To You, Bro!: Liberate Yourself from the Confusing, Ambiguous Messages of Contemporary Masculinity (Lasting Impact Press, 2021) and Keepin’ It Real: Essays on Race in Contemporary America. https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/K/bo40060337.html (University of Chicago Press 2019)

The frenzy began when congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez remarked on the phrase in an August 9th interview on ABC News with interview journalist Jonathan Karl. Asked about Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong’s onetime support for prison abolition and the defunding of law enforcement, Ocasio-Cortez quoted New York City Councilman Chi Ossé’s assertion that “Woke 1 was crazyyyy.” During the same interview she stated that she did say that a large “opening of the Overton Window” had occurred in 2020 and further remarked that the commentary and debates that dominated the time period were quite beneficial. Yet she eventually conceded that she would more than likely refrain from employing similar rhetoric in the present.

Unsurprisingly, like rabid dogs, political moderates, and right-wing conservatives fiercely seized on her comments. Frankly, such a reaction was hardly surprising given the fact that one of the most recognizable left-wing politicians in the nation had publicly conceded on national television that the left had become too extreme over the past few years. Such unfiltered commentary implication from Ocasio-Cortez and Ossé was intentional. The 2020 protests criticizing police violence and the accompanying verbiage that resulted from the period resulted in an untamed movement that resulted in many individuals, including themselves, embracing positions that were misguided. Now, having learned the “error of their ways,” they’ have evolved into more politically refined individuals.

The genesis of the term woke has been debated; however, the common consensus is that certain Black activists used it during the mid-20th century as a clarion call for Black people to stand defiant in the fight against systemic and institutional racism. The term was frequently employed by both Black Americans and non-Black supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement during the 2010s. Then at some point a segment of far-right conservatives and even a few neoliberals and pseudo-progressives in the early 2020s started using the word to ridicule what they perceived to be overly dramatic, substance-deficient, and politically empty gestures of racial and gender politics.

Soon to be the former governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis introduced the Stop Woke Act (Stop Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees Act), which tried to prohibit schools and businesses from discussing critical race theory, sexism, and other oppressive vices. Then Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell declared that corporations must stop listening to calls for equity; otherwise, they would fall prey to “a woke parallel government.” Right-wing commentator Ben Shapiro held live events to discuss “how wokeness is destroying America.” And a Santa Barbara Independent op-ed praised far-right podcaster Charlie Kirk for “going into the lion’s den of woke.” Indeed, the right had gone full in on weaponizing (mostly unsuccessfully) the term woke.

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There is no agreed-upon definition of woke. Many of the term’s detractors do not even understand what the term means. This provides a perverse opportunity for such individuals to assign vague meanings to the word, rendering it void of any concrete definition. Thus, it became a useful term for politicians to distort and weaponize to attack any person, event, or movement they might dislike. They also consider the term and the movement associated with it as an unalterable threat to their political, social, and cultural advancement. Sad to say, such an empty and sinister value system leaves much to be desired.

Some frantically attempt to abandon past terminology perceived as retrograde and embarrassing and move to avidly embrace and adopt language that is potentially more culturally suitable and appropriate for future agendas. They will, in all probability, find that the process is not as simple as tossing such previous words aside in favor of an updated form of newspeak. Woke 1.0 (or “peak wokeness”), as certain social media cultural warriors referred to the era, wish it was not simply a futile exercise in wordplay. The so-called woke movement addressed politics, culture, and the environment in addition to robustly challenging the attitudes and the social, political, and cultural trends it provoked. Indeed, it was a phenomenon that adroitly addressed deeply entrenched issues such as the relationship between law enforcement and minority communities, more commonly known as police brutality. It included the right of women to be free of and to pursue recourse for enduring sexual harassment or assault, giving rise to the #MeToo movement. Wokeness addressed the systemic and institutional racism and sexism that plagued and damaged both women and minorities.

More importantly, wokeness was highly successful in reconstructing the endemic structures that developed and maintained such oppressive systems. The movement encouraged higher education institutions to expand and diversify their curriculum to incorporate a diverse and pluralistic group of perspectives instead of embracing disproportionately Eurocentric curriculums that routinely marginalized the contributions of women and people of color. As an academic, I found this to be nothing short of immensely psychologically cathartic. The woke movement challenged the media to look inward, to do some serious soul searching regarding how an institution ponders its coverage of certain issues. Although some actors in the movement may have been a little over the top in their antics, such efforts were noble and far from being “crazy.”

The gruesome murder of George Floyd in May 2020 by rogue police officer Derek Chauvin was viewed by much of the larger society as evidence of a major societal crisis that had to be addressed. That same year, the additional deaths of Breonna Taylor , Rayshard Brooks , and Michael Ramos further jolted the nation, and the names of the aforementioned individuals resulted in millions of Americans taking to the streets at the height of the COVID pandemic to condemn police brutality. The victims’ names became symbolic of racial justice both domestically and globally. Anyone who was supportive of such movements was agitating for progress and placed themselves on the correct, moral side of history.

Admittedly, some of the methods promoting supposed wokeness were dreadfully performative and misguided. Democratic congresspeople wore kente cloth and knelt on the floor of the US Capital as Congress introduced the Justice in Policing Act of 2020. Representative Nancy Pelosi posthumously thanked George Floyd for “sacrificing” his life “for justice.” Both instances were nothing short of cringeworthy. Certainly, there were certain individuals scouring social media attempting to monitor and dictate what others wrote or said, resulting in the loss of employment for certain individuals and the “cancelling” of others. That being said, a few bad apples do not a movement make.

Wokeness, as the genuine definition of the terms implies, is a noble concept. It is an astute, forward-looking philosophy that is diverse, inclusive, and frequently holistic in nature. There is no reason why anyone should feel the need to apologize for endorsing such beliefs. Rather, what must be confronted and combated are the menacing and devious efforts of right-wing individuals and organizations who all too often do everything in their power to dictate, distort, and dehumanize the spirit of wokeness and deride, decry, and dismiss its true message every opportunity they get. Period.

Elwood Watson Ph.D. is a professor of History, Black Studies, and Gender and Sexuality Studies at East Tennessee State University. He is a cultural critic, syndicated columnist, and author of the books,: Talkin’ To You, Bro!: Liberate Yourself from the Confusing, Ambiguous Messages of Contemporary Masculinity (Lasting Impact Press, 2021) and Keepin’ It Real: Essays on Race in Contemporary America. https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/K/bo40060337.html (University of Chicago Press 2019)

Dr. Jason Arday’s tragic death has elicited various reactions throughout the academic world and society, particularly in social media. Arday, who had recently resigned as a professor from the University of Cambridge after becoming the target of deeply entrenched media coverage that cast doubt on his academic pedigree, scholarship, and other facets of his life story, was found dead on August 14. The British newspaper The Telegraph reported that Arday, 41, was found “unresponsive” at an address in South London. An ambulance arrived shortly after 3 p.m. UK time, and medical personnel pronounced Arday dead at the scene. They discovered his body in his home.

In recent investigations, independent writers, smaller local outlets, and high-profile publications found evidence of academic misconduct throughout Arday’s publications, including abundant plagiarism. Further coverage raised doubts or disproved specific claims Arday had made about his personal achievements, among them his charitable efforts and athletic endeavors. The Atlantic revealed that Arday’s recently released memoir contained “disturbing inconsistencies” from his previous claims.

In response to such aggressive coverage of serious shortcomings in Arday’s academic work and public commentary, the University of Cambridge announced on August 5 that it opened an investigation “following new information about Professor Arday’s academic qualifications and honorary appointments.” Later that same day, Arday announced his resignation. “Sadly, the years since my appointment have also been marked by an unrelenting level of public scrutiny and personal attack,” Arday stated in his resignation letter. “While criticism is an inevitable part of academic life, what I have experienced has gone far beyond scholarly disagreement. The relentless accusations, speculation and public commentary have taken a profound toll on me and on those I love.” Arday, at age 37 in 2023, was Cambridge University’s youngest Black professor in the institution’s history.

Rather than focus on the late sociology professor’s saga and death, progressive scholars need to be ever vigilant about fending off and dismissing attacks from conservative organizations. The result of the Jason Arday affair has been the rightwing media and political classes’ all-out, full-frontal attack on institutional diversity. Indeed, many segments of the conservative right were overjoyed with the Arday scandal. As they saw it, Arday’s conduct reaffirmed their highly misguided assumptions that DEI programs were farcical entities that resulted in the hiring and promotion of unqualified professors of color and, in some cases, women.

Indeed, many on the right, in particular cosmopolitan racists, engaged in shameful levels of schadenfreude as they reveled in Mr. Arday’s dramatic fall from grace. Many of us of African descent are well aware that, in the eyes of many White conservatives (and some neo and paternalistic White liberals), when a White person errs in judgment, society quickly limits such untoward and reductive antics as behavior confined to that individual. Sad to say, if we are being honest, some fellow scholars of color have , mostly privately ( a few publicly) took smug satisfaction in the public and personal demise of the late academic. In particular, those who resented his prominence and jealously viewed him as competition. When a non-White, in particular, Black person engages in shameful or problematic shenanigans, such behavior is usually declared definitive proof of the supposedly “wanton, retrograde, juvenile, inferior, genetical predilections” historically ascribed to their race. Indeed, Jason Arday was hardly alone in such controversy.

Whether due to willfull and genuine ignorance, many, if not most, conservatives and some neoliberals have failed to comprehend DEI’s purpose. It has nothing to do with lowering standards or performing charitable acts. DEI is about promoting fair treatment and full participation for those who have faced discrimination or been underrepresented. It is about recruiting individuals with different characteristics and perspectives into the workforce. The result of such efforts is that organizations engage in more enlightened and informed decision-making, leading to more fruitful results for both the organization and the customer base it serves. Such programs can often assist organizations in identifying crucial trends. Diversity in hiring usually results in a more competitive environment that tends to foster higher standards for all parties involved.

Although Jason Arday was a Black British academic, the fierce and unrelenting backlash he endured has resulted in perverse scrutiny over a slew of Black scholars on both sides of the Atlantic. Many are now upset at Cambridge. If the university had wanted to open the door for a Black professor, there were/are dozens of far more senior and accomplished academics. While they may not have garnered the same degree of scholarly fanfare as young Jason Arday’s seemingly Horatio Alger story did, they would at least have minimized the possibility of such potential misrepresentations. The institution appeared to have sought an individual whose story was nothing short of semi-immortal, a narrative almost too good to be true. As it turns out, the latter was the case.

The chaos surrounding the late professor has led to a contentious and ugly public debate regarding DEI and has shoved Black Americans into a dicey political position. The current affirmative action backlash has declared that sanguine efforts to address systemic and systematic inequities historically directed toward people of color are discriminatory and even dangerous. President Trump has challenged DEI initiatives by invoking executive orders and has blamed DEI for the supposed lowering of standards.

Such blatantly devious and dishonest interventions have culminated in an environment in which it is extremely arduous to engage in reasoned discussions about DEI (which, to be sure, has its blind spots) and the undeniable value it confers on the public. Like all people, Jason Arday had his flaws, and the larger case was troubling on its own terms, but such a complex saga is sour political catnip serving as a potent brew of political correctness and wokeness gone awry that opportunistic right-wing actors have disingenuously weaponized.

Dr. Jason Arday was obviously troubled, but those with nefarious, exclusionist, and prohibitive social agendas must not be allowed exploit him as the poster boy for their cause. Those of us of goodwill must fiercely combat such sinister efforts.

Elwood Watson Ph.D. is a professor of History, Black Studies, and Gender and Sexuality Studies at East Tennessee State University. He is a cultural critic, syndicated columnist, and author of the books,: Talkin’ To You, Bro!: Liberate Yourself from the Confusing, Ambiguous Messages of Contemporary Masculinity (Lasting Impact Press, 2021) and Keepin’ It Real: Essays on Race in Contemporary America. https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/K/bo40060337.html (University of Chicago Press 2019)

Contempt of Congress charges were imposed on Dr. Anthony Fauci by the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee on August 6. The eight-to-five intensely partisan vote was in response to Fauci repeatedly invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination at a hearing last week to avoid Republicans’ questions relating to diary entries that had been publicly released by the committee. The documents exposed the fact that the former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases gave the lab-leak hypothesis for the origin of the coronavirus more credit privately than he did in public during the inaugural stages of the pandemic.

Chairman and Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, a fierce critic of Dr. Fauci, stated at the committee meeting that “Oversight is not a courtesy this committee extends or a favor a former official grants us. It is a constitutional obligation, and when voluntary cooperation ends, Congress must be able to compel compliance with its lawful demands. That is Congress’s compulsory instrument.” Brash bravado by the senator from Kentucky aside, it is. The reality is that the proposed measure would have to be ratified by 60 members of the senate chamber; thus, the likelihood is remote that the intensely partisan measure would garner the approval of enough Democrats to proceed to official ratification. Rather than send the proposal to the floor after the committee vote, Paul has made it clear that he intends to send it directly to the Department of Justice.

The truth is that ever since President Trump retook office in January 2025, he and his administration have engaged in a full-frontal attempt to discredit and severely damage Fauci’s legacy. Such hostility was evident when one of Trump’s initial actions in office — just days after President Biden pardoned the doctor — was to revoke Fauci’s government-funded security detail. Additionally, Fauci’s image was removed from a mural on the National Institute of Health campus shortly afterwards. This politicized persecution of Fauci goes back since 2020, as rightwing journalists, pundits and politicians. politicians crafted him into a super demonic force. Scouring some of Fauci’s emails from as early as 2021, Republican senators and members of Congress demanded his immediate termination from his high-level governmental post. Indeed, for the past several years, Fauci and his family have been the recipients of ongoing and credible death threats.

The vendettas have only proliferated. In recent days Paul, currently heard of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, has released mounds of documents discussing Fauci; among them more than 1,500 pages from Fauci’s private diary. In one set of entries, which covers the latter part of 2019 until his retirement at the end of 2022, Dr. Fauci incessantly opined upon his ever-augmenting celebrity: “truly unbelievable,” he wrote in May of 2020, “people naming their dogs after me.” He was indeed the newest darling of the elite and influential crowd.

No one could deny that by mid spring 2020, the pandemic was already being dramatically and, in some cases, sinisterly politicized. The Trump administration issued plans to reopen some states, and President Trump posted a series of tweets urging his mostly MAGA supporters to “LIBERATE” blue states such as Minnesota, Michigan, and Virginia. In late April, 47% of voters surveyed by Pew Research Center argued that the pandemic was “made a bigger deal than it really is.” By June, that figure increased to 63% and climbed to 66% in September. Republican attention to pandemic coverage decreased from 48% in March to 43% in late April and then to 35% by early June 2020, while Democrats did not see any such fluctuations among their voter bases.

The field of public education exhibited similar patterns during the spring of 2020, regardless of geographic region. Public schools were closed at about the same rate in red and blue states. But that changed by the fall, when “local partisanship decided, which districts would continue to remain remote and which ones would begin to reopen their doors.” Those decisions were not made by Dr. Fauci, as has been claimed, but by approximately 3,349 public school districts, as pointed out in the newsletter, Underlying Conditions.

By the summer of 2020, Fauci’s fame had become a double-edged sword. Although many individuals — in particular, run-of-the-mill left-leaning democratic voters and suburban independent voters — viewed him as the pristine embodiment of public health, his detractors, (including the MAGA and proto-MAHA crowds) quickly transformed him into the primary demon of the pandemic He was portrayed as a political zealot, a public figure rabidly drunk with power who overplayed the advantage of masking in public, tanked the economy, destroyed millions of small businesses, and carelessly and arrogantly derailed learning for millions of American children.

Additonally, by mid-summer 2020, Fauci was openly embroiled in an ongoing public feud with President Trump. Dr. Fauci masked up in the public sphere when Trump refused to do so, and he challenged Trump’s bizarre and, quite frankly, dangerous suggestions urging citizens to inject bleach and consume hydroxychloroquine to protect themselves from contacting COVID-19 and related diseases. Dr. Fauci’s common-sense agenda of aligning himself with the majority of rational Americans, a stance that initially placed him in good stead with most politicians, eventually made him appear to be a partisan political operative to the conservative right. By December 2020, he was traveling with bodyguards.

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Notably, Fauci has refused to comment upon this derelict campaign of vengeance and harassment. Paul forced him to speak. At the age of 85, the retired immunologist was hauled onto the Senate floor to defend his reputation. The hearings were a spectacle of perverse performative banter with many Republican politicians avidly playing to their constituencies and their deeply entrenched MAGA base of supporters. Ohio Senator Bernie Moreno went so far as to blame the doctor for eagerly creating havoc during the 2020 pandemic, culminating in a physician. There is no question that during his tenure in government, Dr. Fauci exercised his nonpartisan stance to recruit resources for his institute and remain in the good graces of influential individuals. Such an approach has always been the norm among many CEOs: nothing new here. Nonetheless, his foes want to politically crucify him for doing so. Talk about rank hypocrisy!

Truth be told, Rand Paul has spent years crafting this exact moment. He dropped over 1,000 pages of Fauci’s private diary entries, going back to December 2019. He posted them throughout social media and on his own blogs and then tacked on a 465-page “prequel” going back to 2001, because apparently 1,000 pages wasn’t dramatic enough. Robert F. Kennedy Jr, another unhinged Trump official, deliriously espoused on social media that his own department spent several months frantically perusing through HHS servers to locate more material — reducing an entire federal health agency to a grudge-fueled operation to satiate one man’s erratic obsession.

It is highly unlikely that Dr. Anthony Fauci will face legal prosecution. That being said, the outrage is that several Republican senators have decided to perversely exploit a crisis that temporarily short circuited the nation and the entire world six years ago for cheap political points and to appease the extreme fringes of their far-right base of voters: a sad and tragic state of affairs, to be sure!

Elwood Watson Ph.D. is a professor of History, Black Studies, and Gender and Sexuality Studies at East Tennessee State University. He is a cultural critic, syndicated columnist, and author of the books,: Talkin’ To You, Bro!: Liberate Yourself from the Confusing, Ambiguous Messages of Contemporary Masculinity (Lasting Impact Press, 2021) and Keepin’ It Real: Essays on Race in Contemporary America. https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/K/bo40060337.html (University of Chicago Press 2019)

Ample debate and abundant commentary have occurred since the Tuskegee University updated dress code has revived an old debate about the topics of professionalism, respectability politics, and the reasonability of how much responsibility Black institutions should take in preparing young people for the larger world. To put it right out there, the Black community must reject the false choice between affirming Black identity and demanding that Black students adhere to high standards. The policy, which is part of the university’s longstanding expectations relating to student appearance, has revived a long, perennial debate highlighting issues of professionalism, self-expression, and respectability — particularly within Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) BCU culture.

Tuskegee recently prohibited bonnets, du-rags, bedroom shoes, and “revealing clothing” from classrooms and dining halls, calling the ban preparation for a workforce. Pin his recent letter to students, President Mark A. Brown, addressed the issue of appropriate attire. In a letter addressed to the larger student body, Brown stated that the goal was to prepare students for the workforce. He further argued that “Employers are less forgiving and too often presentation may overrule stellar preparation.” It is important to note that Tuskegee is hardly the only HBCU to enforce dress codes. Hampton University’s dress code, for example, prohibits du-rags, bonnets, skull caps, scarves, and bandanas “at all times” outside of student housing. Dillard University’s student handbook asks students to “dress neatly” and outlines “appropriate dress for various occasions,” including classrooms, the cafeteria, and university offices. Men must take off caps and hats worn for nonreligious purposes before entering the dining hall at Claflin University. And Virginia Union University has an extensive dress code that bans not just du-rags and bonnets but “pants worn in a ‘baggy’ fashion,” hoodies with the hood up, head scarves, and curlers.

Tuskegee’s decision ignited an ongoing and, at times, contentious discussion: proponents referring to it as preparation, detractors chiding the ban as respectability politics disguised as preparation, with some going as far as to label such action “anti-Black.” The implemented dress code has resulted in a slew of think pieces, TikTok, Instagram reaction videos, and social media threads containing hundreds of comments, fiercely and passionately debating the move, with HBCU alumni, students, and others taking varied stances. Some decry that Black students are being held to different standards than their peers at predominantly white institutions, who often show up to class in casual wear. Truth be told, as I see it, the issue is greater than a university’s dress code requirements. Both camps raise valid concerns.

Anyone with a healthy knowledge of American history is aware of the fact that Black people have routinely been expected — in some cases, demanded — to redefine themselves to become socially palatable to institutions whose standards or agendas were seldom, if ever, designed to embrace or include us. Respectability Politics defines how marginalized people frequently manipulate and alter their appearance, language or behavior to curry acceptance within dominant institutions.

One of the more contentious debates that has dominated Black social media is the topic of bonnets. As many Black beauticians can attest, a bonnet protects textured hair from friction and breakage overnight, but textured hair isn’t the same as an Afro, braids, locs, twists or curls. Outlawing the hair that grows organically from a student’s scalp is not the same as requesting students to refrain from donning a hair covering often worn during nighttime while at school. In fact, no HBCU, to my knowledge, has outlawed the wearing of natural hair to class or anywhere else on their campuses. Blackness cannot be minimized to hairstyles.

Let’s be honest and cut to the chase. Truth be told, many, if not most, people, including Black people make decisions, justified or not, on appearance. There is an enormous amount of veracity in the saying “first impressions can mean a lot.” Primarily for two reasons, such impressions die hard! Additionally, you are provided with one opportunity to make a first impression. Consider this scenario. You are interested in investing some of your earnings. You schedule a meeting with two companies. During your first meeting, you notice that almost everyone is dressed to the nines or at the least well dressed, and well-groomed. At the second firm, most people are wearing t-shirts, sandals or flip flops, some of the men have scruffy beards, unkept hair etc. . . In all honesty, which firm would you be likely entrust to handle your money?! To me, and most likely most people (including critics of the dress code) it would be a no-brainer. The thing is that the second organization could be just as competent, perhaps even more capable in investing your funds, but guess what — it is safe to say that most of us are not going to take such a risk based on what we have externally witnessed.

It was not by accident that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and other activist members of the modern civil rights movement of the mid-20th century were ever mindful about presenting themselves accordingly in public. They were astute to the fact that they were under the lens of a very discerning public microscope and were always impeccably groomed, neatly dressed in suits and ties and other fashionable attire. They knew that they were representing a movement and a greater cause and governed themselves accordingly. As a professor at a regional state university, I have witnessed certain studentsof many races and ethnicities come to class and visit the dining hall in bed slippers and pajamas.

To be sure, I have seen adults in the supermarket donning pajamas, sweatpants, and similar attire. To be candid, my reaction is one of detached pity. My colleagues have made similar comments. Whether we approve or disagree, the truth is that — rightly or wrongly — appearance and perception are often reality. It is no accident that many of those campus radicals of the 60s and 70s traded in their sandals and them t-shirts, removed their nose rings, cut their hair and dyed it back to its original color, etc. when they applied for summer internships or applied for lucrative jobs in the private sector after graduation. Indeed, the same scenario occurs today several decades later.

To be sure, there is more to a person’s character than what sort of threads they wear in public. Dressing professionally isn’t about assuaging White discomfort. Most people of color know that a pristine and elegant appearance does not prohibit racism and discrimination. But that doesn’t absolve appearance as irrelevant. Not every expectation set within the larger Black community should be equated as a nod to respectability politics. Having standards should not be associated with subjugation, ooppression or adherence to whiteness. Teaching a young person to present themselves with purpose and mission instills him or her with the tools and choices that can serve as immensely valuable at some point.

Two truths can be true at the same time. No one, Black or otherwise, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, religion etc. should ever have to change or transform the basic facets of their culture in an effort to garner the right to be granted dignity and respect. As a worthy individual you should, in fact, need to be mindful of how you have decided to present yourself in any given situation. One could argue, if you do not know how to dress accordingly, what else do you not understand? That is not respectability politics for the approval of any specific of people. Rather, it is demonstrating self-respect, for yourself and, in some case, our ancestors.

Elwood Watson Ph.D. is a professor of History, Black Studies, and Gender and Sexuality Studies at East Tennessee State University. He is a cultural critic, syndicated columnist, and author of the books,: Talkin’ To You, Bro!: Liberate Yourself from the Confusing, Ambiguous Messages of Contemporary Masculinity (Lasting Impact Press, 2021) and Keepin’ It Real: Essays on Race in Contemporary America. https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/K/bo40060337.html (University of Chicago Press 2019)

President Trump signed an executive order on July 16 called Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History. In typical Trump fashion, the order leads with charges against unidentified individuals, many of whom are renowned historians and affiliated scholars, charging them with a “concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our nation’s history.”

The order’s intense derision of the Smithsonian Institution duplicates the now widely publicized right-wing agenda clearly outlined in Project 2025 and elsewhere. That agenda is a disingenuous effort to prohibit the liberal “woke agendas” on race and gender and replace them with policies ensuring parental rights and school choice. In addition, their agenda promotes a version of history more aligned with the values of the nation’s founding fathers. As the president sees it, “objective facts” have been replaced by a “distorted narrative driven by ideology”; thus, he is steadfast in his commitment to end the “revisionist movement” that he says is being carelessly promoted by unnamed historians.

Trump and his right-wing posse view the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History as a fierce promoter of “anti-White propaganda,” “illegal alien sympathies,” and “transgender activism.” in response to such scurrilous allegations, the secretary of the Smithsonian, Lonnie G. Bunch III, fiercely defended the institution after the White House issued a 162-page report that characterizes the National Museum of American History as a place which has become “subject to institutional capture by a radical, activist ideology that is fundamentally opposed to telling the noble, honest story of the great country we know and love.”

Again, the Trump administration and its MAGA allies in Congress have compiled these accusations in a blistering 162-page report released by the White House on July 4, Independence Day, no less. The report accuses the museum and its leaders of promoting a “radical view” of American history.

U.S. Rep. Tim Burchett, the Tennessee Republican who chairs the House Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency, supplemented the report with similarly reductive sentiments in a congressional hearing. His document was titled “Rewriting American History: Examining the Smithsonian’s Efforts to Reshape the Past.” It is important to note that the supposed “reshaping” amounted to a handful of cherry-picked examples.

The conservative congressman declared that the American history museum was pushing radical left-wing narratives, a view that echoed President Donald Trump’s earlier claims. He further charged that these narratives are driven by museum director Anthea Hartig, who sees history is a “prime tool of social justice.” In fact, social justice is a very positive thing. What reasonable person could find fault with such an ideology?

Any astute observer and follower of the cultural wars that have raged for quite some time are aware that MAGA’s political arsenal is densely populated with terms the movement has adopted from the social and cultural left. They focus on terms such as “social justice,” which they routinely infuse with dastardly negative connotations. MAGA considers social justice warriors, wokeness, and trans rights to be the most imminent dangerous threats supposedly being avidly promoted by leftist radicals. The idea of lawmakers convening to decide which historical events and images they consider appropriate to be taught or discussed is distressingly troubling. It epitomizes a culture that is infested with deep levels of insecurity. It is nothing short of watching our society creep ever closer to Orwellian dystopia and fascism. May God have mercy upon us!

Burchett’s report further accuses the museum’s leadership of promoting “an ideological framework that no longer showcases the American story as a shared national inheritance to be taught or celebrated, but as a political instrument to divide, dispirit, and discourage our citizens.” Speaking of Orwell, the report is written in language reminiscent of doublespeak.

To her credit, Director Hartig responded elegantly to questions from two separate House committees about what the report describes as the “ideological capture” of the Smithsonian. Additionally, some Democrats pushed back against GOP doublespeak with thundering rhetoric of their own.

Rep. Kweisi Mfume (D-Maryland) accused the Trump administration of trying to erase Black history, and Rep. Andy Harris, the state’s lone Republican in Congress, said federally funded museums should place greater emphasis on patriotism than what he called “wokeness.” Speaking before a House Oversight subcommittee, Mfume delivered an impassioned defense of the Smithsonian, particularly the National Museum of African American History and Culture, saying efforts to reshape its exhibits amount to an attempt to erase parts of the nation’s history.

Referring to his own largely segregated childhood, Mfume stated that the nation’s museums have a responsibility to preserve both America’s achievements and its failures. “We will not let you destroy that museum,” he said. “That history is too sacred. It is too precious, and it will not be erased . . . Black people across this country are outraged at what is happening now with these efforts to do away with the African American Museum and all of the Smithsonian,” Mfume said. “If you erase it, we will replace it.” Amen to that!

The truth is that such sinister efforts are, to quote renowned historian Dr. David Blight, “nothing less than an act of political war on the historians’ profession, our training and integrity, as well as on the freedom — in the form of curious minds — of anyone who seeks to understand our country by visiting museums or historic sites.”

The fact is that there are many America citizens who are deeply interested in and care about the nation’s past; they have no problem consuming all of the truth: the good, the bad, the tragedies, the redemptions, and the downright ugly, warts and all. Many Americans actually prefer complex accounts rather than assuming that everything has largely been blue skies and apple pie. No honest person can argue that many events of the twentieth century, from World War II, the Vietnam War, and rock n’ roll to the civil rights movement, the women’s and gay rights movements, and the struggle to learn Native American history, have permanently transformed the nation.

Let me repeat, the force of American history from the good, bad and downright ugly should, in fact, must be studied not shunned. Indeed, more than a few Generation Z students have made it clear, in no uncertain terms, that their knowledge of history is alarmingly dismal and they want to learn about American history from an honest, direct, unvarnished, take- no-prisoners perspective. By engaging in such an effort to politically exercise an autocratic attempt to control what is taught in the nation’s schools, the administration has opened up a dangerous Pandora’s box.

Regardless of where any individual person stands on this issue, none of us should endorse the idea that the nation’s museums, public libraries, cultural centers, and institutions dedicated to America’s history should be subjected to a political, social, and cultural litmus test that demands history, English, or any subject (humanities, social sciences, hard sciences, medicine, etc.) be displayed in the most positive manner. In truth, the administration is practicing the precise type of antics that it has publicly denounced as scurrilous for the past few years. In essence, these are the same cultural revisionists who have routinely decried revisionism. As the administration sees it, American exceptionalism (read only: White accomplishments) should be touted. Please! Such blatant hypocrisy is nothing short of obscene.

J. Scott Applewhite/AP

Big lies move like viruses in our culture, and although we do have evidence, facts, and ethics on our side, there are no vaccines. The crude intent of the current order is to silence historians and further decimate institutions.

Despite what many on the right habitually deride, the reality is, as has been stated by many, me included, that diversity is our strength. Only the most foolish or the hopelessly naïve would believe otherwise. For the better part of two centuries, 180 years to be exact, the Smithsonian and other institutions have provided American society with bipartisan, independent scholarship. It will be incumbent upon all of us to resist all menacing and sinister efforts from those who wish to nullify such scholarship to ensure that our public institutions will continue to possess unalloyed independent decision-making power and to act accordingly.

Elwood Watson Ph.D. is a professor of History, Black Studies, and Gender and Sexuality Studies at East Tennessee State University. He is a cultural critic, syndicated columnist, and author of the books,: Talkin’ To You, Bro!: Liberate Yourself from the Confusing, Ambiguous Messages of Contemporary Masculinity (Lasting Impact Press, 2021) and Keepin’ It Real: Essays on Race in Contemporary America. https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/K/bo40060337.html (University of Chicago Press 2019)

Andrew and Tristan Tate, the far-right social media influencers and self-described misogynists who command a following of young, angry men on the internet, were arrested in Miami on July 18 on rape and sex trafficking charges from the United Kingdom. They will be held in custody in Florida as they challenge an extradition claim. British law enforcement announced that the brothers face 59 charges between them, including choking and raping women. Andrew Tate faces further charges relating to “indecent images of a child and extreme pornography.” Such supplemental charges have been issued to a litany of prior ones, including a 2022 arrest in Romania on rape and sex trafficking; however, that case was dismissed on legal grounds as prosecutors continue to investigate disturbing allegations.. Both brothers have denied all wrongdoing.

For those interested in specifics, the demonic duo was under investigation in Romania since for allegedly forcing numerous women — including a 17-year-old girl — into participating in pornography for business purposes. To be sure, each allegation is nothing short of despicable, but combined they paint an abominable portrait of an expansive pornography empire based on physical brutality and a misogynist worldview that the brothers feed to boys and young men worldwide.

Facing the possibility of criminal prosecution in multiple countries, the Tate brothers have continued to exploit their immense popularity with young men and members of the right-wing media in order to continue their opulent lifestyle and evade law enforcement. Now British prosecutors are seeking the brothers’ extradition from the United States, creating a high-profile dilemma for the Trump administration: will President Trump and his affiliates permit the men to be held accountable for their actions, including possible incarceration in the United Kingdom, or will they intervene to protect their allies? The president’s recent comments indicate that he will refrain from intervening in the Tate saga. Time will tell.

An in-depth investigation by the New York Times in December 2025 revealed that one of Trump’s first actions in his second term in office was arranging the brothers’ return from Romania. Numerous Trump administration officials reportedly persuaded Romanian prosecutors to lift the brothers’ travel restrictions. Additionally, White House officials continued to run interference when customs officials confiscated their devices. The brothers immediately began traveling freely again, arrogantly showing up at parties in cities around the world. It should come as no surprise that Andrew Tate was also a longtime admirer of Trump associate Jeffrey Epstein. In a deleted tweet, he once wrote, “EVERYONE wants to be friends with the pimp. Doubt me? EPSTEIN HAD ACCESS TO PUSSY. Look at his fucking friends list.” Talk about theater of the perverse!

To be sure, while both Tate brothers have drawn denunciation and scorn across the political spectrum, they have enjoyed empathetic treatment from numerous influential figures on the cultural and conservative right due to their alliances with such individuals. Although the silence among many of these previous supporters is deafening, they do have some detractors. For instance, conservatives such as Megyn Kelly, Ben Shapiro, and Ron DeSantis have been bitter critics of the brothers and have chastised their fellow conservatives who have embraced the duo. By contrast, others on the conservative right have adopted a “hear no evil, fear no evil, see no evil” non-partisan stance.

To be sure, sexism and misogyny are not limited to one side of the ideological spectrum. On the contrary, they have deep historical bipartisan roots across organizations of various political stripes, including Young Americans for Freedom , Students for a Democratic Society, The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and The Democratic Socialists of America. Many women who participated in were active in these movements early in their existence -mid- 1960s/early 70s, — spoke of the deeply entrenched sexism and misogyny that pervaded these organizations in the mid and latter 20th century. To be sure, we are witnessing such consistent and reductive attitudes with contemporary political outlets such as Turning Point USA, ,Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches and similar right wing outlets.

As the midterm elections move ever closer, Republicans and a few Democrats seem to be soliciting the manosphere as a vital voting bloc, working under the assumption that such an online environment appeals to the vast majority of males and that doing so is a sagacious political tactic. Graham Platner, the supposedly blue collar yet, in reality, prep school misfit, was virtually worshipped as the left’s answer to the manosphere before his eventual demise. Alpha male Gavin Newsom, Governor of California and potential 2028 presidential candidate, has consistently decried what he believes is “a crisis of men and masculinity” and has embraced manosphere figures such as Steve Bannon, Ben Shapiro, and the late Charlie Kirk on his podcast. Politics does, indeed, occasionally make peculiar bedfellows.

Whatever President Trump decides, his committed MAGA base will undoubtedly fall in line and accept his choice. Trump has never suffered any significant loss of support for his poor treatment of women or the sexist/misogynist views he shares with the Tate brothers. In fact, he has won the presidency not once but twice in two nonconsecutive terms . Grover Cleveland is the only other president that can claim such a feat. Remember, this is the person who stated that he “could shoot somebody and wouldn’t lose any voters.” Sadly, given his politically unremitted MAGA base, he is probably correct.

Elwood Watson Ph.D. is a professor of History, Black Studies, and Gender and Sexuality Studies at East Tennessee State University. He is a cultural critic, syndicated columnist, and author of the books,: Talkin’ To You, Bro!: Liberate Yourself from the Confusing, Ambiguous Messages of Contemporary Masculinity (Lasting Impact Press, 2021) and Keepin’ It Real: Essays on Race in Contemporary America. https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/K/bo40060337.html (University of Chicago Press 2019)

Senator Lindsey Graham’s abrupt and untimely death sent shockwaves throughout Washington and the Beltway establishment as well as the larger mainstream media, the pundit class, bloggers, and reporters. Indeed, many individuals across the political spectrum wasted no time weighing in on the late senator’s legacy. Bipartisan condolences and commemorations in addition to personal platitudes were abundantly showered upon the late politician.

Within many segments of the Black community, when an individual passes on, people are often reminded to let the dead rest in peace, as if death should nullify a lifetime of reductive and untoward if not outright scurrilous behavior. Personally, I am a dissenter of such a doctrine because I believe that one should tell the truth — tell it like is (or was), take no prisoners, and pull no punches about the dead, no matter how unpleasant such truth may be. In essence, KEEP IT REAL!

Yes, no doubt, there are more than a few individuals who are genuinely mourning for the late senator and undoubtedly viewed him as a good colleague or close personal friend, as former President Joseph Biden recently declared. Of course, there is no problem in sending condolences to his sister and extended relatives, but as I stated, it is crucial not to allow the truth to be sullied by political tradition coupled with pomp and circumstance.

The reality is that Graham’s legacy comes down to one major factor: When he had the opportunity to stand on political principle like Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger and precious few others of his Republican colleagues did, rather than standing up and retaining his prior stance of politically challenging Trump and decrying his multitudes of unhinged political sins, he decided to examine how the GOP party winds were blowing, take a self-serving detour, and embrace the specter of Trumpism and the intensely racist, sexist, anti-Semitic, homophobic, and xenophobic politically exclusionary world of MAGA. To be blunt, like many politicians, he sacrificed his principles for political access, power, and political expediency.

In 2015, Graham was Trump’s fiercest critic, declaring Trump “unfit for office.” He avidly encouraged his fellow Republicans to denounce the loquacious entrepreneur who had never held public office and had zero political experience. Indeed, he even paraphrased Trump’s campaign rhetoric by announcing, “You know how you make America great again? Tell Donald Trump to go to hell.” So much for maintaining political principles. One can only wonder what the late John McCain would have thought of his extremely close colleague’s political 180 degree turn?

Remember January 6, 2021, the day Trump unleashed a mob of his unhinged thugs upon the US Capitol like rabid wolves as they broke windows, injured and murdered police officers, and attempted to murder then Vice President Mike Pence, thus closing the chapter on the previously proud tradition of the peaceful and orderly transfer of power. It appeared that Graham was disgusted by such carnage. Lindsey Graham was finally fed up. His outrage was so apparent that he stated on the house floor, “All I can say is count me out. Enough is enough.” So much for political sincerity. Several weeks earlier, after Trump was defeated in November 2020, Graham contacted the then Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger inquiring if lawfully registered mail-in ballots in some counties could be dismissed! Abominable!

The bipartisan avalanche of selective amnesia to depict Graham as a congenial and amiable fellow who was never confrontational, even with those he was politically at odds with, is perversely disingenuous. Displayed as a minor political anomaly is the checkered image of a person who during the last decade of his existence, politically sold his weak soul to President Trump and emerged as his most avid supporter, defender, and sycophant.

This was also the same Graham who unabashedly voted against LGBTQ+ rights despite the long-standing rumors of his closeted sexuality. In a recent appearance on The Daily Beast podcast, author Michael Wolff commented that everyone in Washington knew Graham was gay. He also said he suspected Trump was using that knowledge as leverage over him. His fellow South Carolina senator, Tim Scott, who also steadfastly opposed gay rights, has also persistently faced such rumors.

First, to me, “is he, was he, or wasn’t he?” assertions are legitimate yet simultaneously, also irrelevant. The fact is that both Senator Graham’s and Senator Scott’s sexuality is their business and no one else’s. Second, with all due respect to both senators, whether either man has slept with women, other men, both genders, neither etc. I couldn’t care less about their sex lives. Where such an issue does become relevant is when such politicians are publicly denouncing such groups of people or vote in favor of legislation that harms the community of people of which they are part and are engaged in activities associated with that group of people whether overtly or covertly. Anyone engaged in this “do as I say, not as I do” sort of rank hypocrisy is fair game and deserves to be exposed.

Sexual preference aside, bestowing undeserved on Graham is dishonest and disgraceful. To be sure, his death is a sincere loss to his loved ones. Nonetheless, it is not a justifiable reason to redesign his life history by reconstructing his true, authentic, disturbing legacy, specifically, the hard right MAGA stance he all too eagerly adopted during Trump’s presidencies.

After Trump was reelected in November 2024, like many of Graham’s fellow Republicans (and some Democrats and political independents for that matter), Graham saw the writing on the wall. Viewing how elected Republicans would sheepishly follow Trump’s commands, he chose to align himself with the Commander-in-Chief instead of challenging him. Seemingly overnight, Graham went from being Trump’s rabid foe to his loyal sycophant. To be sure, he has plenty of company on the conservative right.

When a New York Times reporter asked Lindsey Graham about his abrupt transition several years ago, he commented he “just made the decision to remain in the game.” Indeed, the late senator made a conscious choice to sell his soul for political gain and relevance while sacrificing his integrity. Hopefully, history will remember and accurately depict such a flawed and politically unprincipled, compromised and disappointing character and legacy.

Elwood Watson Ph.D. is a professor of History, Black Studies, and Gender and Sexuality Studies at East Tennessee State University. He is a cultural critic, syndicated columnist, and author of the books,: Talkin’ To You, Bro!: Liberate Yourself from the Confusing, Ambiguous Messages of Contemporary Masculinity (Lasting Impact Press, 2021) and Keepin’ It Real: Essays on Race in Contemporary America. https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/K/bo40060337.html (University of Chicago Press 2019)

The tragic death of 18-year-old Nolan Xavier Wells, the community college football player who went missing while socializing with friends on the Fourth of July, has sent shock waves throughout the nation. Wells was last seen alive on Horn Island, a sliver of undeveloped land roughly 20 miles from the coast of Alabama, 10 miles from Mississippi, and less than a mile wide. At the moment, the mysterious death of the Mississippi teenager remains under investigation.

Sheriff John Ledbetter of Jackson County, Mississippi, publicly stated that when the group of friends who brought Wells to the island decided to return to the mainland at 4:30pm, Wells remained, informing them he would catch a ride back later. The young man was reported missing several hours later. A few days later, his body was found. Now, instead of preparing to celebrate his birthday next month, family, friends, and relatives are forced to confront the sad and sobering reality of losing a loved one whose life was suddenly cut short while simultaneously waiting for answers. One can only imagine the pain the Wellses have endured as they are forced to bury their own teenage child.

The autopsy and coroner’s report will expose what really happened to the late Mr. Wells on Independence Day. Regardless of what the evidence produces, it will be plagued by the fact that the 18-year-old happened to be the only Black person in any of the video footage viewed from that day. This fact may call to mind the August 2023 video of a group of rowdy, drunk, bigoted, white men attacking a Black man on a dock in Montgomery, Alabama. That footage itself was shadowed by the early-morning recording of a group of white, hate-filled teenagers beating up and intentionally running over a Black man with a pickup truck in 2011 in Jackson, Mississippi. More enraging and disturbing, after the killing of James Craig Anderson, authorities discovered the group had tried to run over and murder other Black people alongside other various hate crimes throughout the state.

What is most distressing about this are the undisputed facts coupled with local law enforcement’s reaction. For whatever reason, local authorities have already made the presumption that no foul play was involved, yet they stated that the complete findings were still weeks away. Huh? If upcoming findings are weeks away, why would any official be so confident as to issue such a premature statement? This fact, in and of itself, is legally inappropriate.

Mind you, we are talking about Mississippi. While no state — north, south, east, or west — has a utopian history as it relates to race, the hard truth is that even for a deep southern state, Mississippi has a notorious history of violence and mistreatment against its Black citizens, from Emmett Till, a teenage boy who was murdered and dumped into a river for whistling at a white woman, to Fannie Lou-Hamer (1917–1977), who endured a horrific, near-fatal beating in a Winona County jail in 1963. That same year, civil rights activist Medgar Evers was shot outside his driveway by the rabid white supremacist Byron De La Beckwith. De La Beckwith was only convicted of the crime in 1994 — belated justice to be sure, but better than justice forever denied.Vernon Dahmer, a civil rights activist, was killed when Klansmen firebombed his house in Hattiesburg, Miss., in 1966. Several of the men involved were later convicted and received life sentences. The state (although next-door neighbor Alabama has given them a real run for their money) has an endemic history of racial mistreatment and injustice toward its Black citizens. Given such history, such apprehension and distrust are well founded.

Individuals across the racial divide have weighed in on the harrowing situation. Some Black people have blamed the late teenager and his parents, arguing that he should never have been hanging out with a group of white kids in the first place, and that being southern Black parents, the Wellses should have made such a “lesson” clear to their son much earlier in life and monitored such activity. Conversely, a few white podcasters, such as Drip Damone Jr, have disingenuously blamed Black people for “acting irrationally” about the entire event, believing that such reactions will prompt white parents to discourage their children from being friends with Black people. Both positions are flawed.

Yes, Black parents historically have had valid reasons to exercise a healthy dose of caution when it comes to interacting with others, white Americans in particular. That said, taking extreme, exclusionary positions does not do anyone any favors. People of color can be shady and vile too. As it relates to Drip Damone’s comments, the truth is that for centuries, white parents have also told their children to avoid being friends with non-white, particularly Black children. Hell, even recently, the so-called “Christian” nationalist pastor Joel Webbon told white people to prohibit their children from embracing Black children and Black people in general.

Finger pointing, irrational anger, and emotionally heated reactions aside, numerous celebrities have provided their goodwill and assistance to the grieving family, including Tyler Perry, Colin Kaepernick, media titan Byron Allen, and three-time NFL Superbowl champ Travis Kelce.

In 1903, when Renaissance scholar WEB-DuBois announced that the problem of the 20th century would be the problem of the color line, one can only speculate if he was aware that the same dilemma would continue to manifest itself in the 21st century as well.

Elwood Watson Ph.D. is a professor of History, Black Studies, and Gender and Sexuality Studies at East Tennessee State University. He is a cultural critic, syndicated columnist, and author of the books,: Talkin’ To You, Bro!: Liberate Yourself from the Confusing, Ambiguous Messages of Contemporary Masculinity (Lasting Impact Press, 2021) and Keepin’ It Real: Essays on Race in Contemporary America. https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/K/bo40060337.html (University of Chicago Press 2019)

Reuters photographer Chaney Orr took the photo that has launched numerous conversations. He showcased a young Black woman, Bernita Bowlding, sitting alone on the Metro in Washington, DC, seemingly going about her business on the day America celebrated its 250th year of independence from Britian. She was isolated, yet White supremacists and pusillanimous men in khakis, who represent the most debased among us, shielding their identities behind masks, dark glasses, and beige hats — their pinkish noses sticking out — surrounded her with their intense hatred, unfounded anxiety, and rabid insecurity. Public reaction was immediate.

Actor Wendell Pierce was one of many who reshared the photo on social media, writing on X, “An instant Pulitzer Prize winning photograph.” Liberal commentator Dean Withers wrote that “your great-grandchildren would see it in their history books.” Rep. Adam Kinzinger, D-Calif., wrote on Facebook, “He is probably right. But what it will represent when they do — whether it marks the moment these forces won, or the moment the country looked at the image and decided enough — is not yet written.”

“For many people, the images of the white supremacists marching through Washington, D.C., have come to represent the current state of the country,” Christopher Rhodes wrote for Blavity. The photo became so instantly iconic that fellow supremacists launched a counter-campaign noting that the Black woman had been arrested in 2024 for indecent exposure, a charge that was ultimately dismissed. One disapproving X user complained that activists and media outlets portrayed her as “a modern-day Rosa Parks staring down extremists on America’s 250th Independence Day.” The latter comment is nothing short of nonsense.

Her reaction was notable yet transparent. Her expression appeared to say Who the hell?! It would have been a bonus to read her mind. Was she gripped with fear? Was she reeling with disgust? Whatever her precise emotions, she managed to conceal her genuine thoughts superbly. To paraphrase the late 19th century poet Paul Lawrence Dunbar (1872–1906), like many Black people, the woman wore the mask when we find ourselves in targeted and surrounded in unfamiliar, uncomfortable, and occasionally menacing threatening environments.

On July 4th, Independence Day, no less, she literally came face-to-face with a group of White nationalists who brazenly marched through Washington, DC. The group, known as Patriot Front, is a virulently White supremacist organization that desires to make the nation a White ethno-state. In essence, these are the type of politically retrograde individuals comfortable with the reductive ideology of the current conservative Republican right. Patriot Front is “a white nationalist hate group” that divorced from Vanguard America following the deadly Unite the Right 2017 rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. The group is known for staging intensely choreographed marches through major metropolitan centers while wearing uniforms consisting of blue sweaters, beige hats, and khaki pants. Yet, they disguise their genuine identities because they know that publicly showcasing their deplorable values would all but derail their careers.

Not surprisingly, the far right has been publishing foolish images, disingenuous op-ed pieces, and politically obscene video rants. Ms. Bowlding’s photo has been widely dissected online, some likening it to photos once seen during the Civil Rights Movement and others using it to call out extremism and racism in modern-day America. On Monday, some social media posts released the woman’s identity and criticized her over a previous arrest. Court records show that charge was later dismissed. We should be expected to see the beauty in Black people’s essential contributions to this country.

The more dishonest right wingers are declaring that the specific moment was staged, and that Ms. Bowlding was financially compensated to sit there. Yes, you read that right. Others on the conservative right have resorted to the “Black on Black crime” narrative, arguing that she was safer in the presence of White supremacists than a Black like me. Such perverse assertions are standard practice among bigoted, reactionary Whites who perceive non-Whites, in particular, Blacks, as “the other.” Locate a criminal record. Seek a mugshot. Verify a rumor. Dredge up a negative photo. Dig up an old arrest. Seize upon anything that can be exploited in the arena of public opinion and perversely declare the person in question as typical of those people.

Many of these same bigots resent that the Reuters image was effective without additional explanation. It enrages them that the nation was forced to confront itself on a subway car on Independence Day. They despise the fact that a Black woman’s stoic silence ripped open the pathology, fear, and fecklessness of those White men. Given that Ms. Bowlding did not have to utter one word for the larger public to successfully compute the situation at hand deeply enrages their racist sensibilities. Thus, they are forced to pretend that the political left has turned the young lady into a heroine while simultaneously attempting to defile her character. Talk about the theater of desperation.

In a related photo, Roswell Encina, a Filipino American gay man and president and CEO of the US Capitol Historical Society, sits on the train as masked members of the Patriot Front crowd around him. “Encina said he did not know at first who the men were. He noticed patches and logos and began piecing it together. He texted friends during the ride so someone would know where he was,” Christopher Wiggins wrote for the LGBTQ+ publication The Advocate. “I would be lying if I said no,” he said when asked whether he was scared. “I was terrified, honestly, just because I wasn’t sure what the motives were,” Wiggins wrote.

As we move forward in 2026, we still have to come to the realization that many people of color are still under political, emotional, physical, and psychological terror by retrograde entities that refuse to acknowledge or embrace the diverse mosaic that has made our nation the envy of the world. The truth is that we still have a ways to go.

Elwood Watson Ph.D. is a professor of History, Black Studies, and Gender and Sexuality Studies at East Tennessee State University. He is a cultural critic, syndicated columnist, and author of the books,: Talkin’ To You, Bro!: Liberate Yourself from the Confusing, Ambiguous Messages of Contemporary Masculinity (Lasting Impact Press, 2021) and Keepin’ It Real: Essays on Race in Contemporary America. https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/K/bo40060337.html (University of Chicago Press 2019)

Recent Graham Platner allegations aside, No one can credibly deny that Democratic Socialist candidates are having quite a moment. Octogenarian senator Bernie Sanders enjoys the highest favorability among active American politicians today. New York on the East Coast and Seattle on the West coast elected Democratic Socialist mayors last November. It looks as if the nation’s capital, Washington, D.C., is going to follow suit later this year. Los Angeles also has a Democratic Socialist candidate in the runoff for mayor. Just recently, three Democratic Socialists won US House primaries in New York City, as did other candidates in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Additionally, just last week, 29-year-old Democratic Socialist Melat Kiros defeated a 30-year incumbent in Colorado for a House seat. More notably, Phil Wieser, a relatively unknown candidate, defeated heavy favorite Michael Bennett, a US senator, in the state gubernatorial primary with 56.9% of the vote. Bennett won 43.1%.

There is too much consistency about these results for them to be dismissed as flukes. It is evident that many Democratic voters are angry, frustrated, and eager for significant change from party leaders. Indeed, they are demanding it, provoking fear and chagrin among the democratic establishment. There has been an avalanche of head-spinning commentary about the results, including from Jaime Harrison, Rahm Emanuel, and James Carville. These elites have expressed displeasure at the party’s sudden, sharp leftward turn. They even turned the issue personal, particularly in the case of Darializa Chevalier and Graham Platner.

Darializa Avila Chevalier is the 32-year-old daughter of Dominican immigrants and the Democratic nominee in New York’s 13th Congressional district, which has a long history of Palestinian activism and campus radicalism. She has engaged in engaged in questionable behavior in the past: attacking non-White men for being in relationships with White people (i.e., “fetishizing ugly colonizer women”); discussing wiping her hands on the American flag; referring to former president Joe Biden as a “rapist”; declaring “F — Kamala Harris”; expressing a desire to abolish police, borders, and prisons; and referring to U.S. service members as “child murderers.”

As for Graham Platner, his sizable win in the Maine Democratic Senate primary notwithstanding, sordid revelations of his dark side have overshadowed his progressive, populist message. He has a tattoo that resembled a Nazi death’s head symbol but claimed he was unaware of what it represented. His campaign conceded that the allegations that he sent sexually charged text messages to women was true. Multiple ex-lovers have accused him of disturbing behavior, including one who said he used excessive force toward her more than once. In response, Platner described himself as a “bad boyfriend” but adamantly denied physically abusing women. Such allegations, coupled with old Reddit posts that a number of individuals described as racist and sexist, set the mainstream press abuzz.

It is probably safe to say that neither candidate will be vying for congeniality awards anytime soon. However, much of the bellyaching and cries of despair among elite party ranks and certain media outlets appear to be gaining little traction among rank-and-file voters at the moment. This is, in some ways, an indication of how the American public’s perceptions of such issues have changed. As a historian and a scholar of both 20th-century and more recent politics, I am highly aware that a number of (but certainly not all) politicians have been morally deceitful. Numerous politicians (and people in other professions) have engaged in ethically suspect antics. More than a few of them believed sex was a benefit they were entitled to, and others felt no apprehensions about stepping outside of the bounds of matrimony to seek it. Many strongly harbored 19th-century Victorian attitudes, causing them to preach one thing and practice another. Franklin Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and the founding fathers can all be included in this list. However, these men were very effective leaders for their respective times, their deceitful and inconsistent behavior and their moral deficiencies notwithstanding. The fact that the press corps was far more deferential to the office of the presidency than it is today also helped. These men faced no real stigmas, public penalties, or consequences for their arrogant and shameful philandering. If anything, such behavior was often winked at by other men and tolerated by many wives. They often quietly overlooked or turned a blind eye to infidelity no matter how blatant or compulsive it was. Hell, has Trump paid any price for his habitual infidelity aong other vices?!

However, given the current political climate, the nation cannot afford the luxury of waiting for the “perfect candidate” — assuming they ever existed in the first place. To expect politicians to be above reproach compared to the rest of the population is hypocritical. This is even more true for people of color, whom an authoritarian, White supremacist-oriented administration is targeting. This administration is determined to abolish all progressive political and social legislation and return the United States to the Jim Crow era with its Black codes, grandfather clauses, and chattel slavery. During these politically dark times, we cannot afford to embrace a disingenuous form of respectability politics.

In Donald Trump, the nation has a commander-in-chief who is a thrice-married serial adulterer, a shameless grifter, and an insurrectionist with 34 criminal convictions who treats the U.S. Constitution as a recommendation. We do not need monks but revolutionary and visionary politicians who can take him on. A politician’s background is less important to me than their willingness to combat draconian political policies designed to undo centuries of progress. Could any of these individuals eventually expose themselves as pretending to support Democrats while voting with Trump on important issues like John Fetterman or Krysten Sinema? Of course. However, Republicans are already doing such things without apology.

With Trump in the White House and Republican majorities in the House and the Senate, and with right-wing justices dominating the U.S. Supreme Court, ruthless attacks on diversity are being carried out throughout the nation. Previously historical Black and Latino congressional districts are being callously erased, and the Trump administration is sinisterly employing antidiscrimination laws against the very people they were meant to protect.

The current Democratic establishment is under attack because of the perception that it is weak and inefficient. It is not enough to say that “we are anti-Trump.” The people who say this often initiate and conclude the conversation by lamenting (often unconvincingly) why progressive ideas are outlandish, unrealistic, or impossible and yet fail to suggest creative and ambitious ideas themselves. The party must offer its ever-skeptical supporters valid and convincing reasons for investing in their brand, which currently appears somewhat stale, antiquated, and outdated. Democratic Socialists are offering such reasons as part of a bold, innovative agenda. They want to curtail, if not outright prohibit, offensive weapons sales to nations they perceive to be engaging in human rights abuses. Moreover, they support Medicare for All, free public college tuition, universal childcare, and basic housing as a human right.

There are a number of older, centrist, and corporate-leaning Democrats who take issue with such “radical” proposals. However, very few of them can offer their own resourceful solutions to issues such as skyrocketing childcare, health insurance, college tuition, and housing costs or the ever-transforming foreign policy landscape. These issues and concerns are on the minds of many of the party’s voters, whether they are people of color, female, or young. In essence, this voter base forms a significant segment of the Democratic Party. Upscale and affluent party leaders and power brokers, many of whom reside in exclusive enclaves such as Palo Alto, Palm Beach, Beverly Hills, Scarsdale, and the Hamptons, would do well to refrain from adopting an insincere “holier-than-thou” attitude, take heed of the brewing and seething storm, and take urgent steps to address it.

Elwood Watson Ph.D. is a professor of History, Black Studies, and Gender and Sexuality Studies at East Tennessee State University. He is a cultural critic, syndicated columnist, and author of the books,: Talkin’ To You, Bro!: Liberate Yourself from the Confusing, Ambiguous Messages of Contemporary Masculinity (Lasting Impact Press, 2021) and Keepin’ It Real: Essays on Race in Contemporary America. https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/K/bo40060337.html (University of Chicago Press 2019)

Recently, I was reading one of my favorite magazines primarily geared toward Generation X men. There were a number of interesting and provocative article. One in particular drew my attention: it discussed the issue of men and sex addiction and contained riveting testimonies from men of varied ages (mostly their late twenties to their mid-fifties) whose sex addiction cripped their entire lives and livelihoods. Some men lost their spouses, family members, and friends; others destroyed their careers; and still others became infected with fatal diseases such as HIV. I found the article traumatic and troubling.

Sex addiction is a disease that is slowly but surely turning into an epidemic in American society. Given the diverse methods used to determine what accounts for sex addiction, precise statistics showing its level of prevalence are difficult to obtain. Nonetheless, it is estimated that 3–6% of Americans suffer from some form of sex addiction according to the National Association of Sexual Addiction and Compulsivity. It is a vice affecting people of all races, socioeconomic backgrounds, sexual persuasions, and religions.

Some psychiatrists and sex therapists argue that a number of factors can result in a person entering a cycle of sexual obsession and dysfunction. A traumatic childhood, excessive drug use, and social insecurity are just a few examples. Some sexologists and sex experts argue that a person’s genetic composition can be a factor in their sex addiction. Briefly, the tendency to be a sexaholic can exist in a person’s DNA. For its victims, it can result in a harrowing life of risk and frustration.

Among the most prominent symptoms of sex addition are the following:

1) Chronic, obsessive sexual thoughts and fantasies

2) Using sex seductively

3) Trading sex for money

4) Voyeurism

5) Addiction to pornography or cybersex

6) Exploiting others for sex

7) Having intrusive sex

8) Relations with multiple partners on a frequent basis, especially with strangers

9) Compulsive masturbation

10) Preoccupation with having sex, even when it interferes with daily life, productivity, work performance, and so on

11) Inability to stop compulsive sexual behaviors or restrain sexual activity

12) Putting oneself or others in danger because of one’s sexual behavior

13) Engaging in illegal sexual activity with prostitutes, minors, or children

14) Need for dominance and control in sexual liaisons

15) Feeling remorse or guilt after sexual episodes

16) Negative personal or professional consequences due to sexual behavior

Sex addicts often experience a sense of euphoria beyond anything the average person with a normal, healthy sexual appetite experiences. For addicts, the sexual experience is not about intimacy. On the contrary, addicts use sexual activity to seek pleasure, avoid unpleasant situations, suppress feelings, or respond to external pressures such as work difficulties or interpersonal problems. As in the case of those who suffer from alcoholism, the pleasure gained from such brief experiences soon evaporates and, in a number of cases, feelings of depression and guilt set in. Unfortunately, the addict then practices denial and starts all over again. It is a vicious cycle.

Sex addiction is often rooted in psychological and emotional challenges. Mental health disorders such as anxiety, depression, and bipolar disorder can significantly increase the likelihood of a person developing compulsive sexual behaviors. Individuals may turn to sex to escape feelings of anger, inadequacy, loneliness, sadness, or stress and soothe themselves, creating a harmful cycle of dependency. In these cases, sex serves as a temporary coping mechanism, masking deeper psychological issues. Low self-esteem and unresolved identity issues can also be contributing factors. For some, engaging in frequent sexual activity provides a temporary boost in confidence and self-worth. This fleeting sense of validation can lead to repeated behaviors, reinforcing the addiction over time. Emotional regulation difficulties further compound the issue.

Societal expectations around masculinity also play a pivotal role. Many cultures emphasize male dominance, sexual prowess, and physical relationships as markers of masculinity. These pressures can create unrealistic expectations, driving individuals to engage in sexual behaviors and resulting in a cycle of performance and validation that spirals into addiction.

Peer environments further reinforce these patterns. In social groups where casual sexual encounters are glorified, unhealthy behaviors may be normalized, making it difficult for individuals to recognize or address their addiction. The combination of societal norms and personal experiences often creates fertile ground for compulsive sexual behaviors to develop.

Sex addiction is not confined to one’s family, friends, or neighbors. A number of prominent public figures such as Michael Douglas, Kanye West, Tiger Woods, Tom Sizemore, Jesse James, Charlie Sheen, Lamar Odom, Scott Dissick, David Duchovny, Eric Benet, Mike Causin, Colin Farrell, and Russell Brand have been linked to the disorder.

Those experiencing sexual obsession and sex addiction should not lose hope. The following are some options available to them:

1) Get support — Seek help from your partner, friends, and family members.

2) Avoid triggers — Avoid places or situations that are likely to trigger your sexual urges. Failure to do so might cause you to either continue or relapse into addictive behavior.

3) Accept your problem — Stop the denial and admit that you have a problem. The sooner you do this, the better your odds are of conquering the issue.

4) Join an outside support group — You are not alone. Consider reaching out to a community support group.

5) Seek help — A professional can help you gain control of your addiction and move forward.

No one is saying that sex is a bad thing. Sex is a part of human nature and can be a wonderful and pleasurable experience. However, sex addiction, like any addiction, can be problematic and wreak havoc on the lives of the victim and those around them.

In our age of deadly sexually transmitted diseases, sex addiction should be considered a form of dysfunction that can potentially destroy a person physically, psychologically, and mentally. Those who grapple with such a powerful and agonizing disorder, regardless of their sexual orientation, must make an effort to combat it through whatever means necessary. Doing so just might save their lives.

NOTE: Those who desire or are in need of assistance in conquering their sex addiction can contact the following:

Addictions: 1-(800)- 654–0987

Prescott House: 1-(800)-425–4673

Elwood Watson Ph.D. is a professor of History, Black Studies, and Gender and Sexuality Studies at East Tennessee State University. He is a cultural critic, syndicated columnist, and author of the books,: Talkin’ To You, Bro!: Liberate Yourself from the Confusing, Ambiguous Messages of Contemporary Masculinity (Lasting Impact Press, 2021) and Keepin’ It Real: Essays on Race in Contemporary America. https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/K/bo40060337.html (University of Chicago Press 2019)

A Ph.D. candidate and arguably dogmatic left winger who was a political novice ran against and defeated Adriano Espaillat, leader of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. He developed a political operation referred to known as the “squadriano” in New York’s 13th District, which includes Washington Heights, Harlem, and parts of the Bronx. The majority of these communities are reliably progressive but not necessarily known for their radical politics. Of the three New York City congressional candidates whom Mayor Zohran Mamdani endorsed in Tuesday’s primary, Darializa Avila Chevalier was the most vulnerable. Each of these candidates won.

Some pundits have argued that such an outcome was more of a response to Senate Democrats’ deferring countless times to Trump: dramatic decrease in support for congressional Democrats and Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries in particular. During the first Trump administration, the good and reliable forces were The New York Times and The Washington Post. Democratic leaders in Congress were held in high regard. The reality is that voters have realized that the solution to handling Trump is not to continually pledge homage to the institutions whose failure resulted in his two presidential victories. Over the past decade, from larger and midsized cities to small towns, the left has created an ideologically dedicated voter base and a solid and robust infrastructure through Democratic Socialists of America chapters that have been victorious in elections and established a strong competitive bench outside the more traditional young, jig economy, working class, and politically fluid areas.

Such parochial political machines were initially able to consolidate in these areas; the bohemian-inspired districts were heavily composed of voters who were psychologically radicalized by Bernie Sanders and his “rage against the machine” campaigns. Because of such efforts, socialist candidates can now win in cities such as New York with Zohran Mamdani, DC with Janeese Lewis George, or Los Angeles with Marissa Roy. Strategic, long-term organizing has accelerated the left beyond its young, primarily White voter base with the opportunity to secure victories across sizable majority Black and Latino constituencies that previous left-wing efforts such as the Sanders presidential campaign could not achieve.

Additionally, the sudden left surge is based on a return to mass politics. For most of the 20th century, politics was based around crucial entities — unions, local parties, civic organizations — a real, civil society anyone could join and participate in that offered community and consensus decision-making. Truth be told, the latter 20th and early 21st centuries have seen the dismantling of these entities, supplanted by atomized politics ruled by cabals of elected officials who do the bidding of plutocrats with no genuine roots among the masses.

The past two months should awaken the Democratic Party and its leadership to the high, in fatuous energy emanating from its left wing. The fighters are the people on their left. Democrats have made it clear that they want fighters; they want the sort of old school politics that was invested in the collective struggles of the masses, not decided by a few elites in smoke infested rooms. Democratic centrist voters are still an important constituency to keep pacified. Nonetheless, the party’s leadership is deeply at odds and out of touch with its base. A strong, radical leftist wave is powering across the nation.

The current electorate in both political parties is furious, and now it’s the conservative right that hates the business-as-usual approach to politics. Much of the Democratic establishment has proved itself dreadfully inept. Previous anti-ICE positions were viewed as fringe and irrational. However, when Trump eventually transformed the agency into something reminiscent of his own private army, a plurality of voters wanted to scrap it. The real and major question is what lessons those representing the left have learned from the past several years that have been less than politically fruitful. Indeed, progressive outsider candidates are surging throughout the nation.

There’s now a democratic socialist mayor in Seattle, and a democratic socialist recently won the primary to become mayor of Washington, DC. In northern New England, Maine candidate Graham Platner, who, like Avila Chevalier, has a less than pristine social media history, soundly defeated the state’s governor, Janet Mills, for the Senate nomination. Additionally, voters in Maine’s rural Second District, which Trump won by nine points, chose a progressive, Matt Dunlap, to run for the House seat of outgoing centrist Democrat, Jared Golden, defeating Joe Baldacci, the candidate that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee endorsed. Such results are not merely coincidental.

A transformation in urban politics itself lies beneath this generational change. The shift to the left has been notable in urban centers — New York; Washington, DC; Seattle; Los Angeles; Chicago; Boston; etc. Over the last decade, distinct from and similar to political disruptions in the national climate, the left has created a strong, solid ideological base in urban areas that are increasingly the governing or opposition faction in most major cities. hegemonic among an entire generation of voters, a millennial generation that is now ageing into a majority. The radicals of a decade ago are now becoming parents themselves and members of school boards and PTAs.

Many Democratic voters, however, are in no mood for acquiescence. As they see it, the current overly cautious, tepid party structure has repeatedly failed them, and they have decided to divorce them politically. Voters are hungry for bold, visionary leadership. As several pundits have proclaimed, the Democratic version of the Tea Party has arrived with unalloyed implications for the midterms and the 2028 presidential election. Zorhan Mandami noted at a rally at Brooklyn’s Kings Theater what people are asking when the race for 2028 begins. “It starts now,” he said. Indeed, if recent mayoral and state elections are any indication, at least for the moment, the mayor is right on target in his assessment.

Elwood Watson Ph.D. is a professor of History, Black Studies, and Gender and Sexuality Studies at East Tennessee State University. He is a cultural critic, syndicated columnist, and author of the books,: Talkin’ To You, Bro!: Liberate Yourself from the Confusing, Ambiguous Messages of Contemporary Masculinity (Lasting Impact Press, 2021) and Keepin’ It Real: Essays on Race in Contemporary America. https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/K/bo40060337.html (University of Chicago Press 2019)

Kohen Wiley, a one-year-old child from Mississippi, is dead because of a dispute about diapers. Let that sink in for a moment. Again, a child who was only a year old is no in essence, executed due to a dispute over a box of diapers! His mother had held the child up in the direction of the police officers who fatally shot him to ensure that they could see him. She wanted them to show grace and deference to this newly arrived human life that was so innocent and vulnerable. Her efforts were in vain. The trigger-happy police officers fired anyway and one of them shot the young child in the ribcage while he was still in his mother’ s arms. The offcier’s name has yet to be released.

The murder occurred on Sunday, June 14, after police in Senatobia responded to a reported shoplifting at Walmart. According to the authorities, police officers tried to block a vehicle connected to the call. They claimed the driver moved toward them, and then one officer fired into the car. Kohen was pronounced dead at a hospital, and another adult driving the car was critically injured.

This lack of humanity in regard to a Black infant is shocking yet routine. The usual suspects, racially motivated people who hate Black and other non-White children because of their own sadistic value systems, have wasted no time saturating social media with perverse justifications for comparing the child’s life with a box of diapers. Social media users have contested the official version of events. Some bloggers claim that Kohen’s mother, Vellesiya Wiley, had a receipt and was not shoplifting. Understandably, Kohen’s family and friends are demanding that Walmart release its surveillance footage and that police provide body camera footage.

Their skepticism is well founded. Too often, police narratives about Black people are viewed as authentic without evidence. The United States has a long and sinister history of official misconduct, from false testimonies to suppressed or forged evidence to coercion, which has upended and decimated Black Americans’ lives and livelihoods. Let’s say for the sake of argument that Ms. Wiley had stolen one, two or 100 boxes of diapers, as well as bottles of milk and baby food and other items, police officers had no right to shoot multiple bullets into her vehicle with the full knowledge that there was a child inside. Clearly, therefore, this was an act of sadistic violence.

The killing of Black children is nothing new in the United States. Black infants and toddlers have been shot out of their mothers’ arms, fed to alligators and other animals, murdered by White supremacists, used as target practice during race riots, killed while sitting in their parents’ laps, and shot during police raids while sleeping in their homes. Many were not even given the opportunity to be born because their mothers were lynched or physically assaulted and murdered by police.

Ever since Black people first stepped foot on the country’s shores, their lives and bodies have been routinely scrutinized, objectified, sexualized, and racialized. Black people, whether children or adult, have never been seen as fully human but as largely primitive and invisible creatures who are to be denied any degree of humane acknowledgment from mainstream society. Kohen Wiley is another addition to this gruesome historical list.

Black people never appear to be granted the “benefit of the doubt” that so many privileged Whites are in police confrontations. Indeed, it is highly unlikely that any other racial group in America has to expend so much intense energy navigating its interactions with law enforcement in an effort to prevent deadly encounters or loss of life. It is disgraceful that the presumption of “guilty until proven innocent” that many police officers hold with regard to Black Americans does not conform to the notion of equal justice or “color blindness” in law.

Would the average White person be the victim in a random act of violence committed by police officers? Absolutely not. If White people were routinely and randomly subjected to police violence, including being gunned down in the street, at the rate that Black — and increasingly Latino/a people — are, there would be calls for congressional demonstrations and cries of protests so loud that a politician or police officer who ignored it would be committing political or career suicide. When will this become a reality for people of color?

The death of Black people at the hands of law enforcement has become so commonplace that many Black people are simultaneously outraged and psychologically numbed. Over the past few years, Black people have been front-row spectators of grainy, and, in some cases, graphic footage of police officers engaged in horrifically violent behavior toward people of African descent. White denial, resistance, and other factors notwithstanding, Black people are human beings and deserve to be treated with as respect and dignity as any other group of people. PERIOD!

Elwood Watson Ph.D. is a professor of History, Black Studies, and Gender and Sexuality Studies at East Tennessee State University. He is a cultural critic, syndicated columnist, and author of the books,: Talkin’ To You, Bro!: Liberate Yourself from the Confusing, Ambiguous Messages of Contemporary Masculinity (Lasting Impact Press, 2021) and Keepin’ It Real: Essays on Race in Contemporary America. https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/K/bo40060337.html (University of Chicago Press 2019)

The recent, abhorrent comments directed at former First Lady Michelle Obama by UFC fighter Josh Hokit were not only offensive and inappropriate, but they were also part of a troubling pattern that Black women in America have endured for generations. UFC President Dana Whitte denounced the juvenile comments as “nonsense.” The incident exposes larger and disturbing reasons why some individuals feel that it is permissible to publicly insult one of the most admired and accomplished women in the world.

The comments made by Hokit were not simply about politics. They reflected a long-standing pattern in which upscale accomplished Black women are targeted, ridiculed, and denounced as less feminine, less refined, or less worthy of respect than their White counterparts. From elected officials and businesswomen to educators and community activists, Black women have routinely endured vile attacks that expand well beyond policy disagreements and often land in the category of personal degradation and denigration.

What is particularly disturbing is that such an offensive comment was made in a notably public setting. Regardless of whether you concur or disagree with Michelle Obama politically is not the issue. All human beings should be afforded a basic degree of dignity and respect. The level of civil discourse in society has plummeted in our current political climate, and retrograde situations such as this further contribute to the destruction of such a standard.

Politically motivated conspiracy theories about Ms. Obama started during her husband’s presidency and have repeatedly been debunked. Online, transphobic bullies continue to post photos of the former first lady that are sinisterly distorted to make her features appear more masculine. She has been referred to as “Big Mike.” Others claim that former President Obama is gay, and that their children, Malia and Sasha Obama, now 27 and 25, were conceived by surrogate parents. The nonsense is par for the course in the frequently mentally challenged and debased right-wing blogosphere.

Equally outrageous is that almost a decade after leaving the White House, both Barack and Michelle Obama (and occasionally their daughters Malia and Sasha) continue to face enormous hostility and resentment from their political detractors. Both reactions are mainstays in conservative political conversations. Indeed, from the moment her husband became a serious contender for the Democratic nomination in 2008, Michelle Obama has been a perennial figure in the media spotlight. With this level of exposure came a significant amount of controversy. Unlike previous first ladies such as Rosalyn Carter, Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson, Pat Nixon and others, Mrs. Obama evokes rabid passions among her supporters and detractors alike. There appears to be no middle ground. Her proponents see her as intelligent, classy, elegant, no-nonsense, charismatic, and socially conscious. Her opponents denounce her as arrogant, aloof, unpatriotic, racially bigoted, and anti-American.

For her critics, the already intense level of suspicion toward both Obamas reached a fever pitch in the 2008 presidential campaign when the then future first lady stated that for the first time in her adult life she was really proud of America. Although many reasonable people totally understood what she meant (even another former first lady Laura Bush stated later in the same year during in an interview stated understood what she (Obama) meant and detected not one hint of unpatriotic rhetoric in her comments,on the contrary, the political right, including Cindy McCain wasted no time in perversely exploiting a sincere statement, misconstruing it to imply that Mrs. Obama was an anti-American who harbored Black nationalist sentiments.

Such indignities continued during her tenure as first lady, and even today the Republican right has frequently made Mrs. Obama the target of vicious assaults. She has been accused of hating Whites and using the term “whitey” on tape. Terms such as “baby mama,” “angry Black woman,” “jezebel,” “Black Lady Macbeth,” “Ms. Grievance,” “bitch” (in many cases preceded by the word Black), “uppity,” and other derogatory and disrespectful labels have been used to malign her. Truth be told, on more than a few far-right wing websites, the rhetoric used to describe both her and her husband is often so inflammatory and intolerant that some website moderators suspend activity until they can get things under control. I will not repeat such incendiary rhetoric here.

Not content to take the “proud of my nation” quote grossly out of context, the anti-Michelle crowd posted copies of her Princeton undergraduate thesis on anti-Obama websites to demonstrate that she was obsessed with being Black, attacked her University of Chicago administrative job as a “diversity position,” spread false rumors that she only wanted Black and other non-whites at campaign rallies, and claimed that she was on tape yelling anti-American statements and other such nonsense. A couple of talk show hosts referred to Michelle Obama by invoking the term “lynching party.” YES INDEED! THINGS HAVE BEEN UGLY! For the record, the supposedly “whitey” tapes never surfaced. That is because they never existed. For the hosts’ jingoistic, wild-eyed, racist, sexist, and xenophobic right-winged supporters, just the thought of such recordings was enough to whip them into spasms of anti-Michelle Obama frenzy. Clearly, the nation’s first Black first lady — glamorous, accomplished, and unapologetic — still lives, rent-free, in the minds of Trump and his MAGA supporters.

Some people argue that there have been other first ladies like Hillary Clinton and Nancy Reagan who have undergone critical and hostile scrutiny. Although true, neither Mrs. Clinton nor Mrs. Reagan were subjected to acerbic racial overtones. They were criticized for certain excesses, but never were the attacks, especially in the case of Nancy Reagan, so racially charged or personal. Race has undoubtedly been a factor in such treatment. However, like many strong, radiant, and viable Black women before her, Mrs. Obama has managed to admirably shrug off such criticism and resentment and focus on the goals that are important to her. In essence, while her critics have continually gone low, Ms. Obama has perennially taken the high road.

Despite pockets of naysayers, the reality is that Michele Obama has numerous admirers across the political spectrum. Many individuals see her diverse, flexible, and sincere personality as refreshing. The truth is that many her most strident, bigoted critics, who would rather have seen the Obamas cooking and cleaning in the White House rather than residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue as they did for eight years, have been unable to successfully demonize either of them. Michelle Obama will remain true to herself and to her constituencies. She is indeed one classy, resilient, and intelligent former first lady.

Elwood Watson Ph.D. is a professor of History, Black Studies, and Gender and Sexuality Studies at East Tennessee State University. He is a cultural critic, syndicated columnist, and author of the books,: Talkin’ To You, Bro!: Liberate Yourself from the Confusing, Ambiguous Messages of Contemporary Masculinity (Lasting Impact Press, 2021) and Keepin’ It Real: Essays on Race in Contemporary America. https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/K/bo40060337.html (University of Chicago Press 2019)

Nineteen-year-old Karmelo Anthony was convicted of murder on June 9 and sentenced to thirty-five years in prison for fatally stabbing seventeen-year-old Austin Metcalf at a high school track meet in April 2025 in Frisco, Texas. Frankly, the conviction didn’t surprise me. From the incident’s initial stages to the jury’s composition and other factors, the political and judicial winds were clearly blowing in the prosecution’s direction.

From the outset, the case garnered intense national media attention. It was about a harrowing physical altercation that escalated to murder. It did not take long for inaccurate information about both young men to saturate social media. Grotesque lies and malicious, targeted, menacing campaigns emanated from across the political spectrum, and both men’s family members were disturbingly the targets of aggravated harassment. Conservative right-wing organizations eagerly latched on to the case, for one obvious reason. Anthony is Black, Metcalf White.

Numerous studies that the US Sentencing Commission, The Marshall Project, and the Office of Justice Programs conducted have exposed profound racial disparities between Black defendants and non-Black defendants charged with serious crimes. Black defendants routinely receive harsher sentences than other racial groups do when claiming self-defense.

Such disturbing disparities are a major reason why Karmelo Anthony’s judicial saga has drawn rabid attention. Anthony’s proponents argue that his sentence raises justified questions about consistency, especially after he claimed self-defense. In contrast, his detractors argue that justice was served. Truth be told, America has a long history of cultivating racially polarizing criminal trials based on the racial dynamics involved. A Black teenager’s killing a White teenager has been fertile ground for the most intensely hate-filled racist individuals to perversely amplify and exploit endemic racial tensions. The rise of AI has further compounded the problem.

Consequently, many observers, including me, have examined the trial through a broader historical and cultural lens. Some have questioned whether race influenced public reaction to the incident, while others raised concerns about fairness, appropriate representation, and faith in a judicial process that has often been anything but equitable to Black Americans. Indeed, Karmelo Anthony’s family openly expressed concerns about racial discrimination and unequal treatment throughout the legal proceedings and shared that they had to move from their original residence to protect their safety due to racial attacks during the trial.

While the verdict ignited fierce debate across the political spectrum, in social activist circles, and in the world of legal punditry and other segments of American society, one glaring factor at the center of everything is the jury’s racial composition.

In Collin County, where the trial occurred, Black people make up 12.1 percent of the population, according to The Dallas Morning News. Nonetheless, of the roughly several hundred residents summoned for jury duty, the jury ultimately comprised twelve jurors and six alternates, one of whom identified as Black. According to CBS News, the prosecutors dismissed the three qualified Black jurors during the final jury selection in spite of defense attorneys’ accusing the prosecutors of removing the jurors without proper cause. They argued with a straight face that the case’s circumstances were “race-neutral” (yes, you read that correctly) and did not require a diverse jury. Judge John Roach Jr. ultimately sided with the prosecutors.

The sentence arrived as Anthony’s family and supporters said they did not believe he received a fair trial, and an advocate claimed jurors never saw a key video. The case is drawing attention because the murder, the verdict, and the fight over Black jurors are now colliding in a high-profile Texas murder trial. “The prosecution used its final strikes to remove the remaining qualified Black jurors from the jury pool, raising serious concerns about fairness and equal justice,” Next Generation Action Network, a civil rights organization, shared following jury selection. “We respect the court, but we will not remain silent.” Law Professor Anna Ofitt confirmed such concerns in an op-ed for The Dallas Morning News, pointing out that in Texas, the stakes of jury composition are particularly high because jurors don’t only decide guilt or innocence; they also decide the sentence.

The exclusion of Black people from juries is hardly a recent phenomenon. On the contrary, it is often par for the course and deeply American. For centuries, the US Constitution effectively denied Black communities the right to serve on juries through the machinery of slavery. Even post-emancipation, many states resisted providing Black citizens access to jury service and the option of a jury of their peers trying them. The ratification of the 14th Amendment in 1868, which provided all citizens with “equal protection of the laws,” and the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which nullified race-based discrimination in jury selection, legally opened the door to Black Americans’ equal participation in the judicial process. Centuries later, the gulf between legal protection and lived reality remains stark.

Today, that gap is even more pronounced when you consider that nearly every elected prosecutor in America is White, despite the fact that more than four out of ten Americans are non-White, as cited by the Equal Justice Initiative. The constitutional right to a jury of one’s peers exists precisely to protect defendants from law enforcement, judges, and racially motivated prosecutors unchecked and all too often unexamined racial and cultural biases. When juries fail to reflect the diversity of the communities they serve, those biases emerge to the detriment of other non-White defendants, particularly Black defendants who are often saddled with abnormally unjust sentences.

The fact that Karmelo Anthony is a dark-skinned Black person may well have factored into the jury’s deliberations. Several studies have indicated that darker-skinned Black people often receive harsher sentences than lighter-skinned Black people do. Anthony’s more pronounced Blackness possibly turned off many Whites, particularly socially and culturally conservative Whites, including those on the jury. Such internal entrenched biases extend beyond the judicial system.

To be sure, a racial belief in the Karmelo Anthony verdict has not been universal. Several Black people, among them Jemele Hill, have argued that Anthony should have been convicted but for a lesser crime. To be honest, I could have understood a manslaughter charge. In my view, a thirty-five-year sentence for a then seventeen-year-old child with no prior criminal record and no evidence of harboring any pre meditated motives in his altercation with Mr. Metcalf is unduly harsh and borders on cruel and inhumane punishment. This sentence is particular unnerving when compared to what previous defendants received. For example, Aaron Dean, Elijah McCain, Johanes Mehserle, Danie Panteleo, Chickee Rick Chow, George Zimmerman, Kyle Rittenhouse, Gerald Stanley, James Burke, Sonja Du, and Caysen Allison were accused of taking the lives of Black people, but most of them were either acquitted or received minimal sentences.

Such outcomes demonstrate that in the US judicial system, many Americans perceive White people’s lives as significantly more valuable than the lives of others. A cold, sobering, and unacceptable reality.

Elwood Watson Ph.D. is a professor of History, Black Studies, and Gender and Sexuality Studies at East Tennessee State University. He is a cultural critic, syndicated columnist, and author of the books,: Talkin’ To You, Bro!: Liberate Yourself from the Confusing, Ambiguous Messages of Contemporary Masculinity (Lasting Impact Press, 2021) and Keepin’ It Real: Essays on Race in Contemporary America. https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/K/bo40060337.html (University of Chicago Press 2019)

Many of us remember the day Donald Trump rode down the elevator to announce his first presidential campaign in 2015 before falsely claiming that Mexico was sending criminals to the US. A segment of isolationist, parochial, ethnocentric, exclusionary, intolerant Americans embraced his blatantly bigoted and unsubstantiated claim and made his uncensored racism their official motto, a weapon in their war against those they perceived as different from them.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump continued with aggressive, harsh, and politically lacerating messages. Racism, sexism, and xenophobia were staples throughout his odiously divisive candidacy. He marked his 2016, 2020, and 2024 presidential campaigns with significant media attention and controversy, notably his promise to “Make America Great Again” (MAGA). While some politicians have frantically tried to explain that this rallying cry carries various meanings, Trump’s message to his largely right-of-center, MAGA-obsessed supporters and many non-White Americans was that he unambiguously and unapologetically aimed to return to a time when Whites, particularly White men, were in control of politics and economics. Indeed, Dr. Claire Potter, professor emeritus of The New School for Social Research, and Dr. Paul Starr, sociology professor at Princeton University, brilliantly dissected Dr. Potter’s splendid Political Junkie podcast.

Trump has successfully satisfied his MAGA supporters’ longing for the “good ol’ days” when heterosexual, able-bodied White men ruled; where Latino and other dark-skinned, non-White immigrants were largely nonexistent; and where Blacks and, in some cases, Jews, were often marginalized and deprived of any sense of dignity, fairness, and equality. Women were largely relegated to second-class status, offered no competition in the workplace (notice all the tradwives articles saturating the internet?), often had to ignore infidelity or spousal abuse, and experienced sexual objectification. Society regarded gays and lesbians as less than human and as deviants and perverts unworthy of respect, and it viewed people with disabilities as quasi-human, burdensome, and semi-tragic figures.

Now, to complexly obliterate such a mirage! The reality that such a supposedly “Leave it to Beaver,” environment really never existed for many Whites, in most notably, lower income and poor Whites and certainly not White women across socio-economic backgrounds. The fact is that more than a few Whites have been gullibly deluded into believing that such a Norman Rockwell version America of yesteryear did, in fact, exist to their benefit. This is particularly true of the economically disaffected segment of White America who avidly supported Donald Trump for president through each of his three presidential campaigns. Trump and his minions were able to capitalize effectively on this voting bloc’s misguided fears and resentment to win the White House and have arrogantly misused and weaponized their power ever since.

For these voters, it has never been about the economy or other kitchen table issues. The majority of Trump voters did not cast their ballots for him because they thought he would reduce the deficit; develop a thriving, robust economy; or make it easier to own a home or hold a decent-paying job with health benefits. Indeed, many of his most ardent supporters have lost their jobs, are shelling out enormous amounts on grocery bills despite the president’s insistence that he would bring food prices down, and are struggling with various health ailments while having no recourse to medical assistance. To paraphrase James Carville, it’s not the economy, stupid. Rather, these voters chose Trump because he promised the racial preservation of a Eurocentric culture, more precisely, White Christian Nationalism. Indeed, in many cases, economics is employed as subterfuge for racial intolerance.

White supremacy is the adhesive glue of Trump’s political career, and those who would rather wallow in denial or pretend not to see his racism are just as conspiratorial as those who have embraced him and his social Darwinist ideology, providing him with the cover to promote policies that would have shattered many political careers. Thus, whenever he feels that his back is against the wall, Trump spews his disturbingly racist rhetoric to remind his overwhelmingly right-wing White supporters that he is doing everything he can to keep “those other people” in line. Are all Trump supporters individuals deeply embodied with unrestrained hatred or diehard racists? Of course not. That being said, many do, at a minmun, harbor rabidly intense White supremacist sympathies.

Throughout American history, numerous politicians, at the local, state and federal levels have employed such psychologically sinister tactics in an effort to play upon the resentments and securities of individuals who view those they see as the other with a paranoid and jaundiced eye. The more things change, the more they remain the same. One can only wonder what the national state of affairs would be today if America had elected Kamala Harris as president in November 2024. Sadly, we can only wonder.

Elwood Watson Ph.D. is a professor of History, Black Studies, and Gender and Sexuality Studies at East Tennessee State University. He is a cultural critic, syndicated columnist, and author of the books,: Talkin’ To You, Bro!: Liberate Yourself from the Confusing, Ambiguous Messages of Contemporary Masculinity (Lasting Impact Press, 2021) and Keepin’ It Real: Essays on Race in Contemporary America. https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/K/bo40060337.html (University of Chicago Press 2019)

Considerable controversy and commentary have continued to cascade through various political, educational, economic, and financial venues ever since the NAACP publicly announced its multilayered “Out of Bounds” campaign. The association requested Black athletes to reconsider playing for prominent football and basketball programs at higher education institutions such as the University of Alabama, University of Georgia, Louisiana State University, and Clemson University. These institutions are located in states that recently aggressively exercised the right that the US Supreme Court granted them to redesign their congressional districts prior to the November 2026 midterm elections.

The boycott is in response to a series of Supreme Court rulings — beginning with Shelby County vs. Holder in 2013 — that have weakened the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The NAACP has urged athletes currently enrolled at such institutions to consider transferring or demand that their respective coaches and athletic directors take a proactive stand in denouncing such gerrymandering efforts. The association also requested the athletes to consider attending HBCUs and encourage fellow players “not to let their athletic value be separated from their community’s political power.”

The Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) has joined the NAACP with a similar request. Both are relying on Black Americans’ recognizing the political urgency of the moment, that the parents of these talented young men will get on board, understand what is at stake, and support the campaign. The reality is that Black athletes are the most successful, influential, and visible individuals within the larger Black community. A fierce, impervious, well-synthesized movement of Black athletes against resistant states would have a revolutionary effect on sports in general as well as on politics. Truth be told, such an effort would hardly be novel. During the 1960s, Black athletes flexed their political muscle by making themselves available to colleges and universities outside of the South. While such efforts can be inspirational, even aspirational, they face problems on several levels.

First is the call for these athletes to consider attending HBCUs. Most are located in the same states that adamantly support the redistricting efforts. Second, most HBCUs are drastically underfunded and horrendously economically deprived of the wealth that flourishes at many predominantly White institutions due to historical and chronic racism. The effort to coax these athletes to attend HBCUs would likely have the opposite effect.

Truth be told, too many mainstream Black organizations have been woefully inadequate in addressing the larger Black community’s concerns. On the first day of his second term in office, President Trump brazenly declared a war on diversity efforts, not only in government but also in any institution, from schools to law firms to private industries, over which he could exert leverage. At breakneck speed, regardless of any criteria, he began terminating high-profile Black government officials. They included the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Charles “CQ” Brown Jr.; the librarian of Congress, Carla Hayden; Gwynne Wilcox, a well-respected attorney who served on the National Labor Relations Board; Robert Primus, a member of the Surface Transportation Board; Alvin Brown, who served on the National Transportation Safety Board; Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics; Willie Phillips, head of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission; and Lisa Cook, a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.

When Trump and his top political donor, Elon Musk, then started eliminating huge swaths of the federal government, to disastrous effect, the most severe cuts targeted agencies that employed a disproportionate number of Black employees. Not since Woodrow Wilson resegregated the federal workforce during his presidency has there been such a vile assault on Black government workers. Rather than hold wall-to-wall press conferences and flood the news zone decrying such brazenly bigoted antics, these same organizations were either offered bland and tepid remarks, were MIA or fell deafeningly silent. Unacceptable!

To be sure, the Trump administration has waged war on Black America (on all non-Whites for that matter), which now faces emergency levels of danger. Nonetheless, having the NAACP, CBC, and other Black national organizations recruit junior political warriors to tackle the dilemma is highly improbable. Moreover, it is unjust to enlist athletes in their late teens and early twenties and showcase them as contemporary modern-day saviors. These athletes, although endowed with rock-hard bodies, are still psychologically and emotionally immature and largely devoid of any political contacts or power. Indeed, it is grossly irresponsible and unfair to attempt to enlist kids — yes, kids — to lead a civil rights effort that many adults would find objectionable. Such a monumental request is unacceptable.

The situation would be different if these young men had collectively decided for themselves to initiate this sports boycott. In my view, it is unseemly to observe elders, many of whom are products or beneficiaries of generations of Civil Rights Movement activists, soliciting, indeed, demanding that Black youth take a fervent stand on behalf of the larger Black community when these same supposed leaders have frequently been less than sufficiently proactve on the recent assaults against much of Black America. We must resist all efforts to treat our young people as some kind of athletic guinea pigs or pawns of sorts to serve the agenda of others.

Elwood Watson Ph.D. is a professor of History, Black Studies, and Gender and Sexuality Studies at East Tennessee State University. He is a cultural critic, syndicated columnist, and author of the books,: Talkin’ To You, Bro!: Liberate Yourself from the Confusing, Ambiguous Messages of Contemporary Masculinity (Lasting Impact Press, 2021) and Keepin’ It Real: Essays on Race in Contemporary America. https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/K/bo40060337.html (University of Chicago Press 2019)

You may have heard about the many individuals on the conservative right who lost their already culturally challenged and tortured minds after learning that Lupita Nyong’o was cast in the upcoming epic fantasy film The Odyssey. She has also appeared in 12 Years a Slave, Black Panther, and Wakanda Forever. The Oscar-winning actor will inhabit two major characters in director Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of Homer’s ancient Greek epic. She portrays Helen of Troy, the most beautiful woman in the world, whose abduction ignites the Trojan War; and Clytemnestra, Helen’s sister and Agamemnon’s mysterious spouse. Helen of Troy is a significant individual in Homer’s The Iliad and The Odyssey. She is primarily associated with The Iliad due to her role in starting the fictitious Trojan War, but she emerges in The Odyssey in a scene with the character Telemachus, played by Tom Holland.

The eagerly anticipated film features a regal A-list cast including Matt Damon as Odysseus, Anne Hathaway as Penelope, and Zendaya as Athena. Several right-wing commentators have accused Nolan of producing a historically inaccurate depiction of a mythological poem. Additionally, for this rabidly Eurocentric mentally and morally regressive cast of right wingers, the casting of Lupita Nyong’o, who was chosen was sinisterly engineered as a leftwing plot to undermine western society. Yes, you read that correctly! Mind you, we are talking about a fictional poem! Right wing conspiracy theories continue to abound no matter how retrograde or insane.

Understandably, several racially progressive individuals scorned the irascible Elon Musk, right-wing commentator Matt Walsh, and other MAGA members for arrogantly questioning Nyong’o’s casting as Helen of Troy while taking aim at her physical appearance. Musk took to X (formerly Twitter) to declare in unison with fellow bigoted commentators that Nyong’o was not an appropriate selection to play the “most beautiful woman in the world.” The frequently maniacal Musk further claimed that Nolan had “lost his integrity,” foolishly charging that the director chose the actor to satisfy Hollywood’s diversity rules to “win awards.” Yes, you read that correctly! Musky Musk wasn’t done quite yet. He decried the upcoming potential blockbuster, complaining the casting was an affront to Homer’s original text, which described the fabled character as fair-skinned and blonde.

Conservative influencer Tanya Bass protested that Helen is a “historically White character” and claimed that Nyong’o’s casting was tantamount to giving a White person the role of Pocahontas: “This is racism against White people.” Numerous replies to her misguided and ill-informed post deftly and succinctly reminded Bass that Pocahontas was an actual historical figure, while Helen, according to Euripides’s version of the story, was born after the god Zeus assumed the form of a swan and mated with a human woman.

White supremacist and conservative political pundit Matt Walsh commented that Lupita N’yongo, who was named People Magazine’s most-beautiful woman-in 2014 was not sufficiently attractive. “Not one person on the planet actually thinks that Lupita Nyong’o is the ‘most beautiful woman in the world.’” Walsh continued: “And yet if a major Hollywood studio made a film set in Africa and cast a White woman as ‘the most beautiful woman in Africa,’ those same people would literally riot in the street. If, say, Sydney Sweeney was cast in the role, they’d be driven to murderous violence. We all know this is the case.” I guess he has not heard of the film Cleopatra starring Claudette Colbert and Elizabeth Taylor or of Sir Lawrence Olivier playing the African moor in Othello. Fortunately, many, including actor Alec Baldwin, aggressively challenged his faulty, foolsihly, racially tinged assertion.

Truth be told, the conservative backlash directed at The Odyssey has not only been about racism following Nyongo’s casting as Helen of Troy. Elliot Page, formerly known as Ellen Page, who earned an Oscar nomination for her performance in JUNO, will play the tragic male hero Achilles. Thus, for many on the social and cultural right, having a transgender performer portray a supposed heroic character, no matter how fictitious, is tantamount to blasphemy.

To be sure, there are cases where nonfiction must prioritize truth and accuracy. Should Denzel Washington and Benicio del Toro represent Nazi soldiers in a movie about the Holocaust? Should Julianne Moore or Kathy Bates be given first priority to portray Harriett Tubman or Ida B. Wells on the silver screen? In all probability, no. Nonetheless, when it comes to fiction, the rules of rigidity are suspended. Fiction, by definition, has no obligation to be accurate. The reality is that opportunities for Black actors and actors of color in general are not as abundant as they are for White performers. Despite progress, it has been recent and minimal at best.

Racism impacts Black people in many areas, including the entertainment industry. The racist response to Nolan’s casting of Nyong’o is not about a concern for fealty to Homer’s intent or to the “supposed veracity” of Greek classics. There is nothing new in altering and redefining the Greek classics. Thus, right-wing outrage is about the grand refusal to view Helen as anything other than an Aryan woman to pacify their own psychosexual obsession with whiteness as supreme. It is indeed a sad, disquieting, and disturbing statement about our present-day society One that must continue to be ruthlessly challenged.

Elwood Watson Ph.D. is a professor of History, Black Studies, and Gender and Sexuality Studies at East Tennessee State University. He is a cultural critic, syndicated columnist, and author of the books,: Talkin’ To You, Bro!: Liberate Yourself from the Confusing, Ambiguous Messages of Contemporary Masculinity (Lasting Impact Press, 2021) and Keepin’ It Real: Essays on Race in Contemporary America. https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/K/bo40060337.html (University of Chicago Press 2019)