Kali Holloway

There are political candidates who are all boasts and bluster on the campaign trail, who tone things down once they take office. Not Eric Adams. In the week since he officially became New York City’s mayor, the man who was a police officer for 22 years before going into politics full-time has kept up the same Big Sweaty Cop Energy he displayed during his run. Adams was sworn in just after the ball dropped on New Year’s Day last weekend, and he immediately proceeded to kick things off by tacitly criticizing the outgoing administration for allowing New York City to be […]

On this New Year’s Day, it’s a good bet that Rhode Island state Rep. Patricia Morgan and the one Black person she knows will not be sitting down to eat black-eyed peas and collard greens together. It’s an even safer bet that she and her fellow Republicans will spend zero mental energy on the history of the New Year as a terrifying moment for enslaved people in America. Rep. Morgan, as you might recall, tweeted a few days ago that she “had a black friend”—emphasis on the past tense—but this unnamed Black token had recently become “​​hostile and unpleasant,” which the […]

During an interview with a Catholic anti-abortion outlet this September, Lynn Fitch — the lawyer arguing the case that could effectively overturn Roe v. Wade — called reproductive freedom a “state’s rights” issue. Fitch, Mississippi’s first woman attorney general, is undoubtedly aware of the historical associations of that phrase, which one local outlet noted has been “often invoked throughout Mississippi’s history, including in defense of slavery, segregation and the state’s now-defunct same-sex marriage ban.” Very nearly as a rule, the usage of “state’s rights” seems to presage a curtailing of civil rights, and Fitch’s effort to ban nearly all abortions in […]

Origin stories were kind of a thing this year. So was the anti-origin story movement, or rather, the conservative campaign to cancel any lessons about history dealing with slavery or decentering whiteness. Between the two, it seems like a perfect moment to examine the origins of one of the Christmas songs that becomes ubiquitous at this time of year, the soundtrack to a million Omicron superspreader shopping expeditions. For example, did you know the guy who wrote 1857’s “Jingle Bells,” James Pierpont, despite being from a well-known family of Boston-based Unitarian abolitionists, grew up to become an ardent secessionist and Confederate […]

“I don’t do requests because I’m not a DJ” should really become the motto of every Black woman who, hired for her expertise and competency, nonetheless has to deal with colleagues and clients who attempt to undermine both. On the last episode of Succession, the line is delivered by Lisa Arthur—the Gloria Allred-esque Black woman celebrity lawyer—in response to Kendall Roy, who has retained her services, only to consistently ignore every bit of legal advice he is paying her to give him. Instead, Kendall gives Lisa directives and “wish list” requests, like the one that provoked Lisa’s cutting quip, which include […]

Whenever the racist crimes of violent white offenders come to national light, there is always a period when those of us desiring accountability hold our collective breaths and patiently wait — hoping for the best, but prudently expecting the worst. It’s a learned behavior, the self-protective result of knowing that in place of criminal justice, the U.S. has a system that disproportionately criminalizes Black folks and denies them justice. Even when there is unequivocal evidence — as with the video documenting how William Bryan, Travis McMichael and Greg McMichael used pickup trucks and shotguns to track and murder Ahmaud Arbery — […]

You should expect, in the very near future, to see photos of a beaming Kyle Rittenhouse again holding court in a Wisconsin bar — surrounded by Proud Boys, white nationalists and other fascist fanboys — while flashing white power signs and wearing the same “Free as Fuck” t-shirt he wore the last time he went carousing, just hours after he’d pleaded not guilty in court. In the coming months, Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz might really follow through on his talk about giving Rittenhouse a congressional internship so that he can continue what Gaetz describes as “​​helping the country in additional ways,” […]

It is useful to know, if you are unfamiliar with the string of gruesome killings collectively known as the Atlanta Missing and Murdered Children’s cases, that no one was ever formally charged in the killings. The person or persons who, from 1979 to 1981, snatched at least two dozen kids from their families and communities, disposing of their young bodies in local rivers, woods, and long abandoned buildings, never faced charges for those killings even as authorities declared that the cases had been solved and the killer convicted of other crimes. There are many homicides that police fail to solve, and […]

It took Alabama lawmakers just five days last week to move a plan to build more prisons—in part, thanks to $400 million in COVID relief dollars—from a bill to a law. For years, Alabama’s prisons have been among the country’s most inhumane, marked by “an excessive amount of violence, sexual abuse, and prisoner deaths… on a regular basis,” according to a 2019 report from the Department of Justice. The well-documented human rights abuses in Alabama’s prisons have only worsened as the state has registered one of the highest coronavirus death tolls in the nation. But instead of addressing the disastrous conditions […]

Richard Spencer became a media fixture in 2016 because the overwhelmingly white and middle-class American press was impressed by a white supremacist they found unnervingly relatable, in possession of not only all his teeth, but also “articulate,” “intellectual” and “a neat dresser.” The “white rights activist,” as one mainstream outlet I shit you not described Spencer in 2017, painted himself as the leader of an iconoclastic and edgy new ideology—the term “alt-right” was coined by Spencer in 2008 —as if white supremacy, anti-Blackness and hating Jews isn’t the absolute least transgressive, boringly predictable basis for any American political movement. Spencer pushes […]

Eddie Lee Howard was twice sentenced to die based almost solely on bite mark evidence, and a forensic dentist’s testimony that there was “no doubt” Howard’s teeth matched bruises found on a murder victim’s body. After 26 years on Mississippi’s death row, Howard was exonerated in January, making him at least the 28th person in America to be freed after bite mark evidence was discredited by DNA. In 2012, nearly 30 years after an FBI investigator testified that hairs found at a murder scene belonged to Santae A. Tribble—and that there was “one chance in 10 million” those strands could have […]

The lawyers for the white men who admit, and were captured on video, killing Ahmaud Arbery, have filed papers declaring their plan to “rely heavily upon Georgia’s… citizen’s arrest statute” as a defense strategy. That is, they will argue during the October murder trial that Greg McMichael, a former police officer, and his son Travis were attempting a perfectly legal citizen’s arrest of Arbery because they decided he was up to no good—a supposition steeped in white presumptions of innate Black criminal guilt. Essentially, the defense will be resting its case on the idea that it was actually Arbery who was […]

In withdrawing from the U.S. team gymnastics finals at the Tokyo Olympics, gymnast Simone Biles showed courage and leadership, maturity and strength, faith in her teammates and prioritization of herself. “We have to protect our body and our mind,” the greatest gymnast the world has seen said in explaining her decision, adding that she didn’t want to hurt her teammates’ chances of winning a medal. “It just sucks when you’re fighting with your own head.” But we should also acknowledge that Black women in hypercompetitive, often white-dominated sports deal with issues their teammates and competitors simply aren’t forced to face. The […]

FINA, the international federation that makes the rules for competitive swimming, was recently given the chance to approve a swim cap specifically designed for natural Black hair. It’s a move that would have shown the organization wants to demonstrate that the sport—long-standing bastion of whiteness and racial exclusion—was making an effort to be more hospitable and welcoming to Black swimmers. Unfortunately and unsurprisingly, FINA turned down that opportunity. Instead, the federation denied an application submitted by Soul Cap, a company that manufactures caps for swimmers who have “thick, curly, and voluminous hair,” to have its gear officially approved for black competitive […]

RapidEye In a video released in early June, just days after his firing from the Bellevue Marshal’s Office, former Idaho police officer Nate Silvester—who got internet famous in April with a viral TikTok mocking LeBron James’ tweet calling for accountability for the cop who killed 16-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant — stated that the teen girl’s “death was tragic but it was also justified.” He also chastised his critics’ “radical woke ideologies,” and issued a declaration, or perhaps a warning, that “because I’m not wearing a badge anymore, you’re going to be hearing a lot more from me, so buckle up.” Now Silvester […]

Hell hath no fury like a white conservative confronted with the unvarnished history of slavery and racism in America. For nearly two solid years, right-wing reactionaries have been apoplectic over the 1619 Project, a journalistic exploration of the indelible impact of Black enslavement on these United States put together by New York Times journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones. The same angry mob has also attacked a heretofore obscure, four-decades-old analytical methodology for understanding the institutionalism of white supremacy and anti-Black racism called Critical Race Theory. The white conservative rage has been prolific, producing two House bills seeking to ban CRT and other “anti-American […]

It should be common knowledge that Black women invented rock and roll. Memphis Minnie, Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton, Bessie Smith and Sister Rosetta Tharpe should be names known as widely as those of the men who came after them, especially the white boys who have been canonized and made infinitely wealthy for biting their style. Instead, even as they’re cited in the annals of musicology and name-checked by music nerds, these Black women innovators are still far less famous than the musicians they influenced, and rock and roll writ large is almost always raced and gendered as white and male. […]

When the Biden Food and Drug Administration announced its plan to ban menthols, it cited the fact that “out of all Black smokers, nearly 85 percent smoke menthol cigarettes, compared to 30 percent of White smokers who smoke menthols.” Other kinds of flavored cigarettes—which apparently once included cinnamon, toffee, vanilla and bourbon, among so many other disgusting tobacco flavor profiles—were banned back in 2009, but not menthols, which continued to be sold. In 2011 and 2013, an FDA advisory committee reported that menthols aren’t any more toxic than other cigarettes, but suggested the minty flavoring mitigates “the harshness of smoke and […]

A mere three years ago, Brett Kavanaugh had a full-on meltdown while testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee about allegations that he committed sexual assault in high school at the age of 17. Red-faced and sneering, overflowing with both indignation and entitled frat-boy rage, Kavanaugh denounced the proceedings, denying the charges—but also suggesting the sentient keg-stand he’d been in high school didn’t define who he’d grown up to become all these decades later. “If we want to sit here and talk about whether a Supreme Court nomination should be based on a high school yearbook page,” the SCOTUS candidate said at […]

We learned a lot about what happens behind the closed doors of Buckingham Palace from Oprah Winfrey’s interview with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, but maybe the most astonishing revelation was that Meghan Markle felt like she “just didn’t want to be alive anymore” during her former life as a royal. The over the top racism and sexism she experienced, both within the Royal Family and from British tabloids, had eroded her mental health so severely that she didn’t want to be left alone out of fear that she might self harm. It was an admission that felt familiar to […]

Studying the extent of the damage caused by Black chattel slavery would be —and I mean this literally—the very least America could do to address racial inequality. But white conservatives oppose a bill that would undertake even that baby step. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said last week that President Joe Biden would support an investigation of the enduring impact of slavery and the inequities it created between Black and white Americans. “He certainly would support a study of reparations,” Psaki told reporters at the day’s press briefing. “He continues to demonstrate his commitment to take comprehensive action to address […]

The Trump administration’s sole success was in removing any lingering doubt that the right-wing is a death cult. This president’s nihilistic indifference to the coronavirus pandemic helped kill 385,000, his incitement of his white supremacist followers left five dead after the Capitol insurgency, and his administration’s anti-immigrant family separation policy killed children. In its final act of bloodthirsty callousness, as a petty parting boast of its power, the Trump administration is now assaulting the rule of law to race through the planned end of the execution spree it began last year. Dustin Higgs is slated to be killed by Trump’s DOJ […]

Dustin Higgs, a Black federal inmate whom the Trump Justice Department plans to kill next month, tested positive for COVID-19 this Thursday. One day later, Corey Johnson, another Black man the government also plans to murder on its way out the door, was also diagnosed with the disease. Per the Bureau of Prisons, the two are among at least 309 inmates and nearly 30 staff with active COVID cases in the federal prison complex in Terre Haute, Indiana, where in recent months at least three inmates have died of complications related to the disease. Those figures are a mere fraction of […]

Let’s just call what happened in Washington, D.C. today what it was: An anti-democracy protest by an assortment of white supremacists, violent fascists, and conspiracy nuts. They came to town to collectively demand the disenfranchisement of more than 78 million Americans, Joe Biden voters, and to reaffirm that “legal votes” can only be cast by white folks outside of miscegenated cities. Had they been marching against anti-Black racism or police abuse, cops would probably have violently rioted against them. Instead, the crowd of overwhelmingly white anti-democratic whiners and agitators made their way from Freedom Plaza to the Supreme Court with nary […]

For about 24 hours after the 2020 election was called for Joe Biden, Democrats and other opponents of fascism—which is to say, anti-fascists—danced in the streets in an outpouring of both joy and relief at the end of the most openly bigoted, corrupt and destructive presidential administration in the modern era. And then, like clockwork, the same awful people who have supported this awful president re-proved their awfulness, by issuing demands that everybody stop and think about how all this made Trump and his white supremacist cult feel—often with the implication that if Trump and his followers refuse to accept his […]

I feel fairly confident in this moment stating that I know white people better than they know themselves. That’s the only conclusion I can logically come to now that all those predictions of white Trump voters abandoning Donald Trump have turned out to be as wrong as I predicted. After four years of lily-white newsrooms cranking out “Trump Supporters Steadfastly Supporting Trump” articles, the media ignored its own findings, and instead came up with a new reason to lavish attention on white Trump voters — an imagined #Whexit, wherein white voters would finally suddenly see the err of their ways and […]

I’m exhausted, and I’m speaking for all of us. This presidency has seemingly lasted forever, and the primary season felt like an endurance test. But more specifically, I’m tired of Donald Trump’s incessant lying, his transparent racism, his oozing of toxicity. There was plenty of all of that on display during the final presidential debate, which again saw Trump square off against Joe Biden, this time with a competent moderator in Kristen Welker—only the second Black woman to moderate a presidential debate. On the one hand, watching the event only made me more tired. On the other hand, I got a […]