This is the web version of raceAhead, Fortune’s twice weekly newsletter on race and culture. Sign up to get it delivered free to your inbox.
SCOTUS scuttles the hopes of Florida voters. As newsrooms reckon with race, publishing houses make strides, TIAA’s Roger Ferguson wants you to get on with it, already. Are the Black women in your workplace paying an emotional tax? (Spoiler: yes.)
But first, here’s your Cole Porter inspired in review in Haiku.
This story is much
too sad to be told: Wonder
why all the news leaves
me totally cold?
Maybe it’s ‘cause of this case —
On a quiet street,
fighting vainly for
PPE, I suddenly
turn and see……and see…
Your “fabulous” face.
I get no kick from the shame
you don’t feel when you
put folks at risk, as
if you don’t have a clue. Yes,
I’d kick you out, too.
Hope you get a kick out of your weekend. We just think you’re the top! You’re the Coliseum, even.
Ellen McGirt
@ellmcgirt
Ellen.McGirt@fortune.com
On point
SCOTUS upholds a Florida law that bars formerly incarcerated people from voting The issue is unpaid fines associated with their convictions; the Supreme Court decision will allow the state to uphold the law, which will likely be in effect for the November election. "This Court's order prevents thousands of otherwise eligible voters from participating in Florida's primary election simply because they are poor," Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in the dissent. The situation is compounded by the problematic state of Florida’s records. “The scheme might function properly if Florida could identify residents with unpaid court charges and calculate how much they owe,” reports Slate. “But the state cannot do any of that, because it does not know who owes courts money or how much they owe.” In most cases, the records do not exist.
CNN
Advice on diverse corporate leadership from one of the four Black Fortune 500 CEOs That's right, just four out of 500. Roger Ferguson has headed up the No. 81 ranked financial services provider Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America, or TIAA, since 2008. His advice for other CEOs looking to create diverse teams? "Frankly, get on with it," he tells Fortune correspondent Susie Gharib. "Be very, very intentional about it... There's more and more data that shows that diverse boards, diverse teams, lead to better outcomes. So as a CEO, you ought to say, 'This is not just the morally nice thing to do, or right thing to do. It's a smart, savvy thing to do as well.'" He adds that strong pillars of diversity, inclusion, and equity will not only lead to better outcomes for employees, but shareholders and customers, too.
Fortune
Newsrooms and the reckoning on race What does the future of reporting look like if newsrooms actually diversify? Black journalists and other journalists of color have been candid on social media, sharing stories of what it’s like to work in a majority white industry that has the power to shape global narratives. On his outstanding podcast, Sam Sanders catches up with The Undefeated's Soraya Nadia McDonald, Futuro Media president and founder and Latino USA host Maria Hinojosa, and NPR public editor Kelly McBride to help chart a better future. “The credibility crisis that [journalism has], I think, actually bears a lot of similarities to our current voter disenfranchisement problem,” says McDonald. “There needs to be a baseline of literacy, when it comes to how we talk about race within America, how it operates within American history, and how that informs our present and what role news media has played in that.”
NPR
Lisa Lucas is having a moment The now former executive director of the National Book Foundation is joining Knopf, to become publisher of Pantheon and Schocken Books. Her job, she says, is the whole world. “To really be as open-minded as possible about who might want to connect with any given book,” she says. One of her last great acts? Joining forces with the Academy of American Poets (AAP) and the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP), in establishing a new Literary Arts Emergency Fund, which will provide $3.5 million to literary arts organizations, devastated by COVID-19-related disinvestment. The fund is made possible by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. But Lucas’s ascension is a clear sign that the publishing world is (finally) changing.
New York Times
What’s an emotional tax? Women of color pay an additional price at work, explains Catalyst, a nonprofit that advances progress for women in the workplace. Black, Latinx, and Asian women are often on guard against bias, a form of “emotional tax” that can impact their health and productivity. RaceAhead has covered the research behind this phenomenon in depth, but this helpful short video can nudge anyone who may need a little inclusive leadership coaching. It seemed worth the reminder, particularly now.
Catalyst
On background
The power of white rage A rare moment of thanks to the YouTube algorithm who served up what I needed today, in the form of this passionate and brilliant lecture delivered by my new cousin, Carol Anderson, the Charles Howard Candler Professor and Chair of African American Studies at Emory University. The occasion was the 2018 John F. Morgan Sr. Distinguished Faculty Lecture, and she showed up ready. Funny, kind, and utterly engaging, she weaves a tale that explains the kindling that made Ferguson burn, by touching on Jim Crow, Brown v. Board of education and so much more. “I began to think about the way that white rage worked,” she says. It’s not visible violence, it’s subtle, corrosive, and operates through legislatures, the judiciary and school boards. Charting white rage from the Civil War to the present, she discovered and explains what triggers white rage, every time. She drops it at the 14 minute mark, but do yourself a favor and watch the whole thing. Really.
John F. Morgan Sr. Distinguished Faculty Lecture, 2018
On being Korean all alone This is a gorgeous essay, filled with detail and cultural nuance that is both specific and familiar. Michelle Zauner begins by explaining the unique pain of being of Korean descent in America without your lifeline. “When I was growing up, with a Caucasian father and a Korean mother, my mom was my access point for our Korean heritage,” she explains, a complex and lifelong lesson that played out mostly around food. Which is why H Mart, a supermarket chain offering Asian fare, has now become the emotional epicenter of her identity. “I can hardly speak Korean, but in H Mart I feel like I’m fluent,” she says. Without giving too much away, this story will make your eyes water with hunger and grief and love.
New Yorker
Remembering the Red Summer Hundreds of black children, women, and men were murdered during the long, hot summer of 1919, set upon by white mobs in small towns and large cities, lynched, shot, burned alive, hanged, beaten. Homes and businesses were razed or seized. And yet, history barely remembers the event. “The people who were the icons of the civil rights movement were raised by the people who survived Red Summer,” said history professor Saje Mathieu. Experts say that social forces – like the Great Migration and returning World War I veterans in search of equal rights spurred the violence. “Ethnic cleansing was the goal of the white rioters,” says William Tuttle, an author and retired professor. ″They wanted to kill as many black people as possible and to terrorize the rest until they were willing to leave and live someplace else.”
AP News
The Harlem Renaissance in photos Starting in the 1930s, Harlem became the epicenter of a cultural revolution, as artists, writers, poets and musicians flocked to the NYC neighborhood in search of opportunity. The Addison Gallery of American Art staged an exhibit celebrating the phenomenon, beautifully chronicled in this short video from PBS. Stephanie Sparling Williams, the exhibit’s curator, is also featured. “The art was important then in creating a new visual lexicon for African Americans against histories of dehumanizing and degrading stereotypes and imagery in the American popular imagination,” she says. The photos are inherently inspiring, she suggests. “I see vibrance. I see a people who have been through so much and were given so little and have made this out of it, this miraculous — this place.”
PBS
raceAhead is edited by Aric Jenkins.
Today's mood board
If you want to get invited to all the best parties, be an artist, like Andy W.