Trump’s Confederate Embrace; Will Smith Remembers: Protest Wrap

(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump’s embrace of the Confederate battle flag, statues and names on military bases might fire up his political base, but the moves may have alienated swing voters. Trump’s poll numbers have sunk in recent weeks amid dissatisfaction with his handling of police brutality against Black Americans, compounded by his management of the pandemic.

In Virginia, nearly 80% of the faculty at Washington and Lee University voted in favor of a resolution seeking to remove Robert E. Lee’s name from the university, the Washington Post reported. In Richmond, the Confederacy’s former capital is rushing to remove statues seen as symbols of oppression. In North Carolina, a crew took down a monument of an angel holding a Confederate soldier.

Actor Will Smith said in an interview posted on his Youtube channel that he remembers being “called [the n-word]” by police in Philadelphia on “more than 10 occasions.” He called on Black Lives Matter protesters to be peaceful, saying that while their anger was justified, “you got to be careful not to be consumed by your own rage.”

Meanwhile, a letter signed by dozens of famous authors and academics, including J.K. Rowling, Salman Rushdie, Malcolm Gladwell and Noam Chomsky, warned against a rising “intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty.” Criticism came swiftly. The Washington Post’s Felicia Sonmez said in Twitter posts that many of the “‘cancel culture’ critics” want to “protect the ability of powerful people to say and do things that harm vulnerable groups — women, people of color, trans people.”

Britain’s Prince Harry and Meghan, in some of their sharpest comments on race, said in a call that wrongs from the past need to be acknowledged, the BBC reported. “When you look across the Commonwealth, there is no way that we can move forward unless we acknowledge the past,” said Harry. “It’s not going to be easy and in some cases it’s not going to be comfortable, but it needs to be done, because, guess what, everybody benefits.”

The University of California system was poised to name Michael V. Drake its new president, making him the first Black leader in its 152-year history, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Key Developments:

• Audit Shows Facebook’s Civil Rights Approach ‘Too Reactive’: NYT
• Kylie Jenner’s Instagram Propels Black-Owned Fashion Label
• Tech CEO Kicked Out of Restaurant for Racist Rant: ABC7
• VC Firms Targeting Diversity Are Suddenly in High Demand
• Robin Hood Foundation Looks to Support More Groups Led by People of Color
• Howard Taps Bond Market Most Black Colleges Miss Out On
• Red Sox Dogged By Claims of Racism, Sexual Abuse
• Eagles’ DeSean Jackson Apologizes for Anti-Semitic Posts
• Major Cities, Gripped With Crisis, Now Face Spike in Deadly Shootings

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