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Balls & Strikes (10/13/25)

This week on CounterSpin: There is an argument evidently compelling to some: Yes, Black people have been enslaved and excluded and discriminated against for decades, such that today they are born in a hole in terms of wealth, of housing equity, of jobs. If we acknowledge that their discrimination was and is race-based, that would be saying race matters—but haha! Didn’t you all say you don’t want race to matter?

It’s an argument so specious a third grader could call it out. But if it comes from the Supreme Court majority, we are forced to consider it as serious, and enjoined to believe it is based in good faith. The history on these efforts helps us see a way forward.

Madiba Dennie is deputy editor and senior contributor at the legal analysis site Balls and Strikes, and author of The Originalism Trap: How Extremists Stole the Constitution and How We the People Can Take It Back.

Transcript: ‘They Are Creating the Opportunity to Shrink Democracy More’

Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look back at some recent press coverage of Zohran Mamdani.