The Takeaway

Since August 5th, hundreds of asylum seekers and migrants have arrived in New York City’s Port Authority Bus Terminal from the US-Mexico border in Texas. The buses were sent by Texas state leadership under Governor Greg Abbott, who claims that this is the city’s chance to put its "sanctuary city" status into practice. We speak with Arun Venugopal, race and justice reporter for WNYC and Gothamist, about the circumstances these travelers are now facing.

Earlier this month, “Prey,” the latest film in the Predator franchise, premiered on Hulu. The film centers on characters who are part of the Comanche Nation as they fight off threats from both the Predator as well as a group of French settlers. According to the film’s producer, 20th Century Studios, “Prey” had the biggest ever debut of any movie or TV show on Hulu when it premiered earlier this month.

Although the movie was directed and co-written by Dan Trachtenberg, who is white, Trachtenberg brought in co-producer Jhane Myers, who is Blackfeet and Comanche, to make sure that Native people were represented behind the scenes as well as in front of the camera.

Joey Clift, comedian, staff writer and supervising producer for Netflix’s “Spirit Rangers,” and member of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe, has been an outspoken advocate for Native representation in Hollywood for years. He joined The Takeaway to discuss the significance of "Prey" and how it fits into the current movement around Native representation in the entertainment industry.

The Gullah (also known as Geechee or Gullah-Geechee) are descendants of enslaved West and Central Africans who were brought on slave ships to the coasts of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida. Their descendants retained many of their ancestors’ African traditions reflected in their arts and culture, food, and religion.

In 2006, Congress designated the Atlantic shores and sea islands from North Carolina to Florida, “The Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor.”

One of those designated places is off the Georgia Coast, called Sapelo Island. On Sapelo Island,  a small community of Gullah-Geechee people are struggling to preserve their culture, land, and future. They are descendants of enslaved West Africans, and their ancestors worked on plantations on the island until Emancipation, when they bought their own land.

The Gullah-Geechee originally owned land all over Sapelo Island and had several communities, but according to descendants, in the 1930’s, the North Carolina tobacco heir R.J. Reynolds, Jr. used coercive and exploitative tactics to move the Gullah-Geechee onto one part of the island called Hog Hammock (or called Hogg Hummock by descendants) — where they remain today.

In the 1970s, Reynolds’ widow sold most of the island to the State of Georgia, which owns 97 percent of the island. Descendants and others own the other 3 percent.

This is one of the last intact Gullah-Geechee communities in Georgia, and the number of descendants on the island is declining every year. Descendants say their people are leaving the island because they are slowly being driven off by state and county entities that are denying descendants basic municipal services, and increasing property taxes.

We spoke with Reginald Hall, CEO of Raccoon Hog Community Development Corporation and a descendant living on the island. Hall was not born on the island, but grew up visiting his grandmother. He was living in the Midwest in 2007 when his family called him back to his ancestral home to help his community and take an assessment of their survival.

Back in 2015, Hall and 56 Sapelo Island property owners, filed a federal race discrimination lawsuit which claimed that McIntosh County, the state of Georgia, and the Sapelo Island Heritage Authority were “engaged in a policy designed to make plaintiffs’ lives so uncomfortable that they abandon their homes and their land.”

In a statement to the AP, the county’s lead attorney in the lawsuit denied the county had discriminated against Hogg Hammock residents because they were Black.

Sapelo Island is located about 7 miles from the mainland, and its remote location has helped descendants preserve their Gullah-Geechee culture, but also made it difficult to live full-time on the island.

The only public access to and from the island is a state-run ferry, which only runs three times a day. It makes it hard for descendants to hold jobs off the island, and many end up working for the state institutions on the island. And the docks to-and-from the ferry, and the ferry itself, are not wheelchair accessible, meaning many of their elders cannot come to the island.

There’s also no school on the island, no medical services, no fire department, no trash collection. And on top of that, descendants’ lands are being threatened by developers and the resulting high property taxes.

In 2020, the state settled its portion of the lawsuit that descendants had filed in 2015. The state agreed to fix the aging ferry dock, and make the ferry and the docks ADA-compliant. The settlement is estimated to cost 19 million dollars in infrastructure rebuild, along with a $750-thousand-dollar payout to descendants. 

And earlier this month, descendants settled the federal lawsuit against McIntosh County. The county agreed to station an emergency medical vehicle and emergency medical equipment on the island. The county will maintain and install a helipad for emergencies and evacuations, and provide a functional fire truck and firefighting training to residents who wish to receive it. And the county will maintain the roads, and reduce the trash collection fee that Island residents pay. Descendants also received $2 million in damages and attorneys’ fees, and a three-year freeze on property taxes. 

The settlement agreement says the settlement is not “an admission or acknowledgment of liability by Defendant McIntosh County.” We also reached out to the county and the state for a comment but did not get a response.

Receiving these settlements, and the updates to the island that will come with them, is just one step in Hall’s, and his family’s, plans for recovery. 

Their main goal is to bring their family members and other descendants home – but also to create jobs for them to come back to. In the future some descendants are hoping to work with the state and county to create a historical district on Sapelo Island. With this historic district designation, Hall and his family hope to build a tourism industry on the island run by descendants.

The world has been captivated by Beyoncé’s 7th studio album RENAISSANCE ever since it dropped nearly two weeks ago. And while many have relished in the excitement of the new era Beyoncé has ushered in, it hasn’t been without some controversy.

Amidst a crediting conflict primarily between artist Kelis and music producer Pharrell, another issue arose. Some disability advocates took issue with a song lyric containing the word 'spaz' in the track “Heated.”  It’s a word rooted in the word spastic, a medical term often used to describe those who suffer from disabilities involving muscle spasms. Beyoncé’s not the only artist who has received criticism for the use of the term. In June, Lizzo also received similar backlash after including the word in the lyrics to the song "Grrrls." In response both artists removed the word from their lyrics.

Writing this month for OkayPlayer, Clementine Williams noted that the term has often been used by Black artists to mean “going wild,” and that the initial call outs on the Beyoncé and Lizzo lyrics were largely made by white disability activists. However, the double meaning and history of its use in African American Vernacular English does not negate the harm the term can cause for the disabled community. Instead, moments such as these have helped create dialogue around what accountability can look like in the music industry, and even drawn the conversation to the growing movement and consciousness around disability.

But for Black disabled writer, poet, activist, and scholar Leroy Moore Jr., he couldn't help but notice a critical voice missing from the conversation: Black disabled artists.

Leroy was born with cerebral palsy and has dedicated much of his writing and activism to disability rights. He co-founded Krip-Hop Nation, a movement that uses hip-hop as a means of expression for people with disabilities and this movement has grown to different parts of the world including parts of Africa and Europe. He is also a doctoral student in linguistic anthropology at UCLA, and he writes and delivers lectures and performances that reflect the intersections between racism and ableism, in the United States and abroad. 

Leroy joined The Takeaway to give us his take on the situation. He addressed the problematic nature of both policing Black language while erasing Black disabled voices, shining a light on the ways Krip-Hop Nation is working to make this change.  

Last week, a settlement administrator uploaded a report showing that hundreds of Black former NFL players now qualify for compensation from the league, following adjustments to dementia tests that eliminated the discriminatory practice known as “race-norming.”

Following a civil rights lawsuit by two former players, the NFL said last year that they would stop applying lower cognitive base scores to Black players compared with white players. The Takeaway spoke with former NFL running back and player advocate Ken Jenkins about the significance of this latest development.

And to learn more about the use of "race-norming" as well as what else is going on in the sports world, The Takeaway checked in with Dave Zirin, sports editor at The Nation.

Liz Cheney lost her seat in Wyoming, and Sarah Palin returned to fill the late Don Young’s congressional seat in Alaska in the special election.

We speak with national correspondent for the New York Times, Trip Gabriel, about the these primaries and next week's races in Florida and New York.

What do you think happens to us after we die? Not our essences, our inner beings, our souls — whichever term you prefer — but our bodies. Who takes care of us, from the time we are found to the time we are laid in the ground? The people who tend to our bereavements, our burials, and our bodies do work that is largely invisible, allowing the rest of us to maintain our distance from a painful and difficult concept.

"But the bodies have to go somewhere," writes journalist Hayley Campbell, in her new book, "All the Living and the Dead." Each chapter focuses on a different person who works closely with the bodies of those who have died. We speak with her about what we might learn from confronting the physical realities of death with an open mind.

Since 2014, nearly 25,000 people have gone missing in the Mediterranean. It is one of the most deadly migration routes in the world. Many of these migrants and refugees have already risked dangerous journeys across harsh terrains and conflict zones rife with traffickers on their way to the sea, from their home countries in the Horn of Africa and the Middle East. When they reach the coast, they are crowded onto small inflatable rafts or rickety wooden boats that are ill-equipped to handle the mercurial sea.

That's where rescue ships come in. Run by humanitarian organizations, rescue ships patrol international waters for signs of travelers in distress or on sinking boats. The delicate rescue operations are a race against time and the Libyan Coast Guard, which is supported by European Union funding to capture migrants and detain them before they can reach Europe's shore.

We hear about this human cost of this ongoing crisis from Jenelle Eli, emergency responder for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies who served on the Ocean Viking rescue ship in 2021, and Bill Frelick, Director of the Refugee and Migrant Rights Division at Human Rights Watch. 

Months after Guidepost Solutions exposed the mishandling of sexual abuse reports within the Southern Baptist Convention, the DOJ has subpoenaed documents as part of its own investigation of the SBC.

We speak with staff reporter at the Houston Chronicle, Robert Downen, about the significance of the DOJ’s investigation.

According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the rate of job openings in the leisure and hospitality industry has consistently hovered around 10% since June of 2021, the highest out of all industries it tracks. Many businesses are turning to older adults to fill those shifts and sweetening the deal with better travel benefits.

We hear from Maria Boyd-Scott, a 60-year old part-time ramp agent at an airline, about her experience. And we speak with Debra Kamin, a journalist who covered this trend recently in the New York Times.