Author: Carma Henry

  So wrote W.E.B. Du Bois in his seminal work “The Soul of Black Folk,” published in 1903. One of the most effectuating figures in the history of this country, Du Bois was a leading intellectual of his time, a social scientist, civil rights activist, and the first Black man to earn a Ph.D from Harvard University. His words to open this piece aptly applies, 123 after he penned them, to the current state of the National Football League.

       Among this year’s semi-finalists for the 2026 Hospital for Special Surgery Jr. Knicks Coach of the Year award are one woman from New York and one from New Jersey, whose passion for uplifting young people matches their passion for basketball.

     We keep Black History Month on one shelf and Valentine’s Day on another. One is supposed to be about pain and struggle. The other about flowers and pastel sugary hearts. Public remembrance of the most important Supreme Court decision about love in American history—Loving v. Virginia—waits for June, as if love itself were a summer excursion. 

    What has to happen before you actively push back at a government transforming into authoritarian state before our eyes?

Nothing Can Stop Our Celebration Of Black History This year Or Ever.

     When Black and Brown families can’t get ahead economically, social justice issues like civil rights and immigration tend to fall on their priority list. When rent hikes eat up raises or grocery bills climb 20% while pay stays flat, social issues become a luxury instead of a necessity. 

Back in the day, what happened in Minneapolis, Minnesota with two people being killed within days probably would not have been caught on tape. We didn’t have the technology then, but we have it now.

     Why has ICE become a national flashpoint even for people who are not at immediate risk of deportation? The answer isn’t simply immigration policy. It is legitimacy. Under this administration, enforcement has become a public language of governance—highly visible, often forceful, and paired with thinner transparency and weaker restraint.

     Which brings us directly to Tillich’s varieties of angst, all three of which coat with a thick paralyzing sludge the insane assumptions of nuclear deterrence. We assume nine nuclear powers can go on forever without making a fatal mistake. We assume that 900 nuclear weapons make us more secure than 600 nuclear weapons, and if another country has 1200 nuclear weapons, we cannot be secure unless we can field 1600. We build; they build. The masters of war achieve prosperous quarterly returns as the Union of Concerned Scientists keeps moving the Doomsday clock closer to zero. 

     On January 27, 2026, the editors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the hands of their famous “Doomsday Clock” to 85 seconds to midnight―the closest setting, since the appearance of the clock in 1946, to nuclear annihilation.