Reclaiming the Black cowboy for Juneteenth

Transcript

NIALA: Good morning! Welcome to Axios Today!

It’s Friday, June 16th.

I’m Niala Boodhoo.

Today: reclaiming the Black cowboy for Juneteenth. Plus, the Supreme Court rules to preserve a Native American adoption law.

But first, House Democrats try to squeeze the GOP on abortion. Our weekly politics State of Play is today’s One Big Thing.

NIALA: Next week marks one year since the overturning of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court and Axios Reporters have learned that House Democrats will soon try to force a vote to codify the nationwide right to abortion. Mike Allen is here with that and more for our Friday state of play. Hi Mike.

MIKE ALLEN: Hi, Niala.

NIALA: So Mike, I mentioned that House Democrats plan to introduce a discharge petition on abortion next week. Can you remind us what this is and why this move is important for Democrats?

MIKE: Yeah, Niala, when you're in the minority in the House, there's very little you can do, but the discharge petition is one parliamentary way to try to at least force something to the floor. Now, it can take a while and it can be complicated, but Democrats recognize that they have it, a real upper hand on this issue, if you look at swing voters across the country, independent voters across the country. Democrats want to force Republicans to take a vote on this, and this is something else that you see a lot in Congress. They talk about these as message votes, and that is no one thinks that a law is gonna be passed or signed, but they're creating a record that they can later use against Republicans in their elections.

NIALA: The new Democratic primary calendar has South Carolina ahead of Iowa and New Hampshire this year, even though it seems like those states could be pushing back. Mike as a veteran of covering many presidential campaigns, can you remind us why this primary calendar schedule is so important?

MIKE: So, Niala that calendar move was a surprise. Why does it matter? An Axios story by Alex Thompson explains that the result of this is that Iowa and New Hampshire may go ahead with their contest. They're not gonna go quietly. They still wanna have Iowa Caucuses, New Hampshire primary at the beginning of the process. But President Biden's name might not be on the ballot. So you could have the craziest situation where the incumbent president loses the first two contests, and this could mean that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has a distant challenge to the president, but could suddenly get tons of attention and momentum by winning Iowa and New Hampshire, which so long were the gold standard of any nominating contest.

NIALA: Finally, Mike, of course, former President Trump was the big news this week, several days after the federal indictment. I wonder how you are thinking about all of this?

MIKE: Yeah, Niala. This was a week for the history books. We're living it, and so we kind of get used to it. But this is the kind of week that students, historians go back to see what people were saying. And one of the things they're gonna find is Republicans mostly backing former President Trump, even after this indictment with so many bad facts. And Niala, the one I always point to is the report by The Washington Post, that there is surveillance video of these boxes of documents being moved around in Mar-a-Lago.

That's really hard to explain, and yet Republicans are out there defending him, and what Republicans say to me behind the scenes is ‘he looks like he's being targeted, he looks like he's being persecuted’. Somebody who's been on and off with Trump said to me, ‘we don't get to pick our own martyrs’. So that's how it's being looked at by Republicans, and a remarkable piece of reporting by Axios Sneak peek showed that Republicans, they may actually go after the purse strings of the Justice Department and the FBI, as a result of this. So this is gonna be a real fight that's gonna go through election day 2024.

NIALA: Axios co-founder Mike Allen, authors the Axios Essentials newsletters. Thanks, Mike.

MIKE: Now I have the best summer-y weekend.

NIALA: One more Washington headline for you. The Supreme Court yesterday upheld a federal law that gives preference to Native tribes to adopt and foster Native children.

The justices voted 7 to 2, with Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissenting.

Congress passed the Indian Child Welfare Act in 1978 to address the history of abuse Native children experienced from being separated from their tribes and raised by people with no connection to their culture.

Three non-native families challenged the law saying it violated the 14th amendment by relying on racial discrimination. The tribal nations argued that the law is based on political distinctions, not racial ones.

The Supreme Court didn’t answer whether the Indian Child Welfare Act unconstitutionally discriminates on the basis of race. However, the Court ruled Congress was within its power to pass the law and the case lacked standing to contest violating the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

President Biden said the ruling “keeps in place a vital protection for tribal sovereignty and Native children.”

After the break, celebrating Black cowboys…this Juneteenth.

NIALA: Welcome back to Axios Today! I’m Niala Boodhoo. For many the image of the American cowboy is of a white man. But the original cowboys were Black and Latino and still play an important role in the American West. So some black Cowboys are using Juneteenth this year as an opportunity to reclaim their history.

IVAN MCCLELLAN: I realized that the folks that I grew up around and the, and the culture that I grew up around was cowboy culture. I never felt like I had the permission to call it cowboy culture. I never identified Black folks as cowboys because what I had seen in film was John Wayne and Montgomery Clift and you know, Tombstone and all of these, these white cowboys.

NIALA: That's Ivan McClellan, a Black cowboy and photojournalist who's organizing a Juneteenth Rodeo for Black Cowboys in Portland, Oregon. Axios’ Race and Justice Reporter Russell Contreras is here to tell us more about Black Cowboys. Hi Russ.

RUSSELL CONTRERAS: Great to be with you.

NIALA: Who were the original cowboys?

RUSSELL: Well, that's hard to say, but many people believe the original cowboys were from Mexico. In fact, they were Afro-Mexicanos who came in during the time that this was Spanish territory and then Mexico. They came through the West and they learned ranching through Mexico and their Spanish heritage, and they were all over places like present day New Mexico and Arizona. Flash forward to emancipation and right after the end of enslavement you had a number of free Black people going out west and learning the ropes of the American West, uh, shunning their former lives and taking up to ranching and agriculture. So many folks fail to realize and really think about that this real rural life and the taming of the American West, as we like to call it, was done by Black and Latinos and they are the center of the narrative, but they're hardly in the story in our films and novels.

NIALA: What is the role of the Black Cowboy today?

RUSSELL: That's a very interesting question because throughout the American West and even parts of Texas and Oklahoma, you've had these events, Black Rodeos, where black cowboys are competing just like they do in mainstream white rodeos. They get a fraction of the winnings as white rodeos. They make you take a second look because we have been so trained through popular culture to believe that all cowboys are white. So when you go to these events, you'll see cowboys in braids, in dreads, sometimes in Nike shoes, on horses competing the same way that you would see at mainstream rodeos. And it's phenomenal to watch. And when you watch these events, you do a second take and realize, ‘wait a minute, there's something about the American narrative that I'm missing’.

NIALA: How does all of this fit into the larger conversation around racial justice and Black Lives Matter?

RUSSELL: When you rethink how this country was created, you cannot neglect the Black cowboy and you have to rethink how the Black Cowboy fits in our larger story. Nashville and the country music industry is reexamining how they dismiss Black country artists. And now you have Black country artists who've been marginalized for years, finally getting airplay. For example, Brittany Spencer's song ‘Compassion’, a country song about racial justice, has garnered 4 million listens on Spotify. And it comes at a time when support for Black Lives Matter is falling according to various surveys, uh, in the general public. So now the Black cowboy, Black country music artists are asserting themself and saying, ‘wait a minute, we've been here all along, and you have to acknowledge us’.

NIALA: Russell Contreras is Axios’ Race and Justice Reporter. Thanks Russell.

RUSSELL: Thanks for having me.

NIALA: That’s all for this week. Axios Today is produced by Fonda Mwangi, Lydia McMullen-Laird, Robin Linn, as well as senior sound engineer Alex Sugiura. Alexandra Botti is our supervising producer.

Sara Kehaulani Goo is Axios’ editor in chief, and Aja Whitaker-Moore is Axios’ Executive Editor. And special thanks as always to Axios co-founder Mike Allen.

I’m Niala Boodhoo. We’re off Monday for Juneteenth.