Commentary

On March 29, 2024, Beyoncé released “Cowboy Carter,” a 27-track recording that she claims is not a country genre record, but a new Beyoncé record just “rooted in country.” America is our country. Black music is our music, and country music is our music, too.

My friends in the Boston legal community were shocked when I announced I’d be retiring from what many of them considered a dream job: Judge of the Superior Court of Massachusetts.

I was at Claudine Gay’s inauguration as Harvard’s 30th president. I saw her family waving Haitian flags. I stood between a college administrator from Japan, there to celebrate her, and two Stanford faculty who taught her. Literally, the world watched Gay at the apex of her career.

In the weeks since the celebrated “Battle of Montgomery” on a riverfront dock, Black people have released a torrent of creative cultural production — comedic reenactments of the racially tinged fight, commentaries and sound effects edited into the videos of the conflict and, of course, hundreds of memes.

The six Supreme Court justices who last week struck down affirmative action in college admissions ignored America’s legacy of slavery and segregation, while the three dissenting justices, all of whom are women, recognized this history of slavery and its continuing effects in colleges.