Race Inquiry Digest (March 22) – Important Current Stories On Race In America

Feature – As America Changes, Some Anxious Whites Feel Left Behind. Demographic shifts rippling across the nation are fueling fears that their culture and standing are under threat. Outnumbered is a word that came up often when I talked with white residents of this eastern Pennsylvania town. Outnumbered in the waiting room at the doctor’s office. Outnumbered at the bank. Outnumbered at the Kmart, where the cashier merrily chitchats in Spanish with Hazleton’s newer residents. Read more 

Same family income, same street, but the black boy still grows up to earn less. Virtually nowhere in the United States do black boys grow up to earn incomes equivalent to white boys raised in the same neighborhoods by parents with comparable wealth and education levels, according to a study released Monday that followed millions of children now in their late 30s or turning 40. Read more 
Democratic, Republican voter bases are more different than ever. Drop into a political gathering almost anywhere in America, and you can usually name the party just by looking: Democrats increasingly reflect the racially mixed demographics of the nation’s cities; Republicans remain overwhelmingly white, older and more rural. Read more 
The Heavy Burden of Teaching My Son About American Racism. If my black child has to learn that society will hate him, he should hear about it from someone who unconditionally loves him. Read more

Asians could opt out of naming a country of origin on the 2020 census, a policymaker’s nightmare. For the first time in the history of the census, which began in 1790, “Asian” would be a category alongside white and black. The addition of Asian as a racial category reflects the fact that Asians are the country’s fastest-growing racial group. Read more 
A Profile of America’s Gun Owners Is Everything We’d Expect It To Be. What is the profile of the typical gun owner in America? The short answer is that a relatively small number of uneducated white men beset by racial fears and anxiety are stockpiling most of the guns. Read more 

20,000 Republicans just voted for an actual Nazi. The former head of the American Nazi Party ran for the Republican nomination of Congress in Illinois’ 3rd Congressional District. No Republican stepped up to oppose him. Read more 

Martin Luther King Jr. Was Bailed Out by a Millionaire. Incarcerated people today aren’t so lucky. There is a growing belief that using money to make sure a defendant will show up in court is inherently unfair to the poor. Read more 

Kill the Scapegoats. Donald Trump wants the death penalty for the black and brown people he blames for the opioid crisis. Harsh punishment—much less the death penalty—won’t do anything to relieve the opioid crisis. But then this “tough” language has less to do with solutions and more to do with the president’s racist worldview. Read more 

A black female politician was gunned down in Rio. Now she’s a global symbol. Elected last year as the only black woman on Rio’s 51-member city council, she had gone after police brutality and extrajudicial killings. In a society that has long seen itself as post-racial, Franco argued, the slaughter was not just a war on the poor. It was also a war on blacks. Read more 
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