Race Inquiry Digest (April 13) – Important Current Stories On Race In America

Not enough time, too many news sources. The following are compelling stories on race and ethnicity that have been selected to inform our readers.

Feature – Why Spicer Didn’t Count the Jewish Gas Victims. When the president’s spokesman said Hitler didn’t use gas on ‘his people,’ he echoed Trumpians’ frequent references to The American People—who don’t seem to include people of color and immigrants. Read more

Minority Neighborhoods Pay Higher Car Insurance Premiums Than White Areas With the Same Risk. In California, Illinois, Texas and Missouri  some major insurers charge minority neighborhoods as much as 30 percent more than other areas with similar accident costs. Read more

‘Game, Blouses.’ The real story behind the famous Chappelle skit starring Charlie Murphy about Prince’s late-night hoops challenge.  Charlie Murphy died April 12 of medical complications. Read more

Death row lawyer Bryan Stevenson plans a lynching memorial in Alabama. Project will honor the victims of ‘racial terrorism.’ Visiting South Africa, Rwanda and Germany, he was struck by the compelling memorials of apartheid, genocide and the Holocaust. Read more

For White America, It’s ‘Happy Days’ Again. Jeff Sessions rolls the clock back on civil rights enforcement.”[I]t is not the responsibility of the federal government to manage non-federal law enforcement agencies,” Jeff Sessions wrote in a memo last week. Read more

What Mississippi Taught Bobby Kennedy About Poverty. Robert Kennedy may have been a former attorney general and the brother of a slain president, but Annie White’s son was focused on the cornbread crumbs scattered on the floor of his dilapidated home in Cleveland, Miss. Read more

Texas voter ID law was designed to discriminate against minorities, judge rules. Republican lawmakers purposefully designed a strict voter ID law to disadvantage minorities and effectively dampen their growing electoral power. Read more

Watch – A Story of Redemption in Flint, Michigan. Noah Patton’s childhood in Flint was difficult. His community was hit hard by the crack epidemic and the decline of the auto industry, and the city spiraled downwards. Read more

It Did Not Stick’: The First Federal Effort to Curb Police Abuse. Federal intervention to curb police abuse did not begin after chants of “I can’t breathe,” viral cellphone videos or the Black Lives Matter movement. It began 21 years ago here in Pittsburgh. Read more

Sonia Sotomayor: Not Everyone Can Just Pull Themselves ‘Up By The Bootstraps.’ “Unless you do something to knock [barriers] down or help that person up, they will never have a chance.” Read more

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