Race Inquiry Digest (February 15) – Important Current Stories On Race In America

Feature – When the next generation looks racially different from the last, political tensions rise. The “racial generation gap.” This is a straightforward measure of the relationship between the share of seniors who are white and the share of youth who are of color. But its interplay with public will and public policy is complex and consequential. The rising racial generational gap in the U.S. parallels California’s in the 1990s. Read more   

G.O.P. Visions of Tectonic Realignment. Stacking the courts with virulent conservatives, suppressing voter access, reducing the inflow of immigrants who might lean Democratic, gerrymandering districts, punishing states that lean Democratic in presidential elections and returning to a failed drug policy that disproportionately jails black and brown people. Read more 

Trump won’t stop trying to keep America white. Make no mistake: What’s happening on Capitol Hill this week, at Trump’s behest, is nothing other than an attempt by Republicans to slow the inexorable march toward that point at midcentury when the United States becomes a majority-minority nation. Read more 

Trump plans to make 2018 all about race and his Twitter account. President Donald Trump and the Republican Party may be focusing on their infrastructure and budget policies on Monday, but in reality, 2018 will be the year in which they try to stave off political disaster by playing the race card. Read more 

Trump’s budget hits poor Americans the hardest. Slashing billions of dollars in food stamps, health insurance and federal housing subsidies while pushing legislation to institute broad work requirements for families receiving housing vouchers, expanding on moves by some states to require recipients of Medicaid and food stamps to work. Read more 
Terror victims Donald Trump won’t talk about: Americans killed by the “alt-right.” Trump has not spoken the names of any of the 43 people killed by the “alt-right” because the perpetrators are not nebulous black or brown people — or, worse yet, Muslims. Read more 

Frederick Douglass needed to see Lincoln. Would the president meet with a former slave? Frederick Douglass arrived at the White House on a hot day in August 1863 without an appointment. He was a black man on a mission at a time when the country was torn by Civil War. Read more 

Court Rules Alabama Town’s School Segregation Too Racist … Even for Alabama. A federal appeals court on Tuesday finding that the new school district’s intentions to split from Jefferson County schools were racially motivated and typical of how white people will do whatever it takes when black people get too close. Read more

A New Home for Angela Davis’s Papers (and Her ‘Wanted’ Poster). Nearly 50 years ago, she was transformed from an obscure 26-year-old philosophy instructor into one of the world’s most famous activists. The Schlesinger Library at Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study is announcing Tuesday that it has acquired her personal archive. Read more  
‘Black Women Are Realizing the Power of Their Vote.’ The massive turnout of African-American women in 2017’s elections was only the start, predicts Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms. Read more 

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