Race Inquiry Digest (February 5) – Important Current Stories On Race In America (Revised)

Feature – White Americans, welcome to the club of being asked, ‘Where are you really from?’ In 2020, perhaps for the first time, white Americans will be asked a question that has been lobbed innocently and invidiously at minorities for years:  “So where are you really from?” For the text box under the “White” checkbox, the census instructions helpfully state: “Print, for example, German, Irish, English, Italian, Lebanese, Egyptian, etc.”  Read more. Also see,  Let’s Stop Using “White” and “Black” to Describe European-Americans and African-Americans : Here Are The Reasons Why  

Trump’s Mainstreaming of ‘Chain Migration’: A White Supremacist’s Dream. In one 2003 article titled “Fade to Brown,” the writer warned of the perils of “chain migration,” claiming it was responsible for bringing entire “Mexican villages” to America while “whites have been largely pushed out of the immigrant stream.” Read more

America’s Last Slave Ship, and Slavery’s Stain. The wreckage — yet to be excavated and formally verified — has galvanized historians and reawakened the pain of enslavement among African-American descendants of the Clotilda captives, some of whom still live in what is called Africatown, a community not far from downtown Mobile that was founded by their forebears. Read more 

‘Some Observations on the NFL and Negro Players.’ Newly discovered league memo from 1966 anticipates controversies over Kaepernick protest, Rooney Rule. Read more 

The Women Behind White Power. An element of surprise still animates discussions about white women supporting white supremacist politics. In part, it’s because the narrative of white supremacist history in the United States is not immune to the same sexist forces that have shaped so many of our national historical narratives: It has left out the women. Read more 

10 quotes from 1968 Kerner Commission report on race that resonate today. This month marks 50 years since the release of a landmark report on race in America, commissioned by President Lyndon B. Johnson. It followed unrest in 1967 in cities like Newark and Detroit and was prepared by the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, known as the Kerner Commission. Read more 

Justice Dept. Office to Make Legal Aid More Accessible Is Quietly Closed. The division, the Office for Access to Justice, began as an initiative in 2010 under former Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to increase and improve legal resources for indigent litigants in civil, criminal and tribal courts  Its offices now sit dark on the third floor of the Justice Department building. Read more 

#BlackLivesMatterAtSchool is a National Uprising for Racial Justice. From February 5 to 9 thousands of educators around the U.S. will wear Black Lives Matter shirts to school and teach lessons about structural racism, intersectional black identities, black history, and anti-racist movements for a nationally organized week of action: Black Lives Matter at School. Read more 

American Students Aren’t Learning The Full Truth About Slavery. Students often get only a superficial view of the atrocity that built the country, a new study finds. Read more 

White Supremacists Are Targeting College Students ‘Like Never Before.’ A new report from the Anti-Defamation League found a 258 percent increase in white supremacist propaganda on college campuses between 2016 and 2017. Read more 

Visit our home page for more articles and register your email to receive notification of Race Inquiry Digest updates. Click here for earlier Digests.