Race Inquiry Digest (January 25) – Important Current Stories On Race In America

Featured – Trump’s Anti-Immigrant Racism Represents an American Tradition. The nation’s first naturalization law, from 1790, closed off United States citizenship to all but “free white persons of good character.” People of African descent were among the first migrants singled out for surveillance and exclusion, as they sought entry to the country or moved between states. Read more 

Trump’s Racism Toward Haiti Is not an Aberration. U.S. policy toward Haiti has been consistently racist, violent, oppressive, and exploitative. Read more 

Nearly All District Attorneys Are White—And That’s a Huge Obstacle to Fighting Mass Incarceration. Could the 2018 elections help diversify the country’s DA offices? Read more 

Are NFL owners making a mockery of the Rooney Rule?  After a season trying to stop African American players’ protests hurting their profits, NFL owners have bypassed black coaches this winter. Read more 

Florida Will Vote on Restoring Voting Rights to 1.5 Million Ex-Felons. Across the United States, 6.1 million ex-felons can’t vote. More than a quarter of them live in Florida, including 1 in 5 otherwise eligible African American voters in the state. Read more 

Black unemployment is at a record low. But there’s a lot more to the story. Still, at 6.8%, black unemployment remains well above the rate for white people, at 3.7%. That disparity is deeply rooted and a continuing cause of concern for economists and advocates. Read more 

Watch – Systemic Racism And Air Pollution Create A Dangerous Reality For Black People. Air pollution kills thousands of Americans every year, but poor people and African-Americans are disproportionately at risk. Read more 

Academic freedom in the age of Trump: Don’t joke about “white genocide.” George Ciccariello-Maher, then a professor at Drexel University, made several comments online about the relationship between toxic white masculinity and mass shootings. He also mocked the obsession with “white genocide,” an alarmist term for demographic change shared by such right-wing provocateurs as Tucker Carlson of Fox News. Read more 

Medicaid is an effective, efficient program, highly valued by its beneficiaries. And yet, Republicans are relentlessly trying to cut it. Slashing Medicaid would worsen low-income Americans’ access to care, health and financial security, as recent studies comparing outcomes for people and places with and without Medicaid show. Read more

Yes, the census should be tracking race and ethnicity. This month, Ward Connerly and Mike Gonzalez argued in The Post that the agency should remove questions in the census used to monitor race and ethnicity in our country. Read more 

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