Race Inquiry Digest (June 7) – Important Current Stories On Race In America

Feature – The Philadelphia Eagles and “their President”: Trump’s act of potent symbolic racism. Trump disinvited the NFL champs to an event they didn’t want to attend — and couldn’t even fake “God Bless America.” This is part of a larger pattern of behavior where Trump and his inner circle have shown disdain and rage toward black people they believe are “uppity” and “do not know their place.Read more 

D’Souza’s Reward : The pardon of Dinesh D’Souza shows how far the racist fringe has risen under Donald Trump. President Trump’s recent pardons don’t even pretend to address actual injustice in the criminal justice system. They are borne entirely and transparently out of Trump’s self-interest. Read more 

Are Americans a Broken People? Here’s Why We’ve Stopped Fighting Back Against the Forces of Oppression. A psychologist asks: Have consumerism, suburbanization and a malevolent corporate-government partnership so beaten us down that we no longer have the will to save ourselves? Read more 

The Education Of Bobby Kennedy — On Race. Robert Kennedy wanted to know more about black America than briefings from the civil rights leadership could provide. So while he was attorney general and later, as a U.S. senator from New York, he made several trips to various parts of the country, urban and rural, to better understand race and poverty. Read more 

Asian Groups See Bias in Plan to Diversify New York’s Elite Schools. A new plan to change the way students are admitted to New York’s elite public high schools is infuriating members of some Asian communities who feel they will be pushed aside in the drive to admit more than a handful of black and Latino students. Read more 

Driving While Black Has Gotten Even Worse. There is a stark new statistic out from the office of Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley: In 2017, black drivers in the state were 85 percent more likely to be pulled over than white drivers. Read more 

Trump’s Judge Picks Could Boost Racial Bias in the Justice System For Generations. Largely given free rein, as of February Trump had nominated 87 people to serve as federal judges, and 92 percent of those were white men — breaking a trend set by recent predecessors that had made an effort to make federal benches across America more diverse. Read more 

Banking Black : Can divesting from America’s big financial institutions help fix racial inequality. Founded in 1968 to help revitalize Boston’s predominantly black Roxbury and Dorchester neighborhoods, OneUnited Bank now has 10 branches in three cities and up to $600 million in assets. Read more  

Will the State Takeover of Jackson Schools be ‘Better Together’ or the Same Old Education Politics?  Takeovers are carried out by white state officials accusing black and brown communities of being unable to care for their children. Yet, the story of state takeover of Jackson is also different. Read more  

Exploding Myths About ‘Black Power, Jewish Politics.’ Dollinger, a professor at San Francisco State University, argues that much of our accepted knowledge about the interaction between black and Jewish communities is based more on myth than fact. He says uncovering the real story can teach all Americans a lot about privilege, historical memory and the way we construct our own stories. Read more 

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