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

Featured – The Racial Demagoguery of Trump’s Assaults on Colin Kaepernick and Steph Curry. Every day, and in countless and unexpected ways, Donald Trump, the President of the United States, finds new ways to divide and demoralize his country and undermine the national interest. Read more   

Chokehold: Policing Black Men by Paul Butler. Butler has hit his stride. This is a meditation, a sonnet, a legal brief, a poetry slam and a dissertation that represents the full bloom of his early thesis: The justice system does not work for blacks, particularly black men.” —Washington Post  Read more 

Trump’s Attack On Black Athletes May Bring a League to Its Feet. The choice never been simpler: kneel during the anthem, or offer implicit support for a man who questions Americans’ basic right to expression—and leans into racial animus. Read more  

The Caribbean, the U.S., and how their past and present are intertwined. As Hurricanes ripped through the Caribbean in recent weeks, U.S. media coverage and responses to it made it clear that many mainland dwellers had little or no familiarity with the many island nations whose people are our neighbors—and in some cases, our fellow citizens. Read more

America Has Never Truly Atoned For Slavery. John Conyers Has Pressed the Issue for Nearly 30 Years. Every year, the Michigan congressman introduces a bill to study reparations. Every year it fails. Read more 

Flint Had a Lead Crisis in Its Water. Now It Has a Fertility Crisis. “This represents a couple hundred fewer children born that otherwise would have been,” one professor said. Read more 

The Myth of Robert E. Lee And The “Good” Slave Owner. According to the Lost Cause mythology ginned up after the Civil War, Robert E. Lee was a benevolent slave owner who really fought for states’ rights. His slaves said otherwise. Read more 

The African American Museum a year later: Still the hottest ticket in town. It remains one of the hottest tickets in town, it is an essential stop for out-of-town tourists, and it has succeeded in attracting a diverse, engaged, multicultural and international audience. Read more 

‘The American War’: Why you need to understand American racism to understand what happened in Vietnam. To help get themselves through the horrors of war, some American soldiers taught themselves to think about North Vietnamese soldiers as if they were less than human. Read more 

Stone Mountain: The ugly past — and fraught future — of the biggest Confederate monument. Of all the Confederate monuments under fire, few are more figuratively weighted — and literally fixed — than the 1,700-foot high outcropping of granite outside Atlanta with carvings of Robert E. Lee, Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson and Jefferson Davis. Read more 

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