Race Inquiry Digest (September 4) – Important Current Stories On Race In America

Feature – White Elephant. Trump has never been less popular—and never more clearly the head of a party of racial resentment. And yet, few Republican lawmakers of consequence are willing to buck him or his agenda, in large part because their voters still support the president by huge margins. Read more

Trump Raises an Army. Why raise this army? I have a theory. Should something emerge from the Robert Mueller investigation that should implicate Trump and pose a threat to the continuation of his tenure, Trump wants to position any attempt to remove him as a political coup. Read more 

The museum of “Enslavement and Mass Incarceration” will open in 2018. This museum is designed to change the way we think about race in America. The United States has done very little to acknowledge the legacy of genocide of Native Americans, enslavement of black people, lynching, and racial segregation. Read more 

Federal government has long ignored white supremacist threats, critics say. For too long, Attorney General Holder said, the federal government had narrowly focused on Islamist threats and had lost sight of the “continued danger we face” from violent far-right extremists. Read more 

These Southern Cities Are at the Heart of the Struggle Against White Supremacy. From New Orleans to Durham, from Birmingham to Houston, progressives and leftists, led by people of color, are resisting both the historical remnants and present manifestations of the authoritarian racism that has always seethed within this nation. Read more 

Hurricane Harvey hit low-income communities hardest. Hurricanes don’t care if you’re rich, poor, white or black — but that doesn’t mean that every person is equally vulnerable to a storm. Low-income families are more likely to live in flood-prone areas with deficient infrastructure. Read more 

The Martyring of Colin Kaepernick. How the NFL botched the quarterback’s protest and guaranteed the controversy will live on, whether he plays or not. Read more 

Celebrating 30 Years Of ‘Fresh Air’: Drummer And Composer Max Roach.  First we go back to 1987 for an interview with Max Roach, one of the inventors of modern jazz drumming. Together with Charlie Parker, Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie, Roach helped formulate the language of bebop. Listen here    

“White supremacists are more afraid of us than we are of them.” That’s what Daryle Jenkins, a longtime activist and antifa member, told me in a recent interview. Antifa is a loose network of left-wing activists who physically confront and publicize the personal information of people they consider fascists. Read more 

Travelin’ while black. As people hit the roads this Labor Day weekend, perhaps heading off for a short vacation at summer’s end or to visit relatives, I remember Jim Crow-era journeys taken by my family and their friends who “traveled while black.” Read more 

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