Monday, December 30

Tag: americans

What happens when black Americans leave their segregated hometowns
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IN OTHER NEWS

What happens when black Americans leave their segregated hometowns

Where someone grows up is profoundly important for their life chances. It influences things like the schools they attend, the jobs, parks and community resources they have access to and the peers they interact with. Because of this comprehensive influence, one might conclude that where you grow up affects your ability to move up the residential ladder and into a better neighborhood than the one you grew up in. In a new study, my co-authors and I show that for many children, where they grow up is profoundly important for where they end up as adults. But for black Americans who move away from the cities of their youth, moving out often means moving up the residential ladder. More than half of black people in the U.S. live in highly segregated areas. Andrey_Popov/Shutterstock.com Segregati...
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Why support for the death penalty is much higher among white Americans
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Why support for the death penalty is much higher among white Americans

Sentencing a person to die is the ultimate punishment. There is no coming back from the permanence of the death penalty. People who oppose the death penalty cannot serve on juries in those cases. Crazy City Lady/Shutterstock.com In the U.S., the death penalty is currently authorized by the federal government, the military and 29 states. The primary rationale for using the death penalty is deterrence. As public policy, I believe that capital punishment has largely not proved to be an effective deterrent. Nevertheless, for decades the death penalty has been popular. However, support for the death penalty has been declining over the past 25 years and is near historic lows. Critics point to issues such as inhumane killing procedures, a plunge in crime rates and the death penalty’s high cost...
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Poll: Black and Latino Americans think Donald Trump’s actions have made life worse for people of color
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Poll: Black and Latino Americans think Donald Trump’s actions have made life worse for people of color

NEW YORK — Large majorities of black and Latino Americans think Donald Trump’s actions as president have made things worse for people like them, and about two-thirds of Americans overall disapprove of how he’s handling race relations, according to a new poll conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. About half of all Americans think Trump’s actions have been bad for African Americans, Muslims and women, and slightly more than half say they’ve been bad for Hispanics. Trump’s 33% approval rating on handling race relations makes that one of his worst issues in recent AP-NORC polls. That stands in stark contrast to his handling of the economy: About half say they approve of his handling of that issue, while views of current economic conditions continue to be ro...
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Journalism

Ghana: Homecoming for African Americans

African Americans find new home in Ghana - gateway of the brutal African slave trade to the US that began 400 years ago. The Cape Coast castle, built with local labour in the 17th century, is frequented by tourists [Edem Robby Abbeyquaye/Al Jazeera] Accra, Ghana - Afia Khalia Tweneboa Kodua, then a resident of Los Angeles, still remembers the day she left Ghana in 2011 on her first trip there. "I am not a public emotional person so I got to the airport and asked [myself]: 'what is this? Are those tears?" "It was clear something had awoken in me and ignited in me and I have to come back. My ancestors are telling me; I have to come back," she told Al Jazeera. And so in 2017, she left Los Angeles, California and moved permanently to Accra, Ghana's capital w...
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SOCIAL JUSTICE

The Plutocracy We Have vs. the Democracy Most Americans Want

We will have true democracy when economic power and political voice reside with we the people, all the people. This is part two of a two-part series. See part one here. Economic power is—and always has been—the foundation of political power. Those who control the peoples’ means of living rule. In a democracy, however, each person must have a voice in the control and management of the means of their living. That requires more than a vote expressing a preference for which establishment-vetted candidate will be in power for the next few years. My previous column, “Confronting the Great American Myth,” distinguished true democracy from government by the wealthy, a plutocracy. Contrary to popular belief, the U.S. Constitution was written by representatives of the new nat...
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Fewer Americans are working don’t blame immigrants or food stamps
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Journalism

Fewer Americans are working don’t blame immigrants or food stamps

Where did all the jobs go? Well, we’re finally starting to find some satisfactory answers to the granddaddy of all economic questions. The share of Americans with jobs dropped 4.5 percentage points from 1999 to 2016 - amounting to about 6.8 million fewer workers in 2016. Between 50 and 70 percent of that decline probably was due to an aging population. Explaining the remainder has been the inspiration for much of the economic research published after the Great Recession. Economists and politicians have pointed at immigration, China, video games, robots, opioids, universities, working spouses - everything up to and including the academic equivalent of shrugging their shoulders and muttering, “Kids these days.” Until recently, there was no good system to untangle it all. University of ...
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Traveling while black: Why some Americans are afraid to explore their own country
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Journalism, VIDEO REELS

Traveling while black: Why some Americans are afraid to explore their own country

Her mom always smiled - except when the family made its annual summer drive to visit the grandparents in Magnolia, Arkansas. “The smiles were gone while we were traveling,” said Gloria Gardner, 77. It was the 1940s, and traveling to her parents’ home town was not approached lightly after the family moved to Muskegon, Michigan, during the Great Migration. Stopping for food or bathroom breaks was mostly out of the question. For black families, preparing for a road trip required a well-tested battle plan in which nothing could be left to chance. There were meals to cook and pack in ice. Sheets were folded and stacked in the car to use as partitions if they were left with no choice but to take bathroom breaks roadside. And there was another item that Gardner recalls her parents never forgo...
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Journalism

How the Bankruptcy System Is Failing Black Americans

Black people struggling with debts are far less likely than their white peers to gain lasting relief from bankruptcy, according to a ProPublica analysis. Primarily to blame is a style of bankruptcy practiced by lawyers in the South. Novasha Miller pushed through the revolving doors of the black glass tower on Jefferson Avenue last December and felt a rush of déjà vu. The building, conspicuous in Memphis’ modest skyline along the Mississippi River, looms over its neighbors. Then she remembered: Years ago, as a teenager, she’d accompanied her mother inside. Now she was 32, herself the mother of a teenager , and she was entering the same door, taking the same elevator. Like her mother before her, Miller was filing for bankruptcy. She’d cried when she made the decision, but with three boy...
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