Sunday, December 7

Tag: white

Will 50 Cent, Ice Cube Enable Trump’s Return To The White House? Not exactly
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POLITICS

Will 50 Cent, Ice Cube Enable Trump’s Return To The White House? Not exactly

To judge by the brief, but furious, flurry of recent news and social media reports about the 2020 presidential campaign, the fate of the election may very well be decided by a previously undetected groundswell of support for President Donald Trump by young Black men. In the closing days of the campaign, a pair of hip-hop artists – 50 Cent and Ice Cube – drew widespread political attention by expressing support for Trump or, at least, a willingness to work with him in a second term. Specifically, 50 Cent - born Curtis James Jackson III - endorsed Trump’s reelection in a Twitter post, saying he feared Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden would raise his taxes. “Yeah, I don’t want to be 20cent,” he wrote, noting that higher taxes on the rich “is a very, very, bad idea. I don’t like it....
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Authoritarian White Masculinity As Trump And Pence’s Political Debate Strategy Dominance Or Democracy?
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Journalism, VIDEO REELS

Authoritarian White Masculinity As Trump And Pence’s Political Debate Strategy Dominance Or Democracy?

After the debate between Sen. Kamala Harris and Vice President Mike Pence, commentators contrasted Pence’s reserved demeanor with the belligerence President Donald Trump exhibited in his debate with former Vice President Joe Biden the previous week. NPR Congress editor Deirdre Walsh asserted that Pence’s debate style was an “almost polar opposite of the president’s.” New York Times conservative columnist Christopher Buskirk called Pence “calm, professional, competent and focused,” claiming that he was “in some sense the answer to every criticism leveled at Trump after the last debate.” The BBC’s Anthony Zurcher contended that Pence’s “typically calm and methodical style served as a steady counterpoint to Trump’s earlier aggression.” These seemingly disparate styles, however, are two side...
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The Connection Between White Nationalism And The Military
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SOCIAL JUSTICE

The Connection Between White Nationalism And The Military

White nationalist groups, who make up some of the most serious terror threats in the country, find new members and support in the U.S. military. These groups believe that white people are under attack in America. In their effort to create an all-white country where nonwhites do not have civil rights protections, these groups often instigate violent confrontations that target racial and religious minorities. Since 2018, white supremacists have conducted more lethal attacks in the United States than any other domestic extremist movement. The Proud Boys group, for example, whom President Donald Trump addressed in the first presidential debate of 2020, includes veterans and active duty service members. The group’s members, who are required to engage in physical violence before joining, celeb...
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Mostly White Male Judges Appointed By Trump Buck 30-Year Trend Of Increasing Diversity In The Courts
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Journalism, POLITICS

Mostly White Male Judges Appointed By Trump Buck 30-Year Trend Of Increasing Diversity In The Courts

In nominating Amy Coney Barrett to replace the late justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, President Donald Trump fulfilled his pledge to put another woman on the U.S. Supreme Court. But most of the 218 judges Trump has so far appointed to the federal judiciary – with the steadfast collaboration of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell – are not women or judges of color. Our study on judicial diversity, which ended in July 2020, shows that Trump-appointed judges are 85% white and 76% men – the least diverse group of federal judges seen since Ronald Reagan. This bucks a 30-year historical trend of increasing diversity on the bench, our research shows. Using data from the Federal Judicial Center, we collected demographic information on all lower court judges and their predecessors dating back to t...
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Trump’s appeals to white anxiety are not ‘dog whistles’ – they’re racism
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Journalism, POLITICS

Trump’s appeals to white anxiety are not ‘dog whistles’ – they’re racism

President Donald Trump’s rhetoric is often referred to as “dog whistle politics.” In politician speak, a dog whistle is language that conveys a particular meaning to a group of potential supporters. The targeted group hears the “whistle” because of its shared cultural reference, but others cannot. In 2018, The Washington Post wrote that “perhaps no one has sent more dog whistles than President Trump.” When Trump this year planned a rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma – the site of one of the worst acts of racial terror in U.S. history – on the Black holiday of Juneteenth, the media called the rally a “racist dog whistle.” That suggests that white nationalists would view the timing as an overture, while others would miss the date’s racism. Journalists have also referred to Trump calling COVID-19 “t...
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Historically, White Americans Have Failed to See Racism as a Systemic Issue. Is That Changing?
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SOCIAL JUSTICE

Historically, White Americans Have Failed to See Racism as a Systemic Issue. Is That Changing?

The first wave of the Black Lives Matter movement, which crested after the 2014 police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, had the support of fewer than half of White Americans. Given that Americans tend to have a narrow definition of racism, many at that time were likely confused by the juxtaposition of Black-led protests, implying that racism was persistent, alongside the presence of a Black family in the White House. Barack Obama’s presidency was seen as evidence that racism was in decline. The current, second wave of the movement feels different, in part because the past months of protests have been multiracial. The media and scholars have noted that Whites’ sensibilities have become more attuned to issues of anti-Black police violence and discrimination. After the first wave of t...
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After the civil rights era, white Americans failed to support systemic change to end racism. Will they now?
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IN OTHER NEWS

After the civil rights era, white Americans failed to support systemic change to end racism. Will they now?

The first wave of the Black Lives Matter movement, which crested after the 2014 police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, had the support of less than half of white Americans. Given that Americans tend to have a very narrow definition of racism, many at that time were likely confused by the juxtaposition of Black-led protests, implying that racism was persistent, alongside the presence of a Black family in the White House. Barack Obama’s presidency was seen as evidence that racism was in decline. The current, second wave of the movement feels different, in part because the past months of protests have been multiracial. The media and scholars have noted that whites’ sensibilities have become more attuned to issues of anti-Black police violence and discrimination. After the first wave ...
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African Americans have long defied white supremacy and celebrated Black culture in public spaces
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LIFESTYLE

African Americans have long defied white supremacy and celebrated Black culture in public spaces

From Richmond to New York City to Seattle, anti-racist activists are getting results as Confederate monuments are coming down by the dozens. In Richmond, Virginia, protesters have changed the story of Lee Circle, home to a 130-year-old monument to Confederate General Robert E. Lee. It’s now a new community space where graffiti, music and projected images turn the statue of Lee from a monument to white supremacy into a backdrop proclaiming that Black Lives Matter. This isn’t a new phenomenon. I’m a historian of celebrations and protests after the Civil War. And in my research, I have found that long before Confederate monuments occupied city squares, African Americans used those same public spaces to celebrate their history. But those African American memorial cultures have often been o...
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Urban planning as a tool of white supremacy – the other lesson from Minneapolis
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SOCIAL JUSTICE

Urban planning as a tool of white supremacy – the other lesson from Minneapolis

The legacy of structural racism in Minneapolis was laid bare to the world at the intersection of Chicago Avenue and East 38th Street, the location where George Floyd’s neck was pinned to the ground by a police officer’s knee. But it is also imprinted in streets, parks and neighborhoods across the city – the result of urban planning that utilized segregation as a tool of white supremacy. Today, Minneapolis is seen to be one of the most liberal cities in the U.S. But if you scratch away the progressive veneer of the U.S.‘s most cyclable city, the city with the best park system and sixth-highest quality of life, you find what Kirsten Delegard, a Minneapolis historian, describes as “darker truths about the city.” As co-founder of the University of Minnesota’s Mapping Prejudice project, Deleg...
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Protestantism’s troubling history with white supremacy in the US
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IN OTHER NEWS

Protestantism’s troubling history with white supremacy in the US

In the long-overdue discussions taking place over the legacy of slavery and racism in the United States, few appear to be addressing the relationship between religion and racism. This comes despite notions of white supremacy being entwined with the history of religion in the United States. As a scholar specializing in issues of religion and identity, I argue for a deeper introspection around how white supremacy permeates all parts of American society, including its religious institutions. Race and religion In 1835, French philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville described the character of the U.S. as the result of “the spirit of religion and the spirit of liberty,” which he argued, “elsewhere have often been at war but in America have somehow been incorporated into one another and marvelously c...
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