Tuesday, May 7

Tag: white

In The Classroom The Perils Of Associating ‘White’ With ‘Privilege’
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EDUCATION

In The Classroom The Perils Of Associating ‘White’ With ‘Privilege’

White privilege – the social advantage that benefits white people over others simply on account of skin color – has become a racial justice catchphrase. Peggy McIntosh, an academic who originated the term in 1989, described it like this: “An invisible package of unearned assets that I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was meant to remain oblivious.” As examples, she highlighted the appearance of being financially reliable, shopping alone without being harassed and seeing representation of her race in history books and the media. In the wake of George Floyd’s death, an increasing number of white Americans agree that white privilege exists. That includes a growing number of Republicans. Despite the term’s pervasive use, little attention has focused on how it affects vic...
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Why Black Diners Get Poorer Service From Wait Staff And Bartenders Than White Customers
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SOCIAL JUSTICE

Why Black Diners Get Poorer Service From Wait Staff And Bartenders Than White Customers

When Black diners get poorer service from wait staff and bartenders than white customers, it’s more likely because of racial bias than the well-documented fact that they tip less, according to a new survey I recently published. To reach that conclusion, my colleague Gerald Nowak and I recruited over 700 mostly white full-service restaurant servers and bartenders to review a hypothetical dining scenario that randomly involved either white or Black customers. We then asked them to predict the tip that the table would leave, the likelihood that the table would exhibit undesirable dining behaviors and the quality of service they would likely provide the table. We also asked participants to fill out a survey to learn how frequently they observed anti-Black expressions of bias in their workpla...
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Many Black Women Aimed For The White House, Before Kamala Harris
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POLITICS

Many Black Women Aimed For The White House, Before Kamala Harris

The vice president-elect of the United States is the American daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants. With Joe Biden’s projected presidential win over Donald Trump, Sen. Kamala Harris breaks three centuries-old barriers to become the nation’s first female vice president, first Black vice president and first Black female vice president. Harris is also of Indian descent, making the 2020 election a meaningful first for two communities of color. Harris wasn’t the first Black female vice presidential aspirant in American history. Charlotta Bass, an African American journalist and political activist from California, ran for vice president in 1948 with the Progressive Party. Before she was Biden’s running mate, Harris was his opponent in the Democratic presidential primary. She is one of m...
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Suburbia Is No Longer All White President Trump — And Black Suburbanites Are More Politically Active Than Their Neighbors
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SOCIAL JUSTICE

Suburbia Is No Longer All White President Trump — And Black Suburbanites Are More Politically Active Than Their Neighbors

President Donald Trump has tweeted up a storm about how his Democratic challenger Joe Biden wants to “abolish suburbs” and institute programs that would bring impoverished criminals into the suburbs, where they will destroy the “suburban lifestyle dream.” In the final stages of his campaign, Trump has made an explicit appeal to suburban women: “So can I ask you to do me a favor? Suburban women, will you please like me? I saved your damn neighborhood,” the president said at a rally in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, in mid-October. I am a political scientist who studies race in America’s suburbs; my book “African Americans in White Suburbia: Social Networks and Political Behavior” was published in 2017. I contend that Trump’s tweets are not about the actual suburbs. Instead, they are meant to e...
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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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