Tag: blacks

How Trump Upended 60 Years of Civil Rights

Posted on by Lone Candle

The civil rights movement wasn’t just about getting blacks rights for the first time, but regaining rights that they had torn from them during segregation. We should remember that America has taken rights away before based on race, and it could do it again if we aren’t careful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epVxOkN14Wg

Election takeaways: Trump’s decisive victory in a deeply divided nation

Posted on by Lone Candle

“Black voters — men and women — have been the bedrock of the Democratic Party, and in recent years, Latinos and young voters have joined them.
All three groups still preferred Democrat Kamala Harris. But preliminary data from AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 120,000 voters nationwide, suggested that Trump made significant gains.

Voters under age 30 represent a fraction of the total electorate, but about half of them supported Harris. That’s compared to the roughly 6 in 10 who backed Biden in 2020. Slightly more than 4 in 10 young voters went for Trump, up from about one-third in 2020.

At the same time, Black and Latino voters appeared slightly less likely to support Harris than they were to back Biden four years ago, according to AP VoteCast.

About 8 in 10 Black voters backed Harris, down from the roughly 9 in 10 who backed Biden. More than half of Hispanic voters supported Harris, but that was down slightly from the roughly 6 in 10 who backed Biden in 2020. Trump’s support among those groups appeared to rise slightly compared to 2020. Collectively, those small gains yielded an outsize outcome.”

…

“about half of Trump voters said inflation was the biggest issue factoring into their election decisions. About as many said that of the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border, according to AP VoteCast.

He papered over the fact that the economy by many conventional metrics is robust — inflation is largely in check and wages are up — while border crossings have dropped dramatically. He talked right past the facts and through relentless repetition convinced voters.

He also sold them on the promise of the largest mass deportation effort in U.S. history, although he has not explained how such an operation would work. And he is threatening to impose massive tariffs on key products from China and other American adversaries, which economists warn could dramatically boost prices for average Americans.”

https://apnews.com/article/trump-harris-presidential-election-takeaways-d0e4677f4cd53b4d2d8d18d674be5bf4

Black Voters in This City Could Determine 2024. And It’s Not Looking Good for Biden.

Posted on by Lone Candle

“Black voters in Milwaukee. An influential bloc that can determine if the state remains blue or flips this fall, these voters have serious and lingering doubts about Biden and whether he’s delivered on his promises to them. There’s no danger that Donald Trump will carry this historically Democratic city in November. But there is a considerable risk that an anemic showing in Milwaukee could cost Biden this critical swing state — and possibly the election.
Biden’s Milwaukee problem is a distillation of the challenges facing his reelection campaign nationally: In traditionally Democratic redoubts, polls suggest alarmingly low levels of support among Black and Latino voters. In 2016, Hillary Clinton’s underperformance in Milwaukee, Philadelphia and Detroit’s Wayne County — the urban centers that power Democratic fortunes in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan — enabled Trump’s surprise Rust Belt victories. This year, signs of a lack of enthusiasm for Biden in those places among Black voters is giving rise to fears of a repeat.

In Wisconsin, there isn’t much margin of error: The last two presidential elections here have been decided by less than 25,000 votes each. A low turnout among Black voters in Milwaukee — or a diminished winning margin for Biden — would deal a significant blow to his chances of carrying the state and its 10 electoral votes.”

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/06/21/biden-black-voters-enthusiasm-gap-milwaukee-00163496

Florida’s Rejection of an AP African American Studies Course Is a Rejection of School Choice

Posted on by Lone Candle

“The College Board is a nonprofit organization that administers college entrance exams and develops Advanced Placement (AP) courses for high school students that earn them college credits. They’ve developed a pilot program for an African American Studies class that they plan to launch in 60 schools across the U.S. over the next school year. They did intend for one Florida school to offer the class. They hope to start offering the class in all high schools by the 2024–25 school year and begin administering exams in spring 2025. High school students who pass those exams would earn college credit for taking the class.
Florida’s Department of Education looked at the class, and flat-out rejected it, with officials saying it would indoctrinate students with “a political agenda” and lacked educational value. Gov. Ron DeSantis’ Press Secretary Bryan Griffin* said, “As submitted, the course is a vehicle for a political agenda and leaves large, ambiguous gaps that can be filled with additional ideological material, which we will not allow.”

Well, it is a history class, after all. Once you get past the names and dates, history studies political agendas and ideology. Certainly, that would have to be the case for a black history class in America.”

…

“No AP class is mandatory. Parents and students can decide whether they want to it.”

9 States Have Banned Affirmative Action. Here’s What That Looks Like.

Posted on by Lone Candle

“Black enrollment fell rapidly at the top schools in the University of California system. Before the ban, Black students made up 7% of the student body at UCLA. By 1998, that figure had slipped to 3.93%. By the fall of 2006, the freshman class included only 96 Black students out of nearly 5,000.
In an effort to address that gap, officials in California have spent more than $500 million in outreach to underserved minority students since 2004, lawyers for the state said in a Supreme Court brief this year.

A similar decline took place at the University of Michigan. Black undergraduate enrollment dropped to 4% in 2021 from 7% in 2006, the year the state approved a referendum banning affirmative action.

Even though a Supreme Court ruling restricting the use of race-conscious admissions is unlikely to affect their states, lawyers for Michigan and California filed briefs with the court over the summer arguing that without affirmative action, achieving racial diversity was virtually impossible.

Florida, which banned affirmative action in 2001 and where admission to the state’s flagship university is also competitive, has taken the opposite position: Racial diversity can be achieved without race-conscious admissions, it said.

A study in 2012 by liberal-leaning research group the Century Foundation found that in most states where affirmative action was prohibited, Hispanic and Black enrollment at flagship universities bounced back after an initial drop.

But the study also showed that those increases did not generally keep pace with the growing number of Hispanic and Black high school graduates.”