Why I’m skeptical of reparations. Sources.

The Color of Law Richard Rothstein. Liveright Publishing Corporation. 2017. The New Deal Didn’t Create Segregation Richard Walker. 6 18 2019. Jacobin. https://jacobinmag.com/2019/06/the-color-of-law-richard-rothstein-review Dr. Florence Maätita – I.D.E.A. Book Club – The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein Dr. Florence Maätita. 2021

How ‘Cancel Culture’ Became An Issue For Young Republicans

“it’s Republicans under the age of 45 who are really concerned about “cancel culture.”

One in 4 Republicans between the ages of 18 and 44 listed it as a top concern, compared to just 1 percent of Democrats in this same age group, according to a recent YouGov Blue poll.1 In fact, among younger Republicans, “cancel culture” ranked sixth in terms of overall importance, but for younger Democrats it ranked dead last.”

“the largest bloc of young Republicans (ages 18 to 29) are white men, according to a 2018 survey from Tuft University’s Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, which found that among young voters, white men were the only racial or gender group to align with the GOP in the midterms. This is important because polling by the Public Religion Research Institute, also from 2018, found that 43 percent of young white men (ages 15 to 24) think that discrimination against white people has become as big a problem as discrimination against Black people and other minority groups. In fact, almost half said in that poll that diversity efforts will harm white people.”

“one reason the right’s reactionary movement wields political power is that many of the tones underlying the debates over free speech on campuses are also playing out in conservative media outlets. Young Republicans are already more likely to be plugged into these outlets, like “The Ben Shapiro Show” and PragerU, making them the prime candidates to carry the“cancel culture” mantle.”

Whiteness is at the core of the insurrection

“the whiteness of the insurrectionists acted as a shield — protecting them from being seen as a threat before, and while, they stormed the Capitol. For activists who endured violence at the hands of police when they were merely asking for them to stop executing Black people, this inequity is why they protested in the first place.”

“As I reported in September, research from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project found that out of 7,750 Black Lives Matter protests across 2,400 locations across the country, 93 percent of them were peaceful — yet images of burning and headlines of looting were plentiful, with the president referring to the protesters as “thugs.”
New research from the organization compares the difference in law enforcement response between left-wing protests (anti-Trump, pro-Biden, Count Every Vote, Black Lives Matter, Abolish ICE) and right-wing protests (pro-Trump, anti-Biden, Back the Blue, QAnon, Stop the Steal, etc.), finding that law enforcement was more than twice as likely to use force against liberal demonstrations between May and November.”

“What’s evident is that the organizers of Wednesday’s rallies were not taken seriously, as white extremists are often infantilized and given room to work out their feelings and blow off steam. We are told we need to listen to them, to try to understand their plight and psychology.”

What We Know About How White and Latino Americans Voted In 2020

“In the lead-up to the election, there were plenty of signs that Biden’s support among Latino voters in key swing states might be weaker than Clinton’s in 2016, but some of the shifts wound up being very large. In Florida’s Miami-Dade County, for instance, which is 68 percent Hispanic, Trump narrowed his deficit by 22 percentage points between 2016 and 2020; in Texas’s Starr County, which is 99 percent Hispanic, Trump improved by a stunning 55 percentage points.

However, as the chart below shows, Trump’s gains among Latino voters were hardly universal. In fact, the places where Trump appears to have gained the most support were largely in rural areas or among more conservative Latino voters like Cuban Americans. In suburban and urban areas, the story was much more mixed. (And, to be clear, Biden still won the overwhelming majority of Latino votes.)

One important factor to keep in mind here — which is partially why some of these shifts toward Trump seem so pronounced — is that Trump did really poorly with Latino voters in 2016. According to pre-election surveys, he won just 18 percent of Latino voters in 2016 but 27 percent this year, putting him back in the territory of other recent Republican presidential nominees.

Additionally, part of what we’re seeing here isn’t necessarily something unique to Latino voters at all, but an extension of America’s growing urban-rural divide.”

“The education split has been especially significant among white voters, and this rift appears to have widened as Trump lost ground in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, especially in areas where many white voters have four-year college degrees.”

“Part of what is happening, according to Arlie Hochschild, a sociologist at the University of California who has written extensively about conservative voters, is that many less educated white voters have come to see Trump as their champion. “They feel that Trump is making them great again — their social class and their identity as whites,” she said. “Many of them feel that as white [people], they’re discriminated against.” She added that even if Biden might have personally appealed to those voters, it might not have been enough to overcome their suspicion that the Democratic Party as a whole was hostile to their worldview.

Importantly, Trump’s gains among white voters without a college degree were less substantial than his losses among educated white voters, and that appears to have cost him in these three states. This was most stark in Wisconsin, where Trump’s margin improved in 39 of the state’s 72 counties, but fell in 31 and didn’t change in two. The counties where he lost ground tended to be bigger and more well-educated, while the ones where he gained were generally smaller and less well-educated. In aggregate, these shifts added up to a narrow loss in Wisconsin for Trump in 2020 instead of the close win he achieved in 2016.”

Trump Pushed To Condemn White Nationalist Proud Boys, Instead Tells Them ‘Stand Back and Stand By’

“Biden was pressed (as he has been this summer) to disavow violence and rioting by antifa protesters. Biden did so, saying “Violence is never appropriate.”

Host and Fox News anchor Chris Wallace then noted that Trump has been criticized repeatedly for refusing to denounce the violence that comes from white nationalists at some of these protests. Wallace asked Trump, “Are you willing tonight to condemn white supremacists and militia groups to say they need to stand down and not add to the violence in a number of the cities as we saw in Kenosha and as we’ve seen in Portland?”

Trump said, “Sure, I’m willing to do that, but I would say, almost everything I see is from the left-wing, not from the right-wing.” After demanding from Wallace specific names of groups he should condemn, Biden and Wallace settled on the Proud Boys. Trump responded not with condemnation but by saying “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by.” Then he veered the discussion immediately toward antifa violence, saying “I’ll tell you what. Somebody’s gotta do something about antifa and the left, because this is not a right-wing problem, this is a left-wing problem.”

That’s not a condemnation. Trump still, unlike Biden, seems unable to repudiate violence from people who support him.”

“Regardless of the president’s intent, the Telegram account for the Proud Boys reportedly immediately made a mockup a logo with “Stand Back” and “Stand By” as text, suggesting that the message they received is to wait for potential action. The Daily Beast reports that Proud Boys leader Joe Briggs wrote on Parler that in reality, “Trump basically said to go fuck them up. This makes me so happy.””

“given a chance to more carefully frame a statement, Trump was much more clear at telling the Proud Boys to “stand down and let law enforcement do their work,” according to Bloomberg’s White House reporter”

““They have to stand down and let law enforcement do their work,” Trump says of Proud Boys, adding “I don’t know who the Proud Boys are.””

George Floyd’s Horrifying Death Highlights Stark Racial Disparities in the Use of Police Force

“In a 2017 analysis of data from 20 states, researchers at Stanford University found that “white drivers are searched in 2.0% of stops, compared to 3.5% of stops for black motorists and 3.8% for Hispanic motorists.” After the researchers controlled for stop location, date and time, and driver age and gender, they calculated that “black and Hispanic drivers have approximately twice the odds of being searched relative to white drivers.” They were also twice as likely to be arrested. The study found that “black and Hispanic drivers are searched on the basis of less evidence than white drivers, suggestive of bias in search decisions.”

After surveying drivers in the Kansas City area in 2003 and 2004, Charles Epp and two other researchers at the University of Kansas classified police encounters based on the legal justification (or lack thereof) and the amount of discretion involved. They found that black drivers were no more likely than white drivers to report clear-cut “traffic safety stops” (e.g., for running a red light or stop sign, driving at night with headlights off, or exceeding the speed limit by seven or more miles an hour) but were nearly three times as likely to report seemingly pretextual “investigatory stops” (e.g., for an unilluminated license plate, driving too slowly, or no reason mentioned by the officer).

During investigatory stops, Epp and his colleagues reported, black drivers were five times as likely as white drivers to be searched. They were also more likely to be handcuffed and threatened with arrest, and more likely to describe the officer’s demeanor as rude, hostile, or insulting. Blacks perceived investigatory stops as less legitimate than traffic safety stops, while whites made no such distinction. The more stops black drivers had experienced, the less they trusted the police, an effect that was not apparent among white drivers.”