On Point
How Italians became white New York Times editorial writer Brent Staples contributes to the historical record with this opinion piece which begins with the deliberate steps Congress took in 1790 to ensure the racial purity of the young country. Immigration quickly changed their calculus. "[T]he surge of newcomers engendered a national panic and led Americans to adopt a more restrictive, politicized view of how whiteness was to be allocated," he notes. Some immigrant groups were whiter than others. "The story of how Italian immigrants went from racialized pariah status in the 19th century to white Americans in good standing in the 20th offers a window onto the alchemy through which race is constructed in the United States, and how racial hierarchies can sometimes change."
New York Times
Welcome to the glass floor. Now, please step aside I suspect many raceAhead readers will chortle with satisfaction at this sharp HuffPo piece that lays the facts bare: The poor and middle class are increasingly unable to rise up the income ranks while the undeserving rich are increasingly taking up space that they haven't earned, and for which they are wholly unqualified. "There's a lot of talent being wasted because it's not able to rise, but there's also a lot of relatively untalented people who aren't falling and end up occupying positions they shouldn't," said Richard Reeves, a Brookings Institution researcher and the author of this barnburner of a book, Dream Hoarders: How the American Upper Middle Class Is Leaving Everyone Else in the Dust, Why That Is a Problem, and What to Do About It. But I also suspect that the chortles will turn to chokes of rage. The problem is bigger than a Trump kid taking the phone during a presidential call. "Over the last 30 years, nearly every institution of social mobility, from education to work to government spending, has been systematically tilted toward the wealthy," reports Michael Hobbes.
Huffington Post
A Pennsylvania middle school teacher on leave after a racist rant was caught on video The video, which begins after the accident, shows no damage to the car, but it nevertheless triggered an angry rant. She accused the other driver, a young Black man, of being on welfare and of targeting her because she is white. She used the n-word, and a homophobic slur, and threatened him—all in the parking lot of her own school. CNN reports that she is currently on leave, and also notes that the Upper Darby School District, where she teaches, is increasingly diverse: 46.6% are African American, 31.76% are white, 14.4% are Asian/Pacific Islander, 5.62% are Hispanic, and 1% are other. When you read this story, and I do encourage you to read it, ask yourself this question: What is going on inside a person when profoundly racist stereotypes tumble out of their mouth when faced with a minor inconvenience?
CNN
A wealthy white community in Baton Rouge has seceded The largely white suburb of Baton Rouge voted over the weekend to incorporate themselves right into a new city called St. George , a move which effectively removes money, services, and resources from their increasingly diverse neighbors. While only 54% of voters supported the measure, it was a stinging rebuke to community leaders and a sign of a deeply divided community. "When we create a better St. George, we're creating a better parish," says one local lawyer. "Whether it be issues like drainage or transportation or our economy," says mayor-president Sharon Weston Broome, "we will have the highest level of success the more we stay united."
New York Times
On Background
The devil in the advocate Maya Rupert holds nothing back in this essay on the painful folly of playing "devil's advocate" when it comes to something as important as race, particularly now. Discussions about race are already necessary, but now, in a time of heightened white supremacist threats, there is "a dangerous tendency for white people to engage in these discussions with people of color by summoning the devil himself and treating racism as a political disagreement around which two opposing viewpoints can reasonably form." What you're asking when you play devil's advocate is for a person of color to justify to you their own value, safety, and status. It's an act of cruelty, she says. "There is no way to productively ask a person to participate in an argument that questions their equality as an epistemological experiment," she says. And yet, we still try.
Slate
A young Native rapper explores his past and future Frank Waln, a rapper and member of the Sicangu Lakota in South Dakota, uses music to process his own bouts with depression to explore what it's like to be a modern Native American, inextricably linked to a history of genocide. He finds inspiration in the parallel journey of African Americans. "Hip hop just resonated with a lot of Native youth from my generation, especially growing up on reservations because we could relate to the stories being told in the music."
WBUR
A Japanese town that is filled with life-sized dolls The scarecrow looked so much like her father, recently passed, that neighbors spoke to it with reverence. It was then that Japanese artist Tsukimi Ayano began to see an opportunity to replace the dwindling population of her rural village with life-sized human tributes of friends and neighbors. Now, Nagoro has more dolls than human inhabitants, working in fields, waiting for the bus, teaching in a now- abandoned school. "When I make dolls of dead people I think about them when they were alive and healthy. The dolls are like my children." The effect is both haunting and beautiful, as this six-minute documentary shows. Enjoy.
National Geographic
Tamara El-Waylly helps write and produce raceAhead.
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Quote
"I believe in white supremacy. We can't all of a sudden get down on our knees and turn everything over to the leadership of the blacks. I don't believe in giving authority and positions of leadership and judgment to irresponsible people. I don't feel guilty about the fact that five or 10 generations ago these people were slaves. Now, I'm not condoning slavery. It's just a fact of life, like the kid who gets infantile paralysis and has to wear braces so he can't play football with the rest of us. I don't feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from [Native Americans], if that's what you're asking. Our so-called stealing of this country from them was just a matter of survival. There were great numbers of people who needed new land, and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves."
—John Wayne
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