The shooting of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, and the anger poured out in response by Ferguson’s mostly black population, has snapped the issue of race into national focus. The incident has precipitated a much larger conversation, causing many Americans to question […] Read more »
Missouri Residents Are 49th Out of 50 States When Asked to Rate Climate for Racial and Ethnic Minorities
Gallup’s major 50-state poll conducted in 2013 included a question asking residents of each state to rate the city or area where they live as “a good place to live for racial or ethnic minorities.” My colleague Lydia Saad analyzed the resulting data in some detail a few months ago, […] Read more »
Racial Divide Seen in Response to Ferguson Unrest
Blacks and whites nationally have different opinions about the response of Jay Nixon, the governor of Missouri, to the events that followed the fatal shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, by a white police officer in Ferguson, Mo., on Aug. 9. The latest New York Times/CBS News Poll […] Read more »
The Conservative Divide Over Ferguson
We’re used to just about every American controversy polarizing swiftly along right-left lines, but the discussion of events in Ferguson has been a striking exception thus far. Within the commentariat, the most interesting division has opened within American conservatism, where a large group of conservative and libertarian writers have been […] Read more »
Ferguson, Watts and a Dream Deferred
When rioting broke out in the Watts section of Los Angeles in the summer of 1965, African-Americans didn’t — couldn’t — know it yet, but the next three decades would turn out to be a period of sustained gains in terms of income, jobs, education and the status of blacks […] Read more »
Stark Racial Divisions in Reactions to Ferguson Police Shooting
Blacks and whites have sharply different reactions to the police shooting of an unarmed teen in Ferguson, Mo., and the protests and violence that followed. Blacks are about twice as likely as whites to say that the shooting of Michael Brown “raises important issues about race that need to be […] Read more »