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 »
Nothing Obama and Holder say will change racial debate over Ferguson
… We don’t have to wonder what the reaction would be if Obama talked about the racial components of the events in Ferguson, because we’ve seen it before. There would be an explosive backlash on the right, no matter what Obama actually said. … During the Obama years, the opinions […] 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 »
Black and White Attitudes Toward Police
The death of 18-year-old African-American Michael Brown at the hands of a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, has reopened the subject of black Americans’ relationship with the police, and more generally the differences in the way blacks and whites look at the criminal justice and civil rights situations in […] Read more »