A month after Florida neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman was acquitted on all charges in the shooting death of a black teen named Trayvon Martin, blacks are more likely than they were just prior to the July 13 verdict to believe new civil rights laws are needed to reduce discrimination against […] Read more »
Why the march anniversary matters—especially for whites
When thousands massed on the Mall Saturday to celebrate the 1963 March on Washington, they weren’t simply marking the rally’s 50th anniversary. They were also helping sustain the significance of the civil rights movement in the public consciousness. That’s the implication of a new article by researchers Amy Corning and […] Read more »
The long struggle: The March on Washington, fifty years later
Ernest Green, raised in segregated Arkansas, remembers August 28, 1963. — The Economist Read more »
King’s Dream Remains an Elusive Goal; Many Americans See Racial Disparities
Five decades after Martin Luther King’s historic “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington, D.C., a new survey by the Pew Research Center finds that fewer than half (45%) of all Americans say the country has made substantial progress toward racial equality and about the same share (49%) say that […] Read more »
Fix the Census’ Archaic Racial Categories
Starting in 1790, and every 10 years since, the census has sorted the American population into distinct racial groups. Remarkably, a discredited relic of 18th-century science, the “five races of mankind,” lives on in the 21st century. [cont.] Kenneth Prewitt (Columbia U.), New York Times Read more »
Racism doesn’t explain why Obama’s approval rating is falling
Does being black cost President Obama support among white voters? We all know that there’s a certain proportion of the electorate that’s not going to support Obama because he’s black. … What needs to be pointed out, however, is that most of Obama’s current approval slide likely isn’t because of […] Read more »