Wal-Mart's Relationship to "Stand Your Ground" (the License to Kill Law)

"Not only are Wal-Mart and the Walton Family Foundation members of ALEC, but the company also played an active role in helping advance the 'Stand your ground' law. In 2005 Wal-Mart executive Janet Scott co-chaired ALEC's Criminal Justice Task Force (it later became the Public Safety and Elections Task Force in 2009) when the National Rifle Association successfully lobbied the task force to support the 'Stand your ground' legislation.

"According to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, 'justifiable homicides' have tripled since the passage of the law. FBI data shows similar increases in other states that have adopted the law." [Read more]

Hate among Hockey Fans

"When Joel Ward scored the overtime winner for the Capitals to end the defending Stanley Cup champion Boston Bruins’ season, a wave of racist tweets surfaced. They ranged from casually offensive to viciously hateful. None were shocking. But they illustrated the latent sentiment that exists in many pockets of the fan base that hockey is a sport to be played and enjoyed by whites." [Read more]

NYC's Policing Policies Destroy Lives

"An arrest, even without a conviction, can swiftly unleash disastrous personal consequences. Consider the 2011 case of a 26-year-old single mother from Brooklyn whose lawyers say she was arrested after the police forced her to reveal a small packet of marijuana hidden in her purse. The judge said the charges would be dismissed if she stayed out of trouble for a year. A week later, the woman had been fired from her job as a janitor with the New York City Housing Authority. She has not been rehired.

. . .

"Young parents have faced neglect accusations in family court after marijuana arrests, even if they are not ultimately charged with any crime. In a case described in The Times, a woman’s son and niece were removed from her home by child welfare workers after police found about a third of an ounce of marijuana — below the threshold for a misdemeanor — in a boyfriend’s backpack in her Bronx apartment. The district attorney declined to prosecute, but the children spent time in foster care, and her niece was not returned for over a year." [Read more]

Hard Times for College Grads, Hard Times for Ex-Offenders

College Grads: 


"A weak labor market already has left half of young college graduates either jobless or underemployed in positions that don't fully use their skills and knowledge.

"Young adults with bachelor's degrees are increasingly scraping by in lower-wage jobs – waiter or waitress, bartender, retail clerk or receptionist, for example – and that's confounding their hopes a degree would pay off despite higher tuition and mounting student loans." [Read more]

Ex-Offenders:  

"According to a startling 2011 report from the National Employment Law Project, an advocacy group, about 90 percent of companies are using criminal background checks in hiring decisions and about 65 million people have criminal records. The group found that companies of all sizes routinely deny people with records any chance to establish their qualifications, even for entry-level jobs like warehouse worker. These blanket exclusion policies flout the E.E.O.C. rules. They also ignore research showing that many offenders who stay out of trouble for even a brief period after their original crimes present little or no risk to employers." [Read more]

All-White Jury Pools Convict Black Defendants 16 Percent More Often Than Whites

"Juries formed from all-white jury pools in Florida convicted black defendants 16 percent more often than white defendants, a gap that was nearly eliminated when at least one member of the jury pool was black, according to a Duke University-led study." [Read more]

A Crazy Level of Inequality in the United States

“The United States is getting accustomed to a completely crazy level of inequality,” Mr. Piketty said, with a degree of wonder. “People say that reducing inequality is radical. I think that tolerating the level of inequality the United States tolerates is radical.” [Read more]

Better Educated, But Still Low-Wage

"the average low-wage worker today is both older and much better educated than the average low-wage worker was in the past." [Read more]

Food Stamps Helped Reduce Poverty Rate, Study Finds

"A new study by the Agriculture Department has found that food stamps, one of the country’s largest social safety net programs, reduced the poverty rate substantially during the recent recession. The food stamp program, formally known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, reduced the poverty rate by nearly 8 percent in 2009, the most recent year included in the study, a significant impact for a social program whose effects often go unnoticed by policy makers." [Read more]

Latinos versus the Census Bureau: When racial categorizations clash

"Over the past few decades, the United States has seen a significant increase in the Latino population. Many of these Latinos are immigrants from other countries with other systems of identity and racial classification. These systems of classification may be in conflict with the official directives of the Census Bureau." [Read more]

The NRA is Out of Control

There is nothing so dangerous as a lobbying organization that’s running out of stuff to lobby about.

I am thinking in particular of the National Rifle Association. These people are really in desperate straits. The state legislatures are almost all in session, but some of them have already pushed the gun-owner-rights issue about as far as it can go. You can only legalize carrying a concealed weapon in church once.

This year, in search of new worlds to conquer — or at least to arm — a couple of states are giving serious attention to bills that would allow gun owners to carry their concealed weapons in places like day-care centers and school buses. [Read more]

The Republican Mean Season Continues

[The budget proposal of Republican Congressman Paul] Ryan would cut $770 billion over 10 years from Medicaid and other health programs for the poor, compared with President Obama’s budget. He takes an additional $205 billion from Medicare, $1.6 trillion from the Obama health-care legislation and $1.9 trillion from a category simply labeled “other mandatory.” Pressed to explain this magic asterisk, Ryan allowed that the bulk of those “other mandatory” cuts come from food stamps, welfare, federal employee pensions and support for farmers.

Taken together, Ryan would cut spending on such programs by $5.3 trillion, much of which currently goes to the have-nots. He would then give that money to America’s haves: some $4.3 trillion in tax cuts, compared with current policies, according to Citizens for Tax Justice.

. . . 

The budget “repairs the safety net” by allowing the states to award public assistance to fewer people — “those who need it most.” Financial aid for college would be slashed — er, “put on a sustainable funding path.” And the Ryan plan would give workers “the tools to thrive in the 21st century” — by killing off various job-training programs. 

[Read more]

Bob Herbert on "The Destruction of Black Wealth"

"Black-owned auto dealerships have taken a terrible hit. By mid-2011, according to Automotive News, there were just 261 black-owned dealerships in the U.S., half as many as three years earlier. White-owned dealerships suffered a decline of 18 percent over the same period." [Read more]

Charles Murray’s failure by design

Murray’s last book, The Bell Curve, argued that nothing could be done about inequality because it was all genetic. He is still arguing that nothing can be done to address inequality. [Read more]

Hate Groups on the Rise

"The number of hate groups counted by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) last year reached a total of 1,018, up slightly from the year before but continuing a trend of significant growth that is now more than a decade old. The truly stunning growth came in the antigovernment “Patriot” movement — conspiracy-minded groups that see the federal government as their primary enemy." [Read more]

Black veterans are disproportionately homeless

"Almost half of homeless veterans were African American in 2008 despite the fact that only 11 percent of veterans overall are African American." From the Center for American Progress

Minority Students Face Harsher Discipline, Fewer Options, New Federal Data Shows

"Minority students have less access to advanced courses, more inexperienced teachers and face tougher disciplinary consequences than their counterparts, a new trove of federal data shows, affirming long-held beliefs about disparities in the classroom." [Read more]

Black women heavier and happier with their bodies

Like many black women, Gibson describes her 5-foot-4, size 14-plus physique as “thick,” and considers herself ultra-feminine — no matter what the mainstream culture has to say about it.

She’s one of the most full-figured women in the gym, but she’s in love with her body. And it’s a sentiment that syncs perfectly with a recent survey conducted by The Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation that focused on African American women. [Read more]

Black Job Seekers are Still at the Back of the Bus

At this time of year, when we celebrate the birthday of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Black History Month, we often celebrate the successes of the Civil Rights Movement. But I never hear anyone speak of the many goals that the Movement did not achieve. One such goal is the goal of full employment for African Americans.

The 1963 March in which King delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech was not simply a "march on Washington" as many people call it. The full title of the march was the "March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom." The truly important part of the title is the "jobs and freedom" part. If we are going to abbreviate the title of the march, let's call it the "March for Jobs and Freedom." When we say "the 1963 March for Jobs and Freedom" we remind ourselves that jobs was a fundamental part of the African American civil rights movement.

One demand of the March for Jobs and Freedom was for "a massive Federal program to train and place unemployed workers." When Martin Luther King died, he was still planning the Poor People's Campaign. The number one goal of the Poor People's Campaign was full employment. In a full-employment economy everyone who wants a job can get one. In his book, I've Got the Light of Freedom, the civil rights historian Charles Payne points out that for Mississippians involved in the civil rights movement, civil rights included the right to a "decent job."

Jobs was such an important issue to civil rights activists because in the 1960s the black unemployment rate was about twice the white rate. Civil rights activists also recognized that without jobs, blacks would never conquer poverty and all of the problems that stem from poverty. Fifty years later, the black unemployment rate continues to run at about twice the white unemployment rate, and blacks have failed to conquer poverty and all of the problems that stem from poverty.

Many times over the last 50 years, the American economy has provided a job for nearly every white American who has wanted one. But the American economy has never succeeded in doing the same for African Americans. We need to create an American economy where not only every white person who wants to work can find a job, but also where every black person who wants to work can find a job.

In the past 50 years, the highest unemployment rates that white America has experienced are about the level of the lowest unemployment rates that black America has experienced. This means that if African Americans were to give up the struggle for equality and were to just obtain enough jobs to have the worst unemployment rate that whites have experienced over the last 50 years, this change would be a tremendous improvement over the status quo. When it comes to unemployment, African Americans are still second-class citizens, sitting at the back of the bus.

Pretty much all of the major social problems faced by African Americans are connected to the problem of the persistent high levels of joblessness. Of course, black poverty rates are linked to high black unemployment rates. We also know that poor children do worse in school [PDF] than middle-class children. A significant part of the achievement gap stems from the high rate of black poverty. If you are interested in reducing crime in black communities, then it is important to reduce black unemployment rates. Economic disadvantage is correlated with crime rates. The wealth gap is also connected to the unemployment gap. People who are unemployed do not build wealth; they spend down their savings, and if they have no savings, they go into debt. If you are interested in increasing the black marriage rate, again, you should be concerned about the high rate of joblessness among blacks. Economic insecurity is linked to lower marriage rates. Greater rates of steady employment in good jobs for blacks, and particularly for black men, would lead to an increase in the black marriage rate.

The civil rights activists of the 1960s marched on Washington to fight for job opportunities for blacks. They succeeded in obtaining anti-discrimination policies, but they did not succeed in obtaining "a massive Federal program to train and place unemployed workers," nor did they obtain a real federal commitment for full employment. If we truly want to honor Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement, we need to continue the work that they did not complete.

Lending Discrimination against Blacks

In a study of loans created on Prosper.com, a peer-to-peer lending website where applicants are encouraged to include a personal photo, researchers found that black borrowers are 25 to 35 percent less likely to receive funding than a white borrower with similar credit. [Read more]

Blacks Suffer Biggest Decline in Health Insurance Coverage

Read the report.