Tag: white people
Are Iowa’s Democratic Days Gone for Good?
Updated at 1:17 p.m. ET on June 7, 2022
DUBUQUE, Iowa—Megan Simpson was 3 years old when her family strapped her in a stroller and took her door-knocking for the first time. She was in elementary school when she began stuffing mailers for get-out-the-vote campaigns. Every Election Day during the 1990s and 2000s, Megan and her five brothers and sisters stayed home from school as the house was transformed into a staging area for the precinct. Her parents would blast
No, Ann Coulter, I Am Not Responsible for the ‘Great Replacement’ Theory
Ann Coulter, in so many words, thinks that I am responsible for the mass shooting in Buffalo in mid-May.
Not me alone. After the shooting, Coulter wrote a column dismissing the idea that Republican politicians and commentators had popularized the “Great Replacement” theory, a conspiracy theory that the young, white Buffalo shooter cited as a motivation before killing 10 people at a supermarket in a predominantly Black neighborhood. Instead, Coulter argued that the theory had been popularized by political
Why Jarrett Adams Is Working to Free Terence Richardson and Ferrone Claiborne
PART I: The Writ
I
n the end, Jarrett and Joi Adams decide to confront the attorney general in person. They buy tickets to his fundraiser—they figure it’s their best chance to speak with the man. The car they’ve requested pulls up to the Airbnb they’re renting this week in August in Richmond, Virginia, and the driver sets the address on his phone for McLean, some two hours away. Jarrett and Joi settle in and talk about the case.
Jarrett
Buffalo Shows the Double Terror of Being Black
I loved strawberry shortcake as a child in New York City. The sliced strawberries, the juice, the softest of cake, that whipped cream. I loved it all individually. And together? Pure bliss.
Celestine Chaney loved strawberry shortcake too. A 65-year-old mother and grandmother of six, Chaney took strawberry-shortcake making to another level. She’d buy “those little cake cups,” her son, Wayne Jones, told The Buffalo News. “You cut the strawberries up, sprinkle sugar over them, and leave in the
Tucker Carlson Deserves Blame—But Not for Buffalo
This is an edition of Up for Debate, a newsletter by Conor Friedersdorf. On Wednesdays, he rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Every Monday, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.
Question of the Week
Caitlin Flanagan’s masterful “Chasing Joan Didion” has me thinking about travel.
What have you learned while away from home? Paint a picture of where you went and share your insights.
Conversations of Note
Top of
The Abortion Policy Most Americans Want
The relationship between public opinion and the codification of rights is not linear. Public opinion lagged decades behind the courts on the question of interracial marriage, but led the way on same-sex marriage. In theory, rights supersede public opinion—you should have the right to free speech even if what you’re saying is very unpopular. In practice, rights are safer when they are popular.
Now that the Supreme Court seems poised to reverse itself on Roe v. Wade, abortion-rights advocates
What the Labor Movement Can Learn From Its Past
Essential, fed up, in demand: These are terms often used to describe American workers in the COVID era. Companies have laid off millions of people; the coronavirus has killed many others. Panicked employers have scrambled to raise wages and offer perks in response to the “Great Resignation.” More than 100,000 workers either striked or threatened to during October 2021, which some dubbed #striketober.
Throughout the pandemic, Kim Kelly, a labor journalist and organizer, has reported on
‘Bel-Air’ and the Flawed Logic of ‘Black Excellence’
A pair of massive double doors swing open, and a teenage Will Smith (played by Jabari Banks) walks into his aunt and uncle’s palatial Bel-Air home, where a big-dollar cocktail-party fundraiser is taking place. The soulful hip-hop song “A Lot,” by 21 Savage, soundtracks the scene. “How much money you got? (A lot),” the lyrics recite, seemingly narrating Will’s awe as he clocks the material evidence of the Banks-family fortune. “Yo! I got some rich-ass relatives,” he says. This scene
Vaccinating Kids Has Never Been Easy
In September 1957—two years after church bells rang in celebration of the new polio vaccine, two years after people rejoiced in the streets, two years after Americans began lining up for their shots—the proportion of children fully vaccinated against polio remained at about 50 percent.
Supply was not the problem. Nor were doubts about the vaccine’s safety or efficacy, concluded a report from around that time by the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, now known as the March of Dimes,
Can Anything Stop Republicans From Rolling Back Rights?
The great divergence is rapidly expanding—and President Joe Biden’s window to reverse it is narrowing.
Since the 1960s, Congress and federal courts have acted mostly to strengthen the floor of basic civil rights available to citizens in all 50 states, a pattern visible on issues from the dismantling of Jim Crow racial segregation to the right to abortion to the authorization of same-sex marriage. But now, offensives by red-state governments and GOP-appointed federal judges are poised to retrench those