WASHINGTON — THE Civil Rights Act of 1964, which banned discrimination in public accommodations, employment and federally funded activities like education, would not have passed without the support of House and Senate Republicans who were competing for black votes. And Presidents Kennedy and Johnson would not have advocated for the bill without being pressured to do so by a multiracial grass-roots movement. Continue reading As the #CivilRights Act Turns 50, Creating Cross-Racial Alliances | NYTimes→
After a seven-week freeze following Clayton Lockett’s botched execution in Oklahoma, three states executed three death-row inmates in less than 24 hours last week. Georgia, Missouri, and Florida had tangled with defense lawyers for months over the secrecy surrounding their lethal-injection cocktails and where they were obtained, a key issue in Lockett’s death. Florida also addressed concerns about its inmate’s mental capacity; his lawyers claimed he had an IQ of 78. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected all appeals, however, and the three inmates—Marcus Wellons, John Winfield, and John Henry, respectively—were successively executed without apparent mishap.
In addition to their fates, Wellons, Winfield, and Henry have something else in common: They are among the disproportionate number of black Americans to have been executed since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.
In the three states where they were executed, blacks constitute a disproportionate share of the death-row population relative to the state population. In Oklahoma and Missouri, black Americans are overrepresented on death row by nearly a factor of four. Continue reading Race and the Execution Chamber |The Atlantic→
Brooklyn’s courthouses are being rocked by the “Williamsburg Effect.”
The influx of well-off and educated white people to trendy neighborhoods such as Williamsburg is rapidly “gentrifying’’ the borough’s jury pool — and transforming verdicts, lawyers and judges told The Post.
It’s good news for prosecutors in criminal cases — and bad news for plaintiffs in civil lawsuits, they said.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently published new data on the role that American fathers play in parenting their children. Most of the CDC’s previous research on family life — which the agency explores as an important contributor to public health and child development — has focused exclusively on mothers. But the latest data finds that the stereotypical gender imbalance in this area doesn’t hold true, and dads are just as hands-on when it comes to raising their kids.
In fact, in its coverage of the study, the Los Angeles Times noted that the results “defy stereotypes about black fatherhood” because the CDC found that black dads are more involved with their kids on a daily basis than dads from other racial groups: Continue reading .@ThinkProgress: The #Myth Of The Absent #BlackFather→
Dean Baker is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC. He previously worked as a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute and an assistant professor at Bucknell University. His blog, Beat the Press, features commentary on economic reporting.
Efforts to alleviate poverty are often seen as being separate from the debate on overall economic policy, with the former involving a distinct set of issues that only marginally overlap with the latter. This is unfortunate, since the health of the economy and specifically the level of unemployment, has an enormous impact on the prospects of the poor. In fact, there are few policies that are likely to have as much effect on improving the plight of the poor or near poor as a genuine commitment to full employment economic policies.
There are three separate channels through which a reduction in the unemployment rate is likely to benefit low-income people. The first is simply by increasing their probability of finding jobs. Unemployment is not evenly distributed throughout the workforce; the less-educated and disadvantaged see the sharpest rises in unemployment when the economy goes into a downturn. Continue reading @BillMoyersHQ: The Full #Employment Route to #Poverty Reduction→
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