AMBER GUYGER CASE KEY WITNESS MURDERED AFTER HER GUILTY CONVICTION (JOSHUA BROWN):
WHITE DALLAS CITY COUNCIL MEMBER LOSES ELECTION AFTER EXPOSING DALLAS POLICE DEPT COVER UP (PHILLIP KINGSTON).
“WE’VE GOT SOME LONG DAYS AHEAD OF US” (DR MARTIN LUTHER KING JR).
WE NEED TO PRAY FOR THE USA AND PREPARE FOR NOVEMBER 2020.
DEAR LORD, GIVE US WISDOM & STRATEGIES.
Post Sources: BallotPedia, CBS News, Fox News, Dallas News, Status Coup, TIME, WFAA, Youtube
******* Key Witness in Amber Guyger Murder Case Fatally Shot Days After Emotional Trial Wraps Up
Less than three days after ex-Dallas police officer Amber Guyger was sentenced to 10 years in prison for murdering Botham Jean in his own apartment, a key witness in the case was fatally shot.
Joshua Brown was killed Friday night at a Dallas apartment complex, as confirmed to TIME and originally reported by the Dallas Morning News.
The Dallas Police Department told TIME that law enforcement responded to a report of a shooting at a Dallas apartment complex just after 10:30 p.m. on Friday and found the victim “lying on the ground in the apartment parking lot with multiple gunshot wounds,” but did not identity the victim.
Spokesperson Kimberlee Leach with the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office confirmed to TIME that the victim was Brown.
The victim died from his injuries at Parkland Memorial Hospital, police said in a statement.
Several witnesses had heard gunshots and noticed a silver four-door sedan speeding away from the parking lot, police said.
But authorities did not provide more details about the suspect and noted that no one is currently in custody.
Brown, who was also Jean’s neighbor, testified during Guyger’s trial that he met Jean for the first time the same day that he was shot on Sept. 6, 2018.
After talking in his testimony about how he would hear Jean singing gospel or Drake songs inside his apartment, Brown became emotional and had to take a break from questioning.
Lee Merritt, a civil rights lawyer who represented the Jean family during trial, has spoken extensively on social media about Brown’s death, and said “his murder underscores the reality of the black experience in America.”
“A former athlete turned entrepreneur—Brown lived in constant fear that he could be the next victim of gun violence,” Merritt said, adding that Brown’s mother asked that he “do whatever it takes to get to the bottom of his murder.”
Brown’s death has also elicited concern from politicians. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted on Sunday that “just when when we caught a glimpse of justice for Botham Jean, much of it feels stolen back with the murder of Joshua Brown.”
**** Dallas City Council Member On Officer Shooting Investigation: DA ‘Screwing This Up’ (Circa 2018)
DALLAS (CBSDFW.COM) – A Dallas city councilman is demanding 911 calls and any police videos be released in the case involving former officer Amber Guyger’s deadly shooting of Botham Jean in his apartment last month.
Councilman Philip Kingston said he is unhappy with the way the investigation into the Botham Jean shooting is being handled, going so far as to accuse Dallas County District Attorney Faith Johnson of, “screwing this up.”
Kingston responded to news the DA will not release 911 calls, radio calls or any possible police body cam videos that exist or Amber Guyger’s personnel records during her time as an officer.
The transmissions made by Guyger in the moments after the shooting are key evidence to prove or disprove her story that she mistakenly walked into the wrong apartment directly above hers at the South Side Flats and mistook Botham Jean for a burglar when she shot and killed him.
Kingston told CBS 11 after Wednesday’s city council meeting, it makes the city look bad that nearly a month after the shooting so little information is being released.
He blames Dallas Police Chief Renee Hall and DA Johnson.
“I think the investigation is over and I think we need to start being transparent with the information these decision makers are looking at because they’ve all said we want transparency, we want transparency, we want transparency, but they’re actions are 180 degrees from that,” said Kingston.
CBS11 received a response from the DA’s office which said Kingston’s comments would only fuel the argument for a change of venue in the case if there’s an indictment and trial:
“Case law regarding venue change mandates no pretrial release of evidence that could influence potential jurors and render them unable to return a fair and impartial verdict in any potential criminal trial.
See e.g. Gonzalez v. State, 222 S.W. 3d 446.
This law includes non-disclosure of all of the described.
This potential case should be tried in Dallas County, not some contiguous county where the interests of justice are not as compelling.
The DAs office is following the law in its effort to seek fair and impartial jurors in any potential trial regarding this tragic matter.”
AMBER GUYGER’S TEARS vs BOTHAM JEAN’S FAMILY TEARS:
IF BOTHAM JEAN SHOT AMBER HE WOULD HAVE BEEN SENTENCED TO LIFE.
AMBER’S TEARS WON’T RESURRECT BOTHAM JEAN.
FORGIVENESS DOES NOT ELIMINATE CONSEQUENCES.
Post Sources: ABC News, Inside Edition, Salon.com, Youtube
**** This time white tears didn't work: Why Amber Guyger's guilty verdict surprised me
The former Dallas police officer was found guilty of murdering her neighbor Botham Jean in his own apartment
Finally, a cop's white tears didn't work.
Fired Dallas police officer Amber R. Guyger, a white woman who shot and killed her unarmed black neighbor, Botham Shem Jean, was found guilty of murder on the second day of jury deliberations, an all-too-rare instance of the justice system holding police officers accountable for reckless actions.
The guilty verdict shocked me, and not because I’m used to being let down by the juries, grand juries, prosecutors and judges presiding over cops' cases.
It shocked me because Guyger had a weapon stronger than the law on her side; even more powerful than the gun she carried.
Guyger was armed with white tears. And in America, white tears are a source of ultimate power.
White tears helped kill Emmett Till, the 14-year-old black boy accused of whistling at a white woman in Mississippi back in 1955.
White tears almost allowed Susan Smith to get away with killing her own kids after claiming that an African American man was the culprit.
And white tears could have ruined the life of an innocent black man in Quincy, Mass, when a white woman said she was assaulted by a black male in his early 20s and only after police reviewed surveillance footage admitted she had made it up. Guyger invoked that power of white tears in court: "I was scared he was going to kill me," she said to the jury.
This time the outcome was justice.
Guyger, 31, lived in the same apartment complex as Jean.
On September 6, 2018, she entered Jean's apartment, which is on a different floor from hers. She says she thought she was in her apartment.
There she saw Jean eating ice cream, and she says she thought he was an intruder, so she shot him.
Jean died from his injuries in a nearby hospital.
Three days later, Guyger was arrested by Texas Rangers who took over the investigation.
Guyger was initially charged with manslaughter and terminated from the police force.
After a series of protests, public outrage, and a sorry attempt by the Dallas police department to smear Jean’s reputation as a Christian man, Guyger was charged with murder by a Dallas grand jury.
The disgraced Guyger faced a multiracial and multiethnic jury during her week-long trial that ended Tuesday in that shocking verdict.
Even though it seems like it would have been an open-and-shut case, African Americans know better.
We have seen how often cops continue to enjoy freedom after killing black people, even when the victims posed no threat, had no weapons, and the incidents were even caught on tape.
Freddie Gray, Eric Garner and Michael Brown — just to name a few — had no firearms on them.
They should be alive today and are not. All of their killers walked.
How does this happen? Cops who kill too often earn a get-out-of-jail-free card when they say “I feared for my life and the lives of my fellow officers.”
And Guyger tried it as well, claiming she was afraid Jean was going to kill her — even though by her logic he would have been more justified in shooting, because she had intruded into his apartment.
Guyger got the verdict she deserves, but I'd hold off on celebrating this turn of justice until she's sentenced.
Her conviction carries a sentence from five to 99 years, and she could easily receive a lesser penalty and be home soon.
And even if she is made to serve decades in prison, an innocent man is dead.
What will Dallas do to prevent another Amber Guyger incident?
Police officers have enormous powers — to take someone's freedom, to take their lives even.
Those powers were granted to Guyger, who then made a colossal, life-ending error in judgment while wielding those powers, with no checks in place to prevent those powers from killing a man.
According to Guyger, she was too tired to recognize her own home that night.
And yet she had enough cognitive control to fire deadly shots at a living being.
Jean had no weapon and, once again, was in his own home; and yet Guyger felt shooting him was her only option.
That's a serious issue — of training, of recruitment, of assessment — that goes deeper than one man's killing, and needs to be aggressively handled by the Dallas Police Department.
CHARLIZE THERON (WHITE ACTRESS) TURNS ADOPTED BLACK SON INTO A TRANSGENDER BLACK GIRL & NO EYES BLINK:
IS THIS CHILD AN ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT??......WHERE ARE HIS BIOLOGICAL PARENTS??
IT BEGAN WHEN HE WAS AGE 6 OR 7.....IS THIS CHILD ABUSE??.....HE DIDN’T CHOOSE TO BECOME A GIRL.....HE WAS BORN A NATURAL HUMAN MALE CHILD.
WAS THIS LITTLE BLACK BOY GIVEN EXPERIMENTAL DRUGS TO ALTER HIS BRAIN CHEMISTRY & THINKING?
THIS IS NOT A GAY BASHING POST.....I’M SPEAKING OF DEFENSELESS CHILDREN NOT IN CONTROL OF THEIR OWN LIVES.
WHY DIDN’T CHARLIZE THERON ADOPT A LITTLE WHITE BOY AND TURN HIM INTO A GIRL??
WHY ARE BLACK HUMAN BEINGS ALWAYS SELECTED FOR EXTREME SOCIAL EXPERIMENTS?
DEAR LORD GOD HELP US.
Post Sources: Daily Mail, NBC, ELLEN Show, X17Online, Youtube
****** Beaming Charlize Theron appears fresh-faced as she wraps up in loose-fitting hoodie while taking son Jackson for frozen yogurt in rainy LA
She is renowned for her status as one of Hollywood's most beautiful stars.
And Charlize Theron showed off her natural good looks as she headed for a low-key outing with her six-year-old son Jackson to grab a sweet treat at Menchie's Frozen Yogurt in rainy Sherman Oaks on Tuesday.
The 42-year-old Oscar winner, who adopted Jackson in March 2012, headed out in the rain in black leggings, sliders, and a People Over Power cowl-neck hoodie - the profits of which benefit survivors of sexual exploitation.
Proving she has the off-duty mum look nailed, Charlize was a vision with her glowing fresh-faced appearance, while keeping things low-key in monochrome.
Beaming from ear-to-ear, she scraped her blonde locks into a low chignon at the nape of her neck ahead of the fro-yo date.
Charlize, who also adopted three-year-old daughter August in July 2015, recently discussed how she is grateful her kids are growing up in the age of Black Panther.
She told NBC's Access earlier this month, 'This is an incredible moment. Black Panther should've been here a long time ago. I'm so happy that I am lucky enough to be alive at this moment...
'I love that those barriers and glass ceilings are being broken. My kids are very aware of that every single day...
'And, of course for me as a mother watching that happening, I am so happy that my kids will get to watch all of that work and not have to feel so isolated.'
On Monday, Watch What Happens Live host Andy Cohen revealed he once yawned in the South African stunner's face during a business meeting.
'She pitched me a show and I let out a big yawn in the middle,' the 49-year-old producer said on iHeartRadio's Thrive Global podcast.
'She goes, "You are the first man to yawn in my face, I think, since I was a little girl." I'm like, "I'm sorry — I'm gay. I'm a yawner, and I'm gay."
'Trust me, I will yawn in the middle of a Housewives reunion while someone is having a mental breakdown and they break out of it and they look at me and they’re like, "Am I boring you?"'
The Golden Globe winner next produces and stars as mother-of-three Marlo who's gifted a night nanny in Tully, which hits UK theaters April 20 and US theaters May 4.
REGARDLESS OF WHAT LIES THE RACIST MAINSTREAM MEDIA POSTS, KIM CAN NEVER BE REPLACED IN DIDDY’S LIFE NOR THE LIVES OF HIS CHILDREN.
KIM PORTER WAS NOT A “BABY MAMA”, SHE WAS A BEAUTIFUL, INTELLIGENT, LOVING MOTHER WHO DIED MUCH TOO SOON.
I’M NOT JUDGING BUT I KNOW DIDDY TRULY LOVED KIM AND HE SHOULD HAVE MARRIED HER.
I’M JUST SAYING.
PLEASE EVERYONE PRAY FOR ALL OF DIDDY’S CHILDREN.
Post Sources: Instagram, People, Youtube
”For the last three days I’ve been trying to wake up out of this nightmare. But I haven’t. I don’t know what I’m going to do without you baby. I miss you so much. Today I’m going to pay tribute to you, I’m going to try and find the words to explain our unexplainable relationship. We were more than best friends, we were more than soulmates. WE WERE SOME OTHER SHIT!! And I miss you so much. Super Black Love 🖤”
GEORGIA GOV RACE UPDATE - FED JUDGE ORDERS STATE TO PROTECT PROVISIONAL BALLOTS:
EVERY VOTE SHOULD COUNT (VOTING RIGHTS).
MOST STATES (MARYLAND -PG COUNTY) HOLD PROVISIONAL BALLOTS UNTIL 13 DAYS AFTER ELECTION SO THEY CAN THROW AWAY CERTAIN BALLOTS.
STACEY ABRAMS IS A 21st CENTURY CHANGE AGENT.
I’M PROUD OF HER.
Post Sources AP, NBC News, Youtube
***** Judge orders Georgia to protect provisional ballots in Abrams-Kemp race
A federal judge has ordered Georgia take steps to ensure provisional ballots aren't improperly rejected and to wait until Friday to certify the results of the midterm elections that include an unsettled race for governor.
In a ruling late Monday, U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg ordered the secretary of state's office to establish and publicize a hotline or website where voters can check whether their provisional ballots were counted and, if not, the reason why.
And, for counties with 100 or more provisional ballots, she ordered the secretary of state's office to review, or have county election officials review, the eligibility of voters who had to cast a provisional ballot because of registration issues.
Totenberg also ruled that Georgia must not certify the election results before Friday at 5 p.m., which falls before the Nov. 20 deadline set by state law.
State elections director Chris Harvey testified at a hearing last week that the state had planned to certify the election results on Wednesday, a day after the deadline for counties to certify their results. He said that would allow preparations to begin for any necessary runoff contests, including one already projected in the race for the next secretary of state.
Current unofficial returns show Republican Brian Kemp leading by a margin that would make him the governor-elect. But Democrat Stacey Abrams insists that enough outstanding votes remain to be counted that could pull Kemp below the majority threshold and force a Dec. 4 runoff.
Totenberg acted in response to a lawsuit filed Nov. 5 by Common Cause Georgia. The suit accuses Kemp, the state's top elections official until he resigned as secretary of state last week, of acting recklessly after a vulnerability in Georgia's voter registration database was exposed shortly before the election.
Kemp's actions increased the risk that eligible voters could be illegally removed from the voter registration database or have registration information illegally altered, the lawsuit says.
Sara Henderson, executive director of Common Cause Georgia, said in an emailed statement that the ruling helps increase voter confidence in elections.
The secretary of state's office was reviewing the order and considering its options, spokeswoman Candice Broce said in an email.
Totenberg's order doesn't change the Tuesday deadline for counties to certify their results. But Abrams' campaign filed a lawsuit Sunday asking a federal court to push that deadline to Wednesday, while also requiring that elections authorities count certain provisional and absentee ballots that have been or would be rejected for "arbitrary reasons."
"I am fighting to make sure our democracy works for and represents everyone who has ever put their faith in it. I am fighting for every Georgian who cast a ballot with the promise that their vote would count," Abrams said in a statement explaining her refusal to end her bid to become the first black woman elected governor in American history.
Kemp's campaign retorted that Abrams' latest effort is "a disgrace to democracy" and ignores mathematical realities.
"Clearly, Stacey Abrams isn't ready for her 15 minutes of fame to end," said Kemp spokesman Ryan Mahoney.
As of Monday evening, a hearing had not been scheduled for arguments in the case, but Abrams' campaign was expecting a federal court in Atlanta to set a Tuesday hearing, given the time sensitivity.
Unofficial returns show Kemp with a lead of about 60,000 votes out of more than 3.9 million cast; Abrams would need a net gain of about 21,000 votes to force a Dec. 4 runoff. NBC has rated the race too close to call at this time.
The Georgia race, along with Florida's gubernatorial and Senate matchups that are requiring recounts, are among the final measures of a midterm election cycle that already has allowed Democrats to deal serious blows to President Donald Trump.
Democrats already have won the House, flipped seven governor's seats and reclaimed more than 300 state legislative seats in statehouses around the country. The GOP maintained its Senate majority, and could still expand it. But it's looking to hold the governor's mansions in Florida and Georgia to deny Democrats important gains in presidential battlegrounds ahead of the 2020 election.
Republicans have been governor in Georgia since 2003 and in Florida since 1999, and Trump has put a premium on the two states, endorsing both Kemp and Florida's GOP nominee Ron DeSantis when they were in competitive GOP primaries and then campaigning in person for them ahead of the Nov. 6 election.
Georgia's interim Secretary of State Robyn Crittenden on Monday directed county officials to count some provisional ballots that had been rejected because of voters' failure to provide their year of birth, provided the voter's identity and eligibility was still established.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that the State Election Board asked Crittenden to send a letter instructing county election officials how to handle absentee ballots.
Republican Gov. Nathan Deal appointed Crittenden to replace Kemp, who resigned last week after declaring victory in the governor's race. He called his margin — 50.3 percent of the vote — "clear and convincing," but said he wanted Georgians to have confidence in the certification process.
Crittenden's directive was in line with one form of relief sought by the Abrams campaign lawsuit but rejected another.
When casting absentee ballots, voters have to sign an oath and have to write their address and year of birth. The lawsuit asked the judge to order that county election officials accept any absentee ballots on which there was missing or insufficient oath information as long as that doesn't "substantially obstruct" officials from verifying the absentee voter's identity.
The lawsuit says that at least 1,095 qualified voters who cast absentee ballots in Gwinnett County had them "arbitrarily and unlawfully rejected" because of missing or insufficient information.
Under Georgia law, any issues causing a voter to cast a provisional ballot must be remedied within three days of the election — Nov. 9 for this election. The lawsuit asks that county election officials be required to consider evidence proving eligibility through Wednesday at 5 p.m.
Crittenden's guidance to the counties noted that the Nov. 9 deadline for verifying the eligibility of provisional ballots was set by state law.
The lawsuit also asked that provisional ballots cast by a voter registered in another county be counted as if the voter had shown up at the wrong precinct. The lawsuit says that of the 1,556 provisional ballots Fulton County reported having rejected by Nov. 9, nearly 1,000 were disqualified because they were cast by voters whose registration records showed them registered in another county.
Further, the Abrams' campaign is asking that any of the court's orders in the case be applied retroactively to counties that already have certified their returns, meaning those counties would have to reopen their counting process using any new standards and then submit updated returns to the state.
SERENA WILLIAMS’ U.S. OPEN “ANGRY BLACK WOMAN” CARTOON IS RACISM AT IT’S FINEST:
UNFORTUNATELY 20th CENTURY RACISM IS STILL ALIVE EVEN FOR SUPER ATHLETES.
Post Sources: ESPN, Herald Sun, Washington Post, Yahoo Sports, Youtube
**** Australian newspaper prints racist cartoon about Serena Williams and Naomi Osaka
Serena Williams made headlines (and was fined $17,000) for her outburst over the officiating nightmare at the U.S. Open women’s final on Saturday. It was a polarizing moment, with Williams calling out the double standard for the conduct women’s tennis players and the inconsistent application of the rules. Now, days after the incident, a newspaper cartoonist from Australia has put his spin on it. And his spin is really, really racist.
Editorial cartoonist Mark Knight of the Australian newspaper the Herald Sun was so proud of his Serena Williams-U.S. Open cartoon, which was published in the newspaper, that he posted it on his Twitter account early Monday morning.
If you’re wondering why he was proud, you’re not alone. He depicts Serena Williams, one of the greatest athletes of all time, as a racist stereotype, with a huge nose and big lips. She’s drawn like a Hulk baby, her strength and power twisted into infantile ugliness as she stomps on her racquet with a pacifier on the ground.
As if the racist depiction of Williams wasn’t enough, there’s more. Naomi Osaka, who beat Williams on Saturday, is Japanese-Haitian. But in the cartoon, she’s drawn as a busty, blonde white woman. And the only words in the cartoon are uttered by the umpire, who says “Can’t you just let her win?” That makes it seem like he played zero part in Saturday’s controversy, but it also implies that Williams needs to be “allowed” to win because she’s not talented enough or because she’s too “angry.”
Twitter’s response was swift and angry
Considering that the racism in Knight’s cartoon was so immense that it could have been spotted from space, Twitter jumped on it immediately and called it out for what it was: racist, hurtful, and 100% unnecessary.
In this one, Williams is drawn like a racist stereotype again, with the big lips and nose, and very defined cheeks. Additionally, she barely looks like a woman, which is obviously intentional. She’s holding up a sign and being approached by a Nike executive, in an effort to tie in the brand’s recent Colin Kaepernick commercial and make it look like Williams fighting for herself on the court was just a PR move.
Williams’ race isn’t brought up in the text of the cartoon itself, but she’s still drawn like a racist stereotype. Zanetti made the choice to draw her that way, when drawing Williams like a person wouldn’t have changed the overall meaning of the cartoon at all. But he did draw her that way, because the point of the cartoon is to make Williams look bad, not just for challenging the double standard of women’s conduct in tennis and being emotional on the court, but apparently just for being African-American.
JEMELE RUINED A GREAT JOB WITH ESPN TO HELP DEMOCRATS IN 2020.
SHE WAS HIRED AS A SPORTS COMMENTATOR NOT A POLITICAL ACTIVIST.
WILL DEMOCRAT LEADERS WHO HATE TRUMP NOW OFFER JEMELE A $10 MILLION CONTRACT??
IT’S NOT ABOUT VIOLATING FREEDOM OF SPEECH.
EVEN IF YOU DON’T LIKE TRUMP, HE IS STILL THE ELECTED U.S. PRESIDENT JUST AS OBAMA WAS.
THINK SMARTER BLACK YOUNG PEOPLE.
IF YOU WANT TO BE AN ACTIVIST, SAVE MONEY AND THEN LEAVE YOUR JOB AMICABLY FIRST.
YOU CAN NOT BE AN POLITICAL ACTIVIST AT WORK IN CORPORATE AMERICA UNLESS YOU WERE HIRED UPFRONT TO BE A PAID POLITICAL COMMENTATOR.
PERIOD.
Post Sources: NY Daily Post, Bleacher Report, ESPN, Fox News, Sports Illustrated, Your Black World, Youtube
***** Jemele Hill is out at ESPN
Jemele Hill needed to be out at ESPN. Hill knew it. ESPN president Jimmy Pitaro knew it. And, now, Jemele Hill is out at ESPN.
The marriage between ESPN and Hill — the controversial sports commentator who waded into politics and sparred with President Donald Trump — has long been stuck in irreconcilable differences. Since leaving “SportsCenter” earlier this year, she has barely worked, making a divorce the obvious conclusion.
A buyout of her reported $2.5 million per year contract has been completed and her last day will be Friday, according to sources.
On Saturday night, the author James Miller, who wrote a book about ESPN, first tweeted the newsof the breakup, calling it “amicable.” The timing, on a Saturday evening, was fortunate for Hill and ESPN in an attempt to lessen the news coverage of what had been a huge national story, both in politics and in sports. There had been rumblings last week of buyout talks between the two sides.
It is quite simple as to why the buyout happened: Hill wants to continue her involvement in politics, and ESPN wants out of politics.
Pitaro has made it clear ESPN is a sports network and does not want to be associated with politics, so he agreed to a buyout with Hill, according to sources. ESPN had no use for Hill on any of its programs after her ill-fated 6 p.m. “SportsCenter”with her former partner, Michael Smith, failed to deliver ratings. She first left Smith behind by quitting the show before the executive in charge of the program, Norby Williamson, had a chance to replace her. She would have been removed.
Nearly one year ago, on Sept. 11, 2017, Hill called Trump “a white supremacist who has largely surrounded himself [with] other white supremacists.” Though it broke ESPN’s social media rules about commenting on politics unrelated to sports, then-network president John Skipper failed to suspend Hill. The White House called for Hill to be fired.
A little more than a month later, Skipper decided to suspend Hill after she criticized Cowboys owner Jerry Jones’ anthem stance by tweeting, “Change happens when advertisers are impacted. If you feel strongly about JJ’s statement, boycott his advertisers.” She was off television for two weeks. ESPN called it a second offense. Hill said she regretted that she had “painted ESPN in an unfair light.”
Pitaro recently said he thinks the biggest misperception of ESPN is that it is political, and now he is putting action behind his words. Though the network’s on-air programming is mostly apolitical, it is hard to ask viewers to disassociate stances they read on social media when ESPN personalities are on TV, radio or writing for its website.
Nearly one year ago, on Sept. 11, 2017, Hill called Trump “a white supremacist who has largely surrounded himself [with] other white supremacists.” Though it broke ESPN’s social media rules about commenting on politics unrelated to sports, then-network president John Skipper failed to suspend Hill. The White House called for Hill to be fired.
A little more than a month later, Skipper decided to suspend Hill after she criticized Cowboys owner Jerry Jones’ anthem stance by tweeting, “Change happens when advertisers are impacted. If you feel strongly about JJ’s statement, boycott his advertisers.” She was off television for two weeks. ESPN called it a second offense. Hill said she regretted that she had “painted ESPN in an unfair light.”
Pitaro recently said he thinks the biggest misperception of ESPN is that it is political, and now he is putting action behind his words. Though the network’s on-air programming is mostly apolitical, it is hard to ask viewers to disassociate stances they read on social media when ESPN personalities are on TV, radio or writing for its website.
Donald Trump’s election victory over Hillary Clinton seemed to herald a new era for border security and immigration enforcement. But his polarizing and occasionally ignorant comments about immigrants have handed his adversaries a convenient pretext for stymying compromise on immigration reform: racism.
Left-leaning advocacy groups and a host of Democrats all too often shy away from the specifics of the debate and instead lean on cries of bigotry, resorting to claims like that of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who has described Trump’s approach to immigration reform as an effort to “make America white again.”
Claims that immigration enforcement equals racism ignore the reality that the group most likely to benefit from a tougher approach to immigration enforcement is young black men, who often compete with recent immigrants for low-skill jobs.
This dynamic played out recently at a large bakery in Chicago that supplies buns to McDonald’s. Some 800 immigrant laborers, most of them from Mexico, lost their jobs last year after an audit by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The Cloverhill Bakery, owned by Aryzta, a big Swiss food conglomerate, had to hire new workers, 80 percent to 90 percent of whom are African-American. According to the Chicago Sun Times, the new workers are paid $14 per hour, or $4 per hour more than the (illegal) immigrant workers.
In this case, and in many others, the beneficiaries of immigration enforcement were working-class blacks, who are often passed over for jobs by unscrupulous employers.
The labor force participation rate for adult black men has declined steadily since the passage of the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, which ushered in a new era of mass immigration. In 1973, the rate was 79 percent. It is now at 68 percent, and the Bureau of Labor projects that it will decline to 61 percent by 2026.
The Obama White House in 2016 produced a 48-page report acknowledging that immigration does not help the labor force participation rate of the native-born. It concluded, however, that “immigration reform would raise the overall participation rate by bringing in new workers of prime working age.”
Although the report used the term “new workers,” Democrats may also be tempted by the prospect of new voters. But they should be aware that in courting one group, they risk losing others.
African-Americans tend to be a reliable voting bloc for the Democratic Party, but they have repeatedly indicated in public opinion surveys that they want significantly less immigration.
A recent Harvard-Harris poll found that African-Americans favor reducing legal immigration more than any other demographic group: 85 percent want less than the million-plus we allow annually, and 54 percent opted for the most stringent choices offered – 250,000 immigrants per year or less, or none at all.
These attitudes are rational.
In a 2010 study on the social effects of immigration, the Cornell University professor Vernon Briggs concluded: “No racial or ethnic group has benefited less or been harmed more than the nation’s African-American community.”
The Harvard economist George Borjas has found that between 1980 and 2000, one-third of the decline in the employment among black male high school dropouts was attributable to immigration. He also reported “a strong correlation between immigration, black wages, black employment rates, and black incarceration rates.”
University of Notre Dame professor Stephen Steinberg argued in a 2014 paper on neoliberal immigration policies and their effects on African-Americans that thanks to the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, “African-Americans found themselves in the proverbial position of being ‘last hired.’” Steinberg also noted that “immigrants have been cited as proof that African-Americans lack the pluck and determination that have allowed millions of immigrants from Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean to pursue the American dream.”
The struggles of black men obviously cannot all be linked to immigration, but it’s clear that the status quo does not benefit them.
As elected leaders consider changing our immigration laws, the interests of America’s most vulnerable citizens shouldn’t be overlooked. The first step toward honest reform is for the Democratic Party to admit that while liberal immigration enforcement might help them win new voters, it also harms and disenfranchises their most loyal constituency.
The highest African American unemployment rate is in the District of Columbia at 12.9 percent, while the highest white unemployment rate is in West Virginia at 5.2 percent.
In the first quarter of 2018, African American workers had the highest unemployment rate nationally, at 7.2 percent, followed by Hispanic (5.1 percent), white (3.3 percent), and Asian workers (3.0 percent).1
This report provides a state-by-state breakdown of unemployment rates by race and ethnicity and racial/ethnic unemployment rate gaps for the first quarter of 2018. It shows that while there have been state-by-state improvements in prospects for black and Hispanic workers, their unemployment rates remain high relative to those of white workers. Following are some key highlights of the report:
While the African American unemployment rate is at or below its pre-recession level in 17 states (of the 22 states and the District of Columbia for which these data are available), in 14 states and the District of Columbia, African American unemployment rates exceed white unemployment rates by a ratio of 2-to-1 or higher.
The District of Columbia has the highest black–white unemployment rate ratio overall, at 8.5-to-1, while South Carolina and Maryland have the highest ratios among states (3.2-to-1 and 2.8-to-1, respectively).
The highest African American unemployment rate is in the District of Columbia (12.9 percent), followed by Illinois (9.1 percent) and New Jersey (9.0 percent). The highest Hispanic state unemployment rate is in Connecticut (10.0 percent). In contrast, the highest white state unemployment rate is 5.2 percent, in West Virginia.
While the Hispanic unemployment rate is at or below its pre-recession level in 13 states (of the 16 states for which these data are available), there is no state where the Hispanic unemployment rate is lower than the white rate.
In five states and the District of Columbia, Hispanic unemployment rates exceed white unemployment rates by a ratio of 2-to-1 or higher (Connecticut, 3.4-to-1; Massachusetts, 2.1-to-1; Washington, 2.1-to-1; Colorado, 2.0-to-1; District of Columbia, 2.0-to-1, and Idaho, 2.0-to-1).
Background
In March 2018, the national unemployment rate was 4.1 percent, unchanged from at the end of the fourth quarter of 2017.2 State unemployment rates in March ranged from a low of 2.1 percent in Hawaii to 7.3 percent in Alaska.3 According to a previous EPI analysis of unemployment by state, from December to March 2018, 25 states and the District of Columbia saw their unemployment rates decline, 7 states saw unemployment rates rise, and 18 states saw no change.
State unemployment rates, by race and ethnicity
EPI analyzes state unemployment rates by race and ethnicity, and by racial/ethnic unemployment rate gaps, on a quarterly basis to generate a sample size large enough to create reliable estimates of unemployment rates by race and ethnicity at the state level. We only report estimates for states for which the sample size of these subgroups is large enough to create an accurate estimate. For this reason, the number of states included in our map and data tables varies based on the analysis performed (unemployment rate, change in unemployment rate since the fourth quarter of 2007, and ratio of African American or Hispanic unemployment rate to white unemployment rate).
Trends among white workers
In the first quarter of 2018, the white unemployment rate was lowest in the District of Columbia (1.5 percent) and highest in West Virginia (5.2 percent), as shown in the interactive map and underlying data, which present state unemployment rates by race and ethnicity. Among states, North Dakota had the lowest unemployment rate for white workers (1.9 percent).
Trends among African American workers
African American unemployment rate estimates are available for 23 states and the District of Columbia.
During the first quarter of 2018, among states, the African American unemployment rate was lowest in Indiana (4.8 percent) and highest in Illinois (9.1 percent); in the District of Columbia, it was 12.9 percent. The District of Columbia also had the highest black unemployment rate during the previous six quarters.
In the first quarter of 2018, of the 23 states with African American unemployment rate estimates, all had black unemployment rates below 10 percent; in 14 of these states, the rate was at or below the first quarter national average for African American workers (7.2 percent).
The black unemployment rate in the first quarter of 2018 was at or below its pre-recession level in 17 states: Alabama, Arkansas, California, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas.
(Data on the change in black unemployment over this period are available for 22 states and the District of Columbia).
However, all states except for Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas have black labor force participation rates that were lower in the first quarter of 2018 than at the end of 2007, indicating that the return to pre-recession levels of unemployment in these states was not a full recovery for African American workers because not all discouraged job seekers have returned to the market.5
Trends among Hispanic workers
Hispanic unemployment rate estimates are available for 23 states and the District of Columbia, and data on changes in Hispanic unemployment rates since the fourth quarter of 2007 are available for 16 states. In the first quarter of 2018, among states, the Hispanic unemployment rate was highest in Connecticut (10.0 percent) and lowest in Arkansas and Virginia (both at 3.3 percent).
The Hispanic unemployment rate was 3.1 percent in the District of Columbia. Connecticut and Washington were the only states with Hispanic unemployment rates above 8.0 percent in the first quarter.
The Hispanic unemployment rate is at or below its pre-recession level in 13 states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Texas, Utah, and Virginia. The Hispanic unemployment rate was most elevated above its pre-recession level in Washington (by 2.3 percentage points).
In no state was the Hispanic unemployment rate lower than the white unemployment rate. In Arkansas, the Hispanic unemployment rate and white unemployment rate were exactly the same (3.3 percent). The ratio of Hispanic unemployment to white unemployment was highest in Connecticut (3.4-to-1), Massachusetts (2.1-to-1), and Washington (2.1-to-1).
Trends among Asian workers
Asian unemployment rate estimates are available for 10 states, and data on the change in Asian unemployment rates since the fourth quarter of 2007 are available for seven states. For the third consecutive quarter, the Asian unemployment rate was lowest in Hawaii (1.6 percent). The highest Asian unemployment rate was in Massachusetts (6.2 percent).
The Asian unemployment rate was at or below its pre-recession level in California, Hawaii, Illinois, New York, Texas, and Washington. In only one state—New Jersey—was the Asian unemployment rate was more than 2 percentage points above its pre-recession level (at 2.6 percentage points higher).
Methodology
The unemployment rate estimates in this report are based on the Local Area Unemployment Statistics (LAUS) and the Current Population Survey (CPS) from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The overall state unemployment rate is taken directly from the LAUS. CPS six-month ratios are applied to LAUS data to calculate the rates by race and ethnicity.
For each state subgroup, we calculate the unemployment rate using the past six months of CPS data. We then find the ratio of this subgroup rate to the state unemployment rate using the same period of CPS data. This gives us an estimate of how the subgroup compares with the state overall.
While this methodology allows us to calculate unemployment-rate estimates at the state level by race and ethnicity by quarter, it is less precise at the national level than simply using the CPS. Thus, the national-level estimates may differ from direct CPS estimates.
In many states, the sample sizes of particular subgroups are not large enough to create accurate estimates of their unemployment rates. We report data only for groups that had, on average, a sample size of at least 700 in the labor force for each six-month period.
There is, it turns out, a line. Early Tuesday morning, Roseanne Barr crossed it. And within half a day, ABC, though Ms. Barr had given the network its biggest hit of the past season, enforced it.
First, the comedian and star of the revived “Roseanne” leveled a dehumanizing insult at Valerie Jarrett, calling the African-American former adviser to Barack Obama the offspring of “muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes.” Then she tried to pass off the slur, by way of halfhearted apology, as a “joke” — as if, somehow, a racist joke were any better than a racist statement.
Here’s the sad thing. Ms. Barr’s tweet, while shocking, was not unbelievable. What was truly surprising was that a commercial TV network took action against a valuable star, quickly and definitively, and in plain words.
“Roseanne’s Twitter statement is abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values, and we have decided to cancel her show,” the ABC entertainment president, Channing Dungey, said in a statement.
You could criticize ABC for working with Ms. Barr, who has a long history of offenses, especially since she joined Twitter. You could argue that the network was just trying to stave off bad publicity or boycotts. You could wonder if behind-the-scenes troubles or declining ratings (common to many TV revivals) played a role.
But credit where due: ABC canceled its highest-rated show, a linchpin of its fall schedule, as a stand against its star’s racism. That decision will probably cut into the network’s advertising profits. There may be no perfect moral actors in this world, but that’s still a moral action.
As we’ve seen with #MeToo, which has taken figures like Louis C. K. and Matt Lauer off TV, this is the sort of decision that corporations in our society often make more quickly and punitively than voters. But it is not a step you can take for granted.
Take Donald Trump. Forget his statements as president or on the “Access Hollywood” bus. He began peddling the birther slur — that Mr. Obama, the first black president, was not born in the United States — while the fourth “Celebrity Apprentice” was on NBC. The network kept him as host for three more seasons, and aired one more on which he was executive producer.
In 2013, the “Duck Dynasty” star Phil Robertson gave an interview likening “homosexual behavior” to bestiality and suggesting that black people in the South were more content before the civil rights movement. The A&E network suspended him for nine days before reversing its decision, less a slap than a tap on the wrist.
The “Roseanne” decision, on the other hand, will come at a price for ABC — and like any such step, will have collateral costs. In a Twitter post, Sara Gilbert, Ms. Barr’s co-star and an executive producer of the revival, deplored Ms. Barr’s comments as “abhorrent.” She added that the series was “separate and apart from the opinions of one cast member.”
There’s some truth to that last comment. “Roseanne,” the revival, was imperfect but complicated, trying to engage with important if volatile issues. At times, it had ugly racial overtones, including a snide swipe at ABC’s sitcoms about “black and Asian families” and references to “illegals.” At other times the show pushed back against her character, or even ridiculed her.
But finally, none of that matters. “Roseanne” is a story. The issue here was the real act of a real person, saying the sort of thing that leads to real corrosion in the real world when it becomes normalized.
Make no mistake: The “Roseanne” decision would also have been expensive if ABC hadn’t canceled the show. It’s just that the costs would have been borne, as they generally are, by vulnerable people whose tormentors would be emboldened by seeing someone famous and powerful get away with it.
For that matter, it would insult people in small towns like the Lanford, Ill., of “Roseanne” — towns like the one I grew up in — for a TV network to imply that the only way to represent them is by indulging racism.
The character Roseanne said something like that a quarter-century ago, when her son was reluctant to kiss a black girl in a school play. “I didn’t raise you to be some little bigot!” she told him. “Black people are just like us. They’re every bit as good as us, and any people who don’t think so is just a bunch of banjo-pickin’, cousin-datin’, barefoot embarrassments to respectable white trash like us!”
Corporations involved in controversies like this usually simply want them to disappear. This one, because “Roseanne” has long since been drafted into the culture war, probably won’t.
Even if the president, who praised “Roseanne” to his supporters as being “about us,” doesn’t weigh in, even if Ms. Barr herself stays off Twitter, recent history tells us people will seize on the opportunity to say that the p.c. thought police are repressing us, because a rich woman lost her job for calling a black woman an ape. ABC will have picked a side regardless.
At least it picked the right one here. The battle against bigotry is not just about bigots. It’s about those who reap the benefits of ignoring bigots, and still think they should be able to call themselves good people. When an institution like ABC takes a stand — in prime time, where people notice it — that matters.
I’ll be cynical again tomorrow. For now I’m glad that a corporation had an opportunity to think only of its bottom line, and chose to draw a line instead.
Starbucks shut 8,000 US stores on Tuesday for a racial bias training day with its employees.
The coffee chain has published a booklet staff were given, asking questions about their hair and how often friends of different races come to their home.
It also asked staff to say whether they find it easy or hard to talk about race.
Take a look at the full list questions below.
Starbucks shut 8,000 stores in the US for four hours on Tuesday afternoon to give its employees a racial bias training day.
It came after a scandal which saw two black men arrested at a Philadelphia Starbucks after they asked to use to the bathroom without having purchased drinks.
The training, which was provided to some 175,000 employees, included a "personal notebook" for employees to fill out. It encouraged them to become "color brave."
After the training day, Starbucks published the notebook in full. It included questions for employees about their "natural hair" and how often friends of a different race had been in their home.
There were two rounds of questions.
The first asked employees to recall the first time something happened to them. The booklet said that a possible answer was that these things had never happened:
1.The first time you noticed your racial identity.
2.The first time you noticed how your race affected your beauty standards.
3.The first time you felt your accent impacted people's perception of your intelligence or competence.
4.The first time you altered your communication style (dialed it up or down) to avoid playing into stereotypes.
5.The first time you had a friend of a different race who regularly visited your home.
6.The first time you felt distracted at work because of external events related to race.
7.The first time you had a senior role model in your organization with a similar racial identity as your own.
8.The first time you went to work with your natural hair without comments or questions from others.
9.The first time you felt your race affected your ability to build a rapport with your manager.
The second set of questions asked people to rank whether they would find various racially-charged situations easy or hard to deal with.
They were asked to put their answer on a five-point scale, once for dealing with someone of their own race, and once for somebody of their own race.
1. I can talk about race and not make the other person feel threatened.
2. I can comfortably maintain eye contact throughout the conversation and not fear I'm being aggressive.
3. I can talk about race and not make the other person feel threatened.
4. I can use my normal gestures and body language without feeling uncomfortable.
5. I can expect to be respect without having to prove my worth.
6. I can speak with my natural cadence without feeling judged about my intelligence.
7. I can respond to a difficult request directly and not fear my answer wll be questioned.
8. I can share my accomplishments without someone assuming that I did not earn them myself.
9. I can talk about my childhood and not expect others to assume I grew up in poverty.
10. I can voice my dissatisfaction with a situation and not be told I'm "too angry."
~ For Starbucks, the scope of companywide anti-bias training on Tuesday was easy to measure.
Roughly 175,000 employees at 8,000 locations pored over nearly 23,000 iPads, learning about the processing power of unconscious brains and the roots of unconscious bias.
The training — part social justice crash course and part self-reflection exercise — is at the core of a well-choreographed effort by Starbucks to improve its corporate image after a backlash over the arrests of two African-American men in a Starbucks in Philadelphia last month.
Since then, the company has apologized, most recently in full-page newspaper ads. It has changed its guest policy, allowing people to sit without buying anything. And it enlisted a full complement of social justice activists and policy advocates for guidance.
Starbucks is trying to send a statement with the training. It closed most company-owned stores in the United States, leaving caffeine addicts without Frappuccinos and freelancers without office space.
But the company acknowledges that it is trying to tackle systemic racism going back centuries. And there is only so much that can be crammed into a four-hour session.
Pomp and Circumstance
Starbucks infused its training with some star power.
In one video shown to workers via iPad, the artist Common explains that it is sometimes better to embrace differences than to look for only similarities in one another. In another, the documentary filmmaker Stanley Nelson Jr. provides an overview of the civil rights era and viral videos of racial incidents in the past. Former Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. reviewed the materials, and Sherrilyn Ifill of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc. gave advice.
The training “is a transformational moment in the history of Starbucks,” said Howard Schultz, the company’s executive chairman.
The company, which spent tens of millions of dollars to bring it all together, needs to put on a show. It is trying to convince customers that it is committed to social justice issues and that it wants to create a sense of community at its stores.
Its image was tarnished after the incident at the Starbucks in Philadelphia, where an employee called the police after two African-American men asked to use the restroom. The men, Rashon Nelson and Donte Robinson, who hadn’t made a purchase and were waiting for a business meeting, were arrested on suspicion of trespassing — a charge that prosecutors declined to pursue. Mr. Nelson and Mr. Robinson, both 23, reached a settlement this month with the city and Starbucks.
To design the training program, Starbucks teamed up with Perception Institute, an anti-bias research and advisory group, and solicited input from several social scientists. The questions were based on years of research and on past workshops, the group said, adding that the four-hour time frame was more generous than the one hour typically allotted.
As they developed the materials, Starbucks tested them in select stores in Texas, New York, Indiana and elsewhere, and incorporated feedback from employees. Some said that earlier drafts of the materials were confusing, and that directions needed to be clearer, according to a consultant from SYPartners, a consultancy that also helped come up with Tuesday’s program
A Lesson in Sociology and Science
At the training sessions, employees broke into small groups to guide themselves through 68 pages of materials printed on newspaper print, sure to create ink-stained hands. They watched videos on iPads, some with stands made from a cut-up Starbucks cup.
Many of the exercises had the sort of open-ended approaches that have long been the province of sociology classes and business retreats. In personal notebooks, employees were asked to jot down private responses to vague questions like “What makes me, me? And you, you?” After one of the Common videos, they were asked to pair with a co-worker and list all the ways they were different from each other.
After a brief lesson on brain science, they took the Stroop effect test, quickly reciting the colors that words were written in to show how they form implicit associations. The notebook then took them through what it means to be “color brave” — rather than “colorblind.”
One of the more powerful exercises came toward the end of the training, when the employees listened to recorded audio clips of other colleagues discussing biased decisions they had made. In one instance, an employee said he had hid the tip jar when he saw a group of black men walk in. He became embarrassed, he said, after he gave them their change and they asked if there was a tip jar for them to leave it in.
“The big question was we need to make it much more personal,” said Zarina Masih, a Starbucks employee in Evanston, Ill., alluding to advice she received about how to treat people in the store. “To make sure we’re not making assumptions, that we get to know them.”
Talking About Race
The documentary in the training includes an interview with a bald white man who reflects on how easy he has it when he leaves his house.
“I walk out a free man,” he said. “I just do my thing.”
Going out is much more complicated for a black man with braids, who is also interviewed. He has to be careful of how close he stands to fellow train commuters and how he talks to people in public.
Leaving the house can be so exhausting, the man said, that it sometimes “just keeps you at home.”
The training bluntly shows how white and black people experience the world differently.
To that end, Starbucks is toeing a difficult line. How do you convince white people that they are beneficiaries of the country’s racist history without calling them racists? And if you can convince them, how, then, do you turn that into a more welcoming in-store environment?
This can, expectedly, be a tall task for a company whose work force transcends geographic, socioeconomic, racial and educational lines. Some undoubtedly were familiar with, and had experienced, the concepts in the training. Others found them foreign.
“You’re always talking about a particular percentage that is willing to move off of their narrative,” Ms. Ifill said. “You’re appealing to people who are willing to listen and willing to learn.”
In the training, an exercise of “firsts” could serve to highlight the Rorschach that is race in America.
When was the first time you “altered your communication style (dialed it up or down) to avoid playing into stereotypes?” For African-Americans, that is likely so common that it would be difficult to remember a first.
When was the first time you “went to work with your natural hair without comments or questions from others?” For white people, that’s likely always.
One question in the notebook highlights the efforts of its creators to emphasize that this wasn’t about proving someone to be a racist.
“Upon reflection, do you notice ways in which you treat people differently?” the booklet asked. “The point here is not to judge whether that is a good or bad thing, but merely to notice.”
The booklet also offered definitions of what it called “key terms,” such as bias, confirmation bias, inclusion and stereotype.
The definition given for institutional racism could prove upsetting without further context. “The ways in which institutional policies and practices create different outcomes for different racial groups, creating unbalanced advantages for whites along with oppression and disadvantages for people from groups classified as nonwhite,” it read.
Starbucks and the creators of the training say it is not meant to end bias. Rather, it is about getting employees to start grappling with issues of race. In other contexts, like policing, this might mean thinking twice before pulling a weapon on someone. For Starbucks, it might mean a barista’s thinking twice before accusing someone in the store of nefarious behavior.
If nothing else, Starbucks employees may have to think twice because all the publicity surrounding the training could send a message that messing up on race could cost them their job.
Challenge in History and Logistics
“It always seems to me that they’re doing it to save face. It is, to me, too little too late,” said Doug Brandt, who was sitting at a Starbucks cafe in New York with two other men on Tuesday afternoon, several minutes before the store would close. “But it can’t hurt.”
One of the men, De’Monie Jackson, joined in. “It’s not Starbucks that needs the training,” he said. “It’s the police.”
Not even Starbucks pretends that the training will solve systemic racism and abuse. But the company is trying to start a dialogue.
“We also have to recognize that there will be some customers for some reason or another who are having a bad day, and that’s the moment of truth where we have to perform,” Mr. Schultz said.
“We as a company are systemically dealing with things that are far, far out of the control of Starbucks as a company or the four walls of our stores,” he said.
Putting aside whether a corporation is well equipped to address hundreds of years of racism, Starbucks is also up against a “customer is always right” ethos. And it is putting the burden on employees to rethink their own prejudices to offer better customer service, while doing little to help Starbucks’s nearly half-minority work force address the bias it may face from customers.
Then there are the more logistical concerns. Brian Nosek, a psychology professor at the University of Virginia who was consulted on the training, worried that Starbucks was moving ahead too quickly. Productive sessions, he said, require concrete goals, specific behavioral standards and a clear metric for evaluating performance.
“Training to make a caramel macchiato can be quite effective,” he said. “Training to be unbiased toward your fellow human doesn’t achieve any of those criteria.”
Stacey Abrams will win the Democratic primary in Georgia's gubernatorial race Tuesday, CNN projects, becoming the first black woman in the nation to hold a major party's nomination for governor.
If she wins in November, she will become the country's first Black female governor.
The former state House minority leader defeated former state Rep. Stacey Evans, who ran a campaign that tried to appeal to moderates and independent voters.
Abrams, who grew up in Gulfport, Mississippi, as one of six children, told CNN's Kyung Lah in an interview before the election she was aware that "as an African-American woman, I will be doing something no one else has done."
In the interview, Abrams also recounted a story about being rejected as a high school student at the gates of the Georgia Governor's Mansion at an event honoring the state's top students.
"In front of the most powerful place in Georgia, telling me I don't belong there, that's resonated for me for the last 20 years. The reality is having a right to be places does not always mean that you'll gain admission," she said.
Abrams' status as an African-American with strong progressive support, as well as Georgia's status as an early primary and marquee general election state, made her campaign a major draw for national Democratic figures.
Hillary Clinton and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders endorsed Abrams, and New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker and California Sen. Kamala Harris went to Georgia to campaign for her.
The Republican race, meanwhile, could be headed to a runoff, with none of the six candidates -- including Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle and secretary of state Brian Kemp -- currently holding a majority of the vote.
If no candidate tops 50%, the top two will advance to a one-on-one runoff on July 24 to decide who will take on Abrams.
The day of the royal wedding, we could not keep our eyes off her. What was she thinking, as she sat in the pews of the five-hundred-year-old chapel, enveloped in history and irony? I mean the mother of the bride, Doria Ragland. A millennium of world-shifting encounters—of violence and of romance and of acts in between—produced this scene: the sixty-one-year-old Ragland, an American who teaches yoga and does social work in Culver City, California, sitting in the opposite and equivalent seat to Queen Elizabeth II. They’d agreed on green, the color of beginnings—Ragland in churchy, pastel Oscar de la Renta, the Queen in electric-lime Stewart Parvin. One is a descendant of the enslaved, a child of the Great Migration and Jim Crow and seventies New Age spirituality; the other, the heir to and keeper of empire. Blood had long ago decided what life would be like for both.
But love barges in and finds a way. Love brings together Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, whose train of identifiers—biracial, actress, Angeleno, divorcée, feminist, former life-style blogger—complete the Mad Libs of the new American vogue. Love brings together their families: the House of Windsor and a one-woman house. Genuine attraction seemed to pulse between them, as Harry, biting his lip, giddily whispered to his bride, “You look amazing.” Markle’s doe eyes glinted. Nearby, Ragland radiated with what looked like maternal pride. Certainly it was more complex than just that.
Ragland isn’t an actress like her daughter, but she said many things with her face. Photographs of her and Markle pressed close to one another in the Rolls-Royce on the way to the chapel show the mother trying on a regent’s wave, smiling warmly but tentatively. Inside, she executed her duties with grace. Her locs had been swept beneath her pillbox hat; the shine of her tiny nose ring gleamed like the shine in her eyes. There was not much emoting in the crowd of royal fascinators, although many screwed their faces as Bishop Michael Bruce Curry, the first black head of the Episcopal Church, thundered in his sermon about the possibility of a “new world.” But one could perceive Ragland softly reeling beneath her composure. Her lips trembled as her daughter walked down the aisle. She cried gently. When Curry spoke about the example of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the power of radical, social love, she nodded unreservedly; when the East London choir roused the room with Ben E. King’s “Stand By Me,” she swayed. Sometimes the cameras would catch Ragland as if she were in a trance, lost in some intimate thought.
What we know of the relationship between mother and daughter has an “us against the world” feel to it. After her parents divorced, when she was six, Markle spent weekdays with her mother. Ragland doted on her only child, calling her “Flower.” When Markle became wealthy, she paid for her mother to attend graduate school; in a Mother’s Day post on her blog, she swooned with reverence over Ragland’s resilience. There’s no “Imitation of Life” drama here, in which the mixed-race daughter shuns her darker-skinned mother. Markle clearly delights in what she euphemizes as her mother’s “free spirit.” But they are different women. Markle makes it a point to call herself biracial. She vaguely invokes the “wounds” of American history, but is careful not to frame herself as a race hero. The skin of the mother is honey brown, but the daughter has been cast as ethnically ambiguous. In essays, Markle recalls that, as a child, strangers in the Valley mistook her mother for her nanny. In front of billions, Markle entered one of the oldest halls of whiteness, with the flowers of former colonies sewn onto her veil, and blended in. Ragland stood out.
It is true that Markle and her groom beautifully threaded black rituals throughout the ceremony. But claims about the wedding’s “wokeness” are a little jarring. This was a royal marriage set against the backdrop of the government threatening to deport Britons of the Windrush generation. Was that melancholy in Ragland’s eyes? A worry about whether her daughter would be truly accepted in the family, and what she may have to do to usher in that acceptance? Did she recall the Christmas luncheon that Markle attended in December, at which Princess Michael of Kent wore a blackamoor brooch clipped to her jacket? Markle had longtime friends in her party, but Ragland was the sole representative of her family. Ragland’s mother, Jeannette, who reportedly watched Markle as a child while Doria worked, died in 2000. Through her presence, Ragland implied a lineage of black women—and represented the fraught lineage of a nation.
It should not be lost on anyone that, despite the pitiful shenanigans of her ex-husband, Thomas Markle, and the gossiping of her ex-step-children, Ragland flew to Heathrow to do what black women do: straighten the mess up. One vision of the black mother depends on this kind of self-effacing altruism. The public has fallen for Ragland. On Twitter, people speculate that Lady Diana Spencer, whose legend of social rebellion is especially idolized by black women, would have adored her. At an afternoon tea on Friday, Ragland “charmed” the Queen, and she has quit her job at the mental-health clinic to avoid the paparazzi. The big interview will likely come via Oprah, who, swaggering into the castle on Saturday in pink, called attention to her own supremacy. But how Ragland will participate in the cult of her daughter’s marriage is yet to be seen. There is new pressure on the Duke and Duchess of Sussex—who take their titles after the first and only Duke of Sussex, who supported abolition—to liven up the monarchy’s social reputation. The hunger for a cordial kind of racial harmonizing is strong. I know Markle feels that burden, and I know that Ragland does, too.
Representation matters. We’ve both heard and said it repeatedly: our visibility and presence—in every arena—is vital to our perception of ourselves and what spaces we believe we deserve to occupy, both in the world and in the scope of the human imagination.
And yet, as The Root covered the marriage of Meghan Markle into the British monarchy, repeatedly we heard some variation of any or all of the following questions:
“Why are you reporting on this? Why should we care? What does this mean for us?”
Let’s get one thing out of the way up front: we’re a black news site (don’t @ me about that fact while you’re using Al Gore’s internet; I know who I work with and to whom I report), so the question of why we’d cover the entry of a biracial American actress into the British royal family is basically asking us why we’re doing our jobs properly. (Which is a dumb question, so cut it out.)
But aside from that, contrary to Al Sharpton’s surprisingly naive opinion, no one here is under the illusion that the new Duchess of Sussex is going to change the course of white supremacy—or the long and brutal history of imperialism and colonialism that Britain has both perpetuated and passed down to its younger brother, America. If the election of the first black biracial American president only served to stoke the ire of the irrationally entitled, an interracial marriage into the British monarchy is probably not going to spontaneously inspire world peace (or solve racism, hunger or inequality), amirite?
Frankly, that’s not even a fair expectation to place upon Markle’s newly crowned head, as ending any ism remains the job of those who perpetuate it. And, as the royal family is currently more of a PR-driving figurehead than absolute British rule, it’d be a losing battle, anyway.
But with that in mind, it could be argued that the question of Meghan Markle’s relevance is only, well, a relevant question if one is predominantly concerned with the white gaze—and the white supremacy so often adjacent to it.
Fun fact: When I was a little girl, my parents refused to buy me any dolls that weren’t black because they didn’t want me to aspire to a beauty standard that didn’t include me (forget the skinny and perpetually in heels part). Accordingly, my Barbie Christie collection (which didn’t really resemble me, either, tbh) was pitifully small, which was fairly devastating to an already fashion-obsessed child.
It would take Mattel 40 years to introduce a full range of dolls that could even hope to begin to reflect the range of children (and doll enthusiasts) who want to be part of the Barbie universe. I now have a young niece who’s only just beginning to take an interest in dolls; despite my own childhood disappointment, should I not consider it progress that if and when she asks for a Barbie, I can now get her one that has a massive mane of naturally textured hair, just like her?
Meghan Markle is a living, breathing human being—a fact many seem to forget when discussing her—and while very light-complected and straight-haired, is the first black woman to be openly acknowledged by the British royal family (despite not being the first to potentially enter the royal bloodline; she’s not even the only black princess in Europe). Is that not a space we are (finally) entitled to be represented in, too?
Yesterday, those of us who were interested enough to watch (or were professionally obligated to) were given indisputable evidence that Meghan Markle knows exactly who she is, and what she represents—and clearly wanted the world to know it, too. She may have married a wealthy white man, but the question of her own identity was well-answered; not that she hasn’t answered it before, years before her engagement was announced:
Growing up in a homogeneous community in Pennsylvania, the concept of marrying an African-American woman was not on the cards for my dad. But he saw beyond what was put in front of him in that small-sized (and, perhaps, small-minded) town. ... He wanted me to find my own truth.
Markle’s truth was evident in the choice of a black priest to deliver an impassioned homily at her wedding. It was evident in the gospel choir that followed. It was evident in her musical selections. And most profoundly, there was tangible evidence of Markle’s heritage in her mother, Doria Ragland, to whom Markle once wrote a deeply loving tribute on her now-defunct blog, The Tig.
From the looks of it, Markle has been clear about her identity for quite some time. And whether or not a royal wedding—or the idea of “royalty” at all—personally resonates with you, to question whether or not she “matters” is, in some ways, to question whether or not you do.
Because bottom line: Representation does matter. While I don’t personally aspire to be a princess (or know anyone who does, though I’m sure they’re out there), if only mere months ago we were collectively overjoyed to meet the fictional black princess of a country that only exists onscreen, does it really make sense to be dismissive of a real one in one of the most powerful countries in the world?
It doesn’t unless you’re really dismissive of whom she chose to marry. And that’s your prerogative; just call a thing a thing, rather than dismissing the entire affair. (I personally just shrug at people marrying folks that look like their one of their parents, but that’s me.)
As to the question of what impact Markle’s presence and story will or should have, that was perhaps best answered by British writer and broadcaster Afua Hirsch, who has been very open about her own experiences growing up biracial in Britain, and was one of many commentators who spoke to BBC America just prior to Saturday’s nuptials:
I think the challenge for the royal family is how to be a family that represents very old-fashioned values—of intergenerational inherited privilege—in a society that’s about equality of opportunity and multiculturalism. And I think that Meghan Markle is certainly someone who represents the latter; she has become successful through her own talent and hard work, she’s used her celebrity to champion causes that she’s passionate about, and also, as a woman of mixed heritage, she hasn’t shied away from speaking about that; she’s owned it.
And for me, as a black British woman of mixed heritage myself, I think there’s been a lot of pressure in my lifetime in this country—if you’re entering spaces that have previously been very white—to downplay your identity. And I think she represents a real cultural change in her willingness not to minimize it, but to speak about it. And for me, that sends a powerful signal, that you can own your identity and it’s not a taboo; it’s not something to shy away from. And that also, there is nothing essentially ‘white’ about Britishness.
You know, for a lot of people, the royal family represents a sense of British identity, and until now, that has been an identity very much linked to whiteness in many people’s perceptions. So, I think the visual and symbolic change that Meghan’s entry into that family represents is actually quite profound.
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