VICE: How Many Racists Are There in America?

No matter how many times America has a national conversation about race, the topic of actual racists rarely seems to come up. That is, racism is usually regarded as a major challenge facing America, but since no one will admit to being a racist and calling someone the R-word is regarded as the gravest possible insult, politicians generally shy away from calling out specific people or groups as fomenting prejudice. [...]

I do think that based on the analysis I've done and based on some analysis more recently, there's no doubt that Trump supporters are more motivated by racially resentful views and negative racial views than Hillary Clinton supporters or [supporters of] previous Republican candidates. That was stuff I started analyzing in the spring during the primary. The people that supported Donald Trump, their views on negative racial stereotypes towards blacks, and negative views of Muslims, and negative views of immigrants was just off the charts. That's a new thing this election cycle. [...]

We've seen those kinds of measures rise since Obama's election in America. So they had kind of gone away or dissipated after the 1960s to the 2000s, but with the election of Obama, we started to see explicit, old-fashioned racism reemerge in American politics and become politically salient. And it was much more likely to be true of Republicans than Democrats. People who hold those racist views would also be more likely to think negative views about things like the economy when [these views] weren't true objectively.

The other thing we started doing as a discipline in the 80s and 90s as explicit racism was declining in American society, we started asking questions that focused on what we called "racial resentment." And so racial views were not about characteristics or individual traits of black people or immigrants or what have you, but rather about how much they deserve benefits, if they should work harder and not blame society for their troubles, if they're being discriminated against. It was this idea to connect it more to government policy. And there's some debate, with some people saying that's not racism, it's political ideology. But I think the results are pretty clear, it's connecting politics to the color of people's skin and judging them as not worthy because of whatever. It depends on the scholar, but people call that symbolic racism or racial resentment.

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Deutsche Welle: A Russian city that could 'collapse'

At first there is no hint of the catastrophe. There's a blue paddling pool. There are red cherries. There are tomatoes, potatoes and dill. It is an idyllic place, somewhere in the Urals.

There is no hint of the catastrophe if you stay in the garden. The garden belongs to Irina and Andrej Chorow, who are both around 40. They have been living here for 13 years. But for how much longer? They don't know.

The catastrophe becomes visible once you leave the garden and go into the house belonging to the couple. Then you see the cracks. They are everywhere in the facade, as thick as a finger. They are under the torn wallpaper in all the rooms. They are on the walls and next to the windowsill. "It's cracking everywhere," complains Andrej. "The house is crooked. You can't open the doors properly anymore. The building is being pulled apart. We can't do anything." [...]

Instead I am allowed to go to the other danger zone that made headlines nine years ago. It is the old main mine shaft that has been closed down. This is where the earth first caved-in in 2007. It made a crater with walls that plunged 350 metres down. The city authorities evacuated 2000 people. Three years later the Beresniki central station became a danger to people. It was closed down. In 2011 methane gas that had been leaking out of a crater, exploded. This has turned into a lake.

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Quartz: Parents in Russia are blaming the internet for a spate of child suicides

Russia has the third-highest number of child suicides in the world. For the past decade, around 1,500 teenagers between the ages of 15 and 19 take their own lives each year, which is three times the world average—and that’s not even when you take the number of suicides registered as accidental deaths into account. In the past, UNICEF reports have pointed toward disadvantaged family situations as the root cause of these figures, but many parents in Russia are pointing the finger at a much larger and harder-to-control source: the internet.

Over the past year, journalists, politicians, and families have been claiming that Russia’s internet culture is promoting youth suicide. Specifically, they lay the blame on so-called “Groups of Death”—closed, cult-like communities that sprout on VKontakte (VK), the Russian version of Facebook. One of the most infamous cliques was called f57, a VK group for members to share videos and memes with a touch of the psychedelic. [...]

Lyubov may say that villainizing the internet isn’t the answer, but many politicians are still desperately calling for more restrictions on social media, and they are positively mute when it comes to self-help groups. For example, earlier this year “Children 404,” which is Russia’s online—and only—support forum for LGBT adolescents, was found guilty of violating the “gay propaganda” law and threatened with closure. This law, which forbids spreading “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations among minors,” was passed in 2013 and written by politician Yelena Mizulina.

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The Guardian: Gay referee in Spain receives death threats after return to football

Spain’s first openly gay football referee has received homophobic death threats after returning to the game months after quitting in the wake of abuse.

Jesús Tomillero, 21, was refereeing a game between CD Lasalle and Atlético Zabal in Andalusía’s second division on Saturday when a Lasalle supporter told him to “get off for being gay” after he awarded a penalty to Zabal. [...]

Spain has generally embraced sexual tolerance since the death of General Franco in 1975, and became the third European country to legalise same-sex marriage, in 2005.

A survey conducted three years ago suggested Spain was the most accepting country in Europe when it came to homosexuality, with 88% of respondents saying society should accept it.

But prejudice remains a problem. According to statistics gathered by an equality group, in the Madrid region there is a homophobic attack every two days.

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Bloomberg: Italy Said to Press for EU Defense Incentives in Wake of Brexit

Italy has asked the European Union to boost financial incentives for the defense industry as it seeks closer EU military cooperation in light of the U.K.’s decision to quit the bloc.

The proposal is contained in an Italian government document obtained by Bloomberg News detailing plans for the defense industries that has been circulated to Berlin, Brussels and Paris ahead of a Sept. 16 meeting of EU leaders in Bratislava. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker is expected to touch on the paper’s contents Wednesday in his annual “State of the Union” address to the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, according to a person familiar with the matter. [...]

Germany and France have already drawn up plans for closer defense cooperation, Munich-based newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung reported on Sept. 9, citing a position paper by German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen and her French counterpart, Jean-Yves Le Drian. The paper includes plans for common headquarters, use of European satellites for surveillance, synchronizing financing, planning and procurement, and allowing EU member states to accelerate cooperation at different paces.

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Deutsche Welle: EU puts more pressure on Poland but no solution in sight

A "systemic risk to the rule of law" continues in Poland, the resolution states. It was supported by the EP's five largest factions from across the political spectrum. The resolution is symbolic only, but aims to keep the topic in focus. For many Social Democrats, it is a means of dialogue. They see an increasing tendency to attack basic freedoms, said Gianni Pitella, the head of theSocial Democrat parliamentary group. "We are fighting for you, not against you," he said. [...]

"The PiS has a master plan to redo Polish society," said German MEP Sylvia-Yvonne Kaufmann. She visited Poland with a delegation, meeting with opposition groups, concerned by developments there, but hopeful that Poland's civil society will rise to meet the challenge. The Committee for the Defense of Democracy has been the main organizer of past demonstrations, and she believes they will continue their movement. An event with more than 1,000 anti-government judges called for democratic engagement.

However, Kaufmann herself sees PiS popularity increasing, due to its handing out of social benefits. The EU can do little except keep the public spotlight on the situation. Kaufmann fears difficult times ahead for the Visegrad Group, consisting of Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. A stronger trend towards "block building" would be dangerous for European cohesion.

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CityLab: Do We Need to Redefine 'Better Off'?

Courtney Martin introduces her new book, The New Better Off, with this staggering statistic: nearly two-thirds of Americans do not believe that the next generation will be “better off” than their parents.

That reality provoked Martin to probe more deeply into what the expression “better off” really means to our society. Ultimately,The New Better Off proposes a more holistic view of human happiness, rather than the hamster-wheel of work and money that drives our modern idea of success. I liked the book so much I blurbed it, and Martin recently took some time to answer a few questions from CityLab. [...]

 think we need to redefine "better off." We may, in fact, have less money. Fewer of us will own homes. Millennial men, in particular, will probably lead lives that are much more focused on domestic tasks and care-taking than the lives their fathers, and certainly grandfathers did. But to my mind, none of that is inherently negative. It's an opportunity to re-evaluate how much money, house deeds, and job status actually matter in the larger picture of how you want to spend your finite energy and time. [...]

In my reporting, I found that people are really gravitating back towards the local—local food, local community, local investing. As globalized as the world is, and in fact, perhaps because it's become so globalized, people are remembering how critical it is to know your neighbors and experience the daily kindness of public life on the city streets. Research shows that having local connections makes people safer, both in terms of crime and natural disaster, but it's something even less transactional than that. I think people crave the emotional connection of being from a place and from "a people," as it were.

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Al Jazeera: Manufacturing discontent: India's workers in crisis

The proposed reforms will make it easier for employers to fire labourers, make it harder to unionise, tougher to take industrial disputes to court and will exempt a large number of small and medium enterprises from existing labour regulations - including health and safety regulations.

They will also put an end to the regime of inspection meant to ensure implementation of laws and set up an alternative mechanism of self-certification in order to protect employers from harassment by corrupt inspectors. [...]

There is, however, strong evidence to indicate that states with labour laws that favour employees are not necessarily less productive.

More importantly, there is little evidence to show that pending reforms - of licensing, land acquisition and bankruptcy laws - and less regulation of the labour market will help the manufacturing sector. [...]

On September 2, a general strike of roughly 180 million workers - possibly the largest reported general strike in history - resulting in an estimated loss of $2.65bn, was a powerful indicator of the stress.

Unsurprisingly the state chose to respond by attempting to suppress the strike in some parts and downplay it in others.

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The Atlantic: Why So Few American Economists Are Studying Inequality

Those three are heavy hitters in the research on wealth inequality; other top scholars are also from Europe. There’s the British economist Anthony Atkinson at the London School of Economics, who has co-authored papers with Piketty and Saez; Nicholas Bloom, a British economist who writes about inequality at Stanford; Thomas Phillipon, a French economist at New York University who studies the financial industry and outsized compensation; Branko Milanovic, a Serbian economist at the City University of New York who published a book on the causes of inequality; and Stefanie Stantcheva, a French economist at Harvard who has co-authored papers on the top 1 percent and the effects of taxation with Saez and Piety. [...]

One reason is the deep influence of the so-called Chicago school. The economics department at the University of Chicago has long been a leader in the field; it has garnered the most Nobel Prizes of any university economics department and a significant number of John Bates Clark medals in economics. But inequality has never been a priority for the Chicago school, to say the least. It has a strong libertarian bent, focusing on how to promote competition and economic growth and the benefits of a free market. “In general, the [American] economics profession has avoided the subject of class conflict. All issues of distribution have been regarded as less pertinent than ideas of growth,” Arthur Goldhammer, a senior affiliate at Harvard’s Center for European Studies who studies French and American politics and history, told me. “Distributive questions in economics just raise hostility, and ultimately, growth is the important issue.” [...]

Why is class conflict more taboo in the United States, a nation dreamed up with at least a bit of rhetoric about throwing off the rigid class structure of Europe? Michael Zweig, an emeritus professor at SUNY Stony Brook, says that American economists haven’t always shied away from social problems like class and inequality. But during the second half of the 20th century, he says, class was “driven from the discipline,” Zweig says. This is largely because U.S. economists focused on the market, always the market.

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