Do you mumble to yourself while looking for your keys, or pump yourself up in the morning with a bathroom mirror pep talk? It may actually be helpful—but only if you do it right.
23 August 2017
Vox: The racist history of US immigration policy (Jan 15, 2016)
Banning an entire racial or ethnic group from entering the US isn't new, and the data shows it.
Vox's Alvin Chang explains. For his full interactive map of the data: http://www.vox.com/2016/1/4/10709366/...
It is immigrants, and their descendants, who largely make up today's US population. European immigrants were the first and largest group to arrive, and there were subsequent policies that made it much easier for people from those countries to come to the US. That said, a decent numbers of Canadian and Chinese immigrants also arrived early in this country's history, and over the years, different policies allowed greater numbers of Hispanics and Asians to immigrate.
Read the full article and view the interactive at: http://www.vox.com/2016/1/4/10709366/...
21 August 2017
The New York Times: A Deal Breaker for Trump’s Supporters? Nope. Not This Time, Either.
It was a week of incessant tumult, when Mr. Trump tumbled into open warfare with some in his own party over his statements on the violence in Charlottesville, Va.; business executives abandoned his advisory councils; top military leaders pointedly made statements denouncing racism in a way he did not; and his embattled chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, stepped down. But around the country, Mr. Trump’s supporters — and, according to many polls, Republicans more broadly — agreed with his interpretation of a swirl of racially charged events and stood with him amid still more clatter and churn.
Sixty-seven percent of Republicans said they approved of the president’s response to the violence in Charlottesville last weekend, compared with just 10 percent of Democrats, according to a CBS News survey conducted over the past week.
It’s an indication of what now seems an almost immutable law of the Trump presidency. There are signs that Mr. Trump’s support among Republican leaders and some Republican voters is weakening. But in an increasingly tribal America, with people on the left and the right getting information from different sources and seeing the same facts in different ways, it reflects the way Mr. Trump has become in many ways both symbol and chief agitator of a divided nation.
Moral outrage at Mr. Trump’s response to Charlottesville continues to glow white hot, but it has a largely partisan tinge. [...]
Is there anything Mr. Trump could do that would change the minds of his supporters? For the most loyal, probably not. A recent Monmouth University poll found that, of the current 41 percent of Americans who approve of the job he is doing, 61 percent say they cannot see Mr. Trump doing anything that would make them disapprove of him. (A similar share of the other side says there is nothing Mr. Trump could do — other than resigning — to get them to like him.)
20 August 2017
Spiegel: Would-Be Reformer Saakashvili Cast Out of Ukraine
It soon became apparent, however, that political will in Ukraine wasn't quite so black and white. The new president was no rose revolutionary or staunch reformist, and he wasn't elected with 96 percent of the vote as Saakashvili had been in 2004. Poroshenko was a politician and businessman, a classic product of Ukraine's oligarchic system, in which every major business leader is also involved in politics. [...]
Saakashvili built a new, transparent customs terminal (which never went into operation), established a citizens' office (which had to close again temporarily) and tore down fences that had been illegally set up on beaches (they were put up again). He reduced the size of the civil service and sent armed investigators to the state-owned chemical plant OPZ. [...]
The real reason for the rift remains unclear. Saakashvili says that he had a long argument with Poroshenko during a March meeting in Malta. According to Saakashvili, Poroshenko demanded that he behave himself and stick to the rules, insisting that he criticize others and not just Poroshenko himself - and that if he did so, he could continue his career in Ukrainian politics and would get a seat in parliament. If he did not, though, according to Saakashvili's account, Poroshenko said "individual measures" would be taken, though he failed to elaborate.
Vox: I've studied the history of Confederate memorials. Here's what to do about them.
But the story of the monuments is even stranger than many people realize. Few if any of the monuments went through any of the approval procedures that we now commonly apply to public art. Typically, groups like the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC), which claimed to represent local community sentiment (whether they did or did not), funded, erected, and dedicated the monuments. As a consequence, contemporaries, especially African Americans, who objected to the erection of monuments had no realistic opportunity to voice their opposition. [...]
A smaller number of monuments, like the one recently toppled in Durham, were indeed funded with public money — but an asterisk must be attached to the word “public.” In 1922, Confederate veterans in Durham persuaded the state legislature to allocate $5,000 of county taxes to fund the monument. No one asked black residents, who were denied the right to vote by Jim Crow laws, whether they supported spending their tax dollars on this public, political statement. [...]
It is hardly coincidence that the cluttering of the state’s landscape with Confederate monuments coincided with two major national cultural projects: first, the “reconciliation” of the North and the South, and second, the imposition of Jim Crow and white supremacy in the South. As part of the process of national reconciliation, white Northerners agreed to tolerate the commemoration of Confederates, and they contributed both moral support and funds to the veneration of a few Confederate figures in particular, especially Robert E. Lee. [...]
During the dedication speech, Carr praised Confederate soldiers not just for their wartime valor but also for their defense “of the Anglo Saxon race during the four years after the war” when “their courage and steadfastness saved the very life of the Anglo Saxon race in the South.” The “four years after the war” was a clear reference to the period in which the Ku Klux Klan, a white paramilitary organization terrorized blacks and white Republicans who threatened the traditional white hierarchy in the state. Then he boasted that “one hundred yards from where we stand” — and within months of Lee’s 1865 surrender — “I horse whipped a negro wench until her skirts hung in shreds because she had maligned and insulted a Southern lady.”
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