USA: Immigrants Healthier Than Native-Born, But Advantage Fades

2021/07/15 Leave a comment

Likely similar in Canada although medicare and a more generous social safety net likely attenuates the effect. One of the negative aspects of integration:
Immigrants to the U.S. are healthier and have better health outcomes on average than native-born Americans, according to a new study in the journal Health Affairs.But the longer that immigrants live in the U.S., the more their health profiles resemble those of the native-born.

These findings are among a wealth of details about immigrants’ self-reported health and access to health care included the study. The researchers analyzed data from two large surveys, one national and the other focused only on California. The latter survey was used because it included data on undocumented immigrants that was lacking in the national poll.

Four groups of adult immigrants were compared to native-born adults: naturalized citizens, noncitizen immigrants in the U.S. for more than 5 years, noncitizen immigrants here for 5 years or less, and undocumented immigrants.

Self-reported health status among naturalized immigrants — who, by definition, must be in the country for at least 5 years — was similar to that of citizens born in the U.S., the study found. “In contrast, a higher share of noncitizen immigrants who had been in the U.S. for more than 5 years (30.1%) and who had been in the U.S. for 5 years or less (41.6%) had ‘excellent’ health compared with U.S.-born adults (27.1%).”

Both naturalized and noncitizen immigrants had lower rates of high blood pressure, heart disease, arthritis, asthma, and mental conditions, compared with U.S.-born adults. But naturalized citizens were more likely than the native-born to have type 2 diabetes.

The story was different for undocumented people. In the California survey, twice as many undocumented immigrants (33%) reported being in fair or poor health than native-born citizens (16.5%), and only 29.3% of the undocumented said they were in very good or excellent health, compared to 54.2% of native-born Californians.

In the national survey, the noncitizen adult immigrants were considerably younger, on average, than the U.S.-born adults, which partially explains their better health status. In addition, the study notes, “Chronic conditions are likely to be underdiagnosed among underserved immigrants because of poor access to health care.”

Arturo Vargas Bustamante, PhD, a professor of health policy and management, at UCLA’s Fielding School of Public Health, and the paper’s lead author, told WebMD that a third reason for the disparity between the health status of immigrant and native- born populations is the “healthy immigrant effect.” What this means is that people who choose to face the rigors and challenges of emigrating to a foreign nation tend to be stronger, physically and mentally, than other people from their home country.

Why Health Problems Increase

The biggest reason for the narrowing of differences in health status between immigrants and native-born Americans over time, Bustamante explains, is the aging of immigrants, which is linked to the same kinds of health problems that people born in this country have as they enter middle age.

In addition, he says, exposure to the U.S. lifestyle can harm immigrants’ health. “In their native countries, they might have walked to work or used public transport; here, they drive a car,” he notes. “They get hungry at night and start eating fast food, because it’s convenient. So the process of integrating into the U.S. society also comes with the process of assuming the American lifestyle and behavior.”

Finally, he observes, many immigrants live in low-income areas where there are food deserts, environmental hazards, and poor access to health care. “The longer they live in this country, the more exposed they are to these social determinants of health,” he says.

Higher Uninsured Rate

Compared with 11.4% of U.S.-born adults who lacked health insurance, uninsured rates were 12.3% among naturalized immigrants, 43% among noncitizen immigrants in the U.S. for more than 5 years, and 36.4% among noncitizen immigrants in this country for 5 or fewer years.

Although the Affordable Care Act made more legally authorized immigrants eligible for health care and allowed more of them to have insurance coverage, it left out undocumented immigrants. Unsurprisingly, 45% of undocumented people in the California survey were uninsured.

More noncitizen immigrants who had been in the U.S. for at least 5 years (12.3%) were covered by Medicaid than noncitizen immigrants who had been here for a shorter time (7.5%) or U.S. born adults (9%). Private insurance was the main source of coverage across all immigrant groups, except for the undocumented in California, who were more likely to have public coverage.

Fewer Doctor and ER Visits

Uninsured immigrants, naturally, had less access to health care than the insured did. While 71% of U.S.-born adults reported having made a visit to a doctor, only 50.5% of noncitizen immigrants who had been in the U.S. for over 5 years and 44.2% of those in this country for 5 years or less had seen a doctor.

In addition, naturalized immigrants and both groups of noncitizen immigrants were less likely than native-born citizens to use an emergency room.The underuse of health care cannot be explained purely by the high percentage of immigrants who lack insurance, Bustamante says. Even if immigrants have insurance, they may not seek help from a doctor because they may not get paid for the time taken off from work. In addition, they may be unfamiliar with how the U.S. health care system works. If they don’t speak English, they may not even be able to make an appointment.

Aging Population

Partly due to restrictions on immigration, the immigrant population in the U.S. is aging and therefore subject to worsening health, the study notes. While only a small portion of immigrants are over 65 today, “the process of immigrant aging is going to go really fast if the population of immigrants isn’t replaced by continued flows of new immigrants,” says Bustamante.

The U.S. health care system is poorly prepared to take care of aging immigrants, according to the study. In most states, legally authorized immigrants are subject to a 5-year waiting period before they become eligible for Medicaid, and undocumented immigrants are ineligible for Medicaid and Medicare. “Aging documented immigrants may even find it challenging to qualify for Medicare because they need to account for at least 10 years of Social Security earnings to be eligible,” the study says.

Three of the states with the largest immigrant populations — Texas, Florida, and Georgia — severely restrict Medicaid coverage for immigrants, Bustamante says. In contrast, California, Illinois, and New York, which are also home to many immigrants, offer generous Medicaid coverage. In Illinois and California, there are proposals to cover some undocumented people.
What will happen to aging, uninsured immigrants when they get sick?

“That’s a big question,” says Bustamante. “A lot of the care will fall on their families, which are not necessarily high-income families. In some families, the younger people are citizens who will be called on to take care of their grandparents. This could limit the social mobility of U.S.-born family members.”

Source: Immigrants Healthier Than Native-Born, But Advantage Fades

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Huq: The Conservative Case Against Banning Critical Race Theory

2021/07/14 Leave a comment

Good questioning conservative “snowflake” discomfort:

By the end of June, 29 Republican-led state legislatures had considered and nine had enacted laws to penalize schools or teachers teaching critical race theory(CRT). Whether or not such laws would stifle anything taught in public schools today is uncertain because existing legislative control over curricula is already extensive. But the war against CRT is spilling into new arenas: Florida’s anti-CRT law forces colleges to survey how “competing ideas and perspectives” are presented, threatening funding cuts if a university is “indoctrinating.”

A paradox lies at this largely conservative campaign against CRT. If you slice through the rhetoric, it rests on a view of free speech that the political right, until now, stridently and correctly rejected: That speech can and should be curtailed because it makes some people feel uncomfortable or threatened. As a result, perhaps the most powerful argument against CRT’s critics is located on the political right, particularly in a recent opinion by Justice Samuel Alito, one of the most conservative members of the Supreme Court.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

Consider first how varied and inconsistent the portrayals of CRT on offer are. The Republic Study Committee defines CRT as a belief in “racial essentialism.” In contrast, Ellie Krasne of the Heritage Foundation postulates that CRT is “rooted in Marxism,” and so defines race as “a social construct, enforced by those in power (white men).” Similarly, the Manhattan Institute’s Christopher Rufo talks of CRT as “identity-based Marxism.” He detects it whenever terms such as “social justice” and “diversity and inclusion” are used, and so sees it “permeat[ing] the collective intelligence and decision-making process of American government” in advance of a socialist uprising.

Turn to the newly-minted laws, and one finds yet other, quite different depictions. Florida’s, for example, defines it as any “theory that racism is not merely the product of prejudice.” Idaho’s characterizes CRT as teaching that treats people as “inherently responsible for actions committed in the past by other members of the same … race.”

These definitions of CRT can’t be reconciled. None offer clear guiderails to what precisely it means to ban CRT—No more talk of race as an identity? No discussion of laws or institutions that create racial stratification? Taken literally, some of the definitions also extend absurdly far. Florida’s could prohibit Nobel Prize-winning University of Chicago economist Gary Becker’s work on discrimination, because Becker identifies market concentration and education (not “merely” prejudice) as causal predicates of discrimination.

Perhaps it’s a mistake to look for a stable definition of CRT threading together the case against it. For at the core of the case against CRT is instead the simple idea that people shouldn’t be made to feel uncomfortable about their advantages or others’ disadvantages. This is a version of the “belief in a just world” that psychologists long ago identified. But here it has a partisan edge: it is about appealing to people—especially those in “swing districts” targeted by Republicans in 2022—who feel unease in their present relative advantage, but find it costly to dissect such discomfort.

Both the Idaho and the Florida laws target suggestions that someone should be responsible for disadvantages now faced by Blacks and other minorities, beyond a narrowly defined coterie of ‘bad’ discriminators. Similarly, Krasne centrally objects to being made to feel that she is “an enemy of all that is good.” Rufo complains in a similar vein about people having to write “letters of apology”—since whites have nothing to feel culpable about. As one (white) letter writer to the Laconia Daily Sunplaintively said, the problem with CRT is that it surfaces the possibility of “systems and rules that work in my favor, benefiting me every day, month and year, that are not available to anyone else in America.” Indeed.

The case against CRT, in short, is not about a fixed set of ideas. It is about wanting to avoid certain feelings of discomfort or even shame. But the right has encountered this idea before—and seemed not to like it. Until recently, commentators on the political right have claimed that universities are captured by “leftist” students who “don’t think much” about free speech, or who “don’t want to be bothered anymore by ideas that offend them.” A “jargon of safety” in universities, complained commentator Megan McCardle, is then used to “silence” those who don’t agree.

Conservatives disparage arguments made by “snowflake” college students. But the case against CRT is made of the same stuff. As such, it is subject to the same response. Hence, in a recent opinion concerning off-campus student speech, Justice Alito explained why a student’s crude rant about being excluded from a cheerleading squad could not be punished in simple terms: “Speech cannot be suppressed just because it expresses thoughts or sentiments that others find upsetting.” This is indeed the law: The Supreme Court has not allowed the state to prohibit or punish speech because it riles up an audience since 1951.

The idea that audience discomfort provides a justification for censorship, that is, is at profound odds with our free speech tradition. The case against CRT shows why: Because it turns on how an audience feels, this argument for speech bans has an indefinite, elastic quality, one that accommodates an endlessly voracious appetite for censoriousness. One of the lessons of the CRT debate, indeed, is that offense can and is taken at indubitably true facts. In many educational contexts, this would mean that either side of a hot-button issue would have the right to shut the other down.

Ironically then, if there is a lesson to be learned from the war on CRT, it has nothing to do with how to talk about race—and everything with how the Trumpian revolution continues to devour the principles of American conservatism.

Source: The Conservative Case Against Banning Critical Race Theory

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USA: There Are 11,073 Muslims In Federal Prisons But Just 13 Chaplains To Minister To Them

2021/07/14 Leave a comment

The previous conservative government largely cancelled the chaplain program with respect to non-Christian chaplains in 2012 (Non-Christian prison chaplains chopped by Ottawa). Not sure what the current situation is:

Abdul Muhaymin al-Salim converted to Islam during his incarceration on drug charges at a federal prison in South Carolina from 2004 to 2014. In his first year there, the 49-year-old remembers a Muslim volunteer coming to the prison a couple of times a month to lead religious services.

Then, in the second year, during Ramadan, a holy month for Muslims, the volunteer was no longer allowed in the prison. Al-Salim never found out why.

“There were instances where we could have been denied or not received the proper representation or resources that we needed,” he said.

Muslims, the third-largest faith group in federal prisons, are significantly underrepresented among the chaplaincy, according to a Department of Justice inspector general report released last week. Currently, 6% of federal prison chaplains are Muslim, while 9.4% of inmates identified as Muslim.

As of March 2020, 199 of the 236 federal prison chaplains, or 84%, were Protestant Christian, even though that faith group makes up only 34% of inmates. There were no more than 13 Muslim chaplains in the past six years working at federal prisons — and that number remains today, even though the number of Muslim inmates has grown during that time, to 11,073.

Table showing federal inmates by religion

The challenges in recruiting Muslim chaplains have persisted within the Federal Bureau of Prisons for years, the report says. In response to a 2004 inspector general report that highlighted a significant shortage in Muslim chaplains, the bureau said it tried to attract a greater number through an on-site program that allowed prison employees to acquire the necessary skills to become a chaplain. But those efforts were unsuccessful, resulting in only one Muslim chaplain trained since 2006. And the number of Muslim inmates has more than doubled since then.

“Oftentimes, this will have a negative effect because you’re left to the whims of whoever is in charge of the chaplain’s department,” said al-Salim, who now works at the Tayba Foundation, where he mentors incarcerated Muslims. “There’s nobody there to help them gain that grounding that they need.”

The needs of the federal prisons’ Muslim population are underserved without chaplains, Muslim leaders say. Because most religious services have to be led by a chaplain, not having Muslim clergy means the services get canceled. When Muslim chaplains are employed, they also make sure Muslim inmates have access to books, prayer rugs and halal meals and that they can freely practice their faith.

Why prospective prison chaplains have been discouraged from applying

“The Bureau of Prisons is committed to ensuring that inmates of all faiths can practice their religion and participate in religious services while also maintaining appropriate safety and security measures,” spokesperson Donald Murphy told NPR in a statement.

Based on recommendations from the inspector general’s office, the bureau is “making changes to improve management and oversight over its chaplaincy program,” Murphy added.

To recruit additional Muslim chaplains, the bureau said it is working with current prison chaplains and seminaries to find candidates.

The bureau is also considering waiving requirements that chaplains must be a certain age, have a graduate-level theological degree and have completed coursework in interfaith study. That would make it easier for religious leaders like Imam Sami Shamma. A chaplain at the Connecticut Department of Corrections for over eight years, Shamma said he hasn’t been eligible for a federal position because he is 65 — over the 37-year age limit for appointment. Neither could Imam Abu Qadir al-Amin, who wanted to be a chaplain at a federal prison in Dublin, Calif., where he volunteered. But he couldn’t qualify because he didn’t have access to higher education.

“Some of the more effective leaders are not necessarily people who went to school for what they’re doing now,” al-Amin said. “They’re more inspired leaders that can make a real contribution to people’s lives who are in that restricted environment and need someone who understands their lifestyle, what led them to be there in the first place, and then can more appropriately develop strategies that address the needs of them returning.”

There’s another reason it’s difficult to recruit Muslim chaplains: Ordination is required by the bureau, but Muslims do not formally ordain religious leaders. And often Muslim communities live far from the prisons, requiring the chaplains and their families to relocate. In addition, Muslim chaplains in correctional facilities often face criticism by people claiming that they are spreading an extremist interpretation of Islam to the prisoners, according to a Harvard University report.

In the meantime, the prisons are filling the gap through contracted religious services providers and trained chapel volunteers. But even with volunteers and contractors, who don’t work full time, there is only one Muslim chaplain per 176 inmates, according to the latest inspector general report.

“If they’re actively recruiting Muslim chaplains and they want to employ Muslim chaplains in the federal system, then they should maybe sit down with Muslim leaders in the community and discuss a strategy for filling that vacuum,” al-Amin said.

Despite the chaplain shortage, the bureau has made incremental progress in accommodating Muslims’ religious practices. In 2019, for instance, it changed its guidelines to allow Muslim inmates to pray in groups.

State prisons face a similar shortage of Muslim chaplains

There’s also a shortage of Muslim chaplains at state prisons, Shamma says. While he used to rely on volunteers to help, they have not been allowed to do so during the pandemic. That has sometimes meant canceled services for the almost 200 inmates he serves.

Some state prisons, with larger Muslim populations, have better resources.

Tariq MaQbool, a 44-year-old Muslim incarcerated at the New Jersey State Prison, told NPR through the Prison Journalism Project that the Muslim chaplain there is a “blessing.” He regularly attends Friday prayers and Islamic talks led by the chaplain.

But MaQbool is still advocating for other ways to practice his faith, including access to halal meals and Islamic literature.

Source: There Are 11,073 Muslims In Federal Prisons But Just 13 Chaplains To Minister To Them

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Taking Action to Address Potential Barriers in Staffing: Public Service Employment Act amendments receive Royal Assent

2021/07/13 Leave a comment

Some interesting changes announced by the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat.

I think the change that will have the earliest and largest impact will be Canadian citizens and Permanent Residents having the same preference in external advertised hiring processes.

We will see over the next few years the extent to which this has an impact through the annual EE reports and which groups, given disaggregated data, are impacted most:

Too many Canadians continue to face bias, barriers, and discrimination based on their race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, disability, or other factors.

The Government of Canada has amended the Public Service Employment Actto address systemic barriers for equity-seeking groups in public service staffing.

These amendments represent foundational work that will help departments take measures in their staffing actions to reduce barriers and encourage more inclusive recruitment practices. 

Over the past several months, the Treasury Board Secretariat worked with employee networks, bargaining agents and senior officials for Employment Equity, Diversity and Inclusion to better understand the experiences of members of equity-seeking groups in public service staffing.

Amendments to the Public Service Employment Act reaffirm the importance of a diverse and inclusive workforce and strengthen provisions to address potential bias and barriers in staffing processes.

With these changes:

  • All new or revised qualification standards must be evaluated for bias and barriers for members of equity-seeking groups. 
  • Permanent residents now have the same preference as Canadian Citizens when appointments are made through external advertised hiring processes.
  • The design and application of assessment methods must include an evaluation of bias and barriers, and reasonable efforts for mitigation.
  • The Public Service Commission now has explicit authority to audit for bias and barriers that disadvantage members of equity-seeking groups.
  • The Commission and deputy heads will have explicit authority to investigate bias and barriers for members of equity-seeking groups. 

These Public Service Employment Act amendments form one part of a set of initiatives and activities to increase diversity and inclusion in the public service so that it is reflective of the Canadian population it serves and a place where all public servants feel a true sense of belonging.

The work of eradicating bias, barriers, and discrimination, which have taken root over generations, demands an ongoing, relentless effort. The Government of Canada is committed to this effort and will use all available levers to improve the experiences of public servants in their workplace and ensure that they are able to realize their full potential.

Source: https://www.canada.ca/en/treasury-board-secretariat/news/2021/07/taking-action-to-address-potential-barriers-in-staffing-public-service-employment-act-amendments-receive-royal-assent.html?utm_campaign=tbs-sct-20-21&utm_source=lnkn&utm_medium=smo&utm_content=7-27l122-en

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How the White Press Wrote Off Black America

2021/07/13 Leave a comment

Good historical account:

Newspapers that championed white supremacy throughout the pre-civil rights South paved the way for lynching by declaring African Americans nonpersons. They embraced the language once used at slave auctions by denying Black citizens the courtesy titles Mr. and Mrs. and referring to them in news stories as “the negro,” “the negress” or “the nigger.”

They depicted Black men as congenital rapists, setting the stage for them to be hanged, shot or burned alive in public squares all over the former Confederacy. These newspapers entered their bloodiest incarnations during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, inciting hellish episodes of violence during which white mobs murdered at will while sometimes destroying entire Black communities.

African Americans who fled these Southern horrors found the white Northern press only marginally less hostile. Yankee papers that congratulated themselves for opposing lynching in the abstract justified it in practice by depicting the victims as naturally disposed toward heinous crime.

As the historian Rayford Logan writes in his iconic study of this period, the white Northern press cemented the stereotype of the Negro barbarian by making Blackness synonymous with crime. Headlines included phrases like “Negro ruffian,” “colored cannibal,” “dissolute Negress” and “African Annie.” By portraying Black people as less than human, the white popular press justified the reign of terror that the South deployed, while stripping African Americans of the rights they had briefly enjoyed during the period just after the Civil War known as Reconstruction.

Since the early 2000s, historically white newspapers in Alabama, California, Florida, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri and North Carolina have apologized with varying degrees of candor for the roles they played in this history. When read end to end, these statements of confession attest to blatantly racist news coverage over a more than century-long period that encompasses the collapse of Reconstruction, the rise of Jim Crow, the two world wars, the civil rights movement, the urban riots of the 1960s, the Vietnam era and beyond.

The Raleigh News & Observer in North Carolina has admitted to engineering a landmark episode of racial terrorism — the 1898 white supremacist coup that overthrew the government of the majority-Black city of Wilmington. The Montgomery Advertiser in Alabama, once the voice of the Confederacy, acknowledges being complicit in racial terrorism through the 1950s. The Lexington Herald-Leader in Kentucky could well have spoken for hundreds of newspapers when it confessed that it had “neglected” to cover the civil rights movement at a time when that movement was changing the face of the country.

The Orlando Sentinel touched on a familiar theme of the struggle for racial justice when it repented for supporting the wrongful prosecution of Black defendants, known as the Groveland Four, who were charged with rape in 1949. The paper was known as The Orlando Morning Sentinel when its bloodthirsty coverage featured a front-page editorial cartoon that depicted four empty electric chairs under the headline “No Compromise!” A threatening editorial warned that “innocent Negroes” might suffer if civil rights lawyers sought to free the defendants based on “legal technicalities.”

The Los Angeles Times apologized for being “an institution deeply rooted in white supremacy” for most of its history and admitted to a record that included indifference and “outright hostility” toward the city’s nonwhite population.

The Kansas City Star confessed that it had “disenfranchised, ignored and scorned generations of Black Kansas Citians” and “robbed an entire community” of “dignity, justice and recognition.” While showing keen interest in military operations abroad, the paper noted, it remained silent when bombs exploded in the homes of Black people not far from its own offices.

The Star shut out even world-famous Black Kansas Citians like the saxophonist Charlie “Bird” Parker, who did not get a significant headline in The Star until he died, in 1955 — “and even then, his name was misspelled and his age was wrong.” When a flood devastated the city in 1977, The Star and its sister paper focused on businesses and suburbs, all but ignoring the fact that the flood had also swallowed homes of residents in Black areas. The newspapers showed more concern for missing pets than for Black citizens whose lives had been swept away in the torrent.

The apology movement is historically resonant on several counts. It offers a timely validation of the besieged academic discipline known as critical race theory — by showing that what news organizations once presented as “fair” and “objective” journalism was in fact freighted with the racist stereotypes that had been deployed to justify slavery. It lays out how the white press alienated generations of African Americans — many of whom still view the leading news outlets of the United States as part of a hostile “white media.”

The movement illustrates what President Lyndon Johnson’s National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders — also known the Kerner Commission — was talking about in 1968 when it criticized the press for writing and reporting “from the standpoint of a white man’s world.” It also vindicates the hundreds of African American men and women who established anti-racist newspapersduring the late 19th and early 20th centuries and engaged in open combat with the white press over how Black life would be represented.

The white press in the South dictated how anti-Black atrocities were viewed all over the country by portraying even the most grotesque exercises of violence as necessary to protect a besieged white community. White news organizations elsewhere rubber-stamped this lie. The editors of small, struggling Black publications often risked their lives to refute what they rightly saw as white supremacist propaganda masquerading as news.

Ida B. Wells of the fiery Memphis weekly known as The Free Speech was the best known of these Black press paladins. Her investigations showed that mobs regularly lynched innocent victims as part of a terror tactic that was intended to keep the Black community on its knees. Her most explosive finding was that the Black men who were charged with raping white women were often involved in consensual relationships with them.

Her editorial calling the common rape charge a “threadbare lie” conveyed more truth than the white aristocracy could bear. The white-owned Daily Commercial called for the writer of the editorial to be lynched without using the term. The Evening Scimitar presumed the editorial writer male and called for him to be tied to a stake at the intersection of Main and Madison Streets, his forehead branded with a hot iron and castrated “with a pair of tailor’s shears.” Ms. Wells was fortunately out of town when a mob destroyed the Free Speech office.

John Mitchell Jr. of The Richmond Planet, a Virginia weekly, had been born into slavery, as had Ms. Wells. He was known in his time as the “the fighting editor” — a posture that The Planet reflected with a logo depicting a muscular Black arm whose clenched fist radiated lightning bolts. During the late 19th century, Mr. Mitchell was acutely aware of the connection between the lynching fever that was sweeping the former Confederacy and the fact that Southern cities were filling their public squares with monuments to Confederate soldiers who had plunged the country into war with the goal of preserving slavery.

Speaking of a monument erected in Richmond to the Confederate general Robert E. Lee, Mr. Mitchell said that it would “ultimately result in handing down to generations unborn a legacy of treason and blood.” He foresaw more than a century ago that this and other monuments to white supremacy might not stand in perpetuity. Speaking of the African American labor used to erect monuments, he said of the Black man, “He put up the Lee Monument, and should the time come, he’ll be there to take it down.”

Mr. Mitchell and his Virginia contemporaries were no doubt watching when the white press in North Carolina began to campaign for the interracial government of Wilmington to be overthrown. On the eve of the coup, the majority-Black city was a stronghold of African American economic and political success and home to a thriving community of Black craftsmen and businesses owners, as well as African American public servants who included aldermen, magistrates and mail carriers.

The News & Observer rallied the white press beyond the carnage by relentlessly equating Black voting rights with corruption, anti-whiteness and, inevitably, the rape of white women. The paper ran infamous editorial cartoons like the ones depicting a giant Black foot crushing a white citizen and another showing a Black vampire bat labeled “Negro Rule” hovering over the state.

This toxic campaign yielded fruit on the morning of Nov. 10, 1898, when a mob marched into the city and burned the offices of The Wilmington Daily Record, widely thought to have been the only Black-owned daily newspaper in the United States at the time. The vigilantes swept through the streets shooting some African Americans and exiling others, along with their “white nigger” allies, from the city.

The New York Times referred obliquely to the overthrow of the Wilmington government as necessary for restoring “law and order.” The Richmond Planet — under the headline “Horrible Butcheries at Wilmington” — made clear that the coup was aimed at removing Black officeholders and restoring white control of the city.

The Planet described unarmed Black people being shot dead in the streets or driven into the woods, making clear that the carnage had resulted from “a concerted conspiracy which has been underway for several weeks,” with the goal of securing “the reins of the city government by treasonable practices.” In his characteristically acid tone, Mr. Mitchell admonished President William McKinley for failing to restore the legally elected government of the city and observed that the “good white people” of the Wilmington vicinity had either acted as “aiders and abettors of murder” or fallen “painfully silent” in the face of a treasonous attack on democracy.

A similar scenario — complete with distorted news accounts — played out two decades later after the massacre of Black sharecroppers in Elaine, Ark. The sharecroppers had angered their white landlords by banding together to demand a fair price for the crop. After a shootout instigated by whites, as the historian David Levering Lewis has written, “enraged white planters and farmers chased down Black men and women in the high cotton of Phillips County in a frenzy lasting seven days, until the count of the dead approached 200.”

It was widely — and falsely — reported in the white press that the sharecroppers had intended to kill every white person they could and take control of the county. The African American press pointed out soon after the bloodletting that the sharecroppers had been slaughtered for contesting a form of slavery under which white overlords swindled them out of their earnings.

The white Southern press degraded African Americans in a variety of everyday ways. One of the humiliations that continued into the 1950s involved denying Black adults the courtesy titles Mr. and Mrs., and referring to them by first name only, at a time when African Americans could be beaten or even lynched for addressing white people in this fashion. By identifying married Black women by their first names, instead of as Mrs., white newspapers denied the legitimacy of African American marriage and reinforced a racist slander that labeled women of color morally “loose.” Jim Crow society used this defamation to justify the rapacious conduct of white men who targeted Black women for sexual assault.

Black newspapers like The Baltimore Afro-American, The Chicago Defender and The Pittsburgh Courier served as a haven against white press hostility, while incubating and advancing the early civil rights movement.

At a time when African Americans had to commit crimes to appear in the white press, The Defender and its sister papers filled their society pages with scenes of the Black middle class succeeding at business, convening civic organizations or taking their leisure at tony vacation spots. In other words, the Black press was a century ahead of the news media generally in discovering the African American middle class as a marketable subject of journalism.

Black news organizations started to wither as segregation eased and the white press became interested in the civil rights movement. Nevertheless, it would take decades for that interest to extend beyond stories about crime. The Kerner Commission underscored this problem when it admonished the news media to “publish newspapers and produce programs that recognize the existence and activities of the Negro, both as a Negro and as part of the community.”

News organizations that were not moved to address this problem when the business represented a license to print money have come to see things differently since the business model began its collapse. The apology movement represents a belated understanding that these organizations need every kind of reader to survive. The challenge is that the gap news providers are eager to close is vast and was generations in the making.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/10/opinion/sunday/white-newspapers-african-americans.html

Filed under Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with , ,

DOJ Declined to Prosecute 82 Percent of Hate Crimes Between 2005-2019

2021/07/13 Leave a comment

Don’t believe we have national stats in Canada but reader feedback welcome:

The Justice Department declined to prosecute 82% of hate crime suspects between 2005 and 2019, according to a department reportreleased this week.

State of play: Prosecutors declined to prosecute the 1,548 cases for different reasons, but more than 55% of the decisions came down to insufficient evidence, which means that a case could not be proven in court beyond a reasonable doubt.

  • The second most cited reason to decline cases was for the prioritization of federal resources.
  • Prosecutors conducted investigations into 1,878 suspects in potential hate crime cases, but only 17% were prosecuted. Another 1% of cases were dismissed by U.S. magistrates.

Yes, but: The report also said that of those crimes that were reported, the conviction rate increased from 83% between 2005 and 2009 to 94% between 2015 and 2019. About 85% of defendants convicted were sent to prison for an average term of 7.5 years.

The big picture: The report comes weeks after Attorney General Merrick Garland announced a six-step plan to combat hate crimes in the country. He said he would direct the Justice Department to increase resources and coordination to state, local and tribal partners.

  • The plan would also designate an officer to facilitate the expedited review of hate crimes, as well as increase the department’s language access capabilities to make it easier to report these types of crimes.

Worth noting: Reports of hate crimes against the Asian American and Pacific Islander community have increased during the pandemic. Stop AAPI Hate received more than 6,600 self-reported incidents from the beginning of the pandemic until March this year.

  • President Biden in May signed into law the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act, which would direct the Justice Department to expedite the review of coronavirus-related hate crimes.

Source: DOJ Declined to Prosecute 82 Percent of Hate Crimes Between 2005-2019

Filed under Hate crimes, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Montreal blue-collar workers allege systemic racism on the job, seek compensation

2021/07/13 Leave a comment

Of note.

Not convinced that not providing training for truck drivers is at the same level as the other examples. And interviewing only 3 employees is hardly a representative sample:

Blue-collar workers employed by a Montreal borough say they’re seeking compensation from the city after a pair of reports earlier this spring revealed allegations of widespread discrimination against Black and other racialized employees.

Celeste, a longtime worker in the Montreal North borough who did not want to give his last name for fear of reprisals, says Black and other racialized employees of the district are passed over for opportunities because managers prefer hiring white people. He says he’s been left out of training sessions, asked to do menial work below his seniority level and subjected to racist comments on the job.

The constant rejection and humiliation over the years have affected his sleep, his marriage and especially his morale. “It was like something has been taken away from me that I had in me,” Celeste said in a recent interview. “This spirit I had to succeed, to go further.”

About 40 of Montreal North’s racialized employees have asked their union to file grievances for moral and other damages in connection with lost wages and benefits and for the attacks on their dignity, Fo Niemi of the Center for Research-Action on Race Relations said in a recent interview. Niemi’s group is supporting the workers in their quest for compensation from the city.

The union grievances follow the release of two reports commissioned earlier this year revealing Black and other racialized employees of the Montreal North borough said they faced unfair and discriminatory hiring practices that prevented them from accessing better jobs and pay.

Celeste and another longtime Montreal North borough employee told The Canadian Press they and their Black colleagues have been subjected to racist comments at work and denied the same opportunities that white colleagues are given.

The City of Montreal has acknowledged the existence of systemic racismwithin its civil service and says it’s working with the borough to improve diversity and inclusion. In a recent statement, the city said it would support the borough in implementing all the recommendations of the two reports, adding that a diversity and inclusion advisor had been hired to oversee the process.

But Niemi and the workers say Montreal needs to do more than change its culture: it needs to compensate the workers who suffered discrimination. “If you really are committed to systemic racism, it’s not about changing systems and policies but also supporting victims,” Niemi said.

Luc Bisson, president of the Montreal blue-collar workers’ union, confirmed there have been grievances filed as a result of the reports, but he could not confirm their nature.

Celeste said that on two occasions, he was discriminated against when applying for permanent jobs for which he was qualified at the Montreal North borough. The first time, he said, the posting was taken down and later reposted. In the second instance, the job was reposted to include qualifications he didn’t have. It went to a white employee who was less senior, he said.

The first report, commissioned by the city’s comptroller general and published in April, described a long-running climate of tension among blue-collar workers. Workers “almost unanimously report inequitable or discriminatory treatment,” read the report authored by Tania Sabia, an industrial relations expert with Université de Montréal.

The second report, produced by an expert hired by the union, documented the same problems as the first. Written by Université du Québec à Montréal professor Angelo Soares, the report concluded the workers’ allegations of discrimination were “founded” and urged the City of Montreal, the borough and the union to take “urgent” action to correct them.

Sabia’s report delved into the process of driving a heavy truck for the city — which is seen among workers as one of the better jobs at the borough and key to advancing within the administration. The borough, Sabia said, required employees who want to drive trucks to pass a test involving backing up a truck with a trailer — even if that skill is not part of the job description — a requirement that is seen by racialized employees as a barrier.

A Haitian employee of the Montreal North borough told The Canadian Press that many immigrants failed the course because they weren’t from a cultural background where driving a trailer is common. “We had to tell the trainer that immigrants don’t fish, don’t hunt,” the employee, who didn’t want to be identified because they feared reprisals, said in a recent interview. “When we have time off we do other things. It’s like expecting everyone to like hockey.”

The employee said the borough doesn’t offer to train employees how to drive a trailer. As a result, the employee said, some Haitian workers have had to scramble to find someone outside work to teach them or suffer the humiliation of failing the course and being permanently relegated to menial or physical jobs such as emptying trash cans.

A third borough employee, who is white, told The Canadian Press he was suspended by his employer after speaking out about the unequal treatment his colleagues experienced. He confirmed a group of employees are hoping for financial compensation.

Sabia issued a number of recommendations, including that the city conduct a wide examination of the internal relations in the borough. He also recommended the city clarify the hiring process and ensure all employees have equal chances to succeed at the courses offered to attain certain positions.

While Sabia’s report noted that the city had made improvements to its processes, none of the three Montreal North blue-collar workers interviewed by The Canadian Press said they had noticed any positive changes.

Celeste said that if he is successful in receiving compensation, he will consider quitting his job and leaving Montreal to find better working conditions.

Source: Montreal blue-collar workers allege systemic racism on the job, seek compensation

Filed under Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with ,

Douthat: A Case for Patriotic Education

2021/07/12 Leave a comment

More on capturing the “the good, the bad and the ugly” and finding a balance, along with age appropriateness for the negative parts:

I have my doubts about America. As a Catholic, my first loyalty is to a faith that predates and promises to outlast our Republic, that was disfavored for much of our history and may be headed into disfavor once again. American anti-Catholicism is far from the worst evil in this nation’s history, but it still instills a special obligation to take critiques of our Anglo-liberal-Protestant inheritance seriously, whether they come from radicals or traditionalists or both.

But when it comes to introducing American history to my own American children, none yet older than 10, I’ve realized that we’re giving them a pretty patriotic education: trips to the battlefield at Concord; books like “Johnny Tremain” and the d’Aulaires’ biographies of Lincoln and Franklin and Pocahontas; incantatory readings of “Paul Revere’s Ride.”

One of my son’s favorite books is an account of Lewis and Clark’s mission that pairs extracts from diaries with vivid illustrations. Laura Ingalls Wilder may have been canceled a few years ago, but she’s a dominant literary figure for our daughters. Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the U.S.A.” plays in our minivan, and when my eldest daughter tries to win arguments by declaring “I’m a free American!” I let the claim stand, rather than answering her with Catholic critiques of liberal individualism.

I should say that we also deliver doses of realism about slavery and segregation and the importance of seeing history from the perspective of the defeated, from the Tories to the Sioux. (Though many older texts contain those perspectives, however un-P.C. their form; tragic realism is not the exclusive province of the early 21st century.) And we are not home-schoolers; our patriotic education interacts with what our kids learn in school and pick up through osmosis in our progressive state and city.

But having written recently about the race-and-history wars, I think it’s worth talking about what makes patriotic education valuable, even if you ultimately want kids to have critical distance from the nation’s sins.

Here I want to disagree mildly with David French, the famous conservative critic of conservatism, who wrote for Time magazine recently chiding parents who are “afraid children will not love their country unless they are taught that their country is good.” The love for country we instill, he argued, shouldn’t rest on American innocence or greatness; rather we should love our country the way we love our family, which means “telling our full story, the good, the bad, and the ugly.”

To which I would say, yes, but … you probably want to feel a certain security in your children’s family bonds before you start telling them about every sin and scandal.

Admittedly there are families where that isn’t possible, as there are political contexts where young kids need to know dark truths upfront. But we aren’t living in Nazi-occupied France, and there is easily enough good in America, past and present, to lay a patriotic foundation, so that more adult forms of knowledge are shaped by a primary sense of loyalty and love.

Moreover, with families the people you’re supposed to love are usually there with you, and to some extent you can’t help loving them even in their sins. Whereas the nation’s past is more distant, words and names and complicated legacies, not flesh and blood. So if historical education doesn’t begin with what’s inspiring, a sense of real affection may never take root — risking not just patriotism but a basic interest in the past.

I encounter the latter problem a lot, talking to progressive-minded young people — a sense that history isn’t just unlovable but actually pretty boring, a grim slog through imperialism and cisheteropatriarchy.

Whereas if you teach kids first that the past is filled with people who did remarkable, admirable, courageous things — acts of endurance and creation that seem beyond our own capacity — then you can build the awareness of French’s bad-and-ugly organically, filling out the picture through middle and high school, leaving both a love of country and a fascination with the past intact.

And starting with heroism doesn’t just mean starting with white people: From Harriet Tubman to Martin Luther King Jr., the story of the African-American experience is the most straightforwardly heroic American narrative, the natural core of liberal patriotism — something liberalism understood at the time of Barack Obama’s election, but in its revolutionary and pessimistic mood seems in danger of forgetting.

This idea of a patriotic foundation hardly eliminates controversy. You still have to figure out at what age and in what way you introduce more detail and more darkness. This is as true for Catholic doubts as for radical critiques: I’m not sure exactly how to frame Roe v. Wade and abortion for my older kids.

In this sense French and others to his left are correct — there is no escape from hard historical truths, no simple way to raise educated Americans.

But still I feel no great difficulty letting my children begin, wherever their education takes them, with the old familiar poetry: Here once the embattled farmers stood / And fired the shot heard round the world.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/10/opinion/sunday/history-education-patriotic.html

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

‘What are equity-seeking groups?’ Confidential report reveals Greens’ problems supporting diverse candidates in 2019

2021/07/10 Leave a comment

Of note but probably the least of their worries right now:

Election 2015 and Beyond- Implementation Diversity and Inclusion (2019 update included).111

A confidential report prepared for the federal Greens details the party’s shortcomings in recruiting and supporting diverse candidates in the last general election, the Star has learned.

It’s the same problem beleaguered leader Annamie Paul has said the party officials trying to depose her don’t want her to address.

Sean Yo, a top member of Paul’s political circle who ran her byelection campaign in Toronto Centre last year, said Paul’s push to increase diversity is “central” to the challenges she is facing within the party.

“I think that others who have obstructed and frustrated her leadership see this as a distraction, and that everything is just fine, and interpret her strength and determination as something that’s unwelcome,” Yo told the Star on Thursday.

The report, which was obtained by the Star, was drafted last year by a Toronto-based firm called DiversiPro, with input from the party’s diversity co-ordinator who was laid off this week.

The authors surveyed representatives of riding associations across the country. Of the minority that responded — representing 63 Green electoral district associations (EDAs) — 29 per cent said they had no strategy to recruit equity-seeking candidates for the 2019 election, while 35 per cent said they did not understand what that means.

“What are equity-seeking groups? We don’t sell shares in our EDA,” said one unnamed respondent quoted in the report.

The report said this is a “glaring indicator of a lack of information about diversity issues in the party,” and concluded “it is clear that the party has a lot of work to do before it truly embodies its core values of respect for diversity and social justice.”

Paul declined to comment about the report through her spokesperson on Thursday.

The internal party report was made as part of a push to address a lack of diversity after the 2019 election, when the party ran fewer visible minority candidates than the far-right People’s Party, according to a report by The Canadian Press.

That push also included hiring a diversity co-ordinator, Zahra Mitra, who helped create the confidential report before she was laid off this week along with two staffers in Paul’s office. This spring, Mitra penned an email to dozens of party staffers that decried the Greens’ “very real problem with racism” and accused unnamed officials of hampering efforts to make the organization more inclusive.

Now Paul is facing a direct threat to her leadership as the party’s top governing body — the federal council — prepares to hold a vote on July 20 that could lead to her removal. The vote was called over Paul’s handling of a controversy involving a top aide who denounced Green MPs’ comments about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Last month, Paul accused unnamed officials of making “racist” and “sexist” allegations against her, and tied their resistance to her efforts to make the Greens “the most diverse party in federal politics” through an open recruitment drive called the “Time to Run” campaign. She told reporters that “this kind of change… is often perceived as a threat to the existing institutional gatekeepers,” and said members on the party’s top governance body who are seeking to oust her oppose her diversity efforts.

Judy Green, who ran against Paul in the leadership race last year and recently resigned from her local riding association in Nova Scotia, said she was told she would not be allowed to run for the party in the next election. In an interview with the Star, she said she supports Paul’s push for diversity but that her efforts to recruit fresh candidates are pushing out more experienced Greens.

“People who’ve been working very hard, who were building teams, who were prepared to represent the Greens in the next election, have been cast aside,” Green said.

But the party’s decision to address diversity predates Paul’s leadership, which began in October 2020.

Prateek Awasthi was the Green party’s executive director until he resigned last fall amid controversy over his handling of harassment complaints at a previous job. He said his top task when he was hired after the 2019 election was to increase diversity in the party, and he implemented changes like mandatory training for leadership candidates and federal council members, as well as a process to deal with complaints about discrimination.

Based on interviews with 36 equity-seeking candidates from the 2019 election, the diversity report found that several of them experienced racism and sexism from Green members during the campaign, including comments about their appearance and “jokes” about their gender or race.

“A lot of those painful experiences were shared and the party decided that it would take this seriously,” Awasthi said, referring to the origins of the diversity report.

However, despite what he perceived as good intentions, Awasthi said he confronted skepticism from top officials who felt the diversity push was unnecessary.

“They were sort of shocked at the implication that they might have any unconscious bias because of how they loved the planet,” Awasthi said.

And that might be part of the problem Paul is having in the party as she pushes to bring in diverse candidates, he said.

“You can’t Kumbaya your way out of systemic racism, right? It’s tough work. And that was sort of the source of the resistance.”

Source: ‘What are equity-seeking groups?’ Confidential report reveals Greens’ problems supporting diverse candidates in 2019

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Palestinians start applying for citizenship under family unification laws

2021/07/10 Leave a comment

Of note. Creating ‘facts on the ground’ while the law has not been renewed:
Palestinians who are married to Israeli citizens but who have not been able to obtain Israeli citizenship or residency due to the Citizenship Law which the government failed to renew this week have begun filing requests for such standing with the Interior Ministry.
NGOs, including the Hamoked civil rights group, have begun filing requests for citizenship and residency on behalf of their clients, and are encouraging others to do so as well.
There are some 9,200 Palestinians married to Israeli Arab citizens who have the most basic “stay permits” allowing them to reside in the country but which have to be renewed every one or two years, and another 3,500 who due to special circumstances were able to obtain temporary residency visas.
They will all now be able to apply for citizenship, although since the Arab population of east Jerusalem generally shuns citizenship in favor of residency those with stay permits in the city will likely request residency visas.
Until now, the 2003 Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law prevented Palestinians who marry Israeli Arab citizens from obtaining citizenship through naturalization, as is available to other foreign national spouses of Israelis.
The law was passed on security grounds and later extended to Syrians, Lebanese, Iraqis and Iranians who marry Israelis.
But the law has been criticized by human rights groups as discriminatory and on humanitarian grounds, and was opposed by coalition partners Ra’am and Meretz.
Although compromises were found, two Ra’am MKs abstained, while Yamina rebel MK Amichai Shikli voted against, and the law was toppled.
This means that those Palestinians married to Israeli citizens can now start the application process with the Interior Ministry for citizenship or residency like any other foreign national.
They will be able to apply first for a B1 visa, then an A5 temporary residency visa, and ultimately for citizenship if they do not live in east Jerusalem.
Jessica Montell, Executive Director of the Israeli human rights organization HaMoked, said that her organization represents approximately 400 families and that it has begun filing visa applications for them to the Interior Ministry.
In some families not just the spouse needs to obtain residency, the children do as well, she said.
Asked whether the ministry might hold up the processing of applications while the government ponders new steps, Montell insisted that the “Ministry doesn’t have right to drag its feet,” and that it had to “respect people’s rights.”
She said the standard response time for a request to a government authority is 45 days, and that if her clients did not receive responses in such time they would take the issue to court.
“The ministry cannot ignore these requests for a year in the hope a new law is passed,” said Montell.
“Israelis are just as safe as they were before the law expired. The authorities still have all the tools necessary to prevent dangerous people from entering the country, but without this law we will be a little bit more free and equal,” she said.
“Without this law, all Israeli citizens and residents have an equal right to fall in love and build a family, and that’s good news for these families and for everyone who cares about basic human rights.”
Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked has said however that she intends to bring the law back to the Knesset for a vote in the coming weeks in a fresh attempt to get it approved, meaning that the gateway to citizenship for such people may soon be closed.
Shaked has emphasized the security basis of the law, stating this week that the majority of terror attacks carried out by Arab Israeli citizens have been committed either by individuals who obtained some form of status in Israel through family reunification under the Citizenship Law, or by their offspring.
The Shin Bet said in 2018 that since 2001 some 155 individuals involved in terror activities obtained entry to Israel under family reunification laws.
But the law has also been justified to preserve Israel’s Jewish majority, something emphasized this week by Shaked, as well as  more centrist figures like Foreign Minister Yair Lapid and, a few weeks ago, Defense Minister Benny Gantz.

Source: Palestinians start applying for citizenship under family unification laws

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