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Category: Society

Pressure on Biden to act on police reform will grow post-Chauvin conviction

Pressure on Biden to act on police reform will grow post-Chauvin conviction

ABC News reports: For activists, advocates and communities of color, the urgency behind the need for police reform does not end with the guilty verdict in the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. Chauvin was found guilty on all charges after kneeling on George Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes, the killing caught on camera. The graphic images of Floyd’s murder ignited a movement across the country, forcing the nation to begin to reckon with how people…

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Black and brown people’s defiance is not the problem. Our compliance is not the solution

Black and brown people’s defiance is not the problem. Our compliance is not the solution

Ibram X. Kendi writes: Chicago Police Officer Eric E. Stillman chased a boy down an alleyway. It was the early morning of March 29. In Minnesota, opening statements in the Derek Chauvin trial were coming in a few hours. Stillman had responded to reports of gunshots in Little Village, a predominantly Latino community on Chicago’s West Side. “Stop right now!” the officer yelled at Adam Toledo, a 13-year-old seventh grader at Gary Elementary School. “Hands. Show me your hands. Drop…

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Throughout trial over George Floyd’s death, killings by police mount

Throughout trial over George Floyd’s death, killings by police mount

The New York Times reports: Just seven hours before prosecutors opened their case against Derek Chauvin, a former Minneapolis police officer charged with murdering George Floyd, a Chicago officer chased down a 13-year-old boy in a West Side alley and fatally shot him as he turned with his hands up. One day later, at a hotel in Jacksonville, Fla., officers fatally shot a 32-year-old man, who, the police say, grabbed one of their Tasers. The day after that, as an…

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Amazon lives off America’s failure

Amazon lives off America’s failure

Sarah Jones writes: Bill Bodani liked his old job. He cleaned slag out at the Sparrows Point steel mill in Maryland, cleared the flues and the broken brick out of the blast furnace. He loved it despite the asbestosis it gave him, writes Alec MacGillis in his new book, Fulfillment. “I enjoyed the people,” Bodani told MacGillis. “They made it enjoyable. The Black, the white. It was a family thing. I don’t care if you knew them for five minutes,…

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The pandemic’s terrible toll on kids: ‘All of the people I look up to, they are all, like, breaking down’

The pandemic’s terrible toll on kids: ‘All of the people I look up to, they are all, like, breaking down’

The Wall Street Journal reports: When Victoria Vial’s Miami middle school shut down last spring and her classes went online, it felt like the beginning of an adventure. “I was in my pajamas, sitting in my comfy chair,” the 13-year-old recalled. “I was texting my friends during class.” Then she received her academic progress report. An A and B student before the pandemic, she was failing three classes. The academic slide left her mother, Carola Mengolini, in tears. She insisted…

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U.S. intelligence report warns of global consequences of social fragmentation

U.S. intelligence report warns of global consequences of social fragmentation

The New York Times reports: U.S. intelligence officials warned in a report issued on Thursday about the potential fragmentation of society and the global order, holding out the possibility of a world where international trade is disrupted, groups of countries create online enclaves and civic cohesion is undermined. The report, compiled every four years by the National Intelligence Council, mixes more traditional national security challenges like the potentially disruptive rise of China with social trends that have clear security implications,…

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Fears of white people losing out permeate Capitol rioters’ towns, study finds

Fears of white people losing out permeate Capitol rioters’ towns, study finds

The New York Times reports: When the political scientist Robert Pape began studying the issues that motivated the 380 or so people arrested in connection with the attack against the Capitol on Jan. 6, he expected to find that the rioters were driven to violence by the lingering effects of the 2008 Great Recession. But instead he found something very different: Most of the people who took part in the assault came from places, his polling and demographic data showed,…

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The forgotten history of the western Klan

The forgotten history of the western Klan

Kevin Waite writes: The Ku Klux Klan was on the rise in the spring of 1869. Vigilantes could measure their success that season by the carnage they left behind: marauded homesteads, assaulted politicians, a church burned to the ground. According to a local report, insurance companies considered canceling their policies, “owing to the Ku Klux threats.” A school serving students of color was supposedly next on the Klan’s hit list. Such havoc could describe almost any southern state in the…

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If you sell a house these days, the buyer might be a pension fund

If you sell a house these days, the buyer might be a pension fund

The Wall Street Journal reports: A bidding war broke out this winter at a new subdivision north of Houston. But the prize this time was the entire subdivision, not just a single suburban house, illustrating the rise of big investors as a potent new force in the U.S. housing market. D.R. Horton Inc. built 124 houses in Conroe, Texas, rented them out and then put the whole community, Amber Pines at Fosters Ridge, on the block. A Who’s Who of…

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Remote work is here to stay. New York City faces a cataclysmic challenge after the pandemic ends

Remote work is here to stay. New York City faces a cataclysmic challenge after the pandemic ends

The New York Times reports: Spotify’s headquarters in the United States fills 16 floors of 4 World Trade Center, a towering office building in Lower Manhattan that was the first to rise on the site of the 2001 terror attacks. Its offices will probably never be full again: Spotify has told employees they can work anywhere, even in another state. A few floors down, MediaMath, an advertising tech company, is planning to abandon its space, a decision fueled by its…

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Americans who belong to a house of worship are now a minority

Americans who belong to a house of worship are now a minority

Ed Kilgore writes: It’s Holy Week for Christians and Passover for Jews; there are also two Hindu holidays this week. But as Gallup reports, the percentage of Americans who belong to houses of worship where such days in the religious calendar are observed has been rapidly falling in this century. For the first time since Gallup began compiling religious membership statistics in 1937 (when 73 percent of Americans belonged to a church, synagogue, mosque, or temple), a minority — only…

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After anti-Asian violence, volunteers take to streets to form patrols

After anti-Asian violence, volunteers take to streets to form patrols

The Wall Street Journal reports: Before sunset Monday, a few dozen Asian-Americans outfitted in neon vests and jackets combed the streets of this New York City neighborhood. They weren’t police officers. They were students, retail workers and retirees equipped with little more than a cellphone in the event they came across someone being harassed or attacked. Their mission: to stop would-be attackers from hurting other Asians, whether it be by calling the police for help or stepping in themselves. “It’s…

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After two mass shootings, Americans ask: Is this what a return to normal looks like?

After two mass shootings, Americans ask: Is this what a return to normal looks like?

NBC News reports: Spring has arrived, and the American disease that lay dormant during the pandemic — deprived of oxygen by the intense national focus on the presidential election — has made a bloody return. In less than a week, two gunmen separated by 1,400 miles have taken 18 lives. And experts who study and chronicle mass killings warned Tuesday that there could be more as the nation reverts to a more normal way of life. “This is a moment…

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Racism is behind anti-Asian American violence, even when it’s not a hate crime

Racism is behind anti-Asian American violence, even when it’s not a hate crime

Children attend a March 17 vigil at Clemente Park in Lowell, Massachusetts, for the victims of the shooting spree in Atlanta. Erin Clark/The Boston Globe via Getty Images By Pawan Dhingra, Amherst College Over the past year, attacks on Asian Americans have increased more than 150% over the previous year, including the March 16 murders of eight people, including six Asian American women, in Atlanta. Some of these attacks may be classified as hate crimes. But whether they meet that…

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Who is making sure the AI machines aren’t racist?

Who is making sure the AI machines aren’t racist?

Cade Metz writes: Hundreds of people gathered for the first lecture at what had become the world’s most important conference on artificial intelligence — row after row of faces. Some were East Asian, a few were Indian, and a few were women. But the vast majority were white men. More than 5,500 people attended the meeting, five years ago in Barcelona, Spain. Timnit Gebru, then a graduate student at Stanford University, remembers counting only six Black people other than herself,…

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Asian-Americans are being attacked. Why are hate crime charges so rare?

Asian-Americans are being attacked. Why are hate crime charges so rare?

The New York Times reports: On a cold evening last month, a Chinese man was walking home near Manhattan’s Chinatown neighborhood when a stranger suddenly ran up behind him and plunged a knife into his back. For many Asian-Americans, the stabbing was horrifying, but not surprising. It was widely seen as just the latest example of racially targeted violence against Asians during the pandemic. But the perpetrator, a 23-year-old man from Yemen, had not said a word to the victim…

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