Supporters of Donald Trump are more likely than other voters to tell pollsters that blacks are “lazy,” “violent” and “unintelligent.” Four out of five Trump backers say that discrimination against whites is as big a problem as discrimination against blacks. And only 39 percent of Trump supporters believe that President Obama was born in the United States.
.. Take something as simple as crossing the street. In one study by scholars at Portland State University and the University of Arizona, three black men and three white men played pedestrians trying to cross a street at a crosswalk. On average, a black pedestrian was passed by twice as many vehicles before a driver yielded.
.. teachers reviewing discipline reports in some cases were more likely to favor harsh punishment for a student named “Deshawn” or “Darnell” than one named “Greg” or “Jake.” And black children with appendicitis are less than halfas likely to get strong pain medication at an emergency room as white children with appendicitis.
.. Devah Pager of Harvard conducted a study of racial discrimination in New York City in 2004 by sending young black and white men to apply for jobs at 170 businesses, bearing fictitious and carefully matched résumés. She found that white applicants were more than twice as likely to get a call back; indeed, a white applicant purportedly just released from prison did no worse than a black applicant with a clean record.
.. This year, Pager published a follow-up based on what had happened to these businesses in the 2008 recession. She found that the companies that had discriminated were significantly more likely to have gone out of business — which may suggest a price tag for discrimination.
.. I was just in Detroit, where 9 percent of children suffer lead poisoning (more than in Flint); if this were happening to rich white children on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, there would be outraged demands for a national commission and reparations.
.. When opioids were primarily a black problem, America’s instinct was harsh prison sentences; now that it is mainly a white problem, we’re more compassionate and are improving treatment programs.
How to Cover a Charlatan Like Trump
If a known con artist peddles a potion that he claims will make people lose 25 pounds and enjoy a better sex life, we don’t just quote the man and a critic; we find ways to signal to readers that he’s a fraud. Why should it be different when the con man runs for president?
.. In watching the campaign coverage this year, I’ve sometimes had the same distressing feeling I felt in the run-up to the war in Iraq — that we in the media were greasing the skids to a bad outcome for our country. In the debate about invading Iraq, news organizations scrupulously quoted each side but didn’t adequately signal what was obvious to anyone reporting in the region: that we would be welcomed in Iraq not with flowers but with bombs. In our effort to avoid partisanship, we let our country down.
.. When some in cable TV cover Trump endlessly without sufficiently fact-checking his statements or noting how extreme his positions are, because he is great for ratings and makes money for media companies, we are again failing the country.
.. Skeptics note that more rigorous coverage might not make a difference; Only 6 percent of Americans say they have a great deal of confidence in the press. After all, few facts are clearer than that President Obama was born in the United States, yet only 62 percent of American voters say he was born here.
.. In the early 1950s, journalists were also faced with how to cover a manipulative demagogue — Senator Joe McCarthy — and traditional evenhandedness wasn’t serving the public interest. We honor Edward R. Murrow for breaking with journalistic convention and standing up to McCarthy, saying: “This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy’s methods to keep silent.”
.. to expose charlatans is not partisanship, but simply good journalism.
Do You Care More About a Dog Than a Refugee?
“Surely the George W. Bush experience taught us something.”
Let me push back. I opposed the Iraq war, but to me the public seems to have absorbed the wrong lesson — that military intervention never works, rather than the more complex lesson that it is a blunt and expensive tool with a very mixed record.
.. Yes, the Iraq war was a disaster, but the no-fly zone in northern Iraq after the first gulf war was a huge success. Vietnam was a monumental catastrophe, but the British intervention in Sierra Leone in 2000 was a spectacular success. Afghanistan remains a mess, but airstrikes helped end genocide in the Balkans. U.S. support for Saudi bombing in Yemen is counterproductive, but Bill Clinton has said that his worst foreign policy mistake was not halting the Rwandan genocide.
.. I wonder what would happen if Aleppo were full of golden retrievers, if we could see barrel bombs maiming helpless, innocent puppies. Would we still harden our hearts and “otherize” the victims? Would we still say “it’s an Arab problem; let the Arabs solve it”?
Why I Was Wrong About Welfare Reform
because the embarrassing truth is that welfare reform has resulted in a layer of destitution that echoes poverty in countries like Bangladesh.
.. Recent research finds that because of welfare reform, roughly three million American children live in households with incomes of less than $2 per person per day, a global metric of extreme poverty.
.. There are now more postage stamp collectors in America than there are families collecting cash welfare, and so kids like Hailey grow up in chaotic households in which there is simpy no money.
.. roughly three million American children live in households earning less than $2 per person per day.
.. Rather, let’s build new programs targeting children in particular and drawing from the growing base of evidence of what works.
.. 70 percent of pregnancies among young single women are unplanned