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Alyssa

‘Anchorman: The Legend Continues’ Will Be About The Perfect Subject: The Rise of Cable News

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Jun 19, 2013 at 9:03 am

I’m trying very, very hard not to get too excited for Anchorman: The Legend Continues because of the considerable risk of disappointment I’m running, but the first full-length trailer for the movie is absolutely not helping my efforts to contain my enthusiasm:

Ferrell, for all that he’s a big, loud goof in a lot of his comedy, is an actor with a great deal of interest moments when American culture is shifting in some significant way, particularly when he’s collaborating with Adam McKay, as he did on the original Anchorman, the underrated Talladega Nights, and The Other Guys. If Anchorman was about the arrival of women not just in the workforce but in occupations that men believed to be specifically reserved for them as a result of their maleness, it looks like Anchorman: The Legend Continues has an equally good idea. It’s going to explore what happens when someone like Burgundy, whose ego was healthy enough when he worked in local news, goes national, and what happens when broadcast news, which in Anchorman was padded out with panda pregnancy watches and cat fashion shows, goes from hour-long slots to round-the-clock coverage. That’s an incredibly rich area for critique, and I can’t wait to see what happens when the news team has to fill that much programming, how Ron will react when he meets a rival anchor with better hair in the form of James Marsden, and whether it’s possible for him to destroy race relations in America in a single dinner.

Immigration

Defining ‘White’ And ‘Hispanic’ In Majority-Minority America

By Ruy Teixeira, Guest Blogger on Jun 18, 2013 at 8:03 pm

From back when Irish-Americans weren't "white."

The Census Bureau released its latest population data last week, providing a portrait of the nation through July of 2012. Among the most interesting findings was that, for the first time, deaths among white Americans exceeded births. While this does not mean, of course, that white people are about to disappear, it is nonetheless a harbinger of the vast race-ethnic changes that are leading us inexorably toward a majority-minority nation by around the year 2043. It’s also a fascinating testament to the complex, variegated ways in which Americans understand the concept of race.

Five other interesting findings from the new data, as summarized by the AP:

1. The population younger than 5 stood at 49.9 percent minority in 2012.

2. As a whole, the nonwhite population increased by 1.9 percent to 116 million, or 37 percent of the U.S. The fastest percentage growth is among multiracial Americans, followed by Asians and Hispanics. Non-Hispanic whites make up 63 percent of the U.S.; Hispanics, 17 percent; blacks, 12.3 percent; Asians, 5 percent; and multiracial Americans, 2.4 percent.

3. About 353 of the nation’s 3,143 counties, or 11 percent, are now “majority-minority.” Six of those counties tipped to that status last year: Mecklenburg, N.C.; Cherokee, Okla.; Texas, Okla.; Bell, Texas; Hockley, Texas; and Terrell, Texas.

4. In 2012, 13 states and the District of Columbia had an under-5 age population that was “majority-minority,” up from five states in 2000. In 25 states and the District of Columbia, minorities now make up more than 40 percent of the under-5 group.

5. Among the under-5 age group, 22 percent live in poverty, typically in more rural states such as Mississippi, Arkansas and Louisiana. Black toddlers were most likely to be poor, at 41 percent, followed by Hispanics at 32 percent and whites at 13 percent. Asian toddlers had a poverty rate of 11 percent.

Jamelle Bouie of The American Prospect put an intriguing spin on these numbers: it’s actually a pretty good bet that in, in a certain sense, whites will remain the majority of Americans. This is because many Hispanics and Asians in the future will choose to identify as white, thereby keeping America majority-white rather than majority-minority as the Census projections indicate.

Maybe. But first we should be clear on what the Census is really talking about when it projects that the US will be majority-minority by 2043. Minorities in the Census definition are based on two different questions, one on race and one on Hispanic ethnicity. Here’s the race question:

And here’s the Hispanic ethnicity question:

Minorities are those who check any other race but white on the race question OR check more than one race on the race question OR check any of the yes boxes on the Hispanic question. Conversely, whites, as distinct from minorities, are those who check only the white box on the race question AND check the no box on the Hispanic question. To put it more technically, when Census talks about whites and contrasts them with minorities, they are defining whites as “white-alone non-Hispanic”.

So when Census says whites will be a minority of the population in 2043, they mean that non-Hispanic, non-multiracial whites will be a minority, not that whites as defined by the race question above will be a minority. In fact, whites in the latter sense will continue to be a majority for quite some time — 71 percent in 2050, for example, a year where Census also projects that minorities, as defined above, will be 53 percent of the population.

The main reason for this result is that almost all Hispanics (91 percent) identify as white alone on the race question. Thus, the situation Bouie projects is not hypothetical; it is already here. The issue therefore is not whether, say, Hispanics in the future will identify as white — most already do — but whether Hispanic ethnicity is going to completely lose its cultural and political significance in the future for large numbers of Hispanics, making them indistinguishable from today’s non-Hispanic, non-multiracial whites. I am skeptical that this will happen very rapidly, but this is the case that skeptics of a majority-minority America have to make.

Economy

California Clothing Store Will Pay $7.5 Million In Racial Discrimination Settlement

By Joseph Diebold, Guest Blogger on Jun 18, 2013 at 10:45 am

Credit: New York Magazine

California-based clothing retailer Wet Seal will pay $7.5 million and make a series of changes aimed at reducing racial discrimination after a federal court approved a settlement last week.

A California district court gave preliminary approval to the national class action settlement in the case, Cogdell v. Wet Seal, which alleged that Wet Seal “had a policy of denying equal pay and promotion opportunities and firing African-American store management employees” in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. The plaintiffs were represented by the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund and two other law firms. The court will decide in November, after a review of the claims process, whether to grant final approval.

If the settlement, which the two parties reached May 8, is approved, at least $5.58 million of the $7.5 million in monetary relief will be paid in damages to current and former managers of Wet Seal outlets who are black or African-American. The company will also take several non-monetary steps, including expanding its human resources department and tracking job applications to ensure diversity in hiring and applications.

A three-year investigation by the Equal Employment and Opportunity Commission (EEOC) into the store wrapped up last year. The EEOC concluded that the store had knowingly discriminated in its hiring decisions, the Los Angeles Times reported:

In a three-year investigation, the commission found evidence that Wet Seal corporate managers openly stated that to be profitable the retailer had to retain workers with “the Armani look” — meaning thin, blond and blue-eyed.

One high-level executive sent an email to underlings in 2009 pointing out that the dominance of African American workers was a “huge issue.”

“Managers were instructed to make employment decisions based on race,” the agency said in documents made public Monday.

The case is the latest reminder of the difficulties African-Americans face in the job market. The black unemployment rate is still more than double that for white people, and last week the EEOC filed two suits against separate companies alleging they unfairly used background checks to discriminate in hiring decisions.

Joseph Diebold is an intern at ThinkProgress.

Sports

Spurs Answer Racist Response To Latino National Anthem Singer By Letting Him Sing Again

By Travis Waldron on Jun 14, 2013 at 12:01 pm

Sebastien De La Cruz (Credit: San Antonio Express-News)

When Darius Rucker canceled plans to sing the national anthem ahead of Game 3 of the NBA Finals, the San Antonio Spurs asked Sebastien De La Cruz to do the honors. De La Cruz, an 11-year-old Mexican-American, is a San Antonio resident who appeared as a singer on America’s Got Talent last year, and he didn’t disappoint.

That the Spurs chose a Latino boy in a mariachi suit quickly became a controversy, with social media users asking why an “illegal alien” was singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” and why he was “dressed like such a little Mexican.” One Twitter user posited that “They prolly made this Mexican sing to stay in America.”

De La Cruz was quick to respond , as was San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro, who wrote in a Facebook message that De La Cruz “represent[s] the best of our nation’s future!” Spurs coach Greg Popovich blasted the critics as “idiots” who were for some reason “proud of their ignorance.” But the Spurs organization itself had the best response, because it asked De La Cruz to come back and sing the national anthem again before Game 4 Thursday night. And he killed it:

It’s great that the Spurs didn’t back down in the face of criticism, but it shouldn’t be shocking. San Antonio is 63 percent Latino, according to the Census Bureau, so the organization is used to embracing its diverse population. And if any franchise understands the benefits of immigration, it’s the Spurs: eight of their 15 players are foreign-born, coming from places like Argentina, Brazil, Australia, and France.

Still, it would have been easy to ignore the controversy and the critics who don’t understand that people who aren’t white and male are Americans too (represented by the flag and everything!), especially at a time when immigration reform is so prominently featured in the news. But the Spurs didn’t, because doing so wouldn’t have just alienated an 11-year-old who can sing an amazing rendition of his nation’s anthem but also the community they call home. The Spurs and the NBA do a significant amount of outreach to America’s growing Latino population. Sometimes, though, the best outreach (and the best business decision) comes from showing that community that you aren’t scared to stand up for their right to be Americans too.

Justice

Chief Justice Roberts Calls For Rare Formal Review Of Allegedly Racist Judge

By Ian Millhiser on Jun 13, 2013 at 10:30 am

Judge Edith Jones

Judge Edith Jones, the former chief judge of the powerful United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, will be the subject of a formal ethics review.

Last week, a coalition of civil rights organizations filed a complaint against Jones alleging that she claimed that African-Americans and Hispanics are predisposed towards violent crime, among other things. In response to this complaint, Fifth Circuit Chief Judge Carl Stewart asked Chief Justice John Roberts to transfer the Jones complaint to another circuit. Yesterday, Roberts obliged with a letter formally calling upon the Judicial Council of the District of Columbia Circuit to “exercise the powers of a judicial council with respect to” the Jones complaint and any related complaints.

Although the rules governing judicial misconduct complaints allow for such transfers, they are unusual and are normally not handled in as public a manner.

As of last month, the Judicial Council of the District of Columbia Circuit includes Chief Judge Merrick Garland, a Clinton appointee, and four other judges appointed by Democratic presidents. The remaining four members are Republican appointees.

Economy

Two Companies Charged With Racial Discrimination In Hiring Practices

By Joseph Diebold, Guest Blogger on Jun 13, 2013 at 9:30 am

Credit: AutoBlog

The U.S. Equal Employment and Opportunity Commission (EEOC) filed complaints Tuesday alleging two major employers used improper criminal background checks in hiring, thus discriminating against black job applicants.

The EEOC alleges, in complaints filed in Illinois and South Carolina courts, that discount retailer Dollar General and a U.S.-based manufacturing branch of German auto company BMW violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.

The BMW suit says the company’s background check policy had no time limit on convictions, which constituted “a blanket exclusion without any individualized assessment of the nature and gravity of the crimes, the ages of the convictions, or the nature of the claimants’ respective positions.” The Dollar General suit, meanwhile, “charges that Dollar General conditions all of its job offers on criminal background checks, which results in a disparate impact against blacks.”

The EEOC issued new guidelines for employers in April 2012 after Pepsi agreed to pay $3.1 million to settle a separate EEOC lawsuit arguing that the soda company’s policy of not hiring workers with arrest records disproportionately excluded more than 300 black applicants. According to the new guidelines, even a policy that does not explicitly discriminate in its use of background checks “may disproportionately impact some individuals protected under Title VII, and may violate the law if not job related and consistent with business necessity (disparate impact liability).”

There is a growing nationwide movement to pass laws banning the use of criminal background checks in hiring given the difficulty formerly incarcerated people already face when they return to their communities. In May, Minnesota became the ninth state to pass a “ban the box” law, which restricts the ability of companies to use background checks until an applicant receives an interview.

Racial minorities already face an uphill struggle in a tough job market. The black unemployment rate in the latest jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics was more than double the rate for white people, 13.5 percent to 6.7 percent. Yet in March, Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) suggested all federal laws banning employment discrimination may be unconstitutional.

Joseph Diebold is an intern at ThinkProgress.

Justice

If You Own A Gun, You’re Probably A White Guy

By Ian Millhiser on Jun 13, 2013 at 9:00 am

A survey released earlier this week by the Pew Research Center finds that over 6 in 10 American gun owners are white men. Overall, 74 percent of gun owners are male and 82 percent are white. Just 7 percent of gun owners are African-American and 6 percent are Hispanic.

This result suggests that the gun lobby’s present clout is unlikely to last much longer, as white people as a percentage of America’s population are projected to decline rapidly in coming decades:

Sports

NFL Commissioner: Redskins Name ‘Stands For Strength, Courage, Pride and Respect’

By Travis Waldron on Jun 12, 2013 at 4:00 pm

(Credit: Associated Press)

A top Republican messaging shop may be holding a focus group asking questions about the name of the Washington Redskins, but National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell seems to have already developed his own justification for the name. In a letter responding to members of Congress who have urged Goodell and Redskins owner Daniel Snyder to change that name, Goodell said that it remains “a unifying force that stands for strength, courage, pride and respect,” USA Today reports.

Deadspin has a full copy of the letter, addressed to Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK) and Rep. Betty McCollum (D-MN), the co-chairs of the Congressional Native American Caucus. It is courtesy copied to eight other members of Congress who, along with Cole and McCollum, sent Goodell a letter calling for a name change in May. In the letter, Goodell cites the “overwhelming majority” of Americans who view the name positively and multiple Native American tribal leaders who have said they have no problem with it. The name is honorary and worth preserving, Goodell argues, because “the most recent detailed survey of Native Americans, conducted by the independent and highly respected Annenberg Public Policy Center, found that fewer than 10% considered the name objectionable.”

Goodell did not state the exact percentage of Native Americans that would have to find the name objectionable to qualify it as objectionable.

Meanwhile, several of Goodell’s arguments seem thin. Goodell’s letter says the team chose the name in 1933 to honor its head coach, William “Lone Star” Dietz, the obvious insinuation being that Dietz was a Native American. But as Deadspin’s Barry Petchesky noted, he almost certainly wasn’t. Goodell added that the matter has been settled legally, though he didn’t mention the ongoing federal trademark case that is taking place only because a previous decision to rescind the Redskins’ trademark on grounds that it is an offensive term was overturned on a technicality.

And while Goodell states that “there is no doubt that the team understandably is proud of its heritage and the culturally rich community it serves,” he acknowledges neither the team’s extensive history of racism nor that the “culturally rich community it serves” includes a population that is just 0.6 percent Native American, according to the Census Bureau. One wonders, then, if Goodell would feel the same way if the Redskins chose to honor the racial group that makes up a majority of D.C.’s population and 28 percent of its business owners with a similar racial descriptor.

The letter wasn’t received well in Congress. McCollum called it “a statement of absurdity” and “another attempt to justify a racial slur.” Del. Eni Faleomavaega, who represents American Samoa, said Goodell’s response “completely missed the point.” Former NFL linebacker Scott Fujita tweeted Wednesday, “Whoever drafted the Commissioner’s letter to Congress about the football team in DC failed him miserably.”

Health

Medical Bills Continue To Take The Biggest Toll On Black Americans

By Tara Culp-Ressler on Jun 10, 2013 at 10:50 am

(Credit: Public Health Practice)

As medical costs continue to rise across the entire health care sector, Americans are increasingly worried about being able to afford the health care they need. And some sectors of the population are hit harder than others. Medical bills continue to have an outsized impact on black Americans, according to a new survey conducted in collaboration with NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Harvard School of Public Health.

Nearly a quarter of African American families who participated in the survey said they have recently struggled to afford the prescription drugs they need. And one in three of the African American respondents said they had “serious problems” paying bills from doctors or hospitals over the past year.

“We specifically asked African American families what were the top concerns they had for health in their own families,” Robert Blendon, a professor of health policy at the Harvard School of Public Health, explained. “And we ended up with high blood pressure, stroke and diabetes as being the top.”

Those chronic conditions are somewhat in contrast to the health issues that the general population typically reports as their biggest concerns, like cancer. That’s perhaps due to the fact that the national obesity epidemic has taken an outsized toll on people of color. Access to healthy food has typically been divided along racial and socioeconomic lines, and fast food companies often specifically market their cheap products to low-income communities of color.

African Americans also already tend to have worse health outcomes and less access to health treatment than white Americans do — issues that increase in areas of the country with increased levels of segregation.

Health insurance doesn’t necessarily alleviate the stress that accompanies sky high medical bills. The typical family of four with a employer-sponsored health plan spends more on their health costs each year than they do on their groceries. Most of the people who participated in NPR’s survey did have health insurance plans, but nearly half of them still worried about the catastrophic effects of a major illness in the future. “We found general economic insecurity among families who generally were doing well — and this fear of paying a larger medical bill was just one of the top problems they had,” Blendon said.

Sports

Another Major Challenge Facing Soccer’s Efforts To Eradicate Racism

By Travis Waldron on Jun 7, 2013 at 11:19 am

Mario Balotelli reacts to racial abuse from fans. (Credit: Getty Images)

FIFA, international soccer’s governing body, approved a package of reforms meant to address the racism and abuse that permeates international soccer and returned to focus when Kevin Prince Boateng, a Ghanaian midfielder for Italian club AC Milan, walked off the pitch after fans showered him with racial taunts in a friendly match this year. Fans have also targeted Boateng’s teammate, Milan striker Mario Balotelli, and it seems not a month goes by without news of another racial incident at a soccer match somewhere in the world.

FIFA’s efforts face significant challenges, though, and one of them may be that the most common racism isn’t at matches in top-tier leagues like Italy’s Serie A, where Milan plays, or in major international matches. When ESPN The Magazine’s Wright Thompson traveled to Italy to examine the political and social roots of racism in one of soccer’s largest hotbeds, he found Eric Andrews, who plays in Serie D, Serie D, four rungs below the top Italian league and the rough equivalent of A-league baseball in the United States. Black players in top leagues, Andrews said, have “not seen anything” like the racism that persists in the lower levels of soccer:

“Somebody will call me a monkey in front of the referee,” he says. “I turn to the referee and say, ‘Did you hear what he said?’ The referee says I should keep quiet. That is what the referee tells me. Are you kidding me?”

He’s 28 now. People tell him he might still make it, but he knows the truth. His window is closed; he’s too old to change his life with the game that brought him here. Now he plays because he loves the way he feels with a ball at his feet, eyes up, looking ahead. He tries to ignore the monkey chants, and the slurs, even as he notices the abuse is getting worse.

“Boateng has not seen anything,” Andrews says. “He needs to come here. I’ve been experiencing many things.”

Racism, of course, is a major problem in the top leagues, particularly in Italy, where the most violent and virulent racists exist at clubs like Lazio and Roma, as Thompson lays plain in excellent detail. But racism in those matches can be less common and less overt — “During his first three seasons at AC Milan, [Boateng] never was abused,” Thompson writes. “Then he rode a bus to Pro Patria,” where the now-famous walk off the pitch occurred. It is also far more likely to end up in the international spotlight, and now, under the scornful eye of FIFA and the European federation.

The question facing FIFA and its continental and domestic federations is whether it can or will apply the same scrutiny to soccer’s lower leagues, which exist as an afterthought for most soccer fans, regulators, and media. Will racism that occurs on the dusty fields and in the empty “stadiums” that play host to those matches be noticed, monitored, and punished the same way it will be at matches that occur in the international spotlight and spark ugly headlines across the world?

As part of the new guidelines, FIFA wants to place a separate official who will be in charge of noticing racist behavior among players, coaches and fans. It will levy serious fines and penalties, including forfeiture of league points and possible relegation to lower leagues, on clubs that repeatedly exhibit racism. Those penalties, if used correctly, are harsh enough to hopefully reduce that sort of behavior at matches involving large, competitive, and profitable clubs. The challenge will be to ensure that racism is noticed and that penalties are also applied to small clubs in minor leagues. Because while Mario Balotelli and Kevin Prince Boateng make headlines when fans call them monkeys and shower them with bananas, Eric Andrews deserves to take a field free of racism too.

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