Tasty Morning Bytes – Race Cards, Criminalizing Poverty and a Black Confederate Daughter
Good morning, DCentric readers! Woohoo for Wednesday and delicious links:
RACE Card – Michele Norris NPR/All Things Considered host Michele Norris asked people all over the country to send her a postcard bearing a six-word statement on race. Here are a few: “You talk like a white girl”. “Racist Childhood. I didn’t buy it.” ” Start with kids, and MIX well” “LOOKOUT! Hispanics are taking over.” “It will be up to women.” (michele-norris.com)
How America turned poverty into a crime According to Kaaryn Gustafson of the University of Connecticut Law School, applying for assistance feels like being booked by the police: “There may be a mug shot, fingerprinting, and lengthy interrogations as to one’s children’s true paternity. The ostensible goal is to prevent welfare fraud, but the psychological impact is to turn poverty itself into a kind of crime.” (Salon)
After Years Of Research, Confederate Daughter Arises And she’s not white: “Rice is the second black Real Daughter to be recognized by an organization that was once exclusively for white women. Yet some progressive historians and Civil War buffs frown at her father’s story. They say the very term “black Confederate” supports the notion that the Civil War wasn’t about slavery.” (npr.org)
Hispanic households: Looking at the wealth gap Sir, about that wealth gap– why did Hispanics lose more equity than their black home-owning counterparts? “Over time more and more Hispanics had become economically vulnerable and eminently exploitable, a fact attributable in large part to American immigration policy.” (Economist)
A color-blind Montgomery County is still a myth “(Joey) lives in Four Corners and said he’d support a curfew. He won’t take his family to Silver Spring at night because of ‘thug-looking kids’ hanging out there. ‘And I’m not just talking about black and Latino kids,’ he quickly added. If we don’t see race, is that statement necessary?” (Greater Greater Washington)