“NFL players will be allowed to stay in the locker room during the national anthem, but their teams will be fined by the league if they go onto the field and kneel, according to new rules adopted by owners on Wednesday in an effort to defuse an issue that escalated last season into a national debate catalyzed by President Trump,” the New York Times reports.
Race
A Remarkable Moment I’m Sorry I Missed
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Send a Mariachi Band to Racist Lawyer’s Office
A GoFundMe campaign is raising money to send a Mariachi band and taco truck to the offices of the New York City lawyer who threatened to call immigration authorities on Spanish-speaking restaurant employees.
Making America Hate Again?
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Russian Ads Focused Mainly on Race
USA Today: “The Russian company charged with orchestrating a wide-ranging effort to meddle in the 2016 presidential election overwhelmingly focused its barrage of social media advertising on what is arguably America’s rawest political division: race.”
“While some ads focused on topics as banal as business promotion or Pokémon, the company consistently promoted ads designed to inflame race-related tensions. Some dealt with race directly; others dealt with issues fraught with racial and religious baggage such as ads focused on protests over policing, the debate over a wall on the U.S. border with Mexico and relationships with the Muslim community.”
‘We Must Never Be As Wrong As This Again’
This is quite an editorial in the Montgomery Advertiser:
On the day when people from across the globe come to our capital city to consider the sordid history of slavery and lynching and try to reconcile the horrors of our past, the Montgomery Advertiser recognizes its own shameful place in the history of these dastardly, murderous deeds.
We take responsibility for our proliferation of a false narrative regarding the treatment of African-Americans in those disgraceful days.
The Advertiser was careless in how it covered mob violence and the terror foisted upon African-Americans from Reconstruction through the 1950s. We dehumanized human beings. Too often we characterized lynching victims as guilty before proven so and often assumed they committed the crime.
Read the whole thing…
It Was Racism, Not the Economy, Stupid
Alan Abramowitz: “Data from the Pew Research Center show that six months into Donald Trump’s presidency, the gap between whites with and without college degrees in opinions of the president was enormous. Non-college whites were far more likely to approve of Trump’s performance than white college graduates.”
“This gap appears to have little or nothing to do with differences between the economic circumstances of these two groups. While whites without college degrees did experience far more economic distress than those with college degrees, economic distress itself appeared to have little relationship with opinions of Trump.”
“The main explanation for the class divide in opinions of Trump among whites appeared to be differing views on race relations. White college graduates were much more likely than whites without college degrees to hold liberal views on the significance of racial discrimination, and opinions on the significance of racial discrimination were strongly related to opinions of Trump’s performance. Racial attitudes, not economics, appears to be the main factor producing strong support for Trump among members of the white working class.”
Most Americans Say Trump Is Racist
A new AP-NORC poll finds that 57% of Americans, including more than 8 in 10 blacks, three-quarters of Hispanics and nearly half of whites, said they think President Trump is racist.
Eighty-five percent of Democrats consider Trump racist, but just 21% of Republicans agree.
Anti-Semitic Incidents Soar by 57%
“The Anti-Defamation League is reporting a 57 percent increase in anti-Semitic incidents in the U.S. last year, the highest tally that the Jewish civil rights group has counted in more than two decades,” the AP reports.
Rauner Drinks Chocolate Milk for Diversity
“In an awkward onstage appearance this week, Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner (R) drank a glass of chocolate milk to demonstrate his belief in diversity,” the Chicago Tribune reports.
Said Rauner: “It’s really, really good. Diversity!”
Shooter Belonged to White Supremacist Group
“Nikolas Cruz, the alleged gunman who killed 17 people at a Florida high school on Wednesday, trained with a white-supremacist group,” its leader told the Daily Beast.
Said Jordan Jereb, captain of the Republic of Florida: “He probably used that training to do what he did yesterday. Nobody I know told him to do that, he just freaked out.”
‘Mr. President, Are You a Racist?’
Washington Examiner: “In just three days, the short video of reporters yelling questions to President Trump about whether he is a racist has become C-SPAN’s most-watched clip on YouTube involving the Trump White House.”
The Definitive List of Trump’s Racist Remarks
David Leonhardt and Ian Prasad Philbrick: “The media often falls back on euphemisms when describing Trump’s comments about race: racially loaded, racially charged, racially tinged, racially sensitive. And Trump himself has claimed that he is “the least racist person.” But here’s the truth: Donald Trump is a racist. He talks about and treats people differently based on their race. He has done so for years, and he is still doing so.”
“Here, we have attempted to compile a definitive list of his racist comments – or at least the publicly known ones.”
Quote of the Day
“No, no, I’m not a racist. I am the least racist person you have ever interviewed. That I can tell you.”
— President Trump, quoted by Politico.