Wednesday, May 26, 2021

Tim Scott: "America is not a racist country" (part 6)

 

Meet the receptive Tim Scott, GOP U.S. Senator from South Carolina.

America not a racist country? 

Tim Scott, meet Dan Patrick, president of the Texas Senate.


Texas Tribune, 5/23/2021
Relocating polling sites is part of the GOP’s priority voting bill — Senate Bill 7 — as it was passed in the Texas Senate. It would create a new formula for setting polling places in the handful of mostly Democratic counties with a population of 1 million or more. Although the provision was removed from the bill when passed in the House, it remains on the table as a conference committee of lawmakers begins hammering out a final version of the bill behind closed doors. 
Under that provision, counties would be required to distribute polling places based on the share of registered voters in each state House district within the county. The formula would apply only to the state’s five largest counties — Harris, Dallas, Tarrant, Bexar and Travis — and possibly Collin County once new census figures are released later this year.

All 6 counties voted heavily Democratic in 2020.



5/21/2021 update starts here

America not a racist country?  Tell that to Black professional football players with brain injury claims.



Former Washington running back Ken Jenkins, 60, and his wife Amy Lewis on Friday delivered 50,000 petitions demanding equal treatment for Black players to Senior U.S. District Judge Anita B. Brody in Philadelphia, who is overseeing the massive settlement. Former players who suffer dementia or other diagnoses can be eligible for a payout. 
Under the settlement, however, the NFL has insisted on using a scoring algorithm on the dementia testing that assumes Black men start with lower cognitive skills. They must therefore score much lower than whites to show enough mental decline to win an award. The practice, which went unnoticed until 2018, has made it harder for Black former players to get awards. [emphasis added]


5/20/2021 update, "Tell that to students and faculty at historical black colleges and universities", starts here.

Tennessee could owe a historically Black university more than a half-billion dollars after it withheld funding for decades. 
A bipartisan legislative committee determined last month that the state failed to adequately fund Tennessee State University in matched land grants going all the way back to the 1950s, costing the public university between $150 million and $544 million. 
When the school was founded, the federal government designated it a land-grant institution, as it did with the University of Tennessee. Under the program, the state of Tennessee was required to match the federal money sent to the schools each year. 
"In TSU's case, the state did not match the funds dollar-for-dollar for decades," stated a news release from the legislative committee. 
Tennessee State isn't the only historically Black college or university missing out on state funds. Maryland recently finalized a $577 million settlement to resolve a lawsuit alleging the state had underfunded its four HBCUs. 
Andre Perry, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who has written about Maryland's battle with inequality in public higher education, blames institutional racism for what he believes is a pervasive lack of funding at HBCUs. [emphasis added]
Related link:



Part 3 (5/6/2021), "Then why does redlining still exist?', starts here.
Fifty years after the federal Fair Housing Act banned racial discrimination in lending, African Americans and Latinos continue to be routinely denied conventional mortgage loans at rates far higher than their white counterparts. 
This modern-day redlining persisted in 61 metro areas even when controlling for applicants' income, loan amount and neighborhood, according to millions of Home Mortgage Disclosure Act records analyzed by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting. The yearlong analysis, based on 31 million records, relied on techniques used by leading academics, the Federal Reserve and Department of Justice to identify lending disparities. It found a pattern of troubling denials for people of color across the country, including in major metropolitan areas such as Atlanta, Detroit, Philadelphia, Rockford, Ill., St. Louis and San Antonio. African Americans faced the most resistance in Southern cities - Mobile, Alabama; Greenville, North Carolina; and Gainesville, Florida - and Latinos in Iowa City, Iowa.

5/5/2021 update starts here.

America not a racist country?  Then why is the GOP attempting to whitewash America history?

Complaining about what he called indoctrination in schools, former President Donald Trump created a commission that promoted “patriotic” education and played down America’s role in slavery. But though he’s out of the White House and the commission has disbanded, the cause hasn’t died. Lawmakers in Republican states are now pressing for similar action. 
Proposals in Arkansas, Iowa and Mississippi would prohibit schools from using a New York Times project that focused on slavery’s legacy. Georgia colleges and universities have been quizzed about whether they’re teaching about white privilege or oppression. And GOP governors are backing overhauls of civic education that mirror Trump’s abandoned initiatives.
This is, literally and figuratively, a whitewash of American history.

Dictionary entry from Merriam-Webster

Talk about 'cancel culture'.


Original April 29, 2021 post starts here

Tell that to Amyn Gilani of Colleyville, Texas.

A man involved with the True Texas Project, a Tarrant County-based tea party group, said “white power” to an Asian City Council candidate as he campaigned during early voting in Colleyville, according to two witnesses and a video of the incident. 
Amyn Gilani, who is running for the Place 5 Council seat in Colleyville, said he was in the parking lot of City Hall on Saturday and walked past political volunteer David Medlin and Place 5 City Council member Chuck Kelley, who were having a conversation. “David Medlin sticks his fist out and says, ‘white power,’” Gilani said. 
There was a second incident on Monday, which Gilani recorded on his phone. He was again outside City Hall and said Medlin had been with a group of incumbent Colleyville council members, including Callie Rigney and Kathy Wheat, before Medlin drove away in his truck and said “white power” toward Gilani.

Colleyville:  On the losing side of Texas and U.S. demographics 


The True Texas Project:  a sea of white faces



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