How dark money and voter disenfranchisement combined in a toxic brew that resulted in the lowest voter turnout in more than 70 years, hampering whatever chance Democrats had to win.
Race & Ethnicity
Posted inCivil Rights in America
Black America’s Promised Land: Why I Am Still a Racial Optimist
Hope and pessimism have defined two traditions of American thinking about race. Fully acknowledging recent setbacks, the author makes the case for the tradition of hope.
Posted inMoney, Politics, and Power
Watch Party Dispatch: At Howard University, Mentors Challenge Young Activists’ Ideas of Victory
For the African-American community, given all the obstacles, an uptick in turnout can be a victory in and of itself.
Posted inMoney, Politics, and Power
Watch Party Dispatch: Marijuana Legalization Activists Celebrate in D.C.
For many, this is the first midterm election they’ve voted in. And Initiative 71, which went on to pass with nearly 70 percent of the vote, is the reason.
Posted inMoney, Politics, and Power
Watch Party Dispatch: Poets and Pols Gather For Some Pointed Words
In which Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton mingles with constituents and the verse is a bit searing.
Posted inMoney, Politics, and Power
Meet the Working Families Party, Whose Ballot Line is in Play in New York
The WFP has amassed the power to turn progressive ideas into law. But a controversial attempt to work a deal with incumbent New York Governor Cuomo has put its ballot line at stake.
Posted inMoney, Politics, and Power
GOP’s Neo-Confederate Theocrat Wins Council Seat in One of Richest U.S. Counties
Voters were looking for something new when they elected Michael Peroutka to run as a Republican for a seat on Maryland’s Anne Arundel County Council. What they got was something very old—like ante bellum kind of old.
Posted inMoney, Politics, and Power
Will Black Millennials, Faced With Voting Restrictions, Turn Out On Election Day?
North Carolina is closing college polling places. Texas has a forbidding ID law. Ohio curtailed early voting. For African-American students, the obstacles are mounting.
Posted inBooks, Arts and Culture
Seahawks’ Russell Wilson Controversy Shows Dangers of Racial Authenticity Tests
The ‘are you black enough?’ question is perilously close to the racist one-drop rule of yore—whether called by blacks or whites.
Posted inBooks, Arts and Culture
After Ferguson, ‘Dear White People’ Arrives Right On Time
Then again, any time would have been right. Systemic white privilege and the language of racism is an American tradition as old as the republic.
