Whites Believe They Are Victims of Racism More Often Than Blacks

WHITES BELIEVE THEY ARE VICTIMS OF RACISM MORE OFTEN THAN BLACKS

Whites believe that they have replaced blacks as the primary victims of racial discrimination in contemporary America, according to a new study from researchers at Tufts University’s School of Arts and Sciences and Harvard Business School. The findings, say the authors, show that America has not achieved the “post-racial” society that some predicted in the wake of Barack Obama’s election.

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The Hidden History of Mexico/U.S. Labor Solidarity

The Hidden History of Mexico/U.S. Labor Solidarity

David Bacon writes, “After a quarter century in which the development of solidarity relationships was interrupted during the cold war, unions and workers are once again searching out their counterparts and finding effective and appropriate ways to support each other.”

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This article was published by the Americas Program, a project of the Institute for Transnational Social Change, which is based at UCLA in the Center for Labor Research and Education.

War on Crime: U.S. Supreme Court Condemns California Prison Abuses, by Tom Hayden

War on Crime: U.S. Supreme Court Condemns California Prison Abuses
Monday, May 23, 2011 at 3:38PM
Tom Hayden

Inmates sit in crowded conditions at the California Institute for Men in Chino, California. (AP Photo)

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Fifty years ago, a young Justice Department civil rights lawyer, Thelton Henderson, offered to drive Martin Luther King to a safe residence amidst lynch-mob threats. For this service, he was reprimanded and removed from his position on the grounds that a government vehicle could not be used to protect King. Shaped by the fires of the early Sixties, Henderson went from being the first African-American civil rights attorney in the Justice Department to ultimately being named a federal judge under President Jimmy Carter.

This week Henderson was vindicated in a long, controversial struggle over conditions in California’s prison system. In 2005, Henderson ruled that overcrowding and lack of medical care amounted to “cruel and unusual punishment” under the Eighth Amendment. His position subjected him to attack from the California’s powerful prison guards union, and the political leadership in Sacramento, including then-Attorney General Jerry Brown, an opponent of the death penalty who nonetheless defended in court a prison system where 112 inmates died of preventable causes in the past two years. In addition, there has been an inmate suicide rate twice the national average. As recently as this year, Gov.-elect Brown was complaining about those “intrusive” federal judges who “want us to spend more money,” though it was Brown himself who hired $1,100 Washington lawyer to fight the case.

Judge Henderson’s vindication by a conservative-leaning U.S. Supreme Court, sends a message that there may be increasing limits to America’s mass incarceration policies, including guarantees against cruel and unusual practices. The ruling is a huge victory as well for the Berkeley-based Prison Law Project, which brought the initial complaint and persevered through multiple hearings.
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This article originally appeared on tomhayden.com.