Poll says blacks less likely to have enough for retirement
Older white Americans are nearly twice as likely as African-Americans to say they’ve saved enough for retirement, a new poll found. The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research survey also found that African- Americans and Latinos have less financial security than whites and will rely on fewer sources of income during retirement. The retirement savings gap between white and other minority groups extends beyond pensions, 401(k)s or other retirement accounts. The survey shows older white Americans are also more likely to collect Social Security benefits, inherit money from their families or receive income from the sale of a home or other physical assets. The disparity in retirement readiness is a sign that the structural inequalities black and Latino workers face during their working years extend into retirement. For example, the unemployment rate among African-Americans is twice that of whites. On top of that, blacks earn less than whites with similar education and experience, research shows. “Having good saving habits is good but black and Latino workers are just always worse off and it makes every aspect of saving for retirement harder,” said Matthew Rutledge, an economist at the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. About 38 percent of older white Americans said they had sufficient money for retirement compared with 20 percent for African-Americans. Four in 10 older Americans say they think they’ll outlive their retirement savings. “Black and Latino families benefit from being close,” Rutledge said, adding that family members help to care for children and the elderly. “But it doesn’t pay off when compared to whites family’s (financial) contributions.” Families not only pass down money, but also information on how to handle finances. “They have learned better savings behavior from the previous generation,” he said. “Older Americans who received financial help from family are less likely to have racked up credit card debt or student loans. They can save (for retirement) rather than paying off debt.” The poll showed whites are significantly more likely, compared to African-Americans and Latinos to say they have a retirement account. They’re also more likely than African-Americans to say they will have income from the sale of physical assets. But even when it comes to the most basic form of income during retirement, whites are more likely to say they will receive Social Security payments – 82 percent compared to 62 percent for African-Americans and 60 percent for Latinos, the survey found. The situation is so dire that some older African-Americans and Latinos have no sources of income for retirement -14 percent compared to 4 percent of whites, the survey found. Maria Villanueva, 69, is one of them. Villanueva doesn’t collect Social Security payments because she didn’t pay into the system. Villanueva immigrated illegally to California in the 70s to work as a farmworker and became a legal resident after the Immigration Reform and Control Act was signed into law. The single mother worked as a domestic worker but was paid in cash. “I didn’t know I had to pay into Social Security,” she said in Spanish. “All my life I’ve taken care of everyone except myself.” Villanueva hoped she would be able to work into older age but she can’t because of various chronic illnesses including diabetes and arthritis. She now relies on government assistance and food stamps. She provides for her 15-year-old granddaughter. “I try not to think about the future because I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow,” she said. “What if I go to sleep tonight and I don’t wake up tomorrow?” Retired members of minority groups tend to have lower incomes and are more likely to describe their financial situation as “somewhat poor or very poor” compared to white Americans. Black Americans were also more likely to say they sometimes fall behind on bills, the poll found. John Jackson, 66, of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, contributed to an Individual Retirement Account when he worked as a manager. Now, two years into retirement, he said he’s not sure if his savings and Social Security will be enough. Jackson, who is black, says there are many people worse off than him and that’s why he doesn’t like to complain. Worst case scenario, he said, he has a big loving family who could take care of him. “I know God will take care of me,” he said. Some white Americans also are fearful about having enough for retirement. For example, Karen Brooks, a 52-year-old university professor living in a suburb outside Seattle, said she’s concerned whether she’s saved enough. Brooks is, by most standards, better off financially than Jackson. She has a pension from her work as a school teacher. She is also contributing about 15 percent of her current income to a retirement account and she may even receive a small inheritance. But her biggest source of worry is that she didn’t save when she went back to graduate school. “I’m pretty smart and I’ve done well,” she said. “I’m saving for retirement but I don’t know if it’s going to be enough. It’s frightening even talking about it now.” The survey was conducted Feb. 14 through March 13 by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research with funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. It involved interviews in English and Spanish with 1,683 people aged 50 and older nationwide who are members of NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. It includes oversamples of 332 African Americans and 308 Hispanics. Results from the full survey have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.0 percentage points. Republished with permission of the Associated Press.
Black Americans weep for the Obama era and uncertain future
On the night in 2008 when Barack Obama was elected the country’s first black president, many black Americans wept. Eight years later, they weep again for the end of an era some thought they would never live to see — and for the uncertain future they face without him. In Obama, many African-Americans felt they had a leader who celebrated their culture and confronted their concerns. In his wife, Michelle, they saw a national role model who epitomized style and grace with brown skin. Now some regard the election of his successor as the price of black progress and the culmination of years of racist rhetoric directed at the Obamas — at times stoked by President-elect Donald Trump himself. “There’s a great deal of melancholy and fear and despair,” said Lester Spence, professor of political science and Africana studies at Johns Hopkins University. “This is a dynamic that the vast majority of black America has only read about or seen in movies. They don’t understand the potential of what’s coming.” Not all African-Americans are sad to see Obama leaving the White House. But blacks overwhelmingly voted for the president in 2008 and 2012, and fewer than 1 in 10 black voters supported Trump. For many, the events of the final days of Obama’s presidency added to the sense of gloom. With his inauguration fast approaching, Trump took to Twitter last week to bash Rep. John Lewis, a civil rights legend who was nearly killed marching for voting rights in Selma, Alabama in 1965. Trump said Lewis was “all talk, talk, talk — no action or results.” On Monday, the president marked his last Martin Luther King Jr. holiday before he himself enters the annals of history. On Friday, he will be replaced by a chief executive who questioned Obama’s birthplace and offended many blacks during his campaign by describing dangerous “inner cities” in need of “law and order.” Perhaps nowhere was the surreal moment more evident than at the Smithsonian National Museum of African-American History and Culture, where a sea of black faces gathered to say goodbye and to celebrate a history of struggle and progress. “This year marks the most significant, most poignant and really the most important Martin Luther King Jr. celebration of my lifetime,” said James Peterson, professor of English and Africana studies at Lehigh University. “There’s never been a clearer case, in terms of presidential politics and the general direction of the country, where King’s edicts are more pertinent than they are now.” Some in the crowd were descendants of slaves. Some survived segregation. Others were too young to have known anything other than a black president. Many made a deliberate decision to be there on this holiday at the end of a historic presidency. For black Americans, the museum offers “proximity to black culture, black history and the power of black social movements. You can steel yourself,” Peterson said. “There’s a reason folks will find solace in just being there.” Throughout the museum are milestones of black suffering and achievement. Watching a video of the 1963 March on Washington, Charles Phillips of Philadelphia worried about whether dark days lay ahead. “I think we’re going to be in for some bad things,” said Phillips, who wore an Obama T-shirt he bought during the president’s first term. “To come to a place like this, it touches you, to see what we went through — and are hopefully not going to go through in the next four years.” Looking at an exhibit with photos of a smiling, waving Obama family during the 2008 inauguration, Kim Taylor became emotional. Though she had visited the museum five times since it opened in September, she cried for the first time as she reflected on the progress of the civil rights movement and Obama’s historic presidency. “I don’t know if we’ll ever have another black president,” said Taylor, of Capitol Heights, Maryland. “I made a point to be here. I just wanted to be a part of history, to have that closeness with other black people.” Jerrod Lemmons and his wife, Dee, were in town from Waxahachie, Texas, for the weekend, taking their daughter on a college tour of Howard University. But stopping by the museum was also important. Being there during Obama’s last days in the White House was humbling and bittersweet, Jerrod Lemmons said. His head dropped at the thought of Trump taking office at the end of a week that began with King’s birthday. “I don’t believe he supports us,” Lemmons said of the president-elect. “He doesn’t see value in who we are as a people.” Sitting outside of the exhibit on sports, he reflected on African-Americans’ sacrifices, failures and victories. “It all comes down to: What are we going to do?” Lemmons said. “We all have a responsibility to each other. This museum reminds us exactly of that.” Jewelle Mason, also visiting from Philadelphia, came to the museum hoping, just maybe, that Obama might show up. He didn’t. But she let out a contented sigh that she was able to be there on King Day, savoring the final days of Obama’s presidency. “It’s nice to know that now he’s a part of the history,” Mason said. “That’s something they can never take away from us.” Republished with permission of The Associated press.
Black lawmakers to speak out against Jeff Sessions in hearing
Donald Trump‘s pick for attorney general, Sen. Jeff Sessions, used strong words in the first day of his Senate confirmation hearings to deny any hints of a racist past. On day two, a group of black lawmakers will speak out against his nomination — including New Jersey Democrat Cory Booker, who will take the rare step of testifying against a current Senate colleague. Booker’s testimony underscores Democratic unease with the Alabama Republican, who was rejected for a federal judgeship by the Senate Judiciary Committee three decades ago amid accusations of racial impropriety. Sessions on Tuesday called those accusations “damnably false,” denying that he had ever called the NAACP “un-American” and saying he had never harbored racial hostility. He said the allegations – which included that he had referred to a black attorney in his office as “boy” – are part of a false caricature. “It wasn’t accurate then,” Sessions said. “It isn’t accurate now.” Sessions has solid support from the Senate’s Republican majority and from some Democrats in conservative-leaning states, and is expected to easily win confirmation. Still, he faces a challenge persuading skeptical Democrats that he’ll be fair and committed to civil rights, a chief priority of the Justice Department during the Obama administration, as the country’s top law enforcement official. Republicans on the panel defended Sessions, with Texas Sen. Ted Cruz describing how Sessions helped secure convictions in a 1981 murder of a black teenager when he was a federal prosecutor. Two Ku Klux Klan members, Henry Hays and James Knowles, were arrested and convicted. “I know we need to do better, we can never go back,” Sessions said. “I am totally committed to maintaining the freedom and equality that this country has to provide to every citizen, I can assure you.” Booker calls his opposition “a call to conscience” and said he didn’t make the decision to speak at the hearing lightly. “The attorney general is responsible for ensuring the fair administration of justice, and based on his record, I lack confidence that Senator Sessions can honor this duty,” Booker said. Senate officials searched and could find no other case in the country’s history when a sitting senator testified against a colleague picked for a Cabinet post. Civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis, a Georgia Democrat, is also expected to testify against Sessions. Congressional Black Caucus Chairman Rep. Cedric Richmond, a Democrat from Louisiana, also will be appearing, as will David Cole, the legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union. Sessions also will have advocates in the hearing room Wednesday, including former Attorney General Michael Mukasey. As Sessions was questioned Tuesday, protesters repeatedly interrupted the proceedings. Some loudly called Sessions a racist, and two were dressed as members of the Klu Klux Klan. They were quickly hustled out by police. In his testimony, Sessions laid out a sharply conservative vision for the Justice Department he would oversee, pledging to crack down on illegal immigration, gun violence and the “scourge of radical Islamic terrorism.” He vowed to stay independent from the White House and stand up to Trump when necessary. He also distanced himself from some of Trump’s public pronouncements. Sessions said waterboarding, a now-banned interrogation technique for which Trump has at times expressed support, was “absolutely improper and illegal.” Though he said he would prosecute immigrants who repeatedly enter the country illegally and criticized as constitutionally “questionable” an executive action by President Barack Obama that shielded certain immigrants from deportation, he said he did “not support the idea that Muslims, as a religious group, should be denied admission to the United States.” Trump earlier in his campaign called for a temporary total ban on Muslims entering his country but has more recently proposed “extreme vetting.” And Sessions asserted that he could confront Trump if needed, saying an attorney general must be prepared to resign if asked to do something “unlawful or unconstitutional.” He also promised to recuse himself from any investigation there might be into Democrat Hillary Clinton, whom he had criticized during the presidential campaign. Trump said during the campaign he would name a special prosecutor to look into Clinton’s use of a private email server, but he has since backed away. The FBI and Justice Department declined to bring charges last year. Sessions was first elected to the Senate in 1996 and before that served as Alabama attorney general and a U.S. attorney. He’s been a reliably conservative voice in Congress, supporting government surveillance programs, objecting to the proposed closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility – a sharp departure from Obama’s Justice Department – and opposing a 2013 bipartisan immigration bill that included a pathway to citizenship for the estimated 11 million immigrants living in the U.S. illegally. Republish with permission of The Associated Press.
Barack Obama racial legacy: Pride, promise, regret — and deep rift
He entered the White House a living symbol, breaking a color line that stood for 220 years. Barack Obama took office, and race immediately became a focal point in a way that was unprecedented in American history. No matter his accomplishments, he seemed destined to be remembered foremost as the first black man to lead the world’s most powerful nation. But eight years later, Obama’s racial legacy is as complicated as the president himself. To many, his election was a step toward realizing the dream of a post-racial society. He was dubbed the Jackie Robinson of politics. African-Americans, along with Latinos and Asians, voted for him in record numbers in 2008, flush with expectations that he’d deliver on hope and change for people of color. Some say he did, ushering in criminal justice reforms that helped minorities, protecting hundreds of thousands of immigrants from deportation, and appointing racially diverse leaders to key jobs, including the first two black attorneys general. These supporters say he deserves more credit than he gets for bringing America back from the worst recession since the Great Depression, the killing of Osama bin Laden, and a major expansion of health care that secured insurance for millions of minorities. They celebrate his family as a sterling symbol of black success. But Obama also frustrated some who believe he didn’t speak out quickly or forcefully enough on race or push aggressively enough for immigration reform. And his presidency did not usher in racial harmony. Rather, both blacks and whites believe race relations have deteriorated, according to polls. Mounting tensions over police shootings of African-Americans prompted protests in several cities and the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement. Perhaps most strikingly, the president’s successor, Donald Trump, is seen by many as the antithesis of a colorblind society, a one-time leader of the “birther” movement that spread the falsehood that Obama was born in Africa. Trump’s strong reliance on white voters was in sharp contrast to the multiracial coalition that gave Obama his two victories. “President Obama represents the face of the future – multicultural America. Donald Trump represents the old racial order of the black-white divide,” says Fredrick Cornelius Harris, director of the Center on African American Politics and Society at Columbia University. “And for the next decades to come, there will be a battle between those two viewpoints of what America is.” It took more than two centuries for America to elect a black president. It will take many years after he leaves office to sort out what it all meant. — “If he can do it, I can do it, too.” –Cheryl Johnson, of Chicago’s Altgeld Gardens public housing project, on Obama as a lasting symbol. — Two iconic images of the Obama presidency: The president patiently bends over as a 5-year-old black boy touches his head, after the child asked Obama if they had the same kind of hair. A 106-year-old black woman joyfully dances with the president and first lady, beaming as she declares: “I am so happy. A black president. Yay!” Born a century apart, these two visitors to the White House convey the potent symbolism of Obama’s presidency, a luster that hasn’t dimmed. For many black Americans, it’s not so much what policies Obama proposed but his mere presence in the Oval Office that has mattered most. “You can’t put a price tag on that,” says Loretta Augustine-Herron, a former community activist who worked with Obama in Chicago’s Altgeld Gardens in the 1980s. “If he never did anything else for African-Americans, just the fact that he occupies the White House, it lets us see ourselves in a different light. … We see a chance for us to fit into the United States society in a way we’ve never fit in. Just knowing that opportunity is not everybody else’s, it’s OURS, too. … The sky is the limit. And it was never that feeling before.” Perhaps nowhere are those sentiments stronger than at Altgeld Gardens, where a 20-something Obama honed his political skills as a community organizer. It was there, in the shadow of rusted steel mills, where Obama had his first up-close exposure to a black community mired in poverty. In his memoir, “Dreams from My Father,” Obama describes the sprawling housing project in “a perpetual state of disrepair” with crumbling ceilings, backed-up toilets and burst pipes. He helped residents agitate, rally and fight City Hall to improve their lives. Three decades later, Altgeld is in the middle of a massive renovation. Crime and poverty persist, but there’s also a sense of hope, especially for kids who, for the first time, see a president who looks like them when they walk by Obama’s photo on their schoolroom walls. Cheryl Johnson is among the few remaining residents who remember Obama’s organizing days. He plotted strategies with her mother, Hazel, a well-known environmental activist. Johnson, who followed in her footsteps, sees Obama as an inspiration. His presidency, she explains, allowed people to say: “If he can do it, I can do it, too.” “It’s the influence, the motivation that he has given to people who may have been hopeless in their life, like, ‘I can’t get this far,’” Johnson says. “Now you hear young people, young as 5 and 6, saying, ‘I’m going to be the next president of the United States.’” Obama changed perceptions of black people, says Ellen Singletary, a youth specialist at Altgeld. “The media depicts us … in such an unfair and defaming way,” she says, “and to see the pride of who we really are demonstrated on the world stage means the world to me.” That attitude is part of what Michael Eric Dyson, a Georgetown professor and prominent African-American commentator, described in a New York Times op-ed as black America’s “unrepentant love affair” with the president. That pride, he wrote, overlooks Obama’s failings, including skimping on black cabinet appointees until his second term, forgoing the nomination of a black woman to the U.S. Supreme Court and a
The Donald Trump-Hillary Clinton Twitter war: Bludgeon vs. stiletto
Back in June, when Donald Trump slammed President Barack Obama‘s endorsement of Hillary Clinton on Twitter, the Democrat’s campaign was quick to tweet back a chilly three-word response: “Delete your account.” It was a telling exchange, and not just because it set the stage for what has become the country’s first nationwide Twitter election. It also highlighted the striking, and very different, ways both presidential hopefuls have used the service to hone their messages, hurl accusations at one another and speak directly to voters — in effect, bypassing traditional media while also relying on it to amplify their retorts. So entrenched has Twitter become in the 2016 election that it can be difficult to remember just how new it is in this context. Four years ago, candidates Obama and Mitt Romney were just testing the waters with social media. This year, it’s a major source of information — political and otherwise — for a huge number of Americans. In a Pew Research Center poll last January, 44 percent of adults said they had learned about the election in the previous week from social media, more than cited print newspapers. “People are using Twitter to connect more directly to the live events, moments and candidates of this campaign in a way that voters have never been able to do before,” says Adam Sharp, Twitter’s head of news, government and elections. STILETTO VS. BLUDGEON The candidates are certainly making the most of it. While Trump says he writes many of his tweets himself, especially at night, Clinton’s staff acknowledges producing the vast majority of hers. And Trump is definitely ahead by one crude measure: His followers outnumber Clinton’s, 12.7 million to 10 million. The former reality-TV star and GOP presidential nominee draws outsized attention for what he’s tweeting and retweeting on a near-daily basis, most recently for his attacks on fellow Republicans and unsupported claims that the Nov. 8 election will be “rigged.” During his primary campaign, Trump drew regular news coverage for Twitter assaults that bludgeoned opponents with insults and sometimes baseless charges. Trump’s approach hasn’t changed much in the general election, although his focus on his political opponent sometimes wavers. While he constantly refers to Clinton as “Crooked Hillary” and has continued to criticize the media for reporting that he is falling behind in the polls, he’s also launched long, and sometimes late-night, Twitter broadsides on a beauty queen, the Muslim family of a slain U.S. soldier and a federal judge. The Trump campaign didn’t respond to requests for comment. When the Clinton camp goes on the attack, by contrast, it uses Twitter more as a stiletto than a club. “Delete your account” is a popular internet meme, an arch putdown that suggests someone just said something so embarrassingly stupid that they should just slink away and disappear. The response was an immediate hit that ricocheted around blogs and news sites for days; it’s been retweeted more than half a million times. Trump is “that rough individual who will say anything,” a stance that his supporters find “very refreshing,” says Ian Bogost, a communications professor at Georgia Tech. Clinton’s tweet, by contrast, “signals to her base that she’s with-it on the internet,” he noted in an earlier piece in the Atlantic. In his first debate with Clinton on Sept. 26, Trump denied saying that climate change was a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese. Clinton’s social media team immediately pounced, retweeting Trump’s own 2013 tweet in which he said just that. After Clinton referred to a large fraction of Trump supporters as a “basket of deplorables ” for their sexism and racism, Trump retweeted a 2012 Obama tweet that argued the country doesn’t need a president “who writes off nearly half the country.” But Trump has also drawn fire for repeatedly retweeting white nationalists and promulgating at least one image condemned as anti-Semitic, an association Trump denied. SEIZING THE WHEEL Unsurprisingly, the two campaigns have very different social media goals. Trump, who joined Twitter in 2009, has long used the medium as a direct channel to the public for promoting himself and testing the political waters — for instance, by fueling the lie that Obama wasn’t born in the U.S. Trump’s campaign staffers do sometimes seize the wheel, as when the account tweeted “thoughts and prayers ” for NBA star Dwayne Wade following the shooting death of his cousin in August. Trump’s first tweet on the subject 82 minutes earlier had noted the shooting and crowed, “Just what I have been saying. African-Americans will VOTE TRUMP!” Some analysts have noticed that most Trump-y tweets from Trump’s account originate from a different mobile device than ones that could have come from any traditional politician. That has spawned endless jokes — mainly on Twitter, naturally — along the lines of how his campaign staff fails to take away Trump’s phone during his tirades. The Clinton campaign takes a more traditional approach, operating as its own massive brand rather than as a singular, fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants candidate. (Rare tweets directly from the candidate are signed “-H.”) Many of the campaign’s tweets are the typical boilerplate of politics — thanks to supporters, reiterations of the candidate’s positions, forwarding news of endorsements and other developments. Clinton’s approach hasn’t always fared well; an early tweet asking people to share how student debt makes them feel in “3 emojis or less ” quickly backfired. Responses on Twitter included, “This is like when your mom tries to be hip in front of your friends and totally fails at it.” THE DIGITAL 100 Twitter is just part of a much larger Clinton digital presence run by a 100-person “digital team” that extends from Twitter to Snapchat to Quora to YouTube to Pinterest. It’s designed to draw in a broad range of voters, from young, social media savvy fans to Pinterest moms, while also working to undercut her rival on some of his favorite stomping grounds. Clinton’s digital team offered Snapchat filters during the GOP convention that let people paste old Trump
Possible Election Day problems worry civil rights advocates
New ID requirements. Unfamiliar or distant polling places. Names missing from the voter rolls. Those are just some of the challenges that could disrupt voting across the country through Election Day. While most elections have their share of glitches, experts worry conditions are ripe this year for trouble at the nation’s polling places. This is the first presidential election year without a key enforcement provision of the federal Voting Rights Act, and 14 states have enacted new registration or voting restrictions. Adding to the uncertainty is a call by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump for supporters to monitor the polls for voter fraud and concerns by the federal government that hackers could try to disrupt the voting process. All this has civil rights advocates on guard. “There is going to be a lot going on in this election that we are going to have to watch out for,” said Penda Hair, a civil rights lawyer who represented the North Carolina NAACP in its bid to overturn that state’s voter ID law. With no national standards for voting, rules vary widely across states and even counties. Voting experts and civil rights groups are encouraging voters to do their research before heading to the polls. That includes checking to ensure they are registered and finding their voting location, as well as understanding their rights if they face any problems. “People should not leave without casting a ballot,” said Wendy Weiser, head of the democracy program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU’s School of Law. “If you are an eligible voter, you should be able to have your vote counted no matter what anyone is saying.” Adding to the potential for confusion are new voter ID laws in nine states as well as reduced hours for early voting and changes to polling locations in some states. In North Carolina, at least two counties no longer offer Sunday voting. Deborah Dicks Maxwell, 60, said she is worried that — along with early voting hours largely limited to between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. — will make it harder for people to cast ballots in her home county of New Hanover. She said Sunday voting was popular during North Carolina’s primary in March. “With the short hours we have and the high turnout that generally occurs in a presidential election year, someone is going to be in line,” said Dicks Maxwell, president of the New Hanover County branch of the NAACP. “Why penalize the citizens when you could have extended the hours and made it easier for them?” State officials have said the county didn’t offer Sunday voting in 2012 and that the current plan represents an increase in evening hours available during early voting. Long lines led to frustration during Arizona’s March primary, when some voters in the Phoenix area waited hours to cast ballots after county election officials opened 60 polling stations — fewer than half what is typical. Melissa Dunmore, a 26-year-old social worker from Phoenix, still doesn’t know if her primary ballot was counted. She waited an hour to vote, only to be told she wasn’t registered despite checking her status before heading to her polling place. She said she won’t be deterred and plans to vote early this time. “If we stop voting every time it was hard or it was denied, women wouldn’t have the right to vote, black people wouldn’t have the right to vote,” Dunmore said. Meanwhile, some 33 states have accepted an offer from the federal government to check their voter databases and reporting systems for vulnerabilities after hackers attempted to breach systems in two states over the summer. Trump’s warning that the election might be rigged along with his call for supporters to monitor polling places has alarmed some advocacy groups who say such comments threaten to undermine voter confidence in the election. “We are deeply concerned about the chilling effect this call might have on the electorate and minority voters in particular,” said Kristen Clarke, president of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. “And we are concerned about the disruption this will cause for election workers.” Clarke and others say Trump supporters at the polls could lead to intimidation at a time when the U.S. Department of Justice has had to make substantial changes to its federal election monitoring program following the 2013 Supreme Court decision that struck down a portion of the Voting Rights Act. For the 2012 election, more than 780 federal observers and Justice Department staff were sent to 51 jurisdictions in 23 states. Now federal election observers can be sent only to those locations where there is a court order, which exists for only a small number of places in five states. With fewer federal election observers on hand, Attorney General Loretta Lynch said last week that Justice Department employees will be sent instead to at least as many states as 2012. But she did not say how many officials will go and how much access they will have. Republished with permission of the Associated Press.
Updates from the 1st presidential debate
The Latest on the first of three presidential debates between Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump (all times EDT): 10:45 p.m. Both candidates concluded the first presidential debate by saying they will accept the outcome if the other wins. Hillary Clinton spoke directly to viewers and said, “It’s not about us, it’s about you.” Donald Trump initially dodged the same question, saying he would make a “seriously troubled” America “great again.” He added: “I’m going to be able to do it. I don’t believe Hillary Clinton will.” But Trump finished his answer by saying that if Clinton wins, “I will absolutely support her.” ___ 10:43 p.m. Hillary Clinton is punching back at Donald Trump’s assertions that she doesn’t have the “stamina” to be president. Trump has questioned whether Clinton has the physical fitness to be president and he repeated the criticism to her directly during the debate. Clinton’s response? Trump shouldn’t talk about stamina until he’s tried out the busy schedule she kept up as secretary of state. Trump didn’t answer moderator Lester Holt’s original question about his past comments that Clinton doesn’t have the “presidential look.” Clinton suggested the remarks were about gender, and she reminded the crowd of Trump’s past comments calling women “pigs” and other derogatory names. ___ 10:42 p.m. Donald Trump says NATO needs to “go into the Middle East with us” to combat the Islamic State group. And he is taking credit for NATO focusing resources on combating terrorism. In fact, the alliance agreed in July to contribute aircraft and conduct training in Iraq and has increased intelligence coordination there. And NATO set up an anti-terrorism program in 2004 — years before Trump criticized them as a presidential candidate. Earlier this year, Trump criticized NATO for not focusing on terrorism. He said that afterward, he saw an article reporting that NATO was opening a new, major anti-terrorism division. He said Tuesday that NATO’s action was “largely because of what I was saying, and my criticism of NATO.” ___ 10:40 p.m. Donald Trump is avoiding a specific declaration on how he would use nuclear weapons if he’s elected president. The Republican nominee said during the first presidential debate that he “would not do first strike” because “once the nuclear alternative happens, it’s over.” That statement suggests he would not authorize a nuclear attack unless the U.S. was struck first. But in the same answer Trump said he “can’t take anything off the table.” He mentioned adversary nations such as North Korea and Iran. President Barack Obama has considered changing existing policy to state clearly that the United States would not deploy nuclear weapons without first being attacked by nuclear weapons. But he met resistance and has elected not to make such a shift. ___ 10:38 p.m. Hillary Clinton is accusing Donald Trump of being too easily provoked to keep the United States from going to war — perhaps even one involving nuclear weapons. Trump says: “I have much better judgment than she does. I have much better temperament.” That drew laughs from some in the debate crowd, and prompted Clinton to exclaim: “Woo! OK!” Clinton then pivoted to policy, defending the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan. Clinton said Iran was “weeks away” from a nuclear bomb when she became secretary of state — and says the Obama administration thwarted that progress. She continued that Trump didn’t have “good judgment or the right temperament” because he could take the country to war over small issues, like being mocked on Twitter. ___ 10:35 p.m. Donald Trump is continuing to insist he opposed the Iraq War before the U.S. invasion despite evidence to the contrary. Trump says during the debate that he “did not support the war in Iraq,” calling that charge “mainstream media nonsense.” But there is no evidence Trump expressed public opposition to the war before the U.S. invaded. Trump was asked in September 2002 whether he supported a potential Iraq invasion in an interview with Howard Stern. Trump briefly hesitated, then responded: “Yeah, I guess so.” Presented with the comment during the debate, Trump responds: “I said very lightly, I don’t know, maybe, who knows.” He’s also telling reporters to call Fox News host Sean Hannity to confirm private conversations he said they had about the war. Hannity is a top Trump supporter. Clinton voted in favor of the invasion in 2002 while she was a New York senator. She has since said it was a mistake. ___ 10:27 p.m. Donald Trump is interrupting the moderator of the first presidential debate to insist he has the best temperament for the office. Trump repeatedly made the assertion after clashing with moderator Lester Holt over his early support for the Iraq War. Then he segued to his temperament. “I think my strongest asset by far is my temperament,” Trump said. “I know how to win.” Clinton and her allies have repeatedly hit Trump over his temper and inability to take criticism. ___ 10:23 p.m. Hillary Clinton says one key to fighting terrorism in the United States is working closely with Muslims living here. Clinton says Donald Trump has “consistently insulted Muslims abroad, Muslims at home.” She says Muslim people can provide information that law enforcement may not be able to obtain anyplace else. Both candidates were asked to explain how they would combat terrorism in the U.S. Clinton says her plan includes an intelligence surge to obtain “every scrap of information” and to “do everything we can to vacuum up intelligence from Europe, from the Middle East.” ___ 10:20 p.m. Hillary Clinton says defeating the Islamic State group and taking out its leaders would be a top priority as president. Clinton says she’s hopeful the Islamic State group would be pushed out of Iraq by the end of the year. She says the U.S. could then help its allies “squeeze” the terrorist group in Syria. Clinton says she would do everything possible to take out the group’s leaders, and make that one of her administration’s organizing principles
As Donald Trump tries minority outreach, many blacks unconvinced
Black Republicans cheer Donald Trump for a newfound outreach to African-Americans, but say the GOP presidential nominee must take his message beyond arenas filled with white supporters and venture into the inner cities. Many rank-and-file black voters, meanwhile, dismiss the overtures as another racially charged pitch from a campaign aimed exclusively at whites, from Trump’s emphasis on “law and order” to his withering critiques of President Barack Obama, the nation’s first black chief executive. It was Trump in 2011 who fiercely challenged Obama’s U.S. birth. “Any minority who would vote for him is crazy, ought to have their head examined,” said Ike Jenkins, an 81-year-old retired business owner in the predominantly black suburb of East Cleveland. Foluke Bennett, a 43-year-old from Philadelphia, went further, labeling the GOP standard-bearer’s remarks as “racist,” pointing, among other things, to his referencing African-Americans as “the blacks.” Trump is scheduled to appear Wednesday in Jackson, Mississippi, an 80 percent African-American city and capital of the state with the nation’s highest proportion of black residents. It is unclear whether he will address black voters directly; so far, his appeal to them has been delivered before white audiences in mostly white cities. Mississippi is overwhelmingly Republican because of whites’ loyalties, as opposed to battlegrounds such as Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida, states Obama won twice and where the largest cities offer at least a theoretical chance for Trump to pursue marginal shifts among significant black populations. Trump has previously rejected high-profile speaking slots at the NAACP’s annual gathering, along with events sponsored by the Urban League and the National Association of Black Journalists. “He’s got to take his arguments to the streets,” said Brandon Berg, a black pastor who drove Monday from Youngstown, Ohio, to hear Trump at the University of Akron. Berg said he’s an outlier: an undecided black Republican. For most African-Americans, Berg said, Trump must “meet them where they are.” Trump has scheduled an event Thursday billed as a roundtable with black and Latino leaders invited to his New York offices, and his aides say he is considering more rallies in heavily minority cities in swing states. The Washington Post first reported those plans, specifically mentioning charter schools, small businesses and churches in black and Latino communities. It’s a well-known electoral conundrum for Trump and Republicans: The United States population grows less white with each election cycle, so to defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton, the New York billionaire must attract more non-white voters or run up an advantage with white voters to a level no candidate has reached since Ronald Reagan’s 1984 landslide. Obama won 93 percent of black voters in 2012 and 95 percent in 2008, according to exit polls. This year, polls suggest Trump could fare even worse than the Republicans who lost to Obama. Trump has confronted his steep path in the last week, asking minorities, “Give Trump a chance!” In Wisconsin, he declared to minorities: “You live in poverty, your schools are no good, you have no jobs, 58 percent of your youth is unemployed? What the hell do you have to lose?” He argues illegal immigration disproportionately affects economic opportunities of blacks and Hispanics. In Ohio, he insisted without evidence that foreign “war zones” are “safer than living in some of our inner cities.” He pledged a Trump administration would “get rid of the crime,” allowing minorities to “walk down the street without getting shot.” Calvin Tucker, the lone black GOP convention delegate from Pennsylvania, says Trump’s arguments resonate with him. “We need a change agent,” said Tucker, 64, of Philadelphia. “He’s breaking down his overall economic platform and relating it to African-Americans,” Tucker added, extolling the GOP’s emphasis on entrepreneurial pursuits. Certainly, each Trump pronouncement drew roaring approval from his rally audiences. Many black voters, however, hear the appeal differently. As he sold Cleveland Cavaliers NBA championship swag, street vendor Steve T, 47, said the “disrespectful” comments represent “the real Trump.” “Not all of us live in poverty, crime,” he said. “You can’t get votes from people you don’t even understand.” In Philadelphia, Bennett said, “It’s crazy to think that he would have the audacity to ask us what we have to lose. If anything, his comments just made the line even more clear as to why black people won’t vote for him.” In East Cleveland, Jenkins and several other retirees gathered in a neighborhood restaurant echo many of Trump’s arguments. James Smith, a 79-year-old former butcher, points out the window and laments “a community that’s old and poor.” Jenkins says “handouts keep people in slavery.” Randall Darnell blasts an economy that traps laborers, black and white, in “legalized slavery.” But every one plans to vote for Clinton, and nearly all said they see Trump’s latest arguments aimed more at whites. “He’s talking about black people” when he mentions violence in cities, Smith said, “not to black people.” Republished with permission of The Associated Press.
Minority Dem delegates frustrated with ‘Bernie or Bust’
As most Democrats rally around Hillary Clinton, the lingering “Bernie or Bust” movement is stirring frustration at the party’s convention among delegates of color, who say they’re upset at the refusal of the Vermont senator’s most fervent backers to fall in line. “I am so exhausted by it,” said Danielle Adams, a black Clinton delegate from North Carolina. “I think there are undercuts of privilege that concern me.” Adams is among those who say the “Never Hillary” crowd, a group that is largely younger and white, isn’t considering the struggles black Americans still face every day. And, they argue, how the nation’s ethnic and racial minorities may be affected by a Donald Trump presidency. Rep. Cheryl Brown, a California delegate from San Bernardino who is black, condemned what she called the “aggressive” behavior of some Sanders delegates, saying they jumped on tables and shoved people at the state’s hotel the night that Sanders moved that the convention nominate Clinton by acclamation. “I think here at the convention, it’s been exacerbated by the way they are treating people,” she said. “I haven’t had that happen with any of the African-American Bernie supporters.” Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings, an African-American and close ally of Clinton, was telling the story of his late father — a share-cropper in South Carolina — on the convention’s first day when Sanders supporters started chanting “No TPP” and holding up signs opposing the trade pact. “It was downright disrespectful,” said Kweisi Mfume, a Clinton delegate and former head of the NAACP, who called it “a low point” of the four-day summer meeting. “I think it does not necessarily help the relations that Bernie’s people may have with the larger African-American community.” To be sure, many black delegates at the convention said they don’t view the “Bernie or Bust” movement through a racial lens. Count Cummings among them. He said that as a veteran of many civil rights protests, he understands the passions that drove the mostly young delegates to shout over his speech. “The optics were not pretty, but I couldn’t be upset with them. Two or three years ago, they would have been outside politics,” he said, adding that more than 100 people have since apologized for the outbursts. “I am so glad these people are under our tent.” Others, meanwhile, are frustrated by Sanders backers who contend the nomination was stolen from the Vermont senator. They say those delegates are ignoring the fact Sanders lost the nomination to Clinton, in part, because he didn’t appeal strongly enough to African-American voters. “They haven’t considered the perspective of minorities,” said Kenneth Williams, a black Clinton delegate from Texas. “I don’t think there was enough there to bridge to that community.” Clinton undoubtedly has far more appeal than Sanders among black voters, a critical voting bloc in Democratic primaries. The former secretary of state won more than three out of four black votes in 25 primary states where exit polling was conducted and, by the end of the primary season, she had swept the 15 states with the largest black populations. “At the end of the day, (Sanders’) coalition looked too much like a modern day Woodstock, and not enough like the Obama coalition it takes to win the primaries and the general,” said Boyd Brown, a Democratic National Committeeman from South Carolina who supported former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley. Michelle Bryant, a radio talk host in Milwaukee who is attending the convention, said she’s heard similar concerns from some people who call into her show. She said Clinton has a decades-long history of fighting for racial and economic justice that some Sanders supporters seem willing to dismiss — even as they promote Sanders’ civil rights advocacy. “You wouldn’t have expected this stuff to kind of break out along racial lines,” Bryant said. But those complaining about Sanders supporters and expressing fears of Clinton losing to Trump are missing the point, said Natalie Vowell, a white Sanders delegate from Missouri. Clinton, she said, just hasn’t been a positive for black Americans. “There have been more young black men imprisoned, more brown bodies piling up across the globe, and I’m not sure at this point that a warmonger like Hillary Clinton is any better than a tyrant like Trump,” said Vowell. She said she’s not yet sure if she will vote at all in November. Ohio state Rep. Alicia Reece, president of the Ohio Legislative Black Caucus and a Clinton delegate, said she heard some complaints when a few people booed Michelle Obama when she mentioned Clinton’s name Monday night. But she predicted the party would ultimately come together. “Both groups have strong feelings about what’s going on,” she said. “Even non-African-Americans are afraid of Donald Trump, not just pro-Hillary people. They know we’ve got to unite and stop Trump.” Republished with permission of the Associated Press.
Cleveland, a fractured city, an apt place for GOP convention
Donald Trump‘s effort to unite a splintered Republican Party around his candidacy is about to take center stage in a city that is itself deeply fractured. Once an industrial powerhouse, Cleveland is one of the poorest and most segregated big cities in America. Two out of five people live below the poverty line, second only to Detroit. Infant mortality rates in its bleakest neighborhoods are worse than in some Third World countries. The city’s mostly blighted east side is almost entirely black, the slightly more prosperous west side more mixed. And there’s deep distrust between the black community and police, in part because of police shootings such as the killing of 12-year-old Tamir Rice and a U.S. Justice Department report that found a pattern of excessive force and civil rights violations by the department. Yet there are also islands of prosperity, created in part by a wave of college-educated young people moving into downtown neighborhoods, a trend that has reshaped the city’s image and helped attract the Republican National Convention, which will be held July 18-21. “It’s a city full of neighborhoods and a city full of divides,” said John Grabowski, a local historian. ___ This is the place that in the 1970s — when the city was in default and a quarter of its population was moving out — embraced the slogan “Cleveland: You Gotta Be Tough.” Tough is a good way to describe Cleveland’s east side, where blacks from the South filled industrial jobs and settled during and after World War II. It’s now marked by high crime and abandoned factories. Over half the children live in poverty. Chris Brown, a 41-year-old black man and lifelong Clevelander, admits he was part of the problem in his younger days. “I was a thug, almost. On a highway going nowhere fast,” he said. Caught selling drugs, he went to prison for three years. Afterward, getting by was a struggle until he started working at a commercial laundry four years ago. Funded by civic leaders, foundations and local institutions, the laundry is part of a wider mission to stabilize east side neighborhoods by creating jobs. Built inside a former torpedo factory, it employs about 40 people, most of whom have done time in prison, and operates as a worker-owned cooperative. The employees can use their wages to buy a piece of the company and get a split of the profits. Brown took advantage of its loan program to buy his first house on the east side, where 1 in 5 homes is vacant. “Where we come from, there ain’t many guys like that,” Brown said. Those behind the cooperative, which also operates a greenhouse and a renewable-energy business, aren’t selling it as a solution to pervasive unemployment. But it’s a bright spot in an area desperately needing something positive, said plant manager Claudia Oates. “It shows we work, we believe in work,” she said. The convention will mean more hotel sheets for the laundry to wash, but apart from that, Brown said, the money the event will bring into the city won’t show up where he lives. “I don’t know many black people who’ve got anything to do with convention,” he said. “Nobody else I know is getting a job or money from the convention.” ___ Downtown is where delegates will spend their money at souvenir shops and sidewalk cafes. It’s also where millennials are moving into renovated warehouse apartments and new condominiums. Once a ghost town at night, it’s now home to 14,000 people. In the two years since the GOP awarded the convention, vacant downtown storefronts have been filled with new businesses, and the Public Square underwent a $50 million renovation. Health care and high-tech jobs are drawing young people, stabilizing the city’s population at about 388,000 after a peak of over 900,000 in the 1950s. “Cleveland’s got a long way to go. I’m not going to sugarcoat it,” said Bill Mangano, a white man who bought a downtown apartment after growing up in the city’s western suburbs. “We’re never going to be New York or Chicago, but we can carve out our own place.” Peter Karman, a 27-year-old white man, left behind a two-hour commute in San Diego for a job within walking distance. “All of my family and friends asked, why Cleveland?” he said. Here, he said, he can afford a lifestyle not possible in California, living in a downtown warehouse overlooking the Cuyahoga River. ___ The crooked river that caught fire during the 1950s and ’60s from industrial pollution sparked an environmental movement resulting in the federal Clean Water Act. But in Cleveland it was the city’s racial boundary for many generations. Blacks stayed east of the river and out of the white neighborhoods to the west, fearing unwelcome stares and police harassment. Kevin Conwell, a black city councilman, remembers his parents warning him 40 years ago not to cross certain streets or risk having the police haul him back home. “People my age still tell kids not to go over there,” he said. “How do you break down that gap?” To this day, many of the east side neighborhoods are at least 90 percent black, according to census data. But over the past 15 years, more blacks are moving to areas once off-limits, creating neighborhoods that are more racially diverse yet still poor. Overall, blacks make up about 53 percent of the city’s residents, whites 37 percent, Hispanics 10 percent. What’s holding back the neighborhoods now, Conwell said, are companies and unions that won’t hire minorities and lenders that won’t offer them home loans. “When you’re not working, you tear your neighborhood apart,” he said. “That’s your great divide.” Republished with permission of the Associated Press.
U.S. Supreme Court to rule on use of race in redistricting
The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Monday to decide whether Republican lawmakers relied too heavily on race when they redrew North Carolina’s congressional districts to give the GOP a powerful advantage in the swing state. The justices will hear the case in the fall — almost certainly too late to affect November’s elections. But in the years ahead, it could impact partisan efforts to create electoral districts aimed at swaying the balance of power in Congress and in state legislatures. The Supreme Court could consider it together with a similar appeal from Virginia, where challengers say Republicans packed black voters into a dozen statehouse districts, strengthening GOP control of neighboring territories. Five of the eight current justices appear sympathetic to such claims brought by minority voters, based on a 2015 ruling in an Alabama case, according to election-law expert Rick Hasen at the University of California at Irvine. North Carolina’s GOP leaders deny factoring in race to an illegal extent, saying their 2011 map was designed primarily to give Republicans an edge while complying with the federal Voting Rights Act after the 2010 census. “We continue to believe the maps are fair, legal and constitutional and look forward to our day in court,” state Sen. Bob Rucho, a chief architect of the maps, said Monday. Opponents say they unfairly stacked black voters into two districts that were already electing African-American representatives, thus diluting their influence in neighboring territories. A federal court ruled in February that race was the predominant factor in drawing the two districts and ordered them redrawn. A new map of 13 congressional districts was used in an unusual June 7 primary, separate from most other races. A high court ruling also should influence a separate court challenge of North Carolina’s state legislative districts. North Carolina is a swing state whose voters split almost evenly in the last two presidential elections. But the GOP’s maps created veto-proof majorities in the state legislature, and the congressional delegation now has 3 Democrats to 10 Republicans. The latest court-ordered map essentially created a new district without an incumbent, but the Republican-leaning territory is expected to help the GOP maintain this 10-3 edge. It also upended the former territories of two Republican members of Congress, pitting them against each other in the primary. State Rep. George Holding beat state Rep. Renee Ellmers after groups including the Club for Growth and Americans for Prosperity funded ads questioning her conservative credentials. Holding is expected to beat a Democrat in November. The state’s lawyers, meanwhile, say the federal court’s logic forces North Carolina into the difficult situation of having to consider race to comply with federal voting rights laws, while also triggering “strict scrutiny” of its maps for doing so. “The three-judge court’s approach would trap states between the threat of vote dilution claims and the hammer of a racial gerrymandering claim,” they wrote in a Supreme Court filing. Their challengers argue that GOP mapmakers illegally gerrymandered the 2011 map, drawing boundaries “whose grasping tendrils were necessary to capture disparate pockets of black voters.” The case is McCrory v. Harris, 15-1262. Republished with the permission of The Associated Press.
As many African-American see it, there are 2 Ben Carsons
Ayauna King-Baker loved Ben Carson‘s “Gifted Hands” memoir so much that she made her daughter Shaliya read it. So when Carson showed up in town to sign copies of his new book, King-Baker dragged the giggly 13-year-old along to the bookstore so they could both meet him. To King-Baker, Carson’s “up-by-your bootstraps” life story makes him a genuine celebrity worth emulating in the African-American community. But she’s also a Pompano Beach Democrat watching Carson rise in the Republican presidential polls. For King-Baker and many other African-Americans, the vast majority of whom are Democrats, there are two Carsons: One is a genius doctor and inspirational speaker and writer who talks of limitless horizons; the other is a White House candidate who pushes conservative politics and wishes to “de-emphasize race.” How they reconcile the two may help determine whether Republicans can dent the solid support Democrats have enjoyed in the black community for decades. President Barack Obama won 95 percent of the black vote in 2008 and 93 percent in 2012. Carson wasn’t immune to the excitement of seeing the U.S. elect its first black president. “I don’t think there were any black people in the country that weren’t thrilled that that happened — including me,” Carson told The Associated Press in a recent interview when asked about Obama’s first victory. “Everyone had hope this would be something different. It was nice having that hope for a little while.” Carson has since become an aggressive critic of Obama’s. Carson rose to prominence in the tea party movement after repudiating the president’s health care law in front of Obama during the 2013 National Prayer Breakfast. Today, Carson charges that Obama’s performance has actually set black candidates back. “I don’t think he’s made my path any easier,” he said. “So many people said there’d never be another black president for 100 years after this.” Carson has not gone out of his way to court black voters this year. He insists he won’t change his message to attract specific audiences, although his campaign tried a rap-filled ad this month. He already has one convert — King-Baker. She says she plans to change her registration to vote for the doctor in the Florida primary. “He has the momentum, he has the conversation, he’s very serious, he’s speaking to the people, and I just think he would be a very good president,” she said. None of this will matter unless Carson survives the primaries, where he’s been leading in early preference polls. Black votes aren’t a major factor in GOP primaries. Only about 16 percent of African-American voters affiliated with the Republican Party in 2012. But they will be a factor in the November general election. African-American voters are one of the few growing segments of the voting public. The percentage of black voters eclipsed the percentage of whites for the first time in 2012, when 66 percent of blacks voted, compared with 64 percent of non-Hispanics whites and about 48 percent of Hispanics and Asians. Carole Bell, a professor of communication studies at Northeastern University, estimates that Carson could attract as much as 25 percent of the African-American vote if he’s the GOP candidate. “That would be a tremendous accomplishment for the GOP at this stage,” she said. Carson is better known by African-American voters than were other black Republicans who ran for president, such as businessman Herman Cain, who achieved passing prominence in the 2012 race, and former ambassador Alan Keyes before him. Carson was a celebrated figure before he entered politics because of his work as a neurosurgeon. Carson led a team that successfully separated conjoined twins, which led to movie appearances, best-selling books, a television biography and a motivational speaking career that crossed racial lines. “Black people were proud that Carson had become a famous surgeon and had accomplished what no one else ever had in separating the twins,” said Fredrick Harris, director of the Institute for Research in African-American Studies at Columbia University. That’s part of his appeal, said Rebecca Britt, 43, a registered Democrat who also came to see Carson in Fort Lauderdale and buy his most recent book. “He’s one of the heroes in our community, with what he’s been able to accomplish in the medical field,” she said. But can that translate into many black votes? Carson has said he would not support a Muslim for president, a position his campaign says helped him raise money and attract conservative support. He’s been critical of the Black Lives Matter movement, which drew its name from protests that followed the death of an unarmed black 18-year-old, Michael Brown. The retired neurosurgeon told the AP that Americans should take the focus off of race during a recent trip to Brown’s hometown, Ferguson, Missouri. Carson may draw support from conservative African-Americans and those already in the GOP, but it’s unlikely that he would make major inroads in the Democratic Party’s dominance among blacks in a general election, said D’Andra Orey, a political science professor at Jackson State University in Jackson, Mississippi. Given the GOP’s fraught history with African-Americans, it could be “nearly impossible for blacks to support a Republican who espouses what they deem to be racially conservative rhetoric,” Orey said. “Put short, it’s an uphill battle for any Republican who seeks out the black vote.” Bell, the Northeastern professor, said Carson’s celebrity may have helped him at the beginning of his candidacy, but that shine may have worn off. “He had tremendous positives before he started speaking as a potential candidate,” Bell said, “but the more he speaks, the more there’s opportunities to sort of really show there’s a gulf between him and a lot of African-Americans.” Republished with permission of the Associated Press.
