The state’s recent legislative session shows how deeply Republicans fear Black voters will once again turn Arkansas blue
Once upon a time, the Arkansas state government was a solid blue oasis in the South. In 2006, Democrat Mike Beebe ran the state as governor while his party swept both chambers of the statehouse, as they had during every election since Reconstruction. Arkansas Democrats also controlled both seats in the U.S. Senate and held one of the state’s four congressional seats. Barack Obama won the state’s electoral college votes in 2008, further raising hopes the state might continue to have a Democratic future. At the time, I was teaching in a rural Arkansas school in Helena, a majority Black…
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How I Got Radicalized
My extracurriculars, summer camps, and internships were never going to get me a magazine cover — or a satisfying job
Welcome to How I Got Radicalized, a series from GEN that tells the story of a cultural moment that made you drastically rethink how society works.
Any overachiever with a LinkedIn knows the most important awards for a certain generation is Forbes’ “30 Under 30” reveal. Every year I brace myself for the Oscars-style gratitude speeches from acquaintances and second-degree connections who feel “so humbled” that they made the list. It’s not that I begrudge their success, I swear. It’s simply a tough pill to swallow as a twentysomething with a harsh tendency to compare myself to others. …
Louis DeJoy unveiled his 10-year plan to cut hours and raise prices, all in the name of profitability
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy presented his much-awaited—or, rather, much-dreaded—10-year reorganization plan at a news conference yesterday and it was pretty much what people expected it would be. DeJoy wants to cut hours, shut down some post offices, raise stamp prices, and lengthen the amount of time it takes first-class mail to be delivered, all in the interest of saving the U.S. Postal Service money.
I’ll leave it to others to debate the specific details of DeJoy’s plan. What I think is most important to understand is that this plan is that it only makes sense if you believe the post…
The PRO Act would help workers who want to form a union
For the past few decades, unions have been under attack. Thanks in large part to laws that undermine labor organizations and make it hard for workers to organize, unions have suffered steep membership declines (just 10% of Americans now belong to one). As a result, wages have stagnated for union and non-union members alike, and the income inequality gap has widened. That’s not to say interest has totally waned: Nearly half of Americans would like to be part of a union and have a voice on issues such as job security, benefits, and compensation.
Trans communities have always honored complex gender narratives
When news first spread that 60 Minutes was planning to cover “detransitioners,” the trans community rightly panicked. Detransitioners — cis people, predominantly cis women, who used to identify as trans and now regret their transitions — have become a major flashpoint in the ongoing culture war around trans people. They are central to the work of Irreversible Damage author Abigail Shrier, who claims most adolescent trans boys are girls transitioning due to social contagion. They were the subject of a controversial 2017 piece by The Stranger’s Katie Herzog, even though most estimates suggest that only around 2% of all people…
To decide, you need to understand ‘micromorts’
My favorite word I learned during the pandemic was “micromort.” I discovered the micromort from a piece in the New York Times by David C. Roberts, which explained that a micromort is measurement used by scientists (and insurance companies) to calculate risk. A micromort, Roberts writes, is equivalent to a one-in-a-million chance of dying. Every behavior, whether it’s jumping out of a plane (seven micromorts) or giving birth (210 micromorts), has a value that can be attached to it. (Much of Roberts’ research can be found in the entertaining book, The Norm Chronicles.)
Thirty years after the congresswoman’s statehood bill failed, she’s seeing a light at the end of the tunnel
On Monday, the House Oversight Committee held a hearing to discuss H.R. 51, the bill to give the District of Columbia statehood. Under the legislation, the federal city would change its name to Washington, Douglass Commonwealth, keeping the same D.C. initials but now honoring famed resident and abolitionist Frederick Douglass, instead of invoking a personification of America whose name derives from Christopher Columbus’s. The town known as everything from “Chocolate City” to “this town” would finally get two U.S. senators and one representative in the House.
The bill, like so many touching on life in Washington, is the work of…
The GOP continues to mimic the former president’s racist rhetoric
Even now, three months after Donald Trump’s White House exit, the former president’s presence continues to loom over the GOP. In a radio appearance with right-wing radio host Joe Pags last week, Republican Sen. Ron Johnson claimed he didn’t feel threatened by the pro-Trump rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol to challenge the presidential election results, but he might have if the mob had been Black Lives Matters or Antifa protesters. Johnson compared BLM to Antifa, basically saying there’s nothing scarier than a bunch of angry Black people (and the white people who support them).
Here’s why vaccination rates in most European countries are only about a third of what they are in the U.S.
Even as the number of daily deaths from Covid-19 in the United States has fallen to levels we haven’t seen in months, continental Europe is now in the middle of a third wave of Covid infections, with a number of countries, including France, imposing new shutdowns in order to try to control the virus. This may be, in part, because Europe’s rollout of Covid vaccines has also been far slower than that of the U.S. and the U.K, and now it’s facing a new issue: Dramatically increased skepticism among many Europeans about the AstraZeneca vaccine.
American history is filled with politicians, journalists, organizers, and citizens claiming they don’t have a racist bone in their body
Humans are notoriously terrible at accurately assessing themselves. That’s why medical researchers question the validity of self-reported data and pollsters rely on more subtle questioning to tease out people’s attitudes than a straightforward ask. And yet, at the highest echelons of American journalism and governance, human self-knowledge is still presumed to be easily accessible, particularly when it comes to racism.
The day after the Atlanta spa shootings, in which six of the eight massacred were women of Asian descent, Captain Jay Baker, the spokesman for Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office in Georgia, relayed that the suspect himself claimed the attacks were…
