What candidates don’t know about Hispanics and Latinos

Both major parties would do well to listen to Voto Latino CEO María Teresa Kumar.

In interviews with Politico’s Tara Palmeri, Kumar has explained the complexity of this increasingly powerful “sleeping giant” voting bloc.

Many of the misconceptions that Kumar and Voto Latino try to dispel came up in “100 Questions and Answers About Hispanics and Latinos.”

These are some of the key points:

* These 32 million vote-eligible people are increasingly English speakers.
* While immigration is important, health-care issues are ahead of that.
* This is a young demographic, sharing characteristics with other non-Hispanic people in Generation Z, and they are often the linchpins linking families to the community.

Probably Kumar’s key takeaway is that Hispanic and Latino people have a low propensity for voting. She blames this in part on candidates not reaching out and engaging them.

The size of this group of eligible voters will be much larger in 2024. Its power is likely to grow simply for its size. If that brings out the candidates, the 2024 campaign could have a much different feel than 2020.

“100 Questions and Answers About Hispanics and Latinos” is available from Amazon or the Front Edge Publishing bookstore.

Posted in Healthcare, Hispanics and Latinos, Immigrants, Politics | Leave a comment

More than 500 LBGTQ candidates on ballots

The LBGTQ Victory Fund’s “Out on the Trail” analysis reports that at least 574 LGBTQ candidates will appear on general election ballots in November. That’s up 33% from two years ago.

Cover of 100 Questions and Answers About Sexual OrientationThe organization forecasts “an unprecedented number to win on Election Day. This report will show that LGBTQ candidates are significantly more diverse than the overall candidate population.”

The report says:

  • 31% of LGBTQ candidates running in 2020 identify as people of color.
  • LGBTQ men of color candidates are proportional to men of color in the overall U.S. population, yet LGBTQ women of color candidates are just half their proportion in the U.S. population.
  • The proportion of bisexual and queer candidates in the LGBTQ candidate population has grown significantly since 2018.
  • Transgender candidates decreased since 2018 while the number of genderqueer/non-binary/gender non-conforming candidates increased dramatically.

“100 Questions and Answers About Gender Identity” is available from Amazon or the Front Edge Publishing bookstore

Posted in Gender identity, LGBTQ+, Sexual orientation | Leave a comment

Christians decline as share of voters in 2020

Chart reflecting party affiliation and religionIn the final days before the U.S. presidential election, the Pew Research Center has some timely updates on the changing religious profile of the electorate.

According to Pew, Christians are about 64% of registered voters. They were nearly 80% in 2008. What’s happening? Over that span, the share of voters who say they are religiously unaffiliated has gone from 15% to 28%. This is not just people dropping religion, it is a growing young cohort of voters who are more likely to be unaffiliated.

The decline has been especially pronounced among White voters. White evangelical Protestants are down from 21% of voters in 2008 to 18% today. White non-evangelical Protestants are down from 19% to 13%, and the share of White Catholics in the electorate fell from 17% to 12%.

Almost 80% of registered Republican voters are Christians, compared with 52% of Democratic voters. Democrats are about two and half times as likely as Republicans, 38% to 15%, to say they are religiously unaffiliated.

The Bias Busters team is working to bring out guides in the next few months on evangelical Christians and the religiously unaffiliated.

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Available Oct. 27: “100 Questions and Answers About Latter-day Saints”

100 Questions and Answers About Latter-day Saints

The Bias Busters team is happy to have its latest cultural competence guide available on Amazon.

The guide is very timely because this is the 200th year of the start of this made-in-the-USA church and it has had a lot of attention in this political year.

Despite its U.S. beginnings, people have a lot of questions and misconceptions about Latter-day Saints. We had enormous help from people in the church, which disputes the secrecy stereotypes. There are others.

Some of the top questions we answer:

Are Latter-day Saints Christians?
What is the Book of Mormon?
Do Latter-day Saints believe Jesus is God?
Is coffee not allowed?
Why does the church maintain genealogical records?

“100 Questions and Answers About Latter-day Saints” is available from Amazon or the Front Edge Publishing bookstore.

Posted in Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints | Leave a comment

TV journalist rocks braids, empowers others

Treasure Roberts in braids with WMBD backdrop

Treasure Roberts stuck with her braids in her video reel and has now brought them out at the anchor desk.

Applause for Michigan State journalism grad Treasure Roberts, now a reporter and fill-in anchor at WMBD/WYZZ News in Peoria, Illinois.

Roberts had the spine to disregard the advice of a new director about her reel, the compilation of video clips that broadcast journalists use to get job interviews. The director told Roberts to cut the clip of herself doing her work in braids. He said the braids would hurt her chances in the job market.

This month, Roberts wore braids on air for the first time in her professional life. Her tweet about it has brought in 150,000 likes so far and a call from Good Morning America, which interviewed her about the support she received.

Roberts told Good morning America, “Representation matters. If anyone gained the confidence to wear their natural hair or protective styles like braids to work because of my post, then I did something right.”

Book cover for 100 Questions & Answers About African AmericansOn her Instagram account, Roberts wrote, “I remember asking for feedback on my news reel a couple years ago before landing a job in the industry. I filmed a captivating stand-up in front of a protest in South Africa. Regardless of the quality of that stand-up I was told to take it out of my reel because I wouldn’t get a job with braids in my hair. That was … discouraging. Despite the feedback, I decided to keep that stand-up in my reel. The way I wear my hair doesn’t affect my storytelling. With that same stand-up at the FRONT of my newsreel I landed my first professional job in news. From that day forward I always said one day I will wear braids on-air. Since then I’ve worn my hair in more natural styles than I ever thought I would on air and now here we are. Braids are professional.”

The story should never be about the hair — except when the story is about the hair, like this one.

As a student at Michigan State, Treasure handled all media and knew how to get to good stories. On Election Day, 2016, she appeared on TV with the MSU project, MI First Election, she did a radio interview with WKAR and then she she wrote the lead story for the website. One of her photographs, from a protest, won recognition from the Society of Professional Journalists. She was also president of the Michigan State student chapter of the National association of Black Journalists.

Black hairstyles are such an issue that the Bias Busters guide, “100 Questions and Answers About African Americans,” includes a video about them. The fact is, we had so many questions about Black hair, we felt we should answer as many as possible where people could see them, rather than spend 10 questions on them. We though that so many questions about hair would distract from the many other issues we wanted to get to.We had lots of help on the video from the Michigan State student group Curlfriends.

“100 Questions and Answers About African Americans” is available from Amazon or the Front Edge Publishing bookstore.

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Chaldeans set back by court’s no-call

A little-noted decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to not hear an appeal has dimmed Chaldean hopes about deportation.

Chaldeans are Catholic Iraqis. Hundreds of Chaldeans and other Iraqis have been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement under a 2017 Trump administration order. Most face deportation for having criminal offenses, some going back decades. Deportation became a possibility in 2017 when Iraq agreed to repatriate former citizens.

Chaldeans and other Christian Iraqis fear persecution and even death under Muslim rule in Iraq.

Their families and Chaldean communities have been apealling that order. The largest Chaldean communities in the United States are in the Detroit area, around El Cajon, California, and in Arizona and Chicago.

Trump appealed for the Chaldean vote in 2016, especially in the swing state of Michigan, the community responded, and now some Chaldeans say they feel Trump has betrayed them.

On a visit to the Detroit area in January 2020, Trump said, “You have a wonderful Iraqi Christian community in Michigan. And the congressmen were telling me on the plane (Air Force One), how rough it’s been for them. It’s been a very tough time for a lot of Christians all over the world. … We’re going to give those who need it an extension to stay in our country. And so we’re going to be extending them. A lot of people in Michigan have been asking for that. We’re going to … do everything we can to keep people who have been good to this country out of harm’s way.”

Martin Manna, president of the Chaldean Community Foundation and Chaldean American Chamber of Commerce, told the Free Press the community was seeking temporary protective status that could prevent Iraqis from being deported back to Iraq. Nothing has changed since then.

This month, reports The Arab American News, the U.S. Supreme Court let stand a ruling that courts are barred from stopping deportations so people can make their cases before immigration judges. In the previous month, the Supreme Court elevated the federal government’s ability to deport people with limited review in court.

This issue and a lack of knowledge about Chaldeans led the Michigan State University Bias Busters team to create “100 Questions and Answers About Chaldean Americans.” To learn more about Chaldeans and this issue, the guide is available from Amazon or the Front Edge Publishing bookstore.

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Young, old veterans face COVID-19 threats

Veterans’ residences have been hard hit by COVID-19 infections, and some warn about threats to mental health wrought by the pandemic’s related recession.

Cover of the Bias Busters guide, "100 Questions and Answers About Veterans: A Guide for Civilians"

Cover of the Bias Busters guide, “100 Questions and Answers About Veterans: A Guide for Civilians”

The Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute warns that layoffs can increase the danger of suicide and substance abuse among veterans.

It estimates that “that as many as 550 additional U.S. veteran lives could be lost to suicide in the next 12 months and 20,000 additional American veterans could suffer from substance use disorders with every 5% increase in unemployment …”

While COVID-19 outbreaks have struck older veterans, the institute reports that your vets “face unique challenges in finding employment after separating from the military.”

Meadows asks that public policy decisions be guided by these twin threats.

“100 Questions and Answers About Veterans” is available from Amazon or the Front Edge Publishing bookstore.

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Biden cites similarity in courting Muslims

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden said Monday, “I wish we taught more in our schools about the Islamic faith … What people don’t realize is … we all come from the same root here, in terms of our fundamental basic beliefs.”

The statement, before an online gathering of the Muslim advocacy group Emgage Action, was unusual, according to National Public Radio — and strategic. NPR reported, “Historically, Democrats have been cautious about openly courting Muslim voters. Clinton never publicly spoke to Muslim groups. And Barack Obama famously visited Cairo in early 2009 to give a speech to the Muslim world, but he never stepped foot inside a mosque as president until the year he was leaving office.”

Biden has been working for Muslim votes. Although the group is small, about 1% of the country’s population, it is larger in critical states Florida and Michigan, and the latter was decided by a margin of less than 1% in 2016.

What did Biden mean when he said, “we all come from the same root?”

He was referencing the shared religious traditions of Jews, Christians and Muslims as Abrahamic religions. It is one of the issues detailed in the Bias Busters series.

“100 Questions and Answers About Muslim Americans” is available from Amazon or the Front Edge Publishing bookstore.

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What is a Jewish trope or canard?

A trope is a metaphor or symbol that alludes to an idea, usually a false one. Often, the word is used for negative stereotypes that can be telegraphed with a phrase, even just a word, or an image.

Book cover for 100 Questions and Answers About American Jews

The word trope is often used to describe allusions to anti-Semitic stereotypes. A closely related word, canard, refers to baseless stories or rumors, and is also often used in conjunction with anti-Semitic content. Most are old or have old roots.

The Anti-Defamation League published a guide to anti-Semitic tropes in this year. The point is to debunk the myths by explaining them, their origin, the twisted logic behind them and how they are expressed today. The first trope in the guide is that Jews have too much power.

Recently, an NFL player and an actor circulated the trope that Jews are involved in a conspiracy to dominate the world. Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver DeSean Jackson put out on Instagram that there is a Jewish plan to extort America and that Adolf Hitler said Black people are the real Jews. Actor Nick Cannon made similar claims. Both were called out by Jewish leaders and apologized.

The ADL’s trope guide explains this myth and reports that “on white supremacist websites and in underground chatrooms … the notion of an international Jewish conspiracy functions as a kind of perverse social currency. ‘Globalist’ functions as a codeword for Jew, the ‘cosmopolitan elite’ a stand-in for wealthy and erudite Jews accused of acting against the common man to install a new world order.”

“100 Questions and Answers About American Jews” contains a chapter on myths and stereotypes and is one of the few guides in the series to include such a chapter. The guide is available from Amazon or the Front Edge Publishing bookstore.

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Associated Press explains its capitalization of Black and white

The AP, arbiter of writing style in thousands of new publications, today explained why its June decision to capitalize Black in reference to ethnicity and culture will not be followed by capitalizing white in such contexts.

These are some of AP’s reasons for using Black and white in reference to race and ethnicity:

Book cover for 100 Questions & Answers About African Americans* “There was clear desire and reason to capitalize Black. … There is, at this time, less support for capitalizing white. White people generally do not share the same history and culture, or the experience of being discriminated against because of skin color. In addition, we are a global news organization and in much of the world there is considerable disagreement, ambiguity and confusion about whom the term includes.”

* “… Capitalizing the term white, as is done by white supremacists, risks subtly conveying legitimacy to such beliefs.”

* “Some have expressed the belief that if we don’t capitalize white, we are being inconsistent and discriminating against white people or, conversely, that we are implying that white is the default. We also recognize the argument that capitalizing the term could pull white people more fully into issues and discussions of race and equality. We will closely watch how usage and thought evolves, and will periodically review our decision.”

The Bias Busters series has capitalized both terms for several years. Our student authors were swayed by the consistency argument and noted that Black identification is also complicated, ambiguous and confusing. The students noted that supremacists capitalize Black and not White and that some publications do the opposite. This helped push them toward being consistent.

The AP wrote, “We will closely watch how usage and thought evolves, and will periodically review our decision.”

Tell us what you think.

“100 Questions and Answers About Americans” is available from Amazon or the Front Edge Publishing bookstore.

Posted in African Americans, Ethnicity & Race | 2 Comments