links for 2011-07-27

July 27th, 2011 by Andrea

  • "Peru's president-elect, Ollanta Humala, has chosen the singer Susana Baca as culture minister, making her the country's first black government minister since independence from Spain in 1821."
  • "Based on data from the Census Bureau, the study highlights how blacks and Hispanics have been disproportionately affected by the collapse of the housing market, the financial crisis and the recession that marked the period from 2005 to 2009. "It found that the wealth gap between white households and their black or Hispanic counterparts was the widest it has been since the government began publishing such data by ethnicity in 1984.
  • "An editorial in Philadelphia's Spanish-language newspaper Al Día criticizes a column in the Philadelphia Daily News that called a City Council resolution condemning the Secure Communities program “misguided, moronic or malicious.” In fact, Al Día editors write, it is the supporters of Secure Communities who are the ignorant ones. Under Secure Communities, local police are required to share fingerprint data of arrestees to federal immigration authorities.
  • "Anyone who’s grown up in a family restaurant knows that everything revolves around 'the restaurant.' You have to cut vacations short, reply 'no' to wedding invitations and drive through blizzards to make sure the kitchen pipes haven’t burst. But you’re also eternally grateful to the restaurant. It’s provided you a livelihood: shelter, food, and in my case, a college education. The loyalty I have to Italian food runs deep. "When many of us are feeling a bit nostalgic, we eat comfort food. It’s the food that reminds us we’re loved and a part of something bigger. In those moments, I eat kubideh, ghormeh sabzi or simply noon-o-paneer. But a hearty bowl of spaghetti and meatballs, made with my dad’s tomato sauce, works just as well. My people may not have been cooking pasta for centuries, but Italian food still feels like home."

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  • PatrickInBeijing

    I actually think this information is one of the most important pieces of news I have read in a long time.  I am talking about the widening of the wealth gap, and the reasons for it.  We are in a place where due to last hired first fired racism, POC have been losing their jobs at a much greater rate than society as a whole (although, any lost job is a tragedy).  We add to that the fact that banks have always charged POC more for mortgages, which means that as a group they are less able to withstand economic downturns.  And now, we hear that large companies are refusing to hire people who are unemployed.  De facto, this means they are ESPECIALLY refusing to hire POC. 

    Frankly, this feels like an assault on non-white America which will if allowed to continue result in further cementing the place of the vast majority of Black and Latino Americans in a permanent underclass.  This is scary as hell.  It is hard for me from so far away to see the fights against this that I know must be happening, but the media basically slides around the issues, and they need to be called out on it.  This needs to go to the top of every newsfeed, and …………….. shit, I dunno.  I want to scream.