US Politics

His choice of words was categorical. When Tim Scott, the only Black Republican in the Senate, responded to Joe Biden’s speech to Congress last week, he said: “America is not a racist country.”But racial disparities exist in the US healthcare system, its criminal justice system, its educational system and its economic system. Those gaps are wide. They are persistent. And, in some cases, racial disparities have grown over time rather than narrowed.Dataset after dataset, from non-partisan thinktanks to government sources, consistently show these racial disparities. And, unless one believes inherent, biological differences exist between racial groups in the US that would explain their differing success in the country (a belief that would, by the way, be racist), the only possible explanation for all this is structural racism.These differences exist from the moment that a child is born in the US. One in every seven Black babies has a low birth weight compared with one in every 15 white babies, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data from 2019.And the gaps remain. Black, Hispanic and Native American children are more likely to live in poverty than their white, Asian, Hawaiian or Pacific Islander counterparts, as census data from 2020 reveals.By the time that graduation rolls around, just 74% of Native American or Alaska Native children will complete their public high school education, compared with 79% of Black children and 89% of white children. These statistics come from the US Department of Education, 2017-2018.In adulthood too, racial discrimination affects just about every aspect of a person’s life. The 2018 American Community Survey (conducted by the Census Bureau) reveals that people of color are most likely to work in low-paid frontline jobs.And tragically, though not surprisingly, these are the jobs that often have the greatest exposure to the risks of Covid-19. Black people in the US are almost 1.9 times more likely to die from the disease than their white counterparts. For Hispanic or Latino people, the risk is 2.3 times higher, and for Native Americans it’s 2.4 times higher than white people.Crucially, these statistics can not be treated in isolation. Health is affected by poverty. Poverty affects educational outcomes. Education affects economic security and so it goes on.Research has shown that Black babies are more likely to be born at a low birth weight because of the physical demands of the low-paid work that many of their mothers are doing. That low-paid work can make it harder to get health insurance too. While just 5% of white people in the US don’t have health insurance, that share doubles for Black people (10%) and doubles again for Hispanic people (20%), according to the census. And of course, a lack of access to healthcare puts an individual at greater risk of dying from Covid-19.To say that the US is not a racist country is to make a statement that exists outside of reality. It is a fantasy to which many people, especially white Americans, would like to cling. More

The world is a lot better off without Donald Trump as president of the United States. And Facebook is a lot more peaceful without Trump’s unhinged calls for vengeance against his political opponents and fabricated tales of voter fraud echoing across the platform. What’s more, the world is a lot better off now that Trump can’t use Facebook to execute his plans.The Facebook Oversight Board, a company-selected team of free speech experts, ruled on Wednesday that while, based on Trump’s statements, the company was justified in banning Trump for some period of time, doing so indefinitely meant the company was treating Trump differently than it does other users and other world leaders. The board kicked the decision back to Facebook, meaning that this saga is far from over.“In applying a vague, standardless penalty and then referring this case to the board to resolve, Facebook seeks to avoid its responsibilities,” the 20-member board ruled. “The board declines Facebook’s request and insists that Facebook apply and justify a defined penalty.” The board then demanded that Facebook come up with a clearer and more fair penalty within six months.The board deliberated for four months after Facebook itself appealed its own January ban of Trump. Trump had praised and encouraged the invasion of the US Capitol building on 6 January when five people died in the violence, in what was a clear assault not only on the process of legitimately selecting Trump’s successor but on American democracy itself.In doing so, the board not only came to the most obvious short-term decision, it exposed the limits of its utility. Instead of considering more important questions about the role Facebook plays in politics and political violence around the world, or about how Facebook amplifies some messages and stifles others, or – crucially, in the case of Trump – how a political figure or party exploits Facebook’s features to degrade democracy or exact violence, the board took on the narrowest of questions: the regulation of particular expressions.The decision to ban Trump and his pages in January was a significant reversal of company policy. For years Facebook had treated Trump gingerly, scared of blowback from Republican legislators and the Trump administration itself. Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s CEO, had also for years extolled the platform’s alleged neutrality when it came to controversial speech, going so far, at one point, as to defend the policy of letting Holocaust deniers promote their expressions on Facebook. Clearly Facebook executives considered not only the gravity of the assaults of 6 January, but the fact that Trump would only be president for three more weeks and that Republicans had lost control of the US Senate. It was a safe and almost obvious decision to quiet Trump.The oversight board content director, Eli Sugarman, stated on Twitter that the indefinite penalty, issued without standards by which Trump could correct his behavior and restore his status, was quite different from how Facebook handled misinformation about Covid-19 in March from the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro. Facebook froze Maduro’s page for 30 days and then left it up as “read-only,” limiting posting.“This penalty is novel and smacks of political expediency,” Sugarman wrote about the indefinite banning of Trump, compared to the limited penalty on Maduro.The problem is, Trump is almost novel – or at least he is among a select class of want-to-be tyrants capable of stoking massive violence and undermining democracy with years of corrosive messages. Maduro is no Trump. Comparing the reach and influence of Maduro to Trump makes no sense. And perhaps Facebook made a mistake by making Maduro’s penalty too short and light.Trump’s strategy of fully leveraging Facebook for propaganda, fundraising, organization, and stoking violence against opponents was mastered in 2015 by the leader of the Bharatiya Janata party in India, the current prime minister, Narendra Modi. It was repeated in early 2016 by Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines and Jair Bolsonaro used it in Brazil. Modi, Duterte and Bolsonaro are still active on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. The board has no power to insist that Facebook now treat those leaders like they did Trump. The board may only rule on accounts and content that Facebook decided to ban.Most significantly, the board did not consider the macro effect of Trump on Facebook, on the US, or on democracy. The board is not designed to. The board framed this question as one of expression, as if expression is the only consideration for a company like Facebook. The board was meant to ignore the ways Facebook actually works in the world and the ways some of its most influential users actually use Facebook.The reality is that Trump used Facebook most effectively as an organizing and fundraising tool. Trump’s entire political organization depended on Facebook from the start. Through Facebook, Trump built a fundraising base, recruited volunteers, filled his rallies with supporters and targeted advertisements to small slices of potential voters. Facebook is how Trump prevailed in 2016. Only the fact that Trump failed spectacularly as president to keep the US healthy and prosperous kept him from being re-elected in 2020.Even though he is no longer president and may not ever run for office again, Trump has the means and motivation to expand his political machine. Perhaps it would be to maintain his influence in the Republican party. Perhaps it would support some of his children or their spouses in their political campaigns to come.We should not expect consistency from Facebook going forward … Ultimately, Facebook is too big and too complicatedThe oversight board is committed to rule-based deliberation. It seeks consistency and predictability from Facebook. But Facebook is facing a series of unique challenges, very few of which are like the others. Rule-based deliberation forces the board to imagine that world leaders are somehow the same or even in the same situations. It also assumes that language works the same way in different contexts. Overall, it makes the board focus on the micro – the expression itself – not on the macro effects over time of a leader’s full activity on Facebook.Even comparing Modi, who has been pressuring Facebook to scrub criticisms of his government from the platform, to Trump, who has not and cannot, has its limitations. Facebook has so far failed to take Modi seriously as a threat to the lives and health of both people and democracy. But then again, India is Facebook’s largest market and Modi is close to both Zuckerberg and the chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg.We should not expect consistency from Facebook going forward. We should not even demand it. Ultimately, Facebook is too big and too complicated. And so is the real world. Any attempt to change Facebook for the better to bolster the fate of democracy must come with a full acknowledgment that whether one account is up or down or one post is deleted or not does not matter that much. The oversight board is a weak attempt by Facebook to look as if it takes seriously its effects on the world. We should not give it that much credit. More

The coronavirus pandemic – heard of it? It’s famously still going on! Though national case numbers are finally starting to drop and recent regional outbreaks in the midwest have begun to subside, there were still about 50,000 new Covid-19 infections recorded in the US on Tuesday and just over 700 new virus-related deaths.But Greg Gianforte, Montana’s governor, has other priorities: he’s been talking about a “labor shortage” in a cynical attempt to cut public assistance. The Republican governor released a statement on Tuesday announcing his state will stop participating in the federal program that has given unemployed workers additional unemployment payments since the start of the pandemic – in an apparent attempt to get Montanans back to work, and he plans to give those who choose to do so something he calls a “return-to-work bonus”.Here’s why it won’t work:The “return-to-work” bonus is not a replacement for added unemployment benefits.Thanks to the additional unemployment payments of $300 a week, out-of-work Montana residents receiving assistance currently get between $351 and $810 weekly, in enhanced unemployment benefits. Gianforte’s new plan will cut out those additional payments starting 27 June, and “incentivize Montanans to re-enter the workforce” with a single “return-to-work” bonus of $1,200 after one full month of work.Now, I’m no high-falutin’ big city math-e-ma-tician, but a one-time payment of $1,200, which will only go to the first 12,500 workers to claim it – a tactic which, by the way, has huge “while supplies last!!” vibes – simply does not compare to $300 a week for the duration of the pandemic, ie, the foreseeable future.Who knows how long that could be? Only about a third of Montana residents are vaccinated, according to the New York Times, and infections have risen approximately 8% over the past 14 days. The pandemic is not over yet.What could “labor shortage” be another term for?Although Montana’s unemployment rate fell to 3.8% in April, which is about at pre-pandemic levels, the state’s labor commissioner, Laurie Esau, says its labor force is approximately 10,000 workers smaller than it was pre-lockdown, a drop that Gianforte assumes is to do with lazy people who, given their new found pandemic benefits, don’t want to work any more. And according to Montana department of labor estimates, nearly 25,000 people are currently filing unemployment claims, a good chunk of whom the governor is eager to push into the state’s 14,000 or so job openings.But this means there aren’t enough job openings for the number of people unemployed; even if the governor’s plan succeeds in filling those vacant positions as intended, there will still be over 10,000 people without jobs to apply for, forced to subsist on less. It is also wildly reductive to assume that because there are fewer people working, it must be the result of a lack of will. People had jobs, and those jobs were taken away, either through mass layoffs or government shutdowns of businesses. That kind of disruption takes time to recover from. People could now be working out childcare arrangements again; finding out where they fit in a new jobs market; or worried about returning to work until the coast is clear.Workers also aren’t to blame for making more on unemployment than they would at their jobs.The basis of the governor’s claims are that enhanced unemployment benefits have incentivized out-of-work Montana residents to stay unemployed. He says that the extra $300-a-week payments are now “doing more harm than good”, which is a strange way to view an intervention that is hopefully keeping people housed, clothed, and fed, but OK, sir! You’re the governor!But let’s analyze the logic of whether benefits that make your life livable stop people from wanting to work. Last year, a study by economists at Yale found the enhanced unemployment pay authorized by Congress did not disincentivize Americans from seeking employment. And if “a bunch of Yale economists” aren’t convincing enough, how about the labor secretary, Marty Walsh, who told the AP that there’s no evidence of Gianforte’s claims to the contrary.Even if there are some people choosing to stay home rather than go back to work because their enhanced unemployment benefits pay them more than their jobs (which again, no proof that that’s happening!), the argument that the alternative is preferable should be reconsidered.Full-time workers earning minimum wage in Montana earn about $346 a week – far less than MIT estimates an average single Montanan needs to live. For those living with children, even the enhanced unemployment benefits wouldn’t cut it.Nearly two-thirds of Americans have been living paycheck-to-paycheck since the pandemic hit stateside. So if I were a governor and wanted to, say, prevent an already-mounting housing crisis from mounting any further, want to give my residents enough to live on. But maybe that’s far too simple. More

It’s a blustery day in the New York city neighborhood of Astoria, Queens, where the mayoral candidate Dianne Morales is due to speak to the crowd.By the time she arrives, the pitching of Morales’ tent, branded in her colors of purple, pink and orange, has already been abandoned due to the wind, and volunteers have been sent sprinting across Astoria park to retrieve hundreds of white campaign pamphlets sent flying across the grass.It doesn’t matter. Morales, who would be the city’s first female mayor since the position was created in 1665, gets a big cheer when she strolls out to the crowd of about 100 people, nestled under the towering Triborough Bridge.Dressed all in black and wearing a hand-stitched campaign face mask, Morales is here as part of her “traveling block party tour”, where she meets, and hopes to win over, potential voters ahead of the 22 June New York City Democratic primary.An unashamedly progressive candidate who would also be New York City’s first Afro-Latina mayor, Morales is a former non-profit executive who goes the furthest of her myriad competitors in wanting to defund the police, and who plans to revamp public accommodation in a city with a dire housing crisis exacerbated by the coronavirus.“I’m running because for too long, the voices of some of our most vulnerable and marginalized communities have not been centered and elevated and leadership and policy-making,” Morales tells the Guardian.“The essential workers, the working-class immigrants, the undocumented the low-income, black and brown folks, the people who operated our trains, the people who delivered our meals, the people who stopped the grocery shelves, those people who are not being taken care of by us, for far too long have been living on the edge, and have been pushed even further as a result of this pandemic.”This is Morales’ first time running for office. A 52-year-old single mother of two, she has spent most of her career working for non-profits; working to support homeless youth and later becoming CEO of an organization that trains young adults to work in healthcare.Her campaign has attracted the enthusiastic, non-wealthy support – the average contribution to her campaign is $47, and Morales says 30% of her donors are unemployed – that same combination fueled the elections of progressive New Yorkers Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jamaal Bowman to US Congress, but she faces challenges.In much of the wider US, and around the world, New York City is seen as a forward-thinking place, a bastion of leftwing politics, gender equality and progress. But since 1834, when the mayor of New York City began being elected by popular vote, it has elected 109 leaders, every one of them a man.There are sort of political dynasties that are deeply entrenched and deeply rooted hereThe city has only had one non-white mayor, David Dinkins, who lasted four years in office in at the beginning of the 1990s before losing his re-election bid to Rudy Giuliani.“I don’t think New York City, as a whole, is as progressive as we’d like to think,” Morales says.“There are sort of political dynasties that are deeply entrenched and deeply rooted here. And the fact that so many people have not felt represented by politics that they haven’t felt compelled to participate.”Morales’ hope is that more people do participate, and with the first debate scheduled for 13 May, and television adverts already beginning to bombard New Yorkers’ screens, the race is hotting up. In a city with a Democratic majority, the winner of the June primary is expected to win the election proper on 2 November.With demand for racial equality heightened in New York after tens of thousands of people attended Black Lives Matter protests in the summer of 2020, there is enthusiasm among many for the city to appoint its second non-white mayor – although Morales cautions that it should be the right candidate.“Not all people of color are created equal,” Morales says. Her Democratic running mates include Eric Adams, a former New York police department captain, who is Black, and Maya Wiley, a Black woman who formerly advised Bill de Blasio.“But that being said, I think it’s critically important to have someone whose lived experiences can reflect and speak to the challenges of the vast majority of New Yorkers or people of color. Because I think it’s one thing to be able to advocate for someone else. It’s another thing to really have a direct first-hand understanding of those experiences and those challenges. It gives you a different perspective.”Not all people of color are created equalMorales’ past includes having experienced police violence first-hand, most recently at a Black Lives Matter demonstration with her family last May.“I watched as much as both of my children first got pepper-sprayed, and then as my son got assaulted by a police officer,” Morales says.As Morales and her family were being hemmed in by police, she said she waded forward to protect her son, who was being punched by a police officer.“In that moment, time both speeds up and slows down, and I remember coming up behind my son, putting my hand around his chest, pulling him back towards me. And in that moment, that was when everything slowed down, I felt like I could hear him, felt his beating heart. And I remember thinking he’s a baby, and he’s terrified,” Morales said.“It was terrifying and devastating and traumatizing.”Several candidates expressed interest in hacking the NYPD’s budget after that summer, but as the primary grows closer, many have backed away from the strongest proposals. Morales’ plan – “defund the police; fund the people”, her website reads – goes furthest, cutting $3bn from the NYPD’s $6bn budget and swapping out police with trained responders who would respond to mental health, wellness and social issues call outs.Primaries in New York City are known for being unpredictable. At a similar stage in the 2013 Democratic vote, Bill dDe Blasio was in fourth place, but went on to clinch victory with 40% of the vote. That gives hope for Morales, who in a recent poll was in a cluster of candidates trailing Andrew Yang, a tech entrepreneur; Eric Adams, a former New York police captain and the current Brooklyn borough president; and Scott Stringer, the New York City comptroller who is hemorrhaging support after an accusation of sexual misconduct.Morales, unlike the candidates currently in that top three, has never run for public office before, but believes this is her time.“I am not doing this for the sake of the next step, or, just for the sake of holding office,” Morales says.“I’m doing this for the sake of actually trying to dramatically improve the quality of life and the access to dignity of so many New Yorkers.” More

This year, Ruby Bridges saw some newly discovered video footage of her six-year-old self and was terrified for her. The footage was from 14 November 1960, a day that shaped the course of Bridges’ life and – it is no exaggeration to say – American history. Not that she was aware of it at the time. On that day she became the first Black child to attend an all-white primary school in Louisiana.Looking at images of Bridges’ first day at William Frantz elementary school in New Orleans, she is a study in vulnerability: a tiny girl in her smart new uniform, with white socks and white ribbons in her hair, flanked by four huge federal agents in suits. Awaiting her at the school gates was a phalanx of rabidly hostile protesters, mostly white parents and children, plus photographers and reporters. They yelled names and racial slurs, chanted, and waved placards. One sign read: “All I want for Christmas is a clean white school.” One woman held up a miniature coffin with a black doll in it. It has become one of the defining images of the civil rights movement, popularised even further by Norman Rockwell’s recreation of it in his 1964 painting The Problem We All Live With.The confrontation was expected. Three months before Bridges was born, the US supreme court had issued its landmark Brown v Board of Education ruling, outlawing segregation in schools nationwide. Six years later, though, states in the south were stubbornly refusing to act upon it. When nine African American children enrolled at the Little Rock school in Arkansas in 1957, it had caused an uproar. President Eisenhower had to call in federal troops to escort the children through a national guard blockade ordered by the governor. Three years later it was Louisiana’s turn. Bridges was one of six Black children to pass a test to gain access to formerly all-white schools. But two of the children dropped out and three went, on the same day, to a different school. So Bridges was all on her own.Many have read resolve or defiance into Bridges’ demeanour that day, but the explanation is far simpler. “I was really not aware that I was going into a white school,” she says. “My parents never explained it to me. I stumbled into crowds of people, and living here in New Orleans, being accustomed to Mardi Gras, the huge celebration that takes place in the city every year, I really thought that’s what it was that day. There was no need for me to be afraid of that.”Watching the footage of that day 60 years later, Bridges’ reaction was very different. “It was just mind-blowing, horrifying,” she says. “I had feelings that I’d never had before … And I thought to myself: ‘I cannot even fathom me now, today, as a parent and grandparent, sending my child into an environment like that.’”Bridges, 66, can understand her own parents’ actions, though. They grew up as sharecroppers (poor tenant farmers) in rural Mississippi in the pre-civil rights era before moving to New Orleans in 1958. “They were not allowed to go to school every day,” she says. “Neither one of them had a formal education. If it was time for them to get the crops in, or to work, school was a luxury; that was something they couldn’t do. So they really wanted opportunities for their children that they were not allowed to have.”Bridges’ parents paid a high price for their decision. Her mother, who had been the chief advocate for her attending the white school, lost her job as a domestic worker. Her father, a Korean war veteran who worked as a service-station attendant, also lost his job on account of the Bridges’ newfound notoriety. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which had played a big part in Bridges’ case, advised him not to go out and look for work, for his own safety. “That in itself caused a lot of tension,” she says, “because I’m the oldest of eight, and at that point he was no longer able to provide for his family. So they were solely dependent on donations and people that would help them.” The local corner store refused to serve them. Even her sharecropper grandparents were made to move from their farm in Mississippi. Her parents eventually separated. “I remember writing a letter to Santa Claus and asking him to give my father’s job back, and that he didn’t have a job because I was going to the school. So I guess somehow I did feel some blame for it.”Life at her new school was no easier for Bridges. For the first year, she needed federal protection every day since protesters were always at the school gates, including the woman with the doll in a coffin. “That I used to have nightmares about,” she says. “I would dream that the coffin was flying around my bedroom at night.” Bridges had to bring her own lunch every day for fear of being poisoned. The white parents all withdrew their children from the school, and the staff refused to teach Bridges, except for one teacher: Barbara Henry, who had come from Boston. For the first year, Henry taught Bridges alone, just the two of them in the classroom. “We knew we had to be there for each other,” says Bridges.Bridges had another ally outside the school: Robert Coles, a white child psychiatrist who had witnessed the scenes outside the school, and volunteered to support her and her family, visiting the home on a weekly basis. Coles went on to establish a career studying the effects of desegregation on schoolchildren. It later emerged that it was one of his relatives who had sent Bridges her smart school clothes, which her family could never have afforded.Things changed gradually. Over the course of that first year, a few white parents let their children back into the school. At first they were kept separate from Bridges. “The principal, who was part of the opposition, would take the kids and she would hide them, so that they would never come in contact with me.” Towards the end of the first year, however, on Henry’s insistence, Bridges was finally allowed to be part of a small class with other six-year-olds. “A little boy then said to me: ‘My mom said not to play with you because you’re a nigger,’” Bridges recalls. “And the minute he said that, it was like everything came together. All the little pieces that I’d been collecting in my mind all fit, and I then understood: the reason why there’s no kids here is because of me, and the colour of my skin. That’s why I can’t go to recess. And it’s not Mardi Gras. It all sort of came together: a very rude awakening. I often say today that really was my first introduction to racism.”It was also an insight into the origins of racism, she later realised. “The way that I was brought up, if my parents had said: ‘Don’t play with him – he’s white, he’s Asian, he’s Hispanic, he’s Indian, he’s whatever – I would not have played with him.” The little boy wasn’t being knowingly racist towards her; he was simply explaining why he couldn’t play with her. “Which leads me to my point that racism is learned behaviour. We pass it on to our kids, and it continues from one generation to the next. That moment proved that to me.”By the time Bridges returned to the school for the second year, the furore had pretty much died down. There were no protests, she was in a normal-sized class with other children, predominantly white but with a few more African Americans. The overall situation had improved, although Bridges was upset that Henry had left the school (they have remained lifelong friends). Thanks to Henry’s teaching, Bridges spoke with a strong Boston accent, for which she was criticised by her teacher – one of those who had refused to teach her the year before. Every year, though, more and more Black students came to the school. By the time she moved on, high schools had been desegregated for nearly a decade, although Black and white pupils still did not mix. The south’s racist legacy was still close to the surface: her high school was named after a former Confederate general, Francis T Nicholls. Its sports teams were named the Rebels, and had a Confederate flag on their badge, which the Black students fought to change. (The school was renamed Frederick Douglass high school in the 1990s, and its teams are now the Bobcats.)Bridges says she did not have much of a career plan when she finished school. “I was really more focused on how to get out of Louisiana. I knew that there was something more than what I was exposed to right there in my community.” She first applied for jobs as a flight attendant, then became a travel agent for American Express for 15 years, during which time she got to travel the world.By her mid-30s, Bridges had satisfied her wanderlust and was married (to Malcolm Hall, in 1984) with four sons. But she felt restless. “I was asking myself: ‘What am I doing? Am I doing something really meaningful?’ I really wanted to know what my purpose was in life.” In 1993, Bridges’ brother was shot dead on a New Orleans street. For a time she cared for his four daughters, who also attended William Frantz elementary school. Then in 1995, Coles, now a Harvard professor, published his children’s book The Story of Ruby Bridges, which brought her back into the public eye. People in New Orleans had never really talked about her story, Bridges explains, in the same way that, for years, people in Dallas didn’t talk about the Kennedy assassination. “You have to understand, we didn’t have Black History Month during that time. It wasn’t like I could pick up a textbook and open it up and read about myself.” Bridges helped promote Coles’ book, talking in schools across the US. It became a bestseller. A few years later, Disney made a biopic of Bridges, on which she acted as a consultant. “I think everybody started to realise that me, Ruby Bridges, was actually the same little girl as in the Norman Rockwell painting.”The proceeds from the book helped Bridges set up her foundation. Bringing her nieces back to William Frantz, she noticed the lack of after-school arts programmes, so set up her own. She continued touring schools across the country telling her story and promoting cultural understanding. (She recently had a new book published, This Is Your Time, retelling her story for today’s young people.) Then, in 2005, Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans and the school was badly damaged. There were plans to tear it down. “I felt like if anybody was to save the school, it would be me,” she says. Bridges successfully campaigned to have the school put on the National Register of Historic Places, which freed funds to restore and expand it. “So now it has been reopened. Kids are back in the seats. And I’m really proud of the fact that I had something to do with that.” A statue of Bridges stands in the courtyard.It was not until much later in life that Bridges became aware of Rockwell’s painting of her. It is not a faithful recreation of the scene (if anything it is closer to John Steinbeck’s eyewitness account in his 1962 book Travels With Charley in Search of America) but in contrast to Rockwell’s earlier cheery Americana, it captures the anger and drama: the N-word and “KKK” are scrawled across the wall behind Bridges, along with a splattered tomato.When Barack Obama became president, Bridges suggested the painting be hung in the White House to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the event. Obama agreed, and invited Bridges and her family to its unveiling. He gave her a big hug. “It was a very powerful moment,” she says. “As we embraced, I saw people in the room tearing up and realised that it wasn’t just about he and I meeting; it was about those moments in time that came together. And all of those sacrifices in between he and I. He then turned to me and said: ‘You know, it’s fair to say that if it had not been for this moment, for you all, I might not be here today.’ That in itself is just a stark reminder of how all of us are standing on someone else’s shoulders. Someone else that opened the door and paved the way. And so we have to understand that we cannot give up the fight, whether we see the fruits of our labour or not. You have a responsibility to open the door to keep this moving forward.”Ironically, and dishearteningly for Bridges, today William Frantz’s pupils are 100% Black. The white population had already begun moving out in the mid-60s, she explains, partly because of damage done by Hurricane Betsy, in 1965, but also in response to the changing demographics of the district. Today it is one of the poorest in the city, with relatively high crime rates. It is not just New Orleans: “white flight” has effectively resulted in a form of re-segregation in schools across the US.Bridges sees this as the next battle: “Just as those people felt like it was unfair, and worked so hard during the civil rights movement to have those laws changed, we have to do that all over again. And we have to, first and foremost, see the importance of it. Because we’re faced with such division in our country, but where does that start? It starts very young. So I believe that it’s important, just like Dr King did, that our kids have an opportunity to learn about one another: to grow together, play together, learn together. The most time that kids spend away from home is in school, so our schools have to be integrated. And I know that there are arguments on both sides about that, but we’re never going to become the United States of America unless we, the people, are united.”This Is Your Time by Ruby Bridges is published by One. To order for £8.36 (RRP £8.99) go to bookshop.theguardian.com. P&P charges may apply. More

In her first major interview as a candidate for California governor, Caitlyn Jenner sought to appeal to Trump Republicans – telling Fox News’ Sean Hannity she’s an “outsider” looking to “disrupt” politics as usual.The former Olympian and reality TV star sat down with Hannity at her private airplane hangar in Malibu, a wealthy, celebrity enclave west of Los Angeles, to introduce herself as a candidate to replace Democrat Gavin Newsom in the forthcoming recall election.“I am an outsider,” she told Hannity, adding that she wants to surround herself “with some of the smartest people out there” to help her develop her platform. “I’m in a race for solutions. I need to find solutions to be able to turn this state around,” she said.Jenner, who has no prior experience in elected office, has seen her campaign get off to a stumbling start. The news release touting her first campaign video initially misspelled her name. And this week, the former Olympic athlete, who has presented herself as a champion for trans rights, said she opposes transgender girls competing in girls’ sports.“For me as a trans woman, I think role models are extremely important for young people,” Jenner said on Wednesday. “Our suicide rate is nine times higher than the general public. And for me to be a role model, for them, to be out there, I am running for governor of the state of California, who would ever thunk that? We’ve never even had a woman governor.”“But some are mad at you,” Hannity prompted.“That’s that, I don’t care. I move on,” she said.In an interview with TMZ this week, she said: “I oppose biological boys who are trans from competing in girls’ sports in school. It just isn’t fair. We have to protect girls’ sports in our schools.”The comments, which came as conservative lawmakers across the country advanced legislation banning trans children from sports teams and limiting their access to gender-affirming healthcare, have sparked anger and dismay among LGBTQ + advocacy groups and children’s welfare groups. They have also added fuel to criticisms that Jenner is disingenuous. Her campaign ad features footage of her playing in a women’s golf tournament.“Make no mistake: we can’t wait to elect a trans governor of California,” tweeted Equality California, an advocacy group. “But Caitlyn Jenner spent years telling the LGBTQ+ community to trust Donald Trump. We saw how that turned out. Now she wants us to trust her?”Jenner supported Trump in 2016, but later distanced herself from him over his administration’s record on trans rights. Her current gubernatorial bid is bolstered by former Trump campaign figures.On Tuesday, Jenner released her first campaign ad, in which she called herself a “compassionate disruptor”.“California, it’s time to reopen our schools, reopen our businesses, reopen the golden gates,” Jenner narrates, over folksy images of farms, diners and embracing families. “So I don’t care if you’re a Republican, Democrat, I’m running to be governor for all Californians. To reclaim our true identity, to bring back the gold to the Golden State,” she said.But Jenner has had trouble pinning down her political identity, as she strives to woo Trump Republicans and moderate voters in a heavily left-leaning state. “I am all for the wall, I would secure the wall,” Jenner told Hannity. “We can’t have a state, we can’t have a country without a secure wall.”However, she hesitated as Hannity pushed her on whether she opposed social support for undocumented immigrants: “We are a compassionate state … Some people we’re going to send back OK, no question about that. But I have met some of the greatest immigrants [in] our country.”Later, Hannity corrected her when she said she’s pro- “illegal immigration”. “You’re pro legal immigration” he corrected.“Sorry, did I miss the legal part?,” she said. “Thanks for catching me.”Jenner will have to win over Trump-aligned Republicans, who launched the recall effort against Newsom. The effort gained steam this winter, as California struggled through its most deadly phase of the pandemic.“For a candidate like Caitlyn Jenner to win, it has to be like a layered cake. The bottom layer has to be Trump supporters,” Bill Whalen, a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and a speechwriter for the former Republican governor Pete Wilson, told the Associated Press. “Where do you go to get Trump supporters? Simple. Sean Hannity,” Whalen said.In a state that Trump lost by 30 points in the 2020 election, Jenner – like any other Republican seeking to challenge Newsom – would also have to win over moderates and independents in order to win.Jenner and Hannity reviewed common Republican talking points – lamenting pandemic-time business shutdowns, worrying over water restrictions for farmers amid drought, and trash-talking the much-maligned endangered Delta Smelt.Jenner is the most prominent celebrity to enter the recall race. Other Republican challengers include John Cox, a businessman who lost to Newsom by 24 points during the last gubernatorial election and who is currently hitting the campaign trail with a domesticated Kodiak bear. Kevin Faulconer, the former mayor of San Diego and Doug Ose, a former US representative, are also in the running.No Democrats are currently challenging Newsom, who still retains broad support. Recent polling from the Public Policy Institute of California found that 56% of likely voters oppose recalling the governor, and 5% are unsure. Only 40% would vote to remove the governor from office. More

Liz Cheney, the third-most-powerful House Republican, has warned that her party is “at a turning point” as it prepares to try to remove her from leadership for rejecting Donald Trump’s false claims about the election.Writing in a defiant op-ed, published by the Washington Post on Wednesday, the Wyoming Republican told her party that standing with Trump meant undermining the rule of law and risking continued violence.“Trump is seeking to unravel critical elements of our constitutional structure that make democracy work – confidence in the result of elections and the rule of law. No other American president has ever done this,” Cheney said in the article.“The Republican party is at a turning point, and Republicans must decide whether we are going to choose truth and fidelity to the constitution.”“History is watching us,” she warned.Her column comes as top members of her party, including Trump and the No 2 House Republican, Steve Scalise, publicly endorsed Representative Elise Stefanik for Cheney’s job as chair of the party’s conference. A vote could come as early as next Wednesday.Trump flexed his muscles anew this week, releasing seven public statements in three days reiterating his false claims that Joe Biden’s 7m-vote margin of victory was the result of fraud, and attacking Republicans including Cheney and Senator Mitt Romney who rejected him.Cheney referenced the president’s behavior in her column, saying that his message was clear. “Trump has repeated his claims that the 2020 election was a fraud and was stolen. His message: I am still the rightful president, and President Biden is illegitimate. Trump repeats these words now with full knowledge that exactly this type of language provoked violence on 6 January.“The question before us now is whether we will join Trump’s crusade to delegitimize and undo the legal outcome of the 2020 election, with all the consequences that might have. I have worked overseas in nations where changes in leadership come only with violence, where democracy takes hold only until the next violent upheaval,” Cheney wrote.She continued: “We must be brave enough to defend the basic principles that underpin and protect our freedom and our democratic process. I am committed to doing that, no matter what the short-term political consequences might be.”Trump’s false claims of widespread fraud have been widely debunked. But Republican-controlled state legislatures are using those claims to justify legislation imposing new restrictions on voting.The Republican representative Adam Kinzinger earlier on Wednesday praised Cheney for standing by her criticism of Trump. “They are trying to remove Liz for telling you the truth, consistently,” said Kinzinger, who like Cheney voted to impeach Trump on a charge of inciting the Capitol riot.The Wall Street Journal’s conservative editorial page also urged Republicans not to oust her.“Purging Liz Cheney for honesty would diminish the party,” it said in a Wednesday opinion piece.In a recent call, the Republican House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, told Donald Trump that Cheney would soon be forced out of her Republican leadership position, the Daily Beast reports.Cheney herself has told other Republicans that it’s not worth holding on to her leadership role as conference chair “if lying is going to be a requirement”, one source told the Daily Beast.Biden said on Wednesday that a “mini-revolution” over identity appeared to be under way in the Republican party.“Republicans are further away from trying to figure out who they are and what they stand for than I thought they would be at this point,” he told reporters at the White House. More