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      ‘I was not voting before, now I am’: gen Z voters on what they think of Kamala Harris

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      American gen Z voters share how they feel about Kamala Harris’s presidential bid, why they like or dislike her as a candidate and whether they think she could beat Donald Trump, as the vice-president races towards winning the Democratic nomination for November’s election.‘I think she’s just what we need’“I think [Kamala Harris] is the only one that makes sense. She will get the votes Biden couldn’t. She could get the Black, Asian, Latino, women’s, LGBTQ+ and youth votes. She stands more for progress and equality than an old white dude and if she wins it will be historic. The Democrats need a bold move and I think she’s just what we need.“I hope the Democrats realize what an opportunity this is for them.” Will, 22, construction worker from Portland, Oregon‘We are fired up’“I have so much renewed passion and hope now that Kamala is the endorsed candidate. She made history when she was elected VP and I believe she can make history again. I get emotional just thinking about it. And despite having just purchased a new home and having hardly any extra cash lying around, my husband and I just donated $100 to a campaign for the first time this election cycle. We are fired up.“My concern is we are facing a self-fulfilling prophecy; that people think it’s an impossible task to elect a Black woman to the highest office and as a result it becomes one. I think it’s quite the opposite actually. I feel Kamala is just what we need to energize young voters and get them to the polls.” Lizzie, 28, engineer from Idaho‘I’m concerned that she is silly or not serious’“I feel mixed about it. I am a Democrat and at first I thought: ‘Oh well, we’re stuck with Joe we’ll get him elected if it means no Donald Trump.’ Then after the debate I thought: ‘Omg this guy is way too old!’ I guess Biden seemed so set on still running I thought he would never drop out. I liked Kamala when she ran back in 2020 but I’m not sure how I feel about her today.“My biggest concern with her is this perception that she is silly, or not serious. She laughs in every interview and the “You think you fell out of a coconut tree? You are the sum of everything … ” is a huge meme on TikTok. I guess I wouldn’t say it paints her in a horrible light, but I just think people don’t take her seriously.” Georgie, 25, research associate from Massachusetts‘Kamala is not perfect, but I’m more optimistic now than with Biden’“I and everyone I know are THRILLED that Kamala Harris is now leading the ticket. Joe Biden could not win. Kamala is not a perfect candidate, but she can campaign; she is running against the oldest major party nominee in history; she can make the case for a new Democratic administration. Joe Biden could do none of these things, so while I think Democrats still face an uphill battle, I am infinitely more optimistic now that we have a likely nominee who is physically and mentally capable of running an energetic campaign.“Kamala is not a perfect candidate, and I probably would have supported someone else if Biden had stepped down a year ago. I’m worried that she will struggle to differentiate herself from the administration’s policy on Gaza (as Hubert Humphrey struggled to differentiate himself from the Johnson administration’s policy on Vietnam), that she’ll be blamed for voters’ dissatisfaction with the status quo, and, of course, she will certainly face racist and sexist headwinds that Biden did not. BUT, and it’s a big ‘but’, I thought Biden was a certain loser after the debate, so even if Harris’s chances to win are 30%, that’s still better than 0%. I don’t have any concerns about her ability to do the job if elected, and I think she is perfectly capable of running a winning campaign, at least in theory.” Peter, 27, museum educator from Indiana‘That Harris was picked by delegates, not voters, is a disaster for her campaign’“I watched the 2019 debates (eg Harris’s inability to perform under pressure from opponents like Tulsi Gabbard) and her recent interviews (eg her disastrous response to Lester Holt when asked if she’d been to the border) and don’t think she’s the strongest the Democratic party can offer. She doesn’t bring the fact-based, logical responses needed to counter a populist candidate like Trump nor does she present clear policy beyond typical stump-speech moralizing.“I’d rather have Pete Buttigieg to be honest and feel deeply, horribly cheated because the Democratic candidate isn’t going to be chosen by a primary vote, instead relying on a couple thousand delegates in Chicago.“I’d feel better if she were at least chosen by the American people instead of being sweethearted because Biden picked her for VP. It all leaves a bad taste in my mouth, and I’ll have a hard time backing Harris until there’s a broad-scale democratic process to ballast her presidential bid.“The Trump campaign is going to villainize Harris and the Democratic party over the lack of primary voting to support Harris’s candidacy. This narrative feeds exactly into the anti-establishment, deep-state messaging central to the Trump campaign, and the sad thing is that the Trump campaign will have a point: Harris was not picked by voters, she was picked by delegates. It’s a disaster for any campaign she’d hope to launch, and based on Harris’s past performances under fire, she will have no effective argument against Trump’s accusations.” Michelle, 26, from Wisconsin‘I think she can do great things’“It will be refreshing for someone new to take the lead. [Harris] has got experience, she is young and passionate. Let’s see if she can make positive changes. This country needs a levelheaded individual, not a pushover or tyrant. I think she can do great things.“I just hope she is smart and strong enough to not continue to support war and the crackdown on immigrants.“This country was built on the foundation of immigrants and the pursuit of fairness and equity. I don’t mind the basis of what it means to be a Republican but their agenda has really changed over the years. We need to support each other as people; I just hope others get over their greed so we can do just that.” Lee Ocasio, 28, medical assistant from New York‘I hope she’ll restore Roe v Wade’“I am anxious for the results, but if she’s got a good chance at victory, I’m in full support. I had switched back and forth on supporting a Biden withdrawal, but what’s done is done now.“I’m a little worried about her policies. From what I’ve read this far, she doesn’t seem to have much of a stance or plan for things like Palestine, immigration or inflation, but if she can restore Roe v Wade, she will have 110% of my support.” Kaleb Stanton, 24, grocery store worker from New Mexico‘She’ll be a tougher candidate to beat than Biden’“I have been worried about the lack of enthusiasm about Biden’s candidacy, particularly among young voters, and the implications that could have on turnout. Virtually all indicators have pointed to a strong economy under Biden; however, I think many young people feel like there is less opportunity for them today than there was for prior generations.“For this reason, I think it is unsurprising that there would be a lack of enthusiasm to support Biden or Trump because of their age (regardless of their ability to do the job or not).“I think that VP Harris will be a harder opponent for Republicans to run against. Consider the matchup: a 78-year-old male Republican nominee recently found guilty on felony charges, and responsible for appointing three supreme court justices that helped overturn Roe v Wade versus a 59-year-old female (likely) Democratic nominee with a background as a former prosecutor. Harris will be able to hammer Republicans on abortion/reproductive health, contrast her own ‘law & order’ background with Trump’s felon status, and offer a younger option to voters that were concerned about Biden’s (and Trump’s!) age.“I think Harris also has strengths that bring previously competitive southern states back into play in a way that Biden couldn’t in 2024. Harris would be the first female president, first female African-American president, and first Asian-American president. She represents America’s cultural melting pot in a way that no previous presidential candidate has and I believe this could help boost African- and Asian-American turnout, two historically strong Democratic voter bases that some polls have shown to be slightly wavering in their support in recent years.” Anonymous policy researcher at a thinktank in their 20s‘She appeals way more to gen Z than Biden’“[Kamala Harris] is a much better candidate for the country, and appeals way more to gen Z voters than Biden did. I was not voting before, and now I am.” Javier, 25, a gay Latino voter from New York More

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      Trump nephew reveals Uncle Donald’s racist outburst in new book

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      In a new book, Donald Trump’s nephew recalls the future US president, at the start of his New York real estate career, surveying damage to a beloved car and furiously using the N-word.The shocking scene appears in All in the Family: The Trumps and How We Got This Way by Fred C Trump III, which will be published in the US next Tuesday. The Guardian obtained a copy.“‘Niggers,’ I recall him saying disgustedly. ‘Look what the niggers did,’” Fred Trump writes, describing his uncle’s racist outburst.In the midst of a tumultuous election, in which Trump faces Kamala Harris, the first woman of color to be vice-president, the book may prove explosive.Allegations of racism have followed Trump through his life in business and politics.Rumours persist that tape exists of Trump using the N-word during his time on The Apprentice, the hit NBC TV show that propelled him towards politics, though none have emerged. Omarosa Manigault, a Black contestant, has said she has heard such a tape. Trump denies it.Since winning the Republican nomination for president in 2016, through four years in the White House and in his third presidential campaign, Trump has repeatedly used racist language and has faced accusations of race-baiting. He has vehemently denied all such accusations.Nonetheless, Fred C Trump III describes in detail a stunning moment he says happened in the early 1970s at the house of his grandparents, Donald Trump’s parents, in Queens, New York.It was “just a normal afternoon for preteen me”, Trump III writes, but then his uncle arrived.“Donald was pissed,” Trump III writes. “Boy, was he pissed.”Trump says his uncle showed him his “cotillon white Cadillac Eldorado convertible”. In its retractable canvas top, “there was a giant gash, at least two feet long [and] another, shorter gash next to it”.“‘Niggers,’ I recall him saying disgustedly. ‘Look at what the niggers did.’“‘I knew that was a bad word.’”His uncle, Trump III writes, had not seen whoever damaged his car. Instead, he “saw the damage, then went straight to the place where people’s minds sometimes go when they face a fresh affront. Across the racial divide.”Fred C Trump III is a successful New York real estate executive – outside the Trump firm – and, because of his experiences as a parent, a campaigner in support of the intellectually and developmentally disabled.He is not the first Trump to write a book about growing up in a family led by Fred Trump Sr, a New York construction and real estate magnate, and containing the future president.In 2020, Fred C Trump III’s sister, Mary Trump, published the bestseller Too Much and Never Enough. Promoting that book, she said her uncle was “clearly racist”, adding that she had heard him using racist language “and I don’t think that should surprise anybody given how virulently racist he is today”.Mary Trump will release another memoir this year, about the sad life and early death of her and Fred C Trump III’s father, Fred Trump Jr, the oldest son who nonetheless saw his younger brother take over the family business.When Fred Trump Sr died, Trump III and his sister were effectively disinherited by their uncles and aunts, before reaching a settlement.In 2020, when Mary Trump released her memoir and Donald Trump tried to block it, her brother distanced himself from the project. But this June, when Simon & Schuster announced Trump III’s own book, it promised “candid and revealing … never-before-told stories” that would shed “light into the darker corner of the Trump empire”.The publisher also said Trump III was motivated to write by the 2024 election, and suggested his book might “shape the decision of a nation”.The book spares little in its portrayal of Trump attitudes about race.Of Queens in the 1960s and 70s, Trump III says it was “one of the most diverse places on the planet” but also one of contrast, between Jamaica Estates, the affluent, white neighborhood where the Trumps lived, and areas where majority people of color lived.“If something bad happened” to residents of Jamaica Estates, Trump III writes, “they were the ones who did it. Almost certainly, it was them.”He considers a key question: “So, was Donald a racist?”Noting that “people have been asking for decades”, Trump III say his uncle used the N-word at a time when he says “people said all kinds of crude, thoughtless, prejudiced things”, adding: “Maybe everyone in Queens was a racist then.”Trump III says he did not hear his grandfather, Fred Trump Sr, use the N-word, but did hear him “sometimes say schvartze, the Yiddish slur for Black people, and his tenants were uniformly white. That had to mean something, didn’t it?”In 1973, Fred Trump Sr, Donald Trump and the Trump company were sued by the US justice department, alleging racial discrimination at New York housing developments.Trump III writes: “This was a painful period for the company and therefore for Donald … all the publicity was bad publicity. The ‘r’ word – racist – was thrown around.”The Trumps countersued and the case was settled “with no admission of guilt”, as Donald Trump has said.Trump III also addresses his grandfather’s apparent arrest at a Ku Klux Klan rally in 1927, which he says surprised the family when it was recently reported. Detailing an incident in his own childhood in which he says three “tough-looking Black kids” stole his bike, Trump III says his Uncle Donald demanded one of the kids be “punished” and locked up.He then cites another flashpoint in Donald Trump’s adult life: the day in 1989 when he “took out full-page ads in the New York City newspapers, demanding harsh [in fact capital] punishment for the Central Park Five”, Black teenagers wrongfully imprisoned over the rape of a white woman.“I couldn’t say I was surprised,” Trump III writes. “Suddenly, I was right back … in Queens.” More

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      Harris’s likely nomination invigorates US Black women and spurs donations

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      Following Joe Biden’s decision on Sunday to end his re-election campaign and endorse Kamala Harris, Win With Black Women, a political collective, held its regular call to discuss that week’s agenda: the upcoming election. Only this time, the call swelled to include more than 44,000 people – forcing Zoom to lift capacity limitations – with an additional 30,000 joining in on a Clubhouse stream, and an unknown number of others connecting to unauthorized livestreams, organizers said. Even as late as 1am, people continued trying to join the call.“We were so elated and pleased to see [Biden] fully endorse Vice-President Kamala Harris, and so we all got on that Zoom, united around our joy, united around our desire to be together in history,” Jotaka Eaddy, Win With Black Women’s founder, said. “But [we] also united around our support of Vice-President Harris and our commitment to do the work to make sure that she’s the next president of the United States and that we beat Donald Trump and the Maga agenda.”The group first convened four years ago “around our collective outrage to the racism, the sexism that was taking place in the presidential process”.While Sunday’s number of call attendees was unexpected, Win With Black Women was able to accommodate and mobilize them because of the extensive framework the organization has built.“It is important to recognize Jotaka Eaddy, Holli Holliday, Chrisina Cue, Chantel Mullen, Edwina Ward, Hollye Weekes,” Sesha Joi Moon, who was present on the call, said. “These are the women that were responsible for 71,000 registrants, 44,000 and counting logging on … then helped to raise $1.5m in three hours [for] the first potential Black woman president in the United States of America.”Moon was formerly the chief diversity officer for the US House of Representatives for the 117th and 118th Congresses. After her position was eliminated a few months ago, she recalls saying that it was “a very sad day for America”. Sunday night gave her a renewed sense of hope.“Regardless of your race, your gender, your religion, your sexual orientation, your immigrant status, your military service status, your geographic location, your educational level, your ability status as it relates to being disabled – we said we want a country where everyone belongs,” she said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSunday’s Win With Black Women call featured prominent Black women including representatives Maxine Waters, Joyce Beatty and Jasmine Crockett; Danette Antony Reed, president of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority; actor Jenifer Lewis; and LaTosha Brown, co-founder of Black Voters Matter. The Zoom call included an intergenerational representation of Black women and girls along with Latino, AAPI and male allies.“It was one of the best feelings ever,” Sophia Casey, who joined the Zoom call from Washington DC, said. “The sisterhood, I was just sharing with another colleague who didn’t get to make the call, that the sisterhood was just delicious.”Tiffany Crutcher received an invitation to join from Debra Watts, with whom Crutcher has done social justice organizing, then used her own networks to invite hundreds of additional women, she said.“We’ve carried this Democratic party for decades – we’re the margin of victory. This is our time, and that’s the energy I felt on that call,” Crutcher said. “All of the energy and the organizing that we’re doing on the ground … We’re gonna use that energy all the way into November.”Eaddy said that “there is a fire in the country right now of excitement”. The Monday-night call had more than 5,000 women who were interested in joining, and following the Win With Black Women call, a coalition of several groups organized another under the banner of Win With Black Men.In 2016 and 2020, 94% and 90% of Black women, respectively, supported the Democratic nominee. If Harris is successful in clinching her party’s nomination, for the first time, Black female voters will have the opportunity to vote for a Black woman representing a major political party for president.“To see the breadth of Black women in joy, but also committed to the work that is ahead of us, it’s a feeling that I will never, ever lose,” Eaddy said. “I will take it with me for the rest of my life.” More

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      Black swing voters in Georgia aren’t swayed by the ‘Trump okey-doke’ – and then there’s Biden

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      Inside a barbershop in Atlanta’s affluent Buckhead neighborhood, eight Black men gathered to talk politics on the day before the presidential debate. Most were business owners around town, social media stars and notable conservatives.All but one.Mark Boyd, whose personal politics might best be described as insubordinate, somehow found himself next to two Republican representatives taking a phone call from Donald Trump.“When I came in and saw the doggone sign ‘Blacks for Trump’ or whatever, I’m like: ‘Well, that’s the okey-doke. But I’m going to get their ass,” Boyd said.In the race between Herschel Walker and the Rev Raphael Warnock for a Georgia senate seat two years ago, Boyd cast a blank ballot. He expects to do the same thing in the presidential race this year.The former presidentcalled in to the barbershop the day before the debate, talking about ending taxes on tips and rolling back regulations. Boyd got to ask him a question.“In the Black community, it’s been made a big deal about how you have been kind of railroaded here, as far as your court cases go,” Boyd asked Trump. “If you can acknowledge that you’re getting support from Black people because of this, then we can kind of acknowledge that we have been getting railroaded. So, my question is … what can we do about those Fani Willises and Alvin Braggs that are right now sending some poor Black person to jail for a crime?”It’s an interesting, nuanced question – better, perhaps, than many of the questions put to Trump by debate moderators a day later. Does Trump’s legal ordeal change the way he looks at how the criminal justice system treats common Black defendants?Trump dodged the question. “It’s weaponization, and it comes out of the White House,” Trump said, “even when it’s city and state, it comes out of the White House in order to attack a political opponent. But since that happened, the Black support I think, my representatives will tell you this, the Black support has gone through the roof. And I guess they equated to problems that they’ve had.”He then went on to talk about how his mugshot was more popular than Frank Sinatra’s or Elvis Presley’s.‘If these were white girls, it would be different’Boyd, a Marine Corps veteran who built airplanes for Lockheed, is a second amendment partisan who rejects any candidate advocating for gun control. But he’s also deeply concerned about racial justice, and can’t make common cause with politicians who aren’t. Boyd founded Helping Empower Youth to address a cultural phenomenon in Atlanta and one of the city’s most contentious problems: Black teens risking their safety by hawking water on street corners and at events. His question to Trump goes to the heart of his work, he said.“He pulled that Trump okey-doke on me,” Boyd said. “I learned about the Trump okey-doke firsthand.”Boyd’s work with kids focuses on training, professionalism and ultimately harnessing their entrepreneurial energy into a legitimate business. It’s a fundamentally conservative answer to a Black social problem, and one that conservatives would do well to listen to, Boyd said. “They’re always telling us we need to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps,” Boyd said. “I believe in that basic idea of capitalism.”The sight of Black boys risking conflict on the street, arrest or their very bodies just to make a buck has caused Atlanta’s predominantly liberal, Black political class to call the city’s moral and economic priorities into question. But conservatives – particularly white conservatives – have been unwilling to acknowledge that race and gender are central to the problems of Black empowerment, Boyd said. Young Black men don’t tend to have equal access to opportunity, and those with arrest records are nigh unemployable in traditional jobs.“If these were little blue-eyed blond white girls with lemonade stands, it would be seen as something totally different,” Boyd said.Even as Boyd was talking through this in the barbershop, two teenagers in 100-degree heat were selling water to drivers across the street. One of the cops working the event wandered over to shoo them away. The kids weren’t happy.They were expecting a $150 day. On a good day, they’ll clear $400 or $500, they said. “I would rather not have to ask my momma for nothing. I’d rather give her money,” one 17-year-old said. He’s been locked up a couple of times in the process of selling water, but there are no better options, he said: “I’ll make more money out here than a real job.”#BlackJob goes viralDebate moderator Dana Bash asked Joe Biden and Trump about their approach to Black economic issues during the debate Thursday.The president said he doesn’t blame Black voters for being disappointed, noting the effects of inflation. But he cited low unemployment figures for Black workers and a reduction in costs for childcare, and he touched on a topic that has been roiling Atlanta and other cities: the encroachment of corporate landlords on single-family neighborhoods and increasing consolidation in the housing market. “The fact of the matter is more small Black businesses have been started in any time in history,” Biden answered.Despite what even Biden has acknowledged was a poor debate performance, Trump’s response struck a chord with Black voters for all the wrong reasons.“As sure as you’re sitting there, the fact is that his big kill on the Black people is the millions of people that he’s allowed to come in through the border,” Trump said. “They’re taking Black jobs now and it could be 18, it could be 19 and even 20 million people. They’re taking Black jobs and they’re taking Hispanic jobs and you haven’t seen it yet, but you’re going to see something that’s going to be the worst in our history.”The term #BlackJob began to go viral on Twitter even before the debate ended, as incredulous watchers derided the idea of a racially coded job and considered what Trump must think of Black workers if they can easily be replaced by an undocumented laborer.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“The ‘Black job’ has actually not been defined in America, which is why DEI initiatives which are now being rolled back were put into place to begin with,” said Bem Joiner, an Atlanta cultural critic and creative consultant who expected the debate to generate memes. “#BlackJobs is the cultural moment that came from the debate.”Losing GeorgiaMuch has been made of the purported gains Trump has made with Black voters in polls. Those polls are questionable: a collapse in response rates has been coupled with tiny sample sizes and statistically illiterate reporting to present the impression of a meaningful shift.But small gains will matter in a state like Georgia, where about 30% of the electorate is Black. Black men have long been more likely to vote for Republican candidates than Black women are. They are also far less likely to vote, noted Stephanie Jackson Ali, policy director for the New Georgia Project.In Georgia, 584,228 Black men who are currently registered voted in the 2020 presidential election, Ali said. For Black women, the figure is 931,232. Nationally, Biden overall won 48% of men and 55% of women, according to data from the Pew Research Center. Biden won 87% of Black men and 95% of Black women.Conservatives tend to overperform that mark a bit in Georgia, because the Black electorate here is somewhat more conservative than it is nationwide. But all else being equal, if Trump were to win one in five Black men in Georgia instead of one in six – even if figures for Black women remained in the same low single digits of support – that would represent a gain of about 25,000 votes, more than twice the margin of his 2020 defeat.Losing Georgia because Black voters underperform is a nightmare scenario for progressives here. The New Georgia Project’s political action committee hosted a debate watch party Thursday at the Prime Cigar bar on Peachtree Street in Atlanta as part of a campaign of deliberate outreach to Black men. The room filled with smoke, political candidates and party officials, mostly Democrats, mostly there to cheer for tBiden.Then Biden began to speak, and bit by bit people started to pay less attention to the giant screen above the bar and more to what they were drinking.“I don’t think [Trump] did anything special. He kind of showed up,” said Domonic Brown, a progressive voter who watched the debate at the bar. “Joe Biden, in my opinion, made it easier for him. … I think that’s one of the scarier things about Joe Biden or Donald Trump as our only options. I definitely see why the Democratic party is in kind of disarray right now. But it’s kind of like, how could you guys just not see this coming?”Javarius Gay is the swing voter both Biden and Trump wanted to reach Thursday night. Gay owns Prime Cigar and several other bars in town – a Black business owner in a city that presents itself as a land of opportunity for Black entrepreneurs.Since the night of the debate, Rocky Jones, owner of Rocky’s Barbershop where Trump called in, says he was misled into hosting the event, which he thought would be a forum for Black businesses.“I thought it was going to be something real private,” Jones said to the local news station 11Alive. “I’m thinking about Black businesses in Atlanta, small Black businesses in Atlanta. And I’m like: ‘OK, so when are we gonna start talking about this?’”Jones has seen backlash from angry members of the community, and customers to his shop have dwindled. But he hopes the controversy will pass, emphasizing that the barbershop is not a place for politics.“I have no involvement in politics. We don’t even talk politics in my barbershop. It’s all sports. The World Cup, soccer, baseball, basketball – politics is not what I do. I commend everybody to vote, but that’s your business. You know, I don’t tell you what to do,” Jones added.Though Gay’s cigar bar hosted a debate watch party for a progressive political action committee that night, Gay himself was undecided.“I’m open. I didn’t have my mind already made up,” he said a few minutes after the debate ended. Gay generally votes for Democrats. But after the debate, he’s still thinking about it. Gay was looking for substance on issues close to his interests: support for Black businesses, small business in general and homelessness.“I was looking for Biden to be more natural with his arguments and his key points. He was all over the place a few times,” Gay said. “I don’t feel like his team prepared enough to fully win this debate. I honestly think he should have waited, should have never taken the stage, and come back later.” More

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      Black Alabama mayor reinstated after nearly four-year battle

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      Patrick Braxton, the first Black mayor of an Alabama town that has not held elections in several decades, has spent the last four years fighting to be recognized. Finally, after an extensive legal battle, he and the town officials who refused to acknowledge him as mayor have reached a settlement, according to federal court documents.Per the settlement agreement, Braxton will be officially seated as the mayor of Newbern, Alabama, and be able to fully serve in this capacity for the first time in nearly four years, pending approval by Judge Kristi K DuBose of the southern district of Alabama.The town has also committed to holding regular municipal elections, which will happen openly and transparently, beginning in 2025. Until then, all current town council members will resign. An interim town council, composed of new people and members of the town council Braxton originally appointed, will help guide the town until it has elections.Morenike Fajana, senior counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund (LDF), which has been involved with the case since last year, said: “It’s been a really long battle.“It’s been four years that this has been ongoing and there have been different setbacks and challenges. But I feel like [Braxton] is appreciative of the fact that this is happening now and he is proud to have the opportunity to serve the town of Newbern.”Braxton said that he has kept his church and community members informed of daily updates about the court case and is happy to finally give them some good news.“Everybody is pleased and happy,” he said. “They’re glad we can put this behind us and start moving forward and working for the town … The children, some of them don’t quite understand about everything, and then some of them are old enough to know this is a big deal for the community.”All of the community will hear the news by 30 August, by which time the parties will hold a public town meeting informing Newbern residents of the agreement.Braxton is excited to finally do what he set out to do nearly half a decade ago: to unify and improve the town.“I think I got a wonderful team, people that’s going to work with me and help the community,” he said.Newbern, located about an hour and a half away from Montgomery, captured national attention in 2023 when it became widely known that white officials had refused for three years to allow Braxton, the first Black mayor in Newbern’s history, to exercise his mayoral duties.The 133-person town is about 80% Black and 20% white, but the town’s leadership, excluding Braxton and his town council, has been majority white for decades. The defendants in the lawsuit, including the previous mayor and council, refused to hold elections.During discovery for the case and last month’s hearing about a motion for preliminary injunction, those on the former town council admitted to never holding elections.“They claimed that they didn’t know they had to,” Fajana said. “Instead, their process was when a position became vacant, they would just kind of recruit among their community and the people that they knew. They would just appoint that person and it would happen, basically, in a covert manner. That had been the process for as long as anybody could remember. Anybody who was serving in the past town council said that’s how they came to power.”Per the settlement, the defendants “specifically deny having engaged in any wrongful practice, or other unlawful conduct”, saying instead they reached the “compromise” to avoid protracted litigation.Braxton told the Guardian in 2023 that the town’s previous mayor had told him that it wasn’t possible to have elections in the small town. He decided to run anyway, out of a desire to help his community, which has a significant poverty rate.“For decades, officials in my town have excluded me and other voters from participating in elections and having a say in what happens here,” Braxton said in a statement provided by the LDF earlier this year.In 2020, Braxton became mayor by default when he was the only person to file for office. Following his election and swearing in, he appointed a town council.Unbeknownst to him, or anyone else in the town, the previous town council and mayor held a secret, special election during which they voted themselves in as town council. Braxton did not attend their parallel town council meetings, not recognizing them as legitimate. The parallel town council removed him from office and reappointed the former mayor to the position. They were aided, the lawsuit alleges, by the town’s bank and clerk.“It’s really about those facts, it’s about what happened in 2020 with this alleged parallel election process and then also, which is equally important, the failure of the town to have any sort of municipal election, whether for mayor or town council, for decades dating back to as long as anyone who has been involved in this case can remember,” Fajana said.Now that he’s fully recognized as mayor and able to serve in that capacity, Braxton is looking towards the future.Per the agreement, he will submit a list of potential names for town council to the Alabama governor, currently Kay Ivey, who will fill the positions. If she does not, the probate judge of Hale county will declare a special election on 31 December 2024. All elected officials elected or appointed before the 2025 municipal election, including Braxton, will have their terms end that year, in pursuance with Alabama law.“Once we get my town council in place,” he said, “I think the town is going to take off and start moving from here.” More

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      In South Carolina, Black voters are split on immigration

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      Republicans claim that their election-year rhetoric about immigration has a new audience in Black communities. North Charleston’s newfound racial complexity tests that claim.The working-class city of about 120,000 people is one of the most strongly Democratic in South Carolina, more so even than Charleston, its larger, storied neighbor to its south. It has also long been split almost evenly between Black and white residents. Immigration has been adding a third dimension to what was a two-way relationship.In the “neck” of the barbell-shaped city, between the primarily white northern neighborhoods and the primarily Black southern neighborhoods, are stretches where the shops advertise in Spanish and almost all the children getting off the school bus are Latino.About 2.5% of North Charlestonians identified as Hispanic in the 1990 census. That rose to 4% in 2000, 10% in 2010 and, on paper, about 12% today, with 8% “other”. But the current census figures are questionable, said Enrique “Henry” Grace, CFO of the Charleston Hispanic Association: “Forget about it. Because Hispanics don’t do the census. Whatever the census says, double it.”Immigration can be a tough topic to discuss in South Carolina’s Black community, which isn’t keen on offering white conservatives who regularly attack cities as “crime-infested” yet another reason to snipe at North Charleston, especially in an election year when immigration rhetoric on the right has become increasingly toxic.But it doesn’t mean they aren’t asking more from Democratic leaders. In early June, Joe Biden announced changes to border policy, significantly curtailing asylum claims in a bid for bold executive action on a campaign issue.The US president’s border order came with political pressure mounting on the president and Congress to resolve negotiations on a bill to change America’s immigration policies and stem undocumented migration. Some of that political pressure comes from big-city leaders like the mayors of New York and Chicago, after border state governors began shipping people who had crossed the border to them last year, straining the social services infrastructure.But the border action has an audience among Democrats in South Carolina, too.Biden was serving red meat to Democratic party loyalists at a January campaign speech in Columbia, South Carolina, talking about his appointment of Black judges and lowering Black unemployment rates, when he threw them one nugget of red-state steak. He complained that Republicans in Congress were thwarting legislation on the border – despite getting almost everything they wanted in the bill – at the bidding of Donald Trump in order to preserve it for him as a political issue.View image in fullscreen“If that bill were the law today, I’d shut down the border right now and fix it quickly,” Biden said, to applause.As attendees awaited the president before the speech, Michael Butler, mayor of Orangeburg, South Carolina, a Democrat, expressed sympathy with this idea. “I would expect the president, if he’s elected a second time, to close the border,” Butler said.The population of both the city and county of Orangeburg, about 45 minutes north of North Charleston, is mostly Black, poor, rural and Democratic. Biden won 70% of Orangeburg in the 2020 primary – his best showing statewide – and two-thirds of votes in the November election.Without a careful message, this time could be different. Shipping border crossers to big cities seemed like a publicity stunt, but it was one that worked, in Butler’s view, to highlight how problems at the border are problems everywhere, including Democratic strongholds.“I empathize with those mayors,” Butler said. “They have to deal with the expectations of migrants, and the security of them. You know we’re the land of the free and the brave, and we believe in taking care of all citizens. But those borders need to be secured to protect the citizens.”Butler’s take on immigration isn’t uniformly held across the state.Some Black political leaders in North Charleston beam about how immigration has changed their communities. State representative JA Moore, a North Charleston Democrat, boasts of having the most diverse district in the state. “I’m proud of that,” he said. Moore pushes back, hard, against the suggestion that there’s tension between Black and Latino people about housing or jobs where he lives.North Charleston presents a more nuanced test of the Black electorate’s reaction to immigration, because the growth of its immigrant community has come with booming economic growth and overall population increases. Even so, Moore admits that some could conflate something like the rapid increase in housing prices with the rapid increase in immigration.“The housing market in general and in Charleston is higher than it was 10, 15 years ago,” Moore said. “And also the amount of Hispanics that are moving in has increased tremendously in the past 15 years. They see a Hispanic person move into their neighborhood, and they’re seeing the prices of the houses going up … People may be correlating the two.”Donald Trump is counting on those kind of inferences.Biden’s Republican challenger, known for his increasingly strident immigration rhetoric, responded to the border closure at a rally in the Las Vegas heat after Biden’s announcement, describing it as insufficient while arguing that the president is “waging all-out war” on Black and Latino workers. He falsely claimed that the wages of Black workers had fallen 6% since 2021.The international manufacturers that have driven growth aren’t hiring undocumented labor, said Eduardo Curry, president of the North Charleston chapter of the Young Democrats of South Carolina. “A lot of jobs here in Charleston are skilled labor jobs,” he said. “It’s not just … walk off the street and let me hire you.”The problem, Curry said, is that too few Black workers in North Charleston have the training to take those jobs, even as those employers are yearning for more labor. Working-class Black laborers instead compete with recent immigrants for jobs that require less formal education.Tension between Black and Latino people in North Charleston has been relatively low, but may be rising because of job competition, said Ruby Wallace, a job recruiter at a staffing agency in North Charleston that serves warehouses and distribution centers – working-class employers. “Hispanics are working for whatever they can get at this point,” she said. “And they’re doing a lot of work.”The North Charleston native said her staffing agency has lost 40% of its business year over year after some clients found it less expensive to hire undocumented labor through shady organizations.The neighborhood around the staffing agency has become populated primarily with immigrants, and the office, which has historically employed working-class and poor Black people, turns away undocumented applicants every day.A cottage industry of undocumented labor has emerged, undercutting legal operators by skirting federal E-Verify laws and omitting payments into workers’ compensation and unemployment taxes.Wallace has been reporting the violations she sees to the US Department of Labor, to no avail. “I’m trying to figure out, how is it possible for them to load people up and bring them, working here in South Carolina? Is it not illegal for them to do that?” she said.Republican messaging aimed at Black voters mixes threats about job losses with invective about immigration, crime and cities.Black voters are expected to ignore the racial undercurrent of attacks on cities like Atlanta, Philadelphia or most recently Milwaukee – a “horrible city” in Trump’s most recent tirade – while being receptive to the idea that undocumented people from Central and South America make those cities more unsafe.That hasn’t happened in North Charleston.North Charleston began assessing the city’s racial disparity in arrests and victimization in 2020. A majority of North Charleston’s immigrants are Latino. According to a report released in 2021, Hispanic suspects represented about 7.5% of arrests, while Hispanic residents comprised 10% of the city’s population that year.Violent crime increased during the pandemic in North Charleston, as it did in most cities with more than 100,000 residents. It has fallen since. But it is among the higher-crime cities in the state, with a murder rate about five times the national average.Keeping the peace in North Charleston has meant navigating racial tension in a city experiencing poverty and crime. Immigration adds a new element to that challenge.Reggie Burgess, 58, grew up in North Charleston and served on its police force for more than 30 years – five as its chief – before winning election as the city’s first Black mayor in 2023. He said he contends with a common trope: that undocumented immigrants bring with them an uptick in crime.But that depiction of immigrants as criminals is false; they are measurably less likely to commit crimes than the US-born. Burgess, who has witnessed the changes in his community first-hand, said he has had to meet with immigrants to discuss how they are too often victimized by other poor people who look like him.Back when Burgess was still chief of police in 2017, he found himself conducting role-playing exercises with Latino immigrants about identifying Black people, trying to build some trust with the community.“We would actually turn them backwards, and we’d turn them around real quick and say: ‘Look at this person,’ and turn ’em back around,” Burgess said. “I’d ask, can you give me a description of the person? We were trying to teach them to understand that a Black male was more than this Afro. You’ve got to [describe] a shirt, or this lanyard.”It became evident to Burgess 20 years ago that undocumented individuals were being targeted for robberies because they tended to work in cash trades, he said. That revelation led the city to start pushing the financial-services industry to provide banking services, and was the start of relationship-building exercises between civic leaders and immigrants.But the federal government doesn’t do enough to keep victims from being deported long enough to sustain prosecutions, he said, leaving undocumented individuals as easy targets for crime and exploitation.“The U visa is supposedly supposed to help us lock in the witness for a period of time,” Burgess said, describing a victim witness visa program. “And Hispanics and Latinos would fill out the form, and I’m thinking: ‘OK, we’re good.’ The next thing you know, they tell me the prime witness has to go back or got caught up at a traffic stop and is being deported.”Underlying this issue is unstable housing and endemic poverty.“There’s a lot of need in Charleston in the Hispanic community. Need for everything, housing, jobs, everything,” said Grace of the Charleston Hispanic Association.The undocumented community in North Charleston tends to be concentrated in an area of the city with trailer parks and affordable housing. They are too often living in substandard or overcrowded conditions, said Annette Glover, who operates an immigrant-oriented community ministry in North Charleston.North Charleston is part of a three-county metropolitan area of about 830,000 residents. Glover’s organization, Community Impact, assisted 86,387 people within that area last year, she said, with food, language training, housing assistance and other help. Most were immigrants. About 75% – to 80% were undocumented, she said. With that has come a fear of appearing on the government’s radar, even while applying for help from nongovernmental organizations like hers, she said.“We have found a way to actually get them to fill out applications, by allowing them to understand that we’re not going to be giving it to Ice or to anything like that,” she said.Burgess said economic conditions and education are stress points. “I mean, some of these neighborhoods, the [adjusted median income] is $29,000. And then you can go a little further up, and AMI is probably is $101,000,” he said. “And without education, there’s no options. You have to settle for whatever you get.”The gridlock in Washington DC on immigration has an impact on places like North Charleston.Biden’s move to close the border to asylum seekers is a short-term approach to a long-term problem, Burgess said.Without actual reform to the immigration system, undocumented immigrants will remain in the shadows.“We have to step back and push aside these little personal vendettas and squabbles in these parties, and think as Americans,” Burgess said. “My people came here in chains 400 years ago. We’re free now, right? Why? We’re free because the country said enough is enough. And they fought, brothers and sisters, fought each other, and they said: ‘OK, everybody’s free.’ They could do that in 1865. They can do the same thing in 2024.” More

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      in US Politics

      Sam Bankman-Fried funded a group with racist ties. FTX wants its $5m back

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      Multiple events hosted at a historic former hotel in Berkeley, California, have brought together people from intellectual movements popular at the highest levels in Silicon Valley while platforming prominent people linked to scientific racism, the Guardian reveals.But because of alleged financial ties between the non-profit that owns the building – Lightcone Infrastructure (Lightcone) – and jailed crypto mogul Sam Bankman-Fried, the administrators of FTX, Bankman-Fried’s failed crypto exchange, are demanding the return of almost $5m that new court filings allege were used to bankroll the purchase of the property.During the last year, Lightcone and its director, Oliver Habryka, have made the $20m Lighthaven Campus available for conferences and workshops associated with the “longtermism”, “rationalism” and “effective altruism” (EA) communities, all of which often see empowering the tech sector, its elites and its beliefs as crucial to human survival in the far future.At these events, movement influencers rub shoulders with startup founders and tech-funded San Francisco politicians – as well as people linked to eugenics and scientific racism.Since acquiring the Lighthaven property – formerly the Rose Garden Inn – in late 2022, Lightcone has transformed it into a walled, surveilled compound without attracting much notice outside the subculture it exists to promote.But recently filed federal court documents allege that in the months before the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX crypto empire, he and other company insiders funnelled almost $5m to Lightcone, including $1m for a deposit to lock in the Rose Garden deal.FTX bankruptcy administrators say that money was commingled with funds looted from FTX customers. Now, they are asking a judge to give it back.The revelations cast new light on so-called “Tescreal” intellectual movements – an umbrella term for a cluster of movements including EA and rationalism that exercise broad influence in Silicon Valley, and have the ear of the likes of Sam Altman, Marc Andreessen and Elon Musk.It also raises questions about the extent to which people within that movement continue to benefit from Bankman-Fried’s fraud, the largest in US history.The Guardian contacted Habryka for comment on this reporting but received no response.Controversial conferencesLast weekend, Lighthaven was the venue for the Manifest 2024 conference, which, according to the website, is “hosted by Manifold and Manifund”.Manifold is a startup that runs Manifund, a prediction market – a forecasting method that was the ostensible topic of the conference.Prediction markets are a long-held enthusiasm in the EA and rationalism subcultures, and billed guests included personalities like Scott Siskind, AKA Scott Alexander, founder of Slate Star Codex; misogynistic George Mason University economist Robin Hanson; and Eliezer Yudkowsky, founder of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (Miri).Billed speakers from the broader tech world included the Substack co-founder Chris Best and Ben Mann, co-founder of AI startup Anthropic.Alongside these guests, however, were advertised a range of more extreme figures.One, Jonathan Anomaly, published a paper in 2018 entitled Defending Eugenics, which called for a “non-coercive” or “liberal eugenics” to “increase the prevalence of traits that promote individual and social welfare”. The publication triggered an open letter of protest by Australian academics to the journal that published the paper, and protests at the University of Pennsylvania when he commenced working there in 2019. (Anomaly now works at a private institution in Quito, Ecuador, and claims on his website that US universities have been “ideologically captured”.)Another, Razib Khan, saw his contract as a New York Times opinion writer abruptly withdrawn just one day after his appointment had been announced, following a Gawker report that highlighted his contributions to outlets including the paleoconservative Taki’s Magazine and anti-immigrant website VDare.The Michigan State University professor Stephen Hsu, another billed guest, resigned as vice-president of research there in 2020 after protests by the MSU Graduate Employees Union and the MSU student association accusing Hsu of promoting scientific racism.Brian Chau, executive director of the “effective accelerationist” non-profit Alliance for the Future (AFF), was another billed guest. A report last month catalogued Chau’s long history of racist and sexist online commentary, including false claims about George Floyd, and the claim that the US is a “Black supremacist” country. “Effective accelerationists” argue that human problems are best solved by unrestricted technological development.Another advertised guest, Michael Lai, is emblematic of tech’s new willingness to intervene in Bay Area politics. Lai, an entrepreneur, was one of a slate of “Democrats for Change” candidates who seized control of the powerful Democratic County Central Committee from progressives, who had previously dominated the body that confers endorsements on candidates for local office.In a phone interview, Lai said he did not attend the Manifest conference in early June. “I wasn’t there, and I did not know about what these guys believed in,” Lai said. He also claimed to not know why he was advertised on the manifest.is website as a conference-goer, adding that he had been invited by Austin Chen of Manifold Markets. In an email, Chen, who organized the conference and is a co-founder of Manifund, wrote: “We’d scheduled Michael for a talk, but he had to back out last minute given his campaigning schedule.“This kind of thing happens often with speakers, who are busy people; we haven’t gotten around to removing Michael yet but will do so soon,” Chen added.On the other speakers, Chen wrote in an earlier email: “We were aware that some of these folks have expressed views considered controversial.”He went on: “Some of these folks we’re bringing in because of their past experience with prediction markets (eg [Richard] Hanania has used them extensively and partnered with many prediction market platforms). Others we’re bringing in for their particular expertise (eg Brian Chau is participating in a debate on AI safety, related to his work at Alliance for the Future).”Chen added: “We did not invite them to give talks about race and IQ” and concluded: “Manifest has no specific views on eugenics or race & IQ.”Democrats for Change received significant support from Bay Area tech industry heavyweights, and Lai is now running for the San Francisco board of supervisors, the city’s governing body. He is endorsed by a “grey money” influence network funded by rightwing tech figures like David Sacks and Garry Tan. The same network poured tens of thousands of dollars into his successful March campaign for the DCCC and ran online ads in support of him, according to campaign contribution data from the San Francisco Ethics Commission.Several controversial guests were also present at Manifest 2023, also held at Lighthaven, including rightwing writer Hanania, whose pseudonymous white-nationalist commentary from the early 2010s was catalogued last August in HuffPost, and Malcolm and Simone Collins, whose EA-inspired pro-natalism – the belief that having as many babies as possible will save the world – was detailed in the Guardian last month.The Collinses were, along with Razib Khan and Jonathan Anomaly, featured speakers at the eugenicist Natal Conference in Austin last December, as previously reported in the Guardian.Daniel HoSang, a professor of American studies at Yale University and a part of the Anti-Eugenics Collective at Yale, said: “The ties between a sector of Silicon Valley investors, effective altruism and a kind of neo-eugenics are subtle but unmistakable. They converge around a belief that nearly everything in society can be reduced to markets and all people can be regarded as bundles of human capital.”HoSang added: “From there, they anoint themselves the elite managers of these forces, investing in the ‘winners’ as they see fit.”“The presence of Stephen Hsu here is particularly alarming,” HoSang concluded. “He’s often been a bridge between fairly explicit racist and antisemitic people like Ron Unz, Steven Sailer and Stefan Molyneux and more mainstream figures in tech, investment and scientific research, especially around human genetics.”FTX proceedingsAs Lighthaven develops as a hub for EA and rationalism, the new court filing alleges that the purchase of the property was partly secured with money funnelled by Sam Bankman-Fried and other FTX insiders in the months leading up to the crypto empire’s collapse.Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison in March for masterminding the $8bn fraud that led to FTX’s downfall in November 2022, in which customer money was illegally transferred from FTX to sister exchange Alameda Research to address a liquidity crisis.Since the collapse, FTX and Alameda have been in the hands of trustees, who in their efforts to pay back creditors are also pursuing money owed to FTX, including money they say was illegitimately transferred to others by Bankman-Fried and company insiders.On 13 May, those trustees filed a complaint with a bankruptcy court in Delaware – where FTX and Lightcone both were incorporated – alleging that Lightcone received more than $4.9m in fraudulent transfers from Alameda, via the non-profit FTX Foundation, over the course of 2022.State and federal filings indicate that Lightcone was incorporated on 13 October 2022 with Habryka acting in all executive roles. In an application to the IRS for 501(c)3 charitable status, Habryka aligned the organization with an influential intellectual current in Silicon Valley: “Combining the concepts of the Longtermism movement … and rationality … Lightcone Infrastructure Inc works to steer humanity towards a safer and better future.”California filings also state that from 2017 until the application, Lightcone and its predecessor project had been operating under the fiscal sponsorship of the Center for Applied Rationality (CFAR), a rationalism non-profit established in 2012.The main building on the property now occupied by the Lighthaven campus was originally constructed in 1903 as a mansion, and between 1979 and Lightcone’s 2022 purchase of the property, the building was run as a hotel, the Rose Garden Inn.Alameda county property records indicate that the four properties encompassed by the campus remain under the ownership of an LLC, Lightcone Rose Garden (Lightcone RG), of which Lightcone is the sole member, according to the filings. California business filings identify Habryka as the registered agent of Lightcone Infrastructure and Lightcone RG.Lightcone and CFAR both give the campus as their principal place of business in their most recent tax filings.On 2 March 2022, according to the complaint, CFAR applied to the FTX Foundation asking that “$2,000,000 be given to the Center for Applied Rationality as an exclusive grant for its project, the Lightcone Infrastructure Team”. FTX Foundation wired the money the same day.Between then and October 2022, according to trustees, the FTX Foundation wired at least 14 more transfers worth $2,904,999.61. In total, FTX’s administrators say, almost $5m was transferred to CFAR from the FTX Foundation.On 13 July and 18 August 2022, according to the complaint, the FTX Foundation also wired two payments of $500,000 each to a title company as a deposit for Lightcone RG’s purchase of the Rose Garden Inn. The complaint says these were intended as a loan but there is no evidence that the $1m was repaid.Then, on 3 October, the FTX Foundation approved a $1.5m grant to Lightcone Infrastructure, according to FTX trusteesThe complaint alleges that Lightcone got another $20m loan to fund the Rose Garden Inn purchase from Slimrock Investments Pte Ltd, a Singapore-incorporated company owned by Estonian software billionaire, Skype inventor and EA/rationalism adherent Jaan Tallinn. This included the $16.5m purchase price and $3.5m for renovations and repairs.Slimrock investments has no apparent public-facing website or means of contact. The Guardian emailed Tallinn for comment via the Future of Life Institute, a non-profit whose self-assigned mission is: “Steering transformative technology towards benefiting life and away from extreme large-scale risks.” Tallinn sits on that organization’s board. Neither Tallinn nor the Future of Life Institute responded to the request.The complaint also says that FTX trustees emailed CFAR four times between June and August 2023, and that on 31 August they hand-delivered a letter to CFAR’s Rose Garden Inn offices. All of these attempts at contact were ignored. Only after the debtors filed a discovery motion on 31 October 2023 did CFAR engage with them.The most recent filing on 17 May is a summons for CFAR and Lightcone to appear in court to answer the complaint.The suit is ongoing.The Guardian emailed CFAR president and co-founder Anna Salamon for comment on the allegations but received no response. More

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      in Elections

      ‘Racial resentment’ a factor in violence of 6 January 2021, study says

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      Political observers are quick to blame hyperpartisanship and political polarization for leading more than 2,000 supporters of Donald Trump to riot at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021.But according to a recently published study, “racial resentment” – not just partisanship – explains the violence that broke out after the 2020 election.Angered over the claim, promoted by Trump and his closest allies, that heavily Black cities had rigged the 2020 election in favor of Democrats, white voters – some affiliated with white-nationalist groups and militias, and others acting alone – stormed the US capitol in an attempt to halt the certification of the 2020 election.“What Trump and Republicans did was they tried to make the point that something nefarious was going on in areas that were primarily African American,” said David Wilson, dean of the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, who published the study with Darren Davis, a professor of political science at Notre Dame.The paper, Stop the Steal: Racial Resentment, Affective Partisanship, and Investigating the January 6th Insurrection, relied on a national survey of adults in the US conducted in 2021.Respondents were asked a question assessing their approval or disapproval of the House select committee investigating January 6, and responded to numerous statements evaluating racial resentment, such as “I resent any special considerations that African Americans receive because it’s unfair to other Americans” and “special considerations for African Americans place me at an unfair disadvantage because I have done nothing to harm them”.The research revealed a correlation between respondents’ feelings of racialized resentment and opposition to the House committee on January 6.Wilson and Davis also point to the fact that while a slew of polls show the general public split somewhat evenly over the legitimacy of the House select committee, Black Americans overwhelmingly supported the committee’s work, while white poll respondents generally opposed it.“Many of President Trump’s supporters believed they were being victimized by election fraud in the 2020 election, but they also believed that whites were being victimized more generally – the American way of life for them was changing and they were being disadvantaged by African Americans and other minorities,” Wilson and Davis wrote.The study comes as the former president and his allies are stoking unfounded fears of non-citizens voting and tainting political outcomes.The strategy activates “action emotions – primarily anger”, said Wilson. “When you’re angry, you want to see some problem resolved because it’s clearly not making you feel good. Your heart rate increases, you have a festering sense that things are wrong and you’re playing by the rules and other people aren’t and it’s just not right.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOther forms of racial resentment, according to this framework, would include the perception that affirmative action unfairly hurts white applicants – or the idea that DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) policies unfairly benefit people of color.Distinct from racial hatred or prejudice, racial resentment, Wilson argues, is a particularly powerful motive to action because it stems from a sense of injustice.The psycho-social phenomenon can have consequences for democracy, Wilson said.“If you can get people to believe that democracy is about your freedom, and that the government is taking that away through taxes, through policies, through regulatory efforts, and [even] by fixing and rigging elections, you can stoke their resentment and they can even come to resent democracy.” More