• And justice for all? A study broke this weekend that flies in the face of that notion. ProPublica journalists Dafna Linzer and Jennifer LaFleur investigated the last decade’s worth of presidential pardons, and found some alarming things. For starters, white applicants were four times more likely to receive a pardon than minority applicants, with blacks having the lowest chance of approval. After taking office, President Bush outsourced the pardons process to lawyers in the Office of the Pardon Attorney, who claim their protocol for examining cases never included any mention of the applicant’s race, but that non-statistical factors like candor and remorse were taken into account. That said, there are striking examples of minorities being denied for very similar or lesser offenses than successful white applicants. Of the thirty-four drug-related pardons President Bush authorized, all were white. Of President Obama’s twenty-two total pardons to date, twenty have been white. Pro Publica’s reporting on this is excellent, and far more in-depth than we can possibly summarize; we urge you to look for yourself.

• Exhibit A Two women, one white and one black, both from the same city in Texas, filed for pardons on tax related offenses. The black woman had been fined $3000 for underreporting her income in 1989, while the white woman had faked multiple tax returns to reap over $25,000; only the white woman’s pardon was approved.
• Exhibit B A first-time, black drug offender from South Carolina was given probation for possessing 1.1 grams of crack; his pardon was denied. Conversely, a white four-time offender, who had served prison time for selling 1,050 grams of methamphetamine, was pardoned; only the white man’s pardon was approved. source

• These data are the first to demonstrate that not only do whites think more progress has been made toward equality than do blacks, but whites also now believe that this progress is linked to a new inequality — at their expense.
• Tufts University psychologist Samuel Sommers • Describing his study, published in the peer-reviewed Perspectives on Psychological Science, which shows that some white people feel that, as blacks gain ground in society, they’re falling behind. Which is to say that, due to societal changes, many whites feel they receive detrimental treatment compared to blacks. It’s a perception which, while felt by some whites, isn’t necessarily true, according to Sommers. On top of flying in the face of ample evidence to the contrary, he notes that it’s felt worst in the job market. “Economists have documented over and over again that it takes twice as many resumes to get a call back from an employer if you have a black-sounding name,” he says. This is a study we wish didn’t exist. We still have a way to go. (thanks reallyfoxnews) source

• 38% of Mississippi GOPers wish the South had won source

• » There’s more: If you include the 41% that’s undecided, you get a whopping 79% of Mississippi Republicans who aren’t quite ready to throw their support behind Abraham Lincoln circa 1861. Also, 9% of African Americans in the state aren’t sure whether they like the NAACP more than the KKK; surely, this is the result of a typo, or some sort of methodological error, or perhaps a psychoactive pollutant in the drinking water. Oh well; at least 54% of the state agrees that interracial marriage shouldn’t be illegal. That’s right, a whole 54%!

• 50%+ of children in California are Latino, says the U.S. Census
• 1:4 children under 18 are non-Hispanic whites, a rate which decreased
• 38% of all Californians are Latinos, compared with 40 percent whites source

• No candidate can successfully run for president if he doesn’t understand you should rebuke efforts to honor the man most identified with the KKK.
• The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin • On Mississippi governor and likely presidential candidate Haley Barbour’s latest racially-tinged blunder. After praising the racist, pro-segregationist Council of Conservative Citizens last year as “an organization of town leaders,” and insisting that that the civil rights battles of the 60s weren’t “that bad,” he’s now refusing to condemn an effort in Mississippi to make commemorative license plates honoring a leader of the KKK, Nathan Bedford Forrest. For a while, members of the GOP establishment have been urging Barbour not to run for President. We think they’re onto something. source

• Here’s that mural. What do you think? Radio host and Prescott, Ariz. city council member Steve Blair, whose comments on this mural have sparked a growing controversy about race in Arizona, was fired by KYCA, the station where he was a host. Blair has more thoughts on the controversy, and he seems to stumble around the issue a bit – oh, it’s defacing a public building, it’s graffiti,  I don’t understand what it means, so on and so forth. Fact of matter: He’s going to become nationally-known for being the jerk who called out this mural for its diversity. source

• We consistently, for two months, had people shouting racial slander from their cars. We had children painting with us, and here come these yells of (epithet for Blacks) and (epithet for Hispanics).
• Prescott, Ariz. Downtown Mural Project director R.E. Wall • Regarding the ridiculous chain of events that led to the group lightening the skin of children depicted on a local elementary school’s mural. The mural, by the way, is trying to promote green transportation, and features pictures of KIDS AT THE SCHOOL. Wall says that he and others were depicted to racial slurs on a regular basis while painting the mural. While the school claimed it was only to fix shading, the controversy got so bad that a city councilman who hosts a radio show was trying to get the mural taken down. Real quote from Steve Blair: “To depict the biggest picture on the building as a Black person, I would have to ask the question: Why?” Holy crap. This is 2010. (Hat tip Carissa Wright) source

• 22%of black men married outside their race in ’08

• 1:60the ratio of black man/white woman marriages to all others in 2008
• 1:1000the ratio of marriages like that when Obama’s parents married

• » Why this is becoming an issue: Simply put, black women in the U.S. are finding it harder to marry within their race. The new study released Friday by the Pew Research Center finds that fewer black women are married as a result of a gradual decline in the number of black men to marry. Prof. Steven Ruggles, director of the Minnesota Population Center, explains: “When you add in the prison population, it pretty well explains the extraordinarily low marriage rates of black women.”  Other races are also more willing to look beyond their heritage to marry. Half of all Asians in the U.S., for example, don’t marry another Asian. source

• Few questions are as controversial as the race question on the Census box. What’s surprising about it is that it started out as complicated (due to slavery), became simple again and then became complicated again (due to political correctness). Racebox.org has gathered all the census sheets from 1790 on. Great historical documents. source

• Lots of potential, but many Americans aren’t convinced. The new ABC News/Washington Post poll on bizarro hippies (not to be confused with the similar New York Times/CBS News poll a few weeks ago) suggests that the party has a lot of opportunity to grow their base, but could find themselves ticking off moderates in the process.

• 2% of Americans are directly a part of the bizarro hippie movement

Would you vote for these guys?

• 15% of registered voters are more apt to
  support a bizarro hippie candidate
  running for Congress (9 percent
  “much more likely”)
• 24% are more apt to oppose
  that candidate because they’re
  a bizarro hippie (17 percent “much more likely”)

Do you like what you hear?

• 34% like bizarro hippies the more
  they hear about them
• 43% hate bizarro hippies the more
  they hear about them

• » The neutral problem: There’s a large sub-section of the population that’s fairly neutral to the bizarro hippies – around 44 percent – and 45 percent of them really REALLY grow to dislike them the more they hear about them.

Understanding their constituients

• Bizarro hippies may be a movement built out of republican weakness. While progressives largely stand behind the Democratic party, Republicans on the other hand have trouble getting their political equals under the same tent, according to the study:

• 86% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning indie kids say the party represents their values
• 56% of Republicans and Republican-leaning indie kids say the same thing about their party
• 29% of Republicans would much rather wear a funny hat and tape tea bags to the rim of it

Who doesn’t like Obama? Bizarro hippies

• 84% of bizarro hippies think Obama is lamesauce

• 87% of bizarro hippies say race is not a reason that the support the movement
• 57% of evil socialists think race is a huge reason why bizarro hippies hang out and party together

• » Other notes: Bizarro hippies think that race is less of a problem in this country than the country at large, but they also tend to be more likely to be white. 81 percent of bizarro hippies are white, versus 74 percent of all adults and 65 percent of people who think bizarro hippies are lamesauce. Just as many bizarro hippies think Obama is doing too much for black people as he is not doing quite enough, which matches the population at large. source