Page 6 - Florida Sentinel 7-5-16 Online Edition

White House News
Blacks And Whites Don’t Agree On The State Of Race Relations In U. S.
President Obama Takes On Trump
A little over eight years ago, President Obama deliv- ered a speech on race that the Pew Research Center dubbed one of the biggest events of his 2008 campaign for the White House. The New Yorker wrote the speech helped solidify Obama’s candidacy. The then-Senator was praised for speaking on the contentious and complex history of race relations. After that speech and the subsequent elec- tion, 52% of voters believed the Obama administration would usher in a new era of racial unity.
A new survey from that same research body shows that didn’t happen.
Pew finds that attitudes about race, racial injustice and inequality in 2016 vary greatly among black and white people. Forty-six percent of white Americans, the survey finds, think race relations are “generally good,” while 45% say they’re “generally bad.” Among black Americans, on the other hand, 61% say race relations are bad and only 34% say they’re good.
While almost all blacks, 88%, say the country has work to ensure blacks and whites have the same rights, only 53% of whites agree. The find- ings are similar to the results of a Pew Survey in 2009, just a year after the president’s elec- tion when “more than eight- in-ten blacks — compared with just more than a third of whites” said more needed to be done to give blacks and whites equal rights.
In nearly every category Pew questioned blacks and whites on in their survey, the contrast in opinions is stark. Across the spectrum of life ex- periences, blacks and whites have different perceptions of how black people interact with
the world—and how the world interacts with them.
Blacks overwhelmingly say members of the African Amer- ican community are treated less fairly than whites during police interactions (84%), in court (75%), in the workplace (64%) and when applying for loans (66%).
For whites, less than half agree on all three points—in fact, only 25% of whites think blacks are treated unfairly when they apply for mort- gages. Just 22% say blacks are treated less fairly than whites at work.
While the survey finds blacks’ and whites’ views dif- fer in a general sense, there is division within the white com- munity along party lines. Take for example, the Black Lives Matter Movement. Sixty-four percent of white Democrats are supportive of the move- ment, only 20% of white Re- publicans say they support the movement. A total of 65% of blacks are supportive of the movement, which was launched in the wake of the shooting of Trayvon Mar- tin and catapulted into main- stream conversations after Mike Brown’s death and the Ferguson protests. The partisan divide is clear, too, in perceptions of President Obama. Nearly a third of whites, made up largely of white Republicans, say the president has made race rela- tions worse. Only 5% of blacks agree.
Over the course of three months, from February to May, Pew interviewed 3,769 adults — 1,799 whites, 1,004 blacks, and 654 Hispanics — to survey Americans percep- tions on race. The survey was conducted via telephone calls and has a total margin of error of 2.2 percentage points.
President Barack Obama
will head to the Tar Heel State to appear with Hillary Clin- ton.
President Barack Obama is following up his endorsement of Hillary Clinton by sched- uling a joint appearance with the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee next week in Charlotte, North Car- olina, and escalating his at- tacks on Republican candidate Donald Trump.
Speaking at a news confer- ence last week during an inter- national meeting in Ottawa, Ontario, President Obama said Trump promotes "na- tivism or xenophobia or worse."
President Obama said, "I'm not prepared to concede the notion that some of the rhetoric that's been popping up is populist." He argued that being a populist means caring about workers, children and the poor, and he said Trump is someone "who has never shown any regard for workers, who has never fought on behalf of any social justice issues," and who has opposed pro- grams to expand economic op- portunity.
President Obama had
originally planned the pro- Clinton event for June 14 in Green Bay, Wisconsin, but postponed it because he was dealing with a mass shooting in Orlando, Florida, which oc- curred June 12.
Clinton strategists say the choice of North Carolina sig- nals that Clinton believes she can win the state in November and will intensify her cam- paign there.
Democratic strategists say this will be the first of many Obama appearances for Clin- ton, and there is increasing ev- idence that he can make a difference.
President Obama’s ap- proval ratings have improved,
which may make some voters more interested in supporting Clinton in the general election as President Obama’s polit- ical heir.
A recent CBS News/New York Times poll finds that 50 percent of Americans approve of the job President Obama is doing while 43 percent dis- approve. A year ago, only 42 percent approved and 48 per- cent disapproved.
Other polls show similar re- sults. Gallup gives President Obama an approval rating of 52 percent while disapproval is at 44 percent. A recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll gives President Obama 51 percent approval and 46 per- cent disapproval.
While President Obama can't guarantee the transfer of support from himself to Clin- ton, he can possibly help gen- erate turnout and enthusiasm among some constituencies where he remains very popu- lar. Among them are African Americans and young people. He also can make a difference in some regions where he is in good standing, such as Califor- nia and the Pacific Coast, and in big cities with liberal con- stituencies.
Poll Finds Grand Total Of Donald Trump’s Support With Black Voters: 1%
According to the new Quinnipiac University poll
Republican nominee Don- ald Trump has 1% (yes, out of 100%) of support from black voters, finds a new Quinnipiac poll.
By comparison, 91% of black voters backed presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. The poll showed Clinton leading with 42 per- centage points over Trump’s 40 overall, and qualified that these returns were too close to call.
Trump had support of 47% of white voters polled over
Clinton’s 30%, while Clin- ton beat Trump with His- panic voters by winning 50-33%. Republican nomi- nees traditionally have not won the majority of support from African American voters, but they’ve done better than Trump is polling now: Mitt Romney won 6% of the Black vote in 2012, John McCain won 4% in 2008, and George W. Bush won 11% in 2004.
“You’re not going to find a lot of Black people who openly support Donald Trump,” Trump supporter Pastor Mark Burns, an African American preacher from South Carolina, told the New
Donald Trump, presumptive Republican presidential nomi- nee, gestures at Trump Interna- tional Golf Links in Aberdeen, U.K, on Saturday, June 25, 2016.
York Daily News.
U. S. Military To Allow Transgender Men And Women To Serve Openly
The Pentagon on Thursday lifted a long-standing ban against transgender men and women serving openly in the military, removing one of its last discriminatory hurdles and placing gender identity on par with race, religion, color, sex and sexual orientation.
The announcement by De- fense Secretary Ashton Carter is part of a fundamen- tal shift in the straight-laced, male-dominated U. S. military, which in 2011 ended discrimi- nation against gays and les- bians. More recently, it opened all combat positions to women and appointed the first openly gay Secretary of the Army,
Eric K. Fanning.
“Our mission is to defend this country, and we don’t want barriers unrelated to a person’s qualification to serve preventing us from recruiting or retaining the soldier, sailor, airman or Marine who can best
accomplish the mission,” Carter said. “We have to have access to 100% of America’s population for our all-volun- teer force to be able to recruit from among them the most highly qualified — and to retain them.”
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