Media

Automatic registration works by shifting the onus of registration from the individual to the government. 

On Monday the Supreme Court handed down a decision against Abercrombie & Fitch, ruling 8-1 that the retailer’s “look policy” discriminated against a job applicant on the basis of religion. The policy required that staff conform to the company’s ‘All-American’ brand image, and the job applicant was a young All-American Muslim woman who came to her interview wearing the headscarf she dons as part of her religious observation. To the company’s hiring managers, covering your head was not Abercrombie cool.

It’s well known that graduating college students in recent years have faced student loan debt at unprecedented levels far exceeding that of previous generations of American graduates. Nonetheless, a new report released by the New York-based Demos public policy organization documents the patterns of debt along racial and class lines with Black, Latino, and low-income students taking out higher loans than Whites and more likely to drop out with significant debt.

As we near the two-year anniversary of the Supreme Court gutting the Voting Rights Act and the subsequent failure of Congress to restore it, Demos has found new evidence of racial bias in the passage of voter ID laws.

Increasing tuition costs are largely held to be at fault for rising levels of debt. However, the cause of rising tuition is subject to debate. Some believe that public subsidies have encouraged colleges to avail themselves of the “free money” and jack up tuition prices. Others say it is the competition among institutions to build the most expensive and cutting-edge amenities on campus.

The questions around reparations to descendants of slaves in America often trigger strident conversations. These discussions lay bare how race continues to affect the nation - despite the unfounded protestations by Americans that race holds little relevance to their lives. The "coded racial appeals" that Ian Haney Lopez has written in his informative book, "Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism & Wrecked The Middle Class," is must reading for all Americans and provides a foundation for how racism endures and evolves.  

As 2016 Republican frontrunners continue to dismiss the wage gap as a speculative topic, a new study published on Tuesday further proves just how real the rift is for people of color.