EthnicMajority

(Seattle Times) A new University of Washington poll suggests tea party supporters are not just angry about government spending and the new national health care law.

“The data tells us this opposition and frustration with government is going hand in hand with a frustration and opposition to racial and ethnic minorities and gays and lesbians,” said Matt Barreto, a political science professor and director of UW’s Washington Poll.

The poll, released on Tuesday, surveyed 1,695 voters in May by phone and has a 2.3 percent margin of error. It found that 35 percent of the voters surveyed “strongly” or “somewhat” approve of the tea party movement, 37 percent dissaprove and 28 percent had no opinion or had not heard of the tea party.

The survey asked several questions related to race, immigration and gay rights.

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(Huffington Post) With national polls showing majority support for Arizona’s harsh immigration law, you probably think these voters are hard liners determined to rid the country of immigrants and deny a path to legal status for all of the undocumented immigrants in the U.S., right?

Wrong.

Here’s a shocker: four out of five voters who support Arizona’s new “papers-please” law also support comprehensive immigration reform that includes a pathway to citizenship for the undocumented. On the flip side, a paltry one in five support rounding up and deporting everyone here illegally.

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(NY Times) In late April in a courthouse in Madison County, Ala., a prosecutor was asked to explain why he had struck 11 of 14 black potential jurors in a capital murder case.
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The district attorney, Robert Broussard, said one had seemed “arrogant” and “pretty vocal.” In another woman, he said he “detected hostility.”

Mr. Broussard also questioned the “sophistication” of a former Army sergeant, a forklift operator with three years of college, a cafeteria manager, an assembly-line worker and a retired Department of Defense program analyst.

The analyst, he said, “did not appear to be sophisticated to us in her questionnaire, in that she spelled Wal-Mart, as one of her previous employers, as Wal-marts.”

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(Fox4kc) African-American drivers are stopped more often by police in Missouri than any other race. That’s according to the latest Vehicle Stops Report. And it concerns Attorney General Chris Koster.

Since 2000, Missouri police officers are required to report specific information about the drivers they pull over. It’s meant to prevent racial profiling.

Koster discovered this year’s report shows black drivers were stopped at increasingly higher rates. And it should be a concern to Missourians.

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(UPI) Civil liberties groups have mounted a passionate constitutional attack against Arizona’s tough new illegal immigrant law, saying its “sweeping requirements” violate the U.S. and state constitutions and will lead to racial profiling.

A complaint filed in federal court in Phoenix last week raises the specter of a Hispanic-American, or any other ethnic American, having to carry a passport to prove U.S. citizenship to avoid detention.

Feelings run just as high on the other side. Proponents of the law say illegal immigration costs Arizona about $2.7 billion a year in education and police operations — read Hispanic gangs — among other things.

Rassmussen Reports says a national telephone survey of 1,000 likely voters, conducted April 22-23, found 60 percent of voters nationwide support the law while 31 percent oppose it. Still, 58 percent said they believe implementing the law will result in civil rights violations for some people. The margin of error was 3 percentage points.

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(NY Times) For the singer Larry Hernandez, the 2010 Billboard Latin Music Awards should have been a moment of pure celebration. But when it came time for Mr. Hernandez to accept his award as new artist of the year, he got drawn into politics, prefacing his remarks with a condemnation of the tough new immigration law that his home state of Arizona had just adopted.

“It is deplorable that they are discriminating against us just for the simple fact of looking Latino,” he said from the stage. “It’s not fair. We have to say no to that law.”

Mr. Hernandez’s name, however, is not on the list of prominent pop music performers who have declared that they will no longer perform in Arizona, one of the most dynamic markets for Latin music and culture. The boycott effort, called Sound Strike and led by the singer Zack de la Rocha of the rap metal band Rage Against the Machine, did get pledges from some big names, including the rapper Kanye West, indie rockers Sonic Youth and the trip hop duo Massive Attack. But it was light on mainstream “big tent” performers who can fill stadiums, and included no country music performers.

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(AlterNet) Following his tea-party insurgent Senate primary victory over the establishment Republican candidate in Kentucky, Rand Paul created waves when Rachel Maddow forced him, uncomfortably, to admit his opposition to parts of the Civil Rights Act. To many in the civil rights community, and to the political center, this comes as a shock.

It shouldn’t be.

For years, libertarians opposed government interference with private business, whether that means opposition to environmental regulation, labor laws, or anti-discrimination laws. The son of libertarian presidential candidate, Ron Paul, it’s not surprising that Rand Paul also believes those things. Rand Paul has made it clear that he’s not in favor of a repeal of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and that he supports the vast majority of it. What’s the problem then? He specifically opposes the provisions that prohibit discrimination in what are known as ‘public accommodations,’ which are really private businesses such as hotels, movie theaters, or lunch counters.

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(TalkTVWorld) A poll released today by NBC, MSNBC and Telemundo revealed a deep split in the opinions of white Americans and Hispanic Americans on the topics of immigration, the Arizona law and American politics. More than six in 10 Americans (61%) back Arizona’s controversial new immigration law, including 70% of whites but just 31% of Hispanics. Less than half (43%) of whites agree that immigration strengthens America, but the majority (68%) of Hispanics believe it does strengthen the nation.

Obama’s overall approval rating in the poll stands at 48%. But the divide exists here, too: Only about a third (38%) of whites approve of the president’s job, versus two-thirds (68%) of Hispanics who do. Similarly, only about a third (34%) of whites have a favorable view of the Democratic Party, versus more than half (54%) of Hispanics who do.

But the one thing all seem to agree on is their disapproval of President Obama’s handling of immigration reform — just 32% of the public approves of his job on this issue.

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(Washington Post) Arizona’s new crackdown on illegal immigration will increase crime in U.S. cities, not reduce it, by driving a wedge between police and immigrant communities, police chiefs from several of the state’s and the nation’s largest cities said Tuesday.

The new Arizona law will intimidate crime victims and witnesses who are illegal immigrants and divert police from investigating more serious crimes, chiefs from Los Angeles, Houston and Philadelphia said. They will join their counterparts from Montgomery County and a half-dozen other U.S. cities in meeting Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Wednesday morning to discuss the measure.

“This is not a law that increases public safety. This is a bill that makes it much harder for us to do our jobs,” Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck said. “Crime will go up if this becomes law in Arizona or in any other state.”

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Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele says he was not comfortable with Rand Paul’s views on civil rights.

Steele’s comments came during a fiery debate with Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine on “This Week.”

Paul, who won the Republican Senate primary in Kentucky on Tuesday, drew criticism for his comments suggesting the 1964 Civil Rights Act perhaps was too expansive in insisting private businesses not discriminate.

“I like the Civil Rights Act in the sense that it ended discrimination in all public domains,” Paul said in April.

“I abhor racism, I think it’s a bad business decision to ever exclude anyone from your restaurant,” he told the Louisville Courier Journal, “but at the same time I do believe in private ownership.”

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