Listened to Two Schools in Marin County by Kai Wright and Marianne McCune from The United States of Anxiety | WNYC Studios

Cover art for The United States of Anxiety Podcast

Last year, the California Attorney General held a tense press conference at a tiny elementary school in the one working class, black neighborhood of the mostly wealthy and white Marin County. His office had concluded that the local district "knowingly and intentionally" maintained a segregated school, violating the 14th amendment. He ordered them to fix it, but for local officials and families, the path forward remains unclear, as is the question: what does "equal protection" mean?

- Eric Foner is author of The Second Founding

Hosted by Kai Wright. Reported by Marianne McCune.

Thank you Kai and Marianne. Hearing stories like this really makes me furious that we haven’t figured out how to do these things better. Having some common stories and history to help bring out our commonness certainly helps in getting us past the uncomfortableness we all must feel. Perhaps once we’re past that we might all be able to come up with solutions?

I’m reminded of endothermic chemical reactions that take a reasonably high activation energy (an input cost), but one that is worth it in the end because it raises the level of all the participants to a better and higher level in the end. When are we going to realize that doing a little bit of hard work today will help us all out in the longer run? I’m hopeful that shows like this can act as a catalyst to lower the amount of energy that gets us all to a better place.

Example of an endothermic reaction. nigerianscholars.com / CC BY-SA

This Marin county example is interesting because it is so small and involves two schools. The real trouble comes in larger communities like Pasadena, where I live, which have much larger populations where the public schools are suffering while the dozens and dozens of private schools do far better. Most people probably don’t realize it, but we’re still suffering from the heavy effects of racism and busing from the early 1970’s.

All this makes me wonder if we could apply some math (topology and statistical mechanics perhaps) to these situations to calculate a measure of equity and equality for individual areas to find a maximum of some sort that would satisfy John Rawls’ veil of ignorance in better designing and planning our communities. Perhaps the difficulty may be in doing so for more broad and dense areas that have been financially gerrymandered for generations by redlining and other problems.

I can only think about how we’re killing ourselves as individuals and as a nation. The problem seems like individual choices for smoking and our long term health care outcomes or for individual consumption and its broader effects on global warming. We’re ignoring the global maximums we could be achieving (where everyone everywhere has improved lives) in the search for personal local maximums. Most of these things are not zero sum games, but sadly we feel like they must be and actively work against both our own and our collective best interests.

Read The Search for Isaiah Nixon by Hank Klibanoff (The Georgia Civil Rights Cold Cases Project)
The Georgia Civil Rights Cold Cases Project opened its fall 2015 semester with C-SPAN in the classroom, taping the class for its American History TV series, which you can find here. The project ended the semester with a Wall Street Journal article explaining how students in the class discovered the long-lost gravesite of a Georgia man, Isaiah Nixon, who was killed in 1948 because he voted.
Read Primus E. King (1900-1986) by Craig Lloyd (New Georgia Encyclopedia)

On the morning of July 4, 1944, Primus E. King, an African American duly registered to vote in Georgia, sought to cast a ballot at the Muscogee County Courthouse in Columbus in the Democratic Party's primary election. Shortly after entering the courthouse, King was roughly turned away by a law officer who escorted him back out to the street. During this time the Democratic Party monopolized political activity in Georgia, as in other southern states, and the party's primary provided the only occasion in which a voter was offered a choice between candidates seeking offices in state and local government. For this very reason blacks were denied participation in the primaries by the Georgia Democratic Party and its county affiliates.

Listened to "Buried Truths" Pistols (Season 1, Episode 1) by Hank Klibanoff from NPR

Cover art for Buried Truths from WABE/NPR featuring a brown toned blurry/digitized image of an unidentified African American man superimposed with the title of the show so as to disguise the person's identity.

After Primus King, a black barber and pastor, successfully sued the Democratic Party for denying his right to vote on the grounds of race and color, three-term Georgia Governor Eugene Talmadge declared, "This is a white man's country and we must keep it so." The best way to do so: "Pistols."

Listened to "Buried Truths" Fall, Isaiah, Fall (Season 1, Episode 2) by Hank Klibanoff from NPR

Cover art for Buried Truths from WABE/NPR featuring a brown toned blurry/digitized image of an unidentified African American man superimposed with the title of the show so as to disguise the person's identity.

Election day is usually a grand occasion for a small town like Alston, GA. For the white people in town, September 8, 1948, marked a day of good ole traditions and community. But for black voters, it became a place of opportunity...and defiance.

🎧 The Daily: A Fraudulent Election in North Carolina | New York Times

Listened to The Daily: A Fraudulent Election in North Carolina from New York Times

The investigation into a congressional seat narrowly won by a Republican reveals a detailed playbook for how election fraud can happen in the United States.

🎧 “The Daily”: Who’s Allowed to Vote in Georgia? | New York Times

Listened to "The Daily": Who’s Allowed to Vote in Georgia? from New York Times

Accusations of intentional voter suppression have animated the state’s crucial race for governor.

👓 Certification in limbo in N.C. House race as fraud investigation continues | The Washington Post

Read Certification in limbo in N.C. House race as fraud investigation continues (Washington Post)
Mounting evidence of fraud in North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District could indefinitely delay the certification of a winner, as state election officials investigate whether hundreds of absentee ballots were illegally cast or destroyed. The North Carolina State Board of Elections and Ethics Enforcement has no plans to certify Republican Mark Harris’s 905-vote victory over Democrat Dan McCready, according to an agenda of a board meeting scheduled for Friday morning.

👓 Scott opposes controversial judicial nominee | CNN

Read Scott opposes controversial judicial nominee (CNN)
Republican Sen. Tim Scott announced Thursday he would oppose President Donald Trump's nominee to be a US district judge in North Carolina, effectively ending the nomination that had been plagued with accusations that Thomas Farr supported measures that disenfranchised African-American voters.
Glad to see at least one person in the senate with a brain in their head.

🎧 ‘The Daily’: The Plan to Discredit the Florida Recount | New York Times

Listened to ‘The Daily’: The Plan to Discredit the Florida Recount from New York Times

The partisan battle over several close races risks damaging public confidence in the state’s election systems.

👓 Florida and Georgia: the super-tight midterm elections, explained | Vox

Read Where things stand in the very close Florida and Georgia elections (Vox)
Where things stand as votes continue to be counted — and recounted — in three major statewide races now that Arizona has been called.

👓 Voting Laws Roundup 2018 | Brennan Center for Justice

Read Voting Laws Roundup 2018 (brennancenter.org)
Voting legislation continues to be a subject of state legislators’ attention. So far in 2018, lawmakers have introduced bills to restrict voting in eight states. But all of them, as well as 14 other states, are considering laws that would expand access to the polls.

👓 Federal Judge Orders Georgia to Reveal Tally of Provisional Ballots | Bloomberg

Read Federal Judge Orders Georgia to Reveal Tally of Provisional Ballots by Erik Larson (Bloomberg)
A federal judge in Atlanta ordered the state’s election office -- overseen by Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp until his resignation Thursday -- to disclose how many provisional ballots were cast during the midterm election and how the total compares with the previous two elections.

👓 Photos Show Scores of Uncounted Ballots in Opa-locka Mail Center | Miami New Times

Read Photos Show Scores of Uncounted Ballots in Opa-locka Mail Center (Miami New Times)
Miami-Dade County announced today it has finished counting votes for the 2018 election. But photos obtained by New Times show scores of mail-in ballots sitting inside an Opa-locka mail distribution center — the same center that was evacuated last month after alleged mail bomber Cesar Sayoc's pipe bombs passed through the facility.

👓 Brian Kemp’s Lead in Georgia Needs an Asterisk | The Atlantic

Read Brian Kemp’s Lead in Georgia Needs an Asterisk (The Atlantic)
If the governor’s race had taken place in another country, the State Department would have questioned its legitimacy.