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Here’s our pick of news, writing, and research this week that investigates political questions at the intersections of gender, race, and region.

1. “Black Women Are Getting Killed by Police, Too — So Why Aren’t More People Discussing It?
In Mic, Derrick Clifton calls for a consideration of gender in how we define and address state violence against black Americans. Clifton quotes Charlene Carruthers: “When we look at how police and state violence affects black women, it includes black women and girls getting killed. It also includes black women and girls being sexually assaulted, harassed and beaten by officers as well.”

2. “Stop judging poor moms. Bad policies hurt their kids — not bad parenting.
Joanne Samuel Goldblum, executive director of the National Diaper Bank Network, on the structural barriers low-income mothers face, and how the outcomes of those policies are used to shame and stigmatize mothers: “Diapers for one infant cost an average of $18 a week, or $936 a year. For parents with minimum-wage jobs, making $15,080 a year, diapers alone eat up about six percent of their paychecks. Meanwhile, public support has provided less and less help, even as diapers and other child-care prices have risen.”

3. “CDC HIV Prevention Funding Policy Is Hurting the Hard-Hit Southern U.S.
Carolyn McAllaster: “Nine Deep South states… account for only 28% of the U.S. population, but nearly 40% of national HIV diagnoses… those living with HIV in the Deep South states are dying at higher rates than in any other region of the country. So why would the CDC choose to restrict eligibility for high-impact prevention funding for community based organizations to those located in designated large metropolitan statistical areas, even though much of the Southern epidemic is rural and suburban?”

4. “Remarks by the First Lady at Tuskegee University Commencement Address
First Lady Michelle Obama: “…as potentially the first African American First Lady, I was also the focus of another set of questions and speculations; conversations sometimes rooted in the fears and misperceptions of others. Was I too loud, or too angry, or too emasculating? (Applause.) Or was I too soft, too much of a mom, not enough of a career woman?”

5. “A closer look at income and race concentration in public schools
A recent study by the Southern Education Foundation found that in 2013, for the first time, over half of public school students were low-income. The Urban Institute mapped that data, finding that “Southern states like Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas have the highest levels of students in low-income families attending public schools… a closer look reveals that large shares of low-income areas in the South are often rural.”

Book recommendation: “America in the King Years” trilogy by Taylor Branch. The third volume is being adapted into an HBO mini-series, with writers Ta-Nehisi Coates, James McBride, and David Simon.

 

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