Latest Race and ethnicity News
In a calendar rarity, Hanukkah starts this year on Christmas Day
Hanukkah, Judaism’s eight-day Festival of Lights, begins this year on Christmas Day, only the fourth time that’s happened since 1900. For some rabbis, the intersection of the two religious holidays provides an auspicious occasion for interfaith engagement. “This...
Florida requires teaching Black history. Some don't trust schools to do it justice
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Buried among Florida's manicured golf courses and sprawling suburbs are the artifacts of its slave-holding past: the long-lost cemeteries of enslaved people, the statutes of Confederate soldiers that still stand watch over town squares, the old plantations turned into...
Missouri governor commutes sentence of white police officer convicted of fatally shooting Black man
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — A white former Kansas City police officer who was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the fatal shooting of a Black man was released from prison Friday after Missouri’s governor commuted his sentence to parole. The decision by Republican Gov. Mike...
Oregon sheriff concerned about letters asking people to track possible immigrants
LINCOLN CITY, Ore. (AP) — A sheriff in Oregon says he has contacted the FBI and is increasingly concerned about a letter circulating in his rural, coastal community asking people to write down the license plate numbers of possible immigrants. The Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office...
Alabama profits off prisoners who work at McDonald’s but deems them too dangerous for parole
DADEVILLE, Ala. (AP) — A storm was looming when the inmate serving 20 years for armed robbery was assigned to transport fellow prisoners to their jobs at private manufacturers supplying goods to companies like Home Depot and Wayfair. It didn’t matter that Jake Jones once had escaped or that he...
Amazon Indigenous community wins latest stage of court battle for lost territory
An Indigenous community in the Peruvian Amazon is celebrating a legal victory in the latest stage of its attempt to take back claimed ancestral rainforests. The Puerto Franco community of the Kichwa tribe say their territory was stolen to form the Cordillera Azul National Park in...
Carter, McGrady and Altidore's new stake in Buffalo Bills brings diversity to NFL owners' table
ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. (AP) — The chance to rub shoulders with quarterback Josh Allen and use their Toronto connections to broaden the Buffalo Bills’ reach into Canada’s largest city wasn’t the only thing on the minds of former NBA stars Vince Carter and Tracy McGrady and soccer’s Jozy...
US civil rights probe faults Philadelphia school district over handling of antisemitism reports
The Philadelphia school district failed to show it protected Jewish students from harassment despite “repeated, extensive notice” that students, teachers and administrators were engaging in antisemitic behavior, the U.S. Department of Education has concluded after a federal civil rights...
Zimbabwe launches new land policy to empower Black farmers with direct farm ownership
HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) — Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa on Friday launched a new policy that will allow beneficiaries of land taken from white people under contentious land reforms to sell it and to be able to borrow from banks using it as collateral. This marks a major...
Takeaways from The Associated Press’ reporting on prison labor in Alabama
DADEVILLE, Ala. (AP) — No state has a longer, more profit-driven history of contracting prisoners out to private companies than Alabama. With a sprawling labor system that dates back more than 150 years — including the brutal convict leasing era that replaced slavery — it has constructed a...
