What is Happening in this Country: The Whiteness Issue Continues

Michigan State University Professor Riyad Shahjahan and Graduate Instructor Annabelle Estera published an article in the March issue of Discourse (an academic journal) in which they argue that the stock imagery on higher-education websites promotes the hegemony of “whiteness.” 

The professors cited a review of websites where they discovered that whiteness is not only evident in stock photos, but that “whiteness was entangled with patriarchy, homonormativity, and heterosexuality.”

The term, “Homonormativity” is used to describe instances of privilege within the LGBT community. 

Shahjahan and Estera warn that this is a problem since it highlights that “white students were arguably the ‘default’ university student representative.” Additionally, Shahjahan and Estera argue that stock photos on higher-education ranking websites marginalize women and students of color by placing white men in positions of power.

“As such, the images convey a message that all may enter into [higher education] no matter your social identity... but in the future, after arrival, white and male students assume the dominant role while others will be ‘naturally’ relegated to the sidelines,” the professors write. 

In the conclusion of their paper, Shahjahan and Estera argue that the regularity of white men in stock imagery is unfortunately understandable due to the colonial histories that normalize “white and male bodies as universal, neutral, and desirable. Such normalizing encourages the continued use of global rankings which disproportionately favor Western, predominantly white settings, benefiting the rankers themselves” they contend.

Orange County Fights Against Sanctuary Laws

Los Alamitos, a small city in Orange County, voted last week, 4-1, to oppose California's "sanctuary" law (SB 54). Now the Orange County government is joining the backlash against the state policy, which prohibits local law enforcement from some cooperation with federal immigration enforcement. 

On Tuesday, the Orange County Board of Supervisors voted 3-0 to join the U.S. Justice Department's lawsuit, which argued that California law was deliberately interfering with federal immigration policies. California law prohibits local law enforcement from turning over suspects to federal immigration agents for deportation. Orange County is made up of approximately 3.2 million people. 

As of March 26, the Orange County sheriff’s department said they would publish a "Who’s in Jail" online database, including the date and time of inmates’ release, to help cooperate with other law enforcement agencies including ICE. The release date information applies to all inmates, not just those who are suspected of being in the country illegally. But the goal is to assist agents with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. 

Senate Bill 54, which took effect on January 1, 2018, placed restrictions on collaboration between local custody operations and federal law enforcement authorities. The legislation specifically prohibited local law enforcement’s communication with ICE on the release of certain undocumented offenders.

States Sue Over Census Question

The 2020 census will ask respondents whether they are United States citizens, the Commerce Department announced Monday night, agreeing to a Trump administration request. Many Democrats fear that this would result in a substantial undercount in the population since illegal immigrants might not want to answer that question. 

So far, 12 states signaled that they would sue to block the Trump administration from adding the question about citizenship to the 2020 census. The state of California sued the Trump administration Monday night, arguing that the decision to add a question about citizenship in the 2020 Census violates the U.S. Constitution. The state’s attorney general acted just after the Commerce Department announced the change in a late-night release. 

The action was followed Tuesday by an announcement from New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman who said he was leading a multi-state lawsuit to stop the move. In addition to California, officials in Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Washington said they would join the effort. 

The last time an official census asked if the people responding were U.S. citizens was in 1950. Some other surveys sent out by the U.S. Census Bureau, such as the American Community Survey, however, have since asked the question. 

The Constitution requires that every resident of the United States be counted in a decennial census (occurring every 10 years), whether or not they are citizens. The results are used not just to redraw political boundaries from school boards to House seats, but to allocate hundreds of billions of dollars in federal grants and subsidies to where they are needed most. 

Opponents of the added citizenship question said it was certain to depress response to the census from noncitizens and even legal immigrants. Critics accused the administration of adding the question to reduce the population count in the predominantly Democratic areas where more immigrants reside, in advance of state and national redistricting in 2021.

Kim Jong Un Travels to China

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un visited China in his first foreign trip since he came to power in 2011. After two days of speculation, China announced on Wednesday that Kim had visited Beijing and met President Xi Jinping during what the official Xinhua news agency called an unofficial visit from Sunday to Wednesday. 

Kim Jong Un’s surprise visit to Beijing, China, happened on Sunday, March 25, 2018. Kim Jong Un traveled to the country with his wife, Ri Sol Ju, according to Chinese state media organization Xinhua. China's President Xi Jinping held a banquet for Kim Jong Un and his wife upon their arrival, Xinhua Media reported. Xi Jinping welcomed Kim Jong Un warmly, and Kim Jong Un stated that he "enjoyed the support" of China and its people. 

The outlet reports that Kim Jong Un said he would be open to working with Seoul and Washington on the issue of denuclearization on the Korean peninsula. China said on Wednesday it won a pledge from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to denuclearize the Korean peninsula during a meeting with President Xi Jinping. In return, Jinping said that China would uphold its friendship with North Korea. 

The White House said it had been briefed by China about the visit earlier Tuesday. "The Chinese government contacted the White House earlier on Tuesday to brief us on Kim Jong Un's visit to Beijing. The briefing included a personal message from President Xi to President Trump, which has been conveyed to President Trump," press secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement.  

"The United States remains in close contact with our allies South Korea and Japan. We see this development as further evidence that our campaign of maximum pressure is creating the appropriate atmosphere for dialogue with North Korea”, stated Sarah Sanders. 

New Information on the Opioid Crisis

The United States economy has lost close to 1 million workers and $702 billion due to opioid addiction, according to a study released Tuesday, March 28. 

The American Action Forum (AAF), a right-leaning think tank, analyzed the impact of the opioid epidemic on U.S. labor force participation and output between 1999 and 2015. The group applied findings from previous studies on the economic impact of opioid addiction to data tracking the size of the U.S. workforce and gross domestic product (GDP). 

In 2015, 919,400 prime-age individuals (25-54 years of age) were not in the labor force due to opioids. Roughly 425,000 men and 471,000 women of prime working age who were employed or looking for a job left the labor force by 2015 because of opioid addiction. That’s close to 25 percent of the total decline in U.S. labor force participation. 

Between 1999 and 2015, the decline in labor force participation cumulatively cost the economy 12.1 billion work hours. During that period, the reduction in work hours and economic productivity due to opioid addiction slowed the real annual economic growth rate by 0.2 percentage points, caused by fewer and less productive employees cumulatively costing $702.1 billion in real output, to the U.S economy. 

More than 42,000 Americans died from opioid overdoses in 2016, and addiction tends to be the most prevalent in economically struggling areas of the U.S. The 1.3 trillion spending bill that President Trump signed last week included $2.8 billion in funding to combat the opioid crisis.

Details about Prince’s Death

A toxicology report from Prince's autopsy shows that he had what multiple experts called an "exceedingly high" concentration of fentanyl in his body when he died, according to the Associated Press, which obtained the report. Public data released weeks after his death showed he died of an accidental overdose of fentanyl, a synthetic opioid 50 times more powerful than heroin. 

The report says the concentration of fentanyl in Prince’s blood was 67.8 micrograms per liter. The report explains that fatalities have been documented in people with blood levels ranging from three to 58 micrograms per liter. The report also says the level of fentanyl in Prince’s liver was 450 micrograms per kilogram, and notes that liver concentrations greater than 69 micrograms per kilogram “seem to represent overdose or fatal toxicity cases.” 

Experts say there is no “lethal level” at which fentanyl can kill. A person who takes prescription opioids for a long time builds up a tolerance, and a dose that could kill one person might help another.

Mail Time!

• Bill, Tuesday's No Spin News was one of the most sobering I think I've ever heard. I thought to myself, "Wow, we're really in a civil war in this country." I also thought you painted a bleak picture of Mr. Trump's political future, whether you meant to or not.
• If Hofstra removes Thomas Jefferson then YALE University has to be renamed. Yale, not only owned slaves, he was a slave trader.
• Bill, do you think we will ever get back to GOOD journalism or will we forever be in opinion mode with no proof of what is printed? I miss the good ole days when the news was just reported.

Word of the Day: Buffoon