This is The Dossier.
Each Sunday we deliver the latest developments in world affairs, political economy, and culture straight to your inbox, served with a generous side of soul.
We spend the week scouring the internets for essential information and meaningful content to keep you informed, inspired and mildly entertained.
August 9 is Whitney Houston’s birthday. She would have been 57.
#GOAT
📰 Toplines
AP: US hiring slows amid signs of longer-lasting economic damage
CNBC: 32% of Americans had outstanding housing payments at the beginning of August
Vox: Trump just signed 4 executive orders providing coronavirus relief. It’s not clear if they’re all legal.
Bloomberg: Killer Mike Wants to Save America’s Disappearing Black Banks
NYT: Cori Bush Defeats William Lacy Clay in a Show of Progressive Might
The Tennessean: Marquita Bradshaw wins Tennessee's Democratic US Senate primary
Washington Post: Postal Service overhauls leadership as Democrats press for investigation of mail delays
CNN: Aurora Police Department apologizes after officers draw weapons on Black family in stolen vehicle mix-up
Reuters: Facebook bars pro-Trump PAC from advertising, citing repeated false posts
🎧 Rules: made to be broken
The latest episode of This American Life is a must listen. Every story features a Black person, and it’s quite subversive.
You’ll journey from the streets of Nairobi to the halls of a middle school in metro Atlanta and come away changed. It’s worth every one of its 55 minutes.
🦠 COVID-19
The U.S. surpassed 5 million coronavirus cases as the global tally approaches 20 million. U.S. officials are reporting more than 162,000 covid-related deaths, with an anticipated death toll of 300,000 by the end of the year.
NYT: The Unique U.S. Failure to Control the Virus
NPR: Children Can Get Severe COVID-19, CDC Says — Especially Black And Hispanic Children
💰 Black businesses matter
It is well reported that COVID-19 infection and mortality rates have been higher for Black people than for the U.S. at large.
A report published this month by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has found that coincident with the disproportionate health impacts of COVID-19 are a disproportionate economic impact:
Nationally representative data on small businesses indicate that the number of active business owners fell by 22 percent from February to April 2020—the largest drop on record. While the overall decline is noteworthy, differences among closure rates across racial and ethnic groups are even more striking. Black businesses experienced the most acute decline, with a 41 percent drop. Latinx business owners fell by 32 percent and Asian business owners dropped by 26 percent. In contrast, the number of white business owners fell by 17 percent.
The report offers three reasons for the decline in Black businesses being nearly double the national average:
Black-owned businesses are more likely to be located in COVID-19 hot spots
Paycheck Protection Program did not adequately reach areas hardest hit by the pandemic
Pre-existing bank lending discrimination against Black-owned businesses
The last point requires further elaboration. The Federal Reserve reports a significant difference in the proportion of Black-owned businesses with a pre-pandemic lending relationship with a bank. (An existing business lending relationship was often used by banks to screen PPP applicants.) While 54% of financially healthy white employers have a lending relationship with a bank, that proportion falls to only 33% for financially healthy Black employers.
When you consider that Black businesses are the number one private sector employers of Black people, one can begin to explain that alarming trend in the Black unemployment rate during the pandemic.
While the national unemployment rate has fallen 31% off its April peak of 14.7%, Black unemployment has fallen only 13% since April. In fact, while the rest of the country saw a 10% drop in its unemployment rate from April to May, Black people saw a slight increase in unemployment during that same time period.
Rarely does mainstream media mention the relationship between Black businesses and Black employment. But when it comes to the economic prosperity and material well being of Black people, the data doesn’t lie: Black businesses matter.
🏫 Back to school?
With the Trump administration continuing its push for schools to resume normal operations in the fall, educators and families across the country are left to navigate the dangers and uncertainties of pandemic-era education on their own.
Governor Andrew Cuomo gave the green light for New York schools to hold in-person classes, but educators in New York City have little confidence—and even less information—on how this will happen safely.
Atlanta Public Schools will have a delayed start date of August 24. Classes will be held entirely online until COVID infection rates decrease.
The Chicago Teachers Union prevailed on Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who was proposing a hybrid in-person/online model for the fall. Classes will be held online at least through early November.
Most public school systems in the DC metro area will begin the academic year entirely online. Prince George’s County Public Schools will be entirely online through January 2021.
After families and educators pushed back against its proposed hybrid in-person/online model for the fall, the School District of Philadelphia announced classes will be held online through November.
Despite Florida Governor Ron DeSantis insisting that schools reopen, Miami-Dade County Public Schools will begin the year online. In-person classes will resume in October at the earliest.
Houston area school districts are either beginning the academic year entirely online or planning for hybrid in-person/remote classes. Houston public schools will hold the first six weeks of the academic year online before resuming in-person instruction.
Detroit public schools are offering parents a choice between in-person or remote learning.
The Dallas Independent School District has delayed the start of the academic year as it continues assessing whether it will have remote learning only, or provide in-person instruction with a remote learning option. Local public health officials are advising Dallas-Fort Worth area school districts that remote learning is the safest option.
Los Angeles public schools will begin the year entirely online.
While remote learning is the safest option from a public health perspective, there is the clear and present reality that the digital divide is opening up what some are calling the “Covid slide.” This pandemic-induced learning loss hits low-income and, disproportionately, Black and Latino students particularly hard:
With the onset of the pandemic, some researchers have already begun warning of a “Covid slide” that could intensify learning loss for already underserved students...
Following this spring’s school shutdowns, low-income students might have had unreliable access to technology or been charged with caring for younger siblings at home, preventing them from participating fully or at all in online instruction. At the same time, more affluent families have been forming parenting pods and hiring private tutors for their children.
The cracks are growing. The gaps are widening. With all of the change seemingly in the air, things are only getting worse for those who were already worse off.
🎥 Judas and the Black Messiah
Judas and the Black Messiah is biopic about Illinois Black Panther Party Chairman Fred Hampton and the FBI informant, William O’Neal, whose intel about Hampton would be used for a raid that would end with the assassination of Hampton in 1969. Written and directed by Shaka King and produced by Ryan Coogler, the film will be released in theaters in 2021.
To me, the movie is, in a lot of ways, the capitalist in William O’Neal and the socialist in Fred Hampton… and the coward in William O’Neal and the revolutionary in Fred Hampton. I try to attach judgment to both of those ideologies but most people fall somewhere in between. You want to make a movie where the audience watches it and [walks] away questioning ‘Where do I fall between those two?’
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