2023
February
02
Thursday

Monitor Daily Podcast

February 02, 2023
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Mark Sappenfield
Senior global correspondent

On Wednesday, the College Board released its official curriculum for a new Advanced Placement course in African American studies. Some conservatives balked at proposals for the class, mostly around hot topics like Black Lives Matter and Black queer life. Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, said he’d ban the class. The College Board’s final plan largely skirts those issues.

The controversy speaks to deep divides over how to teach race in America’s classrooms. But it also creates another interesting optic: white people deciding what parts of Black history are acceptable. 

In concert with Black History Month, the Pew Research Center is highlighting a variety of surveys that look at Black views of America. They’re worth a look. In one survey, 42% of Black respondents say white Americans would need to face the same hardships to be real allies, while 35% say white people can be good allies regardless. In another, 87% of Black adults say the prison system needs significant changes – with 54% saying it needs to be completely rebuilt.

Perhaps most interesting is the divide between Black and white Americans on racism itself. Some 70% of white respondents say individual racism is the larger problem, while 52% of Black respondents say the bigger problem is racism in laws. 

In many ways, this has defined America’s recent racial conversation. Each individual wants to say, “I’m not racist.” But the surveys suggest that might not be the most pressing question. How do we erase the grooves worn into law and institutions by generations of racism, which still shape the outlines of prosperity today? Why does the median white household have $188,200 in wealth, while the median Black household has $24,100?

An AP course makes for lively politics. The deeper question might be whether Black Americans themselves feel they have the space and opportunity to write a new chapter in American history. 


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Today’s stories

And why we wrote them

As the war with Russia grinds on, Ukraine’s economy is under pressure and dependent on foreign aid. The average Ukrainian faces an uncertain future, but is still finding ways to persevere.

Graphic

How common are killings by police? How often prosecuted?

In many cases the use of force by police goes unquestioned, seen as a necessary part of defending themselves and public safety. But the death of Tyre Nichols in Memphis amplifies concerns about unjustified violence.

SOURCE:

Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Mapping Police Violence

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Jacob Turcotte/Staff
Fred Weir
Former Western commercial outlets in their post-sanctions reincarnations receive customers at the Europark shopping mall in Moscow on Jan. 27, 2023. McDonald's is now Vkusno i Tochka, Baskin-Robbins is BR and Ice, and Starbucks is Stars Coffee. KFC is still KFC.

Western sanctions aren’t keeping iPhones off Russian shelves or Hollywood films out of Moscow’s theaters. “Parallel imports” are making Russia’s economy more resilient than expected.

Patterns

Tracing global connections

Authoritarian Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan defies his NATO partners, buying Russian weapons and blocking European nations from joining the alliance. How to manage ties with a leader NATO cannot do without?

Difference-maker

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
Many participants in Exchange for Change, a mentorship program for incarcerated writers, say that the encouragement to write has been a catalyst for internal exploration and healing.

Prisons isolate. Exchange for Change helps incarcerated writers forge connections – to the outside and to their innermost thoughts.


The Monitor's View

AP
Zambia's President Hakainde Hichilema speaks Jan. 23 with Kristalina Georgieva, International Monetary Fund Managing Director, who commended the government’s efforts to improve transparency and tackle corruption.

It is a mark of progress in honest governance that a few experts are starting to ask this question: Do national laws against corruption apply in outer space? The question is not so far-fetched.

One American company, Lonestar, plans to put computer servers on the moon later this year. And Elon Musk’s next big space venture, Starship, promises “long-duration interplanetary flights” for people who can afford them. The struggle to ensure integrity in business and government – wherever they exist – keeps on expanding.

As a leader on Earth in exposing transnational corruption, the United States sees this struggle as not only a benefit to its economy, democracy, and national security, but also, as Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in December, “a challenge in many other domains.” That’s why, Mr. Blinken added, it is important to show “that pockets of transparency and accountability can actually be nurtured.”

Many of those “pockets” were highlighted in two global surveys released this week that hint at terrestrial progress.

The 2022 Democracy Index found the number of countries improving on measures such as political accountability has risen compared with 2021. And Transparency International called attention to eight countries – Ireland, South Korea, Armenia, Vietnam, the Maldives, Moldova, Angola, and Uzbekistan – that have improved their scores on its corruption perception index in the past five years.

Both surveys made a point to cite progress on a continent where corruption remains rife.

In sub-Saharan Africa, “citizens’ movements calling for deeper democratization and accountability remain a core part” of politics, stated the Democracy Index. The region saw improvements in political culture and political participation. On the corruption index, seven African nations are on the list of 24 nations worldwide that made significant progress against corruption. They include Senegal, Ivory Coast, and Angola.

“More leaders in [Africa] have stood up for democracy, and the African Union has spoken out against military takeovers,” stated the Transparency International report.

The Biden administration has elevated the struggle against corruption to the top of its foreign policy. Part of its strategy is to reinforce progress in honest governance worldwide. “We see the ways that the fight for accountability can actually motivate real, positive change – from Kyiv to Kuala Lumpur, from Lusaka to Bratislava,” says national security adviser Jake Sullivan.

And, as he might add someday, on the moon and beyond.


A Christian Science Perspective

About this feature

Each weekday, the Monitor includes one clearly labeled religious article offering spiritual insight on contemporary issues, including the news. The publication – in its various forms – is produced for anyone who cares about the progress of the human endeavor around the world and seeks news reported with compassion, intelligence, and an essentially constructive lens. For many, that caring has religious roots. For many, it does not. The Monitor has always embraced both audiences. The Monitor is owned by a church – The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston – whose founder was concerned with both the state of the world and the quality of available news.

Feeling stuck? Humble prayer to see things from God’s view brings progress and healing.


A message of love

Alan Freed/Reuters
The groundhog rules: Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow on Feb. 2, 2023, at Gobbler's Knob in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, so there will indeed be six more weeks of winter.
( The illustrations in today’s Monitor Daily are by Karen Norris and Jacob Turcotte. )

A look ahead

Thank you for joining us today. Please come back tomorrow when we look at how some of the recent job-market upheaval – from tech layoffs even as restaurants keep hiring – is a shift back toward pre-COVID-19 patterns. But beyond that are signs of an encouraging trend: a narrowing of income gaps between low- and high-income workers.

More issues

2023
February
02
Thursday

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