Author: Syndicated

This past winter, Wisconsin launched a widely criticized million-dollar advertising campaign to lure Chicago millennials to the state, ostensibly to fill a workforce gap. On the surface, it made sense — the statewide unemployment rate is at a record low, 2.9 percent, the working-age population growth is only projected to be 0.2 percent, while the projected job growth rate is six percent. State officials believe they need to attract new talent. But dig a little deeper, and you find that there are plenty of workers in Wisconsin who still need jobs, but they cannot get to where the state’s...

When iPhone assembler Foxconn announced that it was building a new display plant in Wisconsin, there was much celebrating over the $10B investment. But it now seems that the company may be planning to scale back the plant. Hon Hai Precision Industry, better known as Foxconn Technology Group, is considering producing small to medium-size displays for Apple, carmakers and others to lower initial costs at its $10 billion factory in the U.S. state of Wisconsin, people familiar with the matter said. Foxconn’s shift to making diversifying displays for cars, personal computers, tablets, mobile devices, televisions and niche products is...

For African Americans, the Bible’s Exodus narrative is a cultural touchstone. Since before the Civil War, the story of the Israelites’ slavery and deliverance has spurred comparisons to black people’s experiences in the United States. Scripture’s importance to the black population in the U.S. is reflected in Pew Research Center survey data showing that black people are more likely than most other Americans to read scripture regularly and to view it as the word of God. Indeed, more than half of black people in the U.S. (54%) – both Christian and non-Christian – say they read the Bible or...

Religion, particularly Christianity, has played an outsize role in African American history. While most Africans brought to the New World to be slaves were not Christians when they arrived, many of them and their descendants embraced Christianity, finding comfort in the Biblical message of spiritual equality and deliverance. In post-Civil War America, a burgeoning black church played a key role strengthening African American communities and in providing key support to the civil rights movement. Here are five facts about the religious lives of African Americans. 1. Roughly eight-in-ten (79%) African Americans self-identify as Christian, as do seven-in-ten whites and...

A Marquette University professor believes that liberal notions of individual liberties and free markets are problematic because capitalism “requires inequality” while racism “enshrines the inequality that capitalism requires.” Jodi Melamed recently argued that individual liberties, including free speech and property rights, are forces “that reproduce capitalist violence.” Professor Melamed made the remarks during a lecture titled “Understanding Racial Capitalism and the Open Secret of Racial Capitalist Violence,” which she delivered at St. Olaf college on April 20. Melamed stated that the purpose of her address was to “share some new work on the open secret of racial capitalist violence.”...

“In the American South, we don’t talk about slavery. We don’t have monuments and memorials that confront the legacy of lynching. We haven’t really confronted the difficulties of segregation. And because of that, I think we are still burdened by that history.” – Bryan Stevenson, EJI executive director The National Memorial for Peace and Justice opened to the public on April 26 near downtown Montgomery, Alabama and became the first memorial dedicated to the legacy of enslaved black people, people terrorized by lynching, African Americans humiliated by racial segregation and Jim Crow, and people of color burdened with contemporary...