Cruise passenger numbers are down and hotel guest numbers have begun to dip. The islands are bracing for worse. By Kate Chappell, Anthony Faiola and Jasper Ward, Washington Post Ocho Rios, Jamaica — A Bob Marley tune played as the scent of jerk chicken wafted through a half-empty market in this normally bustling port town. A few dozen tourists milled about — far fewer than normal but more than last week,…
By Justin Baragona, The Daily Beast — With the stock market experiencing record-setting drops on Monday morning that prompted trading to briefly halt, pro-Trump Fox Business Network hosts Stuart Varney and Maria Bartiromo turned their eyes to… uh… Joe Biden to boost the stocks. During Monday morning’s broadcast of Fox Business Network’s Varney & Co., the eponymous host wondered aloud whether the markets—plunging due to fear and uncertainty surrounding a coronavirus outbreak—could “see a bounce” in the…
The spread of the coronavirus exposes a widening chasm in the U.S. economy between college-educated workers and less-educated workers. By Alana Semuels, Time — There are many things that worry Fina Kao…
Economic justice was always central to Martin Luther King Jr.’s agenda. But society has moved backward on that issue since his death. By Michael K. Honey, Time — When Memphis sanitation workers went on strike in 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. knew they had a lesson to teach America. “You are reminding the nation,” he told attendees at a March 1968 rally there, “that it is a crime for people to live…
It won’t be able to rely on low-wage manufacturing. By Ndubuisi Ekekwe, Harvard Business Review — China designed and executed a policy that shrank the industrialization process in a mere 25 years — something that many economies took at least a century to do. That redesign has brought immense dislocation in global commerce and industry, enabling China to become one of the world’s leading economies. China’s success has led many African capitals to pursue…
By Dr. Julianne Malveaux — If you tell me how you spend your money, I can tell you what your values are. You say you are a Christian but neither…
By Herb Boyd — When Africans were forcibly brought to America, they worked at the points of production. And whether as a multitude of enslaved workers on small farms, large plantations, in mines or elsewhere, black laborers were vital cogs in creating wealth for their owners. On a national scale, enslaved black laborers provided a workforce vital for the development of the American republic by bringing wage-free economic success and…
By Dr. Julianne Malveaux — Donald John Trump has been impeached, and to let him tell it, that isn’t bothering him, and we’d believe him if he hadn’t posted more…
Reparations are popular with black Americans but opposed by most whites and divide Democrats. By Alexi McCammond, Axios — Deval Patrick supports developing a plan for the federal government to provide reparations to living descendants of slaves, a position he’ll make clear as part of an economic platform for black Americans he’s unveiling today, an aide tells Axios. Driving the news: The former Massachusetts governor, one of only two non-white candidates…
By Shant Shahrigian — Mike Bloomberg took to the site of historic race riots in Tulsa, Okla., on Martin Luther King Jr. Day weekend to propose sweeping plans to redress the economic legacy of generations of discrimination against African Americans. In an initiative similar to calls for reparations for slavery, the Democratic presidential candidate proposed $70 billion in investment in the country’s “100 most…
By Edna Whittier, The Roanoke Times — In 1988, President Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act to compensate Japanese Americans who were in internment camps during World War II. Offering a formal apology it paid $20,000 to each surviving victim and their heirs. In 2004, the State of Virginia established the Brown v. Board of Education Scholarship fund setting aside $1 million (with another $1 million contributed by philanthropist John…
This year 2019 is significant as it marks 400 years since the first documented ship anchored the shores of America with chained slaves. Since they left through the Door of…