redlining

Voices that matter 2022: The year in stories of the marginalized and underrepresented

BY: - January 3, 2023

Policy Watch’s tagline is “Stories and Voices that Matter,” emphasizing our mission to bring you stories you don’t see elsewhere and to amplify the voices of those who might otherwise go unheard. This year, we pursued that mission with a series of stories highlighting some of those voices, including...

N.C. A&T conversation series examines redlining, racial history

BY: - February 22, 2022

When Yvonne Johnson was a young girl in east Greensboro, it was in many ways a different world. She split time between her parents’ house on Beech Street, about a block from N.C. A&T, and her aunt’s place on Market Street, where there were rows of corn on one side and faculty housing on the other.

The political right and the myth of color-blind capitalism

BY: - October 26, 2021

By any fair assessment, the United States has come a long way over the last century and a half in overcoming its original sins of slavery and institutionalized racism. A century and a half ago – the span of just two lifetimes – millions of Black Americans were held in bondage by force of law and treated as chattel property because of their skin color.

Who’s kidding who? Setting the record straight on the political ancestry of modern American racism

BY: - August 31, 2021

“Why do you pick on Republicans so much? Don’t you know it was the Democrats who were the authors of Jim Crow?” That's one the gripes frequently voiced by my conservative correspondents these days when I write about race and racism – especially when it comes to barbs directed at GOP leaders over racially-charged policy decisions like making it harder to vote, punishing protesters, or denying access to healthcare.

Monday numbers: Mapping urban heat islands to blunt the health risks of climate change

BY: - June 14, 2021

How hot is it on your block? If you live in am historically Black neighborhood, it's probably hotter than in whiter, more affluent areas. As climate change leads to more extreme temperatures, communities of color are more vulnerable to the health risks of the heat.