| | | | |  | | By Brakkton Booker | With help from Jesse Naranjo, Ella Creamer, Rishika Dugyala and Teresa Wiltz
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A new poll found that higher-income Black Americans, like the family in the show "Grown-ish," are more insulated from feeling discriminated against. | POLITICO illustration/Tiffany Roohani/Freeform | What up, Recast fam! President Biden is in New York but has no plans on crossing paths with Big Apple Mayor Eric Adams, Hunter Biden sues the IRS over public disclosures of the first son’s tax information and the House GOP plan to avert a government shutdown this month is largely panned. First, a focus on a new report documenting the well-being of Black Americans. A newly released report from the Payne Center for Social Justice and Gallup suggests that Black Americans are thriving at equal rates as white Americans. Slight majorities of both racial groups — 52 percent — say overall they are thriving, according to Black Thriving in America 2023. The term “thriving” in this context refers to respondents' positive views of not just their present life, but optimistic views of what their lives will be like five years from now. Respondents in this category also report fewer sick days, lower levels of stress and an overall feeling of being respected in most aspects of their daily life. While no doubt the top-line number is eye-popping, researchers are quick to point out that when those figures are broken down to reflect more nuanced aspects of life, including respect at work, safety in their neighborhoods and interactions with police, disparities between the groups begin to take shape.
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“Some people are going to look at this data report and just jump up and down and say we have overcome,” Payne Center executive director and research scientist M.C. Brown II tells The Recast. “But what it says is that we have made progress, but only half of Black Americans are seeing light at the end of the tunnel.”
He points to one example — policing — where just 10 percent of white respondents report being treated unfairly by police, compared to nearly a third of Black respondents. These figures are compiled from Gallup’s Life Evaluation Index, which is self-reported by respondents on how they measure their current life and what they expect in the future. Gallup breaks down that range into three groups, “suffering” (worst life imaginable) to “thriving” (best life imaginable) with “struggling” somewhere in the middle. (Hispanics trail just behind Blacks and whites, with 48 percent reporting that they’re thriving, while researchers say there was not enough data available for an accurate snapshot of Asian Americans.) Though researchers stay politically neutral in the report, it is also worth noting that perceptions of well-being among Black Americans surged during the years Barack Obama occupied the White House, hitting the most recent highs of 58 percent in both 2010 and 2012. White perceptions of well-being most recently peaked in 2017, the first year of the Donald Trump administration, hitting a high of 57 percent.
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A large police presence is seen during a protest May 30, 2020, in Brooklyn, N.Y,, in response to the death of George Floyd. | Seth Wenig/AP Photo | Views on policing Black Americans’ interactions with law enforcement has long been a fraught issue and one that received intense scrutiny during the 2020 presidential cycle following the high-profile killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and others. The new report finds that among those who report they came into contact with police in the past year, white Americans — by nearly 20 percentage points, compared to their Black counterparts — say they were treated fairly by police. A full 90 percent of whites say they were treated fairly, compared to just 71 percent of Black Americans. While the fact that nearly two-thirds of Black respondents report fair interactions with law enforcement can be taken as a positive, Brown said, the focus should be on the nearly one-third of Black Americans who didn’t perceive positive interactions with police. “That's a significant difference,” Brown tells The Recast, reiterating that the figure is far too high. Money helps shield from discrimination The report finds that for Black Americans, earning a higher income can both fuel perceptions of thriving and shield them from feeling discriminated against. Among Black earners who report having a household income of $120,000, a full 70 percent say they’re thriving, compared to just 57 percent of those who earn between $48,000 and $119,999. The median household income in this country, according to the U.S. census, is roughly $75,000. “We constantly say that money can’t buy you love or happiness. But the data, you know, says a little bit otherwise” says Andre Perry, a senior fellow on the Race, Prosperity, and Inclusion Initiative at the Brookings Institution, who did not work on the report but took part in a panel to discuss its findings. He points out that discrimination is often concentrated in lower-income neighborhoods, which may also have more policing, higher rates of crime and poorer housing conditions.
|  | | “How I interpreted it is, if you have the discretionary income to combat racism, you will feel better off when you have a sense of control and autonomy.” Researchers on the project promise to track these findings annually for the next century to give a more detailed and nuanced understanding of how Black Americans are faring in the U.S. Brown, the lead researcher on the project, jokes he won’t be around to oversee it for the entire time, but hopes it will become “almost like the Dow Jones or NASDAQ every year where [it tracks how] Black Americans are progressing or regressing as it pertains to social justice and race.” We’ll keep tabs on that, too. All the best,
The Recast Team | | | POLL SHOWS BIDEN TRAILING THREE GOP HOPEFULS | | 
A new poll finds the president trailing three GOP candidates in hypothetical matchups. | Andrew Harnik/AP Photo | President Joe Biden isn’t just trailing GOP frontrunner Donald Trump, but also two other Republican hopefuls in hypothetical matchups, according to a survey released by the Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll. Ex-U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, like Trump, both top the current commander in chief, according to the survey. When asked about a one-on-one matchup, Trump edged Biden by 4 points, 44 percent to 40 percent. That figure was largely unchanged from the survey’s findings in July, which showed Trump with a 5-point advantage over Biden. Haley edged Biden by the same margin, 4 points (41 percent to 37 percent), though the percentage of respondents who were unsure who they would support was 6 points higher in the Haley-Biden match up compared to the Trump-Biden hypothetical. Scott topped Biden by just 2 points (39 percent to 37 percent), but a full quarter of respondents also noted they were unsure which candidate they’d support in the scenario. The survey found that Biden’s job approval overall largely mirrors the national average, hovering around 42 percent. The survey found Biden tops three other notable GOP contenders, though all by single digits — perhaps an indication of the tough headwinds Biden faces since none of them appear to be in position to topple Trump for the GOP nomination. Biden leads former biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy by 2 points (39 percent to 37 percent), Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis by 4 points (42 percent to 38 percent) and former Vice President Mike Pence by 6 (42 percent to 36 percent).
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Education Secretary Miguel Cardona listens as President Joe Biden speaks in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, Friday, June 30, 2023, in Washington, D.C. | Evan Vucci/AP Photo | | about the “make-or-break moment” for public education, an issue which has been thrust into the 2024 campaign cycle — and Democrats feel they’re losing ground to Republicans in the school culture wars. POLITICO’s Juan Perez examines the bind that’s tying Biden’s education chief in knots. Relationship in Tatters? — Biden is in New York this week for the convening of the U.N. General Assembly. One leader he won’t have a face-to-face with is New York Mayor Eric Adams. POLITICO’s Emily Ngo breaks down why. Cisneros Wants Back in Congress — Former Rep. Gil Cisneros rode the Democratic wave in 2018 to flip an Orange County, Calif., seat, only to lose reelection two years later. Now he’s giving Congress another go. POLITICO’s Melanie Mason reports why he’s become a punching bag for Republicans since leaving office. Has Hip-Hop Lost Its Soul? — In this essay for POLITICO Magazine, writer Kevin Powell argues that hip-hop was once rooted in politics, social justice and a diversity of voices. But now, he says, at 50, it’s devolving into a minstrel show.
| | | THE RECAST RECOMMENDS Comedian Aparna Nancherla’s “Unreliable Narrator” is a collection of memoiristic essays exploring imposter syndrome, mental health and body image. In Michael Jai White’s Western action-comedy “Outlaw Johnny Black,” a cowboy becomes a wanted man while seeking to avenge the death of his father.
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| “Becoming Frida Kahlo”, a three-part series premiering tonight on PBS at 9, explores the major events of the iconic artist’s life and career. For his 50th birthday, Nas gave us a surprise present: the final LP in his “Magic” trilogy. BTS’ V is feeling melancholy in a black-and-white music video for “Blue.”
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| TikTok of the Day: Winning at life
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