Worried About Race

Gallup reports:

Forty-two percent of Americans say they personally worry a "great deal" about race relations in the United States, up seven percentage points from 2016 and a record high in Gallup's 17-year trend. This is the third straight year worries about this issue have increased by a significant margin.

Jonathan Zimmerman writes at The New York Daily News:

By now, you've surely heard about Iowa Congressman Steve King's racist tweet last weekend. "We can't restore our civilization with someone else's babies," King wrote, in support of a right-wing politician in the Netherlands who has proposed limiting Muslim immigration and shutting down mosques.

The Internet lit up with angry replies to King, including a few from his own party. "What exactly do you mean?" tweeted Florida GOP congressman Carlos Curbelo, who is of Cuban descent. "Do I qualify as 'somebody else's baby?’ "

But here's what almost no Republican was saying: Donald Trump has made remarks that are just as racist as Steve King's. But Trump is President, of course, so he generally gets a free pass from his cowardly compatriots in the GOP.

Start with Trump's relentless questioning of whether Barack Obama was born in the United States. Trump latched onto this racist lie in 2011 and maintained it until last September, when he invented yet another lie: the whole thing was Hillary Clinton's fault.