The Politically Incorrect Reality About How to Boost Access to American Dream

If you want to increase access to the American dream, there’s one simple trick.  But there’s a catch: It’s not a very politically correct reality.  Simply put, to optimize any kid’s chance at success, he needs to grow up with married parents.  A new book, “The Two-Parent Privilege: How Americans Stopped Getting Married and Started Falling Behind,” shows just how starkly a child’s life can be affected based on whether he grows up with married parents or a single parent.  “[M]ounds of social science evidence … shows how the odds…

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Exploring the Rich History of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month

  A month isn’t enough to cover the history and impact of the millions of people who identify as AAPI. There are 20.6 million people in the U.S. who identify as AAPI—over 6% of the total population, and their cultures, contributions, and challenges deserve to be recognized.  What is AAPI Heritage Month? Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month (or AAPI Heritage Month) celebrates people in the United States who are of Asian, Pacific Islander, and Native Hawaiian descent.  The AAPI umbrella term includes cultures from the entire Asian continent—including…

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The Kyrsten Sinema Theory of American Politics

Kyrsten Sinema knows what everybody says about her. She pretends not to read the press coverage—“I don’t really care”—but she knows. She knows what her colleagues call her behind her back (“egomaniac,” “traitor”). She knows how many articles The New York Times has published about her wardrobe (five). She feels misunderstood, and she would like to explain herself. We’re sitting across from each other in her “hideaway,” a small, windowless room in the basement of the U.S. Capitol Building. Every senator gets one of these subterranean, chamber-adjacent bunkers, and most…

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American Madness

This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic, Monday through Friday. Sign up for it here.       On the night of June 17, 1998, a Cornell campus police officer named Ellen Brewer had just begun her shift when she noticed a tall, silhouetted figure moving slowly across the engineering quad. The man appeared to be dressed all in black. Brewer felt a whisper of danger. She slowed her car, and the shrouded figure began…

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The Four Quadrants of American Politics

Control of the House of Representatives could teeter precariously for years as each party consolidates its dominance over mirror-image demographic strongholds. That’s the clearest conclusion of a new analysis of the demographic and economic characteristics of all 435 congressional districts, conducted by the Equity Research Institute at the University of Southern California in conjunction with The Atlantic. Based on census data, the analysis finds that Democrats now hold a commanding edge over the GOP in seats where the share of residents who are nonwhite, the share of white adults with…

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