R Street Institute

Real Solutions

Salam on whether racist incidents are on the rise

by R.J. Lehmann
Feb 22, 2014
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issues: Economic Mobility
Over at CNN’s OutFront with Erin Burnett, R Street’s Reihan Salam joined Mark Potok, senior fellow with the Southern Poverty Law Center, to discuss a recent incident in which Oregon teens tortured a classmate and cut a swastika into his forehead with a box cutter. When combined with Georgia officials recent approval of a Confederate Flag license plate, and the vandalism of a statue of civil rights leader James Meredith at Ole Miss, the discussion focused on whether these incidents mark a rise in racial hostilities in America.

Salam exercised caution before reading too much into a handful of troubling incidents, noting that “when you look at hard statistics, like interracial marriages and friendships, when you look at the level of racial segregation, you’ve seen enormous progress over time and we should celebrate it.”

Watch the full clip below:

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