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Do voter ID laws hurt minority turnout? Study says: Absolutely.

 of huge study of 300,000 people that definitely answers that question. "[W]hen we dig deeper and look specifically at racial and ethnic minority turnout, we see a significant drop in minority participation when and where these laws are implemented," the Post reported.

Hispanics are affected the most: Turnout is 7.1 percent lower in general elections and 5.3 percent lower in primaries in strict voter ID states than it is in other states. Strict voter-ID laws mean lower African American, Asian American and multiracial American turnout as well. White turnout is largely unaffected.

These laws have a disproportionate effect on minorities, which is exactly what you would expect given that members of racial and ethnic minorities are less likely to have valid photo ID.

The researchers noted that civil rights groups are already worried that Jeff Sessions, the new attorney general with 

a history of prosecuting people trying to register black voters,

 might signal for how federal voting rights laws are — or are not — enforced.

Will Donald Trump's wall keep more immigrants in the U.S?

 that President Trump's proposal to build a wall on the border to keep immigrants out of the United States might actually keep them in the country:

When Frankenstein meets Black Lives Matter

After a black teenager named Akai is gunned down by the police, his mother, Dr. Jo Baker -- the last surviving descendant of Dr. Victor Frankenstein -- endeavors to bring her son back from the dead. That's the premise of the forthcoming comic series, Destroyer, by the acclaimed horror novelist Victor LaValle. LaValle sat down with Entertainment Weekly, and said the comic doesn't hide its connections to the grim, real-world stories that inspired it.

What Beyonce's Grammy snub tells us about race and merit

The Grammys, as always, served up plenty of grist for deconstruction. But 

Rembert Browne offered a particularly incisive look

 at the way Beyonce's snubs this year underlined the long pattern of the Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences whiffing on generation-defining, discomfiting music by black artists in favor of milquetoast offerings that were quickly forgotten. (Only 10 black artists have ever won the Album of the Year award, which is head-scratching considering how thoroughly American popular music has been shaped by black musicians.)

To Browne, these Grammy snubs are emblematic of the way race and ideas of merit often collide in American life.

Beyonce is not the "Magical Negro Mammy"

The purely accidental lessons of the first black 'Bachelorette'

And speaking of race, merit, and pop culture, our play-cousin Linda Holmes 

 in the 30-plus-season history of the reality dating show is a pretty good illustration of how ostensibly colorblind processes of advancing candidates can regularly end up with only white folks at the end. (In the world of the Bachelor/Bachelorette, the shows trade off, the star of each new Bachelor/ Bachelorette season is chosen from the handful of top finishers from the previous one.)

And finally, over at The Atlantic, Michael K. Williams stars in a video short in which he plays several of the characters for which he's most well-known (Omar!), and they debate whether he's been pigeonholed into portraying a certain kind of black man:

Michael K. Williams Asks: Am I Typecast? #QuestionAnswers

Arts and Culture

Gene Demby

Author

How the border wall might keep undocumented migrants in the country, a study measures the effects of voter ID laws on minority turnout, and Bey's Grammy snubs illustrates about race and merit.

This week in race: Walls, ID laws and getting typecast

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