Jennifer Stayton | KUT

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2020 has been a difficult and upsetting year so far. The coronavirus pandemic, police killings of Black people, reckonings with racism and a militantly divided electorate ahead of the presidential election have some people looking for bright spots. But it's possible to go too far in that optimistic search for a little good news.

Film has always served as a platform for delving into crucial but difficult topics like racism. In his new book, a Baylor University English professor explores Hollywood’s good, bad and ugly moments when it comes to race.

Capital Metro's Project Connect transit expansion plan got some initial OKs this summer. The transit agency's board approved its recommended system plan in June, and the Austin City Council passed a resolution supporting the plan. But this is just the beginning of the line.

The recent police killings of Black people, the subsequent protests and the removal of Confederate statues and other symbols have focused attention this summer on systemic racism. What has received less attention is the deep and ongoing trauma that racism has laid in.

Peniel Joseph writes that Martin Luther King Jr. is "most comfortably portrayed as the nonviolent insider," while Malcolm X "is characterized as a by-any-means-necessary political renegade."

But those familiar biographies, he says, don't capture the nuanced evolutions their activism and politics underwent during their lives.

We're embarking on a summer unlike any in decades: A pandemic. Protests and demonstrations against police brutality and systemic racism. A looming presidential election involving one of the most divisive presidents in history.  

The Texas Supreme Court has ruled that the absence of immunity to COVID-19 does not qualify a voter to use the disability category to request a mail-in ballot during the coronavirus pandemic. The court also says it will not make election officials investigate – or deny – applications to vote by mail.

Confused by the back and forth over mail-in ballots in Texas? OK, let's sort some of that out.

"I think anybody out there with a second-grader probably feels my pain, but feels her pain, too," KUT Projects Editor Matt Largey says from his home "office."

Austin Public Health officials say they’re still crunching the numbers, but their investigations so far show construction joins long-term care facilities, health care and grocery stores as the industries hit hardest locally by COVID-19. The officials say they are still working to determine exactly how many cases have originated and spread from construction sites.

But they claim that number may be hard to pin down.

At least 335 positive COVID-19 cases and 30 deaths have been reported among staff and residents of Austin-area nursing homes and long-term care facilities. But testing levels remain low, and health officials say they don't have a good estimate of how many tests would be needed for that entire population.

KUT Managing Editor Ben Philpott told the news staff on March 12 almost all of us would be working remotely the next day to practice that routine "just in case."

The next day, the first cases of COVID-19 were reported in Austin, and that trial run became the new normal.

Tracey Sengele, 44, has asthma, so she didn't think it was all that unusual when she started feeling bad and having breathing problems during the second week of March.

She didn't realize at the time that she was one of Hays County's first cases of COVID-19.

Gov. Greg Abbott announced Monday that some Texas businesses like restaurants can reopen with limited capacity Friday. Austin Public Health had been thinking about making a similar move – just not so fast.

KUT Managing Editor Ben Philpott told the news staff on March 12 almost all of us would be working remotely the next day to practice that routine "just in case."

The next day, the first positive cases of COVID-19 were reported in Austin, and that trial run became the new normal.

UT Austin's COVID-19 Modeling Consortium is analyzing data on a rolling basis to chronicle and predict the spread of the coronavirus. The news so far in the Austin-Round Rock area is pretty good. Adherence to social distancing and other guidelines has reduced transmission by over 90%.

But there is no guarantee that it will continue on this path.

On March 13, Central Texans woke up to the news of the first local confirmed cases of COVID-19. Schools closed. UT Austin shut down. That launched a stretch of tough times for the local economy as many operations either slowed or stopped completely.

No school means no programs for Creative Action, an Austin-based arts education organization. And that means no income and no need for most staff.

We’ve all heard about the orders to stay home, practice social distancing and frequently wash our hands to help slow the spread of COVID-19. We’ve also probably seen or heard about people who just won't do that.

When the stakes are so high, why don't people follow instructions to help others and themselves?

The co-founders of a nonprofit encouraging civil conversation across political divides spent several months in Smithville, Texas to put some of their online work into practice in the community. They say their thinking has shifted about how to help a polarized electorate come together.

Maria Stewart, Nannie Helen Burroughs, Belinda Sutton, Aurelia Shines. These people may not be familiar, but two historians hope they will soon become household names.

Dr. Daina Ramey Berry of UT Austin and Dr. Kali Nicole Gross of Rutgers University co-authored a book out this month called A Black Women's History of the United States. They say their goal was not to create the final word on black women's contributions to American history but to provide a starting point for further thought, research and discussion.

A study headed by a professor at UT Austin's McCombs School of Business asked 80 undergraduates to identify which social media news headlines were real and which ones were fake. The person who did the best in detecting fake news got 66% of the headlines correct. That's a D.

kYmberly Keeton harvested community interest to create Growing Your Roots: The Inaugural African American Genealogy Conference. And she has a perhaps surprising suggestion of where to start exploring family history.

When two 2019 college grads from the East Coast noticed a lack of important — and civil — conversations about critical issues, they decided to help make those conversations happen. And what better place to do that, they figured, than Texas.

John Langmore was advocating for denser urban development to counteract sprawl when a closer look at some of the impacts of that development got his attention.

As Dr. Ed Burger prepares to leave Southwestern University to become President and Chief Executive Officer of St. David’s Foundation in Austin, Texas, he and KUT's Jennifer Stayton discuss the art of letting go, as they wrap up the KUT podcast "Higher Ed."

An affordable housing advocate says the city's rewrite of the land development code would boost affordable housing, but there's room to do more.

The grassroots Austin Justice Coalition focuses primarily on criminal justice and related issues, but the impact of development and displacement on communities of color compelled the organization to get involved in the city's rewrite of its land development code.

In the very first episode of KUT's podcast "Higher Ed," Southwestern University President Dr. Ed Burger and KUT's Jennifer Stayton talked about the importance of failure to learning. Has any thinking changed about that concept in the past five years?

The Austin City Council is moving closer to a vote on a comprehensive rewrite of the city's land development code, which regulates how we use land and build things in Austin. For years, there have been arguments and misunderstandings about just what those rules would mean for the city.