The Good Place or The Bad Place?

MINNEAPOLIS — George Floyd came to this city with a broken body and wilted dreams, his many attempts at a better life out of his grasp. He was left with no college degree, no sports contract, no rap career, not even a steady job. At 43, what he had was an arrest record and a drug problem, his hopes hinging on one last shot at healing. So in February of 2017 he decided to board a bus in Houston and ride more than 1,100 miles on Interstate 35 almost straight north to Minneapolis. Waiting for him was his friend Aubrey Rhodes, who had taken the same journey a year earlier. Rhodes was now sober and working as a security guard at the Salvation Army. “Damn, bro, it’s cold,” Rhodes recalled Floyd saying on what was, for Minnesota, a balmy 50-degree winter day. “You ready for this?” Rhodes asked him. “You can get yourself together here. You can find a way to live.” Finding a way to live has never been a sure thing for Black men in America, who are taught from an early age that any misstep coul...

  ‘It’s just too much to handle’ In Texas, the burden of coronavirus on Latinos is diverse, with an impact that is almost certainly underestimated Ramona Cortes helps Gil Vasquez in his home in San Antonio on July 30. Vasquez has muscular dystrophy and receives a lot of care from his father, who was hospitalized after becoming sick with the coronavirus. (Sergio Flores for The Washington Post) By  Arelis R. Hernández SEPTEMBER 22, 2020       Oralia Soto had pain in her lungs, but being the sole caregiver for her 12-year-old diabetic great-granddaughter left no time to see a doctor. When Soto, 87, finally sought medical care, she was critically ill with the  coronavirus  and needed to be put on a ventilator. She died days later, one of 15 members of a large Latino family in Texas’s Rio Grande Valley who fell ill with or succumbed to the virus. “It is just too much to handle,” said Brenda Benitez, Soto’s niece. “I feel numb inside. I just pray.” The novel...