How many times over the years have they told players that they don’t renegotiate contracts? And how often have they told us history matters to them?

Go, Bears!

No, really.

Go.

If moving from Soldier Field to Arlington Heights will solve all the McCaskeys’ problems, fulfill all their dreams and bring them all the riches they’d ever want (until next time), they should go for it. But the team’s owners should remember that they’re the cause of many of those problems, that their only dream should be a Super Bowl and that they’re not lacking for money by anyone’s standards other than Jeff Bezos’.

There’s more than a little hypocrisy in the Bears’ bid to buy the Arlington International Racecourse property, an implied threat that their unhappiness with Soldier Field might lead to a relocation. How many times over the years have they told players that they don’t renegotiate contracts? Yet now they’re trying to get a better deal out of the City of Chicago, the stadium’s owner. If they don’t, they’re willing to break their lease, which runs through 2033, and move to the suburbs. Suddenly, it’s OK to play hardball.

And who negotiated that lease? That would be Bears president Ted Phillips, who now wants us to believe he can’t stop staring at a 326-acre tract that’s a world away from Chicago.

“It’s our obligation to explore every possible option to ensure we’re doing what’s best for our organization and its future,’’ Phillips said in a statement. “If selected, this step allows us to further evaluate the property and its potential.”

I don’t want to say it’s all a negotiating ploy, and I don’t want to say the Bears lost a lot of money last year because of the pandemic. But I guess I just did.

Something about the team moving its game-day tent to Arlington Heights feels right, though. Nothing against that suburb or any other, but the McCaskeys are the type of people who would love to be able take in a Bears game and then make a short hop to Olive Garden. You can see the allure.

This is about money, the way it always is for sports franchises. So the Bears aren’t alone in their greed. But it needs to be pointed out that the McCaskeys have attempted to build their legacy around the franchise’s grand history. Perhaps you’ve heard: George Halas founded the team in 1920, and after he died, his daughter, Virginia McCaskey, took over. The 98-year-old matriarch is still at it, and assorted McCaskeys, led by team chairman George McCaskey, are hard at work buffing Halas’ fedora.

Isn’t Soldier Field a huge part of that history? How many statues have the Bears erected outside the 97-year-old stadium to honor the most important figures in their annals? The franchise has been playing its games by the lake for 50 years. A lot of memories are crammed into the building, and the McCaskeys would be the first to tell you all about it. Or, for $219.95, they’ll sell you a framed panoramic photo of Soldier Field, available on the team’s website.

The Bears are trying to negotiate for stadium improvements. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot has pointed out, correctly, that the team’s Arlington bid is “clearly a negotiating tactic that the Bears have used before.”

(Hot merchandising idea for the team: Write a book about all the times the Bears have threatened to move out of Soldier Field. Call it “The 85 Dares’’ and slap a $29.95 sticker on it. Get richer.)

I’m not naïve enough to think that a love of history would ever win out over money for the owner of a professional sports team. But you’d think there would be a hint of shame about a threatened stadium move for a franchise that seems to be more into nostalgia than football. You’d think wrong.

Compared to other NFL stadiums, Soldier Field is lacking. The seating capacity is 61,500, the lowest in the league. The Bears believe the city has stood in the way of more sponsorship deals for the team. But, again, it’s impossible to escape the fact that the Bears signed this deal. They expressed satisfaction with it when they put ink to paper.

They haven’t been in a hurry to placate star wide receiver Allen Robinson, who would like a better deal than the franchise tag he’s under now. Robinson hasn’t threatened to hold out, choosing to remain professional. The McCaskeys, on the other hand, are stamping their feet and threatening to move because the City of Chicago won’t give them what they want. How can they look players in the eye?

If the Bears want to move to Arlington Heights, they should go. It would be one more thing not to like about an increasingly unlikable franchise.

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A look at seven key issues, from quarterback to a possible stadium relocation.

Minicamp is over, and the Bears will be off until late next month when they open training camp and begin urgent preparations for this season. Until then, here are seven big questions they face:

How did Andy Dalton look this spring?
Competent, which is a step up from what the Bears have had at quarterback lately. Dalton looks like he can be the placeholder the team needs until Justin Fields is ready to take over. He’s far from a game-changer, especially at this point in his career, but he can keep things steady. His grasp of the offense and ability to read defenses make him an upgrade over Mitch Trubisky.

What surprised me the most about Justin Fields in practice was …
How slowly the Bears are taking it with him. It’s important to develop him properly and give him time, but this is over the top. Coach Matt Nagy has been harping on the way he delivered the play call in the huddle and is going to have him send audio recordings to his position coach as he practices it over the summer. This can’t possibly be as big of a problem as Nagy is making it out to be.

Matt Nagy’s quarterback plan is …
Contradictory. So he locks in Dalton as the starter to protect Fields from having to play before he’s ready, but keeps Fields one injury away from the action as the No. 2 quarterback ahead of Nick Foles? If this was solely about preventing Fields from being rushed, he’d be the third quarterback.

The Bears’ defensive starters no-showing OTAs was ….
Probably pretty annoying to their new coordinator Sean Desai. But those are voluntary and unnecessary practices, and the players had every right to decline them. Desai will have more than enough time to put his defense in place once training camp starts.

What is the Bears’ biggest concern heading into camp?
Their pass rush. The No. 1 reason their defense has slipped from great to good is the decline of their pass rush from third in the NFL in sacks in 2018 to 24th in ’19 and 17th last season. That can’t continue with Khalil Mack, Robert Quinn and Akiem Hicks accounting for $41.3 million in cap space this season. Quinn is the chief concern. He had two sacks after signing a five-year, $70 million deal, he’s 31 and he’s already dealing with a back injury.

Will Allen Robinson get his contract extension by the July 15 deadline?
No, and that’ll be an enormous mistake by the Bears. At 27, he’s in the sweet spot of having experience but still being in peak physical shape. The next several seasons will be the best of his career. It’d be incredibly foolish to let that happen in any other uniform.

Lakefront or Arlington Heights?
It’s hard to stomach the Bears leaving the city, but they’ll never get a state-of-the-art indoor stadium if they stay. Soldier Field is woefully behind the multi-billion-dollar stadiums that have opened in the last several years, and sitting there for 17-degree games in December is only going to get less appealing as the at-home experience keeps getting better.

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The National Hockey League is currently a few games into the Stanley Cup Semi-Final but that hasn’t stopped the rumor mill to start up. The Chicago Blackhawks are in the middle of it as they are being connected to players like Dougie Hamilton and Seth Jones. There is also a report from The Athletic that […]

Chicago Blackhawks Rumors: Is Kirby Dach getting traded? – Da Windy City – Da Windy City – A Chicago Sports Site – Bears, Bulls, Cubs, White Sox, Blackhawks, Fighting Illini & More

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As the Bears take their summer break, the Sun-Times’ Patrick Finley answers their biggest questions:

As the Bears begin their summer break, the Sun-Times’ Patrick Finley answers their biggest questions:

How did Andy Dalton look this spring?

Serviceable on the field and like a leader off of it. His mentoring of Fields — Dalton and his wife even took him to dinner — is just as important as Dalton’s performance during spring practices with little defensive resistance. Fields said Dalton “has completely taken me under his wing” and that “any question I have for him, he’s going to answer.”

What surprised me the most about Justin Fields in practice was …

He’s bigger, broader and faster in person than you’d think he’d be. There were some plays Thursday when that combination made him look like a young Cam Newton. Fields’ deep ball is as advertised, too, and brings an element to the Bears playbook they haven’t had in years.

Matt Nagy’s quarterback plan is …

What a coach is supposed to say in June. If Fields is clearly better than Dalton in training camp, no one will hold Nagy to the declaration he made two months earlier — not even the coach himself.

The Bears’ defensive starters no-showing OTAs was ….

Acceptable, so long as inside linebacker Danny Trevathan and outside linebacker Robert Quinn don’t replicate their terrible starts to the 2020 season.

What is the Bears’ biggest concern heading into camp?

Getting their players vaccinated. Outside of the obvious public health benefits to both the players and their community, there’s a real competitive advantage to having a strong vaccination rate. Unvaccinated players will have travel restrictions and won’t be able to eat with their teammates indoors. They’ll be tested daily, wear masks and practice physical distancing. If they’re exposed to the virus, they’ll have to quarantine and possibly miss games. Vaccinated players, though, can mostly return to pre-coronavirus life. Football is predicated on getting 53 players to sacrifice for the good of the team; it’s surprising some players don’t view getting the vaccine as doing precisely that.

Will Allen Robinson get his contract extension by the July 15 deadline?

They’re not close to a deal now. But this is a deadline business, and things can change — and often do — as the date approaches. Both sides will have to budge after a stalemate that has lasted over a year.

Lakefront or Arlington Heights?

Lakefront. It’s the most impressive stadium location in the NFL — and one of the least impressive stadiums. If the Bears can find a way to upgrade Soldier Field and gain control over revenue streams — Better advertising opportunities inside and outside the park? A year-round gift shop? Museum? — staying at the museum campus is the better option for Chicago residents and visiting fans alike. But that’s a gigantic “if.”

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Annette Nance-Holt used her confirmation hearing to outline her plan to put her own stamp on a department she described as in “strong” shape, but in need of “some modernization.”

The first woman ever to serve as Chicago’s fire commissioner vowed Friday to diversify a Chicago Fire Department with a long and documented history of discrimination and racial hijinks, in part by holding entrance and promotional exams on a regular basis.

Annette Nance-Holt used her confirmation hearing before the City Council’s Committee on Public Safety to outline her four-point plan to put her own stamp on a department she described as in “strong” shape, but in need of “some modernization.”

Nance-Holt said her “strategic plan to accomplish this” has four primary components: diversifying the Chicago Fire Department; “re-thinking and re-emphasizing” emergency medical services; “enhancing internal and external outreach” to neighborhoods and confronting the “mental health challenges that plague first-responders” in Chicago and across the country.

As the first woman to serve as Chicago’s fire commissioner and one of only a handful of Black commissioners, Nance-Holt said her “highest priority” is “increasing diversity across all divisions and ranks.”

She plans to do that through “vigorous recruitment in communities of color,” outreach to high school students in “under-represented communities” and by scheduling Chicago’s first firefighters entrance exam since 2014 by the end of this year or the first quarter of next year.

That will be followed by periodic entrance and promotional exams to maintain a steady pipeline of minority candidates to diversify all ranks, she said.

“Trying to encourage young people to take this exam. To dream. To do something that some of ‘em are really afraid to do….We have already started working toward going into communities, talking to young people. Trying to get ‘em energized for this next exam,” Nance-Holt told aldermen.

“The only way to increase diversity starts at the beginning. If we don’t bring ‘em in the door, we can’t bring ‘em up through the ranks. The thing is to get ‘em in there right away and get as many in as we can to change this dynamic. However, it is a challenge. It depends on who all shows up to take the exam.”

Nance-Holt said the leadership team she has assembled will be “so diverse,” it’ll be “something that you have never seen.”

“You probably have heard word of it. I’m not gonna tell you what it is. But you’re gonna be truly surprised by what you’re gonna see. And that’s just the first wave of what I’m going to do. And then, we’re gonna try to do more and more things to really show that we’re serious about increasing diversity and inclusion on this job,” she said.

“It’s been over 160 years. I am the first one to look like this to sit before you to run a department that is male-dominated. And so, my commitment is definitely there.”

Ald. Jason Ervin (28^th), chairman of the City Council’s Black Caucus, said it is “truly a historic day to to see an African American female rise to the top” of the Chicago Fire Department.

“It does our community proud. It does our members proud. We stand with you in helping to diversify the department, reaching out to young men and women in our communities encouraging them to take the” exam, he said.

“If I had it to do all over again. I would have looked at a fire exam over a police exam. I had a cousin who was a member of the department and he told me it was the best job and the best decision he ever made in life.”

Ald. Sophia King (4^th), chairman of the Progressive Caucus, applauded Nance-Holt for having “overcome race and gender hurdles” to rise to the top of the CFD.

“I hope that you will use what you have learned to bring others along with you,” King said.

Nance-Holt is the mother of Blair Holt, the 16-year-old Julian High School honor student who was killed in 2007 trying to shield a friend after a gang member opened fire at a rival gang member on a crowded CTA bus after school.

She has her work cut out for her when it comes to diversifying CFD, considering the department’s history.

In 1973, a federal class-action lawsuit accused the Chicago Fire Department of discriminatory hiring and promotional practices. At the time, only 4% of Chicago’s 5,000 firefighters were Black.

The lawsuit resulted in a four-year freeze on hiring and promotions and a federal consent decree mandating minority hiring. Between 1977 and 1979, the number of Black firefighters increased from 150 to roughly 400.

Under Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Chicago resolved a bitter legal battle the mayor inherited from former Mayor Richard M. Daley, stemming from the city’s discriminatory handling of a 1995 firefighters entrance exam.

The city agreed to hire 111 bypassed African American firefighters and borrow the $78.4 million needed to compensate nearly 6,000 African Americans who never got that chance.

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It didn’t matter to my dad what kind of coat he wore. What mattered to him was what kind of coats his children wore.

“There was a robbery at the plant today, “ my father told us at dinner one very cold winter day.

He rarely talked about his job at Ford Motor Company on Pulaski Road so this was unusual.

“Someone stole everyone’s coat — except mine,” he laughed. “Everyone else had to go out in the cold without a coat except me.”

This was the 1950s and I was just a little girl, but I was old enough to feel shame. Even thieves didn’t want my father’s coat, which was a hand-me-down from my brother.

After my brother graduated from St. Bruno grammar school, he enrolled at St. Mel High School and bought a winter jacket with the school’s name on the back. It was what everyone did in 1953. But after one year, he decided to transfer to Gordon Tech to play football. There was no way he could wear the St. Mel jacket to Gordon Tech.

My mother pulled off the St. Mel name from the back, but you could still see where the letters used to be. It was such a good winter coat that my father started wearing it with St. Mel clearly visible on the back. It was a short, bomber-style jacket and seemed to be on the wrong person, but I guess it was better than the faded blue jacket with the fake fur collar I remember my father wearing year after year.

So I knew why a thief wouldn’t want the coat but I didn’t understand why it didn’t upset my father.

As an adult, I read Nikolai Gogol’s short story “The Overcoat,” about a man who is socially isolated because he is judged by his appearance and especially his threadbare coat but then he gets a beautiful new coat that changes his life and he becomes popular. I’m sure my father never read this story but he intuitively knew the significance of it.

It didn’t matter to my father what kind of coat he wore; what mattered was what kind of coat his son wore. My father didn’t care that a thief had rejected his coat because what was important was that my brother was not judged by his apparel.

Late in life, as a parent myself, I figured out that my father didn’t wear the coat with shame. He wore it with love.

My father, John Golec, was a kind and gentle man who never finished high school and was doomed to low-paying factory jobs for his entire life. But he was always happy because he spent his life doing what he wanted to do: being a husband, a father, a brother, a friend, a neighbor, a co-worker. He has passed on but those of us who knew him were blessed by his presence and I am so very proud of my dad and how he chose to live his life.

He had little formal education but he had a lot to teach me.

He showed me that I don’t need to be rich or famous or accomplish anything grand. What matters is that I live each day as best as I can, and I thank my father for teaching me this timeless lesson.

Gloria Golec is an emeritus professor of English at College of DuPage.

Send letters to [email protected].

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A new Zach LaVine Chicago Bulls bobblehead has been released by our friends at FOCO.

The post New Zach LaVine City Connect bobblehead from FOCO first appeared on CHI CITY SPORTS l Chicago Sports Blog – News – Forum – Fans – Rumors.Read More

With the milestone likely to be reached this weekend, Brazil’s Senate is publicly investigating how the toll got so high, focusing on why President Jair Bolsonaro’s far-right government ignored opportunities to buy vaccines for months while it relentlessly pushed hydroxychloroquine, the malaria drug that rigorous studies have shown to be ineffective in treating COVID-19.

BRASILIA, Brazil — As Brazil hurtles toward an official COVID-19 death toll of 500,000 — second-highest in the world — science is on trial inside the country and the truth is up for grabs.

With the milestone likely to be reached this weekend, Brazil’s Senate is publicly investigating how the toll got so high, focusing on why President Jair Bolsonaro’s far-right government ignored opportunities to buy vaccines for months while it relentlessly pushed hydroxychloroquine, the malaria drug that rigorous studies have shown to be ineffective in treating COVID-19.

The nationally televised hearings have contained enough scientific claims, counterclaims and outright falsehoods to keep fact-checkers busy.

The skepticism has extended to the death toll itself, with Bolsonaro arguing the official tally from his own Health Ministry is greatly exaggerated and some epidemiologists saying the real figure is significantly higher — perhaps hundreds of thousands higher.

Dr. Abdel Latif, who oversees an intensive care unit an hour from Sao Paulo, said the fear and desperation caused by the coronavirus have been compounded by misinformation and opinions from self-styled specialists and a lack of proper guidance from the government.

“We need real humane public health policy, far from the political fight and based on science and evidence,” he said.

Brazil’s reported death toll is second only to that of the U.S., where the number of lives lost has topped 600,000. Brazil’s population of 213 million is two-thirds that of the U.S.

Over the past week, official data showed some 2,000 COVID-19 deaths per day in Brazil, representing one-fifth the global total and a jump public health experts warn may reflect the start of the country’s third wave.

Bolsonaro has waged a 15-month campaign to downplay the virus’s seriousness and keep the economy humming. He dismissed the scourge early on as “a little flu” and has scorned masks. He was not chastened by his own bout with COVID-19. And he kept touting hydroxychloroquine long after virtually all others, including President Donald Trump, ceased doing so.

As recently as last Saturday, Bolsonaro received cheers upon telling a crowd of supporters that he took it when infected.

“The next day,” he declared, “I was cured.”

He pushed hydroxychloroquine so consistently that the first of his four health ministers during the pandemic was fired and the second resigned because they refused to endorse broad prescription of the medicine, they told the Senate investigating committee.

The World Health Organization stopped testing the drug in June 2020, saying the data showed it didn’t reduce deaths among hospitalized patients. The same month, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration revoked emergency authorization for the drug amid mounting evidence it isn’t effective and could cause serious side effects.

Nevertheless, the notion that medicines like hydroxychloroquine work against COVID-19 is one of the main things the fact-checking agency Aos Fatos has been forced to debunk continually for the past year, according to Tai Nalon, its executive director.

“This didn’t change, mostly because there is a lack of accountability of doctors and other medical authorities who propagate this sort of misinformation, and the government supports it,” Nalon said. “Basically it takes only the president to make any fact-checking efforts not useless, but less effective.″

In fact, the Senate hearings that began in April have turned into a forum for dueling testimony from doctors who are either pro- or anti-hydroxychloroquine, creating what some experts fear is a misimpression that the drug’s usefulness is still an open question in the international scientific community.

A Health Ministry official who is a pediatrician told the Senate that there is a much anecdotal evidence of its effectiveness and that the ministry provided guidelines for its use without explicitly recommending it. Fact-checkers cried foul, saying the ministry’s own records show it distributed millions of the pills nationwide for COVID-19 treatment.

A cancer specialist and immunologist who has been one of the drug’s biggest champions — and is said to be an informal adviser to the president — also testified, decrying demonization of a drug she said has saved lives. But fact-checkers proved her wrong when she claimed Mexico is still prescribing it for COVID-19.

Still, the drug is celebrated across social media, including Facebook and WhatsApp. And other misinformation is circulating as well.

Bolsonaro told a throng of supporters on June 7 that the real number of COVID-19 deaths in 2020 was only about half the official death toll, citing a report from the national accounting tribunal — which promptly denied producing any such document.

The president backtracked but has publicly repeated his claim of mass fraud in the death toll at least twice since.

Epidemiologists at the University of Sao Paulo say the true number of dead is closer to 600,000, maybe 800,000. The senators investigating the government’s handling of the crisis ultimately hope to quantify how many deaths could have been avoided.

Pedro Hallal, an epidemiologist who runs the nation’s largest COVID-19 testing program, has calculated that at least 95,000 lives would have been spared had the government not spurned vaccine purchase offers from Pfizer and a Sao Paulo institute that is bottling a Chinese-developed shot.

When the U.S. recorded a half-million COVID-19 deaths, President Joe Biden held a sunset moment of silence and a candle-lighting ceremony at the White House and ordered flags lowered for five days. Bolsonaro’s government plans no such observance.

The Health Ministry is instead trumpeting the 84 million doses administered so far. The number is mostly first shots; just 11% of Brazil’s population is fully vaccinated.

The Senate committee will name at least 10 people as formal targets of its investigation by next week, members told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. That could lead to a recommendation of charges by prosecutors. The list includes the pediatrician and cancer specialist who testified, the current health minister and his predecessor.

For his part, Bolsonaro has said the investigation amounts to persecution.

Last week, microbiologist Natalia Pasternak, who presides over the Question of Science Institute, a nonprofit that promotes the use of scientific evidence in public policies, went before the committee and decried the government’s “denialism.” She lamented that the myth of hydroxychloroquine won’t seem to die.

“In the sad case of Brazil, it’s a lie orchestrated by the federal government and the Health Ministry,” she said. “And that lie kills.”

Biller reported from Rio de Janeiro. AP videojournalist Tatiana Pollastri contributed from Valinhos, Sao Paulo.

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The poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that majorities of Americans who were regularly doing so before the pandemic say they are returning to bars or restaurants, traveling and attending events such as movies or sports.

MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Many Americans are relaxing precautions taken during the COVID-19 pandemic and resuming everyday activities, even as some worry that coronavirus-related restrictions were hastily lifted, a new poll shows.

The poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that majorities of Americans who were regularly doing so before the pandemic say they are returning to bars or restaurants, traveling and attending events such as movies or sports.

Just 21% are very or extremely worried about a COVID-19 infection in their inner circle — the lowest level since the pandemic began — and only 25% are highly concerned that the lifted restrictions will lead to additional people being infected in their community.

Andrea Moran, a 36-year-old freelance writer and mother of two boys, said she feels both relief and joy at the chance to resume “doing the little things,” such as having drinks on a restaurant patio with her husband.

“Honestly, I almost cried,” Moran said. “It’s such a feeling of having been through the wringer, and we’re finally starting to come out of it.”

Still, 34% of Americans think restrictions in their area have been lifted too quickly, while somewhat fewer — 27% — say they were not lifted quickly enough. About 4 in 10 rate the pace of reopening about right.

The way Americans approached their daily lives suddenly changed after COVID-19 spread through the U.S. in early 2020. Following the advice of health officials and governments, people isolated in their homes — either alone or with families — to avoid exposure to the virus, which has sickened more than 33 million people and killed 600,000 people in the U.S.

During the height of the pandemic, restaurants, movie theaters and stores either closed or continued operating with limited occupancy; church services, schools and government meetings went virtual; and many employers made working from home an option or a requirement. Mask wearing in public became the norm in most places, with some states and cities making it mandatory.

The emergence of the vaccine has helped slow down rates of infection and death, allowing state and local economies to reopen and leading Americans to return to activities they once enjoyed.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advised last month that vaccinated Americans don’t have to wear a mask in most scenarios, indoors or out. The latest CDC data shows 53% of all Americans — 65% of those 18 and older — have received at least one dose of the vaccine.

According to the AP-NORC poll, American adults who have not yet rolled up their sleeves for the shot remain hesitant to do so. Just 7% of those who have not been vaccinated say they definitely will get a COVID-19 vaccine, and 15% say they probably will.

Forty-six percent of Americans who have not been vaccinated say they will definitely not get a vaccine, and 29% say they probably will not. Young adults, Americans without a college degree, white evangelicals, rural Americans and Republicans are most hesitant to get vaccinated.

The poll finds many Americans are still wearing masks and taking precautions to avoid contact with other people, but the percentage of those doing so is down significantly from just a few months ago.

In late February, 65% said they were always wearing a mask around people outside their households. Now, just 37% say so, though 19% say they often wear one.

Forty percent of Americans say they are extremely or very likely to wear a mask when participating in indoor activities outside their homes, while just 28% say the same about outdoor activities.

Aaron Siever, 36, of New Market, Virginia, said he and his wife have consistently worn masks and taken other precautions, including getting vaccinated. But Siever said virus-related restrictions were not lifted quickly enough, lamenting that some precautions were politicized and caused an “inherent panic.”

“I think with masks being worn and people getting vaccinated, I think we could have opened a little earlier,” said Siever, who maintains the grounds of Civil War battlefields in Virginia. “We started focusing on the politics of reopening, rather than the health.”

Now that most states have lifted restrictions, the poll finds about two-thirds of Americans who used to travel at least monthly say they will do so in the next few weeks. About three-quarters of frequent restaurant or bar-goers before the pandemic say they will now return. A year ago, only about half said they would travel or go to restaurants if they could.

Likewise, more are returning to activities such as visiting friends and family, seeing movies or concerts, attending sporting events and shopping in-person for nonessential items.

In Cookeville, Tennessee, Moran said her family still regularly wears masks in public, especially when they are indoors or around a lot of people. Both she and her husband have been vaccinated. Moran said she has eaten at outdoor restaurants, but she is avoiding indoor dining.

“Even if the air conditioning circulation is good, I just don’t feel comfortable right now going inside, where there’s a lot of people in fairly close proximity who I don’t know,” Moran said.

Moran said her family avoided nonessential travel during the height of the pandemic, canceling a trip to see her brother in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. But last weekend, the family traveled for the first time in more than a year — a roughly 3 1/2-hour road trip to Asheville, North Carolina, to visit a childhood friend.

“I felt a little bit nervous just because being around people is such a surreal thing after so long,” Moran said. “I was really excited and I was thrilled for my kids that they were able to get out and get back to some semblance of normality.”

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Fingerhut reported from Washington.

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The AP-NORC poll of 1,125 adults was conducted June 10-14 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4.2 points.

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Colorism — or discrimination against darker-skinned people within their same ethnic group — lurks deep among pretty much all communities with varying levels of melanin. But it doesn’t get talked about, and that could be a setback for the racial justice efforts that intensified after the police killing of George Floyd last year.

Every year, Hollywood inevitably comes under criticism for its lack of racial diversity. But another lesser-known yet still pervasive problem also resurfaces: the lack of diversity in skin tone.

It happened again with “In the Heights,” a big-budget film based on the musical created by Lin-Manuel Miranda, which was called out this week for its dearth of dark-skinned, Black Latinos in leading roles.

Colorism — or discrimination against darker-skinned people within their same ethnic group — lurks deep among pretty much all communities with varying levels of melanin. But it doesn’t get talked about, and that could be a setback for the racial justice efforts that intensified after the police killing of George Floyd last year.

Avoiding the conversation will hinder the battle for racial justice because the two are “fully and inextricably linked,” said Ellis P. Monk, Jr., a sociology professor at Harvard University who has been researching colorism for years.

Monk says the issue is prevalent in all communities of color and has been taboo in part because it’s uncomfortable to talk about internal strife while also fighting against broader discrimination based on race and ethnicity.

“In a way, colorism and skin stone stratification is an even more difficult problem to fix because you could make the argument that everyone is involved in the system of colorism,” Monk said. “If we think about race and racial inequality without taking these skin tone differences seriously, then we’re actually missing how this system of racial inequality works.”

Miranda, best known as the creator of the Broadway musical “Hamilton” and a longtime champion of including Latinos in the arts, recognized his own short-sightedness in addressing colorism and issued an apology.

“I can hear the hurt and frustration, of feeling still unseen in the feedback,” Miranda wrote. “I hear that without sufficient dark-skinned Afro-Latino representation, the work feels extractive of the community we wanted so much to represent with pride and joy.”

The legendary Rita Moreno likewise turned introspective on colorism after she faced backlash in her defense of Miranda when she implied that Latinos should be grateful they’re being represented in any fashion. She has since apologized.

There is little data that tracks discrimination based on skin tone, and therefore it is hard to quantify just how pervasive colorism is. But the studies that do exist show that people with darker skin have higher incarceration rates, lower access to health care and education and live in poorer neighborhoods, several experts say.

Nayeli Chavez, a clinical psychologist and faculty at The Chicago School of Professional Psychology, has spent a decade looking into racial differences between ethnic groups.

“We have been socialized from childhood to look down on darker skin, on indigenous features,” Chavez said.

As a psychologist who has dedicated her career to helping people heal from racial trauma, Chavez sees how avoiding the topic of colorism is detrimental and says there is a false assumption in Latin America that because those places were colonized and its people are of mixed races, there is no racism.

The key to changing behavior is by teaching history accurately and admitting that those biases exist.

“Racial justice begins with our own community. It literally begins in our own families,” Chavez said. “This is an area that there’s so little about. We are barely like touching the tip of the iceberg.”

Nancy López, a professor of sociology at the University of New Mexico, said one way Latinos and other communities of color can begin to address colorism is by asking themselves a simple question: what is your “street race?”

Street race refers to the race someone assumes you are when you’re walking down the street and they know nothing else about you. Take former President Barack Obama, who is half-white. Someone who saw him in the street would likely see him as Black — his street race.

López, who also directs and co-founded the Institute for the Study of “Race” and Social Justice at UNM, said the concept of street race affects family dynamics, too. Two siblings from the same parents may have different skin tones and therefore different experiences in how they’re perceived and treated, López said.

“Reflecting on your street race is one way of practicing solidarity with those siblings, cousins, partners, relatives who may be racialized very differently than you, may be experiencing racializing in a very different way,” she said.

While some may find calling attention to colorism divisive, López says it’s the opposite. If communities don’t talk about it, they’re not in total solidarity, she said

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