TO COMMENT CLICK HERE
Discussions on civil rights and race
april 2024
"White people in North America live in a social environment that protects and insulates them from race-based stress. This insulated environment of racial protection builds white expectations for racial comfort while at the same time lowering the ability to tolerate racial stress, leading to what I refer to as White Fragility. White Fragility is a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves. These moves include the outward display of emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and behaviors such as argumentation, silence, and leaving the stress-inducing situation. These behaviors, in turn, function to reinstate white racial equilibrium."
Robin DiAngelo, Ph.D
What people don't like is black people protesting against racism
at some point people should be honest and admit what they don't like is black people protesting against oppression and racism, and quit pretending that what they are sincerely against are the tactics used. Kaepernick used the quietest protest ever and people are flipping out, and BLM uses loud protests and people flip out. It's not the tactics that people are against, it's the goddamn message.
People should quit lying to themselves and to others.
Ken Burns: "We were founded on the idea that all men were created equal, but oops—the guy who wrote that owned more than 100 human beings and didn’t see in his lifetime to free any one of them; didn’t see the contradiction or the hypocrisy. And so it set us on a journey where we are constantly having to struggle not with race, but racism."
race did come from science and theology; it came to science and theology. racial ideas were born in the colonial world, in the brutal and deadly processes of empire building....
by craig steven wilder
ebony and ivy
RACE, CULTURAL CONSTRUCT BASED ON THE POPULAR, BUT MISTAKEN NOTION THAT HUMANS CAN BE DIVIDED INTO BIOLOGICALLY DISTINCT CATEGORIES BY MEANS OF PARTICULAR PHYSICAL FEATURES SUCH AS SKIN COLOR, HEAD SHAPE, AND OTHER VISIBLE TRAITS THAT ARE TRANSMISSIBLE BY DESCENT...GENERIC STUDIES UNDERTAKEN IN THE LAST DECADES OF THE 20TH CENTURY CONFIRM THAT "RACES" DO NOT EXIST IN ANY BIOLOGICAL SENSE.
ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA, 2002
...There are a number of racist types floating around, like the I’m Not a Racist racists. Think of the guy who says “I’m not racist” every time he justifies mass incarceration and police murders. He doesn’t identify as a racist because he talks to black people in public places, loves professional sports like the NBA and NFL, which are dominated by black athletes, and is totally okay with black people until they bring up race or question his privilege. And then we have the I Don’t Know That I’m a Racist racists. This is the guy who doesn’t think he’s a racist because he masturbates to Beyoncé — but jumps across the street so he won’t have to walk past a group of black people. He looks at the black guy in his office with a raised eyebrow every time he misplaces his own wallet. Both of these guys are different from but just as dangerous as the Proud Racist racist (think: the Confederate flag made into a t-shirt guy shaking his ass a Donald Trump rally).
I see these guys all the time. They start race conversations and then ask questions that they don’t really want the answers to, or they already have the answers and want to waste your time. No statistic or study or hard evidence can shift their stance; they are knee-deep in tradition and strangled by their own perspective. I’m not against anyone who wants to spend their time enlightening people who aren’t intellectually curious, but just consider that it’s hard making racists acknowledge their own racism in a system where racism is okay.
D. WATKINS - salon
W.E.B. Du Bois - "Black Reconstruction in America":
It must be remembered that the white group of laborers, while they received a low wage, were compensated in part by a sort of public and psychological wage. They were given public deference and titles of courtesy because they were white. They were admitted freely with all classes of white people to public functions, public parks, and the best schools. The police were drawn from their ranks, and the courts, dependent on their votes, treated them with such leniency as to encourage lawlessness. Their vote selected public officials, and while this had small effect upon the economic situation, it had great effect upon their personal treatment and the deference shown them. White schoolhouses were the best in the community, and conspicuously placed, and they cost anywhere from twice to ten times as much per capita as the colored schools. The newspapers specialized on news that flattered the poor whites and almost utterly ignored the Negro except in crime and ridicule.
------
HISTORIAN TIMOTHY SNYDER WARNED IN A RECENT ESSAY IN THE NEW YORK TIMES:
DEMOCRACY REQUIRES INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY, WHICH IS IMPOSSIBLE WITHOUT CRITICAL HISTORY. IT THRIVES IN A SPIRIT OF SELF-AWARENESS AND SELF-CORRECTION. AUTHORITARIANISM, ON THE OTHER HAND, IS INFANTILIZING: WE SHOULD NOT HAVE TO FEEL ANY NEGATIVE EMOTIONS; DIFFICULT SUBJECTS SHOULD BE KEPT FROM US. OUR MEMORY LAWS AMOUNT TO THERAPY, A TALKING CURE. IN THE LAWS' PORTRAYAL OF THE WORLD, THE WORDS OF WHITE PEOPLE HAVE THE MAGIC POWER TO DISSOLVE THE HISTORICAL CONSEQUENCES OF SLAVERY, LYNCHINGS AND VOTER SUPPRESSION. RACISM IS OVER WHEN WHITE PEOPLE SAY SO.
WE START BY SAYING WE ARE NOT RACISTS. YES, THAT FELT NICE. AND NOW WE SHOULD MAKE SURE THAT NO ONE SAYS ANYTHING THAT MIGHT UPSET US. THE FIGHT AGAINST RACISM BECOMES THE SEARCH FOR A LANGUAGE THAT MAKES WHITE PEOPLE FEEL GOOD. THE LAWS THEMSELVES MODEL THE DESIRED RHETORIC. WE ARE JUST TRYING TO BE FAIR. WE BEHAVE NEUTRALLY. WE ARE INNOCENT.
articles of interest
*SLAVERY ISN’T JUST BLACK HISTORY — IT’S US HISTORY
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*RACIAL INEQUITY LEADS TO LOST BUSINESS AND INVESTMENT
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*White women benefit most from affirmative action — and are among its fiercest opponents(ARTICLE BELOW)
*ACTUALLY, IT’S NOT “OK TO BE WHITE”
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*White men refusing to share power is a silver stake piercing the heart of American democracy(ARTICLE BELOW)
*THE RACIST HISTORY OF ABORTION AND MIDWIFERY BANS
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Qualified immunity is rooted in white supremacy and gives cops a free pass to lynch Black people(ARTICLE BELOW)
*‘Conscious and Deliberate’: Black Workers Say Mississippi Farm Imported White South Africans to Replace Them at Higher Wages for the Same Work
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*54 PERCENT OF BLACK AMERICANS SAY THEY HAVE EXPERIENCED UNFAIR TREATMENT: GALLUP
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Texas Physician Makes History as 9th Black Female Pediatric Surgeon In the U.S., Recalls Being Asked If She Was There to Change the Sheets During Residency
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*While Democrats Work on Infrastructure, Republicans Are Busy Defending Slavery
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*FACEBOOK TOLD BLACK APPLICANT WITH PH.D. SHE NEEDED TO SHOW SHE WAS A “CULTURE FIT”
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*BLACK HISTORY MONTH MEANS GRAPPLING WITH THE FULL LEGACY OF RACISM IN THE US
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Trump's regime defends racism
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*MCDONALD'S DISCRIMINATES AGAINST BLACK FRANCHISEES, LAWSUIT CLAIMS
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Study Finds Black Newborns Have Higher Mortality Rates Under Care of White Doctors Than with Black Physicians(ARTICLE BELOW)
*African Americans have long defied white supremacy and celebrated Black culture in public spaces(ARTICLE BELOW)
*RITE AID DEPLOYED FACIAL RECOGNITION SYSTEMS IN HUNDREDS OF U.S. STORES
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*A Letter to My Nephew by james baldwin
(excerpt below)
*ASIAN AND BLACK AMERICANS REPORT HEIGHTENED DISCRIMINATION AMID CORONAVIRUS OUTBREAK, POLL FINDS(ARTICLE BELOW)
*THE FBI HAS A HISTORY OF TARGETING BLACK ACTIVISTS. THAT'S STILL TRUE TODAY
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Redlining Is Still Creating Racial Disparities 50 Years After It Was Banned
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*A Giant Plastics Company Tried to Halt a Juneteenth Ceremony for Buried Slaves
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*US University Leading COVID Response Leaves Black Workers Behind
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*He Didn’t File Charges in the Arbery Case. But He Spent Years Accusing a Black Grandma of Voter Fraud.(ARTICLE BELOW)
*The US’s Failed Response to the Pandemic Is Rooted in Anti-Blackness
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*BEING A PERSON OF COLOR ISN’T A RISK FACTOR FOR CORONAVIRUS. LIVING IN A RACIST COUNTRY IS(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Environmental Racism Is Killing Black Communities In Louisiana
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Skin Color Discrimination: The Latino Case
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Landmark US case to expose rampant racial bias behind the death penalty
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*'Dying of whiteness': why racism is at the heart of America's gun inaction
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*The US Gave Slavers Their Land Back. What About Black Folks’ Reparations?
(EXCERPT BELOW)
*THE RADICALIZATION OF WHITE AMERICA: HOW DONALD TRUMP WEAPONIZED WHITENESS
(EXCERPT BELOW)
*Living while Black
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Coard: Non-voting Blacks get no thanks, deserve no benefits
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*#NotRacists Be Like: The Top 10 Phrases Used by People Who Claim They Are Not Racist
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Coard: Non-voting Blacks commit suicidal lynchings
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*White People Explain Why They Feel Oppressed
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*These 2 psychologists are dismantling the myth of white intellectual superiority
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Five Big Myths Debunked by the New York Times Report On Race, Economic, and Gender Inequality
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*What’s wrong with white teachers?
Closing the performance gap between black and white teachers means talking about racism(article below)
*THE BLACK AMERICAN EXPERIENCE(ARTICLE BELOW)
*cartoons(below)
Slavery Isn’t Just Black History — It’s US History
Over 100 political leaders descend from enslavers. It’s time for the U.S. to confront this history and its impacts.
By Kwolanne Felix , TRUTHOUT
Published July 17, 2023
A recent Reuters investigation reveals that more than 100 U.S. political leaders descend from slaveholders. This includes five living U.S. presidents, two Supreme Court justices, 11 governors and 100 legislators across party lines. Amid rising debates on slavery and its legacy, from school curricula to the movement for reparations, Reuters examined how politicians are reckoning with these discussions as they reflect on their own familial ties to slavery, but many refused to comment on the findings. This examination refutes the notion that slavery is a relic of the distant past that has no bearing on our current society. It serves as a firm reminder of the legacies of slavery in the U.S. and how it shapes our political landscape.
Slavery was an economic and social system that allowed families to reproduce wealth, status and power. It was simultaneously a systemic issue and an individual choice: Slavery underpinned the economies of Europe, West Africa, and North and South America; and it was upheld by individual choices to buy and sell enslaved people.
As the descendants of enslavers, these 100+ political elite are direct recipients of the wealth and resources created by slavery. Slavery would shape all parts of the U.S. economy, from agriculture, textiles, banks, insurance and transportation. The 4 million enslaved people alive in the 1860s generated an estimated $3.5 billion, making them the single largest “financial asset” in the U.S. economy at the time. It is no understatement that the U.S. is built on the wealth of slavery.
For many African Americans, the link between slavery and their history is obvious and irrefutable. Those who descend from Africans brought to the U.S. through the transatlantic slave trade have no choice but to be aware of this truth. Even though I am not African American, I am the descendant of enslaved people relocated to the Caribbean, and there is no way for me to address my history without discussing slavery. It transformed the lives, cultures, languages and identities of my ancestors.
Even though initial feelings of guilt and shame can arise when reflecting on slavery and its legacies, addressing this history can serve as an important step in seeking racial justice. I decided to study the history of the African Diaspora for this reason during college. Learning about slavery and its impacts gives me a better understanding of the American socio-political landscape. I learned that there is no running from our history; it has already found a way to catch up with us in the present. It’s understandable that conversations around slavery are uncomfortable — it was a horrible system of mass human trafficking that displaced millions of people and reduced them to property. Even during slavery, Americans struggled with addressing the brutality of the system, so much so that it led to Civil War. It’s no surprise that today it’s still a sore topic. But that discomfort shouldn’t produce apathy, but instead could be a platform to further reflection.
Unfortunately, right-wing movements to actively erase this vital history are growing across the country. The rhetoric that discussing slavery makes white students feel bad is used to justify this erasure. In Florida, for instance, Gov. Ron Desantis has pushed laws that ban discussing the truth about U.S. slavery in schools, and has gutted AP African American history courses of their content on slavery and civil rights movements. As a Floridian, I’m frustrated knowing that the projects I put on for Black History Month just five years ago, that ignited my love for history, are now illegal in my school. The history of slavery isn’t just African American history – it is U.S. history, and all students need to learn it.
When discussing the legacies of slavery, the goal isn’t necessarily to assign blame. There are no historical slaveholders that are alive now, and their descendants aren’t responsible for this horrific system. However, that doesn’t negate the need to reflect on how this past system continues to shape the country to the detriment of some and the benefit of others. Slavery reinforced systems of racial hierarchy that still exist in the U.S. today. Black Americans, even those not descendants of American enslaved people, still pay the price of this inequality. White Americans also don’t need to directly descend from slaveholders to benefit from the legacy of this inequality either.
Slavery is an uncomfortable topic for most Americans. For some Americans, it evokes ancestral pain and dehumanization, but also resilience and survival. For others, it brings up feelings of shame and confusing questions of responsibility.
Movements demanding reparations are striking a chord with many Americans, leading to contentious discussions. On the local, state and federal levels, there have been efforts to research and propose reparation efforts to address racial injustice, particularly for African Americans. These demands have been met with mixed responses, as some efforts are successful and others are unsuccessful. Uncertainty looms on how to properly address slavery and the legacy of racial injustice — and move forward.
U.S. history is incomplete without reflecting on slavery and its effects, and when we address this history properly, we gain a better understanding of the country’s present and future. When we understand slavery, we can understand present economic conditions across different communities, geographic distributions, the rise of major cities, labor patterns across the country, and the emergence of diverse American cultures, cuisines and traditions.
We have so much more to gain from learning our history when we let go of our fears.
Slavery was an economic and social system that allowed families to reproduce wealth, status and power. It was simultaneously a systemic issue and an individual choice: Slavery underpinned the economies of Europe, West Africa, and North and South America; and it was upheld by individual choices to buy and sell enslaved people.
As the descendants of enslavers, these 100+ political elite are direct recipients of the wealth and resources created by slavery. Slavery would shape all parts of the U.S. economy, from agriculture, textiles, banks, insurance and transportation. The 4 million enslaved people alive in the 1860s generated an estimated $3.5 billion, making them the single largest “financial asset” in the U.S. economy at the time. It is no understatement that the U.S. is built on the wealth of slavery.
For many African Americans, the link between slavery and their history is obvious and irrefutable. Those who descend from Africans brought to the U.S. through the transatlantic slave trade have no choice but to be aware of this truth. Even though I am not African American, I am the descendant of enslaved people relocated to the Caribbean, and there is no way for me to address my history without discussing slavery. It transformed the lives, cultures, languages and identities of my ancestors.
Even though initial feelings of guilt and shame can arise when reflecting on slavery and its legacies, addressing this history can serve as an important step in seeking racial justice. I decided to study the history of the African Diaspora for this reason during college. Learning about slavery and its impacts gives me a better understanding of the American socio-political landscape. I learned that there is no running from our history; it has already found a way to catch up with us in the present. It’s understandable that conversations around slavery are uncomfortable — it was a horrible system of mass human trafficking that displaced millions of people and reduced them to property. Even during slavery, Americans struggled with addressing the brutality of the system, so much so that it led to Civil War. It’s no surprise that today it’s still a sore topic. But that discomfort shouldn’t produce apathy, but instead could be a platform to further reflection.
Unfortunately, right-wing movements to actively erase this vital history are growing across the country. The rhetoric that discussing slavery makes white students feel bad is used to justify this erasure. In Florida, for instance, Gov. Ron Desantis has pushed laws that ban discussing the truth about U.S. slavery in schools, and has gutted AP African American history courses of their content on slavery and civil rights movements. As a Floridian, I’m frustrated knowing that the projects I put on for Black History Month just five years ago, that ignited my love for history, are now illegal in my school. The history of slavery isn’t just African American history – it is U.S. history, and all students need to learn it.
When discussing the legacies of slavery, the goal isn’t necessarily to assign blame. There are no historical slaveholders that are alive now, and their descendants aren’t responsible for this horrific system. However, that doesn’t negate the need to reflect on how this past system continues to shape the country to the detriment of some and the benefit of others. Slavery reinforced systems of racial hierarchy that still exist in the U.S. today. Black Americans, even those not descendants of American enslaved people, still pay the price of this inequality. White Americans also don’t need to directly descend from slaveholders to benefit from the legacy of this inequality either.
Slavery is an uncomfortable topic for most Americans. For some Americans, it evokes ancestral pain and dehumanization, but also resilience and survival. For others, it brings up feelings of shame and confusing questions of responsibility.
Movements demanding reparations are striking a chord with many Americans, leading to contentious discussions. On the local, state and federal levels, there have been efforts to research and propose reparation efforts to address racial injustice, particularly for African Americans. These demands have been met with mixed responses, as some efforts are successful and others are unsuccessful. Uncertainty looms on how to properly address slavery and the legacy of racial injustice — and move forward.
U.S. history is incomplete without reflecting on slavery and its effects, and when we address this history properly, we gain a better understanding of the country’s present and future. When we understand slavery, we can understand present economic conditions across different communities, geographic distributions, the rise of major cities, labor patterns across the country, and the emergence of diverse American cultures, cuisines and traditions.
We have so much more to gain from learning our history when we let go of our fears.
cost of racism!!
Racial Inequity Leads To Lost Business and Investment
barron's
7/4/2023
Racial inequity is a significant drag on the U.S. economy, although one that isn’t mentioned in routine assessments of GDP and quarterly earnings.
The good news is that correcting these inequities at U.S. corporations and financial institutions could boost consumption and investment in the U.S. alone “by hundreds of billions of dollars by 2050,” according to a research brief published late last month from the Investment Integration Project, or TIIP.
“The U.S. cannot reach its full economic and growth potential, and effectively compete in the global economy, if it continues to exclude people of color from fully participating in its economy,” the report said.
There’s the simple fact that people of color—including Black, indigenous, Pacific Islanders, Latino, East and South Asian, and Arab and Middle Eastern people—will comprise 52% of the nation’s population by 2050.
Not giving people in more than half of the country the same access to income and wealth leads to social destabilization, which, in turn, “increases market volatility and uncertainty and creates a general sense of economic instability, impacting investment opportunities across all asset classes,” the report said.
Making sure racial equity exists at U.S. corporations and financial institutions can ensure the U.S. doesn’t continue on this path, says William Burckart, CEO of TIIP, a Massachusetts-based investment consulting and applied research firm focused on how investing strategies can drive systemic change.
It starts with “making sure that your workforce, including your leadership,
reflects the diversity of the country, the demographics of the country,
which currently right now, it does not,” Burckart says.
The report, “Introduction to Racial Inequity as a Systemic Risk,” was put together by a working group of impact-investment professionals and received funding from the New York-based Surdna Foundation. It describes “how investors can leverage conventional investment techniques and more advanced approaches to manage the risks of racial inequity and embed racial equity across portfolios,” Burckart says.
Investing to Correct Inequity
Currently, 22.2% of board seats at Fortune 500 companies are held by Blacks, Asians, Pacific Islanders, and people from Hispanic or Latino backgrounds, according to a recent report from Deloitte. White men, meanwhile, manage nearly 98% of financial assets in the U.S., according to the TIIP report.
“You can say a lot of things about wanting to invest with [diversity, equity, and inclusion] considerations, but when the actual folks that are making the decisions do not represent the diversity of communities that comprise the U.S. economy, that’s a problem,” Burckart says.
“It’s not just a problem from a moral perspective,” he says. “It’s a disconnect that’s resulting in investors missing potential upside, but then also creating a kind of tail of inequity that is ultimately going to create more unstable returns in the future.”
One action asset owners—such as foundations, family offices, and pension funds—can take is to remove barriers such as requiring investment managers to have long track records or large amounts of assets under management that prohibit them from investing in emerging firms led by more racially diverse teams.
That often begins by hiring more diverse leadership teams who can relate to and spot value in emerging managers that don’t have conventional histories, Burckart says.
Security selection and portfolio construction are other levers investors can use. For instance, “make sure the companies that you’re investing in have leadership that is diverse and/or that you can see the pathway for getting them to be more diverse,” he says.
Investors also have to make sure portfolio managers who say they view racial inequity as a risk, are actually doing something about it.
Strengthening racial equity considerations should also be incorporated within a financial institution’s or asset owner’s statement of investment beliefs. A statement can allow trustees, particularly of bigger financial institutions, to reflect on how they allocate capital in markets and address their fiduciary duty. “Enshrining this in governing policies is important,” Burckart says.
System-Level Change
Investors can also go beyond corporate governance and portfolio decision making to work with peers, set new industry standards, and exercise political influence to create what TIIP has defined as system-level change, according to the report.
The idea is investors can operate more intentionally, and collectively, to “enhance the way they invest but also the way others invest,” Burckart says. “They ultimately have to create new kinds of investment opportunities that fundamentally address racial inequity as part of their thesis and take the jargon away from it.”
The St. Paul & Minnesota Foundation, for instance, devised due diligence criteria for managers that included racial justice considerations. It took its recommendations to the United Nations’ Principles for Responsible Investment investor network to broaden the reach of these standards.
After the Rio de Janeiro-based Vale’s mining disaster at the Brumadinho dam in 2019 that killed 270 people in Brazil, a group of investors got together to demand improved mining safety standards not just for Vale, but for the entire industry, Burckart says.
Investors could similarly collaborate to create standards and a database cataloging the racial composition of both public and private companies, he says.
System-level change also can come from impact investing firms that take a broader look at their mandates. The objective of a sustainable water fund, for instance, shouldn’t just be profiting off of the privatization of water around the world, but addressing issues of water scarcity and water quality.
“They ultimately need to start to pursue investments that promote business models that help to resolve racial inequity, not just profit from it,” Burckart says.
The good news is that correcting these inequities at U.S. corporations and financial institutions could boost consumption and investment in the U.S. alone “by hundreds of billions of dollars by 2050,” according to a research brief published late last month from the Investment Integration Project, or TIIP.
“The U.S. cannot reach its full economic and growth potential, and effectively compete in the global economy, if it continues to exclude people of color from fully participating in its economy,” the report said.
There’s the simple fact that people of color—including Black, indigenous, Pacific Islanders, Latino, East and South Asian, and Arab and Middle Eastern people—will comprise 52% of the nation’s population by 2050.
Not giving people in more than half of the country the same access to income and wealth leads to social destabilization, which, in turn, “increases market volatility and uncertainty and creates a general sense of economic instability, impacting investment opportunities across all asset classes,” the report said.
Making sure racial equity exists at U.S. corporations and financial institutions can ensure the U.S. doesn’t continue on this path, says William Burckart, CEO of TIIP, a Massachusetts-based investment consulting and applied research firm focused on how investing strategies can drive systemic change.
It starts with “making sure that your workforce, including your leadership,
reflects the diversity of the country, the demographics of the country,
which currently right now, it does not,” Burckart says.
The report, “Introduction to Racial Inequity as a Systemic Risk,” was put together by a working group of impact-investment professionals and received funding from the New York-based Surdna Foundation. It describes “how investors can leverage conventional investment techniques and more advanced approaches to manage the risks of racial inequity and embed racial equity across portfolios,” Burckart says.
Investing to Correct Inequity
Currently, 22.2% of board seats at Fortune 500 companies are held by Blacks, Asians, Pacific Islanders, and people from Hispanic or Latino backgrounds, according to a recent report from Deloitte. White men, meanwhile, manage nearly 98% of financial assets in the U.S., according to the TIIP report.
“You can say a lot of things about wanting to invest with [diversity, equity, and inclusion] considerations, but when the actual folks that are making the decisions do not represent the diversity of communities that comprise the U.S. economy, that’s a problem,” Burckart says.
“It’s not just a problem from a moral perspective,” he says. “It’s a disconnect that’s resulting in investors missing potential upside, but then also creating a kind of tail of inequity that is ultimately going to create more unstable returns in the future.”
One action asset owners—such as foundations, family offices, and pension funds—can take is to remove barriers such as requiring investment managers to have long track records or large amounts of assets under management that prohibit them from investing in emerging firms led by more racially diverse teams.
That often begins by hiring more diverse leadership teams who can relate to and spot value in emerging managers that don’t have conventional histories, Burckart says.
Security selection and portfolio construction are other levers investors can use. For instance, “make sure the companies that you’re investing in have leadership that is diverse and/or that you can see the pathway for getting them to be more diverse,” he says.
Investors also have to make sure portfolio managers who say they view racial inequity as a risk, are actually doing something about it.
Strengthening racial equity considerations should also be incorporated within a financial institution’s or asset owner’s statement of investment beliefs. A statement can allow trustees, particularly of bigger financial institutions, to reflect on how they allocate capital in markets and address their fiduciary duty. “Enshrining this in governing policies is important,” Burckart says.
System-Level Change
Investors can also go beyond corporate governance and portfolio decision making to work with peers, set new industry standards, and exercise political influence to create what TIIP has defined as system-level change, according to the report.
The idea is investors can operate more intentionally, and collectively, to “enhance the way they invest but also the way others invest,” Burckart says. “They ultimately have to create new kinds of investment opportunities that fundamentally address racial inequity as part of their thesis and take the jargon away from it.”
The St. Paul & Minnesota Foundation, for instance, devised due diligence criteria for managers that included racial justice considerations. It took its recommendations to the United Nations’ Principles for Responsible Investment investor network to broaden the reach of these standards.
After the Rio de Janeiro-based Vale’s mining disaster at the Brumadinho dam in 2019 that killed 270 people in Brazil, a group of investors got together to demand improved mining safety standards not just for Vale, but for the entire industry, Burckart says.
Investors could similarly collaborate to create standards and a database cataloging the racial composition of both public and private companies, he says.
System-level change also can come from impact investing firms that take a broader look at their mandates. The objective of a sustainable water fund, for instance, shouldn’t just be profiting off of the privatization of water around the world, but addressing issues of water scarcity and water quality.
“They ultimately need to start to pursue investments that promote business models that help to resolve racial inequity, not just profit from it,” Burckart says.
excerpt: White women benefit most from affirmative action — and are among its fiercest opponents
The willingness to erase white women from the story of affirmative action is part of the problem.
By Victoria M. Massie - vox
6/29/2023
University of Texas Case:
The University of Texas Austin was Abigail Fisher's dream school. Fisher, from Sugar Land, Texas, a wealthy Houston suburb, earned a 3.59 GPA in high school and scored an 1180 on the SATs.
Not bad, but not enough for the highly selective UT Austin in fall 2008; Fisher's dreams were dashed when she was denied admission.
In response, Fisher sued. Her argument? That applicants of color, whose racial backgrounds were included as a component of the university's holistic review process, were less-qualified students and had displaced her.
Students graduating in the top 10 percent of any Texas high school are granted an automatic spot at UT Austin. Other students are evaluated through a holistic review process including a race-blind review of essays and creating a personal achievement score based on leadership potential, honors and awards, work experience, and special circumstances that include socioeconomic considerations such as race.
A few are accepted through provisional slots that include attending a summer program prior to the fall. One black student, four Latino students, and 42 white students with lower scores than Fisher were accepted under these terms. Also rejected were 168 African-American and Latino students with better scores than Fisher.
According to court documents, even if Fisher had received a perfect personal achievement score that included race (which, in itself, oversimplifies the admissions process), she still would not have necessarily qualified under UT's admission rubric.
In fact, when she applied for the class of 2012, the admission rate for non-automatic admits was more competitive than that of Harvard University.
Nonetheless, Fisher spent the past seven years in court, and Thursday the US Supreme Court ruled 4-3 that UT's admissions policy procedures are constitutional.
But the battle to erase race from the application review process for admission comes with an interesting paradox: "The primary beneficiaries of affirmative action have been Euro-American women," wrote Columbia University law professor Kimberlé Crenshaw for the University of Michigan Law Review in 2006.
A 1995 report by the California Senate Government Organization Committee found that white women held a majority of managerial jobs (57,250) compared with African Americans (10,500), Latinos (19,000), and Asian Americans (24,600) after the first two decades of affirmative action in the private sector. In 2015, a disproportionate representation of white women business owners set off concerns that New York state would not be able to bridge a racial gap among public contractors.
A 1995 report by the Department of Labor found that 6 million women overall had advances at their job that would not have been possible without affirmative action. The percentage of women physicians tripled between 1970 and 2002, from 7.6 percent to 25.2 percent, and in 2009 women were receiving a majority of bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees, according to the American Association of University Women. To be clear, these numbers include women of all races; however, breaking down affirmative action beneficiaries by race and gender seems to be rare in reported data.
Contrary to popular belief, affirmative action isn't just black. It's white, too. But affirmative action's white female faces are rarely at the center of the conversation.
---
White women have become some of affirmative action's fiercest opponents
In general, women today are more educated and make up more of the workforce than ever before, in part because of affirmative action policies. Indeed, from the tech industry to publishing, diversity has emerged as an overwhelming increase in the presence of white women, not necessarily people of color.
Incidentally, over the years white women have become some of affirmative action's most ardent opponents.
According to the 2014 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, nearly 70 percent of the 20,694 self-identified non-Hispanic white women surveyed either somewhat or strongly opposed affirmative action.
White women have also been the primary plaintiffs in the major Supreme Court affirmative action cases, with the exception of the first — Regents of the University of California v. Bakke in 1978 — that was brought to the courts by a white man.
Twenty-five years after Bakke found that race can be one but not the only criterion for evaluating admissions applications, four white women have filed lawsuits seeking retribution for admissions rejections based on the premise that they were denied a spot over less-deserving students of color.
The first successful case to challenge affirmative action policy was Hopwood v. Texas in 1996. Cheryl Hopwood claimed that despite excellent scores and fitting the profile of a surefire admit, the University of Texas School of Law admitted 62 people of color, only nine of whom had better LSAT and GPA scores than she did.
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that diversity alone was not enough to justify racial preferences. For example, only Mexican-American and African-American students' racial backgrounds were taken into consideration at UT's law school. The Supreme Court refused to hear the case, but the decision dismantled UT's earlier racial affirmative action policy and catalyzed UT's 10 percent policy to admit the best students in a state that still suffers from de facto segregation according to UT's Supreme Court briefs for the Fisher case.
But in 2003, two other white women approached the Court in parallel cases citing a misuse of race in admissions policies. In Grutter v. Bollinger, Barbara Grutter argued that she was denied admission to the University of Michigan Law School as a direct result of the law school's consideration of race in the admissions process. In Gratz v. Bollinger, Jennifer Gratz argued similarly that she was denied acceptance to the University of Michigan's flagship university in Ann Arbor as an undergrad because of race.
The Supreme Court decisions were split between the two cases. In Gratz, the justices ruled that race was being valued in ways that violated the Constitution's Equal Protection Clause — students received 20 points if they were from an underrepresented racial group compared with 5 points for artistic achievement. However, the justices ruled in Grutter that there was nothing unconstitutional about the way race was included in the law school's holistic admissions policy.
The primary distinction between the two decisions had to do with the weight given to race in affirmative action admissions policies. Nonetheless, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor had high hopes for such programs.
"We expect that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today," O'Connor wrote for the majority in Grutter.
Justice Anthony Kennedy, while recognizing the University's complex policy, reiterated O'Connor's sentiments in Fisher.
"The Court's affirmance of the University's admissions policy today does not necessarily mean the University may rely on that same policy without refinement," Kennedy wrote for the majority opinion. "It is the University's ongoing obligation to engage in constant deliberation and continued reflection regarding its admission policies."
Racial affirmative action doesn't undermine merit
"I'm hoping that they'll completely take race out of the issue in terms of admissions and that everyone will be able to get into any school that they want no matter what race they are but solely based on their merit and they work hard for it," Fisher told the New York Times in 2012.
But does race inherently undermine an admit's qualifications?
The question itself is dubious considering the fact that other forms of affirmative action, including gender, are rarely mentioned. The aforementioned CCES survey, which only asked about racial affirmative action, is just one example.
Yet it's a widespread assumption that even Justice Antonin Scalia brought to the fore last December during oral arguments for the Fisher case. He asserted that affirmative action hurts African-American students by putting them in elite institutions they are not prepared for. Study after study shows there's simply no evidence for the claim.
A look at the effects of affirmative action bans also suggests the idea is based on a false dichotomy. Since California passed Prop 209 in 1996 barring racial considerations for college admissions at public universities, UC Berkeley witnessed a significant drop in the number of black students, from 8 percent pre–Prop 209 to an average of 3.6 percent of the freshman class from 2006 to 2010.
But that drop isn't necessarily tied to underqualified students of color. Rather, 58 percent of black students admitted from 2006 to 2010 rejected Berkeley's offer of admission. Alumni, administrators, and current students noted that a possible reason could be a feeling of isolation, or lack of other students of color, at UC's flagship campus — an ironic consequence of the affirmative action ban.
Asian-American applicants also challenge the colorblind meritocracy myth. According to a sociological study in 2009, white applicants were three times more likely to be admitted to selective schools than Asian applicants with the exact same academic record. And a 2013 survey found that white adults in California deemphasize the importance of test scores when Asian Americans, whose average test scores are higher than white students, are considered.
Furthermore, existing race-neutral admissions policies like legacy admissions show that taking race out of the equation doesn't make admissions processes any more just.
According to a 2011 study by the Chronicle of Higher Education, a review of 30 elite universities' admissions processes found that a legacy connection gave an applicant a 23.3 percentage point advantage over a non-legacy applicant. For applicants who had a parent who was an alum, the average advantage was 45.5 percentage points.
Many college campuses, however, have historically had predominantly white student bodies — 84 percent of college students in the US were white in 1976 compared with only 60 percent in 2012 — which makes it far more likely that the beneficiaries of legacy admissions practices are white applicants like Fisher, whose sister and father went to UT Austin.
Fisher advocated for a colorblind, meritocratic admissions process for which she, as an individual, may still not have been qualified. But a look at the marginalized group that has most benefited from affirmative action shows that race was never a barrier for that group to begin with.
White women, like Fisher, stand as a testament to affirmative action's success. If anything, the dismantling of affirmative action is launched at people of color, but it affects white women, too. And the willingness to erase them from the story is part of the problem.
The University of Texas Austin was Abigail Fisher's dream school. Fisher, from Sugar Land, Texas, a wealthy Houston suburb, earned a 3.59 GPA in high school and scored an 1180 on the SATs.
Not bad, but not enough for the highly selective UT Austin in fall 2008; Fisher's dreams were dashed when she was denied admission.
In response, Fisher sued. Her argument? That applicants of color, whose racial backgrounds were included as a component of the university's holistic review process, were less-qualified students and had displaced her.
Students graduating in the top 10 percent of any Texas high school are granted an automatic spot at UT Austin. Other students are evaluated through a holistic review process including a race-blind review of essays and creating a personal achievement score based on leadership potential, honors and awards, work experience, and special circumstances that include socioeconomic considerations such as race.
A few are accepted through provisional slots that include attending a summer program prior to the fall. One black student, four Latino students, and 42 white students with lower scores than Fisher were accepted under these terms. Also rejected were 168 African-American and Latino students with better scores than Fisher.
According to court documents, even if Fisher had received a perfect personal achievement score that included race (which, in itself, oversimplifies the admissions process), she still would not have necessarily qualified under UT's admission rubric.
In fact, when she applied for the class of 2012, the admission rate for non-automatic admits was more competitive than that of Harvard University.
Nonetheless, Fisher spent the past seven years in court, and Thursday the US Supreme Court ruled 4-3 that UT's admissions policy procedures are constitutional.
But the battle to erase race from the application review process for admission comes with an interesting paradox: "The primary beneficiaries of affirmative action have been Euro-American women," wrote Columbia University law professor Kimberlé Crenshaw for the University of Michigan Law Review in 2006.
A 1995 report by the California Senate Government Organization Committee found that white women held a majority of managerial jobs (57,250) compared with African Americans (10,500), Latinos (19,000), and Asian Americans (24,600) after the first two decades of affirmative action in the private sector. In 2015, a disproportionate representation of white women business owners set off concerns that New York state would not be able to bridge a racial gap among public contractors.
A 1995 report by the Department of Labor found that 6 million women overall had advances at their job that would not have been possible without affirmative action. The percentage of women physicians tripled between 1970 and 2002, from 7.6 percent to 25.2 percent, and in 2009 women were receiving a majority of bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees, according to the American Association of University Women. To be clear, these numbers include women of all races; however, breaking down affirmative action beneficiaries by race and gender seems to be rare in reported data.
Contrary to popular belief, affirmative action isn't just black. It's white, too. But affirmative action's white female faces are rarely at the center of the conversation.
---
White women have become some of affirmative action's fiercest opponents
In general, women today are more educated and make up more of the workforce than ever before, in part because of affirmative action policies. Indeed, from the tech industry to publishing, diversity has emerged as an overwhelming increase in the presence of white women, not necessarily people of color.
Incidentally, over the years white women have become some of affirmative action's most ardent opponents.
According to the 2014 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, nearly 70 percent of the 20,694 self-identified non-Hispanic white women surveyed either somewhat or strongly opposed affirmative action.
White women have also been the primary plaintiffs in the major Supreme Court affirmative action cases, with the exception of the first — Regents of the University of California v. Bakke in 1978 — that was brought to the courts by a white man.
Twenty-five years after Bakke found that race can be one but not the only criterion for evaluating admissions applications, four white women have filed lawsuits seeking retribution for admissions rejections based on the premise that they were denied a spot over less-deserving students of color.
The first successful case to challenge affirmative action policy was Hopwood v. Texas in 1996. Cheryl Hopwood claimed that despite excellent scores and fitting the profile of a surefire admit, the University of Texas School of Law admitted 62 people of color, only nine of whom had better LSAT and GPA scores than she did.
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that diversity alone was not enough to justify racial preferences. For example, only Mexican-American and African-American students' racial backgrounds were taken into consideration at UT's law school. The Supreme Court refused to hear the case, but the decision dismantled UT's earlier racial affirmative action policy and catalyzed UT's 10 percent policy to admit the best students in a state that still suffers from de facto segregation according to UT's Supreme Court briefs for the Fisher case.
But in 2003, two other white women approached the Court in parallel cases citing a misuse of race in admissions policies. In Grutter v. Bollinger, Barbara Grutter argued that she was denied admission to the University of Michigan Law School as a direct result of the law school's consideration of race in the admissions process. In Gratz v. Bollinger, Jennifer Gratz argued similarly that she was denied acceptance to the University of Michigan's flagship university in Ann Arbor as an undergrad because of race.
The Supreme Court decisions were split between the two cases. In Gratz, the justices ruled that race was being valued in ways that violated the Constitution's Equal Protection Clause — students received 20 points if they were from an underrepresented racial group compared with 5 points for artistic achievement. However, the justices ruled in Grutter that there was nothing unconstitutional about the way race was included in the law school's holistic admissions policy.
The primary distinction between the two decisions had to do with the weight given to race in affirmative action admissions policies. Nonetheless, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor had high hopes for such programs.
"We expect that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today," O'Connor wrote for the majority in Grutter.
Justice Anthony Kennedy, while recognizing the University's complex policy, reiterated O'Connor's sentiments in Fisher.
"The Court's affirmance of the University's admissions policy today does not necessarily mean the University may rely on that same policy without refinement," Kennedy wrote for the majority opinion. "It is the University's ongoing obligation to engage in constant deliberation and continued reflection regarding its admission policies."
Racial affirmative action doesn't undermine merit
"I'm hoping that they'll completely take race out of the issue in terms of admissions and that everyone will be able to get into any school that they want no matter what race they are but solely based on their merit and they work hard for it," Fisher told the New York Times in 2012.
But does race inherently undermine an admit's qualifications?
The question itself is dubious considering the fact that other forms of affirmative action, including gender, are rarely mentioned. The aforementioned CCES survey, which only asked about racial affirmative action, is just one example.
Yet it's a widespread assumption that even Justice Antonin Scalia brought to the fore last December during oral arguments for the Fisher case. He asserted that affirmative action hurts African-American students by putting them in elite institutions they are not prepared for. Study after study shows there's simply no evidence for the claim.
A look at the effects of affirmative action bans also suggests the idea is based on a false dichotomy. Since California passed Prop 209 in 1996 barring racial considerations for college admissions at public universities, UC Berkeley witnessed a significant drop in the number of black students, from 8 percent pre–Prop 209 to an average of 3.6 percent of the freshman class from 2006 to 2010.
But that drop isn't necessarily tied to underqualified students of color. Rather, 58 percent of black students admitted from 2006 to 2010 rejected Berkeley's offer of admission. Alumni, administrators, and current students noted that a possible reason could be a feeling of isolation, or lack of other students of color, at UC's flagship campus — an ironic consequence of the affirmative action ban.
Asian-American applicants also challenge the colorblind meritocracy myth. According to a sociological study in 2009, white applicants were three times more likely to be admitted to selective schools than Asian applicants with the exact same academic record. And a 2013 survey found that white adults in California deemphasize the importance of test scores when Asian Americans, whose average test scores are higher than white students, are considered.
Furthermore, existing race-neutral admissions policies like legacy admissions show that taking race out of the equation doesn't make admissions processes any more just.
According to a 2011 study by the Chronicle of Higher Education, a review of 30 elite universities' admissions processes found that a legacy connection gave an applicant a 23.3 percentage point advantage over a non-legacy applicant. For applicants who had a parent who was an alum, the average advantage was 45.5 percentage points.
Many college campuses, however, have historically had predominantly white student bodies — 84 percent of college students in the US were white in 1976 compared with only 60 percent in 2012 — which makes it far more likely that the beneficiaries of legacy admissions practices are white applicants like Fisher, whose sister and father went to UT Austin.
Fisher advocated for a colorblind, meritocratic admissions process for which she, as an individual, may still not have been qualified. But a look at the marginalized group that has most benefited from affirmative action shows that race was never a barrier for that group to begin with.
White women, like Fisher, stand as a testament to affirmative action's success. If anything, the dismantling of affirmative action is launched at people of color, but it affects white women, too. And the willingness to erase them from the story is part of the problem.
Actually, It’s Not “OK to be White”
And if you knew the history of that concept you would understand why
Tim Wise - An Injustice!
march 2023
The last few days have seen the internet buzzing with talk about Scott Adams, the creator of the Dilbert comic strip, and the rant that has, as of now, seriously damaged his career.
His screed, which even in the best light was racially intemperate and ignorant, and in a more honest light, was flatly racist, concerned his overwrought reaction to a Rasmussen Reports poll, in which respondents were asked whether they agreed or disagreed with the statement:
“It’s OK to be white.”
As Adams pointed out, nearly half of Black folks polled either answered no or that they weren’t sure. To Adams, this means that roughly half of Black people are hostile or ambivalent to white people’s very existence.
To the Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh — ever looking to ramp up the absurdity for clicks and views — it was even worse: evidence that nearly half of all Blacks might be “genocidal” towards whites.
Yesterday I explained why Adams’s harangue, in which he called Black people a hate group and encouraged whites to “stay the hell away from them” based on this one poll, was both bigoted and so statistically inept as to boggle the mind.
But what I didn’t do was actually confront the question Rasmussen asked.
Oh sure, I explained it was a stupid question.
And I noted that it originated among white nationalist trolls and incel image board losers on 4Chan (I know that last part is redundant, sorry).
And yes, I explained that this origin and the trollish nature of the question is likely behind the way many Black people answered it (and large numbers of other people of color too, and even quite a few whites).
As many have pointed out, the social context within which such a question gets asked makes a difference: sort of like if someone were to ask: “Do white lives matter?”
The answer is obviously yes, but given that such a question is being asked against a backdrop of white backlash to the Black Lives Matter movement — and to deflect from addressing the longstanding reality of anti-Black racism — one might understandably think twice before endorsing this otherwise banal truism.
In any event, what I didn’t do in the previous piece, but want to do here, is offer a deeper response to the question, however absurd it was, and to make clear that depending on how you mean the question, the answer might well be no.
No, actually, it isn’t OK to be white.
There, I said it.
And if you follow along, though you may disagree, you’ll at least understand why someone could answer that way without harboring any hatred or antipathy for people classified as white.
It’s why I can say it, despite actually being white.
And yes, I know that to the white supremacists attacking me on Twitter — and these have, tellingly, been Adams’s loudest supporters there — my being Jewish means I’m not white. But actually, even under Hitlerian race law, I would have qualified, so make of that what you will.
Anyway, here’s the thing.
If the question is taken literally and at face value, the answer is yes, it is perfectly fine to be white.
No one gets to pick the racial identity group into which they are born. If one is white, one simply is and is due neither credit nor blame for such a thing. As such, it makes no sense to dislike someone solely for being white.
Your race is a function of how your society — in this case, the U.S. — has chosen to classify you and cluster people with your ancestry by so-called racial group. Just as ancestry is something over which you have no control (and thus, shouldn’t be disliked), the classification scheme also existed before you were born. As such, you can’t control it either.
And if the Rasmussen question were that simple, we could be done with it.
But it’s not.
There is another way to think about, and thus, to answer the question — a way that compels us to address the underlying issue embedded therein: namely, what does it mean to be white, and how did we become white in the first place?
Because unlike our being born into the designation or automatically inheriting our ancestry, that was hardly a natural process.
So, instead of emphasizing whether it’s OK to be white, what if we focused on whether it was OK to be white?
A semantic difference? Mere wordplay, like when Bill Clinton said the existence of his affair with Monica Lewinsky depended on what the meaning of “is” is?
Hardly.
To be white is something that was done to those who are now called such.
To be white is something that simply happens to us because of what was done.
And we can remain neutral about the latter while roundly condemning the former. Indeed, all people of goodwill should.
His screed, which even in the best light was racially intemperate and ignorant, and in a more honest light, was flatly racist, concerned his overwrought reaction to a Rasmussen Reports poll, in which respondents were asked whether they agreed or disagreed with the statement:
“It’s OK to be white.”
As Adams pointed out, nearly half of Black folks polled either answered no or that they weren’t sure. To Adams, this means that roughly half of Black people are hostile or ambivalent to white people’s very existence.
To the Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh — ever looking to ramp up the absurdity for clicks and views — it was even worse: evidence that nearly half of all Blacks might be “genocidal” towards whites.
Yesterday I explained why Adams’s harangue, in which he called Black people a hate group and encouraged whites to “stay the hell away from them” based on this one poll, was both bigoted and so statistically inept as to boggle the mind.
But what I didn’t do was actually confront the question Rasmussen asked.
Oh sure, I explained it was a stupid question.
And I noted that it originated among white nationalist trolls and incel image board losers on 4Chan (I know that last part is redundant, sorry).
And yes, I explained that this origin and the trollish nature of the question is likely behind the way many Black people answered it (and large numbers of other people of color too, and even quite a few whites).
As many have pointed out, the social context within which such a question gets asked makes a difference: sort of like if someone were to ask: “Do white lives matter?”
The answer is obviously yes, but given that such a question is being asked against a backdrop of white backlash to the Black Lives Matter movement — and to deflect from addressing the longstanding reality of anti-Black racism — one might understandably think twice before endorsing this otherwise banal truism.
In any event, what I didn’t do in the previous piece, but want to do here, is offer a deeper response to the question, however absurd it was, and to make clear that depending on how you mean the question, the answer might well be no.
No, actually, it isn’t OK to be white.
There, I said it.
And if you follow along, though you may disagree, you’ll at least understand why someone could answer that way without harboring any hatred or antipathy for people classified as white.
It’s why I can say it, despite actually being white.
And yes, I know that to the white supremacists attacking me on Twitter — and these have, tellingly, been Adams’s loudest supporters there — my being Jewish means I’m not white. But actually, even under Hitlerian race law, I would have qualified, so make of that what you will.
Anyway, here’s the thing.
If the question is taken literally and at face value, the answer is yes, it is perfectly fine to be white.
No one gets to pick the racial identity group into which they are born. If one is white, one simply is and is due neither credit nor blame for such a thing. As such, it makes no sense to dislike someone solely for being white.
Your race is a function of how your society — in this case, the U.S. — has chosen to classify you and cluster people with your ancestry by so-called racial group. Just as ancestry is something over which you have no control (and thus, shouldn’t be disliked), the classification scheme also existed before you were born. As such, you can’t control it either.
And if the Rasmussen question were that simple, we could be done with it.
But it’s not.
There is another way to think about, and thus, to answer the question — a way that compels us to address the underlying issue embedded therein: namely, what does it mean to be white, and how did we become white in the first place?
Because unlike our being born into the designation or automatically inheriting our ancestry, that was hardly a natural process.
So, instead of emphasizing whether it’s OK to be white, what if we focused on whether it was OK to be white?
A semantic difference? Mere wordplay, like when Bill Clinton said the existence of his affair with Monica Lewinsky depended on what the meaning of “is” is?
Hardly.
To be white is something that was done to those who are now called such.
To be white is something that simply happens to us because of what was done.
And we can remain neutral about the latter while roundly condemning the former. Indeed, all people of goodwill should.
opinion: White men refusing to share power is a silver stake piercing the heart of American democracy
John Stoehr - raw story
October 09, 2022
Thursday’s post borrowed a concept from a new history by Jeremi Suri called Civil War By Other Means. With it, I wrote about an either-or thinking seemingly ingrained in the Confederate brain.
When Black people were slaves, white people were free. When Black people were free, white people were slaves. Slavery wasn’t just the basis of the plantation economy. It was the basis of democracy for the well-mannered overlords of elite southern society. For them, without slavery – without suffering – civilization would collapse.
Among the many obvious problems with this way of thinking is something less obvious. If you believe that what’s bad for Black people is good for white people, what do you have when they, through means internal and external, achieve their freedom?
The answer is nothing.
There’s no there there. There’s no moral constitution that can go on in the absence of a social and political order built on Black bodies. Yes, not just slavery. Black bodies stacked up over centuries – were the foundation. Take them away? Civilization really does collapse.
Now apply this binary mode of thinking to a subject much in vogue these days thanks to redhat propagandists like Tucker Carlson. Of course, the subject I’m talking about is “The End of Men” or, as David Brooks put it more mildly, the “Crisis of Men and Boys.”
At the root of this subject is an assumption that, if given a hard look, would be seen as gonzo nuts. Anyone with eyes that can see – or senses that can sense – can discern that men, especially white men, are doing fine. To be sure, problems remain, societally and individually. But relative to others, white men are still on top.
Here’s an example: I’m 48, white, tall, bald. (Not bad looking.) When I go to pick up my daughter from school, where she’s in the racial minority, nonwhite parents, especially mothers, see me coming and hustle themselves and their kids out of the way, even apologizing as if they’ve done something wrong by standing still in public. This … just happens. It’s not natural, though. It’s a culture white men created.
That culture is complicated, but I think it boils down to this: white men deserve whatever they desire – money, sex, power, whatever.
This is somewhat scandalous to talk about openly, so we invented all sorts of ways of pretending that white men work as hard as other people do; that we aren’t the center of a political culture built for us centuries ago; and that we don’t accept at birth a rich inheritance.
Of course, we do.
The question is whether we want to know that we do.
Because if white men don’t know, what happens when they don’t get their heart’s desire? Some men turn inward to religion. Some to politics. But others don’t have what it takes to reconcile themselves to the consequences of democratic politics. So they reach for a gun.
Still, others discover ways to profit from telling these white men that democratic politics has cheated them of their birthright – that when women gain a fraction of an inch of political power, it’s castration; that when Black people succeed, in business or sports or politics, that’s a sign of societal disease and rot. It wasn’t this way back in the day. Something's gone terribly wrong. We gotta do something.
To be sure, propagandists like Carlson influence these men in various and sundry ways, but propaganda doesn’t work unless there’s already a kernel of truth to build on. In this case, there are two kernels.
One, as I said, is a political culture telling white men that they deserve everything. But the other is perhaps more important: an understanding, though likely unconscious, that if white men do not dominate – that if women and nonwhite people have equal political power as a consequence of democratic politics – what do they have?
Nothing.
They don’t have moral cores that exist independently of the lives and fortunes of their supposed inferiors, because the political culture permits them to grow up without bothering to develop moral cores. What do they have when women are strong and independent?
Due to either-or thinking, nothing.
Worse, they are nothing. Zeroes, ciphers, blanks.
That’s so terrifying, you’ll believe anything.
The reaction among Democrats and liberals, to things like the funny recommendation for men to beam red light onto their genitals, is by now conventional. We say that this wouldn’t happen if these men weren’t so sexist, so racist, so something-ist. If they only sought to be as “enlightened” as we are, this farce would be self-evident.
What some Democrats and liberals – especially Twitter hard*sses – don’t account for is that this reaction feeds into the either-or thinking that seeded a political culture at the root of the problem.
We keep telling them to not be something. But not being something terrifies them. The more we say don’t be X, the more they double down on being X. We see the former as the solution. They see the former as the problem. Either-or thinking becomes a vicious cycle.
Instead of telling them not to be something, we should tell them to be something. In other words, we should admonish them to develop a moral core – a rich inner life – that can exist independently without being conditioned on democratic politics. Instead of sharing power being seen as losing power, it would simply be seen as sharing it.
Developing such a thing is a heavy lift, though.
Living in your inheritance takes less effort.
When Black people were slaves, white people were free. When Black people were free, white people were slaves. Slavery wasn’t just the basis of the plantation economy. It was the basis of democracy for the well-mannered overlords of elite southern society. For them, without slavery – without suffering – civilization would collapse.
Among the many obvious problems with this way of thinking is something less obvious. If you believe that what’s bad for Black people is good for white people, what do you have when they, through means internal and external, achieve their freedom?
The answer is nothing.
There’s no there there. There’s no moral constitution that can go on in the absence of a social and political order built on Black bodies. Yes, not just slavery. Black bodies stacked up over centuries – were the foundation. Take them away? Civilization really does collapse.
Now apply this binary mode of thinking to a subject much in vogue these days thanks to redhat propagandists like Tucker Carlson. Of course, the subject I’m talking about is “The End of Men” or, as David Brooks put it more mildly, the “Crisis of Men and Boys.”
At the root of this subject is an assumption that, if given a hard look, would be seen as gonzo nuts. Anyone with eyes that can see – or senses that can sense – can discern that men, especially white men, are doing fine. To be sure, problems remain, societally and individually. But relative to others, white men are still on top.
Here’s an example: I’m 48, white, tall, bald. (Not bad looking.) When I go to pick up my daughter from school, where she’s in the racial minority, nonwhite parents, especially mothers, see me coming and hustle themselves and their kids out of the way, even apologizing as if they’ve done something wrong by standing still in public. This … just happens. It’s not natural, though. It’s a culture white men created.
That culture is complicated, but I think it boils down to this: white men deserve whatever they desire – money, sex, power, whatever.
This is somewhat scandalous to talk about openly, so we invented all sorts of ways of pretending that white men work as hard as other people do; that we aren’t the center of a political culture built for us centuries ago; and that we don’t accept at birth a rich inheritance.
Of course, we do.
The question is whether we want to know that we do.
Because if white men don’t know, what happens when they don’t get their heart’s desire? Some men turn inward to religion. Some to politics. But others don’t have what it takes to reconcile themselves to the consequences of democratic politics. So they reach for a gun.
Still, others discover ways to profit from telling these white men that democratic politics has cheated them of their birthright – that when women gain a fraction of an inch of political power, it’s castration; that when Black people succeed, in business or sports or politics, that’s a sign of societal disease and rot. It wasn’t this way back in the day. Something's gone terribly wrong. We gotta do something.
To be sure, propagandists like Carlson influence these men in various and sundry ways, but propaganda doesn’t work unless there’s already a kernel of truth to build on. In this case, there are two kernels.
One, as I said, is a political culture telling white men that they deserve everything. But the other is perhaps more important: an understanding, though likely unconscious, that if white men do not dominate – that if women and nonwhite people have equal political power as a consequence of democratic politics – what do they have?
Nothing.
They don’t have moral cores that exist independently of the lives and fortunes of their supposed inferiors, because the political culture permits them to grow up without bothering to develop moral cores. What do they have when women are strong and independent?
Due to either-or thinking, nothing.
Worse, they are nothing. Zeroes, ciphers, blanks.
That’s so terrifying, you’ll believe anything.
The reaction among Democrats and liberals, to things like the funny recommendation for men to beam red light onto their genitals, is by now conventional. We say that this wouldn’t happen if these men weren’t so sexist, so racist, so something-ist. If they only sought to be as “enlightened” as we are, this farce would be self-evident.
What some Democrats and liberals – especially Twitter hard*sses – don’t account for is that this reaction feeds into the either-or thinking that seeded a political culture at the root of the problem.
We keep telling them to not be something. But not being something terrifies them. The more we say don’t be X, the more they double down on being X. We see the former as the solution. They see the former as the problem. Either-or thinking becomes a vicious cycle.
Instead of telling them not to be something, we should tell them to be something. In other words, we should admonish them to develop a moral core – a rich inner life – that can exist independently without being conditioned on democratic politics. Instead of sharing power being seen as losing power, it would simply be seen as sharing it.
Developing such a thing is a heavy lift, though.
Living in your inheritance takes less effort.
The Racist History of Abortion and Midwifery Bans
Today’s attacks on abortion access have a long history rooted in white supremacy.
Michele Goodwin - ACLU
JULY 1, 2020
In 1851, Sojourner Truth delivered a speech best known as“Ain’t I A Woman?” to a crowded audience at the Women’s Convention in Akron, Ohio. At the time, slavery remained in full force, a vibrant enterprise that fueled the American economy. Various laws protected that system, including the Fugitive Slave Act, which resulted in the abduction of “free” Black children, women, and men as well as those who had miraculously escaped to northern cities like Boston or Philadelphia. Bounty hunters then sold their prey to Southern plantation owners. The law denied basic protections for Black people caught in the greed-filled grasps of slavery.
Ms. Truth condemned this disgraceful enterprise, which thrived off not only uncompensated labor, but also physical and psychological terror. Most will remember Ms. Truth’s oration for its vivid descriptions regarding physical labor; Black women were forced to plough, plant, herd, and build — just as men. Yet far too little attention centers on her condemnation of that system, which made sexual chattel of Black women, and then cruelly sold off Black children. This was human trafficking in the American form, and it lasted for centuries. Ms. Truth pleaded:
“I have borne 13 children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain’t I a woman?”
Following the Supreme Court’s decision in June Medical Services v. Russo this week, it is worth reflecting on the racist origins of the anti-abortion movement in the United States, which date back to the ideologies of slavery. Just like slavery, anti-abortion efforts are rooted in white supremacy, the exploitation of Black women, and placing women’s bodies in service to men. Just like slavery, maximizing wealth and consolidating power motivated the anti-abortion enterprise. Then, just as now, anti-abortion efforts have nothing to do with saving women’s lives or protecting the interests of children. Today, a person is 14 times more likely to die by carrying a pregnancy to term than by having an abortion, and medical evidence has shown for decades that an abortion is as safe as a penicillin shot—and yet abortion remains heavily restricted in states across the country.
Prior to the Civil War, abortion and contraceptives were legal in the U.S., used by Indigenous women as well as those who sailed to these lands from Europe. For the most part, the persons who performed all manner of reproductive health care were women — female midwives. Midwifery was interracial; half of the women who provided reproductive health care were Black women. Other midwives were Indigenous and white.
However, in the wake of slavery’s end, skilled Black midwives represented both real competition for white men who sought to enter the practice of child delivery, and a threat to how obstetricians viewed themselves. Male gynecologists claimed midwifery was a degrading means of obstetrical care. They viewed themselves as elite members of a trained profession with tools such as forceps and other technologies, and the modern convenience of hospitals, which excluded Black and Indigenous women from practice within their institutions.
History would later reveal that it was literally on the backs of Black women’s bodies that such tools were developed. Dr. Marion Sims famously wrote about his insomniac-induced “epiphanies” that stirred him to experiment on enslaved Black women, lacerating, suturing, and cutting, providing no anesthesia or pain relief. Only recently have the terrors that Black women endured through nonconsensual experimentation by gynecologists of the 19th and 20th centuries been acknowledged.
Successful racist and misogynistic smear campaigns, cleverly designed for political persuasion and to achieve legal reform, described Black midwives as unhygienic, barbarous, ineffective, non-scientific, dangerous, and unprofessional. Dr. Joseph DeLee, a preeminent 20th century obstetrician and fervent opponent to midwifery, stated in a much-quoted 1915 speech, “Progress Toward Ideal Obstetrics”:
The midwife is a relic of barbarism. In civilized countries the midwife is wrong, has always been wrong … The midwife has been a drag on the progress of the science and art of obstetrics. Her existence stunts the one and degrades the other. For many centuries she perverted obstetrics from obtaining any standing at all among the science of medicine … Even after midwifery was practiced by some of the most brilliant men in the profession, such practice was held opprobrious and degraded.
At the root of these stereotypes were explicit efforts to destroy midwifery and promote white supremacy. As the surge of lynchings, “separate but equal” laws, police violence, and the decimation of successful Black communities during Jim Crow revealed, Black Americans post slavery suffered greatly due to white supremacy, as did Chinese and Japanese workers and their families. Indeed, the racist campaigns launched by doctors against Black midwives extended to anti-immigration legislative platforms targeted at Chinese and Japanese workers. The Page Act, which restricted Chinese women from entering the United States, is a part of this shameful legacy. This broader 20th century anti-Chinese campaign became known as “yellow peril.” DeLee and Horatio Storer urged white women to “spread their loins” across the nation, a dog whistle about the threat of too many Blacks and Asians in the U.S.
Gynecologists explicitly revealed their motivations in undermining midwifery: They desired financial gains, recognition, and a monopoly. As Dr. DeLee wrote in a 1916 article published in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Disease of Women & Children, “There is high art in obstetrics and that it must pay as well for it as for surgery. I will not admit that this is a sordid impulse. It is only common justice to labor, self-sacrifice, and skill.” They believed that men should be paid, but not women — particularly not Black women.
To better understand racial injustice in the anti-abortion movement, remember that American hospitals barred the admission of African Americans both in terms of practice and as patients. And, the American Medical Association (AMA) barred women and Black people from membership. The AMA, founded in 1847, refused to admit Black doctors, informing them, “You come from groups and schools that admit women and that admit irregular practitioners.” For this reason, Black doctors formed the National Medical Association in 1895.
In 2008, the organization issued a public apology for its active campaigns to close Black medical schools, deny Blacks membership, and other efforts to marginalize Black patients and practitioners.
Gynecologists pushed women out of the field of reproductive health by lobbying state legislatures to ban midwifery and prohibit abortions. Doing so not only undercut women’s reproductive health, but also drove qualified Black women out of medical services. For these groups, there was no meaningful path to the formalized skill set DeLee claimed necessary.
Abortion was an expedient way to frame their campaign to create monopolies on women’s bodies for male doctors. The American Medical Association explicitly contributed to this cause through its exclusion of women and Black people.
Today, as people debate whether anti-abortion platforms benefit Black women, the clear answer is no. The U.S. leads the developed world in maternal and infant mortality. The U.S. ranks around 50th in the world for maternal safety. Nationally, for Black women, the maternal death rate is nearly four times that of white women, and 10 to 17 times worse in some states.
In the wake of both Whole Woman’s Health and June Medical Services v. Russo, keep in mind that both Texas and Louisiana, where these cases originated, are considered the deadliest in the developed world for a woman to give birth.
Sadly, pregnancy has become a death sentence for many in the very places that make reproductive health care access the most fraught and hard to reach. Many of these states (though not all) are former slave states, such as Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Arkansas. As Black people in these states continue to fight for equal access the reproductive care they need, Sojourner Truth’s 1851 speech continues to resonate. And as the Supreme Court demonstrated this week, the fight for justice in reproductive health care and equality in abortion access is far from over. The decision does not advance the equality of poor Black women — it maintains all other burdensome restrictions already in place. We have much more work to do such that not only DeLee’s words, but also his racist and exploitative viewpoints, are relegated to history.
Ms. Truth condemned this disgraceful enterprise, which thrived off not only uncompensated labor, but also physical and psychological terror. Most will remember Ms. Truth’s oration for its vivid descriptions regarding physical labor; Black women were forced to plough, plant, herd, and build — just as men. Yet far too little attention centers on her condemnation of that system, which made sexual chattel of Black women, and then cruelly sold off Black children. This was human trafficking in the American form, and it lasted for centuries. Ms. Truth pleaded:
“I have borne 13 children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain’t I a woman?”
Following the Supreme Court’s decision in June Medical Services v. Russo this week, it is worth reflecting on the racist origins of the anti-abortion movement in the United States, which date back to the ideologies of slavery. Just like slavery, anti-abortion efforts are rooted in white supremacy, the exploitation of Black women, and placing women’s bodies in service to men. Just like slavery, maximizing wealth and consolidating power motivated the anti-abortion enterprise. Then, just as now, anti-abortion efforts have nothing to do with saving women’s lives or protecting the interests of children. Today, a person is 14 times more likely to die by carrying a pregnancy to term than by having an abortion, and medical evidence has shown for decades that an abortion is as safe as a penicillin shot—and yet abortion remains heavily restricted in states across the country.
Prior to the Civil War, abortion and contraceptives were legal in the U.S., used by Indigenous women as well as those who sailed to these lands from Europe. For the most part, the persons who performed all manner of reproductive health care were women — female midwives. Midwifery was interracial; half of the women who provided reproductive health care were Black women. Other midwives were Indigenous and white.
However, in the wake of slavery’s end, skilled Black midwives represented both real competition for white men who sought to enter the practice of child delivery, and a threat to how obstetricians viewed themselves. Male gynecologists claimed midwifery was a degrading means of obstetrical care. They viewed themselves as elite members of a trained profession with tools such as forceps and other technologies, and the modern convenience of hospitals, which excluded Black and Indigenous women from practice within their institutions.
History would later reveal that it was literally on the backs of Black women’s bodies that such tools were developed. Dr. Marion Sims famously wrote about his insomniac-induced “epiphanies” that stirred him to experiment on enslaved Black women, lacerating, suturing, and cutting, providing no anesthesia or pain relief. Only recently have the terrors that Black women endured through nonconsensual experimentation by gynecologists of the 19th and 20th centuries been acknowledged.
Successful racist and misogynistic smear campaigns, cleverly designed for political persuasion and to achieve legal reform, described Black midwives as unhygienic, barbarous, ineffective, non-scientific, dangerous, and unprofessional. Dr. Joseph DeLee, a preeminent 20th century obstetrician and fervent opponent to midwifery, stated in a much-quoted 1915 speech, “Progress Toward Ideal Obstetrics”:
The midwife is a relic of barbarism. In civilized countries the midwife is wrong, has always been wrong … The midwife has been a drag on the progress of the science and art of obstetrics. Her existence stunts the one and degrades the other. For many centuries she perverted obstetrics from obtaining any standing at all among the science of medicine … Even after midwifery was practiced by some of the most brilliant men in the profession, such practice was held opprobrious and degraded.
At the root of these stereotypes were explicit efforts to destroy midwifery and promote white supremacy. As the surge of lynchings, “separate but equal” laws, police violence, and the decimation of successful Black communities during Jim Crow revealed, Black Americans post slavery suffered greatly due to white supremacy, as did Chinese and Japanese workers and their families. Indeed, the racist campaigns launched by doctors against Black midwives extended to anti-immigration legislative platforms targeted at Chinese and Japanese workers. The Page Act, which restricted Chinese women from entering the United States, is a part of this shameful legacy. This broader 20th century anti-Chinese campaign became known as “yellow peril.” DeLee and Horatio Storer urged white women to “spread their loins” across the nation, a dog whistle about the threat of too many Blacks and Asians in the U.S.
Gynecologists explicitly revealed their motivations in undermining midwifery: They desired financial gains, recognition, and a monopoly. As Dr. DeLee wrote in a 1916 article published in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Disease of Women & Children, “There is high art in obstetrics and that it must pay as well for it as for surgery. I will not admit that this is a sordid impulse. It is only common justice to labor, self-sacrifice, and skill.” They believed that men should be paid, but not women — particularly not Black women.
To better understand racial injustice in the anti-abortion movement, remember that American hospitals barred the admission of African Americans both in terms of practice and as patients. And, the American Medical Association (AMA) barred women and Black people from membership. The AMA, founded in 1847, refused to admit Black doctors, informing them, “You come from groups and schools that admit women and that admit irregular practitioners.” For this reason, Black doctors formed the National Medical Association in 1895.
In 2008, the organization issued a public apology for its active campaigns to close Black medical schools, deny Blacks membership, and other efforts to marginalize Black patients and practitioners.
Gynecologists pushed women out of the field of reproductive health by lobbying state legislatures to ban midwifery and prohibit abortions. Doing so not only undercut women’s reproductive health, but also drove qualified Black women out of medical services. For these groups, there was no meaningful path to the formalized skill set DeLee claimed necessary.
Abortion was an expedient way to frame their campaign to create monopolies on women’s bodies for male doctors. The American Medical Association explicitly contributed to this cause through its exclusion of women and Black people.
Today, as people debate whether anti-abortion platforms benefit Black women, the clear answer is no. The U.S. leads the developed world in maternal and infant mortality. The U.S. ranks around 50th in the world for maternal safety. Nationally, for Black women, the maternal death rate is nearly four times that of white women, and 10 to 17 times worse in some states.
In the wake of both Whole Woman’s Health and June Medical Services v. Russo, keep in mind that both Texas and Louisiana, where these cases originated, are considered the deadliest in the developed world for a woman to give birth.
Sadly, pregnancy has become a death sentence for many in the very places that make reproductive health care access the most fraught and hard to reach. Many of these states (though not all) are former slave states, such as Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Arkansas. As Black people in these states continue to fight for equal access the reproductive care they need, Sojourner Truth’s 1851 speech continues to resonate. And as the Supreme Court demonstrated this week, the fight for justice in reproductive health care and equality in abortion access is far from over. The decision does not advance the equality of poor Black women — it maintains all other burdensome restrictions already in place. We have much more work to do such that not only DeLee’s words, but also his racist and exploitative viewpoints, are relegated to history.
Qualified immunity is rooted in white supremacy and gives cops a free pass to lynch Black people
Richard Sudan - raw story
May 11, 2022
Though it took more than a century as well as countless lives lost to white supremacy, the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act is now US law.
It has been widely hailed as an important piece of symbolism.
Considering America’s longstanding love affair with lynching, however, which continues to this day, symbolism is the most we can take away.
While it’s good that those terrorists of lynching now potentially face another layer of punishment, it’s too little too late. Why?
Because the new law does not deal with a core problem: police.
White men in uniform lynch the most.
They are also most likely to get away with it.
One hundred years ago, the police and white vigilantes worked in tandem to murder Black people. In the 1950s, the police and white vigilantes conspired together to kill Emmett Till, a 14-year-old Black child.
In 2022, we might ask, what has actually changed?
It might be tempting to get all starry-eyed about America’s new anti-lynching law. The long history of racial oppression and its modern ramifications in America, however, do not permit such a luxury.
Things are too dangerous for Black people.
Racial bias among police is well documented. Police continue to terrorize Black America, knowing what the right thing to do is. They refuse to follow laws that should already ensure that being Black in America at the wrong time and place is not a death sentence.
Days ago, a video was released of an incident in 2021. It shows the shooting and execution of an unarmed Black man named Quadry Sanders at the hands of police in Lawton, Okla.
What preceded the incident does not matter. Sanders was unarmed. After being shot, while lying on the floor, when asked to “raise his hands,” he does so from a near fetal position.
He’s already dying.
Again, the cops shoot him.
All of these videos are awful, but the shooting of Sanders is especially stomach-churning. The moment he’s asked to raise his hands while on the floor riddled with bullets, dutifully complying, only to be shot several more times, sums up everything wrong with anti-Black policing.
Comply, don’t comply, carry a gun or don’t carry a gun, asleep in your home or out with your kids – if you’re Black in America, the hunt is on.
So will the new Emmett Till anti-lynching law apply to police officers too? Well, they would need to be charged first, and this is the real issue.
Qualified immunity feeds the problem.
Bishop Talbert Swan is president of the NAACP chapter of Springfield Massachusetts and a strong critic of racist policing in the United States.
He told the Editorial Board:
While I commend Congressman Bobby Rush for sponsoring and pushing the anti-lynching legislation, we understand the epidemic of legalized lynchings of Black people by law enforcement across this nation will not be abated by the threat of increased sentences.
Especially when most police officers who kill Black people are never charged. It is not the severity of a punishment that is likely to prevent hate crimes. It is the certainty of it.
In America, white police officers and white vigilantes are almost certainly will not be punished for murdering a Black person.
Last year, the Asian-American community succeeded after a couple of months in seeing the anti-Asian hate crime law become a reality.
Black people have been in America before the first European settlers arrived. They’ve experienced hundreds of years of state-sanctioned murder. And yet not an anti-Black hate crime bill in sight.
President Biden doesn’t have to wait to be lobbied.
Black communities need a solid commitment from the government to uproot white supremacy within policing. That needs to happen now.
It has been widely hailed as an important piece of symbolism.
Considering America’s longstanding love affair with lynching, however, which continues to this day, symbolism is the most we can take away.
While it’s good that those terrorists of lynching now potentially face another layer of punishment, it’s too little too late. Why?
Because the new law does not deal with a core problem: police.
White men in uniform lynch the most.
They are also most likely to get away with it.
One hundred years ago, the police and white vigilantes worked in tandem to murder Black people. In the 1950s, the police and white vigilantes conspired together to kill Emmett Till, a 14-year-old Black child.
In 2022, we might ask, what has actually changed?
It might be tempting to get all starry-eyed about America’s new anti-lynching law. The long history of racial oppression and its modern ramifications in America, however, do not permit such a luxury.
Things are too dangerous for Black people.
Racial bias among police is well documented. Police continue to terrorize Black America, knowing what the right thing to do is. They refuse to follow laws that should already ensure that being Black in America at the wrong time and place is not a death sentence.
Days ago, a video was released of an incident in 2021. It shows the shooting and execution of an unarmed Black man named Quadry Sanders at the hands of police in Lawton, Okla.
What preceded the incident does not matter. Sanders was unarmed. After being shot, while lying on the floor, when asked to “raise his hands,” he does so from a near fetal position.
He’s already dying.
Again, the cops shoot him.
All of these videos are awful, but the shooting of Sanders is especially stomach-churning. The moment he’s asked to raise his hands while on the floor riddled with bullets, dutifully complying, only to be shot several more times, sums up everything wrong with anti-Black policing.
Comply, don’t comply, carry a gun or don’t carry a gun, asleep in your home or out with your kids – if you’re Black in America, the hunt is on.
So will the new Emmett Till anti-lynching law apply to police officers too? Well, they would need to be charged first, and this is the real issue.
Qualified immunity feeds the problem.
Bishop Talbert Swan is president of the NAACP chapter of Springfield Massachusetts and a strong critic of racist policing in the United States.
He told the Editorial Board:
While I commend Congressman Bobby Rush for sponsoring and pushing the anti-lynching legislation, we understand the epidemic of legalized lynchings of Black people by law enforcement across this nation will not be abated by the threat of increased sentences.
Especially when most police officers who kill Black people are never charged. It is not the severity of a punishment that is likely to prevent hate crimes. It is the certainty of it.
In America, white police officers and white vigilantes are almost certainly will not be punished for murdering a Black person.
Last year, the Asian-American community succeeded after a couple of months in seeing the anti-Asian hate crime law become a reality.
Black people have been in America before the first European settlers arrived. They’ve experienced hundreds of years of state-sanctioned murder. And yet not an anti-Black hate crime bill in sight.
President Biden doesn’t have to wait to be lobbied.
Black communities need a solid commitment from the government to uproot white supremacy within policing. That needs to happen now.
‘Conscious and Deliberate’: Black Workers Say Mississippi Farm Imported White South Africans to Replace Them at Higher Wages for the Same Work
Niara Savage | atlanta black star
September 13, 2021
A group of six Black farm workers from Mississippi claim their former employer, Pitts Farm Partnership, brought white workers over from South Africa and paid them more to do the same work.
The suit was filed on Wednesday, Sept. 8, by the Mississippi Center for Justice and Southern Migrant Legal Services. Pitts Farm Partnership is located in the 73 percent-Black Sunflower County and grows cotton, soybeans and corn.
According to a copy of the lawsuit obtained by Atlanta Black Star, the workers were “systematically underpaid and denied job opportunities in favor of white foreign workers by their employer.”
The suit says Pitts Farm Partnership applied with the federal government to bring workers from South Africa into the U.S. under an agricultural worker visa program, claiming eligible workers couldn’t be found domestically.
After bringing over the workers, who were all white, the farm also violated federal law and a requirement of the foreign worker visa program by paying the white foreign workers more than the Black American employees for the same work, the plaintiffs claim.
The suit seeks damages for denied job opportunities at the farm and additional wages for workers Wesley Reed, Gregory Strong, Richard Strong, Andrew Johnson, Stacy
Griffin and James Simpson.
The suit also seeks punitive damages to ensure Pitts Farm Partnership complies with laws and regulations in the future.
Pitts Farm Partnership historically employed a majority-Black workforce, but that has changed as more white South Africans have been hired to do the same work.
“And since 2014, PFP has used the H-2A program to hire only white South Africans – no Black South Africans – although that country too is majority Black by a wide margin: estimates stand at around 80% Black compared to less than 8% white,” the suit says.
The suit says Johnson and Reed, who each had roughly 19 years of experience on the farm, and both Gregory and Richard Strong — with roughly 24 years apiece of Xperia century with the Pitts operation — were paid a minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, with $8.25 an hour for weekend work, working seasonally from February through November.
Griffin and Simpson, who each began working for the farm around 2013, also worked seasonally from July or early August through November. and were paid $9 an hour since 2018. Most of the plaintiffs were laid off in 2020.
However, the workers from South Africa were paid $9.87 an hour in 2014, and that rate increased most years until it reached $11.83 an hour in 2020, the suit alleges, adding that between 2014 and 2020 the farm made efforts to hire white foreign workers without making efforts to recruit workers domestically.
According to the suit, the farm violated the civil rights of the workers by discriminating against them because of their race and breached their employment contracts by failing to offer them the same pay as the foreign workers. The farm violated the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Workers Protection Act through “conscious and deliberate” actions, the suit alleges.
Amal Bouhabib, an attorney for Southern Migrant Legal Services, said the foreign agricultural workers program “does not allow farmers to pay their American workforce less than the foreign workers, or to replace willing and able U.S. workers.”
Pitts Farm supervisors, who had the power to fire workers, were always white, the Black workers say. Although the farm was informed that the supervisor used racial slurs, the farm “did nothing,” the claim states.
The suit also alleges the Pitts discrimination extended to housing conditions. One of the Black workers, Richard Strong, for a time in 2019 lived in Pitts housing in conditions that his attorneys describe as substandard:
During a portion of the time he was employed by PFP in 2019, Plaintiff Richard Strong resided in housing owned or controlled by PFP. The housing was in bad condition: infested with rats, and lacking window screens. The wood was worn and rotted, which allowed birds to enter the house through the attic. For this housing, PFP withheld $1400 from Mr. Richard Strong’s December 2019 paycheck, covering the months of December 2019 through April 2020. The rental charges exceeded the actual cost of these facilities and included a profit to PFP. As a result of these withholdings, Mr. Richard Strong was paid less than the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour during those 2019 workweeks in which rent charges were deducted from his earnings.
PFP also provided separate housing to its white H-2A workers free of charge that was in far better condition than the housing provided to Mr. Strong.
The legal filing also described what happened when one worker, Wesley Reed, attempted to assert his right to be paid at a rate equal to the imported white workers:
Prior to the 2020 agricultural season, Mr. Reed, who had also worked for PFP for 19 years, told PFP that he was prepared to return to his long-time job, which included all the duties listed in PFP’s H-2A application for that season.
However, Mr. Reed requested that he be paid the same wage rate as PFP’s white H-2A workers.
PFP refused Mr. Reed’s request, telling Mr. Reed that PFP could not afford to give raises as they had several South Africans who would be arriving soon who needed to be paid at a higher rate, and that Mr. Reed’s rate would remain at the federal minimum wage.
Because of PFP’s failure to pay him at the same rate as the white H- 2A workers, Mr. Reed did not work for PFP during 2020.
Ty Pinkins of the Mississippi Center for Justice said the events described in the suit are not uncommon.
“Unfortunately, this case is emblematic of a disastrous pattern in the South. Our research indicates that farm owners are increasingly abusing the H-2A program and denying opportunities to U.S. workers,” Pinkins said.
“The case also reflects our nation’s deep, ugly history of exploiting Black labor. For too long, powerful businesses have abused Black Americans for profit.”
The suit was filed on Wednesday, Sept. 8, by the Mississippi Center for Justice and Southern Migrant Legal Services. Pitts Farm Partnership is located in the 73 percent-Black Sunflower County and grows cotton, soybeans and corn.
According to a copy of the lawsuit obtained by Atlanta Black Star, the workers were “systematically underpaid and denied job opportunities in favor of white foreign workers by their employer.”
The suit says Pitts Farm Partnership applied with the federal government to bring workers from South Africa into the U.S. under an agricultural worker visa program, claiming eligible workers couldn’t be found domestically.
After bringing over the workers, who were all white, the farm also violated federal law and a requirement of the foreign worker visa program by paying the white foreign workers more than the Black American employees for the same work, the plaintiffs claim.
The suit seeks damages for denied job opportunities at the farm and additional wages for workers Wesley Reed, Gregory Strong, Richard Strong, Andrew Johnson, Stacy
Griffin and James Simpson.
The suit also seeks punitive damages to ensure Pitts Farm Partnership complies with laws and regulations in the future.
Pitts Farm Partnership historically employed a majority-Black workforce, but that has changed as more white South Africans have been hired to do the same work.
“And since 2014, PFP has used the H-2A program to hire only white South Africans – no Black South Africans – although that country too is majority Black by a wide margin: estimates stand at around 80% Black compared to less than 8% white,” the suit says.
The suit says Johnson and Reed, who each had roughly 19 years of experience on the farm, and both Gregory and Richard Strong — with roughly 24 years apiece of Xperia century with the Pitts operation — were paid a minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, with $8.25 an hour for weekend work, working seasonally from February through November.
Griffin and Simpson, who each began working for the farm around 2013, also worked seasonally from July or early August through November. and were paid $9 an hour since 2018. Most of the plaintiffs were laid off in 2020.
However, the workers from South Africa were paid $9.87 an hour in 2014, and that rate increased most years until it reached $11.83 an hour in 2020, the suit alleges, adding that between 2014 and 2020 the farm made efforts to hire white foreign workers without making efforts to recruit workers domestically.
According to the suit, the farm violated the civil rights of the workers by discriminating against them because of their race and breached their employment contracts by failing to offer them the same pay as the foreign workers. The farm violated the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Workers Protection Act through “conscious and deliberate” actions, the suit alleges.
Amal Bouhabib, an attorney for Southern Migrant Legal Services, said the foreign agricultural workers program “does not allow farmers to pay their American workforce less than the foreign workers, or to replace willing and able U.S. workers.”
Pitts Farm supervisors, who had the power to fire workers, were always white, the Black workers say. Although the farm was informed that the supervisor used racial slurs, the farm “did nothing,” the claim states.
The suit also alleges the Pitts discrimination extended to housing conditions. One of the Black workers, Richard Strong, for a time in 2019 lived in Pitts housing in conditions that his attorneys describe as substandard:
During a portion of the time he was employed by PFP in 2019, Plaintiff Richard Strong resided in housing owned or controlled by PFP. The housing was in bad condition: infested with rats, and lacking window screens. The wood was worn and rotted, which allowed birds to enter the house through the attic. For this housing, PFP withheld $1400 from Mr. Richard Strong’s December 2019 paycheck, covering the months of December 2019 through April 2020. The rental charges exceeded the actual cost of these facilities and included a profit to PFP. As a result of these withholdings, Mr. Richard Strong was paid less than the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour during those 2019 workweeks in which rent charges were deducted from his earnings.
PFP also provided separate housing to its white H-2A workers free of charge that was in far better condition than the housing provided to Mr. Strong.
The legal filing also described what happened when one worker, Wesley Reed, attempted to assert his right to be paid at a rate equal to the imported white workers:
Prior to the 2020 agricultural season, Mr. Reed, who had also worked for PFP for 19 years, told PFP that he was prepared to return to his long-time job, which included all the duties listed in PFP’s H-2A application for that season.
However, Mr. Reed requested that he be paid the same wage rate as PFP’s white H-2A workers.
PFP refused Mr. Reed’s request, telling Mr. Reed that PFP could not afford to give raises as they had several South Africans who would be arriving soon who needed to be paid at a higher rate, and that Mr. Reed’s rate would remain at the federal minimum wage.
Because of PFP’s failure to pay him at the same rate as the white H- 2A workers, Mr. Reed did not work for PFP during 2020.
Ty Pinkins of the Mississippi Center for Justice said the events described in the suit are not uncommon.
“Unfortunately, this case is emblematic of a disastrous pattern in the South. Our research indicates that farm owners are increasingly abusing the H-2A program and denying opportunities to U.S. workers,” Pinkins said.
“The case also reflects our nation’s deep, ugly history of exploiting Black labor. For too long, powerful businesses have abused Black Americans for profit.”
1. 54 percent of Black Americans say they have experienced unfair treatment: Gallup
Natalie Prieb - the hill
7/27/2021
The majority of Black Americans say they have been treated unfairly in at least one situation, according to a Gallup survey released Tuesday.
Thirty-five percent of respondents said they were treated unfairly while shopping during the previous 30 days, up from 24 percent last year, and 20 percent reported being unfairly treated by the police. In three other situations included in the survey, assessments of unfairness are similar to those reported a year ago, ranging from 17 percent to 21 percent.
While none of the percentage results for individual situations in the survey approaches the majority level, the majority of Black Americans, 54 percent, said they have been treated unfairly in at least one of the five situations.
Hispanic Americans, who were asked the same questions, reported fewer instances of unfair treatment than Black Americans in the same situations. Sixteen percent of Hispanic American respondents reported being unfairly treated while shopping and 11 percent reported being unfairly treated in dealings with police officers. Hispanic American respondents reported the highest level of unfairness in their dealings at restaurants, with 19 percent saying this has happened to them.
Gallup surveyed Hispanic Americans for unfair treatment in the same situations in 2013 and 2015, and the results were generally similar to the current data. The percentages of those who reported being unfairly treated while shopping and while in a restaurant increased by 9 and 10 points, respectively, since 2015.
This survey follows another Gallup poll released Friday in which 64 percent of respondents said racism is widespread in the U.S., up 3 points from the 2016 survey.
Thirty-five percent of respondents said they were treated unfairly while shopping during the previous 30 days, up from 24 percent last year, and 20 percent reported being unfairly treated by the police. In three other situations included in the survey, assessments of unfairness are similar to those reported a year ago, ranging from 17 percent to 21 percent.
While none of the percentage results for individual situations in the survey approaches the majority level, the majority of Black Americans, 54 percent, said they have been treated unfairly in at least one of the five situations.
Hispanic Americans, who were asked the same questions, reported fewer instances of unfair treatment than Black Americans in the same situations. Sixteen percent of Hispanic American respondents reported being unfairly treated while shopping and 11 percent reported being unfairly treated in dealings with police officers. Hispanic American respondents reported the highest level of unfairness in their dealings at restaurants, with 19 percent saying this has happened to them.
Gallup surveyed Hispanic Americans for unfair treatment in the same situations in 2013 and 2015, and the results were generally similar to the current data. The percentages of those who reported being unfairly treated while shopping and while in a restaurant increased by 9 and 10 points, respectively, since 2015.
This survey follows another Gallup poll released Friday in which 64 percent of respondents said racism is widespread in the U.S., up 3 points from the 2016 survey.
Texas Physician Makes History as 9th Black Female Pediatric Surgeon In the U.S., Recalls Being Asked If She Was There to Change the Sheets During Residency
By Angelina Velasquez | atlanta black star
May 13, 2021
Black women are slowly but surely diversifying the medical field as the U.S. recognizes its ninth Black female pediatric surgeon: Dr. Kanika Bowen-Jallow.
Dr. Bowen-Jallow is continuing to blaze the trail first scorched by Dr. Andrea Hayes-Jordan in 2004. While joining the elite ranks of Black medical professionals is a remarkable feat, the Texas native can’t help but to acknowledge how many more people from her background could be standing alongside her.
“There is a sense of sadness knowing how many others like me could have attained more, without implicit bias in the world; if minority students weren’t underrepresented in medical school,” she told Cook’s Children’s Pediatrics newsroom in March.
Dr. Bowen-Jallow works at Cook Children’s Hospital in the Dallas-Fort Worth region, where she performs various pediatric surgeries, excluding heart surgery. In 2019, the American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC) reported that 3 three percent of doctors identified as Black. The following year only 8 percent of medical students identified as Black.
Neither is a reality Dr. Bowen-Jallow struggles to believe. “You’re just used to that,” she told “Good Morning America” last week. While attending medical school at the University of Texas Medical Branch she encountered her first Black physician.
“I honestly had never thought about it before because there are so few of us, that’s always been my reality.”
The lack of diversity in the medical field was made even more real from her while she was completing her residency.
“A woman looked at me and asked if I was there to change the sheets,” she recalled of an incident that occurred. Even while clothed in her white physicians coat Jallow was not shielded from racism or the expectation of a Black person serving as the help.
“I was rather taken aback by that, but of course it wasn’t the first or the last slight I’ve ever encountered,” she recalled. But even dealing with being the only, or one of few, Black physicians in a room, or racial adversity in general was never able to sway her ambition.
Even enduring 17 years of higher education has been time well spent to the wife and mother of two young children. She shared, “You have to know where you come from and where you’re going. You must set yourself up for success. There is implicit bias. It’s not fair and it’s not right.”
Still, the dream of being a doctor, which first blossomed when she was only in second grade, has led her down a path of fulfillment.
“Working with children is instant gratification. If you perform a good operation, perfect your technique and pay attention to detail. Children will recover well,” she explained. “It fuels my soul, knowing I’m doing what I’ve been called to do.”
Dr. Bowen-Jallow is continuing to blaze the trail first scorched by Dr. Andrea Hayes-Jordan in 2004. While joining the elite ranks of Black medical professionals is a remarkable feat, the Texas native can’t help but to acknowledge how many more people from her background could be standing alongside her.
“There is a sense of sadness knowing how many others like me could have attained more, without implicit bias in the world; if minority students weren’t underrepresented in medical school,” she told Cook’s Children’s Pediatrics newsroom in March.
Dr. Bowen-Jallow works at Cook Children’s Hospital in the Dallas-Fort Worth region, where she performs various pediatric surgeries, excluding heart surgery. In 2019, the American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC) reported that 3 three percent of doctors identified as Black. The following year only 8 percent of medical students identified as Black.
Neither is a reality Dr. Bowen-Jallow struggles to believe. “You’re just used to that,” she told “Good Morning America” last week. While attending medical school at the University of Texas Medical Branch she encountered her first Black physician.
“I honestly had never thought about it before because there are so few of us, that’s always been my reality.”
The lack of diversity in the medical field was made even more real from her while she was completing her residency.
“A woman looked at me and asked if I was there to change the sheets,” she recalled of an incident that occurred. Even while clothed in her white physicians coat Jallow was not shielded from racism or the expectation of a Black person serving as the help.
“I was rather taken aback by that, but of course it wasn’t the first or the last slight I’ve ever encountered,” she recalled. But even dealing with being the only, or one of few, Black physicians in a room, or racial adversity in general was never able to sway her ambition.
Even enduring 17 years of higher education has been time well spent to the wife and mother of two young children. She shared, “You have to know where you come from and where you’re going. You must set yourself up for success. There is implicit bias. It’s not fair and it’s not right.”
Still, the dream of being a doctor, which first blossomed when she was only in second grade, has led her down a path of fulfillment.
“Working with children is instant gratification. If you perform a good operation, perfect your technique and pay attention to detail. Children will recover well,” she explained. “It fuels my soul, knowing I’m doing what I’ve been called to do.”
While Democrats Work on Infrastructure, Republicans Are Busy Defending Slavery
BY Sharon Zhang, Truthout
PUBLISHED May 5, 2021
As the nation grapples with fighting for racial justice and against police-perpetrated murders of Black Americans, Republicans have evidently found a different cause worth fighting for: making racist, seemingly unprompted defenses of slavery.
On Monday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) said that he doesn’t believe that 1619, the year that enslaved Africans first arrived in the U.S., is an important date in history. People have “exotic notions” about important points in U.S. history, and 1619 isn’t one of them, McConnell said.
“I just simply don’t think [racism is] part of the core underpinning of what American civic education ought to be about,” McConnell continued, speaking at the University of Louisville. McConnell has gone on a tirade against The New York Times’s 1619 Project about slavery in the U.S. and Democrats’ anti-racism agenda — though anti-anti-racism, as commentators have pointed out, is simply just racism.
Nikole Hannah-Jones, who headed the 1619 Project on slavery that has Republicans up in arms, spoke on CNN about McConnell’s comments. “This is not about the facts of history — it’s about trying to prohibit the teaching of ideas they don’t like,” she said.
Indeed, many Republicans have long embraced racism but have been emboldened by former President Donald Trump’s style of being openly and brazenly so — to the point that some political journalists have noted that the GOP wants to be called racist so that they can play the victim and claim to be silenced by anti-racists.
Perhaps that’s why Tennessee Republican State Rep. Justin Lafferty on Tuesday suggested that the Three-Fifths Compromise, which counted enslaved people as less than one whole person in population counts, was actually a good thing because it helped to end slavery. But it didn’t; it only further “sanctioned slavery more decidedly than any previous action,” as historian Staughton Lynd writes.
Or maybe it’s why Colorado Republican State Rep. Ron Hanks also defended the Three-Fifths Compromise last month, saying that it “was not impugning anybody’s humanity” to count an enslaved person as less than one human being.
Republicans evidently don’t believe that it was just some elements of slavery that were positive, however; Louisiana Republican State Rep. Ray Garofalo Jr. last week said that schools should teach “the good” of slavery alongside the bad. “If you are having a discussion on whatever the case may be, on slavery, then you can talk about everything dealing with slavery: the good, the bad, the ugly,” Garofalo said.
There is, of course, no “good” to slavery, and it’s abhorrently racist to suggest as such. Garofalo later retracted his statement, but only after Democrats circulated a video of him speaking on the “good” of slavery that now has nearly a million views.
Regardless of the GOP’s intentions, it’s no coincidence that they are raging an attack on anti-racism just as rallies and protests for Black lives have swept the country. Though the GOP’s overt defenses of slavery all happened in recent weeks, the right has been waging racist attacks prominently in the past year.
For months, the right has been railing against critical race theory — scholarly work with the goal of dismantling oppression and white supremacy — despite lacking a clear understanding of what it is. They are claiming that racism has been eradicated in the U.S. even as Black Americans face death at the hands of the state simply for walking down the street or while sleeping in their homes.
It’s evidently not enough for the GOP that racism is alive and well in the U.S. — the party seems to be operating on a mandate to enshrine racism in the nation forever — and normalizing defenses of slavery appear to be part of that strategy.
On Monday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) said that he doesn’t believe that 1619, the year that enslaved Africans first arrived in the U.S., is an important date in history. People have “exotic notions” about important points in U.S. history, and 1619 isn’t one of them, McConnell said.
“I just simply don’t think [racism is] part of the core underpinning of what American civic education ought to be about,” McConnell continued, speaking at the University of Louisville. McConnell has gone on a tirade against The New York Times’s 1619 Project about slavery in the U.S. and Democrats’ anti-racism agenda — though anti-anti-racism, as commentators have pointed out, is simply just racism.
Nikole Hannah-Jones, who headed the 1619 Project on slavery that has Republicans up in arms, spoke on CNN about McConnell’s comments. “This is not about the facts of history — it’s about trying to prohibit the teaching of ideas they don’t like,” she said.
Indeed, many Republicans have long embraced racism but have been emboldened by former President Donald Trump’s style of being openly and brazenly so — to the point that some political journalists have noted that the GOP wants to be called racist so that they can play the victim and claim to be silenced by anti-racists.
Perhaps that’s why Tennessee Republican State Rep. Justin Lafferty on Tuesday suggested that the Three-Fifths Compromise, which counted enslaved people as less than one whole person in population counts, was actually a good thing because it helped to end slavery. But it didn’t; it only further “sanctioned slavery more decidedly than any previous action,” as historian Staughton Lynd writes.
Or maybe it’s why Colorado Republican State Rep. Ron Hanks also defended the Three-Fifths Compromise last month, saying that it “was not impugning anybody’s humanity” to count an enslaved person as less than one human being.
Republicans evidently don’t believe that it was just some elements of slavery that were positive, however; Louisiana Republican State Rep. Ray Garofalo Jr. last week said that schools should teach “the good” of slavery alongside the bad. “If you are having a discussion on whatever the case may be, on slavery, then you can talk about everything dealing with slavery: the good, the bad, the ugly,” Garofalo said.
There is, of course, no “good” to slavery, and it’s abhorrently racist to suggest as such. Garofalo later retracted his statement, but only after Democrats circulated a video of him speaking on the “good” of slavery that now has nearly a million views.
Regardless of the GOP’s intentions, it’s no coincidence that they are raging an attack on anti-racism just as rallies and protests for Black lives have swept the country. Though the GOP’s overt defenses of slavery all happened in recent weeks, the right has been waging racist attacks prominently in the past year.
For months, the right has been railing against critical race theory — scholarly work with the goal of dismantling oppression and white supremacy — despite lacking a clear understanding of what it is. They are claiming that racism has been eradicated in the U.S. even as Black Americans face death at the hands of the state simply for walking down the street or while sleeping in their homes.
It’s evidently not enough for the GOP that racism is alive and well in the U.S. — the party seems to be operating on a mandate to enshrine racism in the nation forever — and normalizing defenses of slavery appear to be part of that strategy.
no surprise!!!
FACEBOOK TOLD BLACK APPLICANT WITH PH.D. SHE NEEDED TO SHOW SHE WAS A “CULTURE FIT”
“You wouldn’t like this job,” she says she was told. Facebook is only 3.9 percent Black and is facing an EEOC investigation.
Sam Biddle- the interceept
March 11 2021, 1:33 p.m.
A BLACK WOMAN passed over for a job at Facebook told federal regulators that even though she was exceptionally qualified for the position, she was rushed through interviews with entirely white staffers, told she wouldn’t like the job, and advised that the company wanted a strong “culture fit,” according to a complaint to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission provided to The Intercept.
The woman joins three others who have recently complained to the EEOC about anti-Black racism at Facebook. The agency has begun conducting a “systemic” probe of Facebook, looking into whether the company’s own policies further discrimination, Reuters reported earlier this month.
The complaint comes as evidence piles up that large Silicon Valley companies are not diversifying their predominately white and Asian work forces quickly enough, particularly within high-paying technical and managerial roles. Facebook’s latest diversity report, from July, stated that only 3.9 percent of its U.S. employees were Black and 6.3 percent Hispanic. Google said that in 2020 its U.S. staff was 5.5 percent Black and 6.6 percent Latinx, and, like Facebook, has faced repeated accusations of racist practices, including, just in the last week, that it de-prioritizes applicants from historically Black colleges and universities and that it pushes people who complain about racism to seek mental health care.
The woman, whose attorneys shared her complaint with The Intercept on the condition that she not be named, alleges she was “subjected to Facebook’s pattern or practice of discrimination against Black applicants” during a series of interviews for a managerial position at the company in 2020. In the complaint, filed in December, the applicant says her prior work experience and directly related doctoral degree made her particularly well-suited for the job: partnerships and program manager at Facebook’s Global Impact Partnerships. She adds that her experience and education were brought up only in an early interview with the position’s hiring manager, who she alleges told her, “You have a big brain, you wouldn’t like this job.”
“We believe it is essential to provide all employees with a respectful and safe working environment,” Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone told The Intercept. “We take any allegations of discrimination seriously and investigate every case.”
In the complaint, the applicant says she made it past the initial screening process and was granted further interviews, culminating in a round of in-person meetings with a group of all-white Facebook employees in San Francisco, during which she “sensed that the interviewers were not prioritizing her interviews because all of the interviews seemed rushed after making her wait for several hours.” The complaint notes that the applicant wasn’t interviewed by a single person of color and that the “only Black Facebook employee [she] encountered during the entire hiring process was a receptionist.”
She further alleges that during one of the in-person interviews in California, she was told, “There’s no doubt you can do the job, but we’re really looking for a culture fit.” The term “culture fit” is common in corporate tech culture, typically defined as the quality of hiring someone you’d want to hang out with socially or grab a beer with, but often criticized as little more than a euphemistic stand-in for racial or gender-based discrimination and a way for companies to deflect accusations of hiring bias. Given the overwhelming racial homogeneity of American tech companies and the pervasive belief that they require some sort of common vision of the future as much as any technical skill, determining what the “culture” in question even is or how one might “fit” into it can be impossible if an applicant doesn’t closely resemble a company’s founders or current staff.
Indeed, the applicant’s complaint states that Facebook’s “general policy of discrimination against Black applicants” is built partly on “Facebook’s strong consideration of ‘culture fit’ in hiring, without providing sufficient objective guidance to managers and other employees on how to determine which applicants and employees will be a good ‘culture fit’ at Facebook.”
The three other recent EEOC complaints about Facebook made similar allegations that Facebook relied on “culture fit” and evaluation by white and Asian employees to determine who made the cut. They were filed by Facebook employee Oscar Veneszee Jr. and by two applicants turned down for jobs. All four individuals are represented by attorneys from Gupta Wessler PLLC, Katz Marshall & Banks, and Mehri & Skalet.
The woman joins three others who have recently complained to the EEOC about anti-Black racism at Facebook. The agency has begun conducting a “systemic” probe of Facebook, looking into whether the company’s own policies further discrimination, Reuters reported earlier this month.
The complaint comes as evidence piles up that large Silicon Valley companies are not diversifying their predominately white and Asian work forces quickly enough, particularly within high-paying technical and managerial roles. Facebook’s latest diversity report, from July, stated that only 3.9 percent of its U.S. employees were Black and 6.3 percent Hispanic. Google said that in 2020 its U.S. staff was 5.5 percent Black and 6.6 percent Latinx, and, like Facebook, has faced repeated accusations of racist practices, including, just in the last week, that it de-prioritizes applicants from historically Black colleges and universities and that it pushes people who complain about racism to seek mental health care.
The woman, whose attorneys shared her complaint with The Intercept on the condition that she not be named, alleges she was “subjected to Facebook’s pattern or practice of discrimination against Black applicants” during a series of interviews for a managerial position at the company in 2020. In the complaint, filed in December, the applicant says her prior work experience and directly related doctoral degree made her particularly well-suited for the job: partnerships and program manager at Facebook’s Global Impact Partnerships. She adds that her experience and education were brought up only in an early interview with the position’s hiring manager, who she alleges told her, “You have a big brain, you wouldn’t like this job.”
“We believe it is essential to provide all employees with a respectful and safe working environment,” Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone told The Intercept. “We take any allegations of discrimination seriously and investigate every case.”
In the complaint, the applicant says she made it past the initial screening process and was granted further interviews, culminating in a round of in-person meetings with a group of all-white Facebook employees in San Francisco, during which she “sensed that the interviewers were not prioritizing her interviews because all of the interviews seemed rushed after making her wait for several hours.” The complaint notes that the applicant wasn’t interviewed by a single person of color and that the “only Black Facebook employee [she] encountered during the entire hiring process was a receptionist.”
She further alleges that during one of the in-person interviews in California, she was told, “There’s no doubt you can do the job, but we’re really looking for a culture fit.” The term “culture fit” is common in corporate tech culture, typically defined as the quality of hiring someone you’d want to hang out with socially or grab a beer with, but often criticized as little more than a euphemistic stand-in for racial or gender-based discrimination and a way for companies to deflect accusations of hiring bias. Given the overwhelming racial homogeneity of American tech companies and the pervasive belief that they require some sort of common vision of the future as much as any technical skill, determining what the “culture” in question even is or how one might “fit” into it can be impossible if an applicant doesn’t closely resemble a company’s founders or current staff.
Indeed, the applicant’s complaint states that Facebook’s “general policy of discrimination against Black applicants” is built partly on “Facebook’s strong consideration of ‘culture fit’ in hiring, without providing sufficient objective guidance to managers and other employees on how to determine which applicants and employees will be a good ‘culture fit’ at Facebook.”
The three other recent EEOC complaints about Facebook made similar allegations that Facebook relied on “culture fit” and evaluation by white and Asian employees to determine who made the cut. They were filed by Facebook employee Oscar Veneszee Jr. and by two applicants turned down for jobs. All four individuals are represented by attorneys from Gupta Wessler PLLC, Katz Marshall & Banks, and Mehri & Skalet.
Black History Month means grappling with the full legacy of racism in the US
Learning our history is about truth. But it is also about reconciliation: making amends for the pain caused to generations of Black Americans
RASHAWN RAY - the guardian
2/24/2021
In 1926, Carter G Woodson started “Negro History Week” to rectify the fact that Black people “were overlooked, ignored, and even suppressed by the writers of history textbooks and the teachers who use them”.
Woodson chose the second week of February because it coincided with the birthdates of President Abraham Lincoln and the slavery abolitionist Frederick Douglass. In 1970, Black educators and students at Kent State University began using the entire month of February to celebrate and recognize Black triumphs and tribulations. US presidents started to formally designate February as Black History Month in 1976. In recent years, other countries including Canada, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Ireland have formally recognized and celebrated the history of the African diaspora.
But the reality this Black History Month is that there are still numerous obstacles to real racial equity.
Republicans in several states recently threatened to remove funding from schools and colleges that teach the 1619 Project, the New York Times’ special project on the history of US slavery. Those Republicans would rather roll back the clock on racial progress than teach our children the truth about the founding – and continued state – of America.
We’re seeing an even more troubling trend concerning voting rights. Rather than embracing the fact that more Americans voted in the 2020 presidential election than in any other election in American history, some politicians, like state legislators in Georgia, want to inhibit access to the polls. This is a slap in the face to people such as the late Congressman John Lewis, who was beaten – bloodied but unbowed – by police as he marched for civil rights on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965. It’s also a slap in the face to the many Black people who had cigarettes burned into their skin and coffee poured on their heads as they simply tried to sit in diners and have a pastry. It is equally disrespectful to the Little Rock Nine, who helped integrate schools, and lawyers and activists like Thurgood Marshall and Charles Hamilton Houston, who worked tirelessly in the courts for the cause of desegregation.
It is easy to say that the conservative politicians fighting racial progress are misguided. But most of them understand perfectly well what they’re doing. This is who America was, and still is to this day. We must acknowledge the bitter irony of people storming the US Capitol to reclaim a building that was built on the backs of enslaved Black Americans.
Learning our history, then, is about truth. But it is also about reconciliation: making amends for the pain caused to generations of Black Americans. This is why it is so important that the state of California recently passed a truth and reconciliation bill. Like Princeton University and Georgetown University, the state of Virginia is requiring state universities to pay reparations for how slavery bolstered their endowments. Cities like Asheville, North Carolina, and Evanston, Illinois, have implemented various reparations plans. The state of Maryland has the Harriet Tubman Community Investment Act, which is being considered before the House of Delegates. US Congresswoman Barbara Lee has proposed a truth and reconciliation bill, while Congresswoman Sheila Jackson-Lee continues to advance reparation bill HR40. Cory Booker has introduced companion bills in the US Senate. These bills are a collective attempt to contend with the direct link between American slavery and the racial wealth gap today. (Federal land may provide part of the answer.)
We must bear witness to America’s rawness in all its glory and failures. Only then can we truly even start to engage in the process of reconciliation and monetary restitution for centuries of enslavement and systemic racism.
Black History Month is about recognition and celebration, but also about truth and reconciliation. We celebrate Vice-President Kamala Harris, while acknowledging the sacrifices of Shirley Chisholm. We celebrate Amanda Gorman, while acknowledging the legacy of Maya Angelou, who paved the way. We celebrate the success of Oprah Winfrey, while acknowledging that systemic racism and sexism have prevented thousands of other Oprahs from becoming successful. We celebrate the lives that Breonna Taylor saved as an EMT, while acknowledging how that very system of public safety badly failed her and perpetuates police profiling and brutality. We celebrate a shot or run by Black athletes on the field, while acknowledging all the investments they make to empower their communities off the court.
At heart, Black History Month is about celebrating the many Black firsts that are still occurring despite systemic barriers, while acknowledging that Black ancestors built much of the physical, economic and cultural foundation that the United States stands upon.
Woodson chose the second week of February because it coincided with the birthdates of President Abraham Lincoln and the slavery abolitionist Frederick Douglass. In 1970, Black educators and students at Kent State University began using the entire month of February to celebrate and recognize Black triumphs and tribulations. US presidents started to formally designate February as Black History Month in 1976. In recent years, other countries including Canada, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Ireland have formally recognized and celebrated the history of the African diaspora.
But the reality this Black History Month is that there are still numerous obstacles to real racial equity.
Republicans in several states recently threatened to remove funding from schools and colleges that teach the 1619 Project, the New York Times’ special project on the history of US slavery. Those Republicans would rather roll back the clock on racial progress than teach our children the truth about the founding – and continued state – of America.
We’re seeing an even more troubling trend concerning voting rights. Rather than embracing the fact that more Americans voted in the 2020 presidential election than in any other election in American history, some politicians, like state legislators in Georgia, want to inhibit access to the polls. This is a slap in the face to people such as the late Congressman John Lewis, who was beaten – bloodied but unbowed – by police as he marched for civil rights on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965. It’s also a slap in the face to the many Black people who had cigarettes burned into their skin and coffee poured on their heads as they simply tried to sit in diners and have a pastry. It is equally disrespectful to the Little Rock Nine, who helped integrate schools, and lawyers and activists like Thurgood Marshall and Charles Hamilton Houston, who worked tirelessly in the courts for the cause of desegregation.
It is easy to say that the conservative politicians fighting racial progress are misguided. But most of them understand perfectly well what they’re doing. This is who America was, and still is to this day. We must acknowledge the bitter irony of people storming the US Capitol to reclaim a building that was built on the backs of enslaved Black Americans.
Learning our history, then, is about truth. But it is also about reconciliation: making amends for the pain caused to generations of Black Americans. This is why it is so important that the state of California recently passed a truth and reconciliation bill. Like Princeton University and Georgetown University, the state of Virginia is requiring state universities to pay reparations for how slavery bolstered their endowments. Cities like Asheville, North Carolina, and Evanston, Illinois, have implemented various reparations plans. The state of Maryland has the Harriet Tubman Community Investment Act, which is being considered before the House of Delegates. US Congresswoman Barbara Lee has proposed a truth and reconciliation bill, while Congresswoman Sheila Jackson-Lee continues to advance reparation bill HR40. Cory Booker has introduced companion bills in the US Senate. These bills are a collective attempt to contend with the direct link between American slavery and the racial wealth gap today. (Federal land may provide part of the answer.)
We must bear witness to America’s rawness in all its glory and failures. Only then can we truly even start to engage in the process of reconciliation and monetary restitution for centuries of enslavement and systemic racism.
Black History Month is about recognition and celebration, but also about truth and reconciliation. We celebrate Vice-President Kamala Harris, while acknowledging the sacrifices of Shirley Chisholm. We celebrate Amanda Gorman, while acknowledging the legacy of Maya Angelou, who paved the way. We celebrate the success of Oprah Winfrey, while acknowledging that systemic racism and sexism have prevented thousands of other Oprahs from becoming successful. We celebrate the lives that Breonna Taylor saved as an EMT, while acknowledging how that very system of public safety badly failed her and perpetuates police profiling and brutality. We celebrate a shot or run by Black athletes on the field, while acknowledging all the investments they make to empower their communities off the court.
At heart, Black History Month is about celebrating the many Black firsts that are still occurring despite systemic barriers, while acknowledging that Black ancestors built much of the physical, economic and cultural foundation that the United States stands upon.
The Trump regime defends racism: At least they're being honest for once
The White House bans "critical race theory," of course — because any recognition of America's racism is forbidden
CHAUNCEY DEVEGA - SALON
SEPTEMBER 10, 2020 11:00AM (UTC)
Trumpism is built upon lies. This is a common feature of authoritarianism and fascism.
These lies includes tales of national greatness, the idea of "populism" and the "silent majority," the "will of the people," an appeal to a mythic past and dire threats from invisible enemies.
The lies are part of a larger war on reality and truth. The lies are told about matters both great and obvious as well as small and petty.
The authoritarian regime's lies help to create and sustain a cult of personality around the leader, a man who is depicted as perfect if not also immortal, an extension of the followers and their collective will to power and greatness.
Donald Trump may rank as one of history's greatest liars. Social theorist Hannah Arendt described such people in her book "The Origins of Totalitarianism":
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.
Trump's lies have been deadly: Considering the official count and those uncounted, at least 200,000 people have now died from the pandemic in the United States. There are projections that more than 400,000 people in America may die before the coronavirus runs its course. As documented in reporter Bob Woodward's new book "Rage," Trump's lies and deliberate sabotage of pandemic relief efforts are largely responsible for that tragedy.
The Trump regime's assault on the truth is more than just bending the truth in service to a fascist vision: It is an effort to replace reality with a nightmare dreamworld.
This is precisely what George Orwell described in "1984": "The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command."
There is one area where Donald Trump and his regime have been remarkably honest. They want to create a country where nonwhite people are silenced and their interests ignored, and where white people — specifically, white Christian conservative men — remain in control of every area of public life in perpetuity.
The TrumpWorld vision of America is bizarre, a form of apartheid where there is racism without racists, colorblindness in service to white supremacy, and neoliberalism and Christian nationalism are unopposed.
In an interview last Wednesday with NBC News, Attorney General William Barr provided an example of the Trump regime's "honest" racism when he said that there must be an explanation besides racism for why Black people are treated differently by police, as compared to white people.
With his absurd argument, Barr offered an almost textbook example of racism, in which the dominant group in a given society (in this instance, white people) is treated in a preferential way by the law, which is supposed to be neutral, as compared to another group of people (Black people) who have been oppressed in the same society.
Barr and the Trump regime see no problems with that logic. Why? They are committed to a set of values and beliefs in which nonwhite people are to be disadvantaged as a group because that is "normal." Likewise, white privilege is viewed as a natural birthright. In TrumpWorld, racism only exists to the degree that nonwhite people somehow "oppress" or otherwise hurt white people — even though white people control every area of American public life.
Barr's comments are part of a larger pattern of overt white supremacy by the Trump regime which includes banning Muslims from the United States; encouraging vigilantism and other violence by right-wing paramilitaries against the Trump regime's "enemies"; characterizing Hispanics and Latinos as a natural-born group of rapists and murderers; overturning civil rights laws and protections for black people and other nonwhites; imprisoning nonwhites, especially Hispanic and Latino refugees and migrants in concentration camps; criminalizing dissent and deeming supporters of Black Lives Matter to be "thugs," "terrorists" and members of a "hate group"; unleashing federal enforcers from ICE and Homeland Security to terrorize nonwhite communities; attempting to stop black and brown people from voting; respond sluggishly to the pandemic because nonwhite people in urban areas were dying in disproportionate numbers, compared to rural whites; and abandoning the people of Puerto Rico to the deadly ravages of Hurricane Maria.
Trump himself is a white supremacist (consciously or otherwise) who built his political career on the claim that Barack Obama was somehow not eligible to be president of the United States because he was supposedly born in another country. Trump has more recently told his followers that there is something inherently shameful and wrong about Sen. Kamala Harris, a black woman, potentially serving as vice president of the United States. Former Trump attorney Michael Cohen's new book includes many examples of Trump's pathological racism and hostility towards black people and other nonwhites.
The American people clearly hear and understand Donald Trump and his regime's invocations of white supremacy and racism. A recent story in the New York Times reports:
Public views of Mr. Trump flow through a racial prism. A poll by CBS News last week found that 66 percent of registered voters believed Mr. Trump favored white people, versus 4 percent who said he worked against their interests. By contrast, 20 percent thought he favored Black people and 50 percent said he worked against Black people. Among Black voters, 81 percent said he worked against their interests.
---
How should this new front in Trump's war on the truth, reality, and multiracial democracy be best understood? We should begin with the facts.
Critical race theory — the target of this new attack — is a set of theories, empirical frameworks and methods for understanding and demonstrating how institutional racism and other forms of social inequality are central to American law, justice and society more generally.
Some of critical race theory's core tenets include the following:
The Pulitzer Prize-winning 1619 Project intervenes against America's myth-making about the founding by making the color line, democracy, white-on-black chattel slavery, settler colonialism and capitalism central to the origins of the United States, rather than peripheral issues.
In TrumpWorld, as in the right-wing political imagination more broadly, none of these facts about critical race theory and the 1619 Project matter. As distorted through the white gaze, these things become bugaboos or empty signifiers, interpreted however the white right chooses to.
For example, critical race theory is being distorted as some type of conspiracy against white America in which "political correctness" brainwashes and programs "real Americans," almost as in the famous Cold War-era film "The Manchurian Candidate."
Republicans and other conservatives have a special obsession with the New York Times' 1619 Project because it shatters their immature understanding of the origins of a country which they claim to love — despite their loyalty to Donald Trump and his treasonous, fascist movement.
Writing at Al Jazeera, Yannick Giovanni Marshall diagnoses the white right's rage toward the 1619 Project:
As a result, the society built upon a gulag continues to be called a great experiment in democracy. Atrocities committed against non-white people are trivialised and reduced to "the imperfections" of an "imperfect nation". The tonnage of blood and flesh peeled from whipping posts, Black town burnings, and "Indian Wars" are but flecks of dust floating against a harmonious, pioneering white settlement destined to civilise the world.
More a Merkers Mine than a state, the slave colony where Black life was waterboarded between the threshing wheel of slave production and the thin air of "race riots" is, even in 2020, seen by many as the birthplace of modern liberty. This is because embedded in both the colony's structure — and in the minds of its admirers — is the fact that Black people do not count. If Black lives mattered, the lights shining from the shining city on the hill would be known to be concentration camp searchlights. If Black lives mattered, globally, America would be a pariah state.
The Trump regime's condemnation of critical race theory and the 1619 Project is another example of the power wielded by White House senior adviser Stephen Miller.
As detailed in journalist Jean Guerrero's new book "Hatemonger," Stephen Miller is fluent in the language, signs, codes, logic, literature, stories and symbols of neo-Nazism and other forms of white supremacy. It is no coincidence that the language used in the Trump regime's condemnation of critical race theory mirrors the white supremacist slogan that "anti-racism is anti-white." Such language reveals a supposition by white supremacists that to be white means to be inherently racist.
In reality, anti-racism is not a form oppression. If anything, it signifies liberation from racism and from the way racist values limit a person's and group's ability to be full members of the human family, working together with other people across the color line to make a better world.
The Trump regime's attacks on critical race theory and the 1619 Project show how today's conservative movement has mated racism and white supremacy with conspiracism. Such a relationship is not new.
As Paul Mason, a New Statesman columnist and former BBC news editor and commentator, told me in a recent phone conversation, the conspiratorial thinking of Trumpism and the white right (which now includes the QAnon cult) has deep connections with centuries of anti-Semitism and the legendary fabrication "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion."
Because the Trump regime is racist, white supremacist and authoritarian, it ultimately views anti-racism as a mortal enemy.
So the Trump regime's attacks on critical race theory and the 1619 Project are but another example of how, in TrumpWorld, critical thinking is not allowed, dissent is to be suppressed and thought-crimes that challenge its new orthodoxy are to be punished.
These lies includes tales of national greatness, the idea of "populism" and the "silent majority," the "will of the people," an appeal to a mythic past and dire threats from invisible enemies.
The lies are part of a larger war on reality and truth. The lies are told about matters both great and obvious as well as small and petty.
The authoritarian regime's lies help to create and sustain a cult of personality around the leader, a man who is depicted as perfect if not also immortal, an extension of the followers and their collective will to power and greatness.
Donald Trump may rank as one of history's greatest liars. Social theorist Hannah Arendt described such people in her book "The Origins of Totalitarianism":
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.
Trump's lies have been deadly: Considering the official count and those uncounted, at least 200,000 people have now died from the pandemic in the United States. There are projections that more than 400,000 people in America may die before the coronavirus runs its course. As documented in reporter Bob Woodward's new book "Rage," Trump's lies and deliberate sabotage of pandemic relief efforts are largely responsible for that tragedy.
The Trump regime's assault on the truth is more than just bending the truth in service to a fascist vision: It is an effort to replace reality with a nightmare dreamworld.
This is precisely what George Orwell described in "1984": "The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command."
There is one area where Donald Trump and his regime have been remarkably honest. They want to create a country where nonwhite people are silenced and their interests ignored, and where white people — specifically, white Christian conservative men — remain in control of every area of public life in perpetuity.
The TrumpWorld vision of America is bizarre, a form of apartheid where there is racism without racists, colorblindness in service to white supremacy, and neoliberalism and Christian nationalism are unopposed.
In an interview last Wednesday with NBC News, Attorney General William Barr provided an example of the Trump regime's "honest" racism when he said that there must be an explanation besides racism for why Black people are treated differently by police, as compared to white people.
With his absurd argument, Barr offered an almost textbook example of racism, in which the dominant group in a given society (in this instance, white people) is treated in a preferential way by the law, which is supposed to be neutral, as compared to another group of people (Black people) who have been oppressed in the same society.
Barr and the Trump regime see no problems with that logic. Why? They are committed to a set of values and beliefs in which nonwhite people are to be disadvantaged as a group because that is "normal." Likewise, white privilege is viewed as a natural birthright. In TrumpWorld, racism only exists to the degree that nonwhite people somehow "oppress" or otherwise hurt white people — even though white people control every area of American public life.
Barr's comments are part of a larger pattern of overt white supremacy by the Trump regime which includes banning Muslims from the United States; encouraging vigilantism and other violence by right-wing paramilitaries against the Trump regime's "enemies"; characterizing Hispanics and Latinos as a natural-born group of rapists and murderers; overturning civil rights laws and protections for black people and other nonwhites; imprisoning nonwhites, especially Hispanic and Latino refugees and migrants in concentration camps; criminalizing dissent and deeming supporters of Black Lives Matter to be "thugs," "terrorists" and members of a "hate group"; unleashing federal enforcers from ICE and Homeland Security to terrorize nonwhite communities; attempting to stop black and brown people from voting; respond sluggishly to the pandemic because nonwhite people in urban areas were dying in disproportionate numbers, compared to rural whites; and abandoning the people of Puerto Rico to the deadly ravages of Hurricane Maria.
Trump himself is a white supremacist (consciously or otherwise) who built his political career on the claim that Barack Obama was somehow not eligible to be president of the United States because he was supposedly born in another country. Trump has more recently told his followers that there is something inherently shameful and wrong about Sen. Kamala Harris, a black woman, potentially serving as vice president of the United States. Former Trump attorney Michael Cohen's new book includes many examples of Trump's pathological racism and hostility towards black people and other nonwhites.
The American people clearly hear and understand Donald Trump and his regime's invocations of white supremacy and racism. A recent story in the New York Times reports:
Public views of Mr. Trump flow through a racial prism. A poll by CBS News last week found that 66 percent of registered voters believed Mr. Trump favored white people, versus 4 percent who said he worked against their interests. By contrast, 20 percent thought he favored Black people and 50 percent said he worked against Black people. Among Black voters, 81 percent said he worked against their interests.
---
How should this new front in Trump's war on the truth, reality, and multiracial democracy be best understood? We should begin with the facts.
Critical race theory — the target of this new attack — is a set of theories, empirical frameworks and methods for understanding and demonstrating how institutional racism and other forms of social inequality are central to American law, justice and society more generally.
Some of critical race theory's core tenets include the following:
- Race is a social construct that overdetermines life chances and life outcomes for individuals and groups.
- Intersectionality: individuals have multiple personal and societal identities. These multiple identities overlap with one another and by doing so create opportunities for alliances, shared struggle and other social change work.
- Positive social change can occur because of interest convergence between elites, social movements and other actors.
- Whiteness and white people do in fact have a history and identity in the West and around the world. This identity reflects how power grants unearned privileges and advantages to white people as a group while denying it to nonwhite people.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning 1619 Project intervenes against America's myth-making about the founding by making the color line, democracy, white-on-black chattel slavery, settler colonialism and capitalism central to the origins of the United States, rather than peripheral issues.
In TrumpWorld, as in the right-wing political imagination more broadly, none of these facts about critical race theory and the 1619 Project matter. As distorted through the white gaze, these things become bugaboos or empty signifiers, interpreted however the white right chooses to.
For example, critical race theory is being distorted as some type of conspiracy against white America in which "political correctness" brainwashes and programs "real Americans," almost as in the famous Cold War-era film "The Manchurian Candidate."
Republicans and other conservatives have a special obsession with the New York Times' 1619 Project because it shatters their immature understanding of the origins of a country which they claim to love — despite their loyalty to Donald Trump and his treasonous, fascist movement.
Writing at Al Jazeera, Yannick Giovanni Marshall diagnoses the white right's rage toward the 1619 Project:
As a result, the society built upon a gulag continues to be called a great experiment in democracy. Atrocities committed against non-white people are trivialised and reduced to "the imperfections" of an "imperfect nation". The tonnage of blood and flesh peeled from whipping posts, Black town burnings, and "Indian Wars" are but flecks of dust floating against a harmonious, pioneering white settlement destined to civilise the world.
More a Merkers Mine than a state, the slave colony where Black life was waterboarded between the threshing wheel of slave production and the thin air of "race riots" is, even in 2020, seen by many as the birthplace of modern liberty. This is because embedded in both the colony's structure — and in the minds of its admirers — is the fact that Black people do not count. If Black lives mattered, the lights shining from the shining city on the hill would be known to be concentration camp searchlights. If Black lives mattered, globally, America would be a pariah state.
The Trump regime's condemnation of critical race theory and the 1619 Project is another example of the power wielded by White House senior adviser Stephen Miller.
As detailed in journalist Jean Guerrero's new book "Hatemonger," Stephen Miller is fluent in the language, signs, codes, logic, literature, stories and symbols of neo-Nazism and other forms of white supremacy. It is no coincidence that the language used in the Trump regime's condemnation of critical race theory mirrors the white supremacist slogan that "anti-racism is anti-white." Such language reveals a supposition by white supremacists that to be white means to be inherently racist.
In reality, anti-racism is not a form oppression. If anything, it signifies liberation from racism and from the way racist values limit a person's and group's ability to be full members of the human family, working together with other people across the color line to make a better world.
The Trump regime's attacks on critical race theory and the 1619 Project show how today's conservative movement has mated racism and white supremacy with conspiracism. Such a relationship is not new.
As Paul Mason, a New Statesman columnist and former BBC news editor and commentator, told me in a recent phone conversation, the conspiratorial thinking of Trumpism and the white right (which now includes the QAnon cult) has deep connections with centuries of anti-Semitism and the legendary fabrication "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion."
Because the Trump regime is racist, white supremacist and authoritarian, it ultimately views anti-racism as a mortal enemy.
So the Trump regime's attacks on critical race theory and the 1619 Project are but another example of how, in TrumpWorld, critical thinking is not allowed, dissent is to be suppressed and thought-crimes that challenge its new orthodoxy are to be punished.
no surprise, systemic racism!!!
McDonald's discriminates against Black franchisees, lawsuit claims
Jonathan Stempel, Bhargav Acharya - reuters
8/31/2020
(Reuters) - McDonald’s Corp has been sued by 52 Black former franchise owners who accused the fast-food giant of racial discrimination by steering them to depressed, crime-ridden neighborhoods and setting them up for failure.
In a complaint seeking up to $1 billion of damages, the plaintiffs said McDonald’s has not offered profitable restaurant locations and growth opportunities to Black franchisees on the same terms as white franchisees, belying its public commitment to diversity and Black entrepreneurship.
The plaintiffs said McDonald’s saddled them under its standard 20-year franchise agreements with stores requiring high security and insurance costs, and whose $2 million average annual sales from 2011 to 2016 were $700,000 below the nationwide norm. Bankruptcy often resulted, they said.
“It’s systematic placement in substandard locations, because they’re Black,” the plaintiffs’ lawyer Jim Ferraro said in a phone interview. “Revenue at McDonald’s is governed by one thing only: location.”
The lawsuit was filed in the federal court in Chicago, where McDonald’s is based.
McDonald’s denied treating Black franchisees differently, or that they were unable to succeed because of discrimination.
It also said that while it may recommend store locations, franchisees make the decisions.
“McDonald’s stands for diversity, equity and inclusion,” Chief Executive Chris Kempczinski said in a video to employees. “Our franchisee ranks should and must more closely reflect the increasingly diverse composition of this country and the world.”
The plaintiffs sued five weeks after McDonald’s updated its corporate values, pledging a greater focus on diversity.
More than 90% of McDonald’s 14,400 U.S. restaurants were recently operated by about 1,600 franchisees.
Ferraro, however, said the number of Black franchisees had fallen to 186 from 377 since 1998.
McDonald’s has denied claims in a separate discrimination lawsuit filed by two Black executives in January, also in Chicago.
Their allegations included that McDonald’s used harsh grading of stores and other “strong-arm” tactics that drove a disproportionate number of Black franchisees out of its system.
In a complaint seeking up to $1 billion of damages, the plaintiffs said McDonald’s has not offered profitable restaurant locations and growth opportunities to Black franchisees on the same terms as white franchisees, belying its public commitment to diversity and Black entrepreneurship.
The plaintiffs said McDonald’s saddled them under its standard 20-year franchise agreements with stores requiring high security and insurance costs, and whose $2 million average annual sales from 2011 to 2016 were $700,000 below the nationwide norm. Bankruptcy often resulted, they said.
“It’s systematic placement in substandard locations, because they’re Black,” the plaintiffs’ lawyer Jim Ferraro said in a phone interview. “Revenue at McDonald’s is governed by one thing only: location.”
The lawsuit was filed in the federal court in Chicago, where McDonald’s is based.
McDonald’s denied treating Black franchisees differently, or that they were unable to succeed because of discrimination.
It also said that while it may recommend store locations, franchisees make the decisions.
“McDonald’s stands for diversity, equity and inclusion,” Chief Executive Chris Kempczinski said in a video to employees. “Our franchisee ranks should and must more closely reflect the increasingly diverse composition of this country and the world.”
The plaintiffs sued five weeks after McDonald’s updated its corporate values, pledging a greater focus on diversity.
More than 90% of McDonald’s 14,400 U.S. restaurants were recently operated by about 1,600 franchisees.
Ferraro, however, said the number of Black franchisees had fallen to 186 from 377 since 1998.
McDonald’s has denied claims in a separate discrimination lawsuit filed by two Black executives in January, also in Chicago.
Their allegations included that McDonald’s used harsh grading of stores and other “strong-arm” tactics that drove a disproportionate number of Black franchisees out of its system.
Study Finds Black Newborns Have Higher Mortality Rates Under Care of White Doctors Than with Black Physicians
Niara Savage | atlanta black star
August 19, 2020
A new study has found that Black newborns have a significantly higher chance of dying under the care of white doctors when compared against those treated by Black doctors.
The study, which was published on Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, analyzed data from 1.8 million births in Florida between 1992 and 2015.
The death rate for Black newborns was reduced by between 39 percent and 58 percent when a Black doctor was in charge of their care as compared against those cared for by white doctors. The study authors found Black doctors caring for newborns saw a mortality rate of 463 deaths per 100,000 births, compared with 720 deaths per 100,000 births for Black newborns under the care of white doctors. At hospitals where more Black babies are delivered, these disparities were even more pronounced.
“The findings suggest that Black physicians outperform their White colleagues when caring for Black newborns,” the authors noted.
A correlation was not found between doctor’s race and the mortality rate of white babies.
Data continues to confirm that Black newborns remain three times more likely to die in than white newborns, but the recent study found that this mortality rate is cut when Black newborns are cared for by Black doctors.
The authors of the study did not offer an explanation for the disparities, but encouraged hospitals and organizations to “invest in efforts to reduce such biases and explore their connection to institutional racism.”
The mortality rate of Black mothers was not significantly impacted by the race of the physician treating them, the study found.
The study, which was published on Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, analyzed data from 1.8 million births in Florida between 1992 and 2015.
The death rate for Black newborns was reduced by between 39 percent and 58 percent when a Black doctor was in charge of their care as compared against those cared for by white doctors. The study authors found Black doctors caring for newborns saw a mortality rate of 463 deaths per 100,000 births, compared with 720 deaths per 100,000 births for Black newborns under the care of white doctors. At hospitals where more Black babies are delivered, these disparities were even more pronounced.
“The findings suggest that Black physicians outperform their White colleagues when caring for Black newborns,” the authors noted.
A correlation was not found between doctor’s race and the mortality rate of white babies.
Data continues to confirm that Black newborns remain three times more likely to die in than white newborns, but the recent study found that this mortality rate is cut when Black newborns are cared for by Black doctors.
The authors of the study did not offer an explanation for the disparities, but encouraged hospitals and organizations to “invest in efforts to reduce such biases and explore their connection to institutional racism.”
The mortality rate of Black mothers was not significantly impacted by the race of the physician treating them, the study found.
African Americans have long defied white supremacy and celebrated Black culture in public spaces
the conversation
August 11, 2020 8.10am EDT
From Richmond to New York City to Seattle, anti-racist activists are getting results as Confederate monuments are coming down by the dozens.
In Richmond, Virginia, protesters have changed the story of Lee Circle, home to a 130-year-old monument to Confederate General Robert E. Lee.
It’s now a new community space where graffiti, music and projected images turn the statue of Lee from a monument to white supremacy into a backdrop proclaiming that Black Lives Matter.
This isn’t a new phenomenon. I’m a historian of celebrations and protests after the Civil War. And in my research, I have found that long before Confederate monuments occupied city squares, African Americans used those same public spaces to celebrate their history.
But those African American memorial cultures have often been overshadowed by Confederate monuments that dominate public space and set in stone a white supremacist story of the past.
Black celebrations
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, African Americans had less power and money than whites did to erect statues to celebrate their past.
Instead, they challenged white dominance of public space using holidays, parades, conventions, mass meetings and other events. Black people used public celebrations such as Juneteenth to tell a positive story about their history, debate and set political goals for the community, applaud the role of Black soldiers and workers, and create a legacy and cultural identity for Black men, women and children.
These community celebrations helped guide Black protests and organizing after the Civil War and continue to inspire activists today.
Here are just a few of the ways African Americans challenged white dominance in public spaces:
• On July 4, 1866, Black people gathered in Richmond’s Capitol Square and decorated the statues of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and George Mason with garlands and flags – a radical act that a reporter from the Richmond Dispatch fumed was “a liberty which no white man ever yet presumed to take with Virginia’s great work of art.” By claiming the Founding Fathers as their own, African Americans protested against their exclusion from public space and citizenship.
• In 1867 Black men and women publicly assembled at a convention in Lexington, Kentucky, where political leader William F. Butler stated, “First we ha[d] the cartridge box, now we want the ballot box, and soon we will get the jury box. I don’t mean with our fists, but by standing up and demanding our rights.” Butler argued that Black men fought to maintain the Union, “but we were left without means of protecting ourselves….We need and must have the ballot box for that purpose.”
• A Baltimore procession in May 1870 celebrated the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment, which guaranteed Black men the right to vote. The event had more than 12,000 participants and 20,000 spectators. Newspapers called the procession “vast and magnificent in its appointments, gorgeous in its decorations, and noble in its purposes.” Participants carried banners reading, “Give us equal rights and we will protect ourselves,” and “Equity and justice goes hand in hand.”
These and other African American celebrations asserted their right to public spaces where previously enslaved people might have needed passes or were supposed to be invisible.
Monuments and power
For both Black and white residents, the actions they took to commemorate their cultures demonstrated the importance of residential and commercial spaces, such as city parks, neighborhoods and shopping districts, and especially official civic spaces such as city halls or courthouses.
White organizations raised hundreds of statues in public spaces, especially in the South, during the height of Confederate memorializing in the Jim Crow and civil rights eras.
White supremacist groups such as the United Daughters of the Confederacy erected these Confederate monuments to, in their words, “correct history” by celebrating the Lost Cause, the idea that slavery was a benevolent institution and the Confederate cause was just.
These monuments represented a way to remind African Americans that public spaces, public commemoration and public advancement were not for them.
And while protests that Confederate flags and monuments do not belong in public spaces have grown stronger since 2015, resistance is not new. African Americans have been protesting against Confederate monuments since they were erected.
In Charleston, South Carolina, Black citizens in the 1880s and 1890s mocked and defaced the original monument to John C. Calhoun, a South Carolina congressman and U.S. vice president, who defended slavery as a “positive good.”
Teacher and civil rights activist Mamie Garvin Fields remembered that as a child it seemed as if Calhoun’s statue was “looking you in the face and telling you … I am back to see you stay in your place.” She recalled bringing something to “scratch up the coat, break the watch chain, try to knock off the nose” – perhaps leading to its replacement in 1896 with a much taller monument.
In 1923 the United Daughters of the Confederacy urged Congress to fund a monument “to the faithful slave mammies of the South” in Washington, D.C. The National Association of Colored Women mobilized several Black activist organizations in letter-writing campaigns, petitions and editorials and crushed the plan. The monument was never built.
Turning away
White residents had the power to ignore Black residents’ commemorative activities.
Rather than watch the festivities or listen to Black speakers, they chose to leave town for the day, stay inside or express disgust among themselves. White people in Richmond celebrated the Fourth of July in the countryside, noted the Richmond Dispatch newspaper, “partly to enjoy the day’s relaxation from business and partly to avoid the spectacle which they could not have avoided witnessing had they remained at home.”
The Baltimore American newspaper noted that those who were too “thin-skinned” to see Black residents celebrating the Fifteenth Amendment shut their doors, “presenting the appearance that ‘nobody was in.’” White residents “refused to witness the procession, declaring they could not gaze upon such a humiliating scene.”
Remaking public space
In 2017, white supremacists gathered in Charlottesville, Virginia on Aug. 11-12 for the Unite the Right rally, ostensibly to protect a monument of Robert E. Lee.
It was a battle over what vision of America would prevail in public space in the 21st century.
Chanting “White lives matter” and “Jews will not replace us,” the white supremacists violently attacked counterprotesters.
Today, the tables are turned. Anti-racism protesters are transforming public space by tearing down Confederate monuments or demanding their removal. Years of activism combined with these same types of activities – mourning, celebration of Black pasts, public demands for the future, politics in the streets – have led to the removal of many Confederate monuments, despite the violence and fury of white supremacists.
Activists are telling a new story of African American history out of the relics of a white supremacist past, just as they did in public celebrations in the 19th century.
In Richmond, Virginia, protesters have changed the story of Lee Circle, home to a 130-year-old monument to Confederate General Robert E. Lee.
It’s now a new community space where graffiti, music and projected images turn the statue of Lee from a monument to white supremacy into a backdrop proclaiming that Black Lives Matter.
This isn’t a new phenomenon. I’m a historian of celebrations and protests after the Civil War. And in my research, I have found that long before Confederate monuments occupied city squares, African Americans used those same public spaces to celebrate their history.
But those African American memorial cultures have often been overshadowed by Confederate monuments that dominate public space and set in stone a white supremacist story of the past.
Black celebrations
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, African Americans had less power and money than whites did to erect statues to celebrate their past.
Instead, they challenged white dominance of public space using holidays, parades, conventions, mass meetings and other events. Black people used public celebrations such as Juneteenth to tell a positive story about their history, debate and set political goals for the community, applaud the role of Black soldiers and workers, and create a legacy and cultural identity for Black men, women and children.
These community celebrations helped guide Black protests and organizing after the Civil War and continue to inspire activists today.
Here are just a few of the ways African Americans challenged white dominance in public spaces:
• On July 4, 1866, Black people gathered in Richmond’s Capitol Square and decorated the statues of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and George Mason with garlands and flags – a radical act that a reporter from the Richmond Dispatch fumed was “a liberty which no white man ever yet presumed to take with Virginia’s great work of art.” By claiming the Founding Fathers as their own, African Americans protested against their exclusion from public space and citizenship.
• In 1867 Black men and women publicly assembled at a convention in Lexington, Kentucky, where political leader William F. Butler stated, “First we ha[d] the cartridge box, now we want the ballot box, and soon we will get the jury box. I don’t mean with our fists, but by standing up and demanding our rights.” Butler argued that Black men fought to maintain the Union, “but we were left without means of protecting ourselves….We need and must have the ballot box for that purpose.”
• A Baltimore procession in May 1870 celebrated the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment, which guaranteed Black men the right to vote. The event had more than 12,000 participants and 20,000 spectators. Newspapers called the procession “vast and magnificent in its appointments, gorgeous in its decorations, and noble in its purposes.” Participants carried banners reading, “Give us equal rights and we will protect ourselves,” and “Equity and justice goes hand in hand.”
These and other African American celebrations asserted their right to public spaces where previously enslaved people might have needed passes or were supposed to be invisible.
Monuments and power
For both Black and white residents, the actions they took to commemorate their cultures demonstrated the importance of residential and commercial spaces, such as city parks, neighborhoods and shopping districts, and especially official civic spaces such as city halls or courthouses.
White organizations raised hundreds of statues in public spaces, especially in the South, during the height of Confederate memorializing in the Jim Crow and civil rights eras.
White supremacist groups such as the United Daughters of the Confederacy erected these Confederate monuments to, in their words, “correct history” by celebrating the Lost Cause, the idea that slavery was a benevolent institution and the Confederate cause was just.
These monuments represented a way to remind African Americans that public spaces, public commemoration and public advancement were not for them.
And while protests that Confederate flags and monuments do not belong in public spaces have grown stronger since 2015, resistance is not new. African Americans have been protesting against Confederate monuments since they were erected.
In Charleston, South Carolina, Black citizens in the 1880s and 1890s mocked and defaced the original monument to John C. Calhoun, a South Carolina congressman and U.S. vice president, who defended slavery as a “positive good.”
Teacher and civil rights activist Mamie Garvin Fields remembered that as a child it seemed as if Calhoun’s statue was “looking you in the face and telling you … I am back to see you stay in your place.” She recalled bringing something to “scratch up the coat, break the watch chain, try to knock off the nose” – perhaps leading to its replacement in 1896 with a much taller monument.
In 1923 the United Daughters of the Confederacy urged Congress to fund a monument “to the faithful slave mammies of the South” in Washington, D.C. The National Association of Colored Women mobilized several Black activist organizations in letter-writing campaigns, petitions and editorials and crushed the plan. The monument was never built.
Turning away
White residents had the power to ignore Black residents’ commemorative activities.
Rather than watch the festivities or listen to Black speakers, they chose to leave town for the day, stay inside or express disgust among themselves. White people in Richmond celebrated the Fourth of July in the countryside, noted the Richmond Dispatch newspaper, “partly to enjoy the day’s relaxation from business and partly to avoid the spectacle which they could not have avoided witnessing had they remained at home.”
The Baltimore American newspaper noted that those who were too “thin-skinned” to see Black residents celebrating the Fifteenth Amendment shut their doors, “presenting the appearance that ‘nobody was in.’” White residents “refused to witness the procession, declaring they could not gaze upon such a humiliating scene.”
Remaking public space
In 2017, white supremacists gathered in Charlottesville, Virginia on Aug. 11-12 for the Unite the Right rally, ostensibly to protect a monument of Robert E. Lee.
It was a battle over what vision of America would prevail in public space in the 21st century.
Chanting “White lives matter” and “Jews will not replace us,” the white supremacists violently attacked counterprotesters.
Today, the tables are turned. Anti-racism protesters are transforming public space by tearing down Confederate monuments or demanding their removal. Years of activism combined with these same types of activities – mourning, celebration of Black pasts, public demands for the future, politics in the streets – have led to the removal of many Confederate monuments, despite the violence and fury of white supremacists.
Activists are telling a new story of African American history out of the relics of a white supremacist past, just as they did in public celebrations in the 19th century.
A REUTERS INVESTIGATION
Rite Aid deployed facial recognition systems in hundreds of U.S. stores
By JEFFREY DASTIN in LOS ANGELES and NEW YORK CITY
July 28, 2020, 11 a.m. GMT
In the hearts of New York and metro Los Angeles, Rite Aid installed facial recognition technology in largely lower-income, non-white neighborhoods, Reuters found. Among the technology the U.S. retailer used: a state-of-the-art system from a company with links to China and its authoritarian government.
Over about eight years, the American drugstore chain Rite Aid Corp quietly added facial recognition systems to 200 stores across the United States, in one of the largest rollouts of such technology among retailers in the country, a Reuters investigation found.
In the hearts of New York and metro Los Angeles, Rite Aid deployed the technology in largely lower-income, non-white neighborhoods, according to a Reuters analysis. And for more than a year, the retailer used state-of-the-art facial recognition technology from a company with links to China and its authoritarian government.
In telephone and email exchanges with Reuters since February, Rite Aid confirmed the existence and breadth of its facial recognition program. The retailer defended the technology’s use, saying it had nothing to do with race and was intended to deter theft and protect staff and customers from violence. Reuters found no evidence that Rite Aid’s data was sent to China.
Last week, however, after Reuters sent its findings to the retailer, Rite Aid said it had quit using its facial recognition software. It later said all the cameras had been turned off.
“This decision was in part based on a larger industry conversation,” the company told Reuters in a statement, adding that “other large technology companies seem to be scaling back or rethinking their efforts around facial recognition given increasing uncertainty around the technology’s utility.”
Reuters pieced together how the company’s initiative evolved, how the software has been used and how a recent vendor was linked to China, drawing on thousands of pages of internal documents from Rite Aid and its suppliers, as well as direct observations during store visits by Reuters journalists and interviews with more than 40 people familiar with the systems’ deployment. Most current and former employees spoke on condition of anonymity, saying they feared jeopardizing their careers.
While Rite Aid declined to disclose which locations used the technology, Reuters found facial recognition cameras at 33 of the 75 Rite Aid shops in Manhattan and the central Los Angeles metropolitan area during one or more visits from October through July.
The cameras were easily recognizable, hanging from the ceiling on poles near store entrances and in cosmetics aisles. Most were about half a foot long, rectangular and labeled either by their model, “iHD23,” or by a serial number including the vendor’s initials, “DC.” In a few stores, security personnel – known as loss prevention or asset protection agents – showed Reuters how they worked.
The cameras matched facial images of customers entering a store to those of people Rite Aid previously observed engaging in potential criminal activity, causing an alert to be sent to security agents’ smartphones. Agents then reviewed the match for accuracy and could tell the customer to leave.
Rite Aid told Reuters in a February statement that customers had been apprised of the technology through “signage” at the shops, as well as in a written policy posted this year on its website. Reporters found no notice of the surveillance in more than a third of the stores it visited with the facial recognition cameras.
Among the 75 stores Reuters visited, those in areas that were poorer or less white were much more likely to have the equipment, the news agency’s statistical analysis found.
Stores in more impoverished areas were nearly three times as likely as those in richer areas to have facial recognition cameras. Seventeen of 25 stores in poorer areas had the systems. In wealthier areas, it was 10 of 40. (Ten of the stores were in areas whose wealth status was not clear. Six of those stores had the equipment.)
In areas where people of color, including Black or Latino residents, made up the largest racial or ethnic group, Reuters found that stores were more than three times as likely to have the technology.
The Reuters findings illustrate “the dire need for a national conversation about privacy, consumer education, transparency, and the need to safeguard the Constitutional rights of Americans,” said Carolyn Maloney, the Democratic chairwoman of the House oversight committee, which has held hearings on the use of facial recognition technology.
Rite Aid said the rollout was “data-driven,” based on stores’ theft histories, local and national crime data and site infrastructure.
Cathy Langley, Rite Aid’s vice president of asset protection, said earlier this year that facial recognition – which she referred to as “feature matching” – resulted in less violence and organized crime in the company’s stores. Last week, however, Rite Aid said its new leadership team was reviewing practices across the company, and “this was one of a number of programs that was terminated.”
‘Orwellian surveillance’
Facial recognition technology has become highly controversial in the United States as its use has expanded in both the public and private sectors, including by law enforcement and retailers. Civil liberties advocates warn it can lead to harassment of innocent individuals, arbitrary and discriminatory arrests, infringements of privacy rights and chilled personal expression.
Adding to these concerns, recent research by a U.S. government institute showed that algorithms that underpin the technology erred more often when subjects had darker skin tones.
Facial recognition systems are largely unregulated in the United States, despite disclosure or consent requirements, or limits on government use, in several states, including California, Washington, Texas and Illinois. Some cities, including San Francisco, ban municipal officials from using them. In general, the technology makes photos and videos more readily searchable, allowing retailers almost instantaneous facial comparisons within and across stores.[...]
Over about eight years, the American drugstore chain Rite Aid Corp quietly added facial recognition systems to 200 stores across the United States, in one of the largest rollouts of such technology among retailers in the country, a Reuters investigation found.
In the hearts of New York and metro Los Angeles, Rite Aid deployed the technology in largely lower-income, non-white neighborhoods, according to a Reuters analysis. And for more than a year, the retailer used state-of-the-art facial recognition technology from a company with links to China and its authoritarian government.
In telephone and email exchanges with Reuters since February, Rite Aid confirmed the existence and breadth of its facial recognition program. The retailer defended the technology’s use, saying it had nothing to do with race and was intended to deter theft and protect staff and customers from violence. Reuters found no evidence that Rite Aid’s data was sent to China.
Last week, however, after Reuters sent its findings to the retailer, Rite Aid said it had quit using its facial recognition software. It later said all the cameras had been turned off.
“This decision was in part based on a larger industry conversation,” the company told Reuters in a statement, adding that “other large technology companies seem to be scaling back or rethinking their efforts around facial recognition given increasing uncertainty around the technology’s utility.”
Reuters pieced together how the company’s initiative evolved, how the software has been used and how a recent vendor was linked to China, drawing on thousands of pages of internal documents from Rite Aid and its suppliers, as well as direct observations during store visits by Reuters journalists and interviews with more than 40 people familiar with the systems’ deployment. Most current and former employees spoke on condition of anonymity, saying they feared jeopardizing their careers.
While Rite Aid declined to disclose which locations used the technology, Reuters found facial recognition cameras at 33 of the 75 Rite Aid shops in Manhattan and the central Los Angeles metropolitan area during one or more visits from October through July.
The cameras were easily recognizable, hanging from the ceiling on poles near store entrances and in cosmetics aisles. Most were about half a foot long, rectangular and labeled either by their model, “iHD23,” or by a serial number including the vendor’s initials, “DC.” In a few stores, security personnel – known as loss prevention or asset protection agents – showed Reuters how they worked.
The cameras matched facial images of customers entering a store to those of people Rite Aid previously observed engaging in potential criminal activity, causing an alert to be sent to security agents’ smartphones. Agents then reviewed the match for accuracy and could tell the customer to leave.
Rite Aid told Reuters in a February statement that customers had been apprised of the technology through “signage” at the shops, as well as in a written policy posted this year on its website. Reporters found no notice of the surveillance in more than a third of the stores it visited with the facial recognition cameras.
Among the 75 stores Reuters visited, those in areas that were poorer or less white were much more likely to have the equipment, the news agency’s statistical analysis found.
Stores in more impoverished areas were nearly three times as likely as those in richer areas to have facial recognition cameras. Seventeen of 25 stores in poorer areas had the systems. In wealthier areas, it was 10 of 40. (Ten of the stores were in areas whose wealth status was not clear. Six of those stores had the equipment.)
In areas where people of color, including Black or Latino residents, made up the largest racial or ethnic group, Reuters found that stores were more than three times as likely to have the technology.
The Reuters findings illustrate “the dire need for a national conversation about privacy, consumer education, transparency, and the need to safeguard the Constitutional rights of Americans,” said Carolyn Maloney, the Democratic chairwoman of the House oversight committee, which has held hearings on the use of facial recognition technology.
Rite Aid said the rollout was “data-driven,” based on stores’ theft histories, local and national crime data and site infrastructure.
Cathy Langley, Rite Aid’s vice president of asset protection, said earlier this year that facial recognition – which she referred to as “feature matching” – resulted in less violence and organized crime in the company’s stores. Last week, however, Rite Aid said its new leadership team was reviewing practices across the company, and “this was one of a number of programs that was terminated.”
‘Orwellian surveillance’
Facial recognition technology has become highly controversial in the United States as its use has expanded in both the public and private sectors, including by law enforcement and retailers. Civil liberties advocates warn it can lead to harassment of innocent individuals, arbitrary and discriminatory arrests, infringements of privacy rights and chilled personal expression.
Adding to these concerns, recent research by a U.S. government institute showed that algorithms that underpin the technology erred more often when subjects had darker skin tones.
Facial recognition systems are largely unregulated in the United States, despite disclosure or consent requirements, or limits on government use, in several states, including California, Washington, Texas and Illinois. Some cities, including San Francisco, ban municipal officials from using them. In general, the technology makes photos and videos more readily searchable, allowing retailers almost instantaneous facial comparisons within and across stores.[...]
A Letter to My Nephew
James Baldwin's thoughts on his nephew's future—in a country with a terrible history of racism— first appeared in The Progressive magazine in 1962. Over 50 years later his words are as powerful as ever.
by James Baldwin - the progressive
December 1, 1962
James Baldwin's thoughts on his nephew's future—in a country with a terrible history of racism— first appeared in The Progressive magazine in 1962. Over 50 years later his words are, sadly, more relevant than ever.
...Now, my dear namesake, these innocent and well meaning people, your countrymen, have caused you to be born under conditions not far removed from those described for us by Charles Dickens in the London of more than a hundred years ago. I hear the chorus of the innocents screaming, "No, this is not true. How bitter you are," but I am writing this letter to you to try to tell you something about how to handle them, for most of them do not yet really know that you exist. I know the conditions under which you were born for I was there. Your countrymen were not there and haven't made it yet. Your grandmother was also there and no one has ever accused her of being bitter. I suggest that the innocent check with her. She isn't hard to find. Your countrymen don't know that she exists either, though she has been working for them all their lives.
Well, you were born; here you came, something like fifteen years ago, and though your father and mother and grandmother, looking about the streets through which they were carrying you, staring at the walls into which they brought you, had every reason to be heavy-hearted, yet they were not, for here you were, big James, named for me. You were a big baby. I was not. Here you were to be loved. To be loved, baby, hard at once and forever to strengthen you against the loveless world. Remember that. I know how black it looks today for you. It looked black that day too. Yes, we were trembling. We have not stopped trembling yet, but if we had not loved each other, none of us would have survived, and now you must survive because we love you and for the sake of your children and your children's children.
This innocent country set you down in a ghetto in which, in fact, it intended that you should perish. Let me spell out precisely what I mean by that for the heart of the matter is here and the crux of my dispute with my country. You were born where you were born and faced the future that you faced because you were black and for no other reason. The limits to your ambition were thus expected to be settled. You were born into a society which spelled out with brutal clarity and in as many ways as possible that you were a worthless human being. You were not expected to aspire to excellence. You were expected to make peace with mediocrity. Wherever you have turned, James, in your short time on this earth, you have been told where you could go and what you could do and how you could do it, where you could live and whom you could marry.
Iknow your countrymen do not agree with me here and I hear them. saying, "You exaggerate." They do not know Harlem and I do. So do you. Take no one's word for anything, including mine, but trust your experience. Know whence you came. If you know whence you came, there is really no limit to where you can go. The details and symbols of your life have been deliberately constructed to make you believe what white people say about you. Please try to remember that what they believe, as well as what they do and cause you to endure, does not testify to your inferiority, but to their inhumanity and fear.
Please try to be clear, dear James, through the storm which rages about your youthful head today, about the reality which lies behind the words "acceptance" and "integration." There is no reason for you to try to become like white men and there is no basis whatever for their impertinent assumption that they must accept you. The really terrible thing, old buddy, is that you must accept them, and I mean that very seriously. You must accept them and accept them with love, for these innocent people have no other hope. They are in effect still trapped in a history which they do not understand and until they understand it, they cannot be released from it. They have had to believe for many years, and for innumerable reasons, that black men are inferior to white men.
Many of them indeed know better, but as you will discover, people find it very difficult to act on what they know. To act is to be committed and to be committed is to be in danger. In this case the danger in the minds and hearts of most white Americans is the loss of their identity. Try to imagine how you would feel if you woke up one morning to find the sun shivering and all the stars aflame. You would be frightened because it is out of the order of nature. Any upheaval in the universe is terrifying because it so profoundly attacks one's sense of one's own reality. Well, the black man has functioned in the white man's world as a fixed star, as an immovable pillar, and as he moves out of his place, heaven and earth are shaken to their foundations.
You don't be afraid. I said it was intended that you should perish, in the ghetto, perish by never being allowed to go beyond and behind the white man's definition, by never being allowed to spell your proper name. You have, and many of us have, defeated this intention and by a terrible law, a terrible paradox, those innocents who believed that your imprisonment made them safe are losing their grasp of reality. But these men are your brothers, your lost younger brothers, and if the word "integration" means anything, this is what it means, that we with love shall force our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it, for this is your home, my friend. Do not be driven from it. Great men have done great things here and will again and we can make America what America must become.
It will be hard, James, but you come from sturdy peasant stock, men who picked cotton, dammed rivers, built railroads, and in the teeth of the most terrifying odds, achieved an unassailable and monumental dignity. You come from a long line of great poets, some of the greatest poets since Homer. One of them said, "The very time I thought I was lost, my dungeon shook and my chains fell off."
You know and I know that the country is celebrating one hundred years of freedom one hundred years too early. We cannot be free until they are free. God bless you, James, and Godspeed.
Your uncle,
James
Well, you were born; here you came, something like fifteen years ago, and though your father and mother and grandmother, looking about the streets through which they were carrying you, staring at the walls into which they brought you, had every reason to be heavy-hearted, yet they were not, for here you were, big James, named for me. You were a big baby. I was not. Here you were to be loved. To be loved, baby, hard at once and forever to strengthen you against the loveless world. Remember that. I know how black it looks today for you. It looked black that day too. Yes, we were trembling. We have not stopped trembling yet, but if we had not loved each other, none of us would have survived, and now you must survive because we love you and for the sake of your children and your children's children.
This innocent country set you down in a ghetto in which, in fact, it intended that you should perish. Let me spell out precisely what I mean by that for the heart of the matter is here and the crux of my dispute with my country. You were born where you were born and faced the future that you faced because you were black and for no other reason. The limits to your ambition were thus expected to be settled. You were born into a society which spelled out with brutal clarity and in as many ways as possible that you were a worthless human being. You were not expected to aspire to excellence. You were expected to make peace with mediocrity. Wherever you have turned, James, in your short time on this earth, you have been told where you could go and what you could do and how you could do it, where you could live and whom you could marry.
Iknow your countrymen do not agree with me here and I hear them. saying, "You exaggerate." They do not know Harlem and I do. So do you. Take no one's word for anything, including mine, but trust your experience. Know whence you came. If you know whence you came, there is really no limit to where you can go. The details and symbols of your life have been deliberately constructed to make you believe what white people say about you. Please try to remember that what they believe, as well as what they do and cause you to endure, does not testify to your inferiority, but to their inhumanity and fear.
Please try to be clear, dear James, through the storm which rages about your youthful head today, about the reality which lies behind the words "acceptance" and "integration." There is no reason for you to try to become like white men and there is no basis whatever for their impertinent assumption that they must accept you. The really terrible thing, old buddy, is that you must accept them, and I mean that very seriously. You must accept them and accept them with love, for these innocent people have no other hope. They are in effect still trapped in a history which they do not understand and until they understand it, they cannot be released from it. They have had to believe for many years, and for innumerable reasons, that black men are inferior to white men.
Many of them indeed know better, but as you will discover, people find it very difficult to act on what they know. To act is to be committed and to be committed is to be in danger. In this case the danger in the minds and hearts of most white Americans is the loss of their identity. Try to imagine how you would feel if you woke up one morning to find the sun shivering and all the stars aflame. You would be frightened because it is out of the order of nature. Any upheaval in the universe is terrifying because it so profoundly attacks one's sense of one's own reality. Well, the black man has functioned in the white man's world as a fixed star, as an immovable pillar, and as he moves out of his place, heaven and earth are shaken to their foundations.
You don't be afraid. I said it was intended that you should perish, in the ghetto, perish by never being allowed to go beyond and behind the white man's definition, by never being allowed to spell your proper name. You have, and many of us have, defeated this intention and by a terrible law, a terrible paradox, those innocents who believed that your imprisonment made them safe are losing their grasp of reality. But these men are your brothers, your lost younger brothers, and if the word "integration" means anything, this is what it means, that we with love shall force our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it, for this is your home, my friend. Do not be driven from it. Great men have done great things here and will again and we can make America what America must become.
It will be hard, James, but you come from sturdy peasant stock, men who picked cotton, dammed rivers, built railroads, and in the teeth of the most terrifying odds, achieved an unassailable and monumental dignity. You come from a long line of great poets, some of the greatest poets since Homer. One of them said, "The very time I thought I was lost, my dungeon shook and my chains fell off."
You know and I know that the country is celebrating one hundred years of freedom one hundred years too early. We cannot be free until they are free. God bless you, James, and Godspeed.
Your uncle,
James
Asian and Black Americans report heightened discrimination amid coronavirus outbreak, poll finds
By Maya King - politico
7/1/2020
The spread of the coronavirus has increased racial tensions across the country and Asian and African-Americans are facing the worst of it, according to findings from a new survey released on Wednesday.
In the study, conducted by the Pew Research Center, 40 percent of Black and Asian-American adults said they have been treated differently or subjected to slurs or jokes as a result of the pandemic. A plurality of both groups also expressed anxiety about wearing a mask in public out of fears that they would be viewed as a threat or physically attacked.
Pew’s findings come as the White House has increasingly used anti-Asian talking points regarding the outbreak of Covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. President Donald Trump has repeatedly blamed China for the global spread of the virus, referring to it as the “Chinese virus” or “kung flu” during recent rallies and press conferences.
“It’s hard to attribute causality, but what we can say is that many Asian-Americans feel they have been subject to slurs or jokes because of their race or ethnicity since the outbreak,” said Neil Ruiz, Associate Director of Global Migration and Demography at Pew, who co-authored the report. “This may be drawing on their own experiences for those people who [say] they know it's become more common for people to express racist views towards Asian-Americans."
Asian-Americans were more likely than any other racial group to report being subject to verbal abuse since the pandemic began. One-third said they had been subject to slurs compared to 21 percent of Black adults, 15 percent of Latinos and 9 percent of whites surveyed.
People of Asian descent have reported incidents of racism in larger numbers since the outbreak began. The Asian hate crime watchdog Stop AAPI Hate has reported a steep rise in reported incidents since March, with nearly 1,000 cases over the past 12 weeks.
African-Americans, who are at a greater risk of contracting and dying from the virus, say they have faced more discrimination since before the pandemic began. According to the survey, 38 percent said that others have acted as though they were uncomfortable around them, compared to 13 percent of white adults.
The survey was conducted June 4-10, at the height of protests in the wake of George Floyd’s death in police custody. Researchers say this likely impacted metrics: At the same time that Black respondents expressed discomfort around public perception of their masking up, over 50 percent said they have received support from others because of their race and ethnicity.
The findings also reveal significant age gaps: 30 percent of Black adults under 50 said they feared being physically attacked while 9 percent of older Black adults shared that concern. The split, Ruiz explained, likely owes to the fact that larger numbers of older adults are staying home and avoiding crowds.
In addition, three-in-ten adults across racial groups say that racist sentiment towards Asian and Black Americans have increased since the coronavirus began. More than half of those surveyed who identify as Democrats agreed with the uptick, compared with 25% of Republicans.
There is no concrete evidence to suggest that sentiments may continue to grow as the coronavirus spreads and more Americans are encouraged to wear masks. However, the uptick in racist sentiments from before the virus' spread to its current point is a trend Ruiz said he will continuing to monitor.
In the study, conducted by the Pew Research Center, 40 percent of Black and Asian-American adults said they have been treated differently or subjected to slurs or jokes as a result of the pandemic. A plurality of both groups also expressed anxiety about wearing a mask in public out of fears that they would be viewed as a threat or physically attacked.
Pew’s findings come as the White House has increasingly used anti-Asian talking points regarding the outbreak of Covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. President Donald Trump has repeatedly blamed China for the global spread of the virus, referring to it as the “Chinese virus” or “kung flu” during recent rallies and press conferences.
“It’s hard to attribute causality, but what we can say is that many Asian-Americans feel they have been subject to slurs or jokes because of their race or ethnicity since the outbreak,” said Neil Ruiz, Associate Director of Global Migration and Demography at Pew, who co-authored the report. “This may be drawing on their own experiences for those people who [say] they know it's become more common for people to express racist views towards Asian-Americans."
Asian-Americans were more likely than any other racial group to report being subject to verbal abuse since the pandemic began. One-third said they had been subject to slurs compared to 21 percent of Black adults, 15 percent of Latinos and 9 percent of whites surveyed.
People of Asian descent have reported incidents of racism in larger numbers since the outbreak began. The Asian hate crime watchdog Stop AAPI Hate has reported a steep rise in reported incidents since March, with nearly 1,000 cases over the past 12 weeks.
African-Americans, who are at a greater risk of contracting and dying from the virus, say they have faced more discrimination since before the pandemic began. According to the survey, 38 percent said that others have acted as though they were uncomfortable around them, compared to 13 percent of white adults.
The survey was conducted June 4-10, at the height of protests in the wake of George Floyd’s death in police custody. Researchers say this likely impacted metrics: At the same time that Black respondents expressed discomfort around public perception of their masking up, over 50 percent said they have received support from others because of their race and ethnicity.
The findings also reveal significant age gaps: 30 percent of Black adults under 50 said they feared being physically attacked while 9 percent of older Black adults shared that concern. The split, Ruiz explained, likely owes to the fact that larger numbers of older adults are staying home and avoiding crowds.
In addition, three-in-ten adults across racial groups say that racist sentiment towards Asian and Black Americans have increased since the coronavirus began. More than half of those surveyed who identify as Democrats agreed with the uptick, compared with 25% of Republicans.
There is no concrete evidence to suggest that sentiments may continue to grow as the coronavirus spreads and more Americans are encouraged to wear masks. However, the uptick in racist sentiments from before the virus' spread to its current point is a trend Ruiz said he will continuing to monitor.
Opinion
FBI
The FBI has a history of targeting black activists. That's still true today
The FBI has long disrupted and discredited civil rights leaders. It should put its authorities to better use by holding officers accountable
MIKE GERMAN - the guardian
Fri 26 Jun 2020 06.59 EDT
Throughout its history, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has viewed Black activism as a potential national security threat. It has used its ample investigative powers not to suppress violence, but to inhibit the speech and association rights of Black activists. And its reaction to the protests following the police killings of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd shows little has changed.
In October 1919, a young J Edgar Hoover, director of the Bureau of Investigation’s general intelligence division, targeted “Black Moses” Marcus Garvey for investigation and harassment because of his alleged association with “radical elements” that were “agitating the Negro movement”. Hoover admitted Garvey had violated no federal laws. But the bureau, the precursor organization to the FBI, infiltrated Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association with informant provocateurs and undercover agents who searched for years for any charge that could justify his deportation.
The justice department ultimately won a conviction against Garvey on a dubious mail fraud charge in 1923. Meanwhile, white vigilantes, police and soldiers targeted Black communities with violence during this period, which included the Red Summer of 1919, the Tulsa massacre of 1921 and scores of lynchings, did not receive the same focused attention from Hoover’s agents.
The FBI used similar tactics to disrupt, discredit and neutralize leaders of the civil rights and anti-war movements of the 1960s. The FBI’s Cointelpro program targeting civil rights leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Stokely Carmichael was specifically designed to “[p]revent the rise of a ‘messiah’ who could unify and electrify the militant black nationalist movement” rather than to prevent any violent acts they might perpetrate. The methods included informant-driven disinformation campaigns designed to spark conflict within the movement, discourage donors and supporters, and even break up marriages. Overt investigative activity was also used, as one stated goal of the Cointelpro program was to inspire fear among activists by convincing them that an FBI agent lurked behind every mailbox.
Exposure of the Cointelpro abuses led to an era of reform starting in 1976 including guidelines issued by the attorney general, Edward Levi, to limit FBI investigations of political activity by requiring a reasonable indication of criminal activity before intrusive investigations could be launched.
Unfortunately, the guidelines were weakened over time, most severely in December 2008, by the Bush administration attorney general, Michael Mukasey. Mukasey’s guidelines authorized a new type of investigation called an “assessment”, which required no factual basis for suspecting individualized wrongdoing before agents could employ intrusive investigative techniques such as overt and covert interviews, physical surveillance, government and commercial database searches, and recruiting and tasking informants. The FBI interpreted these guidelines to allow its agents to use census data to map American communities by race and ethnicity, and to identify and monitor ethnic “facilities” and “behaviors”. A 2009 memo from the Atlanta FBI cited fears of a “Black Separatist” terrorism threat to justify opening an assessment that documented the growth of the Black population in Georgia.
So it wasn’t surprising that when a new generation of political activists started the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement to protest police violence after the fatal 2014 shooting of unarmed teenager Mike Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, the FBI began tracking them all across the country, using its “assessment” authority to conduct months-long investigations. BLM activists reported that FBI agents had contacted them at home to warn them against attending the 2016 Republican national convention.
By 2017, the FBI had invented a new domestic terrorism program category it called the “Black Identity Extremism movement”. An FBI intelligence report cited six unrelated incidents over a three year period in which Black subjects not associated with one another attacked police officers, to allege that a terrorist movement driven by “perceptions of police brutality against African Americans” existed. The report stated that “the perceived unchallenged illegitimate actions of law enforcement will inspire premeditated attacks against law enforcement” by so-called “Black identity extremists”, suggesting that the FBI’s concerns lay not in illegal police violence, but the hypothetical retaliation it might provoke.
In 2018 and 2019, the FBI conducted nationwide assessments of “Black identity extremists” under an intelligence collection operation it called “Iron Fist”, prioritizing these cases over investigations of far more prevalent violence from white supremacists and far right militants over that period, including mass shootings at a Pittsburgh synagogue and an El Paso shopping mall.
The FBI also acknowledged using its most advanced surveillance aircraft to monitor BLM protests in Baltimore after the police killing of Freddie Gray in 2018, and again this month at the BLM protests in Washington DC. And, as the Intercept reported last week, at least four organizers of a Black Lives Matter rally in Cookeville, Tennessee, received unscheduled visits at their homes and workplaces by FBI agents assigned to the local joint terrorism taskforce. The agents questioned them about their social media posts, their plans for the protest, and whether they had connections to antifa – anti-fascist activists who Donald Trump has blamed for inciting violence at BLM protests. The FBI has reported it found no evidence of antifa involvement at the protests.
Certainly there is a potential for violence at any protest, and the FBI has made more than 80 federal arrests of looters and arsonists in recent weeks. But, so far, the most apparent protest violence that falls within the FBI’s jurisdiction is not coming from BLM activists or antifa, but from police. North Carolina lawyer T Greg Doucette and mathematician Jason Miller have compiled a dataset of more than 500 incidents of police violence against protesters that have been captured on video by activists and journalists since George Floyd’s death. Several of the officers responsible for this violence have been fired, and a handful have been charged with state violations, but no federal civil rights charges appear to have been brought yet against law enforcers who have been caught on tape attacking peaceful protesters and reporters.
This isn’t surprising, as the justice department rarely brings civil rights charges against police officers for acts of brutality. If the FBI really believes unaccountable police violence against African Americans might provoke retaliation by “Black Identity Extremists”, it would put its investigative authorities to better use by holding those officers accountable, rather than monitoring a new generation of Black activists.
In October 1919, a young J Edgar Hoover, director of the Bureau of Investigation’s general intelligence division, targeted “Black Moses” Marcus Garvey for investigation and harassment because of his alleged association with “radical elements” that were “agitating the Negro movement”. Hoover admitted Garvey had violated no federal laws. But the bureau, the precursor organization to the FBI, infiltrated Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association with informant provocateurs and undercover agents who searched for years for any charge that could justify his deportation.
The justice department ultimately won a conviction against Garvey on a dubious mail fraud charge in 1923. Meanwhile, white vigilantes, police and soldiers targeted Black communities with violence during this period, which included the Red Summer of 1919, the Tulsa massacre of 1921 and scores of lynchings, did not receive the same focused attention from Hoover’s agents.
The FBI used similar tactics to disrupt, discredit and neutralize leaders of the civil rights and anti-war movements of the 1960s. The FBI’s Cointelpro program targeting civil rights leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Stokely Carmichael was specifically designed to “[p]revent the rise of a ‘messiah’ who could unify and electrify the militant black nationalist movement” rather than to prevent any violent acts they might perpetrate. The methods included informant-driven disinformation campaigns designed to spark conflict within the movement, discourage donors and supporters, and even break up marriages. Overt investigative activity was also used, as one stated goal of the Cointelpro program was to inspire fear among activists by convincing them that an FBI agent lurked behind every mailbox.
Exposure of the Cointelpro abuses led to an era of reform starting in 1976 including guidelines issued by the attorney general, Edward Levi, to limit FBI investigations of political activity by requiring a reasonable indication of criminal activity before intrusive investigations could be launched.
Unfortunately, the guidelines were weakened over time, most severely in December 2008, by the Bush administration attorney general, Michael Mukasey. Mukasey’s guidelines authorized a new type of investigation called an “assessment”, which required no factual basis for suspecting individualized wrongdoing before agents could employ intrusive investigative techniques such as overt and covert interviews, physical surveillance, government and commercial database searches, and recruiting and tasking informants. The FBI interpreted these guidelines to allow its agents to use census data to map American communities by race and ethnicity, and to identify and monitor ethnic “facilities” and “behaviors”. A 2009 memo from the Atlanta FBI cited fears of a “Black Separatist” terrorism threat to justify opening an assessment that documented the growth of the Black population in Georgia.
So it wasn’t surprising that when a new generation of political activists started the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement to protest police violence after the fatal 2014 shooting of unarmed teenager Mike Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, the FBI began tracking them all across the country, using its “assessment” authority to conduct months-long investigations. BLM activists reported that FBI agents had contacted them at home to warn them against attending the 2016 Republican national convention.
By 2017, the FBI had invented a new domestic terrorism program category it called the “Black Identity Extremism movement”. An FBI intelligence report cited six unrelated incidents over a three year period in which Black subjects not associated with one another attacked police officers, to allege that a terrorist movement driven by “perceptions of police brutality against African Americans” existed. The report stated that “the perceived unchallenged illegitimate actions of law enforcement will inspire premeditated attacks against law enforcement” by so-called “Black identity extremists”, suggesting that the FBI’s concerns lay not in illegal police violence, but the hypothetical retaliation it might provoke.
In 2018 and 2019, the FBI conducted nationwide assessments of “Black identity extremists” under an intelligence collection operation it called “Iron Fist”, prioritizing these cases over investigations of far more prevalent violence from white supremacists and far right militants over that period, including mass shootings at a Pittsburgh synagogue and an El Paso shopping mall.
The FBI also acknowledged using its most advanced surveillance aircraft to monitor BLM protests in Baltimore after the police killing of Freddie Gray in 2018, and again this month at the BLM protests in Washington DC. And, as the Intercept reported last week, at least four organizers of a Black Lives Matter rally in Cookeville, Tennessee, received unscheduled visits at their homes and workplaces by FBI agents assigned to the local joint terrorism taskforce. The agents questioned them about their social media posts, their plans for the protest, and whether they had connections to antifa – anti-fascist activists who Donald Trump has blamed for inciting violence at BLM protests. The FBI has reported it found no evidence of antifa involvement at the protests.
Certainly there is a potential for violence at any protest, and the FBI has made more than 80 federal arrests of looters and arsonists in recent weeks. But, so far, the most apparent protest violence that falls within the FBI’s jurisdiction is not coming from BLM activists or antifa, but from police. North Carolina lawyer T Greg Doucette and mathematician Jason Miller have compiled a dataset of more than 500 incidents of police violence against protesters that have been captured on video by activists and journalists since George Floyd’s death. Several of the officers responsible for this violence have been fired, and a handful have been charged with state violations, but no federal civil rights charges appear to have been brought yet against law enforcers who have been caught on tape attacking peaceful protesters and reporters.
This isn’t surprising, as the justice department rarely brings civil rights charges against police officers for acts of brutality. If the FBI really believes unaccountable police violence against African Americans might provoke retaliation by “Black Identity Extremists”, it would put its investigative authorities to better use by holding those officers accountable, rather than monitoring a new generation of Black activists.
systemic racism!!!
Redlining Is Still Creating Racial Disparities 50 Years After It Was Banned
BY Igor Derysh, Salon
PUBLISHED June 20, 2020
Racist redlining practices still exacerbate inequality across the United States, costing homeowners in affected areas hundreds of thousands in home equity, according to a study by the real estate firm Redfin.
In the 1930s, the federal government decided to get into the business of promoting homeownership and created the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) to guarantee home loans. But the FHA drew up maps divided the country into green, yellow, and red neighborhoods to determine which areas would be eligible for federal loan guarantees. Greenlined areas received the best credit ratings and easy access to loans while redlined areas, often legally segregated Black neighborhoods, were considered “hazardous.” “The FHA explicitly refused to back loans to Black people or even other people who lived near Black people,” wrote Alexis Madrigal at The Atlantic.
“Owning property is one of the main ways Americans accumulate wealth and the main way they pass on wealth to the next generation,” Kirsten Delegard, the co-founder of the Mapping Prejudice Project at the University of Minnesota whose data was used for the Redfin study, told Salon. “So by making it impossible for a whole group of people in the city to own property or to own property in a part of the city where property values actually go up, that really laid the groundwork for the racial wealth gap that we see… around the country.”
Though the practice has long been outlawed, housing discrimination continues to this day. About 74% of white families own a home compared to just 44% of Black families, according to Census data.
Black people also continue to face a lack of access to credit and have 10 times less wealth than whites.
“The expanding homeownership gap between Black and white families can in part be traced back to diminished home equity due to redlining, as it’s one major reason why Black families today have less money than white families to purchase homes either as first-time or move-up homebuyers,” said Redfin chief economist Daryl Fairweather. “It’s important to note that other factors play a role in lower homeownership rates for Black families, too. For instance, employment discrimination has prevented Black workers from earning equitable income.”
Redfin’s analysis looked at 41 metro areas and found that Black homeowners were 4.7 times more likely than whites to own a home in a neighborhood that was redlined. The study found that the average homeowner in a redlined neighborhood earned $196,050 in home equity since 1980 compared to $408,073 among families in “Type A” neighborhoods or the best, greenlined areas.
The average home value in Type A neighborhoods has increased by 292% over those four decades compared to 204% in redlined areas.
In some areas, the disparities were even wider. In Warren, a suburb of Detroit, the average Type A home grew by 1,309% more than the average redlined home. In Jacksonville, Florida, the average Type A home value grew by 836% more. In Memphis, Tennessee, the average Type A home value grew by 663% more.
The study found stark disparities in homeownership rates as well:
Since 1980, the homeownership rate for Black families in Type A, or “best,” neighborhoods dropped from 50.4% to just 44.0%, while the rate for white families rose 4.1 percentage points to 71% in 2017, the most recent data that was available at the time of the analysis for this report. That makes for a 27 percentage-point homeownership gap between Black and white families in “best” neighborhoods, up from a 16.5 percentage-point gap 40 years ago. The gap has widened in all neighborhood types except those that were formerly redlined, where Black and white families both have relatively low homeownership rates (29.8% and 45.6%, respectively).
Some areas had even more stark disparities. In Atlantic City, New Jersey, just 14.8% of black families live in Type A areas compared to 75% of white families. In Fresno, California, just 2.5% of black families live in Type A neighborhoods compared to 62.6% of white families. In Greensboro, North Carolina, the homeownership rate for Type A areas for Black families is 9.3% compared to 67.7% for white families.
“More than half a century after it was abolished, redlining continues to dictate the racial makeup of neighborhoods and Black families still feel the socioeconomic effects of such a racist housing policy,” Fairweather said. “Black families who were unable to secure housing loans in the neighborhoods where they lived have missed out on one of the major ways to build wealth in this country. And even families who were able to buy homes in their neighborhood after redlining ended haven’t earned nearly as much home equity as people who bought homes in neighborhoods that were considered more valuable.”
The 2008 housing crisis contributed to the disparities. Black families with mortgages were nearly twice as likely to lose their homes to foreclosures between 2007-2009 as white families, according to data from the Center for Responsible Lending.
Black mortgage applicants are also twice as likely to be rejected as white applicants, according to data from the analytics firm ComplianceTech.
“Credit history is one of the most important reasons why those mortgages are rejected for black Americans,” Bokhari told Yahoo Finance. “Why is that? The financial crisis hit black homeowners a lot harder and ruined their credit history. It is still affecting their ability to buy a home.”
As a result of redlining and continued inequality, the disparities that existed decades earlier have been passed down through multiple generations.
“That has had a lingering effect on their children and grandchildren, who don’t have the same economic opportunities as their white counterparts,” Fairweather said. “Not only are Black parents less likely to have the resources to pay for higher education and help with other expenses, but studies show that children of homeowners are about 7.5% more likely to become homeowners than children of renters.”
In many cases, rising home values have disadvantaged Black families because they have such a low rate of homeownership.
“Relatively low homeownership rates for Black families means landlords are the ones reaping the benefits of increasing home equity in formerly redlined neighborhoods,” Fairweather said. “Black families are mostly renters in those neighborhoods, which means rising home values leads to increased rent payments and possibly being pushed to less desirable, albeit more affordable, parts of town.”
These disparities are likely to get worse, not better, as a result of the pandemic. Black and Hispanic Americans were significantly more likely to lose their job during the pandemic than white Americans, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center. Black businesses were more than twice as likely to close for good than white businesses amid the statewide lockdowns, according to a study from the University of California at Santa Cruz.
Experts were pessimistic, too, that lending discrimination would soon improve.
“I don’t think that they [lenders] can” be more inclusive without significant overhaul, Vishal Garg, the founder of online mortgage lender Better.com, told Yahoo Finance. “They need to hire different people to speak to America’s base of future homeowners. It is a generational and operational challenge for banks in this country.”
In the 1930s, the federal government decided to get into the business of promoting homeownership and created the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) to guarantee home loans. But the FHA drew up maps divided the country into green, yellow, and red neighborhoods to determine which areas would be eligible for federal loan guarantees. Greenlined areas received the best credit ratings and easy access to loans while redlined areas, often legally segregated Black neighborhoods, were considered “hazardous.” “The FHA explicitly refused to back loans to Black people or even other people who lived near Black people,” wrote Alexis Madrigal at The Atlantic.
“Owning property is one of the main ways Americans accumulate wealth and the main way they pass on wealth to the next generation,” Kirsten Delegard, the co-founder of the Mapping Prejudice Project at the University of Minnesota whose data was used for the Redfin study, told Salon. “So by making it impossible for a whole group of people in the city to own property or to own property in a part of the city where property values actually go up, that really laid the groundwork for the racial wealth gap that we see… around the country.”
Though the practice has long been outlawed, housing discrimination continues to this day. About 74% of white families own a home compared to just 44% of Black families, according to Census data.
Black people also continue to face a lack of access to credit and have 10 times less wealth than whites.
“The expanding homeownership gap between Black and white families can in part be traced back to diminished home equity due to redlining, as it’s one major reason why Black families today have less money than white families to purchase homes either as first-time or move-up homebuyers,” said Redfin chief economist Daryl Fairweather. “It’s important to note that other factors play a role in lower homeownership rates for Black families, too. For instance, employment discrimination has prevented Black workers from earning equitable income.”
Redfin’s analysis looked at 41 metro areas and found that Black homeowners were 4.7 times more likely than whites to own a home in a neighborhood that was redlined. The study found that the average homeowner in a redlined neighborhood earned $196,050 in home equity since 1980 compared to $408,073 among families in “Type A” neighborhoods or the best, greenlined areas.
The average home value in Type A neighborhoods has increased by 292% over those four decades compared to 204% in redlined areas.
In some areas, the disparities were even wider. In Warren, a suburb of Detroit, the average Type A home grew by 1,309% more than the average redlined home. In Jacksonville, Florida, the average Type A home value grew by 836% more. In Memphis, Tennessee, the average Type A home value grew by 663% more.
The study found stark disparities in homeownership rates as well:
Since 1980, the homeownership rate for Black families in Type A, or “best,” neighborhoods dropped from 50.4% to just 44.0%, while the rate for white families rose 4.1 percentage points to 71% in 2017, the most recent data that was available at the time of the analysis for this report. That makes for a 27 percentage-point homeownership gap between Black and white families in “best” neighborhoods, up from a 16.5 percentage-point gap 40 years ago. The gap has widened in all neighborhood types except those that were formerly redlined, where Black and white families both have relatively low homeownership rates (29.8% and 45.6%, respectively).
Some areas had even more stark disparities. In Atlantic City, New Jersey, just 14.8% of black families live in Type A areas compared to 75% of white families. In Fresno, California, just 2.5% of black families live in Type A neighborhoods compared to 62.6% of white families. In Greensboro, North Carolina, the homeownership rate for Type A areas for Black families is 9.3% compared to 67.7% for white families.
“More than half a century after it was abolished, redlining continues to dictate the racial makeup of neighborhoods and Black families still feel the socioeconomic effects of such a racist housing policy,” Fairweather said. “Black families who were unable to secure housing loans in the neighborhoods where they lived have missed out on one of the major ways to build wealth in this country. And even families who were able to buy homes in their neighborhood after redlining ended haven’t earned nearly as much home equity as people who bought homes in neighborhoods that were considered more valuable.”
The 2008 housing crisis contributed to the disparities. Black families with mortgages were nearly twice as likely to lose their homes to foreclosures between 2007-2009 as white families, according to data from the Center for Responsible Lending.
Black mortgage applicants are also twice as likely to be rejected as white applicants, according to data from the analytics firm ComplianceTech.
“Credit history is one of the most important reasons why those mortgages are rejected for black Americans,” Bokhari told Yahoo Finance. “Why is that? The financial crisis hit black homeowners a lot harder and ruined their credit history. It is still affecting their ability to buy a home.”
As a result of redlining and continued inequality, the disparities that existed decades earlier have been passed down through multiple generations.
“That has had a lingering effect on their children and grandchildren, who don’t have the same economic opportunities as their white counterparts,” Fairweather said. “Not only are Black parents less likely to have the resources to pay for higher education and help with other expenses, but studies show that children of homeowners are about 7.5% more likely to become homeowners than children of renters.”
In many cases, rising home values have disadvantaged Black families because they have such a low rate of homeownership.
“Relatively low homeownership rates for Black families means landlords are the ones reaping the benefits of increasing home equity in formerly redlined neighborhoods,” Fairweather said. “Black families are mostly renters in those neighborhoods, which means rising home values leads to increased rent payments and possibly being pushed to less desirable, albeit more affordable, parts of town.”
These disparities are likely to get worse, not better, as a result of the pandemic. Black and Hispanic Americans were significantly more likely to lose their job during the pandemic than white Americans, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center. Black businesses were more than twice as likely to close for good than white businesses amid the statewide lockdowns, according to a study from the University of California at Santa Cruz.
Experts were pessimistic, too, that lending discrimination would soon improve.
“I don’t think that they [lenders] can” be more inclusive without significant overhaul, Vishal Garg, the founder of online mortgage lender Better.com, told Yahoo Finance. “They need to hire different people to speak to America’s base of future homeowners. It is a generational and operational challenge for banks in this country.”
A Giant Plastics Company Tried to Halt a Juneteenth Ceremony for Buried Slaves
BY Mike Ludwig, Truthout
PUBLISHED June 20, 2020
St. James Parish, Louisiana — Death Alley activists gathered near the hamlet of Welcome on Friday to celebrate Juneteenth, which observes the date when news of the end of slavery reached enslaved Black people in Texas. About 30 people danced, prayed and sang gospel songs at a cemetery of unmarked graves on the grounds of a former plantation where nearby residents firmly believe their Black ancestors were buried after working the land as slaves. The celebration paid homage to those who founded their rural community along the Mississippi River and lived through one of the nation’s darkest periods.
But had Formosa Plastics gotten its way, the ceremony would never have happened.
Formosa is a Taiwanese mega-corporation building a $9.4 billion petrochemical complex known as the Sunshine Project at the site, a swath of former plantation fields a couple miles from a church and elementary school on the outskirts of Welcome. The company’s attorneys were in court Thursday attempting to prevent residents from accessing the cemetery on land it now owns. A local judge rejected the company’s arguments and upheld a temporary restraining order allowing residents observe Juneteenth on the hallowed grounds. In a statement, the company cited concerns over “health and safety.”
The ruling comes as communities across the U.S. contend with the brutal reality of state violence against Black people, with waves of protest against ongoing police killings continuing in cities across the country.
“Formosa has a fight on its hands,” said Sharon Lavigne, the founder of the local, faith-based environmental justice group RISE St. James, during the ceremony.
Lavigne and other nearby residents are bitterly opposed to the Sunshine Project, which is slated to turn fossil fuels into the chemicals used to make plastics such as throwaway bottles and AstroTurf. They say St. James Parish and the heavily-industrialized river corridor between Baton Rouge and New Orleans — long dubbed “Cancer Alley” — is already inundated with pollution. The Sunshine Project would significantly increase the concentration of cancer-causing chemicals and other harmful air pollutants in majority-Black neighborhoods located along the riverside, which are already surrounded by petrochemical facilities. Friends and neighbors have died of cancer, and activists have renamed the industrial corridor “Death Alley.”
Death Alley has become an internationally recognized landmark of environmental racism, and research shows that cancer rates are higher in lower-income, majority-Black neighborhoods than in higher-income, whiter areas of the region. In Death Alley and across the U.S., polluting industries are known to locate near to communities of color like Welcome, which are perceived to have less political influence and power. Nationally, Black people are three times more likely to die from air pollution than the overall population.
“Formosa, you have been declared an enemy, because God said, ‘Let my people go,’” said Pastor Gregory Manning, an organizer with the Coalition Against Death Alley, during a roaring sermon at the gravesite.
Lavigne and members of RISE St. James say their neighborhoods would become unlivable due to high concentrations of pollution if the Sunshine Project is completed. With the discovery of the burial grounds during state-mandated archaeological survey last year, they are fighting not only their own displacement, but for the dignity of their ancestors. In Welcome, residents of Black neighborhoods trace their roots to the first people of color to settle as free citizens along the Mississippi.
During the initial outbreak of COVID-19 in southern Louisiana, St. James and surrounding parishes had some of the highest per capita death rates attributed to the virus in the U.S. A landmark Harvard study linked long-term exposure to air pollution to higher COVID-19 death rates. Using similar models, researchers at Tulane University mapped the correlation between air pollution levels and the high death rates from the virus in Cancer Alley. In April, Black people accounted for 70 percent of COVID-19 deaths in Louisiana, though they compromise only 32 percent of the population. Temperatures were taken before the Juneteenth ceremony at the burial grounds, and everyone wore a mask.
After completing an initial, state-mandated archaeological survey of the Sunshine Project site, Formosa concluded that a suspected gravesite on one former plantation had likely been destroyed by a previous owner and there were no “cultural resources” in the area. However, an independent archaeological firm used 19th century maps to conclude that gravesites were present, and Black Americans were likely buried there, because the graves of whites and plantation owners are typically marked and recorded in historical records. State regulators asked Formosa to look again, and the discovery of graves on the property was confirmed in 2019.
Lavigne and other members of RISE St. James, who believe they are descendants of those buried here, have previously visited the site to lay flowers, pray, sing and share the cultural significance of the cemetery with their community. Despite state laws guaranteeing access to cemeteries, local law enforcement threatened Lavigne with arrest if she returned, according to Lavigne and the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), a legal aid group representing RISE St. James. Formosa does not plan on building on the area where the confirmed graves are located and erected a barbed wire fence around the cemetery.
“The audacity that you would keep us out,” Manning said, reflecting on the bondage that slaves endured during the plantation days. “The audacity that they would threaten us with barbed wire. God is on our side!”
Working with the independent archaeologists, RISE St. James and CCR released a report in March that shows as many as six cemeteries likely containing the remains of enslaved people may exist across the 2,400 acres of former plantation fields where Formosa is in the beginning stages of building the chemical and plastics complex. The plant would be one of the largest in the area and has received massive tax breaks from the state.
Formosa has repeatedly attempted to cast doubt on claims that enslaved ancestors of local residents are buried at the confirmed gravesite. In its most recent public statement, the company said that “despite assumptions” made about ancestral ties to the site, no archaeologist has confirmed the “identity or ethnicity” of the remains on its property. However, slaves were forced to bury their dead in the same fields where they worked without permanent stones or markings. Based on a review of maps drawn up in 1877 and 1878, the independent archeologists concluded that the people buried in these unmarked cemeteries are most likely Black, which suggests they either lived and died as slaves, were freed before their deaths, or are the descendants of survivors of slavery.
“We all know we have ancestors down there; we all know that, from St. James. I’m from St. James, I know my ancestors are from St. James,” Lavigne said in a previous interview with Truthout. “And I don’t think that Formosa should deny us from going to visit our ancestors. And the people in the public I talk to, they feel the same way, I am speaking myself and the community.”
CCR attorneys say they are deeply concerned about the police threatening Lavigne and others with arrest for visiting the cemetery because an underground pipeline runs through the grounds — and may have already disturbed some of the graves. Amid recent protests against oil pipelines, Louisiana passed an “anti-protest law” pushed by the fossil fuel industry that makes trespassing on so-called “critical infrastructure” a felony offense. The law applies to pipelines, refineries and other facilities privately owned by the industry. Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, vetoed an amendment to the law last week that would have increased the penalty to a minimum of three years in prison. The existing law is currently being challenged on First Amendment grounds.
“On February 1, a police officer came to my house and told me Formosa said I could not come their property,” Lavigne said during the Juneteenth ceremony. “Well, I am here today. See what God can do?”
But had Formosa Plastics gotten its way, the ceremony would never have happened.
Formosa is a Taiwanese mega-corporation building a $9.4 billion petrochemical complex known as the Sunshine Project at the site, a swath of former plantation fields a couple miles from a church and elementary school on the outskirts of Welcome. The company’s attorneys were in court Thursday attempting to prevent residents from accessing the cemetery on land it now owns. A local judge rejected the company’s arguments and upheld a temporary restraining order allowing residents observe Juneteenth on the hallowed grounds. In a statement, the company cited concerns over “health and safety.”
The ruling comes as communities across the U.S. contend with the brutal reality of state violence against Black people, with waves of protest against ongoing police killings continuing in cities across the country.
“Formosa has a fight on its hands,” said Sharon Lavigne, the founder of the local, faith-based environmental justice group RISE St. James, during the ceremony.
Lavigne and other nearby residents are bitterly opposed to the Sunshine Project, which is slated to turn fossil fuels into the chemicals used to make plastics such as throwaway bottles and AstroTurf. They say St. James Parish and the heavily-industrialized river corridor between Baton Rouge and New Orleans — long dubbed “Cancer Alley” — is already inundated with pollution. The Sunshine Project would significantly increase the concentration of cancer-causing chemicals and other harmful air pollutants in majority-Black neighborhoods located along the riverside, which are already surrounded by petrochemical facilities. Friends and neighbors have died of cancer, and activists have renamed the industrial corridor “Death Alley.”
Death Alley has become an internationally recognized landmark of environmental racism, and research shows that cancer rates are higher in lower-income, majority-Black neighborhoods than in higher-income, whiter areas of the region. In Death Alley and across the U.S., polluting industries are known to locate near to communities of color like Welcome, which are perceived to have less political influence and power. Nationally, Black people are three times more likely to die from air pollution than the overall population.
“Formosa, you have been declared an enemy, because God said, ‘Let my people go,’” said Pastor Gregory Manning, an organizer with the Coalition Against Death Alley, during a roaring sermon at the gravesite.
Lavigne and members of RISE St. James say their neighborhoods would become unlivable due to high concentrations of pollution if the Sunshine Project is completed. With the discovery of the burial grounds during state-mandated archaeological survey last year, they are fighting not only their own displacement, but for the dignity of their ancestors. In Welcome, residents of Black neighborhoods trace their roots to the first people of color to settle as free citizens along the Mississippi.
During the initial outbreak of COVID-19 in southern Louisiana, St. James and surrounding parishes had some of the highest per capita death rates attributed to the virus in the U.S. A landmark Harvard study linked long-term exposure to air pollution to higher COVID-19 death rates. Using similar models, researchers at Tulane University mapped the correlation between air pollution levels and the high death rates from the virus in Cancer Alley. In April, Black people accounted for 70 percent of COVID-19 deaths in Louisiana, though they compromise only 32 percent of the population. Temperatures were taken before the Juneteenth ceremony at the burial grounds, and everyone wore a mask.
After completing an initial, state-mandated archaeological survey of the Sunshine Project site, Formosa concluded that a suspected gravesite on one former plantation had likely been destroyed by a previous owner and there were no “cultural resources” in the area. However, an independent archaeological firm used 19th century maps to conclude that gravesites were present, and Black Americans were likely buried there, because the graves of whites and plantation owners are typically marked and recorded in historical records. State regulators asked Formosa to look again, and the discovery of graves on the property was confirmed in 2019.
Lavigne and other members of RISE St. James, who believe they are descendants of those buried here, have previously visited the site to lay flowers, pray, sing and share the cultural significance of the cemetery with their community. Despite state laws guaranteeing access to cemeteries, local law enforcement threatened Lavigne with arrest if she returned, according to Lavigne and the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), a legal aid group representing RISE St. James. Formosa does not plan on building on the area where the confirmed graves are located and erected a barbed wire fence around the cemetery.
“The audacity that you would keep us out,” Manning said, reflecting on the bondage that slaves endured during the plantation days. “The audacity that they would threaten us with barbed wire. God is on our side!”
Working with the independent archaeologists, RISE St. James and CCR released a report in March that shows as many as six cemeteries likely containing the remains of enslaved people may exist across the 2,400 acres of former plantation fields where Formosa is in the beginning stages of building the chemical and plastics complex. The plant would be one of the largest in the area and has received massive tax breaks from the state.
Formosa has repeatedly attempted to cast doubt on claims that enslaved ancestors of local residents are buried at the confirmed gravesite. In its most recent public statement, the company said that “despite assumptions” made about ancestral ties to the site, no archaeologist has confirmed the “identity or ethnicity” of the remains on its property. However, slaves were forced to bury their dead in the same fields where they worked without permanent stones or markings. Based on a review of maps drawn up in 1877 and 1878, the independent archeologists concluded that the people buried in these unmarked cemeteries are most likely Black, which suggests they either lived and died as slaves, were freed before their deaths, or are the descendants of survivors of slavery.
“We all know we have ancestors down there; we all know that, from St. James. I’m from St. James, I know my ancestors are from St. James,” Lavigne said in a previous interview with Truthout. “And I don’t think that Formosa should deny us from going to visit our ancestors. And the people in the public I talk to, they feel the same way, I am speaking myself and the community.”
CCR attorneys say they are deeply concerned about the police threatening Lavigne and others with arrest for visiting the cemetery because an underground pipeline runs through the grounds — and may have already disturbed some of the graves. Amid recent protests against oil pipelines, Louisiana passed an “anti-protest law” pushed by the fossil fuel industry that makes trespassing on so-called “critical infrastructure” a felony offense. The law applies to pipelines, refineries and other facilities privately owned by the industry. Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, vetoed an amendment to the law last week that would have increased the penalty to a minimum of three years in prison. The existing law is currently being challenged on First Amendment grounds.
“On February 1, a police officer came to my house and told me Formosa said I could not come their property,” Lavigne said during the Juneteenth ceremony. “Well, I am here today. See what God can do?”
US University Leading COVID Response Leaves Black Workers Behind
BY Jaisal Noor, Truthout
PUBLISHED May 16, 2020
On May Day, food service workers led a socially distanced protest at the campus of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, taking part in the international day of action to defend workers and highlight the disparate impact COVID-19 is having across the country. Donning masks, the workers read the names of their 188 colleagues who have been laid off amid the pandemic, 98 percent of whom are Black, according to UNITE HERE Local 7.
The demonstration comes as Johns Hopkins, a world-renowned medical and research institution, has mobilized its resources to combat the pandemic. The university had an estimated $4.35 billion endowment in 2019. Johns Hopkins University and Hospital have been helping lead the international response to COVID-19, from mapping its spread and tracking testing data, to developing a vaccine. But its lowest-paid Black employees say they feel like they have been left behind.
The dozen or so demonstrating workers demanded the university honor a promise to give laid-off workers four weeks’ pay. They cite negotiations with officials that resulted in a deal, from which the university abruptly withdrew.
Over 33 million — or one in five — U.S. workers have filed for unemployment during the pandemic. State unemployment websites have crashed under the volume of claims. Many are ineligible or have not received their $1,200 CARES Act stimulus checks or unemployment benefits. Black and Latinx workers are more likely to work jobs impacted by lockdown orders, and 98 percent of UNITE HERE’s over 300,000 members, who work in food service and hospitality, have lost their jobs.
“Honor your commitment, you got the money,” said Alberta Palmer, an organizer with UNITE HERE Local 7, which represents Johns Hopkins workers, who are subcontracted through Bon Appétit, a food service management company.
“I’m disappointed in Hopkins,” said Ganesha Rouse, who has served food at the school for eight years. “We are always being mistreated by this university.”
“[The pandemic] hit all of us hard, and it’s hit the Black community even harder,” said Palmer. “For a lot of us, this is an economic pandemic as well.”
COVID-19 has ravaged Black communities, and not just in terms of the disproportionate rate of illness and death. The virus’s health impact is amplified by a century of discriminatory housing policies like segregation and red-lining, which denied wealth building opportunities to Black families and contributed to the nation’s racial wealth gap.
“Compared to non-Black communities, wealth is not a protective factor for many ailments which exacerbate COVID-19,” said Lawrence Grandpre, director of research for Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle, a Baltimore-based think tank. “Across the socio-economic spectrum, Black people are subject to disproportionate risk for obesity, high blood pressure, and heart disease, all preexisting conditions which create higher risk of morbidity for COVID-19.”
One in three Black households in Baltimore have zero net worth, and two in three face liquid asset poverty, or lack the savings to cover basic expenses for three months if they lose their jobs, a 2017 study by the think tank Racial Justice Now found. In Baltimore, African American median income ($33,801) was 50 percent lower than their white ($62,751) counterparts, and 59 percent of Black renters are rent burdened, meaning they pay more than 30 percent of their income on housing, according to the study.
“A lot of us [workers], we’re from Baltimore, and we don’t have a lot of resources,” said cafeteria worker Latifah Pearson.
Pearson says she’s still working, but her hours have been cut, and she expects to lose her job in the coming weeks.
Johns Hopkins says its planning to reopen its campus in the fall, but it has slashed spending across the board, and students say low-wage workers bear the brunt of the cutbacks and are campaigning to have them rehired.
“Ron Daniels, the president of Johns Hopkins University, took a 20 percent pay cut to move him from an income of $2.7 million to $2.16 million,” said Barae Hirsch, a senior studying sociology and international studies at the university. “Meanwhile, low-wage service workers are being laid off.”
Johns Hopkins students have a long history of organizing in solidarity with campus workers.
“It’s important for educators to stand with janitorial and food workers because the university could not operate without either of our labor. And janitorial and food workers should be paid to reflect that fundamental service” said Steph Saxton, a Johns Hopkins graduate student who attended the rally.
“It’s particularly unconscionable for Hopkins to leave their workers out to dry as it’s presenting itself to be a leader of the struggle against the pandemic,” said Corey Payne, a graduate student and organizer who has been working to support campus workers for the past five years.
There are growing calls for universities, especially those with large endowments, to avoid projected mass layoffs. Over 100 universities in the U.S. had endowments over $1 billion in 2019.
“Layoffs should be the absolute last option for universities and colleges, particularly those with significant endowments,” said Paul Weinstein Jr., director of the MA in Public Management program at Johns Hopkins University and a senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute. “Schools should look at other approaches first, including delaying capital expenditures, cutting salaries for the highest-paid employees, suspending retirement benefits for one year and tapping into endowment funds when they legally can.”
Universities often face restrictions in how they are able to spend their endowments. But Weinstein says Congress could provide legal protections from donor lawsuits.
Beyond not laying off its predominantly Black workers, Grandpre suggests institutions that want to help address COVID-19 health disparities in Black communities might start by examining their own role in fomenting such disparities.
In the early 1950s, Johns Hopkins harvested the genetic material of Henrietta Lacks, an African American woman, without her consent. These cells became invaluable to medical research (such as the development of the polio vaccine), because they continued to multiply instead of dying off. Lacks’s contribution to science was only recognized after the publication of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Sloot.
Hopkins has also come under fire for knowingly exposing children to lead poisoning. It’s also been accused of gentrifying east Baltimore and displacing Black residents to expand its medical campus, which earned it the nickname of “The Plantation” by its Black neighbors, according to the 2018 book, Ghost of Johns Hopkins, by Antero Pietila.
“Encouraging early interventions and screening in the Black community won’t be effective until the fundamental power imbalances between the Black community and the medical establishment are addressed,” says Grandpre. “The reality is COVID-19 is simply speeding up and revealing the slow-motion epidemic produced by racism/white supremacy.”
Standing in front of the sprawling campus of one the U.S.’s wealthiest universities, workers are worried about their future.
Jenica Hudson, a cook who has worked at Hopkins for the past six years and was laid off in mid-March, says she was already living paycheck to paycheck before the pandemic.
“I do have savings, but it’s been depleted,” Hudson said.
She relied on family for help to pay rent on May 1. “I fortunately have a loving mother,” she added.
Hudson has been searching for new employment, but she fears the available opportunities, like a job at an Amazon warehouse, could put her and her family at risk.
In a statement, Johns Hopkins said it “remains steadfast in our commitment to our workforce. We regret that the slow-down in university operations and the university’s losses due to COVID-19 are necessitating some furloughs and lay-offs.”
Johns Hopkins argues it is unable to pay laid off workers because it could jeopardize their eligibility for CARES Act stimulus payments.
“We have not reversed course but instead have been exploring the most beneficial options for these valued team members through their employer,” Johns Hopkins said in a statement.
But UNITE HERE Local 7 President Roxie Herbekian disputes this.
“We offered to them several different ways that the workers could be paid that would not have interfered with any of their other benefits. And then they just stopped communicating with us completely,” she said.
UNITE HERE Local 7 did acknowledge a $15,000 donation from the Baltimore-based Research Associates Foundation, which provides small grants to support local progressive organizing. The union, which is continuing to cover worker’s health insurance, has yet not decided how to distribute those funds.
Workers say they have yet to receive any of the promised support from Johns Hopkins.
“For [Hopkins] to deny what they promised is a stab in the back,” Hudson said.
The demonstration comes as Johns Hopkins, a world-renowned medical and research institution, has mobilized its resources to combat the pandemic. The university had an estimated $4.35 billion endowment in 2019. Johns Hopkins University and Hospital have been helping lead the international response to COVID-19, from mapping its spread and tracking testing data, to developing a vaccine. But its lowest-paid Black employees say they feel like they have been left behind.
The dozen or so demonstrating workers demanded the university honor a promise to give laid-off workers four weeks’ pay. They cite negotiations with officials that resulted in a deal, from which the university abruptly withdrew.
Over 33 million — or one in five — U.S. workers have filed for unemployment during the pandemic. State unemployment websites have crashed under the volume of claims. Many are ineligible or have not received their $1,200 CARES Act stimulus checks or unemployment benefits. Black and Latinx workers are more likely to work jobs impacted by lockdown orders, and 98 percent of UNITE HERE’s over 300,000 members, who work in food service and hospitality, have lost their jobs.
“Honor your commitment, you got the money,” said Alberta Palmer, an organizer with UNITE HERE Local 7, which represents Johns Hopkins workers, who are subcontracted through Bon Appétit, a food service management company.
“I’m disappointed in Hopkins,” said Ganesha Rouse, who has served food at the school for eight years. “We are always being mistreated by this university.”
“[The pandemic] hit all of us hard, and it’s hit the Black community even harder,” said Palmer. “For a lot of us, this is an economic pandemic as well.”
COVID-19 has ravaged Black communities, and not just in terms of the disproportionate rate of illness and death. The virus’s health impact is amplified by a century of discriminatory housing policies like segregation and red-lining, which denied wealth building opportunities to Black families and contributed to the nation’s racial wealth gap.
“Compared to non-Black communities, wealth is not a protective factor for many ailments which exacerbate COVID-19,” said Lawrence Grandpre, director of research for Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle, a Baltimore-based think tank. “Across the socio-economic spectrum, Black people are subject to disproportionate risk for obesity, high blood pressure, and heart disease, all preexisting conditions which create higher risk of morbidity for COVID-19.”
One in three Black households in Baltimore have zero net worth, and two in three face liquid asset poverty, or lack the savings to cover basic expenses for three months if they lose their jobs, a 2017 study by the think tank Racial Justice Now found. In Baltimore, African American median income ($33,801) was 50 percent lower than their white ($62,751) counterparts, and 59 percent of Black renters are rent burdened, meaning they pay more than 30 percent of their income on housing, according to the study.
“A lot of us [workers], we’re from Baltimore, and we don’t have a lot of resources,” said cafeteria worker Latifah Pearson.
Pearson says she’s still working, but her hours have been cut, and she expects to lose her job in the coming weeks.
Johns Hopkins says its planning to reopen its campus in the fall, but it has slashed spending across the board, and students say low-wage workers bear the brunt of the cutbacks and are campaigning to have them rehired.
“Ron Daniels, the president of Johns Hopkins University, took a 20 percent pay cut to move him from an income of $2.7 million to $2.16 million,” said Barae Hirsch, a senior studying sociology and international studies at the university. “Meanwhile, low-wage service workers are being laid off.”
Johns Hopkins students have a long history of organizing in solidarity with campus workers.
“It’s important for educators to stand with janitorial and food workers because the university could not operate without either of our labor. And janitorial and food workers should be paid to reflect that fundamental service” said Steph Saxton, a Johns Hopkins graduate student who attended the rally.
“It’s particularly unconscionable for Hopkins to leave their workers out to dry as it’s presenting itself to be a leader of the struggle against the pandemic,” said Corey Payne, a graduate student and organizer who has been working to support campus workers for the past five years.
There are growing calls for universities, especially those with large endowments, to avoid projected mass layoffs. Over 100 universities in the U.S. had endowments over $1 billion in 2019.
“Layoffs should be the absolute last option for universities and colleges, particularly those with significant endowments,” said Paul Weinstein Jr., director of the MA in Public Management program at Johns Hopkins University and a senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute. “Schools should look at other approaches first, including delaying capital expenditures, cutting salaries for the highest-paid employees, suspending retirement benefits for one year and tapping into endowment funds when they legally can.”
Universities often face restrictions in how they are able to spend their endowments. But Weinstein says Congress could provide legal protections from donor lawsuits.
Beyond not laying off its predominantly Black workers, Grandpre suggests institutions that want to help address COVID-19 health disparities in Black communities might start by examining their own role in fomenting such disparities.
In the early 1950s, Johns Hopkins harvested the genetic material of Henrietta Lacks, an African American woman, without her consent. These cells became invaluable to medical research (such as the development of the polio vaccine), because they continued to multiply instead of dying off. Lacks’s contribution to science was only recognized after the publication of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Sloot.
Hopkins has also come under fire for knowingly exposing children to lead poisoning. It’s also been accused of gentrifying east Baltimore and displacing Black residents to expand its medical campus, which earned it the nickname of “The Plantation” by its Black neighbors, according to the 2018 book, Ghost of Johns Hopkins, by Antero Pietila.
“Encouraging early interventions and screening in the Black community won’t be effective until the fundamental power imbalances between the Black community and the medical establishment are addressed,” says Grandpre. “The reality is COVID-19 is simply speeding up and revealing the slow-motion epidemic produced by racism/white supremacy.”
Standing in front of the sprawling campus of one the U.S.’s wealthiest universities, workers are worried about their future.
Jenica Hudson, a cook who has worked at Hopkins for the past six years and was laid off in mid-March, says she was already living paycheck to paycheck before the pandemic.
“I do have savings, but it’s been depleted,” Hudson said.
She relied on family for help to pay rent on May 1. “I fortunately have a loving mother,” she added.
Hudson has been searching for new employment, but she fears the available opportunities, like a job at an Amazon warehouse, could put her and her family at risk.
In a statement, Johns Hopkins said it “remains steadfast in our commitment to our workforce. We regret that the slow-down in university operations and the university’s losses due to COVID-19 are necessitating some furloughs and lay-offs.”
Johns Hopkins argues it is unable to pay laid off workers because it could jeopardize their eligibility for CARES Act stimulus payments.
“We have not reversed course but instead have been exploring the most beneficial options for these valued team members through their employer,” Johns Hopkins said in a statement.
But UNITE HERE Local 7 President Roxie Herbekian disputes this.
“We offered to them several different ways that the workers could be paid that would not have interfered with any of their other benefits. And then they just stopped communicating with us completely,” she said.
UNITE HERE Local 7 did acknowledge a $15,000 donation from the Baltimore-based Research Associates Foundation, which provides small grants to support local progressive organizing. The union, which is continuing to cover worker’s health insurance, has yet not decided how to distribute those funds.
Workers say they have yet to receive any of the promised support from Johns Hopkins.
“For [Hopkins] to deny what they promised is a stab in the back,” Hudson said.
dealing with a racist!!!
He Didn’t File Charges in the Arbery Case. But He Spent Years Accusing a Black Grandma of Voter Fraud.
DA George E. Barnhill threatened her with 15 years in prison.
SAMANTHA MICHAELS - Reporter - mother jones
5/9/2020
Olivia Pearson knows what it’s like to be caught up in the criminal justice system in southern Georgia. In 2016, a local district attorney’s office indicted Pearson, a Black grandmother and civil rights activist, on felony voter fraud charges and threatened her with years in prison after she helped a first-time voter who didn’t know how to use an electronic voting machine.
The district attorney who pursued her case was none other than George E. Barnhill—a guy in the news this week for having failed to prosecute the men who killed jogger Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old unarmed Black man.
“For the district attorney’s office to not charge these gentlemen, I couldn’t believe that,” Pearson told me this week from her home in Douglas, before pausing a moment: “Then again, I could believe it.”
In late February, Arbery was jogging down a shaded residential road in Satilla Shores, Georgia, when two white men in a truck pulled over in front of him and shot him. When a video of the killing went viral on Tuesday, the case sparked national outrage—especially after it came to light that Barnhill sat on the evidence for weeks without pressing charges. In a memo to police, Barnhill concluded that the men had acted in self-defense and did not violate any laws because they believed Arbery fit the description of a burglar.
On Thursday, after former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams described the killing as “murder” and former Vice President Joe Biden said Arbery was “essentially lynched before our very own eyes,” the Georgia Bureau of Investigation arrested the two men. Gregory McMichael and his son Travis are now charged with murder and aggravated assault. On Friday, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that Gregory McMichael, a former police officer, previously worked with Barnhill’s son, a prosecutor in the Brunswick DA’s office, to bring a criminal case against Arbery at some point before McMichael retired last year.
Barnhill recused himself from the case of Arbery’s killing because of this conflict of interest. But his reluctance to press charges has kept his name in the spotlight. “I can’t answer what another agency did or didn’t see,” Vic Reynolds, director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, said in reference to Barnhill’s office during a press conference. “But I can tell you that…probable cause [for an arrest] was clear to our agents pretty quickly.”
For Pearson, hearing Barnhill’s name in the news again brought the memories of her own case flooding back. In 2012, Pearson was a longtime city commissioner who often ferried people in Douglas to the polls. On the first day of early voting that year, during a visit to the local elections office, a 21-year-old Black woman named Diewanna Robinson asked Pearson for assistance with the electronic voting machine. Pearson says she told Robinson where to insert her card into the machine, and instructed her to follow the prompts. Pearson then walked away before Robinson began filling out her ballot.
Pearson didn’t think much of the encounter—but it would come back to haunt her. Four years later, after a voter fraud investigation by the secretary of state’s office, Barnhill’s office decided to have Pearson arrested for the incident. When Pearson assisted Robinson, poll workers had asked her to sign a form allowing her to help someone struggling with the machines; she did so, not realizing that by adding her signature, she was agreeing to help only those who were disabled or illiterate. (Robinson was neither.) The district attorney’s office charged Pearson with felony voter fraud and threatened her with 15 years in prison. The day she was indicted, “I was just devastated,” she told me over the phone this week.
Though Georgia has a reputation for passing strict voter rules, it was highly unusual for a prosecutor’s office to pursue charges for such minor violations, as Josie Duffy Rice pointed out in an op-ed for the New York Times. From 2014 to mid-2017, the state investigated about 154 instances of alleged voter fraud, and just 10 were referred to a prosecutor, according to BuzzFeed, which brought national attention to Pearson’s case in 2016. Most of those cases were dismissed or closed without a ruling. But Barnhill’s office brought Pearson to trial not once but twice, before she was acquitted.
Pearson’s lawyers accused the district attorney’s office of taking Pearson to court to intimidate Black voters. The office also brought voter fraud charges against at least three other community members around the same time. Pearson believed prosecutors targeted her because of her political activism: She was the first Black woman elected to the city commission in 1999. Her mother was a top official with the local NAACP and helped sue the city in the 1970s to gain better political representation for Black residents. One of Barnhill’s deputies, prosecutor Ian Sansot, who oversaw the litigation against Pearson, denied any improper motive in the case, and argued he was just following the law and doing his job. At trial, he appeared to mock Pearson’s concerns about racial bias, according to BuzzFeed: “Isn’t it true that you think everyone who disagrees with you on this matter is a racist hater?” he asked. “No, sir,” she replied. But she added that she did believe race played a role in the decision to charge her.
Though Pearson was ultimately acquitted, the litigation took a toll on her health. She says she fell into a depression that she has struggled to emerge from. She ran for city commissioner again in 2019, and won, but she remains disheartened at how the city responded to her attempts to help Black voters all those years ago. “What hurts the most is: Douglas is home. I’ve worked in this community trying to do good for people all my life,” she tells me. “Achieving justice in south Georgia is a very difficult task when you’ve got people in the district attorney’s office like these people we got.”
On Saturday, Pearson will go to a protest in Arbery’s honor, a four-mile run in Waycross, the town where the district attorney is based. Because of a hip replacement, Pearson, 58, plans to drive the four miles in her charcoal-gray car, with a sign hanging outside that says, “I Run With Maud.”
“It’s so sad that we’re in the 21st century and we’re still going through this kind of stuff,” she told me over the phone, breaking into tears. “I mean, you would think things would get better. It seems like they’re getting worse.”
The district attorney who pursued her case was none other than George E. Barnhill—a guy in the news this week for having failed to prosecute the men who killed jogger Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old unarmed Black man.
“For the district attorney’s office to not charge these gentlemen, I couldn’t believe that,” Pearson told me this week from her home in Douglas, before pausing a moment: “Then again, I could believe it.”
In late February, Arbery was jogging down a shaded residential road in Satilla Shores, Georgia, when two white men in a truck pulled over in front of him and shot him. When a video of the killing went viral on Tuesday, the case sparked national outrage—especially after it came to light that Barnhill sat on the evidence for weeks without pressing charges. In a memo to police, Barnhill concluded that the men had acted in self-defense and did not violate any laws because they believed Arbery fit the description of a burglar.
On Thursday, after former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams described the killing as “murder” and former Vice President Joe Biden said Arbery was “essentially lynched before our very own eyes,” the Georgia Bureau of Investigation arrested the two men. Gregory McMichael and his son Travis are now charged with murder and aggravated assault. On Friday, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that Gregory McMichael, a former police officer, previously worked with Barnhill’s son, a prosecutor in the Brunswick DA’s office, to bring a criminal case against Arbery at some point before McMichael retired last year.
Barnhill recused himself from the case of Arbery’s killing because of this conflict of interest. But his reluctance to press charges has kept his name in the spotlight. “I can’t answer what another agency did or didn’t see,” Vic Reynolds, director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, said in reference to Barnhill’s office during a press conference. “But I can tell you that…probable cause [for an arrest] was clear to our agents pretty quickly.”
For Pearson, hearing Barnhill’s name in the news again brought the memories of her own case flooding back. In 2012, Pearson was a longtime city commissioner who often ferried people in Douglas to the polls. On the first day of early voting that year, during a visit to the local elections office, a 21-year-old Black woman named Diewanna Robinson asked Pearson for assistance with the electronic voting machine. Pearson says she told Robinson where to insert her card into the machine, and instructed her to follow the prompts. Pearson then walked away before Robinson began filling out her ballot.
Pearson didn’t think much of the encounter—but it would come back to haunt her. Four years later, after a voter fraud investigation by the secretary of state’s office, Barnhill’s office decided to have Pearson arrested for the incident. When Pearson assisted Robinson, poll workers had asked her to sign a form allowing her to help someone struggling with the machines; she did so, not realizing that by adding her signature, she was agreeing to help only those who were disabled or illiterate. (Robinson was neither.) The district attorney’s office charged Pearson with felony voter fraud and threatened her with 15 years in prison. The day she was indicted, “I was just devastated,” she told me over the phone this week.
Though Georgia has a reputation for passing strict voter rules, it was highly unusual for a prosecutor’s office to pursue charges for such minor violations, as Josie Duffy Rice pointed out in an op-ed for the New York Times. From 2014 to mid-2017, the state investigated about 154 instances of alleged voter fraud, and just 10 were referred to a prosecutor, according to BuzzFeed, which brought national attention to Pearson’s case in 2016. Most of those cases were dismissed or closed without a ruling. But Barnhill’s office brought Pearson to trial not once but twice, before she was acquitted.
Pearson’s lawyers accused the district attorney’s office of taking Pearson to court to intimidate Black voters. The office also brought voter fraud charges against at least three other community members around the same time. Pearson believed prosecutors targeted her because of her political activism: She was the first Black woman elected to the city commission in 1999. Her mother was a top official with the local NAACP and helped sue the city in the 1970s to gain better political representation for Black residents. One of Barnhill’s deputies, prosecutor Ian Sansot, who oversaw the litigation against Pearson, denied any improper motive in the case, and argued he was just following the law and doing his job. At trial, he appeared to mock Pearson’s concerns about racial bias, according to BuzzFeed: “Isn’t it true that you think everyone who disagrees with you on this matter is a racist hater?” he asked. “No, sir,” she replied. But she added that she did believe race played a role in the decision to charge her.
Though Pearson was ultimately acquitted, the litigation took a toll on her health. She says she fell into a depression that she has struggled to emerge from. She ran for city commissioner again in 2019, and won, but she remains disheartened at how the city responded to her attempts to help Black voters all those years ago. “What hurts the most is: Douglas is home. I’ve worked in this community trying to do good for people all my life,” she tells me. “Achieving justice in south Georgia is a very difficult task when you’ve got people in the district attorney’s office like these people we got.”
On Saturday, Pearson will go to a protest in Arbery’s honor, a four-mile run in Waycross, the town where the district attorney is based. Because of a hip replacement, Pearson, 58, plans to drive the four miles in her charcoal-gray car, with a sign hanging outside that says, “I Run With Maud.”
“It’s so sad that we’re in the 21st century and we’re still going through this kind of stuff,” she told me over the phone, breaking into tears. “I mean, you would think things would get better. It seems like they’re getting worse.”
|
|
OP-ED RACIAL JUSTICE
The US’s Failed Response to the Pandemic Is Rooted in Anti-Blackness
We are a country built on a racist house of cards, and the pandemic is showing us how racism — specifically anti-Blackness — impairs our ability to respond, hurting all of us.
BY Jhumpa Bhattacharya, Truthout
PUBLISHED April 20, 2020
With the speed of lightning, the coronavirus crisis is waking all of the U.S. up to a reality most Black people have known for decades — our country fails the most marginalized. Our systems were ill-prepared to help everyday people sans pandemic. Now in the midst of one, the sun is shining down on their cavernous cracks created by deep-seated anti-Blackness. The reality is we are a country built on a racist house of cards, and the pandemic is showing us how racism — specifically anti-Blackness — impairs our ability to respond, hurting all of us.
Anti-Blackness — the dehumanization, subjugation and lack of concern for Black people — exists in the makings of our neoliberal economy and almost every facet of U.S. politics. While most would concede that anti-Blackness existed in our history, many cannot see the continuation of anti-Blackness today. Coronavirus is making it very clear that entrenched inequities have a lot to do with anti-Black racism as data sets continue to show that Black people are contracting and dying from COVID-19 at shockingly high rates. We shouldn’t gloss over this fact or chalk it up to individual behavior of Black people. We should continue to advocate for disaggregated data on COVID-19 and dig deep to understand why this is happening. The answer holds the key to our collective well-being.
There has been a continued effort to deny Black people access to health care, which in turn impacts all people. For example, there is a shortage of hospitals across the country, particularly in rural communities and the South. These closures are due in part to the fact that the governments of many of the Confederate states refused to expand Medicare after the passage of the Affordable Care Act, due to anti-Black racism.
Let’s also look at the industries and job sectors that have been hit the hardest during the crisis. The service sector, where 30 percent of Black women are employed, has been macerated by COVID-19. We also know domestic and agricultural workers — two sectors that Black women were pushed into historically — are front-line essential workers with little to no protections or benefits like paid leave, retirement benefits or hazard pay. Now all people working in these professions who are mostly immigrant, Latinx and low-income are reeling from the effects of the pandemic by either being one of the 22 million people that have lost their jobs, or are continuing to work under super hazardous conditions. This is connected to the fact that due to anti-Blackness, domestic and agricultural work has a history of being sidelined in policies that offer worker protection and benefits. For example, the Social Security Act, passed as part of the New Deal, excluded these two professions at a time when 65 percent of Black people were domestic or agricultural workers. This legacy lives on as undocumented workers – many of whom are Black — make up a large part of our agricultural workforce now, and have been excluded from federal COVID-19 relief. Domestic, agricultural and service work – industries heavily dominated by Black and Brown women — continue to be the lowest paid and undervalued, making it so the impact of coronavirus is hitting these workers especially hard.
The reality is, anti-Blackness hurts us all, particularly those who live at the margins of our economy — other communities of color and low-income people. These people are desperately trying to comprehend how they could be worried about putting food on the table and keeping a roof over their heads while living in one of the richest countries in the world. Make no mistake, they are feeling the impacts of anti-Blackness.
It is because of anti-Blackness that the industries with the largest proportions of Black women are the most precarious at this moment. It is because of anti-Blackness that we purposefully reduced our welfare system into a paternalistic, dignity-stripping program due to the false, racialized myth of the “welfare queen,” cementing the visual of a Black woman as the face of poverty. U.S. society generally has easily accepted this myth because many fundamentally struggle to believe Black women deserve their concern, care and empathy.
Policy makers have made countless decisions to divest from public assistance programs because they believe that poor people don’t deserve help or government intervention — a narrative that stems from anti-Blackness. These leaders say its people’s choices and poor decisions that lead them to struggle in the first place. They explain away persistent racial and gender wealth inequality to individual behavior, rather than focusing on systemic racism. This is how the U.S. collectively reconciles the fact that poverty and homelessness exist in the country — it must be the fault of individuals, not our systems, and therefore there is no reason for government intervention. Just pull yourself up from your own bootstraps! So now, when it is increasingly clear that what people need most is a direct, sustained, non-restricted cash benefit, Congress fails to pass or collectively imagine much more than a single $1,200 check as a relief measure.
The U.S. has made profit our god and people expendable because labor is associated with Blackness, a connection ignited by our history of enslaving Black people to do hard labor. Some of us have deluded ourselves into believing that transformational, systemic change is the boogieman because we associate Black people with the face of poverty and suffering. It’s easier to blame others for their plight rather than take any kind of responsibility for it by understanding how anti-Blackness specifically continues to hurt not only Black people — which should be enough — but also anyone who ever finds themselves in a place where they are in need. Now that millions more Americans are experiencing that, we’re sitting around wondering: Where is the infrastructure to help us? Why is my government’s response so deeply inadequate? Our ability to respond to a pandemic has been eroded because of anti-Blackness.
The COVID-19 crisis should force the U.S. to take a good long look in the mirror and do some hard self-reflection. What we choose to see will lay the foundation for what we choose to build moving forward. The U.S. was founded on racism, creating an inequitable economy and dysfunctional social safety net. Moving forward, we must do the exact opposite by centering Black people and other marginalized groups. Centering Black women in particular is what our North Star should be as we repeatedly call on them to save our democracy, yet invest so little in their well-being and power. It is time to reveal, reckon and repair to build something better for everyone.
Anti-Blackness — the dehumanization, subjugation and lack of concern for Black people — exists in the makings of our neoliberal economy and almost every facet of U.S. politics. While most would concede that anti-Blackness existed in our history, many cannot see the continuation of anti-Blackness today. Coronavirus is making it very clear that entrenched inequities have a lot to do with anti-Black racism as data sets continue to show that Black people are contracting and dying from COVID-19 at shockingly high rates. We shouldn’t gloss over this fact or chalk it up to individual behavior of Black people. We should continue to advocate for disaggregated data on COVID-19 and dig deep to understand why this is happening. The answer holds the key to our collective well-being.
There has been a continued effort to deny Black people access to health care, which in turn impacts all people. For example, there is a shortage of hospitals across the country, particularly in rural communities and the South. These closures are due in part to the fact that the governments of many of the Confederate states refused to expand Medicare after the passage of the Affordable Care Act, due to anti-Black racism.
Let’s also look at the industries and job sectors that have been hit the hardest during the crisis. The service sector, where 30 percent of Black women are employed, has been macerated by COVID-19. We also know domestic and agricultural workers — two sectors that Black women were pushed into historically — are front-line essential workers with little to no protections or benefits like paid leave, retirement benefits or hazard pay. Now all people working in these professions who are mostly immigrant, Latinx and low-income are reeling from the effects of the pandemic by either being one of the 22 million people that have lost their jobs, or are continuing to work under super hazardous conditions. This is connected to the fact that due to anti-Blackness, domestic and agricultural work has a history of being sidelined in policies that offer worker protection and benefits. For example, the Social Security Act, passed as part of the New Deal, excluded these two professions at a time when 65 percent of Black people were domestic or agricultural workers. This legacy lives on as undocumented workers – many of whom are Black — make up a large part of our agricultural workforce now, and have been excluded from federal COVID-19 relief. Domestic, agricultural and service work – industries heavily dominated by Black and Brown women — continue to be the lowest paid and undervalued, making it so the impact of coronavirus is hitting these workers especially hard.
The reality is, anti-Blackness hurts us all, particularly those who live at the margins of our economy — other communities of color and low-income people. These people are desperately trying to comprehend how they could be worried about putting food on the table and keeping a roof over their heads while living in one of the richest countries in the world. Make no mistake, they are feeling the impacts of anti-Blackness.
It is because of anti-Blackness that the industries with the largest proportions of Black women are the most precarious at this moment. It is because of anti-Blackness that we purposefully reduced our welfare system into a paternalistic, dignity-stripping program due to the false, racialized myth of the “welfare queen,” cementing the visual of a Black woman as the face of poverty. U.S. society generally has easily accepted this myth because many fundamentally struggle to believe Black women deserve their concern, care and empathy.
Policy makers have made countless decisions to divest from public assistance programs because they believe that poor people don’t deserve help or government intervention — a narrative that stems from anti-Blackness. These leaders say its people’s choices and poor decisions that lead them to struggle in the first place. They explain away persistent racial and gender wealth inequality to individual behavior, rather than focusing on systemic racism. This is how the U.S. collectively reconciles the fact that poverty and homelessness exist in the country — it must be the fault of individuals, not our systems, and therefore there is no reason for government intervention. Just pull yourself up from your own bootstraps! So now, when it is increasingly clear that what people need most is a direct, sustained, non-restricted cash benefit, Congress fails to pass or collectively imagine much more than a single $1,200 check as a relief measure.
The U.S. has made profit our god and people expendable because labor is associated with Blackness, a connection ignited by our history of enslaving Black people to do hard labor. Some of us have deluded ourselves into believing that transformational, systemic change is the boogieman because we associate Black people with the face of poverty and suffering. It’s easier to blame others for their plight rather than take any kind of responsibility for it by understanding how anti-Blackness specifically continues to hurt not only Black people — which should be enough — but also anyone who ever finds themselves in a place where they are in need. Now that millions more Americans are experiencing that, we’re sitting around wondering: Where is the infrastructure to help us? Why is my government’s response so deeply inadequate? Our ability to respond to a pandemic has been eroded because of anti-Blackness.
The COVID-19 crisis should force the U.S. to take a good long look in the mirror and do some hard self-reflection. What we choose to see will lay the foundation for what we choose to build moving forward. The U.S. was founded on racism, creating an inequitable economy and dysfunctional social safety net. Moving forward, we must do the exact opposite by centering Black people and other marginalized groups. Centering Black women in particular is what our North Star should be as we repeatedly call on them to save our democracy, yet invest so little in their well-being and power. It is time to reveal, reckon and repair to build something better for everyone.
TO BE BLACK IN AMERICA!!!
Being a person of color isn’t a risk factor for coronavirus. Living in a racist country is
High COVID-19 deaths in communities or color are shocking, but not surprising
By Renée Graham Globe Columnist, - the boston globe
april 10, 2020, 5:00 a.m.
Racism is a killer. In a pandemic, it’s a mass murderer.
While staggering, the disproportionately high rates of infection and death in communities of color from coronavirus are not unexpected. Even in a global health crisis, Black and brown people can’t practice social distancing from the systemic, institutional, and foundational racism that overshadows and undermines our lives.
“When you are subjected to racism and internalize racism, it can lead to poor health outcomes,” said Dr. Fatima Cody Stanford, an obesity medicine physician at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School.
“We live in a very racist society, so it’s not at all surprising that this is something we need to be aware of and think about as we talk about COVID-19."
In states compiling coronavirus data by race and ethnicity, Black and brown people are dying at rates more than twice their share of the population. Massachusetts is also showing this dire trend. After weeks of pressure from Representative Ayanna Pressley, Senator Elizabeth Warren, and many others, state officials finally released some race and ethnicity data on coronavirus cases and COVID-19 deaths.
Even the limited numbers revealed what Boston City Councilor Julia Mejia already suspected — Black and brown communities are being ravaged by the virus. Black people comprise more than 40 percent of Boston’s coronavirus cases. Chelsea, a city of working-class Latinx immigrants, has the state’s highest incidence rate of infections.
“I grew up in Boston, and I know what health inequities look like based on your zip code,” she said. “We are always at the highest risk for everything. We always bear the brunt of all of these scenarios.”
To address this racial disparity, Mayor Martin J. Walsh has announced the formation of a new COVID-19 Health Inequities Task Force.
From AIDS, which still disproportionately affects Black women, to Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans’s predominantly Black neighborhoods, disasters explode into repercussive catastrophes for Black and brown people.
To ignore the virus’s impact on communities of color is to deny the impact of racism itself. This is the result of decades of substandard housing; living in food deserts, which can lead to higher rates of diabetes, obesity, and heart disease; and more respiratory diseases, due to poor environmental conditions. Being underemployed and underinsured has made many Latinx and Black people especially vulnerable in this unprecedented health crisis.
“Stress can also contribute significantly [to health risk factors]," Stanford said. "We know as Black folks that as we walk and live and breathe, we are subjected to much more intense stressors than other populations.”
Mejia points out that “stay-at-home” advisories or orders mean little to people whose jobs don’t allow them that luxury. Many don’t have paid sick leave. Every time they leave the house, when they take mass transit to get to work, they put themselves and their families in harm’s way.
“I call it ‘the privilege gap,’” she said. "If we really want to be honest about this conversation, it’s about those who have and those who have not — and those who have not, had not for a long time. COVID-19 sheds light on a reality a lot of us have already known.”
That’s why it’s not shocking that, despite the advice of health experts, some Black men don’t feel safe wearing a mask in public. Two Black men recently filed a complaint after a police officer last month followed them in a Walmart in Illinois and demanded that they remove their surgical masks. In a video posted to Twitter by one of the young men, he said they were asked to leave the store. In Illinois, Black people make up 15 percent of the population but comprise 42 percent of COVID-19 deaths.
“This pandemic has pulled back the curtain on the deep rooted systemic racism that exists in America right now,” Mejia said. “People are talking about this because of this crisis, but I want to talk about this beyond COVID-19. There has to be a long-term strategy to dismantle systemic racism.”
New information about racial and ethnic disparities does not address testing or treatment, which may reveal still more inequality. Simply knowing the raw statistics about race and ethnicity in this pandemic does not go deep enough, Stanford said. Any data needs to be “quantified in a way that’s meaningful" to achieve “a cohesive and comprehensive statement” about the many ways in which this virus is attacking marginalized communities, and how “we can close the gap.”
Coronavirus does not discriminate. It doesn’t need to. In a nation strategically built on racial and economic inequality, it was never going to be “the great equalizer” some touted. Being a Black or brown person is not a pre-existing condition. Yet this pandemic is a lethal reminder that living in a racist country is.
RELATED: Systemic Racism Is Making Coronavirus Worse in Black America
Long before COVID-19, Black communities were experiencing deep health and economic inequities that are only intensified by a public health crisis of this magnitude.
While staggering, the disproportionately high rates of infection and death in communities of color from coronavirus are not unexpected. Even in a global health crisis, Black and brown people can’t practice social distancing from the systemic, institutional, and foundational racism that overshadows and undermines our lives.
“When you are subjected to racism and internalize racism, it can lead to poor health outcomes,” said Dr. Fatima Cody Stanford, an obesity medicine physician at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School.
“We live in a very racist society, so it’s not at all surprising that this is something we need to be aware of and think about as we talk about COVID-19."
In states compiling coronavirus data by race and ethnicity, Black and brown people are dying at rates more than twice their share of the population. Massachusetts is also showing this dire trend. After weeks of pressure from Representative Ayanna Pressley, Senator Elizabeth Warren, and many others, state officials finally released some race and ethnicity data on coronavirus cases and COVID-19 deaths.
Even the limited numbers revealed what Boston City Councilor Julia Mejia already suspected — Black and brown communities are being ravaged by the virus. Black people comprise more than 40 percent of Boston’s coronavirus cases. Chelsea, a city of working-class Latinx immigrants, has the state’s highest incidence rate of infections.
“I grew up in Boston, and I know what health inequities look like based on your zip code,” she said. “We are always at the highest risk for everything. We always bear the brunt of all of these scenarios.”
To address this racial disparity, Mayor Martin J. Walsh has announced the formation of a new COVID-19 Health Inequities Task Force.
From AIDS, which still disproportionately affects Black women, to Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans’s predominantly Black neighborhoods, disasters explode into repercussive catastrophes for Black and brown people.
To ignore the virus’s impact on communities of color is to deny the impact of racism itself. This is the result of decades of substandard housing; living in food deserts, which can lead to higher rates of diabetes, obesity, and heart disease; and more respiratory diseases, due to poor environmental conditions. Being underemployed and underinsured has made many Latinx and Black people especially vulnerable in this unprecedented health crisis.
“Stress can also contribute significantly [to health risk factors]," Stanford said. "We know as Black folks that as we walk and live and breathe, we are subjected to much more intense stressors than other populations.”
Mejia points out that “stay-at-home” advisories or orders mean little to people whose jobs don’t allow them that luxury. Many don’t have paid sick leave. Every time they leave the house, when they take mass transit to get to work, they put themselves and their families in harm’s way.
“I call it ‘the privilege gap,’” she said. "If we really want to be honest about this conversation, it’s about those who have and those who have not — and those who have not, had not for a long time. COVID-19 sheds light on a reality a lot of us have already known.”
That’s why it’s not shocking that, despite the advice of health experts, some Black men don’t feel safe wearing a mask in public. Two Black men recently filed a complaint after a police officer last month followed them in a Walmart in Illinois and demanded that they remove their surgical masks. In a video posted to Twitter by one of the young men, he said they were asked to leave the store. In Illinois, Black people make up 15 percent of the population but comprise 42 percent of COVID-19 deaths.
“This pandemic has pulled back the curtain on the deep rooted systemic racism that exists in America right now,” Mejia said. “People are talking about this because of this crisis, but I want to talk about this beyond COVID-19. There has to be a long-term strategy to dismantle systemic racism.”
New information about racial and ethnic disparities does not address testing or treatment, which may reveal still more inequality. Simply knowing the raw statistics about race and ethnicity in this pandemic does not go deep enough, Stanford said. Any data needs to be “quantified in a way that’s meaningful" to achieve “a cohesive and comprehensive statement” about the many ways in which this virus is attacking marginalized communities, and how “we can close the gap.”
Coronavirus does not discriminate. It doesn’t need to. In a nation strategically built on racial and economic inequality, it was never going to be “the great equalizer” some touted. Being a Black or brown person is not a pre-existing condition. Yet this pandemic is a lethal reminder that living in a racist country is.
RELATED: Systemic Racism Is Making Coronavirus Worse in Black America
Long before COVID-19, Black communities were experiencing deep health and economic inequities that are only intensified by a public health crisis of this magnitude.
Skin Color Discrimination: The Latino Case
August 29, 2019
José Cobas • colorism - racism review
Results from a Pew Research Center survey show the persistence in the United States of an association between Latinos’ skin color and their experiences of white (and other) discrimination.
Sixty-four percent of dark-skinned Latinos reported they had experienced discrimination or unfair treatment from time to time whereas the corresponding figure for those with lighter skin was 50 percent. Dark skin was associated with stereotypes. Fifty-five percent of Latinos with dark skin said that people have reacted to them as though the Latinos were not smart, vis-à-vis 36 percent of those with light skins. Additionally, fifty-three percent of Latinos with dark skin stated that they had been victims of slurs or racist jokes, while the comparable figure for light-skinned ones was 34 percent.
The survey also asked Latinos what race people would assume they were if they walked past them on the street. Seventy-one percent said others saw them as Hispanic or Latino, 19 percent as white and approximately 5 percent as members of other races (the report does not mention the remaining 5 percent, although it is safe to assume that they were survey non-responders).
Among Latinos who reported being seen as People of Color, 62 percent stated that they had experienced discrimination while the corresponding figure for those saying they were perceived as white was 50 percent. Finally, Latino respondents said that when they are perceived as People of Color, individuals were more likely to view them with suspicion or treat them as not being smart. The question arises whether the effects of skin color and speaking Spanish might be cumulative. However, the Pew survey does not report such data.
It is important to emphasize that although dark-skinned Latinos were more likely to be victims of discrimination or arouse suspicion, both light- and dark-skinned Latinos reported substantial rates of negative experiences. Thus, while lighter-complected Latinos might manage to escape discrimination more frequently than darker ones, they are still Latinos and their skin color is not sufficient to save them completely from the consequences of white racism.
And note too the direction in which this racialized colorism always operates: Lighter/whiter is always better than darker/browner-blacker. White racial framing–prizing white/lightness in physical look–has affected how most people frame and think for centuries, in the US and abroad.
Sixty-four percent of dark-skinned Latinos reported they had experienced discrimination or unfair treatment from time to time whereas the corresponding figure for those with lighter skin was 50 percent. Dark skin was associated with stereotypes. Fifty-five percent of Latinos with dark skin said that people have reacted to them as though the Latinos were not smart, vis-à-vis 36 percent of those with light skins. Additionally, fifty-three percent of Latinos with dark skin stated that they had been victims of slurs or racist jokes, while the comparable figure for light-skinned ones was 34 percent.
The survey also asked Latinos what race people would assume they were if they walked past them on the street. Seventy-one percent said others saw them as Hispanic or Latino, 19 percent as white and approximately 5 percent as members of other races (the report does not mention the remaining 5 percent, although it is safe to assume that they were survey non-responders).
Among Latinos who reported being seen as People of Color, 62 percent stated that they had experienced discrimination while the corresponding figure for those saying they were perceived as white was 50 percent. Finally, Latino respondents said that when they are perceived as People of Color, individuals were more likely to view them with suspicion or treat them as not being smart. The question arises whether the effects of skin color and speaking Spanish might be cumulative. However, the Pew survey does not report such data.
It is important to emphasize that although dark-skinned Latinos were more likely to be victims of discrimination or arouse suspicion, both light- and dark-skinned Latinos reported substantial rates of negative experiences. Thus, while lighter-complected Latinos might manage to escape discrimination more frequently than darker ones, they are still Latinos and their skin color is not sufficient to save them completely from the consequences of white racism.
And note too the direction in which this racialized colorism always operates: Lighter/whiter is always better than darker/browner-blacker. White racial framing–prizing white/lightness in physical look–has affected how most people frame and think for centuries, in the US and abroad.
'Dying of whiteness': why racism is at the heart of America's gun inaction
The country’s refusal to pass new gun control laws has everything to do with defending racial hierarchy, says author Jonathan Metzl
Lois Beckett in San Francisco
The Guardian
Fri 9 Aug 2019 01.00 EDT
Why does the United States refuse to pass new gun control laws? It’s the question that people around the world keep asking.
According to Dr Jonathan Metzl, a psychiatrist and sociologist at Vanderbilt University, white supremacy is the key to understanding America’s gun debate. In his new book, Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment is Killing America’s Heartland, Metzl argues that the intensity and polarization of the US gun debate makes much more sense when understood in the context of whiteness and white privilege.
White Americans’ attempt to defend their status in the racial hierarchy by opposing issues like gun control, healthcare expansion or public school funding ends up injuring themselves, as well as hurting people of color, Metzl argues.
The majority of America’s gun death victims are white men, and most of them die from self-inflicted gunshot wounds. In all, gun suicide claims the lives of 25,000 Americans each year.
White Americans are “dying for a cause”, he writes, even if their form of death is often “slow, excruciating, and invisible”.
Metzl spoke to the Guardian about his analysis this March, and again this week, following what appeared to be a white nationalist terror attack on Latino families doing back-to-school shopping at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, that left 22 people dead. The conversations have been condensed and edited.
You argue that America’s debate over gun control laws and gun violence makes a lot more sense if you actually understand it as a debate over race and whiteness in America. Why is that?
In my research I look at the history and the social meanings of how guns came to be these particularly charged social symbols. So many aspects of American gun culture are really entwined with whiteness and white privilege.
Carrying a gun in public has been coded as a white privilege. Advertisers have literally used words like “restoring your manly privilege” as a way of selling assault weapons to white men. In colonial America, landowners could carry guns, and they bestowed that right on to poor whites in order to quell uprisings from “Negroes” and Indians. John Brown’s raid was about weapons. Scholars have written about how the Ku Klux Klan was aimed at disarming African Americans. When African Americans started to carry guns in public – think about Malcolm X during the civil rights era – all of a sudden, the second amendment didn’t apply in many white Americans’ minds. When Huey Newton and the Black Panthers tried to arm themselves, everyone suddenly said, “We need gun control.”
When states like Missouri changed their laws to allow open carry of firearms, there were parades of white Americans who would carry big long guns through congested areas of downtown St Louis, who would go into places like Walmart and burrito restaurants carrying their guns, and they were coded as patriots. At the same time, there were all the stories about African American gun owners who would go to Walmart and get tackled and shot.
Who gets to carry a gun in public? Who is coded as a patriot? Who is coded as a threat, or a terrorist or a gangster? What it means to carry a gun or own a gun or buy a gun – those questions are not neutral. We have 200 years of history, or more, defining that in very racial terms.
What moments in the past few years have demonstrated to you most clearly that it’s impossible to understand America’s gun control debate without talking about whiteness?
The period after a mass shooting is often very telling. When the shooter is white, the context is the individual narrative – this individual disordered white mind. When the shooter is black or brown, all of a sudden the disorder is culture. The narrative we tell then is about terrorism or gangs.
Then there’s the quiet everyday level. There’s nothing more painful than sitting in a room with family members who have lost loved ones to suicide. I’d talk to people who had lost husbands, wives, kids, parents to gun suicide, and they would come to the interview, often, bringing their guns. And I would ask them: did it change how you think about the gun? And they’d argue it’s never the gun’s fault and they’d need the gun in case an invader would attack them. This narrative about protection against the radicalized invader was so profound. They were almost nervous not bringing their guns.
And it was very much coded in racial terms. A number of people I talked to in my book basically said, I’m getting this gun because of Ferguson [the city where the killing of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, by a white police officer in 2015 sparked sustained public protests led by black residents]. These were people who lived 300 miles from Ferguson, in entirely white areas of rural America. When I tried to pin them down about it, they would say, “This could happen anywhere. I have to protect myself and my property.”
I talked to a number of people in African American communities, and for them, this meaning of guns being like a privilege was completely absent. They had very ambiguous or mixed feelings about weapons, because, for a lot of people I spoke with in St Louis they symbolized, “Carry a gun, get shot by the police.”
Given how important you think white privilege is to understanding gun policy, should people be talking or messaging about the gun control debate differently?
I’m not imagining that MSNBC talking more about “how guns are proof that you’re racist” is going to change this debate. The point I’m making is more a diagnostic one than a prescriptive one. I’m saying that until we understand the racial tensions that underlie the gun debate, we’re going to keep asking ourselves why this issue is so intractable.
When we talk about guns and people end up polarized, it’s not just because we disagree about gun politics, it’s because gun politics symbolizes a far greater series of tensions in this country. When we’re talking about guns, we’re also talking about race.
During a talk at a bookstore in Washington DC, a white nationalist group reportedly interrupted you in protest. What happened?
My dad is a Holocaust survivor and he and my grandparents escaped Nazi Austria. It took them about 10 years to get into this country and they were only allowed because of the bravery of people who stood up and vouched for them. One of those people was in the audience, a man in his 80s who volunteered to be my father’s host. As I was saying this, I look up to the back of the store, and there are nine men and one woman coming in with bullhorns, and chanting. They were saying things like “This land is our land” and “invaders out”. They commandeered the talk for about five or 10 minutes. At first people thought it was a joke. And then they got scared. The bookstore is right next door to Comet Pizza, where the Pizzagate shooting happened. And then people, everyday people, stood up and shouted them down. Then they left. It was very well rehearsed. They had a videographer there.
What connection do you see between white Americans’ daily choices about gun politics and the violent attack we saw in El Paso?
I think we run a risk of conflating all gun owners with mass shooters. I’ve gotten comments on Twitter about people being mentally ill just for wanting to own an AR-15. I don’t see those as productive. Many of the interventions that we’re suggesting, like background checks, are going to have an impact on gun owners. It’s better off if we have a conversation with them. I think that pathologizing all gun owners gets us further away from any kind of solution that might bring people together.
At the same time, part of what I’m tracking in my research is the politics of racial resentment, a particular form of anti-immigration, anti-government, pro-gun politics that’s been represented in America for a long time. These mass shooters, they’re not coming out of nowhere. They’re a very extreme amplification of the kinds of ideologies that are playing out in a much more quotidian way in middle America.
Did you come away from your research concluding that American gun culture is inherently toxic? Or are there other dimensions to gun ownership and gun culture?
I do think there are many positive things about gun culture. My argument is a lot more centrist than I think people realize.
It’s not just about supremacy and oppression. It’s also about history and tradition and generational meanings. I came away from this research very respectful of gun ownership traditions in many parts of the country, and things people were telling me about guns suggesting safety and protection, about the community networks that gun ownership lets people forge. For many people living in rural America, if anything happens to them, they are far away from support systems, police and other help. I think there are plenty of rational aspects to respecting the tradition of gun ownership.
I have a lot of colleagues and interview subjects and people I’m still having conversations with who are pro-second amendment, people who don’t want mass shootings, and don’t want death. There are a lot of people who are in the middle about this on both sides, but because there’s so many actors that benefit from polarization, everyone from Twitter to the NRA, there’s no benefit to compromising.
But I can list plenty of examples where I think gun policies are not about respecting gun traditions, they’re about really pushing the envelope on seeing how far we can get. I’m not saying that people’s guns should be taken away. I don’t agree that there should be guns in bars and college classrooms. I don’t think that people who are 18 should be carrying assault rifles.
According to Dr Jonathan Metzl, a psychiatrist and sociologist at Vanderbilt University, white supremacy is the key to understanding America’s gun debate. In his new book, Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment is Killing America’s Heartland, Metzl argues that the intensity and polarization of the US gun debate makes much more sense when understood in the context of whiteness and white privilege.
White Americans’ attempt to defend their status in the racial hierarchy by opposing issues like gun control, healthcare expansion or public school funding ends up injuring themselves, as well as hurting people of color, Metzl argues.
The majority of America’s gun death victims are white men, and most of them die from self-inflicted gunshot wounds. In all, gun suicide claims the lives of 25,000 Americans each year.
White Americans are “dying for a cause”, he writes, even if their form of death is often “slow, excruciating, and invisible”.
Metzl spoke to the Guardian about his analysis this March, and again this week, following what appeared to be a white nationalist terror attack on Latino families doing back-to-school shopping at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, that left 22 people dead. The conversations have been condensed and edited.
You argue that America’s debate over gun control laws and gun violence makes a lot more sense if you actually understand it as a debate over race and whiteness in America. Why is that?
In my research I look at the history and the social meanings of how guns came to be these particularly charged social symbols. So many aspects of American gun culture are really entwined with whiteness and white privilege.
Carrying a gun in public has been coded as a white privilege. Advertisers have literally used words like “restoring your manly privilege” as a way of selling assault weapons to white men. In colonial America, landowners could carry guns, and they bestowed that right on to poor whites in order to quell uprisings from “Negroes” and Indians. John Brown’s raid was about weapons. Scholars have written about how the Ku Klux Klan was aimed at disarming African Americans. When African Americans started to carry guns in public – think about Malcolm X during the civil rights era – all of a sudden, the second amendment didn’t apply in many white Americans’ minds. When Huey Newton and the Black Panthers tried to arm themselves, everyone suddenly said, “We need gun control.”
When states like Missouri changed their laws to allow open carry of firearms, there were parades of white Americans who would carry big long guns through congested areas of downtown St Louis, who would go into places like Walmart and burrito restaurants carrying their guns, and they were coded as patriots. At the same time, there were all the stories about African American gun owners who would go to Walmart and get tackled and shot.
Who gets to carry a gun in public? Who is coded as a patriot? Who is coded as a threat, or a terrorist or a gangster? What it means to carry a gun or own a gun or buy a gun – those questions are not neutral. We have 200 years of history, or more, defining that in very racial terms.
What moments in the past few years have demonstrated to you most clearly that it’s impossible to understand America’s gun control debate without talking about whiteness?
The period after a mass shooting is often very telling. When the shooter is white, the context is the individual narrative – this individual disordered white mind. When the shooter is black or brown, all of a sudden the disorder is culture. The narrative we tell then is about terrorism or gangs.
Then there’s the quiet everyday level. There’s nothing more painful than sitting in a room with family members who have lost loved ones to suicide. I’d talk to people who had lost husbands, wives, kids, parents to gun suicide, and they would come to the interview, often, bringing their guns. And I would ask them: did it change how you think about the gun? And they’d argue it’s never the gun’s fault and they’d need the gun in case an invader would attack them. This narrative about protection against the radicalized invader was so profound. They were almost nervous not bringing their guns.
And it was very much coded in racial terms. A number of people I talked to in my book basically said, I’m getting this gun because of Ferguson [the city where the killing of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, by a white police officer in 2015 sparked sustained public protests led by black residents]. These were people who lived 300 miles from Ferguson, in entirely white areas of rural America. When I tried to pin them down about it, they would say, “This could happen anywhere. I have to protect myself and my property.”
I talked to a number of people in African American communities, and for them, this meaning of guns being like a privilege was completely absent. They had very ambiguous or mixed feelings about weapons, because, for a lot of people I spoke with in St Louis they symbolized, “Carry a gun, get shot by the police.”
Given how important you think white privilege is to understanding gun policy, should people be talking or messaging about the gun control debate differently?
I’m not imagining that MSNBC talking more about “how guns are proof that you’re racist” is going to change this debate. The point I’m making is more a diagnostic one than a prescriptive one. I’m saying that until we understand the racial tensions that underlie the gun debate, we’re going to keep asking ourselves why this issue is so intractable.
When we talk about guns and people end up polarized, it’s not just because we disagree about gun politics, it’s because gun politics symbolizes a far greater series of tensions in this country. When we’re talking about guns, we’re also talking about race.
During a talk at a bookstore in Washington DC, a white nationalist group reportedly interrupted you in protest. What happened?
My dad is a Holocaust survivor and he and my grandparents escaped Nazi Austria. It took them about 10 years to get into this country and they were only allowed because of the bravery of people who stood up and vouched for them. One of those people was in the audience, a man in his 80s who volunteered to be my father’s host. As I was saying this, I look up to the back of the store, and there are nine men and one woman coming in with bullhorns, and chanting. They were saying things like “This land is our land” and “invaders out”. They commandeered the talk for about five or 10 minutes. At first people thought it was a joke. And then they got scared. The bookstore is right next door to Comet Pizza, where the Pizzagate shooting happened. And then people, everyday people, stood up and shouted them down. Then they left. It was very well rehearsed. They had a videographer there.
What connection do you see between white Americans’ daily choices about gun politics and the violent attack we saw in El Paso?
I think we run a risk of conflating all gun owners with mass shooters. I’ve gotten comments on Twitter about people being mentally ill just for wanting to own an AR-15. I don’t see those as productive. Many of the interventions that we’re suggesting, like background checks, are going to have an impact on gun owners. It’s better off if we have a conversation with them. I think that pathologizing all gun owners gets us further away from any kind of solution that might bring people together.
At the same time, part of what I’m tracking in my research is the politics of racial resentment, a particular form of anti-immigration, anti-government, pro-gun politics that’s been represented in America for a long time. These mass shooters, they’re not coming out of nowhere. They’re a very extreme amplification of the kinds of ideologies that are playing out in a much more quotidian way in middle America.
Did you come away from your research concluding that American gun culture is inherently toxic? Or are there other dimensions to gun ownership and gun culture?
I do think there are many positive things about gun culture. My argument is a lot more centrist than I think people realize.
It’s not just about supremacy and oppression. It’s also about history and tradition and generational meanings. I came away from this research very respectful of gun ownership traditions in many parts of the country, and things people were telling me about guns suggesting safety and protection, about the community networks that gun ownership lets people forge. For many people living in rural America, if anything happens to them, they are far away from support systems, police and other help. I think there are plenty of rational aspects to respecting the tradition of gun ownership.
I have a lot of colleagues and interview subjects and people I’m still having conversations with who are pro-second amendment, people who don’t want mass shootings, and don’t want death. There are a lot of people who are in the middle about this on both sides, but because there’s so many actors that benefit from polarization, everyone from Twitter to the NRA, there’s no benefit to compromising.
But I can list plenty of examples where I think gun policies are not about respecting gun traditions, they’re about really pushing the envelope on seeing how far we can get. I’m not saying that people’s guns should be taken away. I don’t agree that there should be guns in bars and college classrooms. I don’t think that people who are 18 should be carrying assault rifles.
op - ed: The US Gave Slavers Their Land Back. What About Black Folks’ Reparations?
BY Taru Taylor, Truthout
PUBLISHED July 21, 2019
The U.S. government was on the wrong side of history when it reneged its promise of “40 acres and a mule” to formerly enslaved Black Americans in 1865. Exactly 154 years later, let’s pass H.R. 40, the bill for a commission to study reparations, and get it right this time.
On January 16, 1865, Union Army Gen. William Sherman issued Special Field Order No. 15, which ordered the redistribution of roughly 400,000 acres of land along the coastline of South Carolina, Florida and Georgia to Black families in 40-acre plots. He later authorized the Army to loan mules to them, too. General Sherman’s order provided for the settlement of roughly 40,000 Black people.
President Abraham Lincoln pushed for the creation of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, which was established on March 3, 1865. This “Freedmen’s Bureau” was authorized to give legal title for 40-acre plots of land to Black people and to pro-Union white refugees. But after John Wilkes Booth assassinated Lincoln, President Andrew Johnson overturned Sherman’s order. President Johnson later returned the land that the Union Army had confiscated from slavers back to those same former slavers.
The U.S. government restored slavers their land, but what about Black folks’ freedom dues?
The promise of Black restitution remains unfulfilled. Trillions of dollars and millions of acres in reparations are in order. The Crown of England and the sovereign people of the United States, its white majority, owe a legal duty of restitution to descendants of slaves due to slavery, neo-slavery (in the form of convict leasing and peonage, whereby Black people were imprisoned for bogus crimes such as vagrancy or joblessness and then forced to labor in chain gangs and on prison farms) and segregation.
Justice Defined
...In 1788, when the sovereign people ratified the Constitution, they did so by the logic later expressed in Dred Scott v. Sandford: “The negro has no rights which white men are bound to respect.” Dred Scott held that a Black person, whether slave or freedman, could never be the equal of a free man. The white population in the U.S. effectively adopted the same caste system that the lighter-skinned Aryans had forced upon the darker-skinned Dravidians of ancient India. Their written instrument, the Constitution, legalized slavery in defiance of English common law.
The Rights of Englishmen, Vested in Black People
The common law never recognized slavery as legal. Black people were subjects of the Crown of England up until the American Revolution. The rights of Englishmen, going back to 1215 Magna Carta, were vested in Black people upon their arrival in Virginia in 1619, although they had arrived in the U.S. as early as 1526. For example, Anthony Johnson, whose documented presence in Virginia dates from 1621, eventually got his freedom dues. He started as an indentured servant. By the 1650s, he owned a 250-acre estate.
Johnson’s career thus epitomizes the social contract that Black people made with the Crown by way of the Crown’s agents: the Virginia Company, the Massachusetts Bay Company, and the other corporations that were chartered by the Crown and that later became the United States.
For the first 40-odd years, many Black people, perhaps most, were indentured servants, not slaves. They got their freedom dues just like their white counterparts did. Which means that the original social contract between Black subjects and the Crown was about commutative justice — indentures and freedom dues.
The turning point was 1662, when the Virginia Assembly stated that all children “borne in this country shal be held bond or free only according to the condition of the mother.” The Assembly defied common law precedent of children inheriting the name and status of the father. The Black womb thus became the matrix of slavery and of Dred Scott distributive justice.
The Counter-Revolution
The American Revolution consolidated the triumph of Dred Scottdistributive justice over social-contract commutative justice. Henceforth, the tyranny of the white majority dictated the national agenda. Two events in particular catalyzed the counter-revolution: first, the Somerset case of 1772, in which Lord Mansfield held that slavery was unsupported by common law; and second, Lord Dunmore’s Proclamation of 1775, whereby the governor of Virginia declared that every Negro would be free who joined the British Army in their fight against American rebellion.
As to framing it as a counter-revolution, consider the Declaration of Independence’s penultimate complaint, that King George III “has excited domestic Insurrections amongst us.” The phrase euphemizes white paranoia of slave rebellion as aggravated by Somerset and the Dunmore Proclamation. Also consider its final complaint about George III having “endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.”
The Declaration denotes distributive justice — “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” for white men; slavery for, and genocidal land theft from, Black and Native American people. When the Declaration was published on July 4, 1776, its 56 signers, including 41 slavers, usurped divine right. The British Constitution under the Stuart kings had denoted the divine right of kings. The U.S. Constitution ordained the divine right of white men.
The Social Contract
The Declaration of Independence states that republican governance is based on the consent of the governed. But Black people assented under duress of slavery from around 1662 until 1865. They assented under duress of neo-slavery from around 1865 until 1941. That was when Circular No. 3591, a directive from the attorney general, announced a policy focused on eradicating neo-slavery.
They continue to assent under duress of presumptive guilt, which violates their Ninth Amendment right to the presumption of innocence. The Black presumptive criminal, as stereotyped by white paranoia, induced the antebellum slave codes, and later, the Black Codes of neo-slavery and of mass incarceration.
Furthermore, Black folks have assented under duress of unjust enrichment, whereby first the English Crown, then the U.S. government, allowed whites (slavers in particular) to enrich themselves at Black peoples’ expense. King Charles II himself chartered the Royal African Company in 1660 to monopolize the transatlantic slave trade. Already noted were the 40-acre estates due to Black people thanks to Special Field Order No. 15 that went instead to their former slavers.
Here’s Black’s Law Dictionary on unjust enrichment: “Under this doctrine a defendant has something of value at the plaintiff’s expense under circumstances which impose a legal duty of restitution.” Here’s the definition: “‘Unjust enrichment’ of a person occurs when he has and retains money or benefits which in justice and equity belong to another.”
The English Crown and the sovereign (white) people of the United States engorged several generations of wealth at Black folks’ expense: They enslaved them for two centuries, then re-enslaved them for another three generations. Government programs such as the 1862 Homestead Act, which rendered millions of acres to white families, and New Deal programs that made the white middle class into “the affluent society,” neglected the Black caste whom were segregated to the shack and to the ghetto.
White Americans continue to segregate Black Americans, to criminalize them and to deny them equal educational opportunity. American history, from 1662 until now, chronicles how white property rights have denied Black human rights. Not human rights as in the rights championed by Thomas Paine and the French Revolution. Rather, the rights of Englishmen that were vested in Black people during the early 17th century.
A Just Restitution
The English Crown and the white people of the U.S., especially inheritors of slaver wealth, have a legal duty of restitution to descendants of slaves, for they have denied several generations their inheritance.
Their zero-sum society based on caste persists. Hence the racial wealth gap — the average white family has 20 times the wealth of the average Black family — some 350 years in the making. Restitution would bridge this unjust enrichment gap. Black’s Law Dictionary defines restitution thus: “The act of restoring; restoration; restoration of anything to its rightful owner; the act of making good or giving equivalent for any loss, damage or injury; and indemnification.”
Restitution would mean many trillions of dollars and millions of acres in reparations to account for the losses, damages and injuries suffered by Black people these last three-and-a-half centuries. It would also mean a paradigm shift from Aryan distributive justice as expressed by Dred Scott, to the commutative justice of Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address,” which dedicated the nation to the proposition that all men and women are created equal.
The point of H.R. 40 is for its mandated commission to fill in the details as to how much is owed to Black people and to work out the problem of how “to establish Justice” in terms of commutative justice. A “rectification of names” is in order.
To that end, H.R. 40’s operative word is restitution — to validate the Constitution for descendants of slaves. Thus restored, they could truly consent to the social contract of “We the People.”
On January 16, 1865, Union Army Gen. William Sherman issued Special Field Order No. 15, which ordered the redistribution of roughly 400,000 acres of land along the coastline of South Carolina, Florida and Georgia to Black families in 40-acre plots. He later authorized the Army to loan mules to them, too. General Sherman’s order provided for the settlement of roughly 40,000 Black people.
President Abraham Lincoln pushed for the creation of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, which was established on March 3, 1865. This “Freedmen’s Bureau” was authorized to give legal title for 40-acre plots of land to Black people and to pro-Union white refugees. But after John Wilkes Booth assassinated Lincoln, President Andrew Johnson overturned Sherman’s order. President Johnson later returned the land that the Union Army had confiscated from slavers back to those same former slavers.
The U.S. government restored slavers their land, but what about Black folks’ freedom dues?
The promise of Black restitution remains unfulfilled. Trillions of dollars and millions of acres in reparations are in order. The Crown of England and the sovereign people of the United States, its white majority, owe a legal duty of restitution to descendants of slaves due to slavery, neo-slavery (in the form of convict leasing and peonage, whereby Black people were imprisoned for bogus crimes such as vagrancy or joblessness and then forced to labor in chain gangs and on prison farms) and segregation.
Justice Defined
...In 1788, when the sovereign people ratified the Constitution, they did so by the logic later expressed in Dred Scott v. Sandford: “The negro has no rights which white men are bound to respect.” Dred Scott held that a Black person, whether slave or freedman, could never be the equal of a free man. The white population in the U.S. effectively adopted the same caste system that the lighter-skinned Aryans had forced upon the darker-skinned Dravidians of ancient India. Their written instrument, the Constitution, legalized slavery in defiance of English common law.
The Rights of Englishmen, Vested in Black People
The common law never recognized slavery as legal. Black people were subjects of the Crown of England up until the American Revolution. The rights of Englishmen, going back to 1215 Magna Carta, were vested in Black people upon their arrival in Virginia in 1619, although they had arrived in the U.S. as early as 1526. For example, Anthony Johnson, whose documented presence in Virginia dates from 1621, eventually got his freedom dues. He started as an indentured servant. By the 1650s, he owned a 250-acre estate.
Johnson’s career thus epitomizes the social contract that Black people made with the Crown by way of the Crown’s agents: the Virginia Company, the Massachusetts Bay Company, and the other corporations that were chartered by the Crown and that later became the United States.
For the first 40-odd years, many Black people, perhaps most, were indentured servants, not slaves. They got their freedom dues just like their white counterparts did. Which means that the original social contract between Black subjects and the Crown was about commutative justice — indentures and freedom dues.
The turning point was 1662, when the Virginia Assembly stated that all children “borne in this country shal be held bond or free only according to the condition of the mother.” The Assembly defied common law precedent of children inheriting the name and status of the father. The Black womb thus became the matrix of slavery and of Dred Scott distributive justice.
The Counter-Revolution
The American Revolution consolidated the triumph of Dred Scottdistributive justice over social-contract commutative justice. Henceforth, the tyranny of the white majority dictated the national agenda. Two events in particular catalyzed the counter-revolution: first, the Somerset case of 1772, in which Lord Mansfield held that slavery was unsupported by common law; and second, Lord Dunmore’s Proclamation of 1775, whereby the governor of Virginia declared that every Negro would be free who joined the British Army in their fight against American rebellion.
As to framing it as a counter-revolution, consider the Declaration of Independence’s penultimate complaint, that King George III “has excited domestic Insurrections amongst us.” The phrase euphemizes white paranoia of slave rebellion as aggravated by Somerset and the Dunmore Proclamation. Also consider its final complaint about George III having “endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.”
The Declaration denotes distributive justice — “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” for white men; slavery for, and genocidal land theft from, Black and Native American people. When the Declaration was published on July 4, 1776, its 56 signers, including 41 slavers, usurped divine right. The British Constitution under the Stuart kings had denoted the divine right of kings. The U.S. Constitution ordained the divine right of white men.
The Social Contract
The Declaration of Independence states that republican governance is based on the consent of the governed. But Black people assented under duress of slavery from around 1662 until 1865. They assented under duress of neo-slavery from around 1865 until 1941. That was when Circular No. 3591, a directive from the attorney general, announced a policy focused on eradicating neo-slavery.
They continue to assent under duress of presumptive guilt, which violates their Ninth Amendment right to the presumption of innocence. The Black presumptive criminal, as stereotyped by white paranoia, induced the antebellum slave codes, and later, the Black Codes of neo-slavery and of mass incarceration.
Furthermore, Black folks have assented under duress of unjust enrichment, whereby first the English Crown, then the U.S. government, allowed whites (slavers in particular) to enrich themselves at Black peoples’ expense. King Charles II himself chartered the Royal African Company in 1660 to monopolize the transatlantic slave trade. Already noted were the 40-acre estates due to Black people thanks to Special Field Order No. 15 that went instead to their former slavers.
Here’s Black’s Law Dictionary on unjust enrichment: “Under this doctrine a defendant has something of value at the plaintiff’s expense under circumstances which impose a legal duty of restitution.” Here’s the definition: “‘Unjust enrichment’ of a person occurs when he has and retains money or benefits which in justice and equity belong to another.”
The English Crown and the sovereign (white) people of the United States engorged several generations of wealth at Black folks’ expense: They enslaved them for two centuries, then re-enslaved them for another three generations. Government programs such as the 1862 Homestead Act, which rendered millions of acres to white families, and New Deal programs that made the white middle class into “the affluent society,” neglected the Black caste whom were segregated to the shack and to the ghetto.
White Americans continue to segregate Black Americans, to criminalize them and to deny them equal educational opportunity. American history, from 1662 until now, chronicles how white property rights have denied Black human rights. Not human rights as in the rights championed by Thomas Paine and the French Revolution. Rather, the rights of Englishmen that were vested in Black people during the early 17th century.
A Just Restitution
The English Crown and the white people of the U.S., especially inheritors of slaver wealth, have a legal duty of restitution to descendants of slaves, for they have denied several generations their inheritance.
Their zero-sum society based on caste persists. Hence the racial wealth gap — the average white family has 20 times the wealth of the average Black family — some 350 years in the making. Restitution would bridge this unjust enrichment gap. Black’s Law Dictionary defines restitution thus: “The act of restoring; restoration; restoration of anything to its rightful owner; the act of making good or giving equivalent for any loss, damage or injury; and indemnification.”
Restitution would mean many trillions of dollars and millions of acres in reparations to account for the losses, damages and injuries suffered by Black people these last three-and-a-half centuries. It would also mean a paradigm shift from Aryan distributive justice as expressed by Dred Scott, to the commutative justice of Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address,” which dedicated the nation to the proposition that all men and women are created equal.
The point of H.R. 40 is for its mandated commission to fill in the details as to how much is owed to Black people and to work out the problem of how “to establish Justice” in terms of commutative justice. A “rectification of names” is in order.
To that end, H.R. 40’s operative word is restitution — to validate the Constitution for descendants of slaves. Thus restored, they could truly consent to the social contract of “We the People.”
The Radicalization of White America: How Donald Trump Weaponized Whiteness
Michael Harriot - the root
5/3/19
...The Rise of Radical WhitenessSince Donald Trump declared himself a candidate for the presidency, hate crimes have jumped by a statistically significant amount. In 2014, the last full year he wasn’t running for president, the FBI reported 6,418 total hate crime incidents, the lowest amount in five years. Donald Trump officially announced his White House bid in June 2015, and by 2016 (his first full year as a political figure), hate crimes jumped 14%.
The startling statistics include:
Even more troubling, the numbers say that hate crimes are rising as every other indicator of crime and violence falls.
Despite what police, the local news media and the Avengers would have you believe, we are living in one of the safest periods in American history. Year in and year out, most people say that violent crime is increasing but almost every reliable metric shows that crime and violence has been declining for decades. FBI data shows that America is enjoying the lowest rates for murder and violent crime in a half-century, while the Justice Department reports that the incarceration rate is at its lowest point in 20 years.
Yet, we don’t treat the rhetoric, propaganda and speech that fuels racial, anti-religious and homophobic violence with the same urgency with which we treat traditional “terrorists,” which stands to reason, right? Most people would agree that racist rhetoric—while problematic—isn’t as dangerous as the speech that inspires what right-wingers call “radical Islamists.”
Well, according to the ADL, since Trump announced his candidacy, Muslim extremists in the U.S. have killed 81 Americans.
White supremacists and far-right extremists have killed 118.
How is this Donald Trump’s Fault?
While we should not lay all of this violence solely at the feet of Trump, it is unavoidably true that he has not only used the tactics of fear and hate for his political gain, but he has mainstreamed racism in a way that has motivated some white people to act out on their fears.
“Trump is a huge problem for us as a society, in terms of rationalizing bigotry and making it seem OK,” says the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Heidi Beirich. “But at the same time, you have young white males who—in a very short period of time—are being exposed to this horrific white supremacist propaganda and are starting to commit acts of violence.”
“There are a lot of people who have been sucked into this universe, who have come to see this kind of bigotry as totally OK because the president engages in it,” remarks Beirich, who leads the SPLC’s Intelligence Project and oversees the center’s annual count of hate groups. “Then they get even more radical.”
“There are two things happening here,” she explains. “Trump’s comments sanction racist, bigoted ideas. And at the same time, young white men are living in a milieu—a cesspool of hatred—that make them think they need to commit acts of violence to change the direction the country is headed in.”
A 2017 poll from NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health revealed that a majority of whites feel like they are being discriminated against. When Reuters/Ipsos asked if white people felt they were under attack, a plurality agreed that they were. A Pew Research study on Race in America released in April revealed that 60% of whites, 76% of blacks and 75% of Hispanics believe that it has become “more common” for people to express racist or racially insensitive views since Trump became president.
As an expert on the white supremacist, nativist and neo-Confederate movements, Beirich notes that the social media history of Jason Bowers, the Pittsburgh mosque shooter, revealed his transformation from Trump supporter to violent zealot. Beirich also points to Cesar Sayoc, who allegedly mailed pipe bombs to Trump’s political adversaries.
“The first thing you here [sic] entering Trump rally is we are not going to take it anymore, the forgotten ones, etc,” Sayoc wrote. “You met people from all walks life … color etc. It was fun, it became like a new found drug.”
According to Beirich and other experts, the path to radicalization often starts with rhetoric, especially with someone as influential and prominent as the president. Aside from anecdotal evidence and polling data, there are numerous studies that connect Trump’s public statements to violence and hate crimes.
When a pair of researchers from Princeton and the University of Warwick examined publicly available data from law enforcement agencies, they discovered a rise in Islamophobic hate crimes since the start of Trump’s presidential campaign. Curiously, the increase in hate crimes was concentrated in counties with high Twitter usage. The study also found a correlation between the number of Trump’s tweets about Islam in a given week and the number of anti-Muslim hate crimes that followed.
In an analysis using media reports, tips and interviews, Reveal found 300 incidents of hate speech where the perpetrator used Trump’s name, many of which turned violent. ProPublica’s “Documenting Hate” news index shows that, since his inauguration, Donald Trump’s name has been mentioned more times in news reports of hate crimes and bias incidents than anyone else except Jussie Smollet. Trump has publicly advocated for violence at his rallies, so it is not surprising that a Washington Post analysis found that hate crimes increased 226% in counties that host Trump rallies.
It is not a sheer coincidence that Islamophobic hate crimes have increased when politicians on Trump’s side of the aisle have co-opted his anti-Muslim stance. It’s no wonder that politicians emulate and perpetuate this narrative when his official campaign stokes fears of Sharia law. Trump rallies are increasingly attended by right-wing conspiracy theorists, and hate groups like Patriot Prayer have billed their marches as pro-Trump political demonstrations.
Not only does Trump get to espouse racist views from his presidential bully pulpit, but as the most powerful man in the most powerful country, he has an outsized influence on media, the national narrative and even facts. When he declared a national emergency at the border because of the “horde” of Hispanic invaders, his Republican counterparts backed him up.So, even though border crossings have been steadily decreasing for years and undocumented immigrants commit less crime than U.S. citizens, Trump’s rants against “animals” and “rapists” have been cemented into policies that inspire right-wing militia and Charlottesville, Va., marches.
“When you tell these people that migrants are invaders, what do you do with invaders?” Beirich asked.
“You shoot them.”
As the 2020 election draws near, it is obvious that Trump will amplify his racism to appeal to his white base, so maybe we should expect more mass shootings and church burnings. It is also clear that some of those acolytes will hear the not-so-subtle dog whistle of the white supremacist-in-chief and take matters into their own hands. The next time someone takes a machine gun to a mosque or sends a pipe bomb to a politician, we might not catch it in time.
As long as these terrorists are inspired by the American president, we will never call his dangerous language what it really is:
The radicalization of white America,
The startling statistics include:
- Hate crimes have jumped 31 percent since Donald Trump became a presidential candidate.
- The total number of hate crimes in 2017 (the most recent year for which figures are available) was the highest in a decade.
- Since 2014, the number of hate crimes motivated by religion has increased by 53%.
- During the same time period, the number of racially motivated incidents has increased by 25%, from 4,048 to 5,060, according to FBI data.
- Three of the four deadliest years for extremist-related murders have happened since Donald Trump declared his presidency, according to the Anti-Defamation League
Even more troubling, the numbers say that hate crimes are rising as every other indicator of crime and violence falls.
Despite what police, the local news media and the Avengers would have you believe, we are living in one of the safest periods in American history. Year in and year out, most people say that violent crime is increasing but almost every reliable metric shows that crime and violence has been declining for decades. FBI data shows that America is enjoying the lowest rates for murder and violent crime in a half-century, while the Justice Department reports that the incarceration rate is at its lowest point in 20 years.
Yet, we don’t treat the rhetoric, propaganda and speech that fuels racial, anti-religious and homophobic violence with the same urgency with which we treat traditional “terrorists,” which stands to reason, right? Most people would agree that racist rhetoric—while problematic—isn’t as dangerous as the speech that inspires what right-wingers call “radical Islamists.”
Well, according to the ADL, since Trump announced his candidacy, Muslim extremists in the U.S. have killed 81 Americans.
White supremacists and far-right extremists have killed 118.
How is this Donald Trump’s Fault?
While we should not lay all of this violence solely at the feet of Trump, it is unavoidably true that he has not only used the tactics of fear and hate for his political gain, but he has mainstreamed racism in a way that has motivated some white people to act out on their fears.
“Trump is a huge problem for us as a society, in terms of rationalizing bigotry and making it seem OK,” says the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Heidi Beirich. “But at the same time, you have young white males who—in a very short period of time—are being exposed to this horrific white supremacist propaganda and are starting to commit acts of violence.”
“There are a lot of people who have been sucked into this universe, who have come to see this kind of bigotry as totally OK because the president engages in it,” remarks Beirich, who leads the SPLC’s Intelligence Project and oversees the center’s annual count of hate groups. “Then they get even more radical.”
“There are two things happening here,” she explains. “Trump’s comments sanction racist, bigoted ideas. And at the same time, young white men are living in a milieu—a cesspool of hatred—that make them think they need to commit acts of violence to change the direction the country is headed in.”
A 2017 poll from NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health revealed that a majority of whites feel like they are being discriminated against. When Reuters/Ipsos asked if white people felt they were under attack, a plurality agreed that they were. A Pew Research study on Race in America released in April revealed that 60% of whites, 76% of blacks and 75% of Hispanics believe that it has become “more common” for people to express racist or racially insensitive views since Trump became president.
As an expert on the white supremacist, nativist and neo-Confederate movements, Beirich notes that the social media history of Jason Bowers, the Pittsburgh mosque shooter, revealed his transformation from Trump supporter to violent zealot. Beirich also points to Cesar Sayoc, who allegedly mailed pipe bombs to Trump’s political adversaries.
“The first thing you here [sic] entering Trump rally is we are not going to take it anymore, the forgotten ones, etc,” Sayoc wrote. “You met people from all walks life … color etc. It was fun, it became like a new found drug.”
According to Beirich and other experts, the path to radicalization often starts with rhetoric, especially with someone as influential and prominent as the president. Aside from anecdotal evidence and polling data, there are numerous studies that connect Trump’s public statements to violence and hate crimes.
When a pair of researchers from Princeton and the University of Warwick examined publicly available data from law enforcement agencies, they discovered a rise in Islamophobic hate crimes since the start of Trump’s presidential campaign. Curiously, the increase in hate crimes was concentrated in counties with high Twitter usage. The study also found a correlation between the number of Trump’s tweets about Islam in a given week and the number of anti-Muslim hate crimes that followed.
In an analysis using media reports, tips and interviews, Reveal found 300 incidents of hate speech where the perpetrator used Trump’s name, many of which turned violent. ProPublica’s “Documenting Hate” news index shows that, since his inauguration, Donald Trump’s name has been mentioned more times in news reports of hate crimes and bias incidents than anyone else except Jussie Smollet. Trump has publicly advocated for violence at his rallies, so it is not surprising that a Washington Post analysis found that hate crimes increased 226% in counties that host Trump rallies.
It is not a sheer coincidence that Islamophobic hate crimes have increased when politicians on Trump’s side of the aisle have co-opted his anti-Muslim stance. It’s no wonder that politicians emulate and perpetuate this narrative when his official campaign stokes fears of Sharia law. Trump rallies are increasingly attended by right-wing conspiracy theorists, and hate groups like Patriot Prayer have billed their marches as pro-Trump political demonstrations.
Not only does Trump get to espouse racist views from his presidential bully pulpit, but as the most powerful man in the most powerful country, he has an outsized influence on media, the national narrative and even facts. When he declared a national emergency at the border because of the “horde” of Hispanic invaders, his Republican counterparts backed him up.So, even though border crossings have been steadily decreasing for years and undocumented immigrants commit less crime than U.S. citizens, Trump’s rants against “animals” and “rapists” have been cemented into policies that inspire right-wing militia and Charlottesville, Va., marches.
“When you tell these people that migrants are invaders, what do you do with invaders?” Beirich asked.
“You shoot them.”
As the 2020 election draws near, it is obvious that Trump will amplify his racism to appeal to his white base, so maybe we should expect more mass shootings and church burnings. It is also clear that some of those acolytes will hear the not-so-subtle dog whistle of the white supremacist-in-chief and take matters into their own hands. The next time someone takes a machine gun to a mosque or sends a pipe bomb to a politician, we might not catch it in time.
As long as these terrorists are inspired by the American president, we will never call his dangerous language what it really is:
The radicalization of white America,
Living while Black
Brandon Griggs - philly tribune
Dec 24, 2018
It's happened yet again.
An African-American man in suburban Cleveland says a bank teller called police on him this month when he tried to cash a check from his employer. Although the man didn't explicitly cry "racial profiling," many observers see the incident as another in a dispiriting and all-too-familiar series.
In 2018, police across the United States have been urged to investigate Black people for doing all kinds of daily, mundane, noncriminal activities.
This year alone, police have been called on African-Americans for:
And these are just the incidents that CNN has reported. There are no doubt many others.
"It was highly embarrassing," the Cleveland man told reporters. "The person who made that phone call ... I feel as though they were judging."
A review of news headlines this year shows that police were also called on other people of color. But it seemed to happen most often to black people: Black people just going about their business. -- (CNN)
An African-American man in suburban Cleveland says a bank teller called police on him this month when he tried to cash a check from his employer. Although the man didn't explicitly cry "racial profiling," many observers see the incident as another in a dispiriting and all-too-familiar series.
In 2018, police across the United States have been urged to investigate Black people for doing all kinds of daily, mundane, noncriminal activities.
This year alone, police have been called on African-Americans for:
- Operating a lemonade store
- Golfing too slowly
- Waiting for a friend at Starbucks
- Barbecuing at a park
- Working out at a gym
- Campaigning door to door
- Moving into an apartment
- Mowing the wrong lawn
- Shopping for prom clothes
- Napping in a university common room
- Asking for directions
- Not waving while leaving an Airbnb
- Redeeming a coupon
- Selling bottled water on a sidewalk
- Eating lunch on a college campus
- Riding in a car with a white grandmother
- Babysitting two white children
- Wearing a backpack that brushed against a woman
- Working as a home inspector
- Working as a firefighter
- Helping a homeless man
- Delivering newspapers
- Swimming in a pool
- Shopping while pregnant
- Driving with leaves on a car
And these are just the incidents that CNN has reported. There are no doubt many others.
"It was highly embarrassing," the Cleveland man told reporters. "The person who made that phone call ... I feel as though they were judging."
A review of news headlines this year shows that police were also called on other people of color. But it seemed to happen most often to black people: Black people just going about their business. -- (CNN)
Coard: Non-voting Blacks get no thanks, deserve no benefits
Michael Coard - philly tribune
11/10/18
If you’re Black, 18 or older, and don’t vote- or, even worse, are Black, 18 or older, and tell other Blacks not to vote- I have two things to say to you.
One- Thanks for nothing. Black presidential voting participation decreased from 17.2 million, equaling 66.7 percent of eligible Blacks, in 2012 to 16.4 million, equaling 59.6 percent, in 2016. You’re a key reason why Donald Trump “won” in 2016. You’re a key reason why racist Republicans controlled the House and Senate during Trump’s first two years. You’re a key reason why the Supreme Court, the federal courts of appeal, and the federal district courts have become more anti-Black, anti-Muslim, anti-Latinx, anti-women, anti-LGBTQ, and anti-poor people beginning in 2016.
Two- Since you’re too indifferent or too “woke” to vote, then you’re too indifferent or too “woke” to reap the benefits of what voting has provided for Blacks and others. Therefore, you must now reject every benefit you’re offered that has resulted from the work of Black voters of the present and Black voters of the past.
For example, stop being a greedy hypocrite and immediately start rejecting the following (and all other) governmental benefits:
1. The Social Security Act of 1935 (with amendments in 1939, 1946, 1950, 1952, 1954, and 1965), which in Title I provides for you if you’re elderly, Title III for you if you’re unemployed, Title IV for you and your household members if you and they are in need of Aid to Families with Dependent Children (e.g., food stamps), Title V for your children’s welfare, Title VI for your public health services, and Title X for you if you’re vision-impaired. By the way, it was the 1939 amendment that provides your non-voting ass with that check you rush to cash on the first of every month.
2. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, which provides you with the ability to work at white-owned businesses, ride on public transportation, eat at restaurants, shop at department stores, and stay at hotels- all without getting your head bashed in by white cops enforcing Jim Crow laws.
3. The Voting Rights Act of 1965, which ended whites-only primaries, whites-only grandfather clauses, literacy tests, and poll taxes imposed upon your recently emancipated ancestors following passage of the 15th Amendment in 1870.
4. Medicare and Medicaid Services, which began in 1966 and provide for you medically if you’re 65 or older and had paid into the services through your payroll taxes.
5. Minimum Wage Laws, which- after coming into effect in 1912 in Massachusetts after activist women in New York began relentless protests against sweatshop labor in 1890- provide you with at least some modicum of relatively fair payment.
6. The Workers Compensation Laws, which began in 1911 in Wisconsin and provide for you financially when you’re injured on the job.
7. Everything you use from libraries to recreation centers provided by candidates elected to city councils, from traffic lights to driver licenses provided by candidates elected to state legislatures, and from federal tax laws to affirmative action policies provided by candidates elected to Congress.
8. The elections during the past few years of progressive District Attorneys throughout the country who make sure you and especially your 15-30 year-old Black sons, nephews, and cousins are no longer judicially lynched by the racist and mass-incarcerating so-called criminal justice system.
9. The hopeful- and likely- election of progressive Stacey Abrams in Georgia as the first Black and the first woman governor of that state.
10. The hopeful- and likely- election of progressive Andrew Gillum in Florida as the first Black governor of that state.
Colloquially speaking, you non-voting Blacks better not accept no benefits or take no credit regarding any of the ten items listed above (or anything else) because you ain’t done nothing to help.
In fact, you remind me of the type of people the Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey was referring to when he said, “I have no desire to take all Black people back to Africa. There are Blacks who are no good here and will likewise be no good there.”
In conclusion, the photo in this week’s column is that of ex-Tennessee cop Clayton Hickey wearing his Confederate lynching T-shirt while voting in Mississippi on November 6. Now tell me again why you didn’t vote.
One- Thanks for nothing. Black presidential voting participation decreased from 17.2 million, equaling 66.7 percent of eligible Blacks, in 2012 to 16.4 million, equaling 59.6 percent, in 2016. You’re a key reason why Donald Trump “won” in 2016. You’re a key reason why racist Republicans controlled the House and Senate during Trump’s first two years. You’re a key reason why the Supreme Court, the federal courts of appeal, and the federal district courts have become more anti-Black, anti-Muslim, anti-Latinx, anti-women, anti-LGBTQ, and anti-poor people beginning in 2016.
Two- Since you’re too indifferent or too “woke” to vote, then you’re too indifferent or too “woke” to reap the benefits of what voting has provided for Blacks and others. Therefore, you must now reject every benefit you’re offered that has resulted from the work of Black voters of the present and Black voters of the past.
For example, stop being a greedy hypocrite and immediately start rejecting the following (and all other) governmental benefits:
1. The Social Security Act of 1935 (with amendments in 1939, 1946, 1950, 1952, 1954, and 1965), which in Title I provides for you if you’re elderly, Title III for you if you’re unemployed, Title IV for you and your household members if you and they are in need of Aid to Families with Dependent Children (e.g., food stamps), Title V for your children’s welfare, Title VI for your public health services, and Title X for you if you’re vision-impaired. By the way, it was the 1939 amendment that provides your non-voting ass with that check you rush to cash on the first of every month.
2. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, which provides you with the ability to work at white-owned businesses, ride on public transportation, eat at restaurants, shop at department stores, and stay at hotels- all without getting your head bashed in by white cops enforcing Jim Crow laws.
3. The Voting Rights Act of 1965, which ended whites-only primaries, whites-only grandfather clauses, literacy tests, and poll taxes imposed upon your recently emancipated ancestors following passage of the 15th Amendment in 1870.
4. Medicare and Medicaid Services, which began in 1966 and provide for you medically if you’re 65 or older and had paid into the services through your payroll taxes.
5. Minimum Wage Laws, which- after coming into effect in 1912 in Massachusetts after activist women in New York began relentless protests against sweatshop labor in 1890- provide you with at least some modicum of relatively fair payment.
6. The Workers Compensation Laws, which began in 1911 in Wisconsin and provide for you financially when you’re injured on the job.
7. Everything you use from libraries to recreation centers provided by candidates elected to city councils, from traffic lights to driver licenses provided by candidates elected to state legislatures, and from federal tax laws to affirmative action policies provided by candidates elected to Congress.
8. The elections during the past few years of progressive District Attorneys throughout the country who make sure you and especially your 15-30 year-old Black sons, nephews, and cousins are no longer judicially lynched by the racist and mass-incarcerating so-called criminal justice system.
9. The hopeful- and likely- election of progressive Stacey Abrams in Georgia as the first Black and the first woman governor of that state.
10. The hopeful- and likely- election of progressive Andrew Gillum in Florida as the first Black governor of that state.
Colloquially speaking, you non-voting Blacks better not accept no benefits or take no credit regarding any of the ten items listed above (or anything else) because you ain’t done nothing to help.
In fact, you remind me of the type of people the Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey was referring to when he said, “I have no desire to take all Black people back to Africa. There are Blacks who are no good here and will likewise be no good there.”
In conclusion, the photo in this week’s column is that of ex-Tennessee cop Clayton Hickey wearing his Confederate lynching T-shirt while voting in Mississippi on November 6. Now tell me again why you didn’t vote.
#NOTRACISTS BE LIKE: THE TOP 10 PHRASES USED BY PEOPLE WHO CLAIM THEY ARE NOT RACIST
Michael Harriot - the root
10/04/17 1:37pm
This is not about racists. This is about not-racists. You’ve seen them before: the special class of white people who say racist shit and do racist things but declare themselves the “least racist person you know.”
Their racism isn’t always intentional. Sometimes it is a byproduct of privilege, sometimes it is a deflection, and sometimes it is caused by the vapid, shallow inability to care about or understand anything that they don’t agree with because they are the majority.
The population of not-racists is steadily growing. Not-racists voted for Donald Trump. Not-racists say that kneeling for the flag means you want to slit the throats of veterans. Not-racists believe in Blue Lives, White Jesus and black-on-black crime. So we decided to do a countdown of the 10 most popular phrases so that you can easily identify not-racists, or play a game of not-racist bingo in your spare time:
10. “Why must everything have to be about race?”
One of the most used ideas in the not-racist handbook is that talking about race creates divisiveness. The theory rests on the premise that the more people point out racism, the more ... umm ... I really don’t know how the second part works.
The truth is that talking about race makes white people uncomfortable because it reminds them of the filthy history of white supremacy. That’s why Texas schoolbooks referred to slaves as “immigrants,” and Confederate-flag-wavers have twisted the bloodiest conflict in U.S. history into something about states’ rights, tradition and the North’s hatred of sweet tea ... and declaring human beings to be personal property.
And I get it; it is very uncomfortable for white people to hear about the atrocities of racism knowing that their people are complicit in centuries of mistreatment. It would give me the heebie-jeebies, too. It’s like cheating on a woman, confessing and then wondering why she’s always bringing up old shit when you come home late.
But the only way America will ever cure the cancer of white supremacy is by talking about it and treating it as if it were a disease. If you found a tumor in your left lung and your doctor brought it up every time you lit a cigarette, it would be stupid to respond with, “Why does everything have to be about lung cancer?”
It’s killing you, man. It’s killing you.
9. “I dated a black guy/girl ...
”A few days ago I received a message from a not-racist woman who genuinely wanted to know why I used the phrase “white people” (and its more hilarious cousin, “wypipo”). I patiently replied to her (I don’t always clap back, but when I do, it’s in the mailbag), and she wrote back that she understood. She explained that she wasn’t racist because her ex-husband was black and she had half-black children. Which left me wondering:
That’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works.
8. “I don’t see color."
Do you stop at green lights? How do you play checkers, then? Not-racists will actually try to convince you that they don’t care about race and that erasing the concept of race from our minds is a self-righteous, egalitarian attribute.
Bullshit.
Here is the thing: The idea of a post-racial society is really the desire for a white society. Even nonracist Caucasians don’t mind this because they don’t understand that whiteness has surpassed the classification of a racial category in America and has become the default.
Black people want to be treated like everyone else. We don’t desire to be seen as everyone else. Most African Americans, Mexicans, Jews, etc., love their race and their culture. It is a large part of who we are. We don’t care that you see our color. We just want you to respect it.
Also, how do you play Uno?
7. “You’re the racist!”
In the September 2013 global quarterly Not-Racists, the executive board decided to introduce a clever bit of trickery into the racial discussion in America. According to the memo obtained by The Root, Caucasians were instructed to respond to any claims of racism, no matter how subtle, with the charge that black people were the racist ones. Since then, according to a poll never conducted by Pew Research, claims of reverse racism have risen more than 389 percent.
I’m not one of those people who believe black people can’t be racist, because I, too, felt racism creep into my heart once when a Caucasian co-worker offered me leftover potato salad. Even though black-on-white racism technically exists, it is rarely injurious.
Because—feeling butt-hurt is not a medical symptom.
6. “I grew up around black people.”
There are people who grew up in the “inner city” or played Pop Warner football on the Negro side of town who believe that they can’t be racist. According to them, growing up around black people—along with Mandingo penis and black vagina—completes the Holy Trinity of racism cures.
When asked why the white boys raised on slave plantations; the millennials who went to integrated schools but carried tiki torches in Charlottesville, Va.; and Darren Wilson, who worked his entire career as a police officer in a majority-black town before he shot Michael Brown Jr., still had remnants of racism in their bloodstreams, white people collectively paused, gazed at their flip-flops for a few brief seconds and replied, “Why does everything have to be about race?”
5. “Not all white people ... ”
Nothing upsets the #NotRacist stomach more than hearing the phrase “white people” used in any capacity. Only the term “white privilege” causes more consternation.
That same woman who wrote the letter I mentioned earlier said this:
First & foremost, many of us “white people” could careless what racial label you bestow upon us because at the end of the day the same loving GOD that created white skin created dark skin ... Why does there have to be a label? Why must we classify as a “color”? When we are all God’s master piece? No one runs from what the classification of one’s skin color reminds them of! What happened years ago is embarrassing. It’s hurtful! And morally disturbing. I am fortunate, my family did not participate in the barbaric behaviors as other whites.
And God help our soul had we ever considered using a racial slur at another person! No my family was not and is not perfect but sir not all of us were mentally disturbed. And that is what someone has to be in order to hold another against their will in captivity. And sir, why would you want to write such things that fuel the hatred? Why would you assume that ALL whites fit into one general spectrum? If this is so, does this mean that because you are black sir that you are a gang banger? Do you see the issue here sir? ”
Although this is one of the most interesting uses of the “not all white people” variations, it raises an interesting point: I have a friend who is black and owns a Tesla. When she hears a mechanic advise people to change their oil every 3,000 miles, she doesn’t say, “Not all cars!” My friend is intelligent enough to know that the mechanic is referring to most cars or the typical car. Nothing in this world is 100 percent. Somewhere there exists a cat who likes having mice around, but for the most part ...
People who object to the word combination “white people” do so only because they aren’t used to being stereotyped. When the letter writer considered every black stereotype and decided to ask if I was a gangbanger, it did not bother me. You know why?
Because I am not a gangbanger.
I am also accustomed to living with the knowledge that my skin engenders certain thoughts about who I am. She does not have to navigate a world that presupposes her psyche on a day-to-day basis.
And that, dear reader, is called “white privilege.”
4. “Go back to Africa!”
Not-racists believe that America belongs to them and that whiteness endows them with the power to excommunicate the offenders of their country at will. This, too, is white privilege.
White privilege is believing that you have the right to tell anyone to leave the country they built with their own hands, for free. White privilege is believing that America is in decline and can be made great again only by a billionaire trust fund baby, but simultaneously saying that black football players have no right to criticize America because it made them rich. White privilege is the belief that this country is yours, and anyone who doesn’t like it should kick rocks. White privilege is the belief that kneeling is cause for being called anti-American, but not the actual, unconstitutional mistreatment of Americans.
That’s why I’m proposing that whenever we hear anyone complain about big government, high taxes, Black Lives Matter, traffic, not enough pineapples on their pizza or ask whether something is gluten-free, black people should cup their hands around their mouths and bellow into the world:
“Go back to Caucasia!”
3. “Why must you always be the victim?”
Another not-racist premise posits that when black people play the “race card,” they are blaming the failures of black people on racism. According to them, we want to make white people the villains and ourselves the victims.
They are partially correct. Black people kill too many other black people. The black family structure is falling apart. Blacks should focus more on education. Those things will help black people immensely.
But if black people did all those things and ignored the fact that a black college graduate is more likely than a white high school grad to be unemployed, and on average earns less than one; or that schools with majority-black students receive less funds than white schools with the same tax and income bases; or ignored mass incarceration, sentence inequality, the drug war, the history of redlining, banks giving blacks higher interest rates, disproportionate police brutality ...
... that would be stupid.
It’s like asking someone who was sexually abused to never talk about it or even to keep quiet when the cops ask about it because it turns the survivor into a victim.
We are the victims ... of racism.
2. “I don’t want to sound racist, but ... ”
I have been told, on numerous occasions, to never consider anything after “but.” The oldest sleight of hand in the book of racism magic is to proclaim oneself “not racist.” It is a wondrous trick that never works.
It’s akin to R. Kelly opening up a day care center and using the motto, “I’m not a pedophile, but I’d love to babysit your kids!”
Also, whenever anyone says they “don’t want to sound racist,” brace yourself. Because they are definitely about to say some racist shit.
1. “Make America great again.”
I can’t even ...
Their racism isn’t always intentional. Sometimes it is a byproduct of privilege, sometimes it is a deflection, and sometimes it is caused by the vapid, shallow inability to care about or understand anything that they don’t agree with because they are the majority.
The population of not-racists is steadily growing. Not-racists voted for Donald Trump. Not-racists say that kneeling for the flag means you want to slit the throats of veterans. Not-racists believe in Blue Lives, White Jesus and black-on-black crime. So we decided to do a countdown of the 10 most popular phrases so that you can easily identify not-racists, or play a game of not-racist bingo in your spare time:
10. “Why must everything have to be about race?”
One of the most used ideas in the not-racist handbook is that talking about race creates divisiveness. The theory rests on the premise that the more people point out racism, the more ... umm ... I really don’t know how the second part works.
The truth is that talking about race makes white people uncomfortable because it reminds them of the filthy history of white supremacy. That’s why Texas schoolbooks referred to slaves as “immigrants,” and Confederate-flag-wavers have twisted the bloodiest conflict in U.S. history into something about states’ rights, tradition and the North’s hatred of sweet tea ... and declaring human beings to be personal property.
And I get it; it is very uncomfortable for white people to hear about the atrocities of racism knowing that their people are complicit in centuries of mistreatment. It would give me the heebie-jeebies, too. It’s like cheating on a woman, confessing and then wondering why she’s always bringing up old shit when you come home late.
But the only way America will ever cure the cancer of white supremacy is by talking about it and treating it as if it were a disease. If you found a tumor in your left lung and your doctor brought it up every time you lit a cigarette, it would be stupid to respond with, “Why does everything have to be about lung cancer?”
It’s killing you, man. It’s killing you.
9. “I dated a black guy/girl ...
”A few days ago I received a message from a not-racist woman who genuinely wanted to know why I used the phrase “white people” (and its more hilarious cousin, “wypipo”). I patiently replied to her (I don’t always clap back, but when I do, it’s in the mailbag), and she wrote back that she understood. She explained that she wasn’t racist because her ex-husband was black and she had half-black children. Which left me wondering:
- Who are these black men and women dating these clueless white people and leaving them as unwoke as they found them?
- You gon’ let her raise your kids, bruh? For real?
- Who told wypipo that when a black penis enters a white vagina (or vice versa), the orgasm gives them a special immunity to being a bigot?
- If so, where does it go? (The racism, not the penis, stupid.)
- Instead of the March on Washington or the Montgomery Bus Boycott, should we have just marched around the country having orgies?
That’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works.
8. “I don’t see color."
Do you stop at green lights? How do you play checkers, then? Not-racists will actually try to convince you that they don’t care about race and that erasing the concept of race from our minds is a self-righteous, egalitarian attribute.
Bullshit.
Here is the thing: The idea of a post-racial society is really the desire for a white society. Even nonracist Caucasians don’t mind this because they don’t understand that whiteness has surpassed the classification of a racial category in America and has become the default.
Black people want to be treated like everyone else. We don’t desire to be seen as everyone else. Most African Americans, Mexicans, Jews, etc., love their race and their culture. It is a large part of who we are. We don’t care that you see our color. We just want you to respect it.
Also, how do you play Uno?
7. “You’re the racist!”
In the September 2013 global quarterly Not-Racists, the executive board decided to introduce a clever bit of trickery into the racial discussion in America. According to the memo obtained by The Root, Caucasians were instructed to respond to any claims of racism, no matter how subtle, with the charge that black people were the racist ones. Since then, according to a poll never conducted by Pew Research, claims of reverse racism have risen more than 389 percent.
I’m not one of those people who believe black people can’t be racist, because I, too, felt racism creep into my heart once when a Caucasian co-worker offered me leftover potato salad. Even though black-on-white racism technically exists, it is rarely injurious.
Because—feeling butt-hurt is not a medical symptom.
6. “I grew up around black people.”
There are people who grew up in the “inner city” or played Pop Warner football on the Negro side of town who believe that they can’t be racist. According to them, growing up around black people—along with Mandingo penis and black vagina—completes the Holy Trinity of racism cures.
When asked why the white boys raised on slave plantations; the millennials who went to integrated schools but carried tiki torches in Charlottesville, Va.; and Darren Wilson, who worked his entire career as a police officer in a majority-black town before he shot Michael Brown Jr., still had remnants of racism in their bloodstreams, white people collectively paused, gazed at their flip-flops for a few brief seconds and replied, “Why does everything have to be about race?”
5. “Not all white people ... ”
Nothing upsets the #NotRacist stomach more than hearing the phrase “white people” used in any capacity. Only the term “white privilege” causes more consternation.
That same woman who wrote the letter I mentioned earlier said this:
First & foremost, many of us “white people” could careless what racial label you bestow upon us because at the end of the day the same loving GOD that created white skin created dark skin ... Why does there have to be a label? Why must we classify as a “color”? When we are all God’s master piece? No one runs from what the classification of one’s skin color reminds them of! What happened years ago is embarrassing. It’s hurtful! And morally disturbing. I am fortunate, my family did not participate in the barbaric behaviors as other whites.
And God help our soul had we ever considered using a racial slur at another person! No my family was not and is not perfect but sir not all of us were mentally disturbed. And that is what someone has to be in order to hold another against their will in captivity. And sir, why would you want to write such things that fuel the hatred? Why would you assume that ALL whites fit into one general spectrum? If this is so, does this mean that because you are black sir that you are a gang banger? Do you see the issue here sir? ”
Although this is one of the most interesting uses of the “not all white people” variations, it raises an interesting point: I have a friend who is black and owns a Tesla. When she hears a mechanic advise people to change their oil every 3,000 miles, she doesn’t say, “Not all cars!” My friend is intelligent enough to know that the mechanic is referring to most cars or the typical car. Nothing in this world is 100 percent. Somewhere there exists a cat who likes having mice around, but for the most part ...
People who object to the word combination “white people” do so only because they aren’t used to being stereotyped. When the letter writer considered every black stereotype and decided to ask if I was a gangbanger, it did not bother me. You know why?
Because I am not a gangbanger.
I am also accustomed to living with the knowledge that my skin engenders certain thoughts about who I am. She does not have to navigate a world that presupposes her psyche on a day-to-day basis.
And that, dear reader, is called “white privilege.”
4. “Go back to Africa!”
Not-racists believe that America belongs to them and that whiteness endows them with the power to excommunicate the offenders of their country at will. This, too, is white privilege.
White privilege is believing that you have the right to tell anyone to leave the country they built with their own hands, for free. White privilege is believing that America is in decline and can be made great again only by a billionaire trust fund baby, but simultaneously saying that black football players have no right to criticize America because it made them rich. White privilege is the belief that this country is yours, and anyone who doesn’t like it should kick rocks. White privilege is the belief that kneeling is cause for being called anti-American, but not the actual, unconstitutional mistreatment of Americans.
That’s why I’m proposing that whenever we hear anyone complain about big government, high taxes, Black Lives Matter, traffic, not enough pineapples on their pizza or ask whether something is gluten-free, black people should cup their hands around their mouths and bellow into the world:
“Go back to Caucasia!”
3. “Why must you always be the victim?”
Another not-racist premise posits that when black people play the “race card,” they are blaming the failures of black people on racism. According to them, we want to make white people the villains and ourselves the victims.
They are partially correct. Black people kill too many other black people. The black family structure is falling apart. Blacks should focus more on education. Those things will help black people immensely.
But if black people did all those things and ignored the fact that a black college graduate is more likely than a white high school grad to be unemployed, and on average earns less than one; or that schools with majority-black students receive less funds than white schools with the same tax and income bases; or ignored mass incarceration, sentence inequality, the drug war, the history of redlining, banks giving blacks higher interest rates, disproportionate police brutality ...
... that would be stupid.
It’s like asking someone who was sexually abused to never talk about it or even to keep quiet when the cops ask about it because it turns the survivor into a victim.
We are the victims ... of racism.
2. “I don’t want to sound racist, but ... ”
I have been told, on numerous occasions, to never consider anything after “but.” The oldest sleight of hand in the book of racism magic is to proclaim oneself “not racist.” It is a wondrous trick that never works.
It’s akin to R. Kelly opening up a day care center and using the motto, “I’m not a pedophile, but I’d love to babysit your kids!”
Also, whenever anyone says they “don’t want to sound racist,” brace yourself. Because they are definitely about to say some racist shit.
1. “Make America great again.”
I can’t even ...
Coard: Non-voting Blacks commit suicidal lynchings
Michael Coard - philly tribune
10/12/18
The graphic photo for this piece is an effigy of a lynched Black man with a poster on its chest reading, “This Ni--er Voted.” It was hung in 1940 by the KKK in Miami, Florida to frighten Blacks from voting.
And today, in 2018, instead of being too frightened by the KKK to vote, far too many Blacks are too apathetic or too shortsighted to vote. And the KKK, along with the racist Donald Trump-loving Republican Party, is very happy about that.
Next to that horrific image above is a photo of the title of a 2005 New York Times article regarding the “too little, too late” apology by the United States Senate for its failure to do anything about the 4,742 documented lynchings between 1882-1968 throughout the country, many of the victims being Blacks who registered to vote or Blacks who voted or Blacks who encouraged Blacks to register to vote or Blacks who encouraged Blacks to vote.
On June 13 of that year, the Senate- which consists of members elected by people who care enough to vote- issued a resolution officially telling the family members of lynching victims that it was sorry. But there were two major problems with that.
The first is it didn’t provide any reparations whatsoever.
The second is it wasn’t unanimous. Twenty Senators refused to co-sponsor it or even to sign their names on it. After widespread public outrage, that number was quickly reduced to eight Senators who continued to refuse. And- you guessed it- they were all Republicans.
Before I continue, I need to make something very clear: Although I am a registered Democrat (at least for the time being and have been throughout my entire adult life), I dislike the Democratic Party. And the only reason I am a Democrat is I despise the Republican Party. Allow me to explain.
Mao Tse Tung said “Politics is war without bloodshed and war is politics with bloodshed.” Accordingly, long before Donald Trump became president after the 2016 election, there’s been a political race war in America. But that war has dramatically intensified since he took office because he- after having been endorsed by former KKK leader David Duke- has publicly co-signed and actively promoted blatant racism like no other president since Woodrow Wilson who, in 1915, praised and screened the pro-KKK “Birth of a Nation” film inside the White House, making it the first motion picture ever shown inside that majestic building.
During wartime, soldiers must think and act strategically, not emotionally. I thought and acted strategically when I first registered to vote at age 18. I chose to be a Democrat (but will eventually switch and become an Independent) because I understood what Sun Tzu meant in The Art of War when he wrote, “Ponder and deliberate before you make a move....” and also wrote, “The whole secret lies in confusing the enemy, so that he [or she] cannot fathom our real intent.”
As a young voter back then and a middle-aged voter now, I always thoroughly researched and therefore knew that Republicans Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Donald Trump were clearly greater threats to Blacks (as well as to women, immigrants of color, Muslims, LGBTQs, and poor people) than were Democrats Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, Al Gore, John Kerry, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton.
Anyone who says otherwise is a liar or an idiot or both.
I knew that even though I was and am a proud revolutionary socialist, socialist candidates and even most progressive candidates just ain’t gonna win on the national stage or on most state stages. Therefore, those like me who want substantive, systemic, and policy change for Blacks (as well as for women, immigrants of color, Muslims, LGBTQs, and poor people) must think and act strategically.
In other words, we gotta use the lesser evil to defeat the greater evil. Consequently, we gotta pursue gradual reform with the dislikable Democrats in order to achieve ultimate annihilation of the despicable Republicans.
And don’t tell me that nonsense about rejecting them both since they’re both evil. I already know that, dammit. But, to paraphrase Kautilya, a fourth century philosopher from India, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” For me, that is perfectly applicable, at least for today. I’ll confront the other enemy tomorrow.
This overall strategy of using the system to beat the system is consistent with Malcolm X’s “The Ballot or the Bullet” speech in 1964. The bullet is not strategic right now because the ballot remains a viable alternative- but only if that ballot is able to be cast freely instead of being successfully undermined by ongoing racist Republican voter suppression initiatives.
And although I wouldn’t dare try to speak for Brother Malcolm, I can say that voting reform leading to political revolution is consistent with his goal of releasing the grip that the corporate two-party system has on Black America in particular and white America in general.
In the November 4 edition of this “Freedom’s Journal” column, I’ll offer some suggested endorsements for specific candidates in the November 6 election. You’re certainly welcome to accept them or reject them. But you’re not welcome to be apathetic or shortsighted by not voting.
Our ancestors who battled for the right to vote didn’t merely die for that right. They were murdered for it. Remember Octavius Catto, the scholarly Cheyney University/Institute for Colored Youth professor and courageous Philadelphia voting rights activist? As of last week, it was exactly 147 years ago on October 10, 1871 at 9th and South Streets that he was lynched/shot to death for rallying Blacks to the polls then and for fighting to protect your right to vote today.
Explain to him why you’re not gonna vote.
And today, in 2018, instead of being too frightened by the KKK to vote, far too many Blacks are too apathetic or too shortsighted to vote. And the KKK, along with the racist Donald Trump-loving Republican Party, is very happy about that.
Next to that horrific image above is a photo of the title of a 2005 New York Times article regarding the “too little, too late” apology by the United States Senate for its failure to do anything about the 4,742 documented lynchings between 1882-1968 throughout the country, many of the victims being Blacks who registered to vote or Blacks who voted or Blacks who encouraged Blacks to register to vote or Blacks who encouraged Blacks to vote.
On June 13 of that year, the Senate- which consists of members elected by people who care enough to vote- issued a resolution officially telling the family members of lynching victims that it was sorry. But there were two major problems with that.
The first is it didn’t provide any reparations whatsoever.
The second is it wasn’t unanimous. Twenty Senators refused to co-sponsor it or even to sign their names on it. After widespread public outrage, that number was quickly reduced to eight Senators who continued to refuse. And- you guessed it- they were all Republicans.
Before I continue, I need to make something very clear: Although I am a registered Democrat (at least for the time being and have been throughout my entire adult life), I dislike the Democratic Party. And the only reason I am a Democrat is I despise the Republican Party. Allow me to explain.
Mao Tse Tung said “Politics is war without bloodshed and war is politics with bloodshed.” Accordingly, long before Donald Trump became president after the 2016 election, there’s been a political race war in America. But that war has dramatically intensified since he took office because he- after having been endorsed by former KKK leader David Duke- has publicly co-signed and actively promoted blatant racism like no other president since Woodrow Wilson who, in 1915, praised and screened the pro-KKK “Birth of a Nation” film inside the White House, making it the first motion picture ever shown inside that majestic building.
During wartime, soldiers must think and act strategically, not emotionally. I thought and acted strategically when I first registered to vote at age 18. I chose to be a Democrat (but will eventually switch and become an Independent) because I understood what Sun Tzu meant in The Art of War when he wrote, “Ponder and deliberate before you make a move....” and also wrote, “The whole secret lies in confusing the enemy, so that he [or she] cannot fathom our real intent.”
As a young voter back then and a middle-aged voter now, I always thoroughly researched and therefore knew that Republicans Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Donald Trump were clearly greater threats to Blacks (as well as to women, immigrants of color, Muslims, LGBTQs, and poor people) than were Democrats Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, Al Gore, John Kerry, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton.
Anyone who says otherwise is a liar or an idiot or both.
I knew that even though I was and am a proud revolutionary socialist, socialist candidates and even most progressive candidates just ain’t gonna win on the national stage or on most state stages. Therefore, those like me who want substantive, systemic, and policy change for Blacks (as well as for women, immigrants of color, Muslims, LGBTQs, and poor people) must think and act strategically.
In other words, we gotta use the lesser evil to defeat the greater evil. Consequently, we gotta pursue gradual reform with the dislikable Democrats in order to achieve ultimate annihilation of the despicable Republicans.
And don’t tell me that nonsense about rejecting them both since they’re both evil. I already know that, dammit. But, to paraphrase Kautilya, a fourth century philosopher from India, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” For me, that is perfectly applicable, at least for today. I’ll confront the other enemy tomorrow.
This overall strategy of using the system to beat the system is consistent with Malcolm X’s “The Ballot or the Bullet” speech in 1964. The bullet is not strategic right now because the ballot remains a viable alternative- but only if that ballot is able to be cast freely instead of being successfully undermined by ongoing racist Republican voter suppression initiatives.
And although I wouldn’t dare try to speak for Brother Malcolm, I can say that voting reform leading to political revolution is consistent with his goal of releasing the grip that the corporate two-party system has on Black America in particular and white America in general.
In the November 4 edition of this “Freedom’s Journal” column, I’ll offer some suggested endorsements for specific candidates in the November 6 election. You’re certainly welcome to accept them or reject them. But you’re not welcome to be apathetic or shortsighted by not voting.
Our ancestors who battled for the right to vote didn’t merely die for that right. They were murdered for it. Remember Octavius Catto, the scholarly Cheyney University/Institute for Colored Youth professor and courageous Philadelphia voting rights activist? As of last week, it was exactly 147 years ago on October 10, 1871 at 9th and South Streets that he was lynched/shot to death for rallying Blacks to the polls then and for fighting to protect your right to vote today.
Explain to him why you’re not gonna vote.
White People Explain Why They Feel Oppressed
I just didn't understand how so many white people in American could believe that they are the primary victims of racism. So, I asked some white folks about it to find out why.
toure - vice news
Sep 17 2015
Sometimes white people vex me. Maybe they confuse you, too. Maybe you're a white person who is sometimes confused by white people. A lot of white people have told me they're befuddled by the actions and perspectives of other white people. I hear you. What confuses me? I think it's the utter lack of awareness of how race in America truly functions. In the midst of a national policing crisis, the Black Lives Matter movement is trying to will into existence a sense of value for black bodies and some white people respond, "Why are they so anti-white?" That's dumbfounding to me. I wonder, how could they be so clueless? When white people question why blacks get to say certain words or make certain jokes that whites can't or when white people ask where is White History Month or when white people question why they have to pay for the racism of their ancestors, it's offensive and infuriating and it's also confounding.
In Ta-Nehisi Coates's astounding new book, Between the World and Me, he refers to white people as "dreamers" to evoke the sense of them being not fully awake, like sleepwalkers. I'm not sure if white people are like sleepwalkers, or more like ostriches, consciously burying their heads in the sand, hiding from reality. And that's exactly what vexes me the most about white people: their reluctance, or unwillingness, to recognize the vast impact their race has on their lives and on the lives of all those around them.
Modern white Americans are one of the most powerful groups of people to ever exist on this planet and yet those very people—or, if you're white, you people—staunchly believe that the primary victims of modern racism are whites. We see this in poll after poll. A recent one by the Public Religion Research Institutefound 52 percent of whites agreed, "Today discrimination against whites has become as big a problem as discrimination against blacks and other minorities." A 2011 study led by a Harvard Business School professor went deeper to find that "whites see race as a zero sum game they are losing." That was even the name of the study.It showed that over the last five decades both blacks and whites think racism against Blacks has been slowly declining, but white people think racism against whites is growing at a fast rate. White people are increasingly certain that they're being persecuted. The study also notes, "by any metric—employment, police treatment, loan rates, education—stats indicate drastically poorer outcomes for black than white Americans." White perception and the reality are completely at odds.
Why is it that some white people feel like they are the primary victims of racism? And why do they feel like giving any bit of liberty to black Americans means they are losing something? And why should I be an unpaid armchair psychiatrist interpreting the feelings of white people when I could just ask them? I mean, they're all over the place and available for study in their natural habitat. So I did my own unscientific poll, asking several white people to help me understand white people. Based off the responses, I found three primary explanations for why so many white folks feel like they are the true victims in America today.
Isn't Whiteness Less Valuable Now?
For some white people, whiteness seems less economically valuable than it was decades ago. It's as if white privilege doesn't take you as far these days in the same way that a dollar doesn't go as far as it did in your grandpa's time. Back in the Mad Men-era, if a white man showed up, he got a good job that let him take care of his family. No more, they say. But understanding the reasons behind that are hard. A woman who asked not to be named said, "Being a reasonably hard working white male no longer entitles you to respect or a middle class lifestyle. This has mostly to do with structural economic dynamics including increased competition globally and the decline of unions, but it's a lot simpler to blame it on the black person or Hispanic person who got the job that you think was supposed to be yours."
Jon Dariyanani, co-founder of a software start-up called Cognotion, echoed that sentiment. "It's much easier to believe that the reason the middle class life is slipping away from you is because some lazy group of people are soaking up resources and blocking the way, than to believe that it is caused by globalization and bad macroeconomic policy beyond any individual's control. 'Anti-white' racism relies on an economic anxiety that is almost entirely a fantasy."
It's definitely easier to blame a person of color than it is to try to understand how faceless global economic forces have screwed you over. You can't see global economic forces working, many people don't understand them, and who specifically are you supposed to blame? Besides, blaming black people is as American as Apple computers.
Is Whiteness Ending?
Throughout American history, white has been the dominant race. That is ending. Demographers say that by 2043 there will be fewer white people than people of color in America. We will become a minority-majority nation. Among children under six, it has already happened—there are more kids of color than white kids. I imagine this impending end could seem frightening.
Tim Wise, anti-racist educator says, "When you've had the luxury of presuming yourself to be the norm, the prototype of an American, any change in the demographic and cultural realities in your society will strike you as outsized attacks on your status. You've been the king of the hill and never had to share shit with anyone, what is really just an adjustment to a more representative, pluralistic, shared society seems like discrimination. When you're used to 90 percent or more of the pie, having to settle for only 75 or 70 percent? Oh my God, it's like the end of the world." But as white people lose their dominant status, the meaning of whiteness in America will have to change significantly.
What Is Racism?
Some of the white people I talked with feel like many white people lack of a deep understanding of race and racism. Tim Wise said, "Whites are used to thinking of racism as an interpersonal thing, rather than institutional. So we can recall that time we got shitty customer service by a black person, or had some black person make fun of us for something, and we think, 'we're the victims of racism now,' paying no attention to the ongoing systemic imbalance in our favor." This is in part because the nature of privilege is that you don't have to think deeply about your privilege if you don't want to.
Erikka Knuti, a political strategist, said, "Part of white privilege has been the ability to not know that your privilege exists. If you benefit from racism, do you really want to know that?" I can see where it would be uncomfortable for people to admit that their lives are shaped by unearned advantages, especially in an environment where those advantages may be beginning to slip away, but the blindness itself is a part of the problem. White people have duties as part of the American community. They must be honest with themselves and their co-citizens and admit that white privilege shapes a lot of life in this country. They must understand that the truly pernicious, life-defining sort of racism is not interpersonal, it's institutional. The systems that shape who lives where, who gets educated, who gets jobs, who gets arrested, and so on, these things shape lives, and they are all heavily weighted in white people's favor. To ignore all of that is to misunderstand America. If white people admit those things, it will be plain that they are not, in any way, victims.
I am not urging white people to feel guilty, I'm saying be more honest. As we move toward a nation where white people are less dominant, it will be critical that white people stop being racial ostriches, or sleepwalkers, and deal forthrightly with what it means to be white. Many white people say they have a strong desire to not discuss race because there's a chance they could make a mistake and end up somehow looking racist. But a lack of discussion about race leads to a lack of sophistication about race.
Sociologists speak of race-averse (homes where race is not discussed) and race-aware households (homes where race is openly discussed). Children who grow up in race-averse homes tend to have a more difficult time dealing with race when they get older because they have less experience wrestling with it in their youth. White people are, by and large, living in race-averse communities that support their desire to not discuss race and thus often ending up struggling with how to deal with this complex, nuanced, emotional subject. This is not progress. Calling yourself color-blind is not progress—it's insulting. Engaging with race, making serious efforts to understand race, understanding how systems shape our world and how white people consistently benefit from those systems to the detriment of others, and rejecting the backwards notion of white victimhood—that is the path to progress.
In Ta-Nehisi Coates's astounding new book, Between the World and Me, he refers to white people as "dreamers" to evoke the sense of them being not fully awake, like sleepwalkers. I'm not sure if white people are like sleepwalkers, or more like ostriches, consciously burying their heads in the sand, hiding from reality. And that's exactly what vexes me the most about white people: their reluctance, or unwillingness, to recognize the vast impact their race has on their lives and on the lives of all those around them.
Modern white Americans are one of the most powerful groups of people to ever exist on this planet and yet those very people—or, if you're white, you people—staunchly believe that the primary victims of modern racism are whites. We see this in poll after poll. A recent one by the Public Religion Research Institutefound 52 percent of whites agreed, "Today discrimination against whites has become as big a problem as discrimination against blacks and other minorities." A 2011 study led by a Harvard Business School professor went deeper to find that "whites see race as a zero sum game they are losing." That was even the name of the study.It showed that over the last five decades both blacks and whites think racism against Blacks has been slowly declining, but white people think racism against whites is growing at a fast rate. White people are increasingly certain that they're being persecuted. The study also notes, "by any metric—employment, police treatment, loan rates, education—stats indicate drastically poorer outcomes for black than white Americans." White perception and the reality are completely at odds.
Why is it that some white people feel like they are the primary victims of racism? And why do they feel like giving any bit of liberty to black Americans means they are losing something? And why should I be an unpaid armchair psychiatrist interpreting the feelings of white people when I could just ask them? I mean, they're all over the place and available for study in their natural habitat. So I did my own unscientific poll, asking several white people to help me understand white people. Based off the responses, I found three primary explanations for why so many white folks feel like they are the true victims in America today.
Isn't Whiteness Less Valuable Now?
For some white people, whiteness seems less economically valuable than it was decades ago. It's as if white privilege doesn't take you as far these days in the same way that a dollar doesn't go as far as it did in your grandpa's time. Back in the Mad Men-era, if a white man showed up, he got a good job that let him take care of his family. No more, they say. But understanding the reasons behind that are hard. A woman who asked not to be named said, "Being a reasonably hard working white male no longer entitles you to respect or a middle class lifestyle. This has mostly to do with structural economic dynamics including increased competition globally and the decline of unions, but it's a lot simpler to blame it on the black person or Hispanic person who got the job that you think was supposed to be yours."
Jon Dariyanani, co-founder of a software start-up called Cognotion, echoed that sentiment. "It's much easier to believe that the reason the middle class life is slipping away from you is because some lazy group of people are soaking up resources and blocking the way, than to believe that it is caused by globalization and bad macroeconomic policy beyond any individual's control. 'Anti-white' racism relies on an economic anxiety that is almost entirely a fantasy."
It's definitely easier to blame a person of color than it is to try to understand how faceless global economic forces have screwed you over. You can't see global economic forces working, many people don't understand them, and who specifically are you supposed to blame? Besides, blaming black people is as American as Apple computers.
Is Whiteness Ending?
Throughout American history, white has been the dominant race. That is ending. Demographers say that by 2043 there will be fewer white people than people of color in America. We will become a minority-majority nation. Among children under six, it has already happened—there are more kids of color than white kids. I imagine this impending end could seem frightening.
Tim Wise, anti-racist educator says, "When you've had the luxury of presuming yourself to be the norm, the prototype of an American, any change in the demographic and cultural realities in your society will strike you as outsized attacks on your status. You've been the king of the hill and never had to share shit with anyone, what is really just an adjustment to a more representative, pluralistic, shared society seems like discrimination. When you're used to 90 percent or more of the pie, having to settle for only 75 or 70 percent? Oh my God, it's like the end of the world." But as white people lose their dominant status, the meaning of whiteness in America will have to change significantly.
What Is Racism?
Some of the white people I talked with feel like many white people lack of a deep understanding of race and racism. Tim Wise said, "Whites are used to thinking of racism as an interpersonal thing, rather than institutional. So we can recall that time we got shitty customer service by a black person, or had some black person make fun of us for something, and we think, 'we're the victims of racism now,' paying no attention to the ongoing systemic imbalance in our favor." This is in part because the nature of privilege is that you don't have to think deeply about your privilege if you don't want to.
Erikka Knuti, a political strategist, said, "Part of white privilege has been the ability to not know that your privilege exists. If you benefit from racism, do you really want to know that?" I can see where it would be uncomfortable for people to admit that their lives are shaped by unearned advantages, especially in an environment where those advantages may be beginning to slip away, but the blindness itself is a part of the problem. White people have duties as part of the American community. They must be honest with themselves and their co-citizens and admit that white privilege shapes a lot of life in this country. They must understand that the truly pernicious, life-defining sort of racism is not interpersonal, it's institutional. The systems that shape who lives where, who gets educated, who gets jobs, who gets arrested, and so on, these things shape lives, and they are all heavily weighted in white people's favor. To ignore all of that is to misunderstand America. If white people admit those things, it will be plain that they are not, in any way, victims.
I am not urging white people to feel guilty, I'm saying be more honest. As we move toward a nation where white people are less dominant, it will be critical that white people stop being racial ostriches, or sleepwalkers, and deal forthrightly with what it means to be white. Many white people say they have a strong desire to not discuss race because there's a chance they could make a mistake and end up somehow looking racist. But a lack of discussion about race leads to a lack of sophistication about race.
Sociologists speak of race-averse (homes where race is not discussed) and race-aware households (homes where race is openly discussed). Children who grow up in race-averse homes tend to have a more difficult time dealing with race when they get older because they have less experience wrestling with it in their youth. White people are, by and large, living in race-averse communities that support their desire to not discuss race and thus often ending up struggling with how to deal with this complex, nuanced, emotional subject. This is not progress. Calling yourself color-blind is not progress—it's insulting. Engaging with race, making serious efforts to understand race, understanding how systems shape our world and how white people consistently benefit from those systems to the detriment of others, and rejecting the backwards notion of white victimhood—that is the path to progress.
These 2 psychologists are dismantling the myth of white intellectual superiority
One client at a time, their revolutionary aptitude assessments chip away at the myth of white intellectual superiority.
SAM FULWOOD III - thinkprogress
JUL 19, 2018, 8:00 AM
Without the benefit of the cult-like celebrity that often follows folks who produce social change, Kenneth Yusko and Harold Goldstein are quietly altering the nation’s employment culture for the better — all by meticulously chipping away at one of the fundamental assumptions of modern psychology: the myth of white intellectual superiority.
Yusko and Goldstein are industrial and organizational psychologists — a fancy term for people who study how companies and other organizations make decisions regarding hiring and advancement. In particular, their work takes on the ossified conventional wisdom which holds that white Americans possess greater aptitude for jobs or college admission — a consensus that’s become entrenched because of the widespread use of I.Q. tests or other biased assessments that misstate the assumed intellectual advantage of whites and confuse knowledge with intelligence.
Over the course of their professional life, they’ve produced scholarly and practical work that relatively few people know about, but has enormous potential to help solve future challenges in employment hiring, retention and promotions at a time when the nation’s workforce is becoming more and more diverse. As employers draw from an increasingly nontraditional workforce, they need to know and be assured that, when given a fair assessment, African Americans can — and do — perform just as well as whites on the job.
“We don’t believe there are group racial differences on critical competencies,” Goldstein told me during a recent lunch interview as his colleague, Yusko, nodded in agreement alongside him. “We believe you can hire for competence while still getting diverse talent because there are highly intelligent, capable and competent African Americans and whites and Asians out there to be hired.”
Yusko and Goldstein deserve to be household names or, at the very least, widely acknowledged for their socially impactful efforts to expand job opportunities and open workplaces to historically marginalized people. Over the past three decades, their work on college campuses and in a private consulting firm has helped a broad array of clients to better incorporate diversity into hiring and promotion decisions.
“We tell clients that you don’t have to compromise and you don’t have to water down your hiring assessments,” Yusko said, adding that tests are simply a tool used in decision making. “You can hire by using tests that don’t add contamination that happens to help whites over blacks or whites over Latinos.”
But despite an impressive accumulation of success the pair has enjoyed ever since they first met as doctoral students at the University of Maryland in the 1990s, Yusko and Goldstein’s work remains something of an outlier in academic circles, where the stubborn believe in white intellectual superiority continues to frame discussions of employment testing and assessments.
“Our theory was that if you created a test where the person taking the test couldn’t rely on their schooling and upbringing . . . but had to rely on their pure, raw intelligence, then we’d see much less difference between the races.”
In fact, their work continues to be barely understood or embraced by many outside of the pin-point intersection of corporate diversity managers, civil rights lawyers — and a few CEOs seeking to avoid expensive discrimination lawsuits.
“They are American heroes that nobody knows anything about,” Cyrus Mehri, a Washington, D.C.-based civil rights lawyer, said in an interview. “I’ve been so impressed with their work that I often call on them for assistance as expert witnesses when working with my clients.”
What little attention that Yusko and Goldstein have earned stems, in part, to their association with Mehri, who has litigated some of the nation’s largest and most significant racial and gender employment discrimination cases. In particular, Mehri is well-known for the landmark discrimination cases Roberts v. Texaco Inc. case — which led to a $176.1 million award in 1997 for discrimination — as well as in the case of Ingram v Coca-Cola Company, which resulted in a $192 million settlement. Mehri used Yusko and Goldstein in other significant workplace-discrimination cases against such Ford and Morgan Stanley.
Perhaps more prominently, Mehri played a key role in inspiring the National Football League to implement the Rooney Rule (a policy that requires clubs to interview minority candidates when hiring for coaching positions), at which time he introduced Yusko and Goldstein to team general managers and head coaches. Impressed by their assessment idea, the league embraced a set of assessment tests for NFL teams, termed the NFL-Player Assessment Test (or NFL-PAT) that has been administered during the league’s annual draft combine since 2013.
As Yusko and Goldstein explained in the interview, the NFL wanted a test designed to identify brainy players, as well as brawny ones. As with all their tests, the set produced for professional football players was one that emphasizes what they call “pure” intelligence over “learned” intelligence. The difference is that one cannot study or otherwise prepare for a demonstration of pure intelligence, they say.
“Our theory was that if you created a test where the person taking the test couldn’t rely on their schooling and upbringing — or going to a tutoring class for the SAT — if they couldn’t rely on their previous knowledge but had to rely on their pure, raw intelligence, then we’d see much less difference between the races,” Goldstein told me.
According to an American Psychological Association online newsletter, the NFL-PAT was a success from kickoff. Yusko and Goldstein developed an hour-long, computer-based test that measured 16 different competencies that directly related to a player’s on-the-field tasks.
“The results of their predictive validation study were very strong,” the APA reported. “The scores from the (NFL-PAT) significantly predicted football performance, as rated by both the general managers/coaches and by on-field metrics” such as the number of penalties a player receives and the number of snaps a player is on the field.
“What makes you think the difference is due to the people? Maybe it’s in the way you measure your test.”
Predictably, their work is not without controversy or critics, largely because the widely accepted assumption in the industrial-organization, or I-O, field of psychology is that measurements of intelligence favor white people over African Americans or other racial groups.
Hiring officials often base their decisions on the use of some form of selection testing, which range from in-person interviews to pen-and-paper assessments to role-playing exercises, that help inform an applicant’s qualifications. In many cases, such as college admissions or public service jobs, the decision making falls heavily upon standardized tests, like the SAT for college admission, the LSAT for law schools, or job-specific employment assessments used by police and fire departments.
All too often, these tests claim to quantify an individual’s intelligence and, in turn, are used to provide a dollop of pseudo-empirical authority to justify the decision to offer an applicant a position, promotion, or placement.
But in reality, Goldstein and Yusko say, such tests tend to have what they call “contamination” baked in that skews the results more favorably toward white and male applicants at the expense of African Americans, women, and other groups of applicants. The contamination is rarely refuted or acknowledged by anyone in the hiring chain, they said.
“What a lot of them think is there is a difference between blacks and whites on intelligence,” Goldstein said, noting that early on their work was derided and ignored by others in the I-O field. “So they don’t think (a traditional IQ) test is wrong. They think the test is measuring that difference. So when we created a new way to approach this that reduced those differences, they said to us, if you get reduced differences, you’re not measuring intelligence. You must be measuring something else.”
To which Yusko responded, “What makes you think the difference is due to the people? Maybe it’s in the way you measure your test.”
As a result, Yusko and Goldstein spent the bulk of the last 30 years, flying against the headwind of their peers’ widely embraced beliefs about traditional cognitive ability tests. Along the way, they co-founded a firm, Siena Consulting, which won the 2011 Society of Industrial Organizational Psychology’s M. Scott Myers Award for Best Applied Research, and the 2018 International Personnel Assessment Council Innovations in Assessment Award.
Tasked with the mission to help clients with human resources issues implement their own bias-free assessment tests, their firm has continually demonstrated just how counterproductive the sole reliance on traditional I.Q. tests can be to the bottom line. In addition to the NFL, Siena Consulting’s roster of clients include Morgan Stanley, SC Johnson, the Motion Picture Association of America, Jefferson County in Alabama, and many more.
“What we tell organizations is that you may hire the persons you think is best qualified because (you) think it’s right,” Goldstein said, adding firms need to broaden their search to include a pool of diverse candidates as well. “If you don’t, you will miss the best people. If you’re always looking at a certain category of people – white males – you’ll miss all the other people that are not white males and you’ll miss a chance to get them and someone else will.”
Yusko and Goldstein are industrial and organizational psychologists — a fancy term for people who study how companies and other organizations make decisions regarding hiring and advancement. In particular, their work takes on the ossified conventional wisdom which holds that white Americans possess greater aptitude for jobs or college admission — a consensus that’s become entrenched because of the widespread use of I.Q. tests or other biased assessments that misstate the assumed intellectual advantage of whites and confuse knowledge with intelligence.
Over the course of their professional life, they’ve produced scholarly and practical work that relatively few people know about, but has enormous potential to help solve future challenges in employment hiring, retention and promotions at a time when the nation’s workforce is becoming more and more diverse. As employers draw from an increasingly nontraditional workforce, they need to know and be assured that, when given a fair assessment, African Americans can — and do — perform just as well as whites on the job.
“We don’t believe there are group racial differences on critical competencies,” Goldstein told me during a recent lunch interview as his colleague, Yusko, nodded in agreement alongside him. “We believe you can hire for competence while still getting diverse talent because there are highly intelligent, capable and competent African Americans and whites and Asians out there to be hired.”
Yusko and Goldstein deserve to be household names or, at the very least, widely acknowledged for their socially impactful efforts to expand job opportunities and open workplaces to historically marginalized people. Over the past three decades, their work on college campuses and in a private consulting firm has helped a broad array of clients to better incorporate diversity into hiring and promotion decisions.
“We tell clients that you don’t have to compromise and you don’t have to water down your hiring assessments,” Yusko said, adding that tests are simply a tool used in decision making. “You can hire by using tests that don’t add contamination that happens to help whites over blacks or whites over Latinos.”
But despite an impressive accumulation of success the pair has enjoyed ever since they first met as doctoral students at the University of Maryland in the 1990s, Yusko and Goldstein’s work remains something of an outlier in academic circles, where the stubborn believe in white intellectual superiority continues to frame discussions of employment testing and assessments.
“Our theory was that if you created a test where the person taking the test couldn’t rely on their schooling and upbringing . . . but had to rely on their pure, raw intelligence, then we’d see much less difference between the races.”
In fact, their work continues to be barely understood or embraced by many outside of the pin-point intersection of corporate diversity managers, civil rights lawyers — and a few CEOs seeking to avoid expensive discrimination lawsuits.
“They are American heroes that nobody knows anything about,” Cyrus Mehri, a Washington, D.C.-based civil rights lawyer, said in an interview. “I’ve been so impressed with their work that I often call on them for assistance as expert witnesses when working with my clients.”
What little attention that Yusko and Goldstein have earned stems, in part, to their association with Mehri, who has litigated some of the nation’s largest and most significant racial and gender employment discrimination cases. In particular, Mehri is well-known for the landmark discrimination cases Roberts v. Texaco Inc. case — which led to a $176.1 million award in 1997 for discrimination — as well as in the case of Ingram v Coca-Cola Company, which resulted in a $192 million settlement. Mehri used Yusko and Goldstein in other significant workplace-discrimination cases against such Ford and Morgan Stanley.
Perhaps more prominently, Mehri played a key role in inspiring the National Football League to implement the Rooney Rule (a policy that requires clubs to interview minority candidates when hiring for coaching positions), at which time he introduced Yusko and Goldstein to team general managers and head coaches. Impressed by their assessment idea, the league embraced a set of assessment tests for NFL teams, termed the NFL-Player Assessment Test (or NFL-PAT) that has been administered during the league’s annual draft combine since 2013.
As Yusko and Goldstein explained in the interview, the NFL wanted a test designed to identify brainy players, as well as brawny ones. As with all their tests, the set produced for professional football players was one that emphasizes what they call “pure” intelligence over “learned” intelligence. The difference is that one cannot study or otherwise prepare for a demonstration of pure intelligence, they say.
“Our theory was that if you created a test where the person taking the test couldn’t rely on their schooling and upbringing — or going to a tutoring class for the SAT — if they couldn’t rely on their previous knowledge but had to rely on their pure, raw intelligence, then we’d see much less difference between the races,” Goldstein told me.
According to an American Psychological Association online newsletter, the NFL-PAT was a success from kickoff. Yusko and Goldstein developed an hour-long, computer-based test that measured 16 different competencies that directly related to a player’s on-the-field tasks.
“The results of their predictive validation study were very strong,” the APA reported. “The scores from the (NFL-PAT) significantly predicted football performance, as rated by both the general managers/coaches and by on-field metrics” such as the number of penalties a player receives and the number of snaps a player is on the field.
“What makes you think the difference is due to the people? Maybe it’s in the way you measure your test.”
Predictably, their work is not without controversy or critics, largely because the widely accepted assumption in the industrial-organization, or I-O, field of psychology is that measurements of intelligence favor white people over African Americans or other racial groups.
Hiring officials often base their decisions on the use of some form of selection testing, which range from in-person interviews to pen-and-paper assessments to role-playing exercises, that help inform an applicant’s qualifications. In many cases, such as college admissions or public service jobs, the decision making falls heavily upon standardized tests, like the SAT for college admission, the LSAT for law schools, or job-specific employment assessments used by police and fire departments.
All too often, these tests claim to quantify an individual’s intelligence and, in turn, are used to provide a dollop of pseudo-empirical authority to justify the decision to offer an applicant a position, promotion, or placement.
But in reality, Goldstein and Yusko say, such tests tend to have what they call “contamination” baked in that skews the results more favorably toward white and male applicants at the expense of African Americans, women, and other groups of applicants. The contamination is rarely refuted or acknowledged by anyone in the hiring chain, they said.
“What a lot of them think is there is a difference between blacks and whites on intelligence,” Goldstein said, noting that early on their work was derided and ignored by others in the I-O field. “So they don’t think (a traditional IQ) test is wrong. They think the test is measuring that difference. So when we created a new way to approach this that reduced those differences, they said to us, if you get reduced differences, you’re not measuring intelligence. You must be measuring something else.”
To which Yusko responded, “What makes you think the difference is due to the people? Maybe it’s in the way you measure your test.”
As a result, Yusko and Goldstein spent the bulk of the last 30 years, flying against the headwind of their peers’ widely embraced beliefs about traditional cognitive ability tests. Along the way, they co-founded a firm, Siena Consulting, which won the 2011 Society of Industrial Organizational Psychology’s M. Scott Myers Award for Best Applied Research, and the 2018 International Personnel Assessment Council Innovations in Assessment Award.
Tasked with the mission to help clients with human resources issues implement their own bias-free assessment tests, their firm has continually demonstrated just how counterproductive the sole reliance on traditional I.Q. tests can be to the bottom line. In addition to the NFL, Siena Consulting’s roster of clients include Morgan Stanley, SC Johnson, the Motion Picture Association of America, Jefferson County in Alabama, and many more.
“What we tell organizations is that you may hire the persons you think is best qualified because (you) think it’s right,” Goldstein said, adding firms need to broaden their search to include a pool of diverse candidates as well. “If you don’t, you will miss the best people. If you’re always looking at a certain category of people – white males – you’ll miss all the other people that are not white males and you’ll miss a chance to get them and someone else will.”
Five Big Myths Debunked by the New York Times Report On Race, Economic, and Gender Inequality
By David Love - atlanta black star
March 26, 2018
The breadth, depth and reach of systemic racism in America is something with which Black people are intimately familiar, as they live the reality of discrimination every day and suffer its consequences. Yet, their experiences are often anecdotal and not data driven, and even if they were, society tends to downplay or even dismiss their cries of injustice and urge them to stop complaining, work harder and pull themselves up by their bootstraps. A new report from The New York Times — based on a study from researchers at Stanford, Harvard and the U.S. Census Bureau — examines race and economic opportunity in the United States, shedding light on racial disparities in income and offering suggestions as to how to overcome them. This intergenerational examination of inequality and how it changes across generations helps to dispel some myths.
Myth #1: It’s about class, not race, and all that Black people need to do is pull themselves up by their own bootstraps
If there is an “American Dream,” that dream is working out for some but not for others, and it is based on race and ethnic group. The study examined the upward and downward mobility of five groups across generations — Hispanics, non-Hispanic whites, African-Americans, Asians and Native Americans — and their future earnings trajectories. Researchers found that Black and American Indian children have far higher rates of downward mobility than any other groups. For example, Black children born into the top quintile on the economic ladder are nearly as likely to fall to the bottom income quintile as they are to remain at the top. In other words, this is a matter of race, not class, as growing up in a high-income household does not provide insurance and guarantee that one will stay there. “Because of these differences in economic mobility, blacks and American Indians are ‘stuck in place’ across generations. Their positions in the income distribution are unlikely to change over time without efforts to increase their rates of upward mobility,” the study said. In addition, while Black children born at the bottom rung of the economic ladder have a 2.5 percent chance of making it to the top rung, this is the case with 10.6 percent of white children.
According to the research, some of the widest racial gaps were found in the wealthiest communities, once again demonstrating that race trumps class in the land of opportunity. Black boys born at the top and falling to the bottom in adult life, along with other Black men who grew up at the bottom and remained there, are part of the same phenomenon and two sides of the same coin. Both types of Black men are victims of the same societal forces that are keeping them down and suppressing their aspirations because of their race.
Myth #2: Black men and women experience the same income gap.
Whether women or men, many Black people are struggling out there in today’s society. With that said, the study concluded that the income gap between Black and white people is driven by the disparities Black men face. Among those people who come from families with comparable incomes, Black women grow up to earn slightly more than white women, with little or no wage gap, while Black men earn considerably less than white men. For men, whether high school completion, college attendance, or incarceration, the racial gap is larger for men than it is for women. Consider that 21 percent of Black men in the lowest family income group are incarcerated, higher than any other demographic. However, Black men raised in millionaire households in the top 1 percent of Americans are as likely to face prison as white men who grew up in homes with annual earnings of $36,000.
While Black women and girls face great inequality on various levels, something is happening to Black boys as they turn into men. While Black and white boys both do better in communities in which there is low poverty, Black boys are faring worse than white boys in 99 percent of census tracts, earning less and having lower economic mobility in adulthood despite coming from the same economic level. These results suggest differences in the ways Black males experience racism, their racial stereotyping as criminals and the school disciplining and employment discrimination they face, as The New York Times notes.
Myth #3: The Black-White gap is due to the “Black family”
While some discussions on racial income inequality may attribute the life outcomes of African-Americans to Black culture, problems with the Black family structure or some innate problems with Black ability, the data from this study dispel those racist notions. For example, as the researchers learned, there are intergenerational gaps between Black and white men, but not for women, making the ability argument implausible. Although there are racial gaps in test scores for men and women — as Black men and women have lower SAT scores than their respective white counterparts, for example — Black women have outcomes similar to white women, suggesting that “standardized tests do not provide accurate measures of differences in ability (insofar as it is relevant for earnings) by race, perhaps because of stereotype anxiety or racial biases in tests,” the study said.
Black marriage rates are much lower than those of whites, meaning lower household income with one breadwinner in the house, which some may attribute to the financial disparities across race. However, the report found that the income gaps between Black men and their white counterparts persist when they grew up in homes with identical family structures and the same income and education levels.
Myth #4: Nothing can be done
Despite the sobering reality conveyed in this report, the results suggest there are things that can be done to alleviate the crisis of economic inequality and the lack of intergenerational mobility among Black people. In neighborhoods with low levels of poverty, according to the study, there are two factors which translate into better outcomes for Black men and a narrowing of economic disparities: High rates of fathers present in the community — regardless of whether a particular Black man had his father present or whether his parents were married, but rather indicating the role of fathers as role models and their impact on social norms — and low levels of racial bias by white people.
The study found that Black men who move to communities with improved environmental factors — lower levels of racism, poverty and more fathers — find themselves with less prison and higher income. At the same time, Black men who grow up in these communities have a higher risk of downward mobility compared to white men. This shows the racial income gap is not fixed, but rather can be changed.
Myth #5: The solutions to bridging the racial economic gap are simple and easy
Although environment provides a solution to inequality, or at least a cause, the problem with overcoming the economic gap with respect to race is that few Black children are raised in areas that facilitate upward mobility, the study found. While 63 percent of white children are raised in neighborhoods with a poverty rate lower than 10 percent and with over half of fathers present, this is the case for only 5 percent of Black children, according to the report. Further, given that Black and white boys have such dramatically different outcomes when they emerge from comparable family circumstances, the study concludes new policies are required, and solutions such as cash transfers and measures to increase financial resources for the current generation will do nothing to narrow long-term racial disparities unless they impact intergenerational mobility.
“Policies that reduce residential segregation or enable black and white children to attend the same schools without achieving racial integration within neighborhoods and schools would also likely leave much of the gap in place,” the report said. “Initiatives whose impacts cross neighborhood and class lines and increase upward mobility specifically for black men hold the greatest promise of narrowing the black-white gap.” Examples of measures with potential include efforts to reduce racism in the criminal justice system, initiatives to address white racial bias, mentoring programs geared towards Black boys, and efforts to increase cross-racial interaction, according to the report.
Myth #1: It’s about class, not race, and all that Black people need to do is pull themselves up by their own bootstraps
If there is an “American Dream,” that dream is working out for some but not for others, and it is based on race and ethnic group. The study examined the upward and downward mobility of five groups across generations — Hispanics, non-Hispanic whites, African-Americans, Asians and Native Americans — and their future earnings trajectories. Researchers found that Black and American Indian children have far higher rates of downward mobility than any other groups. For example, Black children born into the top quintile on the economic ladder are nearly as likely to fall to the bottom income quintile as they are to remain at the top. In other words, this is a matter of race, not class, as growing up in a high-income household does not provide insurance and guarantee that one will stay there. “Because of these differences in economic mobility, blacks and American Indians are ‘stuck in place’ across generations. Their positions in the income distribution are unlikely to change over time without efforts to increase their rates of upward mobility,” the study said. In addition, while Black children born at the bottom rung of the economic ladder have a 2.5 percent chance of making it to the top rung, this is the case with 10.6 percent of white children.
According to the research, some of the widest racial gaps were found in the wealthiest communities, once again demonstrating that race trumps class in the land of opportunity. Black boys born at the top and falling to the bottom in adult life, along with other Black men who grew up at the bottom and remained there, are part of the same phenomenon and two sides of the same coin. Both types of Black men are victims of the same societal forces that are keeping them down and suppressing their aspirations because of their race.
Myth #2: Black men and women experience the same income gap.
Whether women or men, many Black people are struggling out there in today’s society. With that said, the study concluded that the income gap between Black and white people is driven by the disparities Black men face. Among those people who come from families with comparable incomes, Black women grow up to earn slightly more than white women, with little or no wage gap, while Black men earn considerably less than white men. For men, whether high school completion, college attendance, or incarceration, the racial gap is larger for men than it is for women. Consider that 21 percent of Black men in the lowest family income group are incarcerated, higher than any other demographic. However, Black men raised in millionaire households in the top 1 percent of Americans are as likely to face prison as white men who grew up in homes with annual earnings of $36,000.
While Black women and girls face great inequality on various levels, something is happening to Black boys as they turn into men. While Black and white boys both do better in communities in which there is low poverty, Black boys are faring worse than white boys in 99 percent of census tracts, earning less and having lower economic mobility in adulthood despite coming from the same economic level. These results suggest differences in the ways Black males experience racism, their racial stereotyping as criminals and the school disciplining and employment discrimination they face, as The New York Times notes.
Myth #3: The Black-White gap is due to the “Black family”
While some discussions on racial income inequality may attribute the life outcomes of African-Americans to Black culture, problems with the Black family structure or some innate problems with Black ability, the data from this study dispel those racist notions. For example, as the researchers learned, there are intergenerational gaps between Black and white men, but not for women, making the ability argument implausible. Although there are racial gaps in test scores for men and women — as Black men and women have lower SAT scores than their respective white counterparts, for example — Black women have outcomes similar to white women, suggesting that “standardized tests do not provide accurate measures of differences in ability (insofar as it is relevant for earnings) by race, perhaps because of stereotype anxiety or racial biases in tests,” the study said.
Black marriage rates are much lower than those of whites, meaning lower household income with one breadwinner in the house, which some may attribute to the financial disparities across race. However, the report found that the income gaps between Black men and their white counterparts persist when they grew up in homes with identical family structures and the same income and education levels.
Myth #4: Nothing can be done
Despite the sobering reality conveyed in this report, the results suggest there are things that can be done to alleviate the crisis of economic inequality and the lack of intergenerational mobility among Black people. In neighborhoods with low levels of poverty, according to the study, there are two factors which translate into better outcomes for Black men and a narrowing of economic disparities: High rates of fathers present in the community — regardless of whether a particular Black man had his father present or whether his parents were married, but rather indicating the role of fathers as role models and their impact on social norms — and low levels of racial bias by white people.
The study found that Black men who move to communities with improved environmental factors — lower levels of racism, poverty and more fathers — find themselves with less prison and higher income. At the same time, Black men who grow up in these communities have a higher risk of downward mobility compared to white men. This shows the racial income gap is not fixed, but rather can be changed.
Myth #5: The solutions to bridging the racial economic gap are simple and easy
Although environment provides a solution to inequality, or at least a cause, the problem with overcoming the economic gap with respect to race is that few Black children are raised in areas that facilitate upward mobility, the study found. While 63 percent of white children are raised in neighborhoods with a poverty rate lower than 10 percent and with over half of fathers present, this is the case for only 5 percent of Black children, according to the report. Further, given that Black and white boys have such dramatically different outcomes when they emerge from comparable family circumstances, the study concludes new policies are required, and solutions such as cash transfers and measures to increase financial resources for the current generation will do nothing to narrow long-term racial disparities unless they impact intergenerational mobility.
“Policies that reduce residential segregation or enable black and white children to attend the same schools without achieving racial integration within neighborhoods and schools would also likely leave much of the gap in place,” the report said. “Initiatives whose impacts cross neighborhood and class lines and increase upward mobility specifically for black men hold the greatest promise of narrowing the black-white gap.” Examples of measures with potential include efforts to reduce racism in the criminal justice system, initiatives to address white racial bias, mentoring programs geared towards Black boys, and efforts to increase cross-racial interaction, according to the report.
What’s wrong with white teachers?
Closing the performance gap between black and white teachers means talking about racism
by Andre Perry
From Hechinger Report: In recent years, an outburst of national studies and exposés has shown that black teachers produce better academic and behavioral outcomes for black students compared to their white counterparts. This has led to numerous articles calling for the recruitment of more black teachers and/or asking where all the black teachers have gone. But the flipside to those studies isn’t making as many headlines. What’s wrong with white teachers? How do we close the black-white teaching performance gap?
Extolling the need for more black teachers is not the same as demanding white teachers be less racist. Naming what’s wrong with white people’s teaching skills must begin with calling out racism. We certainly need more black teachers, but recruitment isn’t a solution for the racism students and teachers of color face everyday.
The research is overwhelming.
Black teachers on average are better for black students (and in some cases for white students too) and white teachers on average are worse for black students. Black primary-school students who are matched to a same-race teacher performed better on standardized tests and face more favorable teacher perceptions according to recent findings from the German economic research group Institute of Labor Economics. Some of the same researchers found in a separate study published by Johns Hopkins University that low-income black students who have at least one black teacher in elementary school are significantly more likely to graduate from high school and consider attending college.
Is it because black teachers are better educators? Not necessarily, although research suggests that may be part of it. A study by NYU’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development found that students of color and white students viewed minority teachers more highly than white teachers. But one of the key reasons black students tend to perform better with black teachers has to do with expectations.
Black teachers are more likely to place high-achieving black students in programs for gifted students. Black teachers suspend and expel black students at lower rates. Singling out recruitment recuses our responsibilities to address the racism that afflicts white teachers and creates conditions that push black teachers out of the profession at an alarming rate. Trying to convince more black teachers to enter a profession they’re likely to abandon after a couple years is not even half a solution.
There’s much at stake for white teachers who represent more than 80 percent of the profession. Research shows that “African American students and white students with the same level of prior achievement make comparable academic progress when they are assigned to teachers of comparable effectiveness.” We need the majority of teachers of this country to improve their practice. An effective teacher must be defined as a teacher who is not racist and who acts on the high expectations she has for every child.
The unconscious bias, racial anxieties and stereotypes that contribute to the criminalization of black people, improper medical diagnoses and employment discrimination also lend themselves to lower expectations of black students and no-tolerance discipline policies in schools.
We can’t put the burden on fixing racist expectations on black teachers. Black teachers are tired of being typecast as disciplinarians. The research shows they are more effective, but expecting them to single-handedly combat the racism prevalent in schools is one of the reasons so many leave the profession early. For these reasons, others have rightly recommended changing the conditions that push teachers of color out the profession.
Focusing on black recruitment insidiously shields white educators from scrutiny and downplays how important it is to provide teachers an anti-racist education before and after they enter the profession. This transcends school type. Charter schools and regular schools alike are implicated in the problem. However, there’s a particular irony in the white reformers who descended upon cities like New Orleans, Newark and Philadelphia to close achievement gaps with an army of young white teachers. If they don’t take seriously the way racism undermines their efforts, they’re the ones who need to be disrupted, taken over and reformed.
Black educators have been focused on the problems associated with racism and bias for generations, but have not had reform systems built around their ideas. A recent offering came from Columbia Teachers College professor Christopher Emdin’s 2016 book “For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood … and the Rest of Y’all.” Emdin channels the work of University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Gloria Ladson-Billings, who, in her groundbreaking 1994 book “The Dreamkeepers: Successful teaching for African-American students,” coined the term culturally relevant teaching, which Ladson-Billings writes “empowers students intellectually, socially, emotionally, and politically by using cultural referents to impart knowledge, skills, and attitudes.”
There are many others who train white teachers to be less racist, including Sonia Nieto, professor emerita at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, Travis J. Bristol, assistant professor at Boston University and Shaun Harper, professor at the University of Southern California.
But the outpouring of articles on recruiting black teachers has drowned out the scholars who aren’t afraid to name racism as the main reason black students aren’t as successful as they should be in school.
Make no mistake: All students benefit from having black teachers. Black children just have the additional benefit of seeing themselves represented in positions of leadership and to learn from someone who isn’t just visiting their culture— if they even make the attempt.
Still, white teachers aren’t going anywhere, which means that black students need for white teachers to stop being racist as much as they need new, effective black teachers.
Whiteness can no longer be a hall pass.
Extolling the need for more black teachers is not the same as demanding white teachers be less racist. Naming what’s wrong with white people’s teaching skills must begin with calling out racism. We certainly need more black teachers, but recruitment isn’t a solution for the racism students and teachers of color face everyday.
The research is overwhelming.
Black teachers on average are better for black students (and in some cases for white students too) and white teachers on average are worse for black students. Black primary-school students who are matched to a same-race teacher performed better on standardized tests and face more favorable teacher perceptions according to recent findings from the German economic research group Institute of Labor Economics. Some of the same researchers found in a separate study published by Johns Hopkins University that low-income black students who have at least one black teacher in elementary school are significantly more likely to graduate from high school and consider attending college.
Is it because black teachers are better educators? Not necessarily, although research suggests that may be part of it. A study by NYU’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development found that students of color and white students viewed minority teachers more highly than white teachers. But one of the key reasons black students tend to perform better with black teachers has to do with expectations.
Black teachers are more likely to place high-achieving black students in programs for gifted students. Black teachers suspend and expel black students at lower rates. Singling out recruitment recuses our responsibilities to address the racism that afflicts white teachers and creates conditions that push black teachers out of the profession at an alarming rate. Trying to convince more black teachers to enter a profession they’re likely to abandon after a couple years is not even half a solution.
There’s much at stake for white teachers who represent more than 80 percent of the profession. Research shows that “African American students and white students with the same level of prior achievement make comparable academic progress when they are assigned to teachers of comparable effectiveness.” We need the majority of teachers of this country to improve their practice. An effective teacher must be defined as a teacher who is not racist and who acts on the high expectations she has for every child.
The unconscious bias, racial anxieties and stereotypes that contribute to the criminalization of black people, improper medical diagnoses and employment discrimination also lend themselves to lower expectations of black students and no-tolerance discipline policies in schools.
We can’t put the burden on fixing racist expectations on black teachers. Black teachers are tired of being typecast as disciplinarians. The research shows they are more effective, but expecting them to single-handedly combat the racism prevalent in schools is one of the reasons so many leave the profession early. For these reasons, others have rightly recommended changing the conditions that push teachers of color out the profession.
Focusing on black recruitment insidiously shields white educators from scrutiny and downplays how important it is to provide teachers an anti-racist education before and after they enter the profession. This transcends school type. Charter schools and regular schools alike are implicated in the problem. However, there’s a particular irony in the white reformers who descended upon cities like New Orleans, Newark and Philadelphia to close achievement gaps with an army of young white teachers. If they don’t take seriously the way racism undermines their efforts, they’re the ones who need to be disrupted, taken over and reformed.
Black educators have been focused on the problems associated with racism and bias for generations, but have not had reform systems built around their ideas. A recent offering came from Columbia Teachers College professor Christopher Emdin’s 2016 book “For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood … and the Rest of Y’all.” Emdin channels the work of University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Gloria Ladson-Billings, who, in her groundbreaking 1994 book “The Dreamkeepers: Successful teaching for African-American students,” coined the term culturally relevant teaching, which Ladson-Billings writes “empowers students intellectually, socially, emotionally, and politically by using cultural referents to impart knowledge, skills, and attitudes.”
There are many others who train white teachers to be less racist, including Sonia Nieto, professor emerita at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, Travis J. Bristol, assistant professor at Boston University and Shaun Harper, professor at the University of Southern California.
But the outpouring of articles on recruiting black teachers has drowned out the scholars who aren’t afraid to name racism as the main reason black students aren’t as successful as they should be in school.
Make no mistake: All students benefit from having black teachers. Black children just have the additional benefit of seeing themselves represented in positions of leadership and to learn from someone who isn’t just visiting their culture— if they even make the attempt.
Still, white teachers aren’t going anywhere, which means that black students need for white teachers to stop being racist as much as they need new, effective black teachers.
Whiteness can no longer be a hall pass.
The Black American Experience
Michael Eric Dyson: The problem is you do not want to know anything different from what you think you know. Your knowledge of black life, of the hardships we face, yes, those we sometimes create, those we most often endure, don’t concern you much. You think we have been handed everything because we have fought your selfish insistence that the world, all of it — all its resources, all its riches, all its bounty, all its grace — should be yours first, and foremost, and if there’s anything left, why then we can have some, but only if we ask politely and behave gratefully.
So you demand the Supreme Court give you back what was taken from you: more space in college classrooms that you dominate; better access to jobs in fire departments and police forces that you control. All the while your resentment builds, and your slow hate gathers steam. Your whiteness has become a burden too heavy for you to carry, so you outsource it to a vile political figure who amplifies your most detestable private thoughts.
Whiteness is blindness. It is the wish not to see what it will not know.
If you do not know us, you also refuse to hear us because you do not believe what we say. You have decided that enough is enough. If the cops must kill us for no good reason, then so be it because most of us are guilty anyway. If the black person that they kill turns out to be innocent, it is an acceptable death, a sacrificial one.
----------------------------------------------------------
cartoons
Explaining Daddy's Death
