Race

What Cities Can Learn From Seattle’s Racial And Social Justice Law

May 6, 2024 Serin Houston and Dan Trudeau, Next City. Create! Race, Racial Justice, Racism, Seattle, Social Justice, Washington

The right-wing political campaign against diversity, equity and inclusion policies taking place in several states across the U.S. has called into question the nation’s commitment to achieving racial equality. In this landscape, Seattle is marking a milestone of sorts – the first anniversary of adopting its Race and Social Justice Initiative ordinance. This ordinance, signed into law in April 2023, places the Race and Social Justice Initiative under the Seattle Office of Civil Rights and states that all departments in city government are responsible for “implementing change toward ending institutional racism,” which is defined in Seattle as “policies, practices, procedures, and culture of an institution or system that work better for white people and cause harm to people of color, often inadvertently or unintentionally.”

As States Limit Black History Lessons, Philly Gets It Right

February 18, 2024 Sierra Lyons, Next City. Create! Education, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Race, Racism

The culture war in education that began in response to the protests that followed the murder of George Floyd in 2020 has had a chilling effect on how race is discussed in classrooms. Since January 2021, 44 states have introduced bills and at least 18 have passed laws restricting or banning the teaching of supposed critical race theory. Just 12 states (Arkansas, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Mississippi, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee and Washington) have Black history mandates for K-12 public schools. In addition, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine and Rhode Island have legislated Black history courses or electives during the last two years. But several of the 12 states have new laws on the books that limit their curriculum.

On Contact: Race And America’s Long War

February 27, 2022 Chris Hedges, RT. Resistance Report Capitalism, Mass Incarceration, Race, Wars and Militarism

The internal violence in the United States, militarized police, and the largest prison system in the world, along with America’s endemic racism, are mirrored in the foreign wars that have been fought almost continuously by the United States since the end of the 19th century. These inner and outer wars, argues historian Nikhil Pal Singh, are intimately connected. The gunning down of unarmed black people in American cities is expressed outside our borders in the gunning down of unarmed Muslims in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya, and Somalia, often by militarized drones. The prison-industrial-complex at home is given form in the myriad of overseas black sites where victims, kidnapped and transported to other countries by the CIA, are held in secret, tortured, and killed.

Race Is Central To Both Revolution And Reaction In Latin American

November 18, 2019 Glen Ford, Blackagendareport.com Educate! Identity Politics, Ideology, Latin America, Race

The events in Bolivia lay bare the central role that racial subjugation has always played in the “New World,” a hemisphere whose “discovery” by Europeans resulted -- within the span of only 50 years -- in the death by genocide and pandemic of fully a fifth of the Earth’s human population. The Conquistadors frenzied “primitive accumulation” of precious metals, mined by enslaved Natives who died quicker than they could be replenished, created a demand for the capture and importation of millions of Africans with immunities to both European and tropical disease.

The Federation Of Southern Cooperatives: Economic Justice Through Cooperative Development

June 27, 2019 Staff, Sharedcapital.coop Create! Cooperatives, Land, New Economy, Race

How many co-ops can claim they were founded directly out of the Civil Rights movement? Or that they prevented a crisis predicted by government statisticians? The Federation of Southern Cooperatives has demonstrated that level of leadership throughout its 52-year history, and Shared Capital is proud to support their operating model through our work together. The Federation is a cooperative association of black farmers, landowners and cooperatives all around the South, with a focus on cooperative economic development, land retention, and advocacy.

Looking Back At 1919: Immigration, Race, And Women’s Rights, Then And Now

April 17, 2019 By Arnold R. Isaacs, Tomdispatch.com Educate! History, Immigration, Policy, Race, Sexism, Women

The blend isn’t exact. Bigotry was expressed much more explicitly a century ago, not in code as it usually is now. Jim Crow laws in the South and other forms of racial segregation in the rest of the country were seen by most white Americans as the normal state of affairs. In the national debate on immigration, the most inflammatory rhetoric was largely aimed at immigrants from Asia, not Latin America or the Middle East; Slavs, southern Europeans, and Jews from Eastern Europe also faced widespread hostility.

Wealth Inequality Across Class and Race

March 6, 2019 By Matt Bruenig, Peoplespolicyproject.org Educate! Inequality, Race, wealth inequality

Discussions of wealth inequality are oftentimes muddled by insufficient statistics. You get some stray comparisons of medians or comparisons of the wealthiest 400 families to the least wealthy half of the country. These incomplete pictures lead to mind-numbing debates about class and race that go nowhere. Below I try to clear up these debates with a more complete picture of race, class, and wealth in America.

You Can’t Design Bike-Friendly Cities Without Considering Race And Class

February 11, 2019 Anne Lusk, The Conversation. Create! Cities, New Economy, Race, Transportation

Designing for bikes has become a hallmark of forward-looking modern cities worldwide. Bike-friendly city ratings abound, and advocates promote cycling as a way to reduce problems ranging from air pollution to traffic deaths. But urban cycling investments tend to focus on the needs of wealthy riders and neglect lower-income residents and people of color. This happens even though the single biggest group of Americans who bike to work live in households that earn less than US$10,000 yearly, and studies in lower-income neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Boston have found that the majority of bicyclists were non-white.

Charter Schools And Race In New Orleans

December 24, 2018 Michael David Raso, Bigeasymagazine.com Educate! Charter Schools, Education, New Orleans, Race, Schools

Thursday night, New Orleans public schools as we knew them ended. With a 5-2 vote by the Orleans Parish School Board, the last remaining public high school in New Orleans became its latest charter school. In a room filled to capacity, replete with security, protesters, placards, chants, and shouts of dissatisfaction, McDonogh 35 Senior High School’s future was turned over to charter school group InspireNOLA. Many were outraged, some were left in tears, but it changed nothing. With the 5-2 decision, New Orleans became the first city in the United States to turn its entire school system over to an all-charter system.

America Has Desegregated In Name Only

December 3, 2018 Paul Street, Truthdig.com Educate! Race, Segregation, United States

It’s a little-acknowledged reality that housing markets distribute more than mere dwellings. That’s because people’s place in the social order is intimately related to their geographic location generally, and where they live specifically. Housing quality functions both as a reflection and driver of inequality. Beyond that, however, better homes come with better neighborhoods that afford other opportunity-expanding advantages: good, well-funded schools; high-quality and readily available health care; agreeable recreational facilities and parks; full-service grocery stores with healthy foods; excellent retail outlets; nice sit-down restaurants; well-kept roads and other infrastructure; safe distance from pollutants, major transport and cargo routes...

Class And Race In Child Adoption

September 8, 2018 Mirah Riben, Dissidentvoice.com Educate! Children, Class, Race

Despite the illusion of adoption as an altruistic child-saving social service . . . adoption is deeply imbued in classism, nearly always redistributing children from economically at-risk “unmarried” or “too young” mothers and fathers, or those in temporary crisis, to adopters of higher socio-economic status who can afford the tens of thousands of dollars that babies cost.

Racial Justice And Cooperatives: Q&A With United States Federation Of Worker Cooperatives Director Esteban Kelly

August 2, 2018 By Robert Raymond, Shareable.net Educate! Cooperatives, New Economy, Race

The worker cooperative movement seems to be gaining more prominence in the U.S., especially locally. "Altogether worker cooperatives represent a small part of the national economy. However, there may be a greater impact at the local level in areas where they are more concentrated," a report by the Democracy at Work Institute, a worker cooperative advocacy group, noted. An important sign that the movement is growing and strengthening came at the turn of this century, when the United States Federation of Worker Cooperatives (USFWC) was formed with the mission of connecting and strengthening the burgeoning cooperative sector. To date, USFWC represents around 200 cooperatives and around 6,000 cooperative members across the country, and proceeds with the ultimate aim of advancing economic justice rooted in community-based, shared ownership.

50 Years After The Kerner Commission

March 5, 2018 By Janelle Jones, John Schmitt, and Valerie Wilson, Epi.org Educate! New Economy, Race, Racial inequality

The year 1968 was a watershed in American history and black America’s ongoing fight for equality. In April of that year, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis and riots broke out in cities around the country. Rising against this tragedy, the Civil Rights Act of 1968 outlawing housing discrimination was signed into law. Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their fists in a black power salute as they received their medals at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City. Arthur Ashe became the first African American to win the U.S. Open singles title, and Shirley Chisholm became the first African American woman elected to the House of Representatives. The same year, the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, better known as the Kerner Commission, delivered a report to President Johnson examining the causes of civil unrest in African American communities.

5 Facts About Black People In The U.S.

February 27, 2018 Kristen Bialik, Pewresearch.org Educate! Black People, Race, Racial inequality, Racism

For the first time in U.S. history, 90% of Americans ages 25 and older have completed high school, according to the U.S. Census Bureau – and the share of blacks who have done so is also at the highest level on record. In 2017, 87% of blacks ages 25 and older had a high school diploma or equivalent. Although the high school completion rate for non-Hispanic whites was higher (94%) than for blacks, the gap has been gradually shrinking. In 1993, the high school completion gap was twice as large (14 percentage points) as it is today (7 points). The share of blacks ages 25 and older who have completed four years of college or more has also roughly doubled during that span, from 12% in 1993 to 24% in 2017.

Your Pipeline Fights; Polluting Along Race Lines & Invading White Spaces

February 22, 2018 Eleanor Goldfield, Occupy.com Resistance Report Pipelines, pollution, Race, Racism

This week on Act Out! big oil and gas pay a small fine so they can keep on polluting. Next up, YOUR solidarity is needed in an upcoming week of action against the Bayou Bridge Pipeline. Not in the bayous? Well, you don't need to be. This affects us all. Finally, the impact of dirty energy on black and brown communities plus community organizer Maurice Cook joins us to talk white supremacy, the importance of battling racism, of recognizing black history and how to organize TOGETHER in our place and time.

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