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Systemic Racism

Legacy Admissions Are Actually The Opposite Of Affirmative Action

July 31, 2023 Jim Naureckas, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. , , ,
A recent NPR headline (7/24/23) declared: “Affirmative Action for Rich Kids: It’s More Than Just Legacy Admissions.” The accompanying story explained: “Affirmative action for minority kids may now be dead. But a blockbuster new study, released today, finds that, effectively, affirmative action for rich kids is alive and well.” Likewise, a Vox headline (7/25/23) reported that “Affirmative Action for White College Applicants Is Still Here.” A Daily podcast (7/27/23) from the New York Times is headlined “Affirmative Action for the 1 Percent,” explaining “just how much elite colleges admissions in the US systematically favor the rich and the superrich.” New York magazine’s Eric Levitz (7/25/23) wrote about “Why Elite Colleges Do Affirmative Action for the Rich.”

Plenty Of Black College Students Want To Be Teachers

July 20, 2023 Jill Barshay, Portside. , , , ,
A growing problem in American classrooms is that teachers don’t resemble the students they teach. Eighty percent of the nation’s 3.8 million public school teachers are white, but over half of their students are Black, Hispanic, Asian, Native American and mixed races. The small slice of Black teachers has actually shrunk slightly over the past decade from 7 percent in 2011–12 to 6 percent in 2020–21, while Black students make up a much larger 15 percent share of the public school student population. A Black teacher can make a positive difference for Black children. Research has shown that Black students are less likely to be suspended and more likely to be placed in gifted classes when they are taught by Black teachers.

Here’s What ‘Moore V. Harper’ Means For Voting Rights Going Forward

July 2, 2023 Marjorie Cohn, Truthout. , , ,
Chief Justice John Roberts has historically not decided cases in a way that protects voting rights. In 2013, he authored Shelby v. Holder, which drove a stake through the heart of the Voting Rights Act. And in 2021, he voted to further weaken the Act in Brnovich v. DNC. But this past month, Roberts surprisingly authored two new Supreme Court opinions that support the right to vote. On June 8, the high court struck down a racist congressional district map in Allen v. Milligan, and on June 27, the court preserved judicial review of state legislative enactments in Moore v. Harper.

SCOTUS’s Latest Attack On Affirmative Action

July 1, 2023 Monica Moorehead, Workers World. , , ,
The Supreme Court of the United States confirmed once again what an utterly reactionary, rightwing institution it is by striking down the right to use affirmative action in college admissions. The 6-3 ruling, issued June 29, stems from two cases – Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard University and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina – which claim that whites and Asians are victims of “reverse discrimination.” What this vote means is that “race-conscious admissions policies,” can no longer be used to assure that working class students of color, especially if they are Black and Brown, will have access to colleges and universities, whose exorbitant tuition fees have put millions into a lifetime of debt.

Indigenous Activists Respond To Gutting Of Affirmative Action

June 30, 2023 Jean-Luc Pierite and Mahtowin Munro, Popular Resistance. , , , ,
Boston, MA - Indigenous activists in Boston reaffirm their commitment to overcome historic barriers to higher education for students in light of today’s ruling delivered by the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) that guts Affirmative Action in college admissions at institutions of higher education across the country. The Indigenous activists demand the passage of two bills in the state legislature specifically addressing Native issues in public education. Today’s SCOTUS ruling overturns a longstanding precedent that had previously benefited Black, Indigenous, and Latine students in higher education due to a demonstrable historic lack of opportunities for those students.

Health Care Discrimination Still Rampant

June 29, 2023 Mark Kreidler, LA Progressive. , , ,
Since before the country’s formation, unequal health based on race, from inferior care and treatment to shorter life spans, has been part and parcel of American history. Surveys in recent decades have enabled researchers to bring those disparities into sharper and sometimes harrowing focus. But identifying these issues hasn’t brought the country much closer to resolving them. And a new report underscores how truly intractable those problems are — because it brings race-based disparities right into the safest hospitals in the United States. According to the report, which was released this month by the Leapfrog Group, America’s A-graded hospitals do no better at reducing racial health disparities than hospitals at the bottom of the scale.

The US Supreme Court Seems Ready To Gut Affirmative Action

May 27, 2023 Brandon Tensley, Capital B. , , ,
This summer, the U.S. Supreme Court’s Republican-appointed majority is anticipated to end affirmative action, which for decades has sought to remedy a bruising legacy of discrimination against marginalized groups, including Black Americans. Nearly 10 years ago, Students for Fair Admissions, an organization headed by Edward Blum, a stockbroker turned conservative legal strategist, filed lawsuits against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina, claiming that their undergraduate admissions practices are racially discriminatory. The lower courts sided with the defendants, but the high court in the coming weeks is expected to say that schools are barred from considering race when reviewing applications.

Five Principles For Making State And Local Reparations Plans Reparative

February 20, 2023 Kyle K. Moore, Economic Policy Institute. , , ,
We are still living in the aftermath of 2020’s overlapping crises of racial injustice, our nation’s polycrisis. Between the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, the ensuing economic recession, and the public police murder of George Floyd, we saw a harsh truth about the structure of American political economy: White supremacy has shaped our institutions such that their outcome is consistent Black precarity and premature death. This confluence of tragedies brought awareness of the Black American condition to a new generation. It also reinvigorated interest among academics and policymakers to finally do something about the problem of racial disparities (though activists and community organizers largely never lost interest in this).

It’s Not About Phenotype; It’s About The Interests Being Served

January 31, 2023 Dr. Wilmer J. Leon, III, Popular Resistance. , , ,
Well, they have done it to us again.  What for most White Americans is a simple inconvenience, a traffic stop, became for an African American another series of frames from a horror movie.  Instead of being pulled over, given a ticket and sent on his way; Tyre Nichols was pulled out of his car by the police, sadistically beaten and sent to the hospital to die. The villain or beast from this real-life horror was not Dracula or Frankenstein. The spawns of Satan that beat Tyre Nichols are not made-up characters from the minds of Bram Stoker or Mary Shelley.  This villainous threat to the African American community is real! They are stalking the streets of our cities and towns for more victims every hour of every day and night. This threat, these body snatchers don’t need the cover of darkness or need to operate in the shadows.  They conduct their evil in broad daylight under the color of law.  They are the urban army that is sworn to “protect and serve”.

Reimagining Reparations As America’s Marshall Plan And Not Just A Payday

September 15, 2022 Jon Jeter, Black Agenda Report. , , , ,
Congratulations Fam, I hear that you’ve finally secured the bag, otherwise known as reparations. A cool $800,000 to be paid in eight annual installments, the first $100,000 of which arrived in your bank account today. Well, maybe not quite $100k, but about $75,000 after taxes. Still some nice coin. So, how should we get the party started? You say you want to finally buy a house for you and your family? Seventy-five grand is not gonna get you that deluxe apartment on the upper East side, but it’s a nice downpayment on a three-bedroom condo in Teaneck or Tallahassee. All you have to do is pop into the bank and sign on the dotted line  . . . but wait one cotton pickin’ minute; is that a subprime mortgage? Perhaps America’s worst- kept secret is that usurious, adjustable mortgages were not designed to help African Americans who don’t have money but to exploit those who do.

Reparations Are Being Discussed But Will Direct Payments Follow?

August 6, 2022 Ezekiel J. Walker, The Black Wall Street Times. , , ,
According to ABC News, during the colonial era the wealth of universities, in the form of endowments and benefactors, was inextricably tied to the slave trade, numerous university presidents owned enslaved people and famous alumni such as John C. Calhoun championed the cause of slavery. Enslaved people were owned by universities and worked on campuses until the abolition of slavery. Now, students at those institutions are organizing efforts to focus on erecting monuments, taxing endowments, PILOT programs, creating divestment campaigns and offering alternative campus tours that highlight the university’s history of slavery. Students are also pushing schools to identify and support descendants of people enslaved by the universities.

‘We Are Resilient People Who Fight For Each Other’

July 10, 2022 Eli Day and  Elnora Gavin, Convergence. , , ,
Elnora Gavin is a lifelong Benton Harbor resident and currently works as the West Michigan organizer with We the People Michigan. In this interview, she talks about her love for Benton Harbor, the challenges facing ordinary people there, and how they’re fighting to address everything from school closures to a disastrous human-made water crisis, and ultimately create a Benton Harbor where everyone flourishes. Eli Day, a Detroit-based writer and We the People Michigan communications director, interviewed Gavin for Convergence.

Abolishing The Family Policing System

July 9, 2022 Roberto Sirvent, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
My passion for the fight to abolish oppressive policing systems – especially the family policing system (also known as the “child welfare system”) – is fueled by my personal experience of having my two children ripped from me in 1999. The two and a half year fight to regain custody, the many additional investigations after my children were returned to me and my learning through research what communities were being impacted by the family police and outcome of the children they claim to protect. The family policing system can completely destroy people’s lives. After I reunited with my children, I knew other parents and families were experiencing the same harm I had experienced, and I knew I had to do something to change that.

Juneteenth Commemorated While Total Freedom For African Americans Remains Elusive

June 21, 2022 Abayomi Azikiwe, Popular Resistance. , , ,
Juneteenth was designated as a federal holiday during 2021 by the United States administration of President Joe Biden. This act of recognition came in the aftermath of an upsurge in mass demonstrations and electoral mobilizations in response to the rash of police and vigilante killings of African Americans during 2020-2021. The holiday had been recognized and celebrated within African American communities largely concentrated in Texas and other areas of the South for over a century. After the surrender of the Confederate military forces in early April 1865, the fate of slavery as an economic system was sealed. Nonetheless, then President Abraham Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862, with immediate effect beginning January 1, 1863.

How Community Care Can Address The South’s Maternal Mortality Crisis

March 1, 2022 Rebekah Barber, Facing South. , , ,
The maternal mortality rate in the United States is 23.8 deaths per 100,000 births — the highest of any developed country. The U.S. is also the only developed country where maternal mortality rates are rising. The crisis is especially dire in the South. As of 2018, Louisiana had the highest maternal mortality rate of any state with 58.1 deaths per 100,000 births — over three times the national rate. It was followed by Georgia with 48.4 maternal deaths per 100,000 births. Of the 10 states with the highest maternal mortality rates, six were in the South. Besides Louisiana and Georgia, they are Arkansas (37.5), Alabama (36.4), Texas (34.5), and South Carolina (27.9). The rates are even higher for Black and indigenous women.
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