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Stanford scholars examine systemic racism, how to advance racial justice in America

Black History Month is an opportunity to reflect on the Black experience in America and examine continuing systemic racism and discrimination in the U.S. – issues many Stanford scholars are tackling in their research and scholarship.

A pandemic that disproportionately affected communities of color, roadblocks that obstructed efforts to expand the franchise and protect voting discrimination, a growing movement to push anti-racist curricula out of schools – events over the past year have only underscored how prevalent systemic racism and bias is in America today.

What can be done to dismantle centuries of discrimination in the U.S.? How can a more equitable society be achieved? What makes racism such a complicated problem to solve? Black History Month is a time marked for honoring and reflecting on the experience of Black Americans, and it is also an opportunity to reexamine our nation’s deeply embedded racial problems and the possible solutions that could help build a more equitable society.

Stanford scholars are tackling these issues head-on in their research from the perspectives of history, education, law and other disciplines. For example, historian Clayborne Carson is working to preserve and promote the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. and religious studies scholar Lerone A. Martin has joined Stanford to continue expanding access and opportunities to learn from King’s teachings; sociologist Matthew Clair is examining how the criminal justice system can end a vicious cycle involving the disparate treatment of Black men; and education scholar Subini Ancy Annamma is studying ways to make education more equitable for historically marginalized students.

Learn more about these efforts and other projects examining racism and discrimination in areas like health and medicine, technology and the workplace below.

Update: Jan. 27, 2023: This story was originally published on Feb. 16, 2021, and has been updated on a number of occasions to include new content.

Understanding the impact of racism; advancing justice

One of the hardest elements of advancing racial justice is helping everyone understand the ways in which they are involved in a system or structure that perpetuates racism, according to Stanford legal scholar Ralph Richard Banks.

“The starting point for the center is the recognition that racial inequality and division have long been the fault line of American society. Thus, addressing racial inequity is essential to sustaining our nation, and furthering its democratic aspirations,” said Banks , the Jackson Eli Reynolds Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and co-founder of the Stanford Center for Racial Justice .

This sentiment was echoed by Stanford researcher Rebecca Hetey . One of the obstacles in solving inequality is people’s attitudes towards it, Hetey said. “One of the barriers of reducing inequality is how some people justify and rationalize it.”

How people talk about race and stereotypes matters. Here is some of that scholarship.

For Black Americans, COVID-19 is quickly reversing crucial economic gains

Research co-authored by SIEPR’s Peter Klenow and Chad Jones measures the welfare gap between Black and white Americans and provides a way to analyze policies to narrow the divide.

How an ‘impact mindset’ unites activists of different races

A new study finds that people’s involvement with Black Lives Matter stems from an impulse that goes beyond identity.

For democracy to work, racial inequalities must be addressed

The Stanford Center for Racial Justice is taking a hard look at the policies perpetuating systemic racism in America today and asking how we can imagine a more equitable society.

The psychological toll of George Floyd’s murder

As the nation mourned the death of George Floyd, more Black Americans than white Americans felt angry or sad – a finding that reveals the racial disparities of grief.

Seven factors contributing to American racism

Of the seven factors the researchers identified, perhaps the most insidious is passivism or passive racism, which includes an apathy toward systems of racial advantage or denial that those systems even exist.

Scholars reflect on Black history

Humanities and social sciences scholars reflect on “Black history as American history” and its impact on their personal and professional lives.

The history of Black History Month

It's February, so many teachers and schools are taking time to celebrate Black History Month. According to Stanford historian Michael Hines, there are still misunderstandings and misconceptions about the past, present, and future of the celebration.

Numbers about inequality don’t speak for themselves

In a new research paper, Stanford scholars Rebecca Hetey and Jennifer Eberhardt propose new ways to talk about racial disparities that exist across society, from education to health care and criminal justice systems.

Changing how people perceive problems

Drawing on an extensive body of research, Stanford psychologist Gregory Walton lays out a roadmap to positively influence the way people think about themselves and the world around them. These changes could improve society, too.

Welfare opposition linked to threats of racial standing

Research co-authored by sociologist Robb Willer finds that when white Americans perceive threats to their status as the dominant demographic group, their resentment of minorities increases. This resentment leads to opposing welfare programs they believe will mainly benefit minority groups.

Conversations about race between Black and white friends can feel risky, but are valuable

New research about how friends approach talking about their race-related experiences with each other reveals concerns but also the potential that these conversations have to strengthen relationships and further intergroup learning.

Defusing racial bias

Research shows why understanding the source of discrimination matters.

Many white parents aren’t having ‘the talk’ about race with their kids

After George Floyd’s murder, Black parents talked about race and racism with their kids more. White parents did not and were more likely to give their kids colorblind messages.

Stereotyping makes people more likely to act badly

Even slight cues, like reading a negative stereotype about your race or gender, can have an impact.

Why white people downplay their individual racial privileges

Research shows that white Americans, when faced with evidence of racial privilege, deny that they have benefited personally.

Clayborne Carson: Looking back at a legacy

Stanford historian Clayborne Carson reflects on a career dedicated to studying and preserving the legacy of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

How race influences, amplifies backlash against outspoken women

When women break gender norms, the most negative reactions may come from people of the same race.

Examining disparities in education

Scholar Subini Ancy Annamma is studying ways to make education more equitable for historically marginalized students. Annamma’s research examines how schools contribute to the criminalization of Black youths by creating a culture of punishment that penalizes Black children more harshly than their white peers for the same behavior. Her work shows that youth of color are more likely to be closely watched, over-represented in special education, and reported to and arrested by police.

“These are all ways in which schools criminalize Black youth,” she said. “Day after day, these things start to sediment.”

That’s why Annamma has identified opportunities for teachers and administrators to intervene in these unfair practices. Below is some of that research, from Annamma and others.

New ‘Segregation Index’ shows American schools remain highly segregated by race, ethnicity, and economic status

Researchers at Stanford and USC developed a new tool to track neighborhood and school segregation in the U.S.

New evidence shows that school poverty shapes racial achievement gaps

Racial segregation leads to growing achievement gaps – but it does so entirely through differences in school poverty, according to new research from education Professor Sean Reardon, who is launching a new tool to help educators, parents and policymakers examine education trends by race and poverty level nationwide.

School closures intensify gentrification in Black neighborhoods nationwide

An analysis of census and school closure data finds that shuttering schools increases gentrification – but only in predominantly Black communities.

Ninth-grade ethnic studies helped students for years, Stanford researchers find

A new study shows that students assigned to an ethnic studies course had longer-term improvements in attendance and graduation rates.

Teaching about racism

Stanford sociologist Matthew Snipp discusses ways to educate students about race and ethnic relations in America.

Stanford scholar uncovers an early activist’s fight to get Black history into schools

In a new book, Assistant Professor Michael Hines chronicles the efforts of a Chicago schoolteacher in the 1930s who wanted to remedy the portrayal of Black history in textbooks of the time.

How disability intersects with race

Professor Alfredo J. Artiles discusses the complexities in creating inclusive policies for students with disabilities.

Access to program for black male students lowered dropout rates

New research led by Stanford education professor Thomas S. Dee provides the first evidence of effectiveness for a district-wide initiative targeted at black male high school students.

How school systems make criminals of Black youth

Stanford education professor Subini Ancy Annamma talks about the role schools play in creating a culture of punishment against Black students.

Reducing racial disparities in school discipline

Stanford psychologists find that brief exercises early in middle school can improve students’ relationships with their teachers, increase their sense of belonging and reduce teachers’ reports of discipline issues among black and Latino boys.

Science lessons through a different lens

In his new book, Science in the City, Stanford education professor Bryan A. Brown helps bridge the gap between students’ culture and the science classroom.

Teachers more likely to label black students as troublemakers, Stanford research shows

Stanford psychologists Jennifer Eberhardt and Jason Okonofua experimentally examined the psychological processes involved when teachers discipline black students more harshly than white students.

Why we need Black teachers

Travis Bristol, MA '04, talks about what it takes for schools to hire and retain teachers of color.

Understanding racism in the criminal justice system

Research has shown that time and time again, inequality is embedded into all facets of the criminal justice system. From being arrested to being charged, convicted and sentenced, people of color – particularly Black men – are disproportionately targeted by the police.

“So many reforms are needed: police accountability, judicial intervention, reducing prosecutorial power and increasing resources for public defenders are places we can start,” said sociologist Matthew Clair . “But beyond piecemeal reforms, we need to continue having critical conversations about transformation and the role of the courts in bringing about the abolition of police and prisons.”

Clair is one of several Stanford scholars who have examined the intersection of race and the criminal process and offered solutions to end the vicious cycle of racism. Here is some of that work.

Police Facebook posts disproportionately highlight crimes involving Black suspects, study finds

Researchers examined crime-related posts from 14,000 Facebook pages maintained by U.S. law enforcement agencies and found that Facebook users are exposed to posts that overrepresent Black suspects by 25% relative to local arrest rates.

Supporting students involved in the justice system

New data show that a one-page letter asking a teacher to support a youth as they navigate the difficult transition from juvenile detention back to school can reduce the likelihood that the student re-offends.

Race and mass criminalization in the U.S.

Stanford sociologist discusses how race and class inequalities are embedded in the American criminal legal system.

New Stanford research lab explores incarcerated students’ educational paths

Associate Professor Subini Annamma examines the policies and practices that push marginalized students out of school and into prisons.

Derek Chauvin verdict important, but much remains to be done

Stanford scholars Hakeem Jefferson, Robert Weisberg and Matthew Clair weigh in on the Derek Chauvin verdict, emphasizing that while the outcome is important, much work remains to be done to bring about long-lasting justice.

A ‘veil of darkness’ reduces racial bias in traffic stops

After analyzing 95 million traffic stop records, filed by officers with 21 state patrol agencies and 35 municipal police forces from 2011 to 2018, researchers concluded that “police stops and search decisions suffer from persistent racial bias.”

Stanford big data study finds racial disparities in Oakland, Calif., police behavior, offers solutions

Analyzing thousands of data points, the researchers found racial disparities in how Oakland officers treated African Americans on routine traffic and pedestrian stops. They suggest 50 measures to improve police-community relations.

Race and the death penalty

As questions about racial bias in the criminal justice system dominate the headlines, research by Stanford law Professor John J. Donohue III offers insight into one of the most fraught areas: the death penalty.

Diagnosing disparities in health, medicine

The COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately impacted communities of color and has highlighted the health disparities between Black Americans, whites and other demographic groups.

As Iris Gibbs , professor of radiation oncology and associate dean of MD program admissions, pointed out at an event sponsored by Stanford Medicine: “We need more sustained attention and real action towards eliminating health inequities, educating our entire community and going beyond ‘allyship,’ because that one fizzles out. We really do need people who are truly there all the way.”

Below is some of that research as well as solutions that can address some of the disparities in the American healthcare system.

Stanford researchers testing ways to improve clinical trial diversity

The American Heart Association has provided funding to two Stanford Medicine professors to develop ways to diversify enrollment in heart disease clinical trials.

Striking inequalities in maternal and infant health

Research by SIEPR’s Petra Persson and Maya Rossin-Slater finds wealthy Black mothers and infants in the U.S. fare worse than the poorest white mothers and infants.

More racial diversity among physicians would lead to better health among black men

A clinical trial in Oakland by Stanford researchers found that black men are more likely to seek out preventive care after being seen by black doctors compared to non-black doctors.

A better measuring stick: Algorithmic approach to pain diagnosis could eliminate racial bias

Traditional approaches to pain management don’t treat all patients the same. AI could level the playing field.

5 questions: Alice Popejoy on race, ethnicity and ancestry in science

Alice Popejoy, a postdoctoral scholar who studies biomedical data sciences, speaks to the role – and pitfalls – of race, ethnicity and ancestry in research.

Stanford Medicine community calls for action against racial injustice, inequities

The event at Stanford provided a venue for health care workers and students to express their feelings about violence against African Americans and to voice their demands for change.

Racial disparity remains in heart-transplant mortality rates, Stanford study finds

African-American heart transplant patients have had persistently higher mortality rates than white patients, but exactly why still remains a mystery.

Finding the COVID-19 Victims that Big Data Misses

Widely used virus tracking data undercounts older people and people of color. Scholars propose a solution to this demographic bias.

Studying how racial stressors affect mental health

Farzana Saleem, an assistant professor at Stanford Graduate School of Education, is interested in the way Black youth and other young people of color navigate adolescence—and the racial stressors that can make the journey harder.

Infants’ race influences quality of hospital care in California

Disparities exist in how babies of different racial and ethnic origins are treated in California’s neonatal intensive care units, but this could be changed, say Stanford researchers.

Immigrants don’t move state-to-state in search of health benefits

When states expand public health insurance to include low-income, legal immigrants, it does not lead to out-of-state immigrants moving in search of benefits.

Excess mortality rates early in pandemic highest among Blacks

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has been starkly uneven across race, ethnicity and geography, according to a new study led by SHP's Maria Polyakova.

Decoding bias in media, technology

Driving Artificial Intelligence are machine learning algorithms, sets of rules that tell a computer how to solve a problem, perform a task and in some cases, predict an outcome. These predictive models are based on massive datasets to recognize certain patterns, which according to communication scholar Angele Christin , sometimes come flawed with human bias . 

“Technology changes things, but perhaps not always as much as we think,” Christin said. “Social context matters a lot in shaping the actual effects of the technological tools. […] So, it’s important to understand that connection between humans and machines.”

Below is some of that research, as well as other ways discrimination unfolds across technology, in the media, and ways to counteract it.

IRS disproportionately audits Black taxpayers

A Stanford collaboration with the Department of the Treasury yields the first direct evidence of differences in audit rates by race.

Automated speech recognition less accurate for blacks

The disparity likely occurs because such technologies are based on machine learning systems that rely heavily on databases of English as spoken by white Americans.

New algorithm trains AI to avoid bad behaviors

Robots, self-driving cars and other intelligent machines could become better-behaved thanks to a new way to help machine learning designers build AI applications with safeguards against specific, undesirable outcomes such as racial and gender bias.

Stanford scholar analyzes responses to algorithms in journalism, criminal justice

In a recent study, assistant professor of communication Angèle Christin finds a gap between intended and actual uses of algorithmic tools in journalism and criminal justice fields.

Move responsibly and think about things

In the course CS 181: Computers, Ethics and Public Policy , Stanford students become computer programmers, policymakers and philosophers to examine the ethical and social impacts of technological innovation.

Homicide victims from Black and Hispanic neighborhoods devalued

Social scientists found that homicide victims killed in Chicago’s predominantly Black and Hispanic neighborhoods received less news coverage than those killed in mostly white neighborhoods.

Algorithms reveal changes in stereotypes

New Stanford research shows that, over the past century, linguistic changes in gender and ethnic stereotypes correlated with major social movements and demographic changes in the U.S. Census data.

AI Index Diversity Report: An Unmoving Needle

Stanford HAI’s 2021 AI Index reveals stalled progress in diversifying AI and a scarcity of the data needed to fix it.

Identifying discrimination in the workplace and economy

From who moves forward in the hiring process to who receives funding from venture capitalists, research has revealed how Blacks and other minority groups are discriminated against in the workplace and economy-at-large. 

“There is not one silver bullet here that you can walk away with. Hiring and retention with respect to employee diversity are complex problems,” said Adina Sterling , associate professor of organizational behavior at the Graduate School of Business (GSB). 

Sterling has offered a few places where employers can expand employee diversity at their companies. For example, she suggests hiring managers track data about their recruitment methods and the pools that result from those efforts, as well as examining who they ultimately hire.

Here is some of that insight.

How To: Use a Scorecard to Evaluate People More Fairly

A written framework is an easy way to hold everyone to the same standard.

Archiving Black histories of Silicon Valley

A new collection at Stanford Libraries will highlight Black Americans who helped transform California’s Silicon Valley region into a hub for innovation, ideas.

Race influences professional investors’ judgments

In their evaluations of high-performing venture capital funds, professional investors rate white-led teams more favorably than they do black-led teams with identical credentials, a new Stanford study led by Jennifer L. Eberhardt finds.

Who moves forward in the hiring process?

People whose employment histories include part-time, temporary help agency or mismatched work can face challenges during the hiring process, according to new research by Stanford sociologist David Pedulla.

How emotions may result in hiring, workplace bias

Stanford study suggests that the emotions American employers are looking for in job candidates may not match up with emotions valued by jobseekers from some cultural backgrounds – potentially leading to hiring bias.

Do VCs really favor white male founders?

A field experiment used fake emails to measure gender and racial bias among startup investors.

Can you spot diversity? (Probably not)

New research shows a “spillover effect” that might be clouding your judgment.

Can job referrals improve employee diversity?

New research looks at how referrals impact promotions of minorities and women.

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For Black History Month, a look at what Black Americans say is needed to overcome racial inequality

Black History Month originated in 1926 as Negro History Week. Created by Carter G. Woodson, a Black historian and journalist, the week celebrated the achievements of Black Americans following their emancipation from slavery.

Since 1928, the organization that Woodson founded, the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, has selected an annual theme for the celebration . The theme for 2023, “Black Resistance,” is intended to highlight how Black Americans have fought against racial inequality.

Black Americans’ resistance to racial inequality has deep roots in U.S. history and has taken many forms – from slave rebellions during the colonial era and through the Civil War to protest movements in the 1950s, ’60s and today. But Black Americans have also built institutions to support their communities such as churches, colleges and universities, printing presses, and fraternal organizations. These movements and institutions have stressed the importance of freedom, self-determination and equal protection under the law. 

Black Americans have long articulated a clear vision for the kind of social change that would improve their lives. Here are key findings from Pew Research Center surveys that explore Black Americans’ views about how to overcome racial inequality.

This analysis examines how Black people view issues of racial inequality and social change in the U.S. It is part of a larger Pew Research Center project that aims to understand Americans’ views of racial inequity and social change in the United States.

For this analysis, we surveyed 3,912 Black U.S. adults from Oct. 4-17, 2021. Black U.S. adults include those who are single-race, non-Hispanic Black Americans; multiracial, non-Hispanic Black Americans; and adults who indicate they are Black and Hispanic. The survey includes 1,025 Black adults on Pew Research Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP) and 2,887 Black adults on Ipsos’ KnowledgePanel. Respondents on both panels are recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses.

Recruiting panelists by phone or mail ensures that nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. This gives us confidence that any sample can represent the whole population (see our Methods 101 explainer on random sampling).

Here are the questions used for the survey, along with responses, and its methodology .

Most Black adults see voting as an extremely or very effective strategy for helping Black people move toward equality, but fewer than half say the same about protesting. More than six-in-ten Black adults (63%) say voting is an extremely or very effective strategy for Black progress. However, only around four-in-ten (42%) say the same about protesting. 

There are notable differences in these views across political and demographic subgroups of the Black population.

Black Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents are more likely than Black Republicans and Republican leaners to say voting is an extremely or very effective tactic for Black progress (68% vs. 46%). Black Democrats are also more likely to say the same about supporting Black businesses (63% vs. 41%) and protesting (46% vs. 32%).

Views also differ by age. For example, around half of Black adults ages 65 and older (48%) say protests are an extremely or very effective tactic, compared with 42% of those ages 50 to 64 and 38% of those 30 to 49.

Black Americans say Black Lives Matter has done the most to help Black people in recent years. Around four-in-ten Black adults (39%) say this, exceeding the share who point to the NAACP (17%), Black churches or other religious organizations (13%), the Congressional Black Caucus (6%) and the National Urban League (3%).

Black Democrats are more likely than Black Republicans (44% vs. 26%) to say Black Lives Matter has done the most to help Black people in recent years. And Black adults with at least a college degree are more likely than those with less education (44% vs. 37%) to say Black Lives Matter has done the most.

Some Black adults see Black-owned businesses and Black-led communities as effective remedies for inequality. When it comes to moving Black people toward equality, about four-in-ten Black adults (39%) say having all businesses in Black neighborhoods be owned by Black people would be an extremely or very effective strategy. Smaller shares say the same about establishing a national Black political party (31%) and having all the elected officials governing Black neighborhoods be Black (27%).

While none of these strategies have majority support among Black adults, certain groups are more likely than others to say they would be effective. Those who say being Black is at least very important to their identity are especially likely to say each of the three strategies are effective, for example.

Those with a high school education or less are more likely than college graduates to say establishing a national Black political party would be effective at achieving equality for Black people. Meanwhile, younger Black adults (ages 18 to 49) are more likely than older ones (50 and older) to say Black officials governing Black neighborhoods would help make progress toward equality.

The vast majority of Black adults say the prison system needs significant changes for Black people to be treated fairly. That includes a majority of Black adults (54%) who say the prison system needs to be “completely rebuilt” in order to ensure fair treatment. Groups especially likely to say this include Black Democrats and those who say being Black is extremely or very important to how they see themselves.

Far smaller shares of Black adults say the prison system requires only minor or no changes, though this view is more common among Black Republicans and those who say being Black is somewhat, a little or not at all important to their identity.

Clear majorities of Black adults say people of other races or ethnicities could make good political allies for Black people. About four-in-ten Black adults (42%) say White people would make good political allies only if they experience the same hardships as Black people; another 35% say White people would make good political allies even if they don’t experience these same hardships. Around one-in-five Black adults (18%) say White people would not make good political allies.

About four-in-ten Black adults (37%) say Latinos would make good allies only if they experience the same hardships as Black people, while a similar share (40%) say Latino people would make for good allies even if they don’t experience the same hardships. Some 16% of Black adults say Latinos would not make good political allies.

The views of Black adults on this question are similar when it comes to Asian people, though a somewhat higher share (23%) say Asian Americans would not make good political allies.

Note: Here are the questions used for the survey, along with responses, and its methodology .

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5 Essays to Learn More About Equality

“Equality” is one of those words that seems simple, but is more complicated upon closer inspection. At its core, equality can be defined as “the state of being equal.” When societies value equality, their goals include racial, economic, and gender equality . Do we really know what equality looks like in practice? Does it mean equal opportunities, equal outcomes, or both? To learn more about this concept, here are five essays focusing on equality:

“The Equality Effect” (2017) – Danny Dorling

In this essay, professor Danny Dorling lays out why equality is so beneficial to the world. What is equality? It’s living in a society where everyone gets the same freedoms, dignity, and rights. When equality is realized, a flood of benefits follows. Dorling describes the effect of equality as “magical.” Benefits include happier and healthier citizens, less crime, more productivity, and so on. Dorling believes the benefits of “economically equitable” living are so clear, change around the world is inevitable. Despite the obvious conclusion that equality creates a better world, progress has been slow. We’ve become numb to inequality. Raising awareness of equality’s benefits is essential.

Danny Dorling is the Halford Mackinder Professor of Geography at the University of Oxford. He has co-authored and authored a handful of books, including Slowdown: The End of the Great Acceleration—and Why It’s Good for the Planet, the Economy, and Our Lives . “The Equality Effect” is excerpted from this book. Dorling’s work focuses on issues like health, education, wealth, poverty, and employment.

“The Equality Conundrum” (2020) – Joshua Rothman

Originally published as “Same Difference” in the New Yorker’s print edition, this essay opens with a story. A couple plans on dividing their money equally among their children. However, they realize that to ensure equal success for their children, they might need to start with unequal amounts. This essay digs into the complexity of “equality.” While inequality is a major concern for people, most struggle to truly define it. Citing lectures, studies, philosophy, religion, and more, Rothman sheds light on the fact that equality is not a simple – or easy – concept.

Joshua Rothman has worked as a writer and editor of The New Yorker since 2012. He is the ideas editor of newyorker.com.

“Why Understanding Equity vs Equality in Schools Can Help You Create an Inclusive Classroom” (2019) – Waterford.org

Equality in education is critical to society. Students that receive excellent education are more likely to succeed than students who don’t. This essay focuses on the importance of equity, which means giving support to students dealing with issues like poverty, discrimination and economic injustice. What is the difference between equality and equity? What are some strategies that can address barriers? This essay is a great introduction to the equity issues teachers face and why equity is so important.

Waterford.org is a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving equity and education in the United States. It believes that the educational experiences children receive are crucial for their future. Waterford.org was founded by Dr. Dustin Heuston.

“What does equality mean to me?” (2020) – Gabriela Vivacqua and Saddal Diab

While it seems simple, the concept of equality is complex. In this piece posted by WFP_Africa on the WFP’s Insight page, the authors ask women from South Sudan what equality means to them. Half of South Sudan’s population consists of women and girls. Unequal access to essentials like healthcare, education, and work opportunities hold them back. Complete with photographs, this short text gives readers a glimpse into interpretations of equality and what organizations like the World Food Programme are doing to tackle gender inequality.

As part of the UN, the World Food Programme is the world’s largest humanitarian organization focusing on hunger and food security . It provides food assistance to over 80 countries each year.

“Here’s How Gender Equality is Measured” (2020) – Catherine Caruso

Gender inequality is one of the most discussed areas of inequality. Sobering stats reveal that while progress has been made, the world is still far from realizing true gender equality. How is gender equality measured? This essay refers to the Global Gender Gap report ’s factors. This report is released each year by the World Economic Forum. The four factors are political empowerment, health and survival, economic participation and opportunity, and education. The author provides a brief explanation of each factor.

Catherine Caruso is the Editorial Intern at Global Citizen, a movement committed to ending extreme poverty by 2030. Previously, Caruso worked as a writer for Inquisitr. Her English degree is from Syracuse University. She writes stories on health, the environment, and citizenship.

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About the author, emmaline soken-huberty.

Emmaline Soken-Huberty is a freelance writer based in Portland, Oregon. She started to become interested in human rights while attending college, eventually getting a concentration in human rights and humanitarianism. LGBTQ+ rights, women’s rights, and climate change are of special concern to her. In her spare time, she can be found reading or enjoying Oregon’s natural beauty with her husband and dog.

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Events, news & press, america’s struggle for racial equality.

Recapturing civil rights leaders’ commitment to ending discrimination

O n June 11, 1963, in the wake of Governor George Wallace’s stand against integration at the University of Alabama, President John F. Kennedy reported to the American people on the state of civil rights in the nation. He called on Congress to pass legislation dismantling the system of segregation and encouraged lawmakers to make a commitment "to the proposition that race has no place in American life or law."

Invoking the equality of all Americans before the law, Kennedy said: "We are confronted primarily with a moral issue. It is as old as the Scriptures and it is as clear as the American Constitution. The heart of the question is whether all Americans are to be afforded equal rights and equal opportunities, whether we are going to treat our fellow Americans as we want to be treated."

The American people are now beginning a great debate over the use of race and gender preferences by federal, state, and local governments. In 1996, a majority of voters in California, including 29 percent of blacks, approved the California Civil Rights Initiative prohibiting preferential treatment in public employment, education, and contracting. In a series of cases, the Supreme Court and federal courts of appeal have made it clear that the system of preference is built on an exceedingly shaky foundation. These cases--chiefly the Adarand decision of 1995--establish that racial classifications are presumptively unconstitutional and will be permitted only in extraordinary circumstances. In 1998, Congress is likely to consider legislation to end the use of race and gender preferences by the federal government.

As we enter this debate, Kennedy’s stirring words on civil rights are as important as they were in 1963. In the name of overcoming discrimination, our government for the past generation has been treating Americans of different races unequally. This is not the first time that American governments have intentionally discriminated. The institution of slavery and Jim Crow laws both violated the fundamental American tenet that "all men are created equal" and are "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights." But racial preferences designed to compensate for prior discrimination are also inconsistent with our most deeply cherished principles.

Slavery was the single greatest injustice in American history. The conflict sparked by its existence and by efforts to expand it took 365,000 American lives. A system of ferocious violence that degraded human beings to the status of chattel, American slavery had at its core the belief that blacks were subhuman. It was an institution that systematically and wantonly trampled on the most basic of human relations: Husband was separated from wife, parent was separated from child. Liberty was denied to individuals solely by reason of race.

When this disgraceful chapter in our history came to an end, it left a legacy of racism that has afflicted America up to the present generation. Soon after the Civil War, that legacy found expression in the segregation statutes, also known as Jim Crow laws. Historian C. Vann Woodward describes segregation thus: "That code lent the sanction of law to a social ostracism that extended to churches and schools, to housing and jobs, to eating and drinking. Whether by law or by custom, that ostracism extended to virtually all forms of public transportation, to sports and recreations, to hospitals, orphanages, prisons, and asylums, and ultimately to funeral homes, morgues, and cemeteries."

Woodward continues, "The Jim Crow laws, unlike feudal laws, did not assign the subordinated group a fixed status in society. They were constantly pushing the Negro farther down." Woodward also documents the "total disfranchisement" of black voters in the South through the poll tax and the white primary. He quotes Edgar Gardner Murphy on the attitude of many southern whites that energized the system of segregation during the first half of the 20th century: "Its spirit is that of an all-absorbing autocracy of race, an animus of aggrandizement which makes, in the imagination of the white man, an absolute identification of the stronger race with the being of the state."

A Question of Dignity

The civil-rights movement of the 1950s and the early 1960s arose to combat racist laws, racist institutions, and racist practices wherever they existed. The story of that movement is a glorious chapter in the history of America. Sparked by the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) , the civil rights movement dealt a death blow to the system of segregation with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  The Voting Rights Act of 1965 soon followed, creating the basis for fully restoring the franchise to black Americans throughout the country.

The moral example of those who stood against the forces of racial injustice played a critical role in reshaping American attitudes toward race. The American people were moved by images of the terrible acts of violence and gross indignities visited on black Americans.

Moreover, the civil-rights movement embodied a fundamental message that touched the soul of the American people. It exemplified an ideal at the core of the American experience from the very beginning of our national life, an ideal that was never fully realized and sometimes tragically perverted, but always acknowledged by Americans.

The ideal of respect for the dignity of the individual was set forth in the Declaration of Independence: "[A]ll men are created equal" and are "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights." At Independence Hall on the eve of the Civil War, Lincoln spoke of this ideal as "a great principle or idea" in the Declaration of Independence "which gave promise that in due time the weights should be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance." This ideal undergirded the civil-rights movement and condemned the contradictions of America’s segregated society.

This ideal has never been more eloquently expressed than by Martin Luther King Jr., who said, the "image of God . . . is universally shared in equal portions by all men. There is no graded scale of essential worth. Every human being has etched in his personality the indelible stamp of the Creator. . . . The worth of an individual does not lie in the measure of his intellect, his racial origin, or his social position. Human worth lies in relatedness to God. Whenever this is recognized, ‘whiteness’ and ‘blackness’ pass away as determinants in a relationship and ‘son’ and ‘brother’ are substituted."

King explicitly linked this religious view of man to the philosophical foundation of the United States. America’s "pillars," King said, "were soundly grounded in the insights of our Judeo-Christian heritage: All men are made in the image of God; all men are brothers; all men are created equal; every man is heir to a legacy of dignity and worth; every man has rights that are neither conferred by nor derived from the state, they are God-given. What a marvelous foundation for any home! What a glorious place to inhabit!"

In light of King’s personal experiences and the contradiction of sanctioning slavery and segregation in a country committed to equality, this is a remarkably optimistic view of the American experience. It is a view that propelled the civil-rights movement to great victories.

An Animating Principle

This understanding of the dignity of the individual found concrete expression in a legal principle that was relentlessly pursued by the early civil-rights movement. If universally adopted, this principle would fulfill the promise of American ideals. It was eloquently stated by the first Justice Harlan in his dissent to the Supreme Court’s decision in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) . In words that would often be cited by those seeking to overthrow the odious Jim Crow system, Harlan pronounced, "Our Constitution is color blind. . . . The law regards man as man, and takes no account of his surroundings or of his color when his civil rights as guaranteed by the Supreme law of the land are involved."

The colorblind principle articulated by Harlan was the touchstone of the American civil-rights movement until the mid-1960s. Emory law professor Andrew Kull, in his admirable history The Color-Blind Constitution , identifies the centrality of the colorblind principle to the movement: "The undeniable fact is that over a period of some 125 years ending only in the late 1960s, the American civil-rights movement first elaborated, then held as its unvarying political objective, a rule of law requiring the color-blind treatment of individuals."

This fact is well illustrated by the example of Thurgood Marshall. In 1947, Marshall, representing the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Legal Defense and Education Fund, in a brief for a black student denied admission to the University of Oklahoma’s segregated law school, stated the colorblind principle unequivocally: "Classifications and distinctions based on race or color have no moral or legal validity in our society. They are contrary to our constitution and laws."

Marshall’s support for the colorblind principle--which he later abandoned--is vividly described by Constance Baker Motley, senior U.S. district judge for the Southern District of New York, in an account included in Tinsley Yarbrough’s biography of Justice Harlan. Motley recalled her days working with Marshall at the NAACP: "Marshall had a ‘Bible’ to which he turned during his most depressed moments. . . . Marshall would read aloud passages from Harlan’s amazing dissent. I do not believe we ever filed a major brief in the pre-Brown days in which a portion of that opinion was not quoted. Marshall’s favorite quotation was, ‘Our Constitution is color-blind.’ It became our basic creed."

The principle of colorblind justice ultimately did find clear expression in the law of the United States. By passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Congress acted decisively against the Jim Crow system, and established a national policy against discrimination based on race and sex. It is the supreme irony of the modern civil-rights movement that this crowning achievement was soon followed by the creation of a system of preferences based first on race and then extended to gender.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was an unequivocal statement that Americans should be treated as individuals and not as members of racial and gender groups. Congress rejected the racism of America’s past. Under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, no American would be subject to discrimination. And there was no question about what discrimination meant. Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota--the chief Senate sponsor of the legislation--stated it as clearly as possible: Discrimination was any "distinction in treatment given to different individuals because of their different race."

Was This Enough?

As the Civil Rights Act was being considered, some voices questioned the adequacy of the principle of colorblind justice. The Urban League’s Whitney Young said that "300 years of deprivation" called for "a decade of discrimination in favor of Negro youth." James Farmer, a founder of the Congress of Racial Equality, called for "compensatory preferential treatment." Farmer said "it was impossible" for an "employer to be oblivious to color because we had all grown up in a racist society." But Roy Wilkins of the NAACP, in an encounter with Farmer, summed up the traditional view of the civil-rights movement: "I have a problem with that whole concept. What you’re asking for there is not equal treatment, but special treatment to make up for the unequal treatment of the past. I think that’s outside the American tradition and the country won’t buy it. I don’t feel at all comfortable asking for any special treatment; I just want to be treated like everyone else."

While considering the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Congress itself debated the issues of racial preferences and proportional representation. The result of that debate was the adoption of Section 703(j) of the Act, which states that nothing in Title VII of the Act "shall be interpreted to require any employer . . . to grant preferential treatment to any individual or group because of the race . . . of such individual or group" in order to maintain a racial balance. Senators Joseph Clark of Pennsylvania and Clifford Case of New Jersey, who steered that section of Title VII through the legislative process, left no doubt about Congress’s intent. "[A]ny deliberate attempt to maintain a racial balance," they said at the time, "whatever such a balance may be, would involve a violation of Title VII because maintaining such a balance would require an employer to hire or refuse to hire on the basis of race. It must be emphasized that discrimination is prohibited to any individual."

For a brief, shining moment, the principle of colorblind justice was recognized as the law of the land. But soon that principle was thrust aside to make way for a system of race-based entitlement. The critical events took place during the Nixon administration, when the so-called Philadelphia Plan was adopted. It became the prototypical program of racial preferences for federal contractors.

In February 1970, the U.S. Department of Labor issued an order that the affirmative-action programs adopted by all government contractors must include "goals and timetables to which the contractor’s good faith efforts must be directed to correct . . . deficiencies" in the "utilization of minority groups." This construct of goals and timetables to ensure the proper utilization of minority groups clearly envisioned a system of proportional representation in which group identity would be a factor--often the decisive factor--in hiring decisions. Embodied in this bureaucratic verbiage was a policy requiring that distinctions in treatment be made on the basis of race.

Discrimination of a most flagrant kind is now practiced at the federal, state, and local levels. A white teacher in Piscataway, New Jersey, is fired solely on account of her race. Asian students are denied admission to state universities to make room for students of other races with much weaker records. There are more than 160 federal laws, regulations, and executive orders explicitly requiring race- and sex-based preferences.

Now, as throughout the history of preferences, the key issue in the debate is how policies of preference can be reconciled with the fundamental American tenet that "all men are created equal" and are "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights."

Evidence of racism can still be found in our country. American society is not yet colorblind. The issue for Americans today is how we can best transcend the divisions of the past. Is it through a policy of consistent nondiscrimination or through a system of preferences?

Racial preferences are frequently justified as a measure to help low-income blacks. But the evidence is compelling that the beneficiaries of preferential policies are overwhelmingly middle-class or wealthy. For the most part, the truly disadvantaged have been unable to participate in the programs that grant preferences. Furthermore, the emphasis on preferences has diverted attention from the task of addressing the root causes of black Americans’ disadvantage. The lagging educational achievement of disadvantaged blacks can be ameliorated not through preferences but through structural reform of the American elementary and secondary education system. Preferences do nothing to help develop the skills necessary for the economic and social advancement of the disadvantaged.

Dressed-Up Discrimination

Preferences must also be judged a moral failure. Although some individuals have benefited significantly from preferences and a case can be made that preferences have enhanced the economic position of the black middle class, these gains have come at a great moral cost. Put simply, preferences discriminate. They deny opportunities to individuals solely because they are members of a nonpreferred race, gender, or ethnic group. The ambitions and aspirations, the hopes and dreams of individual Americans for themselves and for their families are trampled underfoot not for any wrongs those individuals have committed but for the sake of a bureaucratic effort to counterbalance the supposedly pervasive racism of American society. The penalty for the sins of the society at large is imposed on individuals who themselves are guilty only of being born a member of a nonpreferred group. Individual American citizens who would otherwise enjoy jobs and other opportunities are told that they must be denied in order to tilt the scales of racial justice.

Although preferences are presented as a remedial measure, they in fact create a class of innocent victims of government-imposed discrimination. In our system of justice, the burden of a remedy is imposed on those responsible for the specific harm being remedied. In the case of racial preferences, however, this remedial model breaks down. Those who benefit from the remedy need not show that they have in fact suffered any harm, and those who bear the burden of the remedy do so not because of any conduct on their part but purely because of their identity as members of non-preferred groups. Americans of all descriptions are deprived of opportunities under the system of preferences. And some of these victims have themselves struggled to overcome a severely disadvantaged background.

The proponents of preferential policies must acknowledge the injuries done to innocent individuals. They must confront the consequences flowing daily from the system of preferences in awarding contracts, jobs, promotions, and other opportunities. Supporters of the status quo attempt to hide the reality of preferences beneath a facade of "plus factors," "goals and timetables," and other measures that are said merely to "open up access" to opportunities. Behind all these semantic games, individual Americans are denied opportunities by government simply because they are of the wrong color or sex. The names assigned to the policies that deprive them of opportunity are of little moment. What matters is that our government implements a wide range of programs with the purpose of granting favored treatment to some on the basis of their biological characteristics. How can such government-imposed distinctions be reconciled with Martin Luther King’s message that whenever the image of God is recognized as universally present in mankind, " ‘whiteness’ and ‘blackness’ pass away as determinants in a relationship"? The conflict is irreconcilable.

The moral failure of preferences extends beyond the injustice done to individuals who are denied opportunities because they belong to the wrong group. There are other victims of the system of preferences. The supposed beneficiaries are themselves victims.

Preferences attack the dignity of the preferred, and cast a pall of doubt over their competence and worth. Preferences send a message that those in the favored groups are deemed incapable of meeting the standards that others are required to meet. Simply because they are members of a preferred group, individuals are often deprived of the recognition and respect they have earned. The achievements gained through talent and hard work are attributed instead to the operation of the system of preferences. The abilities of the preferred are called into question not only in the eyes of society, but also in the eyes of the preferred themselves. Self-confidence erodes, standards drop, incentives to perform diminish, and pernicious stereotypes are reinforced.

All of this results from treating individuals differently on the basis of race. It is the inevitable consequence of reducing individuals to the status of racial entities. The lesson of our history as Americans is that racial distinctions are inherently cruel. There are no benign distinctions of race. Our history--and perhaps human nature itself--renders that impossible. Although the underlying purpose of preferences was to eliminate the vestiges of racism, the mechanism of redress was fundamentally flawed. Rather than breaking down racial barriers, preferential policies continually remind Americans of racial differences.

Scarring the Soul

Martin Luther King Jr. described the harm done to all Americans by the Jim Crow system: "Segregation scars the soul of both the segregator and the segregated." Similarly, every time our government prefers one individual over another on the basis of race, new scars are created, and the promise of the Declaration of Independence is deferred.

The way forward in American race relations is to embrace the vision of a colorblind legal order that was set forth 100 years ago by Justice Harlan, pursued devotedly by the civil-rights movement, articulated eloquently by President Kennedy, and enshrined in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The way to transcend our racial divisions is to first ensure that we, as a people acting through our government, respect every person as an individual created in the image of God and honor every American as an individual whose color will never be the basis for determining his opportunities.

This principle is consistent with the initial meaning of "affirmative action" in civil-rights law. On March 6, 1961, President Kennedy issued Executive Order 10925, establishing the President’s Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity, and creating a framework for "affirmative steps" designed "to realize more fully the national policy of nondiscrimination within the executive branch of the Government." The executive order also provided that government contracts contain the following provision: "The contractor will take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color or national origin."

The original concept of affirmative action excluded any notion of preference. Indeed, the concept of affirmative action was explicitly linked with the principle of nondiscrimination. It was to be affirmative action to ensure that individuals were treated "without regard to their race." There is no hint of group entitlement or proportional representation in the executive order. On the contrary, the exclusive focus is on the right of individuals to be treated as individuals. The "affirmative steps" were actions designed to ensure that individuals of all races would have an opportunity to compete on the basis of their individual merit.

William Van Alstyne, a law professor at Duke University, has stated it as well as anyone: "[O]ne gets beyond racism by getting beyond it now: by a complete, resolute, and credible commitment never to tolerate in one’s own life--or in the life or practices of one’s government--the differential treatment of other human beings by race. Indeed, that is the great lesson for government itself to teach: In all we do in life, whatever we do in life, to treat any person less well than another or to favor any more than another for being black or white or brown or red, is wrong. Let that be our fundamental law and we shall have a Constitution universally worth expounding."

The American people have embraced that commitment, and the courts have gone far toward making it our fundamental law. The only remaining question is whether the elected representatives of the people will do their part to rid our legal order of the odious distinctions of race.

View the discussion thread.

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14 influential essays from Black writers on America's problems with race

• Business leaders are calling for people to reflect on civil rights this Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
• Black literary experts shared their top nonfiction essay and article picks on race. 
• The list includes "A Report from Occupied Territory" by James Baldwin.

For many, Martin Luther King Jr. Day is a time of reflection on the life of one of the nation's most prominent civil rights leaders. It's also an important time for people who support racial justice to educate themselves on the experiences of Black people in America. 

Business leaders like TIAA CEO Thasunda Duckett Brown and others are encouraging people to reflect on King's life's work, and one way to do that is to read his essays and the work of others dedicated to the same mission he had: racial equity. 

Insider asked Black literary and historical experts to share their favorite works of journalism on race by Black authors. Here are the top pieces they recommended everyone read to better understand the quest for Black liberation in America:

An earlier version of this article was published on June 14, 2020.

"Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases" and "The Red Record: Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States" by Ida B. Wells

In 1892, investigative journalist, activist, and NAACP founding member Ida B. Wells began to publish her research on lynching in a pamphlet titled "Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases." Three years later, she followed up with more research and detail in "The Red Record." 

Shirley Moody-Turner, associate Professor of English and African American Studies at Penn State University recommended everyone read these two texts, saying they hold "many parallels to our own moment."  

"In these two pamphlets, Wells exposes the pervasive use of lynching and white mob violence against African American men and women. She discredits the myths used by white mobs to justify the killing of African Americans and exposes Northern and international audiences to the growing racial violence and terror perpetrated against Black people in the South in the years following the Civil War," Moody-Turner told Business Insider. 

Read  "Southern Horrors" here and "The Red Record" here >>

"On Juneteenth" by Annette Gordon-Reed

In this collection of essays, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Annette Gordon-Reed combines memoir and history to help readers understand the complexities out of which Juneteenth was born. She also argues how racial and ethnic hierarchies remain in society today, said Moody-Turner. 

"Gordon-Reed invites readers to see Juneteenth as a time to grapple with the complexities of race and enslavement in the US, to re-think our origin stories about race and slavery's central role in the formation of both Texas and the US, and to consider how, as Gordon-Reed so eloquently puts it, 'echoes of the past remain, leaving their traces in the people and events of the present and future.'"

Purchase "On Juneteenth" here>>

"The Case for Reparations" by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Ta-Nehisi Coates, best-selling author and national correspondent for The Atlantic, made waves when he published his 2014 article "The Case for Reparations," in which he called for "collective introspection" on reparations for Black Americans subjected to centuries of racism and violence. 

"In his now famed essay for The Atlantic, journalist, author, and essayist, Ta-Nehisi Coates traces how slavery, segregation, and discriminatory racial policies underpin ongoing and systemic economic and racial disparities," Moody-Turner said. 

"Coates provides deep historical context punctuated by individual and collective stories that compel us to reconsider the case for reparations," she added.  

Read it here>>

"The Idea of America" by Nikole Hannah-Jones and the "1619 Project" by The New York Times

In "The Idea of America," Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones traces America's history from 1619 onward, the year slavery began in the US. She explores how the history of slavery is inseparable from the rise of America's democracy in her essay that's part of The New York Times' larger "1619 Project," which is the outlet's ongoing project created in 2019 to re-examine the impact of slavery in the US. 

"In her unflinching look at the legacy of slavery and the underside of American democracy and capitalism, Hannah-Jones asks, 'what if America understood, finally, in this 400th year, that we [Black Americans] have never been the problem but the solution,'" said Moody-Turner, who recommended readers read the whole "1619 Project" as well. 

Read "The Idea of America" here and the rest of the "1619 Project here>>

"Many Thousands Gone" by James Baldwin

In "Many Thousands Gone," James Arthur Baldwin, American novelist, playwright, essayist, poet, and activist lays out how white America is not ready to fully recognize Black people as people. It's a must read, according to Jimmy Worthy II, assistant professor of English at The University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

"Baldwin's essay reminds us that in America, the very idea of Black persons conjures an amalgamation of specters, fears, threats, anxieties, guilts, and memories that must be extinguished as part of the labor to forget histories deemed too uncomfortable to remember," Worthy said.

"Letter from a Birmingham Jail" by Martin Luther King Jr.

On April 13 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. and other Civil Rights activists were arrested after peaceful protest in Birmingham, Alabama. In jail, King penned an open letter about how people have a moral obligation to break unjust laws rather than waiting patiently for legal change. In his essay, he expresses criticism and disappointment in white moderates and white churches, something that's not often focused on in history textbooks, Worthy said.

"King revises the perception of white racists devoted to a vehement status quo to include white moderates whose theories of inevitable racial equality and silence pertaining to racial injustice prolong discriminatory practices," Worthy said. 

"The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action" by Audre Lorde

Audre Lorde, African American writer, feminist, womanist, librarian, and civil rights activist asks readers to not be silent on important issues. This short, rousing read is crucial for everyone according to Thomonique Moore, a 2016 graduate of Howard University, founder of Books&Shit book club, and an incoming Masters' candidate at Columbia University's Teacher's College. 

"In this essay, Lorde explains to readers the importance of overcoming our fears and speaking out about the injustices that are plaguing us and the people around us. She challenges us to not live our lives in silence, or we risk never changing the things around us," Moore said.  Read it here>>

"The First White President" by Ta-Nehisi Coates

This essay from the award-winning journalist's book " We Were Eight Years in Power ," details how Trump, during his presidency, employed the notion of whiteness and white supremacy to pick apart the legacy of the nation's first Black president, Barack Obama.

Moore said it was crucial reading to understand the current political environment we're in. 

"Just Walk on By" by Brent Staples

In this essay, Brent Staples, author and Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial writer for The New York Times, hones in on the experience of racism against Black people in public spaces, especially on the role of white women in contributing to the view that Black men are threatening figures.  

For Crystal M. Fleming, associate professor of sociology and Africana Studies at SUNY Stony Brook, his essay is especially relevant right now. 

"We see the relevance of his critique in the recent incident in New York City, wherein a white woman named Amy Cooper infamously called the police and lied, claiming that a Black man — Christian Cooper — threatened her life in Central Park. Although the experience that Staples describes took place decades ago, the social dynamics have largely remained the same," Fleming told Insider. 

"I Was Pregnant and in Crisis. All the Doctors and Nurses Saw Was an Incompetent Black Woman" by Tressie McMillan Cottom

Tressie McMillan Cottom is an author, associate professor of sociology at Virginia Commonwealth University and a faculty affiliate at Harvard University's Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. In this essay, Cottom shares her gut-wrenching experience of racism within the healthcare system. 

Fleming called this piece an "excellent primer on intersectionality" between racism and sexism, calling Cottom one of the most influential sociologists and writers in the US today.  Read it here>>

"A Report from Occupied Territory" by James Baldwin

Baldwin's "A Report from Occupied Territory" was originally published in The Nation in 1966. It takes a hard look at violence against Black people in the US, specifically police brutality. 

"Baldwin's work remains essential to understanding the depth and breadth of anti-black racism in our society. This essay — which touches on issues of racialized violence, policing and the role of the law in reproducing inequality — is an absolute must-read for anyone who wants to understand just how much has not changed with regard to police violence and anti-Black racism in our country," Fleming told Insider.  Read it here>>

"I'm From Philly. 30 Years Later, I'm Still Trying To Make Sense Of The MOVE Bombing" by Gene Demby

On May 13, 1985, a police helicopter dropped a bomb on the MOVE compound in Philadelphia, which housed members of the MOVE, a black liberation group founded in 1972 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Eleven people, including five children, died in the airstrike. In this essay, Gene Demby, co-host and correspondent for NPR's Code Switch team, tries to wrap his head around the shocking instance of police violence against Black people. 

"I would argue that the fact that police were authorized to literally bomb Black citizens in their own homes, in their own country, is directly relevant to current conversations about militarized police and the growing movement to defund and abolish policing," Fleming said.  Read it here>>

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Breaking Through Barriers to Racial Equity

In this SSIR series, made possible with a grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, we sought to shake up contemporary discussions around diversity, equity, and inclusion, commonly referred to as its decorous, innocuous acronym, “DEI.”

The collection of 10 essays—by fresh new voices to SSIR —were selected from more than five dozen entries on the theme of analyzing DEI work through a global intersectional race lens.

These articles push the envelope on discussions focused on race and racism: From our lead essay by Shawn Ginwright and Sai Seigel, which interrogates the efficacy of social innovation in creating long-lasting racial equity, to our final essay by Sharlene Gandhi, which argues that reverse mentorship can create new paths of inclusion and equity in the workplace, this series presents challenging questions and provoking ideas to break through the discriminatory barriers to racial equity across sectors.

This series is accompanied by 11 original illustrations by French visual artist Aurélia Durand . These vibrant interpretations make the reader directly look at and engage with racial diversity in their experience of reading these articles.

It is our privilege and honor at SSIR to generate ideas and create conversation about racial equity through the thought-provoking work of the contributors who wrote these articles. We thank them for their contributions and with this series signal to the world that we are committed to advancing the practices of diversity and inclusion in order to foster new levels of belonging and equity in the field of social innovation.

How Reverse Mentoring Can Lead to More Equitable Workplaces

By Sharlene Gandhi 2

In response to a July 16 article about improving organizations' DEI efforts by reimagining the roles of mentor and mentee, SSIR reader Yen Ooi wrote that “calling it 'reverse mentoring' might set out the wrong impression in the relationship to start with.” What do you think?  This is the final of 10 articles in a special DEI series .

Reimagining the Internship to Promote Racial Equity

By Jasmine Medina-Perez 1

DEI efforts should develop and maximize the potential impact of this important but often overlooked position.  This is the ninth of 10 articles in a special series about diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Four Global Lessons From Locally Driven DEI Efforts

By Anasstassia Baichorova & Samantha Williams 1

In order to change the odds for marginalized children, social organizations must root their racial equity work in a commitment to learn from and be led by those who have experienced inequity themselves.  This is the eighth of 10 articles in a special series about diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Advancing Equity in Health Systems by Addressing Racial Justice

By Amy Reid, Santiago Nariño, Hema Magge & Angelina Sassi

Lessons on racial equity underscore the need to set explicit aims, build coalitions, and flatten hierarchies in order to strengthen healthcare’s role in undoing systems of oppression.  This is the seventh of 10 articles in a special series about diversity, equity, and inclusion .

Making Places for Everyone — With Everyone

By Kimberly Burrowes 1

Placemaking strategies can improve city life, but they must be used equitably and ensure community involvement.  This is the sixth of 10 articles in  a special series  about diversity, equity, and inclusion .

The Challenge of Negotiating Race in Cross-Sector Spaces

By Tabitha Bentley 1

We must take on the difficult work of accounting for race and racism in our collective change-making endeavors or face the risk of failing to undo systemic inequities.  This is the fifth of 10 articles in  a special series  about diversity, equity, and inclusion.

The Bias of ‘Professionalism’ Standards

By Aysa Gray 36

Professionalism has become coded language for white favoritism in workplace practices that more often than not leave behind people of color.  This is the fourth of 10 articles in a special series about diversity, equity, and inclusion .

How to Push DEI Conversations Out of the Comfort Zone

By Chera Reid & Jara Dean-Coffey 4

As we work to advance racial equity in philanthropy, four practices can help us achieve changes that are truly transformative.  This is the third of 10 articles in a special series about diversity, equity, and inclusion.

‘Checkbox Diversity’ Must Be Left Behind for DEI Efforts to Succeed

By Nicole Anand 14

DEI efforts need to account for hegemony, marginalization, and the creation of sustainable shifts in power.  This is the second of 10 articles in a special series about diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Social Innovation Alone Can’t Solve Racial Inequity

By Shawn Ginwright & Sai Seigel 2

Three insights offer organizations opportunities to cultivate durable solutions to the underlying causes of racial inequity.  This is the first of 10 articles in  a special series  about diversity, equity, and inclusion.

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The Sur File on Race and Human Rights

Putting racial equality onto the global human rights agenda.

E. Tendayi Achiume

Equality is generally marginalized within the global human rights agenda, and among those who wield power in the formation and execution of this agenda. Furthermore, people of color on the front lines of racial oppression remain excluded from human rights decision-making and knowledge production. This essay seeks to put racial equality onto the center of human rights agenda. In order to so, remedying this state of affairs requires infusing the global human rights agenda with a commit to substantive racial equality. It requires both prioritizing a structural and intersectional approach to racial discrimination, and taking seriously the role of communities of color and their advocates not only in fighting racial inequality, but also in defining the very nature of human rights.

United Nations | Activism | Human rights agenda | Racial equality | Structural racism

Introduction

How can it be that in its fourteen years of existence, Sur has published only two articles on racial equality? In this Essay, I propose that Sur’s neglect of racial equality is neither exceptional nor an anomaly within the broader international human rights universe. Rather this neglect is characteristic of the more general marginality of racial equality within the global human rights agenda, and among those who wield power in the formation and execution of this agenda. Formal approaches to racial equality, even within the human rights system, fail to leverage the promise of the International Convention for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (“ICERD”), notwithstanding enduring legacies of colonial-era racial subordination. And people of color on the front lines of racial oppression remain excluded from human rights decision-making and knowledge production. I argue that remedying this state of affairs requires infusing the global human rights agenda with a commit to substantive racial equality, which: (1) prioritizes a structural and intersectional approach to racial discrimination, and (2) takes seriously the role of communities of color and their advocates not only in fighting racial inequality, but also in defining the very nature of human rights.

Confronting Neglect and Marginality

The rise and spread of right-wing nationalist populism around the world has unleashed unashamed public discourses and practices of racism, xenophobia, misogyny and other forms of intolerance. 1 1. Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, “The Threat of Nationalist Populism to Racial Equality.” Report to the United Nations General Assembly, U.N. Doc A/73/305 , August 6, 2018, accessed December 2, 2018, http://undocs.org/en/A/73/305. Today, leaders even in the highest level of political office in countries that have long viewed themselves as the vanguard of liberal constitutional democracy openly profess racist and xenophobic views as they adopt policies that entrench them. Human rights and other organizations continue to document increases in crimes and other incidents motivated by racial, ethnic, religious and related intolerance, and have done important work to expose human rights violations of this kind. United Nations (“UN”) human rights mechanisms and actors have also publicly taken a stand to re-affirm principles of equality and dignity in the wake of egregious incidents of racist and xenophobic expression. In light of this seemingly renewed attention to explicit racism and xenophobia, what does it mean to say that racial equality is marginal to the global human rights agenda or within the global human rights system? And what does it even mean to speak of a global human rights agenda or system?

I want to clarify at the outset that my critique is levelled at the cast of non-governmental and multilateral actors who through different global platforms (especially the United Nations) produce global knowledge and influence norms and policy regarding what human rights are, and when and how they are achieved. These actors include, among others, human rights organizations with international and global influence; the donor and philanthropic organizations that in many cases enable and in some respects, determine this influence through their funding decisions; UN bodies and agencies, including such as the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (“OHCHR”) or the various UN Human Rights Council-appointed Special Rapporteurs and Independent Experts central to human rights knowledge production and agenda-setting; and UN Member State representatives who in different capacities push human rights norm-development and policy in different UN fora. This list is illustrative and not exhaustive, and of course, the concerns I express here will not apply to every single person or institution that participates in the universe I describe. There are important exceptions but these exceptions do not negate the more general trend of neglect with which I am concerned. Equally important to note is that the list above aims to capture the actors who wield power in global human rights knowledge production and agenda-setting . Such a list is not the same as the list of actors who are doing the most to fight human rights violations on the ground, including as they relate to racial equality. Many grassroots organizations and movements such as the Black Feminist Movement in Brazil are engaged in daily struggles to push racial equality from a position of neglect to one of priority on the human rights agenda. However, my experience in different global human rights fora (and their halls of power) is that these grassroots organizations are typically excluded, especially when it comes time to make decisions. 2 2. This exclusion need not be intentional, and often operates structurally—for example, the cost of traveling to Geneva to engage in human rights lobbying is arguably prohibitive for many grassroots organizations in the global south. Many likely also fall outside of the information networks without which it can be difficult to even know when lobbying opportunities present themselves at the UN.

Although influential actors within the global human rights system have raised the alarm against visceral expressions or acts of racism and xenophobia, these actors fail seriously to engage with the historically entrenched structures of racial oppression, exploitation and exclusion that violate the human rights of many but are largely invisible even in the global human rights discourse. Consider the UN Millennium Declaration 3 3. “55/2, United Nations Millennium Declaration,” G.A. Res., September 18, 2000, accessed December 2, 2018, http://www.un.org/millennium/declaration/ares552e.htm . adopted in 2000 as the global policy framework for development, which only mentioned discrimination twice. These references concerned violence against women and the implementation of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. More recently, the General Assembly commendably adopted by consensus a full program of action for the International Decade for People of African Descent (2015-2024), which aims to strengthen the promotion, protection and fulfilment of the rights of people of African Descent. Yet implementation of the Decade remains slow, as the number of countries that have formally adopted a related program of action remains limited. 4 4. See Michael McEachrane, “Review of Progress Achieved Concerning the Implementation of the Programme of Activities for the International Decade for People of African Descent.” Presentation at the 16th session of the Intergovernmental Working Group on the Effective Implementation of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action, August 28, 2018, accessed December 2, 2018, https://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Racism/IntergovWG/Pages/Session16.aspx . No forum has as yet been established for consultations with people of African descent as required by the General Assembly resolution that initiated the Decade. 5 5. “Resolution Adopted by the General Assembly on 18 November 2014,” G.A. Res., UN Doc A/RES/69/16, December 1, 2014, accessed December 2, 2018, http://www.un.org/en/events/africandescentdecade/pdf/A.RES.69.16_IDPAD.pdf . Even within the UN system only the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (“UNESCO”), UN Women, OHCHR and the UN Department of Public Information have reported concrete actions related to the implementation of the Decade. 6 6. “Actions Taken,” The International Decade for People of African Descent, 2015-2024, accessed October 29, 2018, http://www.un.org/en/events/africandescentdecade/actions-taken.shtml .

Where racial discrimination and intolerance feature, the emphasis of actors within global human rights system is largely on explicit racial prejudice as the problem, condemning racist acts and speeches, but paying little attention to the structural and institutional ways that racial discrimination and inequality operate. This “prejudice” approach is evident in the global human rights discourse on migration, in which leading global NGOs, UN actors and member states will speak out against extreme cases of racist and xenophobic speech, 7 7. E. Tendayi Achiume, “Beyond Prejudice: Structural Xenophobic Discrimination Against Refugees,” Georgetown Journal of International Law 45, no. 2 (2014): 355-59. but do not similarly confront or condemn the racism of law and policy that makes no mention of race but de facto systematically discriminates against migrants of color in different parts of the world. 8 8. E. Tendayi Achiume, “Governing Xenophobia,” Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law 51, no. 2 (2018): 365-390.

Recalling the History of Racial Subordination as Global Project

A brief reflection on the history of global projects of racial subordination, and the legal and political institutions erected to advance these projects makes clear why the prejudice approach I mention above amounts to marginalizing racial equality as a human rights end. Until the formal decolonization of much of the world beginning the mid-20 th century, international and domestic law across the world allocated what we now call human rights on a racial basis. For over three hundred centuries, European colonialism structured the globe according to implicit and explicit logics that traded on the claimed moral, cultural and intellectual inferiority of non-Europeans. The 19 th Century consolidation of scientific racism supplied a technical script according to which European scientists divided human beings into different biological races, with whiteness conferring natural supremacy, and non-whiteness instead conferring inferiority. Racial discrimination and racial subordination were institutionalized even within the global order as represented by the United Nations. 9 9. See e.g., Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds, Drawing the Global Colour Line: White Men’s Countries and the International Challenge of Racial Equality (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

It was not until 1965 that UN Member States could agree on an international treaty through which they resolved:

to adopt all necessary measures for speedily eliminating racial discrimination in all its forms and manifestations, and to prevent and combat racist doctrines and practices in order to promote understanding between races and to build an international community free from all forms of racial segregation and racial discrimination[.] 10 10. “International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination,” G.A. Res. 2106 (XX), in Preamble, December 21, 1965, accessed December 2, 2018, https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/ProfessionalInterest/cerd.pdf.

The International Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, which is among the most widely ratified international human rights treaties, articulates the normative and legal framework for the ambitious goal of eliminating all forms of racial discrimination. But during ICERD’s brief life time, racial equality has seemingly drifted to the margins of the global human rights agenda despite efforts, including by anti-racism civil society coalitions at the 2001 World Conference Against Racism in Durban, to highlight the historical context and structural dynamics of persisting racial inequality. If we consider ICERD as initiating UN member states’ programmatic commitment to eliminating racial discrimination, this commitment is only fifty-three years old. This commitment, as a matter of duration, is firmly eclipsed by the over three hundred years that came before it, during which, as I have mentioned, colonialism institutionalized, sanctioned and even celebrated the racial exclusion and subordination of non-Europeans. Recalling this history makes clear that neglecting the fight for racial equality, amounts to abandoning the urgent project of dismantling the systems of subordination and exploitation that were carefully erected in prior eras and that continue to have effect today.

Garry Wilmore

Conceptualizing Race, Racial Discrimination and Racial Equality in Human Rights: An Antisubordination Approach

I use the term race to refer to “the historically contingent social systems of meaning that attach to elements of morphology and ancestry.” 11 11. Ian Haney-Lopez, White By Law: The Legal Construction of Race (New York: New York University Press, 2006): 10. Such an understanding of race unequivocally rejects the notion of biological races, but recognizes that the construction of race is informed by physical features and lineage, not because features and lineage are a function of racial variation but because societies invest them with social meaning. 12 12. Ibid . At the same time, race is by no means merely about physical attributes such as color, nor is it merely about lineage. It is centrally about the social, political and economic meaning of being categorized as black, white, brown or any other racial designation. Perhaps as a further example of how the global human rights system has failed to raise consciousness around and commitment to racial equality, at least two European countries have taken the alarming step of removing the term “race” from their antidiscrimination legislation. 13 13. In July 2018, France removed the term race from its Constitution. Amna Mohdin, “France Replaced the Word ‘Race’ With ‘Sex’ in its Constitution.” Quartz, June 28, 2018, accessed December 2, 2018, https://qz.com/1316951/french-mps-removed-the-word-race-from-the-countrys-constitution; “Assembly Removes Word ‘Race’ From French Constitution,” Connexion, July 13, 2018, accessed December 2, 2018, https://www.connexionfrance.com/French-news/france-assembly-votes-to-remove-race-French-constitution. Sweden has removed race from its anti-discrimination law, from its constitution, and from all domestic law. See A/HRC/30/56/Add.2, para. 20 (discussing Sweden’s removal of all reference to race from their constitution, replacing the use of race with “ethnic origin, colour or other similar circumstance”); Solveig Rundquist, “Race To Be Scrapped from Swedish legislation.” The Local, July 31, 2014, accessed December 2, 2018, https://www.thelocal.se/20140731/race-to-be-scrapped-from-swedish-legislation (discussing Sweden’s removal of the term race from all domestic law). Several other countries, including Australia, Austria, Finland, Hungary, Germany and Norway, have taken steps to remove or have considered removing mentions of race in domestic law. See David Ross and Barbara Shaw, “Indigenous Australians Know Removing Race From Constitution is Pretend Change.” The Guardian, April 10, 2017, accessed December 2, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/apr/10/indigenous-australians-know-removing-race-from-constitution-is-pretend-change (arguing against proposed removal of the term race in the Australian Constitution); Richard Lappin, “Should CERD Repudiate the Notion of Race?,” Peace Review 28, no. 4 (2016): 393, 395 (mentioning Austria, Finland, Hungary, Germany and Norway’s consideration and/or steps to remove race from domestic law). Deleting the word “race” from antidiscrimination legislation does little to erase the social meaning invested in this concept over centuries. Instead, it diverts attention from the urgent legal and other interventions necessary to remedy persisting racial inequality and discrimination, and keeps discriminatory structures and institutions alive and well.

What is required instead is a substantive, structural approach to racial discrimination, which aims at dismantling racial subordination and achieving equality. As I have highlighted elsewhere, the prohibition on racial discrimination in international human rights law aims at much more than a formal vision of equality. 14 14. “Report of the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance,” U.N. Doc A/HRC/38/52, April 25, 2018, accessed December 2, 2018, http://ap.ohchr.org/documents/dpage_e.aspx?si=A%2FHRC%2F38%2F52 . Equality in the international human rights framework is substantive, and requires States to take action to combat intentional or purposeful racial discrimination, as well as to combat structural and institutional racial discrimination. It also requires states to take affirmative action to remedy historically-rooted racial inequality. The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has made clear that the prohibition of racial discrimination under ICERD cannot be interpreted restrictively. 15 15. “General Recommendation no. 32, The Meaning and Scope of Special Measures in the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms (of) Racial Discrimination”, UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), CERD/C/GC/32, September 24, 2009, accessed December 2, 2018, https://www.refworld.org/docid/4adc30382.html . An important aspect of achieving substantive equality under ICERD is ensuring that social groups do not become or remain oppressed underclasses on account of their race. In light of these existing human rights principles, global human rights actors must move beyond “prejudice” or “colorblind” approaches and push for true equality.

Intersectionality

Substantive racial equality is not possible without an intersectional analysis of the problem of racial discrimination and intolerance. The following definition of intersectionality from within the UN system captures well its meaning well:

The idea of “intersectionality” seeks to capture both the structural and dynamic consequences of the interaction between two or more forms of discrimination or systems of subordination. It specifically addresses the manner in which racism, patriarchy, economic disadvantages and other discriminatory systems contribute to create layers of inequality that structures the relative positions of women and men, races and other groups. Moreover, it addresses the way that specific acts and policies create burdens that flow along these intersecting axes contributing actively to create a dynamic of disempowerment. 16 16. See “Gender and Racial Discrimination: Report of the Expert Group Meeting,” United Nations Division for the Advancement of Women, OHCHR and United Nations Development Fund for Women, November 21-24, 2000, accessed December 2, 2018, www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/csw/genrac/report.htm .

Too often, however, the power of this framing is lost when intersectionality is reduced merely to inclusion of references to gender in policy discussions or documents. Intersectionality is vital to achieving substantive equality but it requires attention to all the operational social categories that shape the experience of discrimination and intolerance: race, gender, ethnicity, national origin, class, religion, disability status, sex, sexual orientation and others. True racial equality requires taking seriously the experiences and expertise of cis and transwomen, LGBTQ persons, persons with disabilities, the poor, the undocumented and other marginalized groups. Similarly, real equality for women, for the LGBTQ persons, persons with disabilities and others can never be a reality without attention to how race structures the subordination of these groups.

“Looking to the Bottom”

Important reflection is necessary within the global human rights movement and system to understand the causes of what in other contexts has been called “racial aphasia”—a collective inability to speak about race, a calculated forgetting or neglect of the histories and structures of racism. 17 17. Debra Thompson, “Through, Against and Beyond the Racial State: The Transnational Stratum of Race,” Cambridge Review of International Affairs 26 (2013): 135. Whatever these causes might be, among them must surely be the racial demographics that characterize global human rights NGOs, and the lack of representation of people of color, especially in decision-making roles. The work of achieving racial equality is work that must be done by all, but must be led and guided in close participation with representatives of communities who suffer on the frontlines of racial discrimination, subordination and exclusion. Consider how it is that this special volume of Sur came to be: the Brazilian Black Feminist movement. For this movement, I would venture to say a human rights regime that does not appreciate the pervasiveness of systems of racial inequality and subordination is not only useless but dangerous. More generally, for the many people living and fighting racial injustice, racial aphasia is a deadly luxury they cannot afford. My sense is that one piece of the puzzle of the marginality of racial equality within human rights, is very much the marginality of people of color within the global organizations and institutions that wield the most power within the field of human rights.

Mari Matsuda has argued that those with direct experience with racial and other forms of oppression are essential to the production of knowledge intended to advance the emancipation of these groups. She calls this “looking to the bottom,” and explains further that “Looking to the bottom—adopting the perspective of those who have seen and felt the falsity of the liberal promise” is vital to knowledge production seeking to define and achieve justice. 18 18. Ibid. , 324; Mari J. Matsuda, “Looking to the Bottom: Critical Legal Studies and Reparations,” Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review 22 (1987): 325. In the production of human rights knowledge, whether in the context of norm creation or norm implementation, it is vital to recognize those on the front lines of living and fighting racial oppression as superior “epistemic sources” on the nature of their oppression, and on what the priorities ought to be in the approach and execution of the strategies to fight this oppression. This can happen, for example, by ensuring that racially subordinated groups are meaningfully represented and included in global human rights organizations and institutions, including in positions of leadership. Concretely this might mean auditing the representativeness of the staff and leadership of these organizations, and taking measures (including through investment in training and capacity-building) to address marginalization or exclusion of racially subordinated groups. It also requires an acceptance by these organizations and institutions that the very nature of the work they do and the way they do this work, may need to change significantly once they begin to take seriously the experiences and perspectives of racially subordinated groups. Funding models and institutional organizational models and priorities may need to change, for example, to account for the how the strategies and priorities of social movements can differ from those of bureaucratized civil society. The point is not just diversity or inclusion for the sake of ticking boxes, but rather it is to accept that the very agendas of global human rights organizations may have to shift if these organizations are to take seriously the project of looking to the bottom.

Although there is much human rights attention globally on explicit racism and xenophobia rooted in nationalist populist politics, racial equality remains marginal on the agendas of influential actors in the global human rights system. The long and persisting historical legacies of colonialism and contemporary global structures of racialized exclusion require a different, substantive approach to racial equality that addresses structural and institutionalized forms of racial discrimination. The global human rights system must reflect an intersectional approach to racial discrimination and take seriously the experiences and expertise of communities of color in the global north and south that live on the frontlines of racial subordination. What would it do to global human rights NGOs, agencies, and funding institutions if they took seriously the project of building the power of anti-racism social movements to produce human rights knowledge on racial oppression? I have found that unlike the dominant, usually legalistic formulations of discrimination and intolerance that can dominant the official human rights corpus, when movement actors and those intimate with racial oppression articulate their experiences of structural subordination as well as the interventions they believe are necessary to address them, they speak in terms of the need to change power relations, and to pay close attention to economic, political and financial structures with global dimensions. Their perspectives require stronger inclusion and representation within the global human rights system and agenda.

E. Tendayi Achiume - Zambia

United Nations Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance.

Received in October 2018.

Original in english.

Introductory Essay: The Struggle Continues: Stony the Road (1898–1941)

To what extent did Founding principles of liberty, equality, and justice become a reality for African Americans in the first half of the twentieth century?

• I can explain the challenges and opportunities African Americans faced as a result of the Great Migration.
• I can compare the views of Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois on how best to achieve equality for African Americans.
• I can explain how lynching and other forms of racial violence continued to threaten African Americans.
• I can identify and explain the ways in which African Americans took action to confront restraints upon their rights and dignity.
• I can explain why African Americans’ service during two world wars created conditions to challenge segregation and racism within the United States after the end of World War II.

Essential Vocabulary

The struggle continues: stony the road (1898-1941).

The first half of the twentieth century witnessed significant change for all Americans as the United States entered an increasingly industrialized and urban age. Blacks specifically seized opportunities for social mobility, industrial jobs, higher education, military service, artistic achievement, and activism in the new society. The signs of hope and progress they saw were mitigated by the ever-present cloud of segregation and discrimination.

Still, many Black Americans participated in the new opportunities afforded by a changing nation. Millions left southern farms and sought jobs and social mobility by moving to southern cities, northern cities, and the West during the Great Migration . Those who left the perpetual indebtedness of sharecropping , in which they had rented land from white landowners in exchange for a portion of the crop, sometimes moved West to farm. But more often they migrated to cities, where they found limited employment opportunities in low-paying service sector work, such as jobs for janitors or maids. They also faced housing discrimination and were forced to reside in segregated Black neighborhoods. However, Black churches and civic organizations were often a foundation of mutual support and strength, and many Black Americans improved their lives.

The number of Black schools and colleges grew quickly after the Civil War. Black education achieved an impressive record of increasing Black literacy from around 20 percent in 1870 to almost 80 percent in 1920. These gains were realized despite southern state governments cuts to the already meager funding and white supremacists watching Black schools to ensure they did not promote Black equality.

Black Americans organized into groups to fight for equality and justice, laying the foundation of the Civil Rights. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was the most prominent organization that led the struggle for Black civil rights after its founding in 1909. Its mission included contesting racial prejudice and segregation with striving for civil rights and educational opportunities. W. E. B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells, and Mary Church Terrell helped establish the NAACP. Du Bois served as the editor of its publication, The Crisis, and brought the struggles of Black Americans to light.

A new generation of Black intellectuals conducted a continuing and vibrant debate over the place of a Black person in the United States and the best path to racial equality. The most prominent debaters were Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois.

Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois differed in their thoughts on how best to achieve equality for Blacks. Washington’s life was shaped by slavery, poverty, and the work ethic fostered at Hampton Institute. Du Bois was 12 years younger than Washington and was born and raised in the small community of Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Du Bois praised Washington’s famous 1895 speech at the Cotton States Exposition, but later grew critical of Washington and his leadership.

Booker T. Washington graduated from Hampton Institute (today known as Hampton University) and was the first head of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, one of many Black colleges formed in the period. In his famous “Atlanta Exposition Address” (1895), Washington advocated vocational education, hard work, and moral virtues for Blacks as a means of proving themselves to whites and advancing socially and economically.

W. E. B. Du Bois was a critic of Washington’s stance, which he thought too accommodationist, or too willing to compromise with whites. Du Bois was Harvard educated, and in his most famous work, The Souls of Black Folk (1903), he maintained that Blacks should pursue a liberal arts education and fight for full political and civic equality. He argued that a “Talented Tenth” would provide the leadership and vision in achieving progress in racial equality. Although these Black intellectuals held radically different visions, they concurred on the goal of achieving greater Black equality.

Another figure of the time, Marcus Garvey, presented an alternate view supporting racial separation rather than integration. Garvey was an immigrant from Jamaica who founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). He supported Black separatism and a pan-African movement advocating migration back to Africa. He employed more militant rhetoric and advocated armed self-defense.

Black artists, writers, and musicians expressed themselves creatively in different media to convey their Black pride and celebrate African and African American history. The most famous movement of Black culture in the first half of the twentieth century was the Harlem Renaissance . This was a flourishing of Black art among a remarkable concentration of artists in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City in the 1920s and that also included Black artists and culture around the nation and world. In 1925, Alain Locke helped launch the movement with the anthology “The New Negro,” which advanced Black self-expression and art. The rich array of artists included writer Zora Neale Hurston, poet Langston Hughes, and musicians Josephine Baker, Louis Armstong, and Duke Ellington. These artists and many others left an indelible mark not only upon Black culture but on American culture more generally.

A number of violent racial incidents marred race relations throughout this period. Black Americans were the victims of lynchings , and Congress did not pass an antilynching bill despite repeated calls for one. The Great Migration to urban cities fueled racial tensions and led to a number of race riots during and immediately after World War I in several cities across the country. In the infamous Tulsa Massacre of 1921, armed white mobs burned down several square blocks of Black neighborhoods, including a wealthier part of town called “Black Wall Street,” where successful, enterprising Blacks lived and worked. The white mobs fired their weapons at Blacks, killing dozens.

The racial violence after World War I was replicated during World War II, most notably in Detroit in 1943 as tensions over segregated neighborhoods stirred crowds of whites and Blacks to violence. Hundreds were injured, and President Roosevelt sent the army to quell the violence.

The wider political reform movements of the first half of the twentieth century did not offer Black Americans significant relief. Southern progressivism supported segregation as a means of achieving greater social order. Many labor unions excluded Black workers and thus forced them to rely upon mutual-aid societies. Moreover, the popularity of Social Darwinism , even among scientists and intellectuals, meant that belief in a racial hierarchy became widespread, relegating those of darker skin to the bottom. The federal government generally followed discriminatory hiring practices, most notably during the Wilson administration. Blacks also often received less government assistance. For example, during the New Deal, President Franklin Roosevelt’s response to the Great Depression, the administration deferred to racist local and state governments on the distribution of aid. Still, Blacks welcomed the federal relief they received during those difficult times, and many switched from the Republican Party, often called the party of Lincoln, to the Democratic Party.

Local and state governments also continued to suppress Black voter registration, especially in the South. The court deferred to the states to set voting qualifications in Giles v. Harris (1903), though in Nixon v. Herndon (1927) it did ban discrimination when it was egregiously and overtly aimed at restricting the Black vote in primaries. The court affirmed the Nixon ruling in Smith v. Allwright (1944), by banning the attempt in Texas to exclude Blacks by allowing primaries to be regulated by private associations like political parties that could discriminate.

Black men and women played a vital role in the war effort during both world wars. Pictured are a group of the Tuskegee Airmen at a U.S. base in February 1944 and women working at a welding plant on the home front in 1943.

Even though they did not enjoy the full rights of citizenship at home, Blacks served in the fight against autocracy during two world wars—350,000 soldiers in World War I and 1.2 million in World War II. Black soldiers in the armed forces mostly served in segregated units that were typically assigned menial support labor. However, many fought courageously, such as the Harlem Hellfighters in the 369th Regiment of the 93rd Division at the Meuse-Argonne offensive in 1918, and the bomber and fighter squadrons flown by the highly decorated Tuskegee Airmen. Other significant contributions to the war included the Redball Express, which brought desperately needed supplies and troops to Europe during the Battle of the Bulge. Black members of the armed services resisted racist acts in the armed forces during World War II. After fighting fascism abroad, they were more likely to make a stand against segregation and racism at home after the war.

By World War II, Black leaders such as A. Philip Randolph were directly confronting the Roosevelt administration and the larger society to protest discrimination in the armed services and defense industries. When Randolph threatened a 100,000-person march on Washington, Roosevelt signed Executive Order 8802, banning discrimination in hiring for federal agencies and contractors, and established the Fair Employment Practice Committee (FEPC) to enforce the order. This success was a landmark in Black direct action in the struggle for freedom and equality.

The first half of the twentieth century was a period of segregation and second-class status for Black Americans. However, they took action to defy the restraints upon their rights and personal dignity. They formulated and debated paths to equality, expressed their creativity in dynamic and powerful ways, fought for a country that denied them equal opportunity, cooperated for mutual support, and took direct action to confront oppression and injustice. These generations of Black intellectuals, artists, soldiers, and activists demonstrated the moral courage that laid the foundation of the civil rights movement.

Reading Comprehension Questions

• What factors led to the Great Migration? How did the Great Migration change life for the many Black Americans who moved? How did it alter the Black experience in the United States?
• Compare and contrast the ideas of Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois. How would they critique each other’s ideas? On what did they agree?
• Why do you think Blacks served their country in the armed forces when they suffered discrimination and segregation within both the military and the larger society?

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Freedom, Equality, Race

This essay explores some of the reasons for the continuing power of racial categorization in our era, and thus offers some friendly amendments to the more optimistic renderings of the term  post-racial.  Focusing mainly on the relationship between black and white Americans, it argues that the widespread embrace of universal values of freedom and equality, which most regard as antidotes to racial exclusion, actually reinforce it. The internal logic of these categories requires the construction of the “other.” In America, where freedom and equality still stand at the contested center of collective identity, a history of racial oppression informs the very meaning of these terms. Thus the irony: much of the effort exerted to transcend race tends to fuel continuing division.

JEFFREY B. FERGUSON is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Black Studies and American Studies at Amherst College. He is the author of  The Harlem Renaissance: A Brief History with Documents  (2008) and  The Sage of Sugar Hill: George S. Schuyler and the Harlem Renaissance  (2005).

Our current era of race relations in America maintains racial distinctions largely through the expectation that they will soon disappear. This stands in contrast with previous periods, in which such categories as black and white counted as durable facts of descent and destiny. One side of the current race debate plays up the disappearance of racial distinctions, sometimes by exaggerating the virtues of color blindness. The other side guards against the diminishment of such distinctions, at times going so far as to equate current racial problems with the dark and distant past of slavery and Jim Crow. For the first camp–what we might call a “party of hope”– current racial realities signal the promise of a raceless future where skin color may have no more societal import than does eye color. The second –a “party of memory”–aims for a similar goal, but it generally casts its ultimate purpose in more pluralistic terms. This party finds the waning of timeworn forms of racial identity, along with the deeply etched barriers that gave rise to them, threatening to the very political movements that might bring about lasting positive change. Ironically, the party of memory finds what the party of hope would call racial progress somewhat dangerous to ultimate racial justice. No less curious is the party of hope’s prevailing expectation that after more than two hundred years of constant racial strife, black and white identity in the United States will simply fade away.

In some ways, the expectation that race will disappear seems particular to our era of race relations; but in other ways, the thought goes back quite far. Most Americans have always regarded the abiding values of our country as universal, and therefore raceless. Because they think of such principles as equality and freedom in this way, they believe that eventually, in an essentially good and fair country such as ours, these high ideals will prevail over the more parochial values that keep us apart. Historically, this progressive mindset has come with many good intentions on the race question but much less follow-up. For this and other reasons it has long been an object of attack for scholars of the African American experience. Those who believe that racial problems will go away on their own tend not to act directly to solve them, or they put forth half-stepping measures that address some issues but invent, reinvent, or exacerbate others. Over time, this tendency has contributed mightily to the cloud of betrayal that hangs constantly, and sometimes ominously, over the American racial discourse. At its worst, the seemingly benign idea of progress, which many still regard as the soul of the American dream, can serve as a mask for crass class interest, or can allow racists to “blame the victim” and thus to deny the cruel meaning of their anti-democratic views. Yet these consequences of progress do not contradict the meaning of such foundational values as freedom and equality so much as they manifest their inner logic.

It is worth remembering the uncomfortable and often repeated fact that our most cherished American principles have as one of their most important sources the minds of slavemasters and slave traders. Discerning observers of the American experience, such as the historian Edmund Morgan, have demonstrated a necessary relationship between the freedom cries of slavemasters and their status as absolute rulers of stateless men and women who were regarded primarily as property and as human beings in a much less formal register. In American Slavery, American Freedom (1975), Morgan argues that ruling-class Southerners at the time of the American Revolution–Patrick Henry, for example–tended to associate all subordination with the wretched condition of their slaves. 1 They employed this analogy in their idealistic insistence on freedom from the British. Henry’s famous eruption on the floor of the Continental Congress, “Give me liberty or give me death,” marked him as a radical republican, one ready to pay the highest price for independence. Nevertheless, the reverberant utterance of this slaveholding Virginian (and others like him) bequeathed a cruel legacy to generations of Americans. Unlike free white men, Henry’s slaves lived under the very condition that would presumably have driven their freedom-loving master to kill and to die. Henry’s formulation, oddly, justified the degradation of African Americans by the very condition that the degradation caused; in no small measure, it associated blackness with shame. Though they lived to guarantee the freedom of supposedly independent men, and yearned for freedom in their own terms despite their abasement, African Americans suffered for how starkly they symbolized what white men both feared and despised.

Many writers have observed that the Enlightenment, through its emphasis on human powers, gave freedom its modern meaning; but it also codified the modern idea of race as one way to distinguish those worthy of liberty from the irrational, uncivilized, and superstitious “others” who supposedly lived in a perpetual past. In other words, this period handed down most of the reasons to believe in race along with the justifications for despising and resisting it. As the Enlightenment gave life to the modern concept of race, it created the conditions that force us to explain and theorize this category incessantly. In the hands of early race theorists such as Linnaeus, Blumenbach, and de Buffon, seemingly objective biological categories like skin color and skull size served as impartial measures that positioned man as a subject of his own scientific inquiry and thus as an object of new forms of power/ knowledge that enabled the shaping and control of populations. Thus, human freedom in this era, and thereafter, depended crucially on a thoroughgoing form of subjection that created its own human hierarchies, which in some ways reinscribed ancient ideas of descent and inheritance but now with new and highly influential scientific imprimatur. As the modern concept of freedom carried with it the inclusive language of universalism, it also privileged certain human qualities: rationality, possession of nature or property, power, resistance, and autonomy, to name a few. Instead of membership in humanity as it is, freedom signified communion with humanity as it ought to be . Those who failed to qualify for this imagined ideal often faced terrible consequences, as the long history of slavery, imperialism, sexism, and class oppression demonstrates amply.

From their inception, the concepts of freedom and race have reinforced each other in the making of modernity; they continue to do so today, though the concept of race has shifted in its definitional grounding, from nature to culture. Despite the fact that some of the old biological valences remain active, the post-civil rights concept of race relies mainly on values, modes of signifying, and behavior. Rather than membership in a biological group, “whiteness” represents a cultural norm that non-whites may receive rewards for adopting– though acquiring the necessary cultural capital to do so can prove almost impossible for many. Here, as the social theorist Etienne Balibar points out, the work of exclusion occurs through the regulation of inclusion rather than forming an absolute line of demarcation between the races. 2 Those able to conform to the normalizing logic of post-civil rights “whiteness” live freer lives than those who cannot, as the dismal statistics showing racial disparities in wealth, health, education, and criminal justice reveal so evidently. Under this regime, the work of racial exclusion can occur quite efficiently but without overt racism. In contrast with the frontal assault of the pre-civil rights racial regime, which occurred more or less in the open, the new dispensation conducts most of its oppressive labor behind a smokescreen of elaborate racial etiquette and discursive deflection that communicates racial fear and aversion across an ever wider range of signification.

In its more recent cultural guise, race continues to play a strategic role on the exclusionary side of modern freedom; for the excluded, however, racial identity still has deep attractions, partly because the sheer existence of barriers to full social advancement provides a backdrop against which group solidarity might be perceived in moral terms: as part of a long and righteous struggle for freedom. This idea is well established among African Americans, who, out of the necessity of historic struggle, have formed an alternately heroic, sacrificial, and sometimes melodramatic sense of group belonging laden with collective memories of struggle on the wrong side of the American color line. These struggles have served not only as ways of acquiring freedom, but also as a means of performing it culturally and politically across a great range that encompasses modes of self-fashioning, artistic styles, and direct forms of political resistance and protest. This tradition of performing freedom has helped raise African American identity above the level of mere external imposition as it has created a point of identification for those outside the group to symbolize their own freedom struggles.

As a dominant value in American life, freedom has always stood beside, and competed with, the idea of equality. Nowhere has the complex relationship between these two bedrock concepts had greater impact than in the history of race relations, and rarely has their mutual opposition and entanglement received more trenchant treatment than in the work of the nineteenth-century French aristocrat and social theorist Alexis de Tocqueville. In his classic Democracy in America (1840), he observed that in a country where all men are created equal, those not recognized as equals may not be regarded as men. Tocqueville’s eminently logical formula sets out in elegant form the intimate connection between a high universal ideal and a foundational violence that it maintains through masking. Following Tocqueville’s calculation, hierarchies of descent grow naturally from the inner tensions of democratic values, not out of a failure to attend to them. Americans constantly reinvent racial distinctions and invidious race theories in part to resolve the quandary of their national condition, which entails basic equality on one side and a battle for individual distinction or status on the other.

Basing his observations on an extensive tour of the United States during the 1830s, Tocqueville regarded American society as a test case for the prospects of a new and inexorable world-historical process in which equality, individualism, and democracy would increasingly displace privilege based on birth and permanent class structures. He contemplated America at an early stage of its development with the chaos and despotism of post-revolutionary France, and the slipping grip of his own class, well in view. Though he recognized the positive potential of democracy, he remained equally cognizant of its constitutional flaws: its tendencies toward conformity, dictatorship of the people, corruption, greed, envy, moralism, intellectual shallowness, voluntary isolation of the individual from collective life, and many other weaknesses both large and small. For Tocqueville, American society in the 1830s represented a wonderful opportunity to observe whether such defective tendencies would prevail because it offered a perfect photo-negative of the European social picture: a place where sheer newness put immigrants and near-immigrants, strangers to the land with no permanent barrier between them, in a society where they might arrange life according to their tastes, talents, and desires. Many of the saving graces and sustaining patterns that Tocqueville recognized in American democracy–its local associations and communal public life, its ascetic faith in the value of work, its dynamic and expansive world-altering will–stand endangered in our own age; thus, we may still wonder about the ultimate survivability of our way of life. Or, in light of American race relations from slavery to the present, we might wonder whether Tocqueville understood entirely the full array of forces that have made American democracy cohere. In the end, the stability of our democracy may depend as much on the maintenance of racial inequality, vouchsafed by the anxieties of equality, as it does on the values and structures that Tocqueville so famously cited.

Without “blackness,” or some such negative or countervailing category, “whiteness” would not have achieved its stability as the primary mode of identification in America. And without the stabilizing effect of “blackness,” one of the main justifications for the average white person to count himself a member of the same group as the richest would not exist. As several important scholars of whiteness studies, such as David Roediger, Noel Ignatiev, and Matthew Frye Jacobson, have shown, this formula has provided one of the greatest bulwarks against the formation of entrenched class identity, even as Americans of all colors and persuasions strive to climb the class ladder partly by blending in. 3 Whiteness, with all its confused connotations of universality and particularity, of destiny and sheer emptiness, still prevails as a reason for some of the poorest Americans to tolerate their condition, even as demographers anticipate the day, not more than forty years from now, when the American majority will, in numbers, take on a darker hue.

In his famous section “On the Three Races that Currently Inhabit America,” Tocqueville contributed a foundational pillar to a long tradition of social analysis that would regard the problem of black and white as an aberration rather than a constitutive feature of American social and political life. Though he analyzes the slave South in detail, he treats it as the opposite of the industrial North, which for him represented the future of American democracy because of its burgeoning productivity, culture of equality, and the competitive anxiety of its citizens. In the South, he surmised, the existence of slavery retarded development. Rather than productive, the South was lazy; instead of progressive, it remained mired in the past. Lacking ingenuity, it depended on a narrow range of cash crops; lacking equality, it suffered from the absence of inner drive in its rank-and-file citizens, who depended on relatively unproductive slaves to do most of the work. None of these characteristics augured well for the survival of the South. Underdeveloped by its own economic and cultural commitments, faced with an expansive and dynamic sectional competitor, and threatened by the natural increase of its slave population, it faced an imminent crisis. In time, Tocqueville imagined, the South would lose its grip on its slaves, in part because these unfree people, as members of a society that prized equality, would never accept their unequal station, and thus could never embrace the spirit of European peasantry. Yet, he thought, whites would never admit blacks as equals. A racist himself, Tocqueville believed that whites everywhere in the United States would understandably continue to discriminate against an inferior people, and that blacks stood little chance beyond establishing their own state by conducting a war against indolent Southern whites. Given their numbers, and what he regarded as the decrepit moral state of their white enemies, he liked their chances in such a conflict. 4

Tocqueville’s analysis of race in “On the Three Races that Currently Inhabit America” commands current interest much more for its connection to his larger theory than for its historical accuracy. Much of what he anticipated simply did not happen. Moreover, few current historians of American slavery would take up his dichotomous view of North and South, his dim account of slavery’s profitability, his unitary view of the slave system, or his somewhat mechanical rendering of the effects of the peculiar institution on the hearts, minds, and motivations of slaves and slaveholders. Nevertheless, Tocqueville’s theoretical terms in Democracy in America do provide a good foundation for understanding how the value of equality helped reinforce the perennial American obsession with racial distinction.

Tocqueville believed that white Americans, beyond their motivations rooted in racism, would find black Americans hard to accept because of the radically unequal station from which they started. Locked in an absorbing competition with their peers and exceedingly nervous about the prospects of rising and falling in the game of distinction, white Americans would always feel compromised by their association with a degraded and inferior people; their anxiety derived in part from how perfectly the condition of congenital inferiority and social invisibility reflected their own worst fears. The promise of American life, rooted in the idea that no permanent social barrier stands between even the lowest white man and the very richest, comes with the devastating prospect of freefall: those who can rise infinitely can also fall into uncharted territory of vulnerability, invisibility, and loss. Cut off from strong claims to a primordial past, and staked on the prospect of ever better days to come, white Americans needed to invent the nigger–the nameless, faceless, incompetent who warranted no respect –in order to hide from the real prospect of becoming one. The “psychological wage” of whiteness, which W.E.B. Du Bois famously identified in Black Reconstruction (1935) to explain what kept the white and black working classes apart, rested heavily on this formula, for no matter how far a white person fell in the competition with other whites, he could always look back and spot a dark face in his rearview mirror. Given the broad patterns of American politics since the late 1960s–from the success of the Republican “Southern Strategy,” to the disaffection of Northern working-class whites who abandoned the Democratic coalition in the 1970s and 1980s, to today’s racially inflected Tea Party movement and paranoid fears concerning a “Marxist,” “Fascist,” “Muslim,” African American president–it would appear that an unfortunately high proportion of whites still subscribe to this way of thinking.

In his many essays on race and American identity, Ralph Ellison wrote artfully of what he called the democratic “chaos” that white Americans sought to avoid through their various projections onto African Americans. Today, this process might have more varied economic and social consequences than in the pre-civil rights era when Ellison gave it such eloquent codification, but the moral consequences have not changed very much at all. According to Ellison, these projections have at their root the cowardly avoidance of ethical responsibility to give shape to the self within a democratic culture. At its best, Ellison suggested, such a culture demands sincere engagement with diverse human possibility; at its worst, it cowers behind candy-coated fantasies of goodness already achieved and bounty with no consequence. As diligent and successful shapers of a way of life, African Americans have affirmed democratic possibility under the toughest circumstances by facing the ultimate threat of nothingness and bringing themselves into being, though they have also succumbed in countless ways to illusions stemming from the anger, despair, and resentment endemic to their social circumstance. Ellison’s protagonist in the novel Invisible Man (1952) spends the larger part of the book living the false life of a black man on the make who takes his signals concerning who to be from whites, whose humanity he cannot clearly recognize for lack of facing his own. Just as whites project their desires onto him, he regards them as mere conduits to power, and thus as gods of a sort. His power fantasy engenders only weakness. 5

The game of projection at the heart of race relations comes, according to Ellison, with a large portion of paranoia, as whites, subject to the identity confusion so basic to American life, know on some unconscious level that black skin forms the mystic writing pad of their own desires. Of course, blacks sense the same thing: that in important ways, white Americans, for all their apparent strength as a group, remain vulnerable and always a bit worried that the person behind the black mask must know their desires– and with that truth in hand, may well be putting one over on them. Today, in our post-civil rights period, a large part of this game occurs around the public drama of continuing black anger, the notion of “pulling the race card,” and the seemingly bottomless need from whites for confirmation from blacks that racism no longer exists, or at the very least that they as individuals bear no visible trace of the unspeakable sin.

To this observation some might answer that black people no longer suffer from invisibility in the same way they did when Ellison penned his famous works. Over the last thirty years, although large portions of the black lower and working classes have remained poor–indeed, many have become even poorer–the black middle class has risen to unprecedented heights of professional achievement, inclusion in important institutions, and social exposure. Today, the appearance of black Americans in advertising and the media no longer surprises, nor do the images they portray necessarily reflect stereotypes. Some popular stars, such as Tiger Woods, whose multiracial background would not have spared him from being considered black in the pre-civil rights era, dwell in an apparent racial twilight zone that seems “neither black nor white, yet both.” 6 Though the country remains highly segregated residentially and educationally, and intermarriage rates between blacks and whites show only incremental increases, surveys of white Americans reveal a continuing diminishment of overt racism rooted in ideas of biological inferiority. And the clincher of this case needs almost no mention: our president is an African American.

Yet these signs of progress seem to engender their opposite. The effort that our society has exerted to make advances in race relations has also served at times to reinforce the importance of race in our politics and to encourage new styles of racial identification. Nothing reflects this fact better than the effect of affirmative action policies, which have granted middle-class blacks unprecedented access to important institutions, but at the same time have led many whites to think in zero-sum terms about racial progress: a job given to a black American is one denied to a more qualified white. At times, even our celebrations of racial progress serve to reinforce boundaries between the races because they require us to reinscribe race discursively by employing it as a mode of classification. Recently, a reporter commented after a speech by President Obama that, during the course of that address, he had forgotten Obama’s race. No doubt his thought reflected that of many Americans of every description. Of course, this reporter’s amazement at experiencing a supposedly raceless moment required him constantly to note, as Obama spoke, that he really was in the presence of the “other,” but in a fashion both new and unapproachable because otherness itself was absent. In a sense, Obama had provided a moment for the reporter that exceeded the limits of his racial categories. But recognizing this fact required the evocation of a highly reified and essential form of blackness, a virtual thing in itself requiring almost no content. Though Obama did not “talk black” or “act black”–apparently he did not even “look black” to this reporter– somehow he was black, nonetheless.

Such are the confusions of our moment, emanations of an undigested past. In Black Odyssey (1977), a book that over the years has become a classic in black studies for its challenge to the progressive brand of American historiography, Nathan Huggins reaches back in his epilogue to wonder how the sprawling green visage of the new world first appeared to the twenty slaves aboard the fateful Dutch ship that lay off the shore of Jamestown in 1619. 7 In making this gesture, he parodies (to some extent) the final scene of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925), which famously reflects on the beauty and tragedy of the American insistence on remaining forever new. Though he does not say so directly, Huggins suggests that the powerful effect of Fitzgerald’s famous passage, in all its tragic wisdom, depends in part on the exclusion of those early black captives, who also brought dreams with them, however muted by misfortune. While these dreams, and the efforts they engendered, would over generations play a great role in constituting the American experience, so would the attempts to exclude them or to play down their importance. Our nation has certainly made some progress on this record, but it has not arrived at the new narrative of the American experience that Huggins thought necessary to align American dreams with the events that have made us who we are. Race has marked American culture trenchantly, as it has marked the basic principles that we regard as raceless. Recognizing the full meaning of this thought will require a new narrative, indeed. In his last sentence, both in homage and in mild derision, Huggins quotes the famous last line of Gatsby , which still merits our deepest reflection: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne ceaselessly into the past.”

• 1 On the connection between republicanism and slavery, see Edmund Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (New York: W.W. Norton, 1995), 363–390; also Edmund S. Morgan, “Slavery and Freedom: The American Paradox,” The Journal of American History 59 (1) (June 1972): 5–29.
• 2 Etienne Balibar, “Is There a ‘Neo-Racism’?” in Etienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein, Race, Nation, Class (London: Verso, 1991), 17–28.
• 3 See Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White (New York: Routledge, 1995); David R. Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness (New York: Verso, 2007); and Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998).
• 4 Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 302–391.
• 5 Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (New York: Random House, 1995); Ralph Ellison, “Twentieth-Century Fiction and the Mask of Humanity,” Shadow and Act (New York: Random House, 1995), 24–29, 41; see also in the same volume, “Change the Joke and Slip the Yoke,” 53.
• 6 This is the title of Werner Sollors’s authoritative account of interracial literature in America; see Werner Sollors, Neither Black Nor White Yet Both: Thematic Explorations of Interracial Literature (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999).
• 7 Nathan Irvin Huggins, Black Odyssey: The Afro-American Ordeal in Slavery (New York: Random House, 1990), 243–244.

Diverging employment pathways among young adults 

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In this essay, we explore how wage and benefits pathways differ between Black, white, and Latino or Hispanic adults who experienced socioeconomic disadvantage in a dolescence. We find:

• Upward career mobility leads to higher wages for white adults than for Black and Latino or Hispanic adults. On average, Black and Latino or Hispanic adults in their respective highest-earning trajectory groups earn between 68% to 75% of the average annual earnings of white adults in the highest-earning group. In the second-highest-earning groups, Black and Latino or Hispanic adults also consistently earn less than white adults.
• Higher-earning groups had relatively high rates of military service, particularly among Black and Latino or Hispanic adults.
• Among the lowest earners, Black adults had the highest incarceration rates and white adults had the highest rates of work-limiting health conditions.

In a perfectly equitable society, race or ethnicity would not be systematically associated with advantage or disadvantage . But when we examine how employment pathways vary among Black, Latino or Hispanic, and white adults who experienced socioeconomic disadvantage in their teens, that is not what we find (nor is it what other researchers have found when examining economic mobility).

In fact, in Essay 3 of this series, we found that race and ethnicity play a role in predicting the outcomes experienced by these young people even when controlling for a host of other factors. Simply being white or Latino or Hispanic increases the probability of being in an upwardly mobile trajectory group compared to being Black. And as shown in this essay, the wages of Black and Latino or Hispanic adults in higher-earning trajectories are considerably lower than the wages of white adults in higher-earning trajectories.

Who is in the study population?

To identify adults who experienced socioeconomic disadvantage in adolescence, we assess whether they met any of the following criteria in their teens:

• Lived in a low-income family
• Neither parent had a postsecondary degree
• Mother was aged 19 years old or younger when her first child was born
• Family received public assistance

Anyone who met at least one of the above criteria is included in the analysis.

Early career mobility looks different for white young adults than for Black and Latino or Hispanic young adults

After running separate analyses by race/ethnicity, we find that each population falls into four trajectory groups with similar patterns. They all have one group with very low wages, little wage growth, and few benefits, and they all have three more groups with gradations of higher wages and steeper growth. But wage levels and the rates of growth vary substantially between racial/ethnic populations.

Indeed, economic mobility looks strikingly different depending on race and ethnicity. Among white people, every trajectory group at age 30 has higher earnings than the corresponding trajectory groups among Black and Latino or Hispanic people.

In the lowest-earning group, Group 1 , average annual wages are very low for everyone ($5,000 or less) and poverty rates are extremely high at age 30: 78% of Black people in this group live below the poverty line, as do 46% of Latino or Hispanic people and 42% of white people. Very few people of any race/ethnicity receive any employer-related benefits. More than one-quarter of the Black population falls into this group, compared to 19% of the white population and 15% of the Latino or Hispanic population.

Group 2 has relatively low earnings and sluggish growth for all races and ethnicities. At age 30, average annual earnings for White Group 2 are about $20,000, compared to $17,000 for Latino or Hispanic Group 2 and $14,000 for Black Group 2. Benefit levels are fairly low for everyone, but are slightly higher among white people. Among both Black and white young adults, Group 2 is the most common trajectory group, accounting for 34% of the Black population and 38% of the white population.

In the second-highest-earning group, Group 3 , white adults also have a substantial advantage. At age 30, their average annual earnings are $46,000, compared to about $30,000 among Black Group 3 and $35,000 among Latino or Hispanic Group 3. White Group 3 has a slightly higher benefits index (2.4) than Black Group 3 (1.9) and Latino or Hispanic Group 3 (2.0). (See Essay 2 for a description of the benefits index scoring.) This is the most populous group among Latino or Hispanic people, accounting for 41% of the population.

Economic mobility is greatest among Group 4 for all races/ethnicities we analyzed. It has the steepest wage growth and the highest earnings by age 30, but average annual earnings among Black Group 4 and Latino or Hispanic Group 4 at age 30 are $65,000 and $70,000 respectively, compared to $108,500 among White Group 4. Benefit levels at age 30 are fairly high for everyone. Relatively small shares of each race/ethnicity fall into this group: 9% of white adults, 11% of Black adults, and 15% of Latino or Hispanic adults.

The trajectories of all three populations reflect common patterns, but also differ in important ways

Despite their differences, the trajectories of the different racial/ethnic groups are all shaped by the same well-established labor market and societal patterns, and thus bear certain resemblances to each other. Indeed, they align with the patterns described in the second essay in this series, which reported on the analysis of the study population as a whole, not disaggregated by race/ethnicity.

We list these similarities below and refer you to Essay 2 for more detail:

• Adults who started with the fewest economic resources in adolescence struggle the most to achieve economic mobility.
• Poverty rates are extremely high for lower-earning trajectory groups.
• Those in higher-earning trajectory groups work more consistently, are more likely to work full time/year-round, and have higher education levels than lower-earning trajectory groups.
• Incarceration, work-limiting health conditions, teen parenthood, and disconnection from school and work are most common among the groups with the flattest earnings trajectories.
• Military experience and working in a job that is covered by a union contract are most common among the groups with the highest upward mobility.

However, beyond these similarities, trajectories for racial/ethnic groups also differ in important ways.

The racial wealth gap persists, even among those from disadvantaged backgrounds

Among all races/ethnicities, those in the higher-earning trajectories come from families with greater wealth than those in lower-earning trajectories. But wealth levels are higher among the white population at every earnings level. For example, median parental wealth among White Group 4 is approximately $114,000—about four times that of Latino or Hispanic Group 4 ($28,000) and three times of Black Group 4 ($36,000). These disparities apply in the lowest-earning groups as well, with median parental wealth at about $31,000 for White Group 1, $12,000 for Latino or Hispanic Group 1, and $6,000 for Black Group 1.

White and Latino or Hispanic women are disproportionately likely to be low earners compared to white and Latino or Hispanic men

About two-thirds of the members of White Group 1 and Latino or Hispanic Group 1 are women, and females account for decreasing shares of the trajectory groups as earnings rise. Only 17% of White Group 4 and 23% of Latino or Hispanic Group 4 is female. Gender segregation is not nearly as prominent among the Black trajectory groups, as women make up between 43% to 53% of each trajectory group. In fact, women are slightly underrepresented among the lowest Black earners, making up 43% of that group, compared to 49% of the study population as a whole.

Work-limiting health conditions are most common among white low earners

Among all races/ethnicities, work-limiting health conditions are more common among the lowest earners. But rates are highest among White Group 1 members, 28% of whom have a work-limiting health condition at age 27, compared to 18% of Black Group 1 members and 20% of Latino or Hispanic Group 1 members. Since survey respondents define “work-limiting health condition” for themselves, these conditions likely refer to a wide range of situations and problems.

Incarceration rates are high among all low earners, but particularly among Black people

Across races/ethnicities, a history of incarceration is much more common among Group 1 and 2 than the higher-earning groups. But among Black people, rates are very high: More than one-third of Black Group 1 members and 17% of Black Group 2 members have been incarcerated. Rates are lower (although still high) among the other lower-earning groups: More than 20% of both white and Latino Group 1 members have been incarcerated, as have about 15% for white members and 14% for Latino or Hispanic members of Group 2.

Military experience is most common among Black and Latino or Hispanic Group 4 members

The highest-earning groups among both Black and Latino or Hispanic people are disproportionately made up of those with military experience. Twenty percent of Black Group 4 and 17% of Latino or Hispanic Group 4 served in the military, compared to 5% of the Black study population and 7% of the Latino or Hispanic study population. Among Black Group 3 and Latino or Hispanic Group 3, about 8% and 9% percent have military experience, respectively. Among white individuals, about 11% of both Group 3 and 4 served in the military, relative to 7% of the white study population as a whole.

Among the highest earners, white people are more likely than Black and Latino or Hispanic people to work in construction and production occupations

Across all races/ethnicities, members of higher-earning trajectories are more likely to work in management and professional jobs. By age 30, approximately 40% of Black Group 4, white Group 4, and Latino or Hispanic Group 4 are in these roles. White Group 4 also has high shares of workers in construction, production, and transportation at age 30 (39%)—considerably higher than Latino or Hispanic Group 4 (29%) and Black Group 4 (23%). Similarly, members of lower-earning trajectories are much more likely to work in service occupations. Notably, Black Group 1 has substantially higher shares of members in service occupations at age 30 (55%) than other trajectories and other racial/ethnic groups.

Too many young people are falling behind in the transition to adulthood. This is true for every race and ethnicity. But notable differences between groups point to stressors and barriers affecting some more than others.

The high incarceration rates among Black people in our analysis reflect the higher rates of surveillance and racial bias in law enforcement and sentencing that Black communities face. This sets off a deeply negative spiral —damaging future employment prospects for those with a criminal record, disrupting family and community bonds, and increasing the likelihood of future criminal justice involvement.

The prevalence of work-limiting health conditions among the lowest earners (particularly among white people) tracks with other research on the potential causes of declining labor force participation . Most notably, researchers Anne Case and Angus Deaton found an increase in sickness and death among white people with a high school diploma or less. Subsequently, they linked this declining health with the cumulative disadvantages experienced by white people with less than a college degree as the economy and labor market have shifted.

The military, by contrast, appears to play a disproportionately positive role in the economic prospects of Black and Latino or Hispanic individuals. This aligns with the argument that the military provides a path to socioeconomic advancement for people of color and people from low-income backgrounds. Of course, fighting racism in the ranks is an ongoing concern . And others critique the military as a route for social mobility, arguing that its recruitment efforts disproportionately target high schools with student bodies that are predominantly low-income, Black, or Latino or Hispanic —trading on these groups’ more constrained postsecondary opportunities.

Lastly, although this analysis did not address racial discrimination in the labor market, our findings are consistent with research findings on discrimination. For example, job seekers with stereotypically “Black” names on their resume are less likely than those with “white” names to get callbacks from employers, even when they have similar qualifications. Other research makes it clear that Black and Latino or Hispanic workers face undeniable discrimination in the labor market, noting that the “magnitude and consistency of discrimination” in hiring is a “sobering counterpoint” to more optimistic assessments about the declining significance of race. In addition to hiring, racial discrimination manifests itself in the assignments workers are given and the ways their performance is judged and rewarded, which in turn affects career progression . Thus, the lower payoffs people of color experience reflect racism at every stage in the pathway to higher mobility.

Essay 1: Defining socioeconomic disadvantage and identifying employment trajectories

Essay 2: Less than half of adults from disadvantaged backgrounds attain decent wages by age 30

Essay 3: Race, gender, and other factors affect earnings and benefits

Essay 4: Women are more likely than men to be in lower-earning pathways

Essay 6: Policy ideas to expand economic opportunities for young adults

About the Authors

Martha ross, senior fellow – brookings metro, gabriel piña, research scientist ii – child trends, kristin anderson moore, senior scholar and past president – child trends, jessica warren, senior research analyst – child trends, nicole bateman, former senior research analyst – brookings metro.

Racial Equality - Free Essay Samples And Topic Ideas

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Racism and Inequality in Society Essay

Race has been a serving system of shaping individual and collective identities and influencing social relations. The notion justifies the superiority of specific social groups, perpetuating systemic inequalities and injustices. For many centuries, authorities used the diversity as a tool of segregation, making economical and political profit. Race is a social construct influenced by historical, economic, and political variables rather than a biological truth.

The idea of race as a social construct is examined in the first episode of the documentary series “The Power of an Illusion.” The movie shows that the idea of race is not biological but rather socially formed and influenced by political, economic, and historical circumstances (Kanopy: Stream Classic Cinema, Indie Film and Top Documentaries). In my social science lectures, I did not see any new angles at which race can be analyzed, since I have previously studied this issue deeply.

I focused on the political and historical reasons that influenced the development of racial classifications was instructive. To reveal the essence of racism, it is necessary to show how the idea of race was created to humiliate particular groups of people (Omi and Winant 118). After that, I would present how race classifies people according to their physical features. The Omi and Winant reading explores the concept of racial formation. The authors argue that race is not an objective category, but a social construct shaped by historical and political factors. They discuss how racial categories are formed through the intersection of biological, cultural, and historical factors and how they are reproduced through social institutions and practices (Omi and Winant 114). The video and the reading both emphasize the role of power relations in shaping racial categories and the importance of understanding race as a dynamic and changing concept.

In conclusion, to understand how racism and inequality function in society, it is essential to understand race as a social construct. The film and Omi and Winant’s reading offer insightful perspectives on how race has been introduced as a tool of discrimination. Admitting that race is only a cultural phenomenon, one can guarantee a more equal society that gives space to multiplicity and true personal freedom.

Works Cited

“ Kanopy: Stream Classic Cinema, Indie Film and Top Documentaries .” Kanopy , Web.

Omi, Michael, and Howard Winant. Racial Formation in the United States . Routledge, 2014.

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Bibliography

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• “Racial Formation in the United States” by Omi & Winant
• Race Identity Evaluation in the Film "Malcolm X"
• Racial Formation Theory in American History
• Race, Class, and Gender: Rothenberg’s book
• Racial Formation and Its Importance
• Colorblind Society: Race and Skin Color in America
• The Theory of Racial Formation and Its Use
• How Inequality Is Reproduced in Everyday Life?
• Racism in Movies: Stereotypes and Prejudices
• Diversity of Social Groups: Multiplicity of Social Groupings
• The "Killing the Black Body" Book by Dorothy Roberts
• The Racial Inequality Problem and Its Relevance
• James Weldon Johnson's "The Red Summer" Term
• The Issue of Racism in the United States
• Realities of Racial Inequality and Injustice in the United States

• Events Calendar
• Featured Story

AERA 24: UCLA Scholars Address Racial Injustice, New Opportunities for Equality

Theme chosen by AERA 2023-2024 President Tyrone C. Howard leads annual meeting, featuring a spotlight on UCLA innovative research on issues of race in education.

In his presidential address, Tyrone C. Howard highlighted the main points behind his chosen theme for this year’s Annual Meeting of the American Education Research Association (AERA), “Examining Our Past to Imagine a Better Future: Recognition and Redress of Racial Injustice in Education.”

“It is time for this association – the American Educational Research Association – to grapple with racial injustice in our work, our research, our policy… domestically and globally,” said the UCLA professor of education, who wrapped up his year as AERA President for 2023-2024 in Philadelphia earlier this month, April 11-14. In his remarks, Professor Howard underscored the fact that education and race are inextricably linked.

“For anyone who is studying education, you are studying race,” he said. “Schools are ground zero in our quest for racial justice. Issues tied to race, racial injustice, should be explicitly studied in teacher education; should be studied in history; should certainly be studied in measurement and evaluation; curriculum and administration; leadership and development; human development and psychology; and the list goes on. Ours is a field where … impact should be our goal.”

Hundreds of AERA participants attended the Annual Meeting's opening plenary, which featured AERA President Tyrone Howard in conversation with Kimberlé W. Crenshaw, UCLA professor of law. Photo by Joanie Harmon

Presentations by UCLA Education community were evidence of this impact, given by faculty members, graduate and undergraduate students, and UCLA alumni who are doing innovative work at institutions across the nation. The Annual Meeting was launched with an opening plenary on April 11 titled, “Fighting Back to Move Forward: Defending the Freedom to Learn In the War Against Woke,” with Professor Howard in conversation with his colleague, Kimberlé W. Crenshaw, UCLA professor of law, who is also the founder and director of the Center for Intersectionality & Social Policy Studies and a professor of law at Columbia University.

The following is a sampling of the ways that UCLA scholars explored questions of race and education at AERA:

Marisa Saunders, associate director for research at the UCLA Center for Community Schooling, chaired a symposium titled, “Community Schools: A Strategy for Supporting and Sustaining (BIPOC) Teachers,” exploring the role and potential of community schools to support and sustain Black, Indigenous and other people of color as teachers. The symposium considered educational research on the community schools’ strategy and the experiences of teachers working within these school settings to address longstanding injustices and inequities in education.

Marisa Saunders, associate director for research at the UCLA Center for Community Schooling. Photo by John McDonald

Saunders was joined in the symposium by UCLA Ed&IS doctoral students Tomoko Nakajima, Jeffrey Yo, and Natalie Fensterstock who presented papers exploring the themes, patterns, and emerging areas of inquiry about the role, experiences, and career trajectories of community school teachers with an emphasis on Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) teachers. Together, the papers explore how community schools can provide the structural, organizational and cultural supports necessary that encourage teacher longevity.

UCLA Professor of Education Eddie Cole (at center) presented his paper, “W. E. B. Du Bois and New Directions in Future Research on Black Higher Education.” Photo by John McDonald

Professor of Education Eddie Cole lit up the room in the session, “W. E. B. Du Bois in Our Times: Toward Racial Justice in Education in the 21st Century.” Commenting on his paper, “W. E. B. Du Bois and New Directions in Future Research on Black Higher Education,”  he contended that  the 2024 AERA Annual Meeting was the ideal moment to reflect on Du Bois and his contemporaries’ scholarship while assessing new directions saying, ” Du Bois would challenge us to speak up and speak out against the very real attack on public education.  We can’t sit idle in this moment – there is much work to be done and much hell to raise.”

An AERA Presidential Session honored the work of the late UCLA Professor of Education Mike Rose, titled, "Scholarship That Befits a Democracy: Disrupting Educational Inequality Through the Scholarship of Mike Rose." Wasserman Dean Christina Christie summed up the work of her former colleague, a prolific writer whose 11 books and numerous articles chronicled the challenges of marginalized students across the nation throughout K-12, community colleges, universities, and vocational training.

“An overarching goal of Mike’s work was to show and explain how and why the ways in which education is a complex human endeavor,” said Dean Christie. “He used these observations to address some of the most pressing issues in education. He accomplished this by studying what was extraordinary about the ordinary. Through considerate narratives, he brought you close to the person, the student, the teacher in the classroom, the intimate look that helped us understand the complexity of contemporary social issues, because we were seeing these issues through a story of human experience.

An AERA Presidential Session featured Wasserman Dean Christina Christie summing up the work of the late Mike Rose, UCLA professor of education, a prolific writer whose 11 books and numerous articles chronicled the challenges of marginalized students across the nation. Photo by Joanie Harmon

"Mike was concerned about how the discussion of education in our country has for so many decades now, turned away from understanding education as cognition and pedagogy fundamentally as a human experience, and instead, as focused on, as he wrote, 'education as a means to secure individual advantage and maintain global economic prominence,'" Dean Christie said. "He was a champion of the promise of high quality education for all and he noted the ways in which education matters for health, for quality of life, for democracy, and for a civil society.”

In an invited AERA Roundtable session promoting “AERA Promising Scholarship in Education Research: Dissertation Fellows and Their Research,” doctoral candidate Demeturie Toso-Lafele Gogue presented his poster, “The Undercurrents of Institutionalization: How AANAPISIs Navigate a Racialized Process to Promote Pacific Islander Student Success.”  His study documents the strategies that administrators, faculty, and staff at AANAPISIs employ to institutionalize aspects of their grant-funded programs. 

“I really look at how college campuses in the Pacific and in the United States invest in sustaining efforts beyond their five-year grant funding from the federal government. I’m looking at how institutions are investing in diversity initiatives,” Toso-Lafele Gogue says. He contends there is a need to examine the process of institutionalization through a racialized lens.

Demeturie Toso-Lafele Gogue presented his poster based on the strategies that administrators, faculty, and staff at AANAPISIs employ to institutionalize aspects of their grant-funded programs. Photo by John McDonald

“Institutionalization as a bureaucratic process is not race-neutral,” he said. “It is laced with racial tensions and dynamics that we need to uncover and talk about and think about what institutionalization is so hard to achieve.”

Professor of Education Daniel Solórzano was the discussant in a great session chaired by PhD student JC Lugo titled, “Liberation as Political Imperative: Toward the Conceptualization of Ethnic Studies Education.” Amid intensifying state amid national debates over Ethnic Studies, long-time advocates discussed “Ethnic Studies Education” as a strategic intervention to embolden education scholars to pursue critical, life-affirming work that guides and supports contemporary Ethnic Studies activism. Panelists addressed how Ethnic Studies Education can better achieve the emancipatory potential of education, what Ethnic Studies educators teach, how we prepare and support Ethnic Studies teachers and students, and the role of activism and research.

Professor of Education Daniel Solórzano served as discussant in for the session, “Liberation as Political Imperative: Toward the Conceptualization of Ethnic Studies Education.” Photo by John McDonald

Telling those in attendance of his early experiences in ethnic studies, or as he pointed out, “Mexican studies or Black studies,” Solórzano said, “I brought a story, we all have stories, we all came to ethnic studies from various pathways. These experiences, these early experiences were absolutely critical to my coming to critical consciousness, which I am still coming to  -- it never ends.”

In a packed roundtable session, UCLA Teacher Education Program advisor Darlene Lee and her colleague, Josephine Pham, assistant professor at UC Santa Cruz, made the case for Culturally Sustaining Teacher Educator Pedagogy as a framework for supporting the preparation of K-12 teachers committed to social justice, with their paper, “Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies of Teacher Education: Centering the Well-Being of Teacher Candidates of Color.”

“How do we model and enact the culturally sustaining strategies that we hope teacher candidates will also be able to enact in their classrooms as they work with students of color, and what are the ways that we can perpetuate and foster the linguistic, literate, and cultural assets of communities of color within our roles in teacher education?” Lee asked session participants. The discussion explored how curriculum, critical literacies, practices, actions, and context shape teacher educator pedagogy and K-12 teacher learning.

UCLA Teacher Education Program advisor Darlene Lee made the case for Culturally Sustaining Teacher Educator Pedagogy as a framework for supporting the preparation of K-12 teachers committed to social justice. Photo by John McDonald

Lauren Arzaga Daus, a second-year graduate student in Urban Schooling, co-presented “PEP PODS: Pin@y Educational Partnerships’ Praxis-Oriented Development Series,” with Jocyl Sacramento of CSU East Bay, during a session titled “Offerings of Love and Accountability: Cultivating Empathy Through Loss and Grief.” UCLA Education alumnae Sharim Hannegan-Martinez and Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales also participated in this session.

In their paper, Arzaga Daus and Sacramento focused on the response of Pinay scholar-activists to national and local movements in the summer of 2020, and their creation of “third spaces” called PEP PODS. School and community practitioners took part in virtual discussions called kuwentuhan , a Filipinx cultural practice/method of exchanging dialogue, reflections, and analysis to make meaning of their relational experiences. The PEP PODS also collectively read a book a month that focused on anti-Black racism, ableism, or sexism, including “Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination” by UCLA Distinguished Professor of History Robin D.G. Kelley; “Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor,” by Layla Saad; and “Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha.”

UCLA graduate student Lauren Arzaga Daus (second from right) and UCLA alumnae Sharim Hannegan-Martinez (far left) Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales (at center) participated in a session on "“Offerings of Love and Accountability: Cultivating Empathy Through Loss and Grief.” Pictured with Arlene S. Daus-Magbual, San Francisco State University; and Jocyl Sacramento, CSU East Bay. Photo by Joanie Harmon

The co-authors also examined how third spaces allow school and community practitioners to inform their praxis and pedagogies and allowed for imagining and strengthening of solidarities and empathy across racial groups during the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic. Currently, PEP PODS continues to meet.

“We created PEP PODS to respond to the need for school and community practitioners to have a collective space where they could make sense of their identities and commitments in the midst of community grief during the summer 2020 uprisings,” Arzaga Daus and Sacramento wrote. “PEP PODS as a third space has been instrumental in welcoming and centering our humanity as we continue to endure oppressive and unconducive working environments… we continue to engage in this third space because it serves as a reminder of the many possibilities that can exist outside of educational spaces and workplaces.”

Julieta Rico presented “Navigating Fronteras: How Physical and Symbolic Borders Manifest for Latinx Teachers in Schools,” during a session on “BIPOC Teacher Resistance and Solidarity.” A doctoral student in the Urban Schooling division, her research on bilingual education, funding, tracking, and English learner student success in the context of the Rio Grande Valley, stems from her experience of teaching English language arts to 7th graders in Harlingen, Texas.

In her presentation at AERA, Rico shared maps and illustrations created by Latinx teachers during pláticas around invisible but undeniable “borders” at schools, where certain teachers are seemingly “allowed” while others are not. Three main themes of Rico’s work were the shifting of teachers’ identity, the importance of their classrooms, and meaning making through mapping. The pláticas created a space to talk about teachers’ experiences in and around their classrooms and the isolation that they felt at times. The drawings by the teachers depicted their perceptions of themselves on their campuses, both locationally and emotionally. Rico described a drawing by a California teacher, who depicted her school from the outside entrance.

“I asked her, ‘Why did you draw the front of the school?’ She goes (sic), ‘I don’t feel like I belong inside the school, so I didn’t feel comfortable sharing how I walk around it. I showed you the front of the school because that’s the best place I belong.’”

Rico highlighted the difference in candor between the California teachers and her Texas colleagues.

“It was interesting to see the difference in the way the teachers spoke about their spaces,” she said. “California teachers were much more open: ‘It’s systematic oppression this is what we’re seeing.’ They were very vocal and had the language and vocabulary to speak about it. The Texas teachers were silent and hesitant. We were all first-year teachers together, and it wasn’t until I shared a very vulnerable story [about myself], then it started that conversation.”

Two AERA Presidential Sessions provided stunning support of the conference theme by addressing the issues in race and education from the viewpoint of students’ formations of identity and truth. AERA President Tyrone Howard chaired “Lessons and Reflections From Ghana: Toward Justice and Freedom in the U.S. Education System,” which featured work by UCLA Education graduate student researchers, and UCLA alumni who are in academic positions nationwide, including Keara Williams, Jaleel Howard, Earl Edwards, Tr’Vel Lyons, Gene McAdoo, Demontea Thompson, and Kenyon Lee Whitman. Cynthia B. Dillard, dean of the College of Education at Seattle University and a longtime mentor of Professor Howard, served as discussant.

The research presented in this session was based on recent visits to Ghana made by Professor Howard and his cadre of students in order to examine the cultural practices of Africa that few African Americans have knowledge of, and the history of the slave trade that is commemorated at sites in Africa.

One of the papers in this session titled, “Finding Your Brother: Exploring Black male counterspaces as a pathway to resilient identity and healthy expressions of masculinity,” was presented by Lyons, a UCLA alumnus who is now a postdoctoral research associate in the USC Rossier School of Education, and McAdoo, a second-year doctoral student in the division of Urban Schooling. Their paper was inspired by the work of Saidiya Hartman and her book, “Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route,” which they read in preparation for the journey to Ghana, for its perspective on creating personal memoirs combined with historical exploration.   

UCLA alumni Tr’Vel Lyons (at podium) and Earl Edwards, along with Gene McAdoo, doctoral candidate, presented their research and personal reflections in an AERA Presidential Session on “Lessons and Reflections From Ghana: Toward Justice and Freedom in the U.S. Education System.” Photo by Joanie Harmon

“During this trip, we found ourselves grieving the lives we may have lived, the cultural practices we may have had, if not stolen away,” said Lyons. “We felt our privilege should be put to good use, but how? As educators, we didn’t just traverse geographic locations, but we embarked on an introspective journey into the past, connected deeply with…slavery, colonialism, which is inextricably connected to our understanding of the essence of Black masculinity and identity.”

Williams is a UCLA alumna (BA, American Literature, M.Ed, Teacher Education Program) and is currently a doctoral student in the division of Urban Schooling and a former LAUSD English teacher. She presented, “(Re) Membering and (Re) Claiming Who We Are to Conduct Purposeful Research: A Black Woman’s Inner Journey,” inspired by her travels with the group in Ghana and the opportunity to share community and fellowship with Black women there. She also drew from her experience as a Black teacher, and addressed the lack of representation throughout the teaching fields.

“Black teachers are significantly underrepresented and in many places, serving as the only one in their school or district,” said Williams. “While Black students comprise 14.9% of students enrolled in public schools, Black teachers make up just 7% of K-12 teachers nationally.”

Another AERA Presidential Session brought home the focus of the Annual Meeting, utilizing the voices of those affected the earliest by racism in education: elementary school students. UCLA alumnus Laurence Tan led his 5th grade class at Oakland Academy of Knowledge in a presentation on, “Researching the Reparations in Schools: Urban Youth as Researchers of School Quality,” highlighting a project that was researched and presented by the students themselves. Their study was based on Oakland Unified School District’s Black Reparations Initiative, and explored the students’ findings on the implementation and quality of impact of the initiative in their school, which is located in East Oakland, an area that has been beleaguered by gentrification and corporate chartering of schools.

“Conducting this project with my 5th graders for AERA 2024 in Philly was a transformative experience not only for them, but me as well,” said Tan, who recently appeared with his students on KTVU-FOX to speak about the experience. “Students were able to engage and tackle college level reading and research in the most meaningful ways. I have presented at many AERA sessions, and have also shared space with youth, but this is the first time I have done it with all current 5th graders. This experience was definitely a phenomenal experience and proud moment as we left it all out there for Oakland. What kept them going through all the major moments was the fact that they knew their work and presentation would matter and help make changes for their community of Oakland, and beyond.”

• Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales
• Christina Christie
• Daniel Solórzano
• Darlene Lee
• Demeturie Toso-Lafele Gogue
• Demontea Thompson
• Department of Education
• Earl Edwards
• Eddie R. Cole
• Gene McAdoo
• Jaleel Howard
• Julieta Rico
• Keara Williams
• Kenyon Lee Whitman
• Kimberlé W. Crenshaw
• Lauren Arzaga Daus
• Laurence Tan
• Marisa Saunders
• Natalie Fensterstock
• Sharim Hannegan-Martinez
• Teacher Education program
• Tomoko Nakajima
• Tr’Vel Lyons
• Tyrone Howard
• Urban Schooling

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15 March 2022

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Guest Essay

A Small Group in South Korea Has a Big Homophobic Agenda

By Raphael Rashid

Mr. Rashid has been a journalist in Seoul for 12 years. He is the author of “The Korea We Refuse to See,” published in Korean.

Since South Korean voters delivered a full-throated rebuke of their conservative president this month, a small but influential group has been on edge. It fears the more liberal opposition’s landslide in the April 10 parliamentary elections could signal the country’s wrongheaded move toward what they call a homosexual dictatorship .

Though South Korea projects a modern, diverse image through its gay - friendly global entertainment industry, as a nation it has long tolerated homophobia and other forms of discrimination. The country has no national law that explicitly prohibits unfair treatment based on race or ethnicity, language or sexual orientation. Alongside Japan and Turkey, it’s ranked among the least L.G.B.T.Q.-inclusive countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Now these prejudices are manifesting in a coordinated attack on young people’s rights. In a campaign orchestrated by South Korea’s powerful radical Christian lobby, anti-gay protesters have been working relentlessly to cancel a set of regional bylaws that protect schoolchildren and teenagers from discrimination on several grounds, including sexual orientation and gender identity.

The bylaws’ critics argue that the so-called student human rights ordinances overemphasize students’ rights and downplay the rights of teachers. But that’s just a smoke screen for their anti-gay agenda, which so far is proving effective. Votes to abolish two of the seven bylaws were passed last week, and the others face similar votes or are the target of abolition demands. The conservative campaign must be seen for what it is: part of a concerted effort to erase L.G.B.T.Q. visibility from schools and ultimately, South Korean society .

In recent years, South Korea’s L.G.B.T.Q. community has been subject to censorship , witch hunts and blame for the spread of Covid. Local officials have targeted Pride events, such as in Daegu, where last year the mayor ordered 500 civil servants to obstruct the festival. In Seoul, the mayor tacitly supported pushing Pride from its customary plaza after an anti-gay Christian group applied to hold an event in the same place on the same day. Lectures on gender equality have been canceled, queer films stopped from screening, books on sex education purged from libraries and plans to outlaw hate speech abandoned. Concerns about weakening and inadequate protections — raised in recent years by the United Nations , Human Rights Watch and South Korea’s own human rights commission — have been mostly ignored by successive governments.

In Seoul the Christian lobby’s messaging looms in the trucks blasting Bible verses while circling busy blocks and placards around shopping areas declaring “Homosexuality is sin.” Its most harmful achievement to date has been blocking the passage of a broad anti-discrimination law, which would provide protection to L.G.B.T.Q. people, women, people with disabilities and racial minorities. Since 2007, Christian campaigners have obstructed seven attempts to pass such legislation. Four more bills offering similar protections pending in the National Assembly will die if not passed before the Parliament session ends in May.

Officials repeatedly excuse the legislative stalemate under the pretext of insufficient social consensus, a phrase suggesting they haven’t reached agreement with enough segments of society. Yet South Koreans largely say they support equality legislation: A nationwide survey by the National Human Rights Commission in 2022 found 67 percent were in favor of the measure.

The Christian lobby’s members are mainly Protestant. They are well organized, wealthy and wield outsize influence in a majority secular country. Most but not all Korean Protestant denominations hold anti-gay views, including the major Presbyterian orders and the Methodist Church . High-profile pastors and strident groups like Anti-Homosexuality Christian Solidarity are loosely affiliated with church coalitions that have a direct line to politicians and pressure them to uphold a homophobic agenda.

That agenda has already had some big wins in the current government. In September 2022, President Yoon Suk Yeol’s Gender Equality Ministry overturned a plan that would have expanded the legal definition of “family” to include common-law couples, cohabitating households and foster families. Three months later, the Education Ministry decided to delete the terms “sexual minorities” and “gender equality” from the national school curriculum.

For years, the Christian lobby’s rallying cry has been centered on a bigoted conspiracy theory: that just talking about discrimination could bring South Korea under a homosexual dictatorship. In sermons, street banners and on Christian media and YouTube, they predict that young Koreans will be coaxed into embracing nonheteronormative identities, transforming the social order. Family structures would crumble, they warn; even fewer babies would be born in a country already recording the world’s lowest fertility rate. Gay relationships in the armed forces would jeopardize national security against North Korea, they say. And an ensuing AIDS epidemic would bankrupt the state.

Such prophecies appear to be part of an effort to stave off a larger crisis: South Korea’s waning interest in Christianity, which took off in the country after the Korean War — seen both as a beacon of hope that symbolized Western modernity and as an antidote to Communism. But Protestant denominations have splintered, and membership is declining. To create unity, extremist Protestants seem to be rallying around an invented enemy: L.G.B.T.Q. people and the laws that would protect them.

Churches say the proposals for equality legislation pose a genuine threat to their freedom of speech and religion. The United Christian Churches of Korea, one of the country’s largest coalitions of Protestant churches, maintains that any prospective anti-discrimination legislation would legitimize homosexuality, contrary to its interpretation of the Bible. “If such a law is enacted, it is certain that the activities of churches that teach the Bible will be restricted,” the coalition secretariat wrote in a translated email, “as it does not even allow criticism of homosexuality.”

The recent election results have sparked fresh concern among the Christian lobby that opposition lawmakers may push ahead with equality legislation, despite the fact that churches in which anti-gay preaching may occur are not included in the scope of any of the draft anti-discrimination bills. An editorial in Christian Daily on April 15 warned politicians against touching the issue: “No matter how overwhelming the majority party is, they could face backlash if they recklessly push out legislation that causes social chaos.”

Indeed, the lawmakers who have dared to advocate equality have endured text bombing , and related online message boards have been invaded by trolls .

It’s a worrying development not just for those who are directly affected by the Christian lobby’s anti-L.G.B.T.Q. crusade. As in other societies where homophobia is on the rise, the anti-equality campaign is a red flag for other minority groups. Foreigners, migrant workers , people with disabilities and North Korean defectors all lack unambiguous protection from discrimination under South Korean law.

“Anyone can be the next target,” said Heezy Yang, a queer artist and activist. “Fighting for equality is about protecting all of society.”

Raphael Rashid ( @koryodynasty ) has been a journalist in Seoul for 12 years. He is the author of “ The Korea We Refuse to See ,” published in Korean.

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Opinion We have a radical democracy. Will Trump voters destroy it?

For some time, it was possible to believe that many voters could not see the threat Donald Trump poses to America’s liberal democracy, and many still profess not to see it. But now, a little more than six months from Election Day, it’s hard to believe they don’t. The warning signs are clear enough. Trump himself offers a new reason for concern almost every day. People may choose to ignore the warnings or persuade themselves not to worry, but they can see what we all see, and that should be enough.

Adapted from “Rebellion: How Antiliberalism is Tearing America Apart — Again” by Robert Kagan. Copyright © 2024 by Robert Kagan. Reprinted by permission of Penguin Random House. All Rights Reserved.

How to explain their willingness to support Trump despite the risk he poses to our system of government? The answer is not rapidly changing technology, widening inequality, unsuccessful foreign policies or unrest on university campuses but something much deeper and more fundamental. It is what the Founders worried about and Abraham Lincoln warned about: a decline in what they called public virtue. They feared it would be hard to sustain popular support for the revolutionary liberal principles of the Declaration of Independence, and they worried that the virtuous love of liberty and equality would in time give way to narrow, selfish interest. Although James Madison and his colleagues hoped to establish a government on the solid foundation of self-interest, even Madison acknowledged that no government by the people could be sustained if the people themselves did not have sufficient dedication to the liberal ideals of the Declaration. The people had to love liberty, not just for themselves but as an abstract ideal for all humans.

Americans are going down this route today because too many no longer care enough whether the system the Founders created survives and are ceding the ground to those, led by Trump, who actively seek to overthrow what so many of them call “the regime.” This “regime” they are referring to is the unique political system established by the Founders based on the principles of universal equality and natural rights. That, plain and simple, is what this election is about. “A republic if you can keep it,” Benjamin Franklin allegedly said of the government created by the Constitutional Convention in 1787. This is the year we may choose not to keep it.

A healthy republic would not be debating whether Trump and his followers seek the overthrow of the Founders’ system of liberal democracy. What more do people need to see than his well-documented attempt to prevent the peaceful transfer of power with the storming of the U.S. Capitol, the elaborate scheme to create false electoral slates in key states, the clear evidence that he bullied officials in some states to “find” more votes, and to persuade Vice President Mike Pence not to certify the legitimate results? What more do they need to know than that Trump continues to insist he won that election and celebrates as heroes and “patriots” the people who invaded the U.S. Capitol and smashed policemen’s faces with the stated aim of forcing Congress to negate the election results? As one 56-year-old Michigan woman present at the Capitol on Jan. 6 , 2021, explained: “We weren’t there to steal things. We weren’t there to do damage. We were just there to overthrow the government .”

Trump not only acknowledges his goals, past and present; he promises to do it again if he loses this year. For the third straight election, he is claiming that if he loses, then the vote will have been fraudulent. He has warned of uprisings, of “bedlam” and a “bloodbath,” and he has made clear that he will again be the promoter of this violence, just as he was on Jan. 6. Trump explicitly warned in 2020 that he would not accept the election results if he lost, and he didn’t. This year he is saying it again. Were there no other charges against him, no other reason to be concerned about his return to the presidency, this alone would be sufficient to oppose him. He does not respect and has never pledged to abide by the democratic processes established by the Constitution. On the contrary, he has explicitly promised to violate the Constitution when he deems it necessary. That by itself makes him a unique candidate in American history and should be disqualifying.

This kind of open challenge to our democracy was never meant to be addressed by the courts. As the Founders well understood, you don’t serve a subpoena to a would-be tyrant and tell him to lawyer up. Nor was it meant to be addressed by the normal processes of democratic elections. They knew, and feared, that a demagogue could capture the allegiance of enough voters to overthrow the system. That was why they gave Congress, and particularly the Senate, supposedly more immune from popular pressures, the power to impeach and remove presidents and to deny them the opportunity to run again — and not simply because they violated some law but because they posed a clear and present danger to the republic. After Trump’s attempt to overthrow the government in 2020, Congress had a chance to use the method prescribed by the Founders in precisely the circumstances they envisioned. But Senate Republicans, out of a combination of ambition and cowardice, refused to play the vital role the Founders envisioned for them. The result is that the nightmare feared by the Founders is one election away from becoming reality.

The problem with Trump is not that he has some carefully thought-out plan for seizing power, much less an elaborate ideological justification for doing so. (Others do have such plans and such justifications, including many of those who will populate his administration — more on that in a moment.) With Trump, everything is about him and his immediate needs. He will run roughshod over the laws and Constitution simply to get what he wants for himself, his family and his business interests. Americans know that if he is elected, he would abuse the justice system to go after his opponents. They know this because he says so. “I am your retribution!” he declares, and by “your” he means “my.” Americans know he would use his power as president to try to solve his financial problems. He did it as president and is doing it now as a presidential candidate . They know he would not respect the results of fair elections if he loses, which is the very definition of a tyrant.

So, why will so many vote for him anyway? For a significant segment of the Republican electorate, the white-hot core of the Trump movement, it is because they want to see the system overthrown. This should not come as a shock, for it is not a new phenomenon. On the contrary, it is as old as the republic. Historians have written about the “liberal tradition” in America, but there has from the beginning also been an anti-liberal tradition: large numbers of Americans determined to preserve preliberal traditions, hierarchies and beliefs against the secular liberal principles of the Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights. The Founders based the republic on a radical set of principles and assertions about government: that all human beings were created equal in their possession of certain “natural rights” that government was bound to respect and to safeguard. These rights did not derive from religious belief but were “self-evident.” They were not granted by the Christian God, by the crown or even by the Constitution. They were inherent in what it meant to be human.

This is the central tenet of liberalism. Before the American Revolution no government had ever been founded on liberal principles, and the vast majority of human beings had never believed in these natural rights — certainly not the Christian church in either its Protestant or Roman Catholic versions nor Islam nor Judaism nor Hinduism nor Buddhism. People might be equal in the eyes of their god, but no government or religious institution had ever been based on the principle of equal rights. Not even the English system was based on this principle but rather on monarchy, a ruling aristocracy, and a contract between crown and subjects that was modified over the centuries but was not based on the principle of universal “natural” rights.

The Founders knew these ideas were radical, that they were inaugurating, in their own words, a novus ordo seclorum — a new order of the ages — that required a new way of thinking and acting. They knew, as well, that their own practices and those of 18th-century American society did not conform to their new revolutionary doctrines. They knew that slavery was contrary to the Declaration’s principles, though they permitted slavery to continue, hoping it would die a natural death. They knew that established churches were contrary to those principles because they impinged on that most important of rights, “freedom of conscience,” which was vital to the preservation of liberty, yet a number of states in the 18th and 19th centuries retained all kinds of religious tests for office. In short, they knew that a great many Americans did not in fact believe in the liberal principles of the Revolution. As Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, put it, “We have changed our forms of government, but it remains yet to effect a revolution in our principles, opinions and manners so as to accommodate them to the forms of government we have adopted.” They did not insist that citizens believe in those principles. One could be an American citizen whether one believed in the Declaration or not.

And a great many did not. Leaders of the slaveholding South called the Declaration “a most pernicious falsehood.” South Carolina’s John C. Calhoun called the very idea of equal rights a “false doctrine.” They believed in democracy, but only if it was an exclusively White democracy. When democracy turned against them in 1860, they rebelled and sought an exit from the system. That rebellion never ended. It has been weakened, suppressed — sometimes by force — and driven underground, but it has never gone away. Although the South was militarily defeated and deprived of its special advantages in the Constitution, its hostility to the Founders’ liberalism did not abate. As Southern writer W.J. Cash observed in 1941, if the war had “smashed the southern world,” it had nevertheless “left the essential southern mind and will … entirely unshaken” and Southerners themselves determined “to hold fast to their own, to maintain their divergences, to remain what they had been and were.” In 1956, almost a century after the Civil War, a fifth of Congress, almost all Democrats — signed the “Southern Manifesto” calling on states to refuse to obey the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision to end segregation in public schools. Nothing had changed. Are we so surprised that for many Americans, nothing has changed even today?

Nor has anti-liberalism only been about race. For more than a century after the Revolution, many if not most White Anglo-Saxon Protestants insisted that America was a Protestant nation. They did not believe Catholics possessed equal rights or should be treated as equals. The influential “second” Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s was anti-Catholic and anti-Jewish as well as anti-Black, which was why, unlike the original Klan, it flourished outside the South. Many regard today’s Christian nationalism as a fringe movement, but it has been a powerful and often dominant force throughout America’s history.

For two centuries, many White Americans have felt under siege by the Founders’ liberalism. They have been defeated in war and suppressed by threats of force, but more than that, they have been continually oppressed by a system designed by the Founders to preserve and strengthen liberalism against competing beliefs and hierarchies. Since World War II, the courts and the political system have pursued the Founders’ liberal goals with greater and greater fidelity, ending official segregation, driving religion from public schools, recognizing and defending the rights of women and minorities hitherto deprived of their “natural rights” because of religious, racial and ethnic discrimination. The hegemony of liberalism has expanded, just as Lincoln hoped it would, “constantly spreading and deepening its influence, and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people of colors everywhere.” Anti-liberal political scientist Patrick Deneen calls it “liberal totalitarianism,” and, apart from the hyperbole, he is right that liberalism has been steadily deepening and expanding under presidents of both parties since the 1940s.

The fury on the anti-liberal right against what is today called “wokeness” is nothing new. Anti-liberal movements in America, whether in defense of the White race or Christianity, and more often both together, have always claimed to be suffering under the expanding hegemony of liberalism. They have always claimed that a liberal government and society were depriving them of their “freedom” to live a life according to Christian teachings and were favoring various minority groups, especially Black people, at their expense. In the 1970s, influential theologian R.J. Rushdoony complained that the Christian in America had “no right to his identity” but was forced to recognize “all others and their ‘rights.’” And he was correct if a Christian’s “rights” included the right not only to lead a Christian life oneself but to impose that life on the entire society, or if a White person’s “freedom” included the freedom to preserve white primacy in society. In the 19th century, enslavers insisted they were deprived of their “freedom” to hold human beings as property; Southerners in the post-Reconstruction era insisted on their “freedom” to oppress Black citizens in their states.

Today, anti-liberals in American society are indeed deprived of their “freedom” to impose their religious and racial views on society, on public schools, on the public square and on the laws of the nation. What Christian nationalists call “liberal totalitarianism,” the Founders called “freedom of conscience.”

Six decades ago, people like Rushdoony were responding not to “woke” corporations or Black Lives Matter but to civil rights legislation. Today, anti-liberal conservatives complain about school curriculums that acknowledge the racism that has shaped America’s history, but even five decades ago, before the invention of “critical race theory,” anti-liberal White people such as Rushdoony insisted that the “white man” was being “systematically indoctrinated into believing he is guilty of enslaving and abusing the Negro.” Nor is it new that many White people feel that the demands of minority groups for both rights and respect have “gone too far” and it is they, the White people of America, who are suffering the worst discrimination. In the 1960s, surveys taken by the New York Times showed that majorities of White people believed even then that the civil rights movement had “gone too far,” that Blacks were receiving “everything on a silver platter” and the government was practicing “reverse discrimination” against White people. Liberalism is always going too far for many Americans — and certainly for anti-liberals. Anti-liberals these days complain about wokeness, therefore, but it is the liberal system of government bequeathed by the Founders, and the accompanying egalitarian spirit, that they are really objecting to, just as anti-liberals have since the founding of the nation. Many of Trump’s core supporters insist they are patriots, but whether they realize it or not, their allegiance is not to the Founders’ America but to an ethnoreligious definition of the nation that the Founders explicitly rejected.

Some do realize it. The smartest and most honest of them know that if people truly want a “Christian America,” it can only come through “regime change,” by which they mean the “regime” created by the Founders. The Founders’ legacy is a “dead end,” writes Glenn Ellmers, a scholar at the Claremont Institute. The Constitution is a “Potemkin village.” According to Deneen and Harvard Law School’s Adrian Vermeule, the system established by the Founders to protect individual rights needs to be replaced with an alternative form of government. What they have in mind is a Christian commonwealth: a “culture that preserves and encourages order and continuity, and support for religious belief and institutions,” with legislation to “promote public morality, and forbid its intentional corruption,” a “forthright acknowledgment and renewal of the Christian roots of our civilization,” “public opportunities for prayers,” and a “revitalization of our public spaces to reflect a deeper belief that we are called to erect imitations of the beauty that awaits us in another Kingdom.”

These anti-liberal conservatives know that bringing such a commonwealth into being means jettisoning the Founders’ obsession with individual rights. The influential advocate of “conservative nationalism,” Yoram Hazony, wants Americans to abandon the Declaration in favor of a nationhood built on Protestantism and the Bible. America is a “ revolutionary nation ,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) insists, not because of the principles of the Declaration and not even because of the American Revolution itself, but “because we are the heirs of the revolution of the Bible” that began with “the founding of the nation of Israel.” There could hardly be a statement more at odds with the American Founders’ liberal, ecumenical vision.

Expressing a belief in God is no threat to the Founders’ system, but reshaping society in accord with Christian teachings is. To build the nation Hawley and Hazony imagine would require jettisoning not only the Declaration but also the Constitution, which was designed to protect the Declaration’s principles. The Christian commonwealth would not and could not be a democracy because the majority of people can’t be trusted to choose correctly. According to the Claremont Institute’s Ellmers, “most people living in the United States today — certainly more than half — are not Americans in any meaningful sense of the term.” They are a “zombie” or “human rodent” who lives “a shadow-life of timid conformity.” Only “the 75 million people who voted in the last election” for Trump are true Americans. Instead of trying to compete with Democrats in elections that don’t reflect the will of the people, Ellmers writes, “Why not just cut to the chase and skip the empty, meaningless process?” The “only road forward” is “overturning the existing post-American order.”

For these intellectuals, Trump is an imperfect if essential vehicle for the counterrevolution. A “deeply flawed narcissist” suffering from a “bombastic vanity,” as Deneen and Ellmers note, he has “lacked the discipline to target his creative/destructive tendencies effectively.” But this can be remedied. If Trump failed to accomplish the desired overthrow in his first term, Deneen argues, it was because he lacked “a capable leadership class.” Things will be different in his next term. What is needed, according to Deneen, is a “self-conscious aristoi,” a class of thinkers who understand “both the disease afflicting the nation, and the revolutionary medicine required for the cure,” who know how to turn populist “resentments into sustained policy.” Members of Deneen’s would-be new elite will, like Vladimir Lenin, place themselves at the vanguard of a populist revolution, acting “on behalf of the broad working class” while raising the consciousness of the “untutored” masses. Indeed, according to Harvard’s Vermeule, it will be necessary to impose the common good even against the people’s “own perceptions of what is best for them” — a most Leninist concept indeed.

The Christian commonwealth, then, would require a powerful executive freed from the Constitution’s liberal and democratic constraints. The new state, Vermeule wrote, with its “robust executive,” would “sear the liberal faith with hot irons,” wielding the “authority to curb the social and economic pretensions of the urban-gentry liberals.” The whiff of violence and oppression in such statements is intentional. The anti-liberal intellectuals understand that changing the liberal system will require far more than an election and a few legislative reforms.

Deneen and Vermeule are often dismissed as mere intellectual provocateurs, but their writings stand out because they have the courage to acknowledge that what they seek is incompatible with the Founders’ liberal system. While others conceal their views under a phony fidelity to American liberal principles or claim that what they want accords with the Founders’ true intent, Deneen, Vermeule and other anti-liberals acknowledge that the country they want, a country subservient to the Christian God, a country whose laws are based on the Bible, cannot be created absent the overthrow of the Founders’ liberal and defiantly secular system. Even a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, Neil M. Gorsuch, speaks of the “so-called separation of church and state.” Anti-liberalism at the Supreme Court is nothing new, either.

And the anti-liberals know as well that this year may be their last chance to effect their counterrevolution. The percentage of the population made up of White people (let alone White Protestants) is steadily shrinking. Just as the anti-liberal conservatives of the pre-World War II years closed the immigration gates too late and were overwhelmed by a tide of non-Nordic peoples from Southern and Eastern Europe, so the immigration wave of largely non-White people since 1965 has brought the nation to the cusp of a non-White majority. The anti-liberals thus face the task of engineering the revolution with only a minority of the electorate committed to “regime change.”

Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party makes this possible. Trump is not a unique figure in American history. In each generation, anti-liberal forces have turned to the same breed of demagogue, the flouter of norms, the boorish trampler of liberal nostrums. William Buckley noted that the very “uncouthness” of George Wallace seemed to “account for his general popularity.” James Burnham marveled at how Joseph McCarthy’s “inept acts and ignorant words” had a “charismatic” quality that well expressed the fears and angers of his devoted followers.

What their critics saw as boorishness and malevolence, however, their followers saw as strength and defiance against a liberal system stacked against them. They were rebellious opponents of the system, “wreckers,” unabashedly anti-liberal in both thought and manner, and that is precisely what made them popular among a broad swath of White Americans who felt themselves losing ground in the culture and society — to Black people, Catholics, Jews and immigrants from non-Nordic countries. Today, exactly a century after the most overtly racist immigration restriction in American history, Trump once again calls for more immigrants from “nice” European countries, such as Denmark, Switzerland and Norway.

Trump did not just stumble into leadership of this movement of White rebellion. He summoned it. He made his debut as presidential aspirant on an unabashed white supremacist platform, championing the birther conspiracy that America’s first Black president was not in fact an American. Riding that issue alone, he catapulted to the front of the Republican pack, according to polls in 2011, before bowing out to continue his hit show, “The Apprentice.” Whether his debut as a white supremacist was opportunism or sprang from conviction hardly matters — it certainly has not mattered to his followers. The fact is, white supremacy has been his calling card, and millions have responded to it to the point where white nationalists have become the core of his movement. Many Christian nationalists already see him as a suffering Christ, and in this bizarre sense it is true that the prosecutions have “helped” him: The more adversity he faces, the more court battles he must wage, the more allegations that are slung at him, the more devoted they are to him.

No other group can be counted on for such absolute loyalty. While some Republicans wobble when asked if they would support Trump if convicted of a crime, White Christian Evangelicals overwhelmingly say they will support him no matter what. Trump needs that unshakable loyalty because he is fighting for his life. The thought that he might end up in jail has given him every reason to hew as closely as possible to the people who will stick with him even if he is convicted. These are also the people he will need to back him unconditionally in challenging the results of the election should he lose. If he wins, he will need them in what are sure to be titanic fights with Democrats and the legal system and to keep the Republican Party in line.

This is one reason Trump has so far shown no inclination to reach out beyond his base, to Nikki Haley voters, to more moderate suburban Republicans, to those who are made uncomfortable by his statements and actions. He may show flexibility on the important issue of abortion to secure his own election, but since clinching the nomination, he has only hardened his Christian nationalist message. His “poisoning the blood” campaign, his “dictator-for-a-day” comments, his release of the Trump Bible, his claim that, upon taking office, he will create “a new federal task force” to fight “anti-Christian bias to be led by a fully reformed Department of Justice,” are all aimed directly at his white Christian nationalist base without much concern for how millions of other Republican voters feel about it. Christians are “under siege,” he claims in hawking his Bible. “We must make America pray again.”

Besides, his hard tack toward white supremacy and Christian nationalism has cost him little among the broader Republican electorate.

Why not? Why is there so little resistance to Trump even as he commits ever more deeply to a Christian nationalist program for undoing the Founders’ liberal project?

For many, the answer is simply narrow self-interest, either a positive interest in supporting him or a negative interest in not opposing him or being seen to oppose him. This seems to be the answer for corporate America. Having first followed marketing data to appeal to the broadest cross-section of Americans by embracing communities only recently enjoying more of the full panoply of rights, businesses learned the hard way that Trump and his movement will not tolerate this and have mostly retreated to silence and neutrality. But they have also gone further, making clear as much as possible that they will not be a problem for him — either before he is elected or after.

This was the message JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon sent, from Davos, Switzerland, of all places, early this year when he declared that Trump was “kind of right about NATO, kind of right about immigration,” that he “grew the economy quite well.” There is no reason to doubt that he spoke for many of the richest Americans and for other corporate leaders. There was no outcry among them that anyone could hear. The truth is, they have no financial reason to oppose Trump. They know that Trump’s White working-class followers don’t have to be paid off economically because most care chiefly about the culture wars. Trump can still cut taxes and reduce federal regulations and other obstacles to corporate profit. The rich and powerful will always have some purchase in a Trump administration if only because he needs and respects money and will want to make deals for himself and his family, as he did in a first term. Whatever moral or political qualms business leaders may have about Trump, the bottom line dictates that they get along with him, and if that means turning a blind eye to his unconstitutional actions — Dimon’s favorable recounting of Trump’s first term notably ignored his attempt to overthrow the government — then so be it.

We already know that little or no opposition will come from the Republican Party ecosystem. Among elected officials, the few willing to stand up to Trump have either been driven out of the party or are retiring so fast that they cannot even bear to finish out their terms. Those who remain have accepted Trump’s iron rule and therefore now have an interest in his success.

But what about the average Republican voter, the “normal” Republicans who happily voted for George W. Bush, John McCain and Mitt Romney? Do they not see the difference between those Republicans and Trump — or do they not care? They, too, may feel their narrow interests are served by a Trump victory, and although they may not be Christian nationalists themselves, their views as White Americans make them sympathetic to the complaints of the anti-liberals. They, too, may feel they — or their children — are at a disadvantage in a system dedicated to diversity and wokeness. Their annoyance with a liberalism that has “gone too far” makes them susceptible to Trump’s appeal, and, more importantly, unconcerned about the threat he poses. Left to their own devices, they would not be interested in overthrowing the regime. But neither are they inclined to stand in the way of those who are.

Are these voters and GOP power players right to believe that they, like Dimon, will be just fine in a system no longer faithful to the Founders’ liberal ideals? Perhaps so. They will not be the first to suffer from a shift back toward a 1920s America. White Americans tolerated the systematic oppression of Black people for a century after the Civil War. They tolerated violence in the South, injustice in the courtrooms, a Supreme Court that refused to recognize the equal rights of Black people, women and various minorities. Will they rise up against a second Trump term infused by Christian and white nationalism, or will they acquiesce in the gradual dismantling of the liberal gains of the past eight decades?

The shame is that many White people today seem to have conveniently forgotten how much they and their forebears have depended on the Founders’ liberalism to gain their present status as fully equal members of American society and to enjoy the freedoms that they take for granted.

Most White Republicans, after all, do not have the “legacy European” lineage that Tucker Carlson praises. They do not have ancestors who stepped off the Mayflower or fought in the Revolution. The ancestors of the great majority of “White” Americans today were not considered “White” when they first set foot on American shores. Irish Americans may no longer remember that the Thomas Nast cartoons of the late 19th century depicted the Irish as apelike creatures. Many Italian Americans may not recall that a riot made up of “New Orleans’ finest” lynched and murdered 11 Sicilian immigrants and were never charged.

Many Catholics seem to have forgotten that they were once the most despised group in America, such that one of the Founders, John Jay, wanted them excluded from citizenship altogether. Most White Americans were at one time members of despised immigrant groups. They were the victims of the very anti-liberalism they are now voting back into power. They climbed to equality using liberalism as their ladder, and now that they have reached their destination they would pull away the ladder and abandon liberalism. Having obtained their equality using the laws and institutions of liberalism, their passion for liberalism has faded.

The Founders understood, and feared, that the fervor for rights and liberalism that animated the Revolution might not last. Writing in 1781, two years before the end of the war, Thomas Jefferson predicted that once the war ended, “we shall be going down hill.” The people would return to their quotidian lives, forgetting their passionate concern for rights, intent only on “making money.” They might never again come together “to effect a due respect for their rights,” and so their government would stop being solicitous of their rights. Over a half-century later, Lincoln, in his famous Lyceum address, lamented that the original spirit of the Revolution had dissipated with time, leaving Americans with only the normal selfishness of human beings. The original “pillars of the temple of liberty” had “crumbled away.” A little over two decades later, the nation fell into civil war.

If the American system of government fails this year, it will not be because the institutions established by the Founders failed. It will not be because of new technologies or flaws in the Constitution. No system of government can protect against a determined tyrant. Only the people can. This year we will learn if they will.

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