Reckoning with an Unjust Past: a Spoken Word Series by Veronica Wylie

Summary

One Million Black Families in the South Have Lost Their Farms - Equal Justice Initiative

"Black landowners in the South have lost 12 million acres of farmland over the past century—mostly from the 1950s onward. The Atlantic reports that a million Black families have been ripped from their farms in a “war waged by deed of title” and propelled by white racism and local white power.

The dispossession of 98% of Black agricultural landowners in America is part of our history of racial injustice that is hugely important but mostly overlooked.

First, rich farmland in the South, especially along the Mississippi River, was taken from Native Americans by force. It was cleared, irrigated, planted, and reaped by enslaved Africans, who came to own part of it after emancipation.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, there were 25,000 Black farm operators in 1910, an increase of almost 20% from 1900. The Atlantic‘s reporting focuses on Black farmland in Mississippi, which totaled 2.2 million acres in 1910—about 14% of all Black-owned agricultural land in the country, and the most of any state.

Later, through a variety of means—sometimes legal, often coercive, in many cases legal and coercive, occasionally violent—farmland owned by Black people came into the hands of white people. It was aggregated into larger holdings, then aggregated again, eventually attracting the interest of Wall Street.

Starting with New Deal agencies in 1937, federal agencies whose “white administrators often ignored or targeted poor Black people—denying them loans and giving sharecropping work to white people” became “the safety net, price-setter, chief investor, and sole regulator for most of the farm economy in places like the Delta.” As small farms failed, large plantations grew into huge industrial mega-farms with enormous power over agricultural policy.

Illegal pressures applied through USDA loan programs created massive transfers of wealth from Black to white farmers in the period just after the 1950s. Half a million Black-owned farms across the country failed between 1950 and 1975. Black farmers lost about six million acres from 1950 to 1969. Black-owned cotton farms in the South almost completely disappeared, and in Mississippi from 1950 to 1964, Black farmers lost almost 800,000 acres of land, which translates to a financial loss of more than $3.7 billion in today’s dollars, The Atlantic reports.

While most of the Black land loss appears on its face to have been through legal mechanisms—“the tax sale; the partition sale; and the foreclosure”—it mainly stemmed from illegal pressures, including discrimination in federal and state programs, swindles by lawyers and speculators, unlawful denials of private loans, and even outright acts of violence or intimidation.

Discriminatory loan servicing and loan denial by white-controlled, federally funded committees forced Black farmers into foreclosure, and their property was purchased by wealthy white landowners."

Quote

“If you are looking for stolen black land, just follow the lynching trail.” says Ray Winbush, director of Risk University’s Race Relations Institute.

Personal Narratives

"IN THE SPRING OF 2011, the brothers Melvin Davis and Licurtis Reels were the talk of Carteret County, on the central coast of North Carolina. Some people said that the brothers were righteous; others thought that they had lost their minds. That March, Melvin and Licurtis stood in court and refused to leave the land that they had lived on all their lives, a portion of which had, without their knowledge or consent, been sold to developers years before. The brothers were among dozens of Reels family members who considered the land theirs, but Melvin and Licurtis had a particular stake in it. Melvin, who was 64, with loose black curls combed into a ponytail, ran a club there and lived in an apartment above it. He’d established a career shrimping in the river that bordered the land, and his sense of self was tied to the water. Licurtis, who was 53, had spent years building a house near the river’s edge, just steps from his mother’s.

Their great-grandfather had bought the land a hundred years earlier, when he was a generation removed from slavery. The property — 65 marshy acres that ran along Silver Dollar Road, from the woods to the river’s sandy shore — was racked by storms. Some called it the bottom, or the end of the world. Melvin and Licurtis’ grandfather Mitchell Reels was a deacon; he farmed watermelons, beets and peas, and raised chickens and hogs. Churches held tent revivals on the waterfront, and kids played in the river, a prime spot for catching red-tailed shrimp and crabs bigger than shoes. During the later years of racial-segregation laws, the land was home to the only beach in the county that welcomed black families. “It’s our own little black country club,” Melvin and Licurtis’ sister Mamie liked to say. In 1970, when Mitchell died, he had one final wish. “Whatever you do,” he told his family on the night that he passed away, “don’t let the white man have the land.”

Many assume that not having a will keeps land in the family. In reality, it jeopardizes ownership. David Dietrich, a former co-chair of the American Bar Association’s Property Preservation Task Force, has called heirs’ property “the worst problem you never heard of.” The U.S. Department of Agriculture has recognized it as “the leading cause of Black involuntary land loss.” Heirs’ property is estimated to make up more than a third of Southern black-owned land — 3.5 million acres, worth more than $28 billion. These landowners are vulnerable to laws and loopholes that allow speculators and developers to acquire their property. Black families watch as their land is auctioned on courthouse steps or forced into a sale against their will..."

Their Family Bought Land One Generation After Slavery. The Reels Brothers Spent Eight Years in Jail for Refusing to Leave It. (propublica.org)

******************************

“Land speculators ruthlessly exploited tax delinquency laws to defraud and dispossess poor, often elderly African Americans of their property holdings. In one instance, a White speculator befriended Evelina Jenkins, an African American woman who owned an entire island on the South Carolina coast, and convinced her to allow him to handle her financial affairs, including her property taxes. But instead of delivering Jenkins’s property tax payments to the county treasurer’s office, he purposely allowed her property to fall into tax delinquency, whereupon he successfully acquired the lien at the county’s tax auction. Following the close of the redemption period, he obtained the deed and had Jenkins evicted. He subsequently sold the land to a developer. Today, dozens of vacation homes, each worth upwards of $500,000 fill the island Jenkins formerly owned. Jenkins, meanwhile, was forced to move into a trailer home with one of her daughters, where she died penniless at the age of ninety in 1997.” -Andrew W. Kahrl[4]

Methods of Discrimination

• Heir's property legal complications and developer exploitation
  • Many African Americans have died without wills leaving their property equally to all heirs
  • Any heir may force a sale of the rest of the parcels
  • Opportunists may purchase property from a single heir, then force the sale of the rest of the parcels
  • Heir's property owners may not apply for many USDA farming programs; many Black farmers are denied benefits
• Racial discrimination in administration of the Homestead Acts
• KKK and violence leading to loss of land
• Unscrupulous sharecropping contracts
• lack of access to outdoor activities / lack of green and open spaces in majority Black communities

****************************************

“There is this idea that most blacks were lynched because they did something untoward to a young woman. That’s not true. Most black men were lynched between 1890 and 1920 because whites wanted their land.”

- Ray Winbush, the director of the Institute for Urban Research, at Morgan State University

Timelines of Disparity

Timeline: Black Land Loss and Discrimination in Agriculture (arcgis.com)

The number of U.S. black farmers declined by 98 percent between 1920 and 1997[1].

“According to the Census of Agriculture, the racial disparity in farm acreage increased in Mississippi from 1950 to 1964, when Black farmers lost almost 800,000 acres of land. The Atlantic by a research team that included Dania Francis, at the University of Massachusetts, and Darrick Hamilton, at Ohio State, translates this land loss into a financial loss—including both property and income—of $3.7 billion to $6.6 billion in today’s dollars[5].”

**********************

"Black land at Risk:  The U.S. Department of Agriculture has recognized “heirs’ property,” or property that is inherited without use of a will as “the leading cause of Black involuntary land loss.” Heirs’ property is estimated to make up more than a third of Southern black-owned land — 3.5 million acres, worth more than $28 billion. These landowners are vulnerable to laws and loopholes that allow speculators and developers to acquire their property. Black families watch as their land is auctioned on courthouse steps or forced into a sale against their will."[8].

*********************

"Land ownership has always been a means to generate, accumulate and store wealth.

While many white settler families acquired property through government land grants and patents during the colonial era, and later through the Homestead Acts, Black families were largely precluded from accumulating real estate and amassing wealth – whether by legislative policy or through tactics of exploitation, intimidation, and fraud.

Why?  Black landowners were considered more likely to vote, participate in public affairs and thus gain political power."[3]

Articles

[1]How USDA distorted data to conceal decades of discrimination against black farmers | New Food Economy

[2] Historian Plumbs Tax Records for Patterns of Racial Discrimination | UVA Today (virginia.edu)

[3]Project MUSE - The Power to Destroy: Discriminatory Property Assessments and the Struggle for Tax Justice in Mississippi

[4] "Unconscionable: Tax Delinquency Sales as a Form of Dignity Taking" by Andrew W. Kahrl (iit.edu)

[5] The Mississippi Delta’s History of Black Land Theft - The Atlantic

[6]Land and the roots of African-American poverty

[7] What Reparations Could Mean for Black Farmers | Civil Eats

[9]These racist vigilantes inspired the Ku Klux Klan and battled state governments for years | by Matt Reimann

Black farmers continue to battle systemic discrimination | Southern Poverty Law Center

Black Farmers Fear Foreclosure as Debt Relief Remains Frozen - The New York Times

Torn from the Land | The Authentic Voice

Who Owns Almost All America's Land? - Inequality.org

How USDA distorted data to conceal decades of discrimination against black farmers | 

The Truth Behind '40 Acres and a Mule' | African American History Blog

Special Field Orders No. 15 - Wikipedia

How Did African-American Farmers Lose 90 percent of Their Land? - Modern Farmer

Black Lands Matter: The Movement to Transform Heirs’ Property Laws | The Nation

Their Family Bought Land One Generation After Slavery. The Reels Brothers Spent Eight Years in Jail for Refusing to Leave It.

Farm Groups See Racism in Agriculture and Promise to Seek Change | Bloomberg Government

Adverse Racial and Community Impacts of Heirs’ Property Title Problems - Non Profit News

Jillian Hishaw Wants to Help Black Farmers Stay on Their Land | Civil Eats

The Homestead Act and the exodusters (article)

The Mississippi Delta’s History of Black Land Theft

The Promised Land: Plantation turned beloved black community

Opinion | Stalled US Debt Relief Is the Latest Setback to Black Farmers | Elisha Brown

Books

Exodusters: Black Migration to Kansas After Reconstruction by Nell Irvin Painter

Heirs' Property in the African American Community by Anderson Jones

Farming While Black: Soul Fire Farm's Practical Guide to Liberation on the Land by Leah Penniman

We Are Each Other's Harvest: Celebrating African American Farmers, Land, and Legacy by Natalie Baszile (goodreads.com)

Podcasts

1619 Episode 5: The Land of Our Fathers, Part 1 - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

1619 Episode 5: The Land of Our Fathers, Part 2 - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

Losing ground | Reveal (revealnews.org)

Sustained - Land Theft in the American Heartland

Fighting for the Promised Land: A Story of Farming and Racism | Southern Foodways Alliance

How southern black farmers were forced from their land, and their heritage

How Black Farmers Lost 14 Million Acres of Farmland — And How They're Taking It Back

Film/Video

How Property Law Is Used to Appropriate Black Land

Housing Discrimination: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

The Biggest Problem You've Never Heard Of - Examining Heirs Property and Black Property Loss

Voices of the Civil War Episode 36: "Special Field Orders, No. 15"

How Black Americans Were Robbed of Their Land

How black farmers were forced from their land

Disrupt and Dismantle | Season 1 | Episode 3 | The Battle for Black Land

Websites

Arphax - Family Maps and Texas Land Survey Maps - Genealogy History

More

See additional sections Housing and Banking/Credit for related information.

Questions for Research and Reflection:

Which myths based in white supremacy culture did you grow up with?

• My ancestors worked hard to buy our land; we received no handouts from the government
• If Black people lost their land, it must be because they didn't work hard enough to keep it.

Ask older relatives or research on your own:

• Who were the first members of your family to own property?  If you research your ancestors through census documents, did they rent or own?  What year did they first acquire land?
• Did your ancestors receive any land grants?  Is the land still in the family?  What Native American tribes lived on the land before your ancestors were granted the land?
• Did your ancestors use wills and trusts to pass down inherited land to the next generation?  What would have happened to that land if they had not had wills?
• In what ways do Heir's Property laws allow white developers and others to seize Black-owned land?
• How might the 1829 law forbidding enslaved people to learn to read or write impact future land acquisition and ownership?
• What are the tactics white people have historically used to drive Black people from their land?  Create a list. Might your ancestors have acquired property by seizing Native American or Black owned lands?  Why or why not?
• If Special Field Order 15 had not been rescinded, what would the median net worth of the descendants of Black families look like now?

Reckoning with an Unjust Past: a Spoken Word Series by Veronica Wylie

Summary

A VERY BRIEF HISTORY OF HOUSING POLICY AND RACIAL DISCRIMINATION (R.B. Drew)

Pre-20^th Century Land and Housing Policies

Land ownership has always been restricted in the United States, even before it was an independent nation. Early European colonists claimed land from Native tribes and forced Native populations to live in designated districts separate from colonial settlements. As these settlements grew, colonial governments appropriated more territory from Native populations and limited their rights to own and sell property. In 1763 the British government offered some protection to Native lands west of the Appalachian Mountains, though following the American Revolution the new U.S. government invalidated the prior agreement and seized lands from Native tribes that had fought against the colonists.

Through the first half of the 19^th century, as the United States continued its westward expansion and appropriation of even more Native lands, additional restrictions were placed on who could own property. Discrimination by race, as well as by religion and country of origin, was rampant, permitted by policies that either actively encouraged or did little to prevent it. In some states, free Black men were forbidden from purchasing land, and courts routinely invalidated gifts and other transfers of property to Black people. Even outside of slave-holding jurisdictions, opportunities for land ownership were often limited, either by direct law or the failure to regulate discriminatory practices against people of color.

Policies in the post-Civil War period continued to limit BIPOC property ownership. Prohibitions on Black land acquisitions increased following Emancipation in former slave-holding states, while exploitive practices like sharecropping entrenched existing racial power inequities. Elsewhere, socially, economically, and legally enforced residential segregation further prevented BIPOC from accessing housing and wealth-building opportunities. For example, Asian laborers brought to the U.S. in the late 19^th century were often forced to live in ethnic enclaves and could not acquire property outside these designated districts, some of which evolved into the iconic Chinatown neighborhoods popular with tourists today.

A Very Brief History of Housing Policy and Racial Discrimination | Enterprise Community Partners

Personal Narratives

In 1954, Andrew Wade – an African American electrical contractor and Korean War veteran – wanted to purchase a house. A friend…suggested he look at a middle-class white neighborhood. The Wades found a property in Shively, an all-white suburb.

When the Wades and their child were moving in, a crowd gathered in front and a cross was burned on an empty lot next door. On the first evening…a rock crashed through the front window with a message tied to it: “Nigger Get Out,” and later that night ten rifle shots were fired through the glass of the kitchen door.

Under the watch of a police guard, demonstrations continued for a month until the house was dynamited.

Methods of Discrimination

Timelines of Disparity

Full timeline of racial disparities in housing

1934

Federal Housing Administration (FHA) is created to boost home ownership during The Great Depression. The FHA insures home mortgages, but only for houses in white neighborhoods. This leads to the industry standard practice of redlining, which systematically withholds credit from homebuyers in black neighborhoods.

1938

Congress creates the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) to boost homeownership levels by making low-cost loans widely available. Only two percent of the $120 billion in new housing subsidized by the federal government between 1934 and 1962 goes to nonwhites.

1945

Though the GI Bill guaranteed low-interest mortgages and other loans, they were not administered by the VA itself. Thus, the VA could cosign, but not actually guarantee the loans. This gave white-run financial institutions free reign to refuse mortgages and loans to Black military members.

1968

Senators Walter Mondale (MN) and Edward Brooke (MA), then the only African-American member of the Senate, submit the Fair Housing Act of 1968 (S. 1358) for inclusion as an amendment within the Civil Rights Act of 1968 (H.R. 2516) a larger civil rights bill to protect civil rights workers.

2007

The subprime crisis reaches a peak. An epidemic of irresponsible mortgage lending driven by the high demand for mortgage-backed securities by institutional investors leads to a severe nationwide recession and nearly 10 million Americans losing their homes. Latinos and blacks experience nearly three times more foreclosure than whites, and decades of progress in their rate of homeownership is wiped out.

Metrics

• Breaking Down the Black-White Homeownership Gap | Urban Institute
• Income differences: 31% of the gap
• Differences in marital status: 27% of the gap
• Credit score differences: 22% of the gap
• Differences in educational attainment do not contribute to the gap
• 17% of the gap remains unexplained

Articles

[10] Public Housing: Government-Sponsored Segregation - The American Prospect

[11] Redlining was banned 50 years ago. It’s still hurting minorities today. - The Washington Post

Navy Federal Credit Union rejected more than half its Black conventional mortgage applicants last year | CNN Business

A Black Appraisal Tax: Million Dollar Mansions In Mostly Black Prince George’s County Aren’t Going Up (moguldom.com)

West Hollywood City Council Approves Measure to Confirm Policies Were Put In Place to Reduce Black Homeownership Over Several Generations (yahoo.com)

Breaking Down the Black-White Homeownership Gap | Urban Institute

Mapping Prejudice (umn.edu)

Blockbusting (Wikipedia)

Blockbusting and racial turnover in midcentury DC on JSTOR

A Very Brief History of Housing Policy and Racial Discrimination | Enterprise Community Partners

What are Covenants?

Documenting Racially Restrictive Covenants in 20th Century Philadelphia on JSTOR

How the Real Estate Boom Left Black Neighborhoods Behind - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

Racial Disparities in Home Appreciation (M. Zonta)

New Evidence on Redlining by Federal Housing Programs in the 1930s | NBER

Home Appraisals More Likely To Be Lower in Black, Latino Areas Than White Ones : NPR

Detroit overtaxed homeowners $600M. They're still seeking compensation (freep.com)

Historian Says Don't 'Sanitize' How Our Government Created Ghettos : NPR

The Assessment Gap: Racial Inequalities in Property Taxation - Equitable Growth

Black Homeowners Pay More Than 'Fair Share' in Property Taxes | The Pew Charitable Trusts

Study of property taxes nationwide finds racial inequalities

Racists Deeds and Covenants (N. Watt, J. Hannah)

Remembering the Wades, the Bradens and the Struggle for Racial Integration in Louisville (R. Howlett)

Public Housing: Government-Sponsored Segregation (R. Rothstein)

How the GI Bill's Promise Was Denied to a Million Black WWII Veterans

Race for profit: Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor on housing discrimination in America - Vox

Inheritance, not work, has become the main route to middle-class home ownership | Lisa Adkins and Martijn Konings | The Guardian

Mapping Prejudice (umn.edu)

Redlining: Mapping Inequality in Dayton & Springfield - ThinkTV

Books

1.Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership (Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor)

2.The Color of Law (Richard Rothstein) [9]

3.Segregation by Design (Jessica Trounstine)

4.How the GI Bill's Promise Was Denied to a Million Black WWII Veterans

Not in My Neighborhood: How Bigotry Shaped a Great American City by Antero Pietila

Podcasts

VIDEO: Housing Segregation In Everything : Code Switch : NPR

Stuff You Should Know: How Housing Discrimination Works

Racial covenants, still on the books in virtually every state, are hard to erase : NPR

Websites

Mapping Prejudice (umn.edu)

Film/Video

Race for Profit (Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor)

The Color of Law (Richard Rothstein)

How Redlining Shaped Black America As We Know It | Unpack That

Redlining and Racial Covenants: Jim Crow of the North

GOOD WHITE PEOPLE: A Short Film About Gentrification

Russell City Blues

Questions for Research and Reflection:

Which myths based in white supremacy culture did you grow up with?

• If you just work hard enough, anyone can buy a house.
• Segregation just happened; it reflects people’s natural choices to be apart.
• Housing laws are applied fairly to everyone; racism can’t be a factor.
• Redlining happened in the past
• Black people just don’t want to live here, that’s all.
• Why do Black families default on their home loans? They’re just bad with money, I guess

Ask older relatives or research on your own:

• When did your family first acquire a home?
• How was it acquired? Where?
• How easy was it to get a loan?
• Did your family receive GI Bill veteran's benefits to buy a home?
• How many Black families lived in your neighborhood growing up?
• Research redlining practices in your hometown – how does your neighborhood rate?
• How does housing figure into your family’s net worth?
• Have ancestral homes been passed down through generations?  What is the value of wealth that has been passed down?
• What zoning codes in your neighborhood affect whether people of color live there?
• Are their any Black families living on your block?  How well do you know them?

Reckoning with an Unjust Past: a Spoken Word Series by Veronica Wylie

Summary

While education is seen as key to social mobility, black people have faced significant barriers to academic success.   While the Boston Latin School, the first school for whites, was established in 1635, public schools for Black children were not established until the mid-1800s.  Colonists and slaveholders relied on ignorance and lack of literacy among enslaved people as a means of establishing and maintaining economic, political and social advantage.  Basic information, literacy training, skill-sharing, and later pre-school education was accomplished through membership in Black churches and faith organizations. 

Unequal Opportunity: Race and Education

"W.E.B. DuBois was right about the problem of the 21st century. The color line divides us still. In recent years, the most visible evidence of this in the public policy arena has been the persistent attack on affirmative action in higher education and employment. From the perspective of many Americans who believe that the vestiges of discrimination have disappeared, affirmative action now provides an unfair advantage to minorities. From the perspective of others who daily experience the consequences of ongoing discrimination, affirmative action is needed to protect opportunities likely to evaporate if an affirmative obligation to act fairly does not exist. And for Americans of all backgrounds, the allocation of opportunity in a society that is becoming ever more dependent on knowledge and education is a source of great anxiety and concern.

At the center of these debates are interpretations of the gaps in educational achievement between white and non-Asian minority students as measured by standardized test scores. The presumption that guides much of the conversation is that equal opportunity now exists; therefore, continued low levels of achievement on the part of minority students must be a function of genes, culture, or a lack of effort and will (see, for example, Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray’s The Bell Curve and Stephan and Abigail Thernstrom’s America in Black and White).

The assumptions that undergird this debate miss an important reality: educational outcomes for minority children are much more a function of their unequal access to key educational resources, including skilled teachers and quality curriculum, than they are a function of race. In fact, the U.S. educational system is one of the most unequal in the industrialized world, and students routinely receive dramatically different learning opportunities based on their social status. In contrast to European and Asian nations that fund schools centrally and equally, the wealthiest 10 percent of U.S. school districts spend nearly 10 times more than the poorest 10 percent, and spending ratios of 3 to 1 are common within states. Despite stark differences in funding, teacher quality, curriculum, and class sizes, the prevailing view is that if students do not achieve, it is their own fault. If we are ever to get beyond the problem of the color line, we must confront and address these inequalities."[7]

*******************************************

“Children coming to school in poor health or with unstable housing are absent more frequently and cannot benefit from good instruction. Children who walk (or ride) to school through violent neighborhoods, or who return to these neighborhoods after school, are stressed and less able to focus on studies. Children with more frequently unemployed parents suffer from insecurity that affects learning[1].”

Personal Narratives

Beth Patin of New York

My name is Beth Patin. I went to a boarding school for high school in Alabama. To raise money for prom and different dances and things, our school would have slave auctions. Folks were allowed to raffle themselves off and stand up in front of everybody on an auction block. And if you bid the most money, then you got to keep that person for an entire day and make them do whatever you wanted. It really bothered me. I went to talk to the headmaster and they really weren't willing to change things, but they eventually changed the name to serf sales, I think by the time I had graduated.

I mean, it certainly makes you feel emotionally vulnerable and a little bit unsafe. When I think back to all the things my family had to endure to be able to just attend schools; my grandfather had to sue the board of education in order to desegregate schools in the state of Alabama. So access to education is something that I've learned to really appreciate and to have gotten all the way to the '90s, 30 years after my father desegregated schools, it makes you feel like you still don't belong there. We've had 30 years of participation, but it still is not a place that is safe for me.

How Racism Has Manifested Itself In Schools, As Recalled By Listeners : NPR

Methods of Discrimination

• Inequality of Property Taxation for Education
• School District Resistance to Desegregation
• Unequal Access to Preschool Programs
• Unequal learning facilities
• Lack of adequate educational materials, textbooks and supplies
• Lack of Black educators / dismissal of Black educators
• Salary disparities among Black educators
• Systemic Bias by Teachers
• Lack of support for development of culturally appropriate curricula
• Racial disparities in discipline
• Racist acts by teachers, administrators, staff and students
• Gentrification of schools
• Legacy Admissions “An analysis commissioned by Students For Fair Admissions found legacy applicants were accepted at a rate of nearly 34 percent from 2009 to 2015. According to the report, that's more than five times higher than the rate for non-legacies over the same six-year period: just 5.9 percent[2].”
• Unequal Access to Scholarships
• Unequal Access to Student Loans

Timelines of Disparity

1865

Federal law prohibited enslaved Africans from learning to read or write [5] After emancipation, schools were established, but education was not equally funded.  

1896

Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court that upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation laws for public facilities as long as the segregated facilities were equal in quality,^[2] a doctrine that came to be known as "separate but equal." The decision legitimated the many state laws re-establishing racial segregation that had been passed in the American South after the end of the Reconstruction Era (1865–1877).[6]

1945

The G.I. Bill created educational opportunities for veterans returning from WWII.  Black veterans were excluded from many of the benefits white veterans enjoyed. (4)

1980

African American students are more isolated than they were 40 years ago[1]

Metrics

K-12 Disparity Facts and Statistics - UNCF

STATISTIC #1:

African American students are less likely than white students to have access to college-ready courses. In fact, in 2011-12, only 57 percent of black students have access to a full range of math and science courses necessary for college readiness, compared to with 81 percent of Asian American students and 71 percent of white students.

Learn more in these sources:

• College Preparation for African American Students: Gaps in the High School Educational Experience
• U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights Data Snapshot: College and Career Readiness

STATISTIC #2:

Even when black students do have access to honors or advanced placement courses, they are vastly underrepresented in these courses. Black and Latino students represent 38 percent of students in schools that offer AP courses, but only 29 percent of students enrolled in at least one AP course. Black and Latino students also have less access to gifted and talented education programs than white students.

Learn more:

• U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights Data Snapshot: College and Career Readiness
• U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights 2013-14 Civil Rights Data Collection “A First Look”

STATISTIC #3:

African American students are often located in schools with less qualified teachers, teachers with lower salaries and novice teachers.

Learn more:

• U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights Data Snapshot: Teacher Equity
• U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights 2013-14 Civil Rights Data Collection “A First Look”

STATISTIC #4:

Research has shown evidence of systematic bias in teacher expectations for African American students and non-black teachers were found to have lower expectations of black students than black teachers.

Learn more:

• Who Believes in Me? The Effect of Student-Teacher Demographic Match on Teacher Expectations

STATISTIC #5:

African American students are less likely to be college-ready. In fact, 61 percent of ACT-tested black students in the 2015 high school graduating class met none of the four ACT college readiness benchmarks, nearly twice the 31 percent rate for all students.

Learn more:

• The Condition of College and Career Readiness 2015: African American Students (a joint ACT-UNCF report)

STATISTIC #6:

Black students spend less time in the classroom due to discipline, which further hinders their access to a quality education. Black students are nearly two times as likely to be suspended without educational services as white students. Black students are also 3.8 times as likely to receive one or more out-of-school suspensions as white students. In addition, black children represent 19 percent of the nation’s pre-school population, yet 47 percent of those receiving more than one out-of-school suspension. In comparison, white students represent 41 percent of pre-school enrollment but only 28 percent of those receiving more than one out-of-school suspension. Even more troubling, black students are 2.3 times as likely to receive a referral to law enforcement or be subject to a school-related arrest as white students.

Learn more:

• U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights Data Snapshot: School Discipline 

STATISTIC #7:

Students of color are often concentrated in schools with fewer resources. Schools with 90 percent or more students of color spend $733 less per student per year than schools with 90 percent or more white students.

Learn more:

• Unequal Education: Federal Loophole Enables Lower Spending on Students of Color

STATISTIC #8:

According to the Office for Civil Rights, 1.6 million students attend a school with a sworn law enforcement officers (SLEO), but not a school counselor. In fact, the national student-to-counselor ratio is 491-to-1, however the American School Counselor Association recommends a ratio of 250-to-1.

Learn More:

• American School Counselor Association
• U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights 2013-14 Civil Rights Data Collection “A First Look”

STATISTIC #9:

In 2015, the average reading score for white students on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) 4th and 8th grade exam was 26 points higher than black students. Similar gaps are apparent in math. The 12th grade assessment also show alarming disparities as well, with only seven percent of black students performing at or above proficient on the math exam in 2015, compared to 32 percent white students.

Learn More:

• The Nation’s Report Card: 2015 NAEP Mathematics & Reading Assessments

There is a clear lack of black representation in school personnel.  According to a 2016 Department of Education report, in 2011-12, only 10 percent of public school principals were black, compared to 80 percent white. Eighty-two percent of public school educators are white, compared to 18 percent teachers of color. In addition, black male teachers only constitute two percent of the teaching workforce.

Learn More:

• U.S. Department of Education: The State of Racial Diversity in the Workforce

Articles

[1] For Public Schools, Segregation Then, Segregation Since: Education and the Unfinished March (R. Rothstein)

[2] Legacy Admissions Offer An Advantage - And Not Just At Schools Like Harvard (M. Larkin, M. Aina)

[4] How the GI Bill's Promise Was Denied to a Million Black WWII Veterans

[5] Anti-literacy laws in the United States - Wikipedia

[6] Plessy v. Ferguson - Wikipedia

[7] Unequal Opportunity: Race and Education

The Neglected College Race Gap: Racial Disparities Among College Completers - Center for American Progress

Most teachers are white. Most students aren't.

The benefit of expanding funding for historically Black colleges and universities - The Washington Post

K-12 Disparity Facts and Statistics | UNCF

Black students need changes to policies and structures beyond higher education (insidehighered.com)

Opinion | Virginia is proof that reparations for slavery can work - The Washington Post

How America's student-debt crisis impacts Black borrowers (businessinsider.com)

The Continued Student Loan Crisis for Black Borrowers - Center for American Progress

U.S. Education: Still Separate and Unequal | Data Mine | US News

Why America's Public Schools Are So Unequal - The Atlantic

California reparations task force links slavery to segregated schools (msnbc.com)

Schools are still segregated, and black children are paying a price | Economic Policy Institute (epi.org)

What the New Integrationists Fail to See | Black-Only Schools (city-journal.org)

The Segregation of Topeka's Public School System, 1879-1951 - Brown v. Board of Educatio

Jim Crow's Schools | American Federation of Teachers (aft.org)

65 Years After 'Brown v. Board,' Where Are All the Black Educators? (edweek.org)

How White Progressives Undermine School Integration - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

The Continued Student Loan Crisis for Black Borrowers - Center for American Progress

School History – Sumner Academy of Arts and Science (kckps.org)

Unequal Opportunity: Race and Education (brookings.edu)

Black women are more burdened by student loan debt. Senator Warren says cancellation could solve it

Books

The Road to Healing: A Civil Rights Reparations Story in Prince Edward County, Virginia by Ken Woodley

Cutting School: Privatization, Segregation, and the End of Public Education by Noliwe Rooks

Affirmative Action for the Rich: Legacy Preferences in College Admissions by Richard D. Kahlenberg

A Framework of Implicit Bias in Education: Includes classroom management tips & Strategies for culturally relevant lesson planning. by Bryant Wilson

Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America's Struggle for Equality by Richard Kluger

Silent Covenants: Brown v. Board of Education and the Unfulfilled Hopes for Racial Reform by Derrick A. Bell

The Student Loan Scam: The Most Oppressive Debt in U.S. History and How We Can Fight Back by Alan Michael Collinge

Courageous Conversations about Race: A Field Guide for Achieving Equity in Schools by Glenn E. Singleton

The Lost Education of Horace Tate | The New Press

Jim Crow's Pink Slip: The Untold Story of Black Principal and Teacher Leadership by Leslie T. Fenwick

Podcasts

Introducing: Nice White Parents - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

Speaking of Psychology: Understanding racial inequities in school discipline

Heinemann Podcast: Beyond Quick Fixes to Racial Injustice in Education

What Makes Us Human Podcast | The College of Arts & Sciences (cornell.edu)

Episode 120: How One District Learned to Talk About Race | Cult of Pedagogy

Film/Video

Legacy Admissions Favor The Rich And Wealthy

'Gaming The System'?: Here's How Legacy Plays A Major Role In College Admissions

How America's public schools keep kids in poverty | Kandice Sumner

How Black High School Students Are Hurt by Modern-Day Segregation | NowThis

Education gap: The root of inequality

The Pandemic of Black Student Loan Debt

(Re)Thinking Black Student Debt

Jane Elliott “Blue Eyes - Brown Eyes” Experiment Anti-Racism

Questions for Research and Reflection:

Which myths based in white supremacy culture did you grow up with?

• white children are naturally more intelligent than Black children
• Each student has an equal chance at success
• What’s good for my child is good for all children
• That neighborhood's school is no good because the residents don't care about education
• Taking my child out of public school does not affect students of color in our area.

Ask older relatives or research on your own:

• How did integration affect the quality of education Black students received? White students?
• How many family members attended private schools versus public? When did they start going to private school? Why?
• How did your parents’/guardians’ work schedules affect your ability to have assistance with your homework and school projects after school?
• Were you pushed/encouraged to go to community college instead of a four year university?
• Who carried/carries the financial burden of your higher education? Did multiple members of your family contribute to the cost?
• Did returning WWII veterans in your family take advantage of the GI Bill’s education benefits?
• What colleges did they attend?
• How did attending college funded by the GI Bill affect your family’s financial prospects?
• Where did you attend grade school? Were you bussed?
• Where did you attend college? How has it affected your net worth? How much college debt did you take on?
• Ask a Black colleague about their family’s experience with education: GI Bill, college attendance, student debt levels, bussing, affect on net worth.
• To what do you attribute the differences?

Reckoning with an Unjust Past: a Spoken Word Series by Veronica Wylie

Summary

Business Case for Racial Equity - July 2018

The United States economy could be $8 trillion larger by 2050 if the country eliminated racial disparities in health, education, incarceration and employment, according to "The Business Case for Racial Equity: A Strategy for Growth." The gains would be equivalent to a continuous boost in GDP growth of 0.5 percent per year, increasing the competitiveness of the country for decades to come. The national study released today by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation (WKKF) and Altarum concludes that while racial inequities needlessly stifle economic growth, there is a path forward.

The report projects a tremendous boost to the country's workforce and consumer spending when organizations take the necessary steps to advance racial equity. Led by Ani Turner, co-director of Sustainable Health Spending Strategies at Altarum, researchers analyzed data from public and private sources, including the U.S. Census, Johns Hopkins University, Georgetown University, Brandeis University and Harvard University. 

************************

Personal Narratives

Methods of Discrimination

Even having a “Black” sounding name can results in discrimination

• With all other aspects controlled, field research conducted in Chicago in 2003 revealed that white names yields as many more callbacks as an additional eight years of experience. The callback gap for the same resume with different names is 50%[3].

Having a Black sounding voice can result in discrimination

• Linguistics professor John Baugh found that people who sounded “white” in answering job advertisements were more likely to be told that the job was still available[4].

A study conducted in 2003 by Devah Pager of Northwestern University focuses on the relationship between incarceration and employment using matched pairs of people applying for the same jobs. She found that:

1.Employers are more likely to consider white candidates with criminal records than black candidates with no such history[e].

2.the effect of a criminal record is 40% greater for blacks than for whites. The ratio of callbacks for nonoffenders relative to ex-offenders for whites is 2:1, this same ratio for blacks is nearly 3:1.

The NBER paper, coauthored by Costas Cavounidis and Kevin Lang, of Boston University, attempts to demonstrate how discrimination factors into company decisions, and creates a feedback loop, resulting in racial gaps in the labor force[5].

1. Hiring discrimination can lead to more consistent or prolonged unemployment for Black people.

2. Gaps in employment enforce the prejudiced assumption that Black workers are less skilled

3. Employers are less likely to hire unskilled workers or treat them with skepticism  if hired.

4. Black workers are more scrutinized (policed) than their white colleagues

5. Because black workers are more closely scrutinized, it increases the chances that errors will be caught

6. When black employees do err, they are more likely than their white colleagues to be let go. 

7. This leads to more unemployment

US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was created as a part of the Civil Rights  Act to investigate workers’ complaints of job discrimination.

1.“The EEOC is weak by design. When the EEOC was created under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, it was initially given few tools to enforce the law. It could investigate complaints, try to mediate between companies and employees, and recommend cases to the US attorney general for litigation, but it couldn’t sue or issue cease-and-desist orders. If an employer didn’t want to follow the law, there was little the agency could do about it[6].”

2.“Just over a quarter of all EEOC complaints came from black employees alleging racial discrimination[6].”

3.“Each year, the EEOC and its state and local partner agencies close more than 100,000 cases — but workers receive some form of assistance, such as money or a change in work conditions, only 18 percent of the time[6].”

4.“Almost 40 percent of people who filed complaints with the EEOC and partner agencies from 2010 through 2017 reported retaliation[6].”

Metrics

“After controlling for age, gender, education, and region, black workers are paid 14.9% less than white workers[1]. Black women are paid 39% less or 61 cents for every dollar that a white man makes [2].”

Among college graduates the Black unemployment rate averaged 2.8 percent from November 2018 to October 2019, 40 percent higher than the 2 percent rate for white college graduates in the same period[2].

Articles

[1] Black-white wage gaps are worse today than in 2000 (E. Gould)

[2] African Americans Face Systematic Obstacles to Getting Good Jobs (C. Weller)

[3] Are Emily And Greg More Employable Than Lakisha And Jamal? A Field Experiment On Labor Market Discrimination

[4] New research finds we're terrible at guessing someone's race over the phone - here's why that matters (M. Torres)

[5] Black Workers Really Do Need to Be Twice as Good (G. White)

[6] Workplace discrimination is illegal. But our data shows it's still a huge problem (J. M. Jameel)

What you probably didn’t know about racism in the workplace - Journal of Accountancy

“Is This Because I’m Black?”: A Story of Racial Discrimination

The Costs of Code-Switching in the Workplace

Code-Switching at Work Is Taking a Psychological Toll on Black Professionals

Study Highlights ‘The Costs of Code-Switching’ in the Workplace

Books

Race, Gender, And Discrimination At Work by Samuel Cohn

Discrimination and Disadvantage in Employment: The Experience of Black Workers: A Reader by Peter Braham

Podcasts

TruthWorks Network Radio - Working While BLACK l TruthWorks Network l Racial Bullying

How Does Race Affect Your Workplace? (hbr.org)

Podcast episode 14:Race, jobs, and the American postsecondary system (luminafoundation.org)

Protesting Her Own Employer - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

Film/Video

Racial Discrimination in the Workplace

Black Americans in the Workplace | The Daily Social Distancing Show

How These Women Got Hair Discrimination Outlawed in NYC | NowThis

Discrimination in the workplace: Creating opportunities for black female professionals at work

Discrimination in America: African American Experiences

Race Bias in Hiring: When Both Applicant and Employer Lose (Podcast)

Questions for Research and Reflection:

What myths based in white supremacy culture did you grow up with?

• Everyone has an equal chance at a job
• If "they" just looked more professional, they would have a better chance getting that job
• Affirmative action has taken care of racial discrimination
• My work environment is all white because there are no qualified people of color in my industry
• Everyone is getting paid the same at work!

Ask older relatives and research on your own:

• Did your older relatives work with Black colleagues? How were they treated?
• Ask a Black colleague about their family’s experience in the workplace: how would they compare their experiences compared with white colleagues with similar educational backgrounds?
• To what do you attribute the differences?

Reckoning with an Unjust Past: a Spoken Word Series by Veronica Wylie

Summary

Personal Narratives

Henrietta Lacks: science must right a historical wrong

"Last month marked 100 years since Lacks’s birth. She died in 1951, aged 31, of an aggressive cervical cancer. Months earlier, doctors at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, had taken samples of her cancerous cells while diagnosing and treating the disease. They gave some of that tissue to a researcher without Lacks’s knowledge or consent. In the laboratory, her cells turned out to have an extraordinary capacity to survive and reproduce; they were, in essence, immortal. The researcher shared them widely with other scientists, and they became a workhorse of biological research. Today, work done with HeLa cells underpins much of modern medicine; they have been involved in key discoveries in many fields, including cancer, immunology and infectious disease. One of their most recent applications has been in research for vaccines against COVID-19.

But the story of Henrietta Lacks also illustrates the racial inequities that are embedded in the US research and health-care systems. Lacks was a Black woman. The hospital where her cells were collected was one of only a few that provided medical care to Black people. None of the biotechnology or other companies that profited from her cells passed any money back to her family. And, for decades after her death, doctors and scientists repeatedly failed to ask her family for consent as they revealed Lacks’s name publicly, gave her medical records to the media, and even published her cells’ genome online..."[4]

[4] Henrietta Lacks: science must right a historical wrong

*********************

Racism and discrimination in health care: Providers and patients

"A patient of mine recently shared a story with me about her visit to an area emergency room a few years ago.* She had a painful medical condition. The emergency room staff not only did not treat her pain, but she recounted: “They treated me like I was trying to play them, like I was just trying to get pain meds out of them. They didn’t try to make any diagnosis or help me at all. They couldn’t get rid of me fast enough.”

There was nothing in her history to suggest that she was pain medication seeking. She is a middle-aged, churchgoing lady who has never had issues with substance abuse. Eventually, she received a diagnosis and appropriate care somewhere else. She is convinced that she was treated poorly by that emergency room because she is black.

And she was probably right. It is well-established that blacks and other minority groups in the U.S. experience more illness, worse outcomes, and premature death compared with whites.^1,2 These health disparities were first “officially” noted back in the 1980s, and though a concerted effort by government agencies resulted in some improvement, the most recent report shows ongoing differences by race and ethnicity for all measures." [5]

[5]Racism and discrimination in health care: Providers and patients - Harvard Health Blog - Harvard Health Publishing

Methods of Discrimination

Medical Experimentation, without anesthesia, during slavery-era

Rape, forced pregnancy

Medical Bias

Unequal Access to Care

Unequal Access to Medical Industry Jobs

Unequal Quality of Care

Unequal access to pain medications; assumptions that African Americans have a higher tolerance for pain.

Lack of medical protocols for African American populations 

Unauthorized Use of Genetic Material

Forced Sterilization

Timelines of Disparity

150 Years Ago

Medical experiments were conducted on enslaved Africans, including gynecological procedures, and forced sterilization.

50 Years Ago

The Tuskeegee syphilis medical torture

In 2012 Researchers at University of California Santa Barbara  ran an experiment to test the link between the anticipation of prejudice and increased psychological and cardiovascular stress.

 “When Latina participants thought they were interacting with a racist white partner, they had higher blood pressure, a faster heart rate, and shorter pre-ejection periods. What this shows is an increased sympathetic response, or what is often called the "fight or flight response." Merely the anticipation of racism, and not necessarily the act, is enough to trigger a stress response. And this study only involved a three-minute speech[2].”

Metrics

Blacks people suffer a disproportionate burden of illness and chronic disease with worse outcomes than Whites. Blacks’ mortality rates are about 20% higher than those of Whites, resulting in a 4-year lower life expectancy.

• When Black people have access to medical institutions they receive poorer quality care than their white counterparts even when other factors like income are controlled.

Black children who lose a finger are half as likely as White children to have the finger reattached.

Blacks with peripheral arterial disease were 77% more likely than Whites to have the affected limb amputated; this disparity was greatest in the best-resourced medical facilities.

• Racial biases play a role in these health care disparities.
• Bias even exist in the technology developed by white people.

Hospital algorhythms routinely refer Black people to programs that provide less personalized care.

Articles

1.Cruel Medical Experiments on Enslaved people were widespread in the south

a.J. Marion Simms the “father” of modern gynecology experimented on enslaved women.

Medical Experiments on Black People extended into the modern era

a.Charity Patients Irradiated to Gauge Effect on Soldiers in through 1972

b.Tuskegee Experiments 1932-1972

New York Foundation Apologizes for Its Role in Tuskegee Syphilis Study

The plundering and capitalization of of Black genetic material

a. The Legacy of Henrietta Lacks

The 2020  race to capitalize on African Genomic material

Black Maternal Health Disparities

Mortality rate for Black babies is cut dramatically when Black doctors care for them after birth, researchers say - The Washington Post

Black newborns 3 times more likely to die when looked after by White doctors - CNN

Racial and Ethnic Disparities Continue in Pregnancy-Related Deaths | CDC Online Newsroom | CDC

Why I Had To Fire My White Dermatologist? | by Rebecca Stevens A.

What Is ‘Medical Gaslighting’ and How Can You Elevate Health Care - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

More...

[1] Cruel Medical Experiments On Slaves Were Widespread In The American South (D. Vergano)

[2] How Racism Is Bad for Our Bodies (J. Silverstein)

[4] Henrietta Lacks: science must right a historical wrong

[5] Racism and discrimination in health care: Providers and patients

Opinion | No, Justice Alito, Reproductive Justice Is in the Constitution

How Enslaved Black Women Resisted Slave Breeding By Using Cotton Roots as Contraceptives - Talk Africana

Calling Out Racism in Nursing - Word In Black

Books

Under the Skin: The Hidden Toll of Racism on American Lives and on the Health of Our Nation by Linda Villarosa

Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty by Dorothy Roberts

Just Medicine: A Cure for Racial Inequality in American Health Care by Dayna Matthew

Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present by Harriet A. Washington

Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America's Heartland by Jonathan M. Metzl

Black Queer Nurse by Britney Daniels

Podcasts

Black History Year - What You Need To Know About Medical Racism with Harriet Washington

Podcast: Racism as a public health issue – Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis

History of American Slavery: Medical experimentation in slavery and the rise of scientific racism

Film/Video

It's Not Just About Tuskegee: The History of African Americans and Medicine

How Modern Medicine Was Born of Slavery

Harriet A. Washington: Discussing Medical Experimentation on Black Americans - 03/07/2017

Lack of Diversity in Health Care: A Health Disparity | Kiaana Howard, DPT | TEDxLenoxVillageWomen

Unpacking Bias in Seeking Mental Health Care for Women of Color | Chandra Carey | TEDxSMUWomen

The US medical system is still haunted by slavery

Questions for Research and Reflection:

Which myths based on white supremacy culture did you grow up with?

• Black people feel little pain.
• Black people are great at sports; they are physically different from white people.
• Sterilizing Black people is for their own good.
• Black people don't take care of themselves; that's why they are in poor health
• Doesn't everyone have good health insurance?  What's so hard about getting a regular checkup?
• Diabetes?  It's because "they" eat all that junk food.  If "they" just ate a better diet and exercised, "they" would be in good health.

Self-reflection:

• Why has the COVID pandemic affected Black families at 3 times the rate of white families?  
• Why might Black families not trust doctors?
• Are there any physicians in your family? Across multiple generations?  What resources paid for this education?
• When you were growing up, did you have health insurance?
• Did you visit the doctor and dentist for regular checkups?
• How would you rate the care you received?
• What about now?
• Ask a Black colleague about the healthcare they received as a child, and the healthcare they receive currently.
• Compare quality and treatment
• Compare health outcomes in your families.
• What are your findings?

Reckoning with an Unjust Past: a Spoken Word Series by Veronica Wylie

Summary

Food Desert

“Grocery gaps, locales in which there are no grocery stores or other opportunities to purchase fresh, healthy food, which typically co-exist with “food swamps,” areas which have a high prevalence of unhealthy food options, such as fast food and convenience stores[1].”

During the 1940s, low-interest home loans offered to middle-class white families through the Federal Housing Administration and the Veterans Administration enabled them to move from cities to suburbs. Supermarkets followed white middle-class incomes to the suburbs in a process called white flight[1]. African American families were systematically denied access to these loans and when they could purchase homes they were relegated to purchasing homes in divested redlined areas. Because redlined areas were graded “high risk” by their association with African Americans, African American communities directly experienced retail divestment and became the “Food Deserts” that exist today.

[1] New York Law School Racial Justice Project., "Unshared Bounty: How Structural Racism Contributes to the Creation and Persistence of Food Deserts. 

Personal Narratives

Black neighborhoods with little poverty have fewer supermarkets, on average, than high-poverty white areas[3].

“When minority families shop locally for groceries they find a grocery store that is “2.5 times smaller than the average grocery store in a higher income neighborhood” with higher priced food, less fresh produce, and more processed food. The inner-city minority diet reflects the limited choices minorities face close to home.“[3]

The Unexpected Challenges of Living in a Food Desert

"You’ve probably heard the term food desert to describe a neighborhood where residents have little or no access to fresh and healthy food. Food deserts hit low-income communities hard, leaving their residents with few options and sometimes long distances to travel in search of healthy food.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s most recent study says 39 million Americans live in “low-access communities,” or communities in which at least a third of the population is more than a mile away from a supermarket or large grocery store in an urban area, or more than 10 miles away in a rural area.

Lauren Ornelas is the founder and director of the Food Empowerment Project based in Northern California. Her organization studies food deserts in Santa Clara County and the city of Vallejo, both in California, and is working to improve communities’ access to healthy food. Ornelas spoke with host Lizzie O’Leary. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation. 

Lauren Ornelas: One of the things that we found out was that, I guess no surprise to many people, is that high-income communities had way more access to fresh produce than communities of color and low-income communities had. In fact, the high-income areas had 14 times more access to even frozen vegetables. So in communities of color and low-income communities, what you would typically find in the freezer section would be frozen pizzas or ice cream, not necessarily frozen vegetables. We also found that in a lot of these communities, you had produce that may be available at the convenience store at the register, but they didn’t have prices on them. So that meant that whoever was behind the counter would determine how much, say, a banana would cost, and it might change depending on who you were. This type of system also puts people who don’t speak English at an incredible disadvantage to others. We also found that some of the smaller, what I would consider convenience stores or liquor stores, were actually being labeled as proper grocery stores and supermarkets even though they clearly weren’t that at all.

O’Leary: What are some things do you think people listening to this interview might not realize? I know you mentioned to my producer the idea of being time poor, which I think might be something that people in higher-income communities are not thinking about.

Methods of Discrimination

• Lack of investment in minority neighborhood infrastructure, including grocery stores
• Higher prices and less variety
• Gentrification results in cultural food staples being phased out
• Lack of access to healthful food choices including fruits and vegetables
• Poorer health outcomes for residents due to nutritional deficiencies

Metrics

“For every additional supermarket in a census tract, produce consumption increases 32 percent for African Americans and 11 percent for whites, according to a multistate study[4]. “

“Using statistical modeling techniques that control for a variety of factors, researchers estimate that adding a new grocery store to a high poverty neighborhood in Indianapolis would lead to a three pound weight decrease among residents, while eliminating a fast food restaurant in a neighborhood with a high density of fast food would lead to a one pound weight decrease[4].”

Based on 2000 census data “the availability of chain supermarkets in African American neighborhoods is only 52% (p<0.01) of that in White neighborhoods with even less relative availability in urban areas[2].”

Articles

[1] New York Law School Racial Justice Project., "Unshared Bounty: How Structural Racism Contributes to the Creation and Persistence of Food Deserts. 

[2] Food store availability and neighborhood characteristics in the United States. (Powell LM, Slater S, Mirtcheva D, Bao Y, Chaloupka FJ)

[3] Poor, mostly black areas face supermarket 'double jeopardy'. (E. Reyes)

[4] The Grocery Gap: Who Has Access to Healthy Food and Why It Matters (S. Treuhaft, A. Karpyn) 

[5] The unexpected challenges of living in a food desert - Marketplace

Books

An Annotated Bibliography on Structural Racism Present in the U.S. Food System, Ninth Edition - Center for Regional Food Systems (msu.edu)

The Public Health Effects of Food Deserts: Workshop Summary (P.T. Whitacre)

The Death Of Food Deserts: 30 Days of Moving From Food Deserts to Underground Food Economies Using Food Stamps (T. J. Wolfe-Deveaux)

Overcoming Food Deserts in Your Community: How To Start A Home, School or Community Garden, Food Co-op or Food Coalition (C. Harris)

Podcasts

“What A Relief” Podcast 14: Traveling to Deserts—Food Deserts: You Don’t Have to Go Far

Food Water and Air podcast - EPISODE 5 What is a Food Desert?

‎Exploring Health Equity: Episode 3: Food Deserts and Obesity

What Are Food Deserts? - BrainStuff

Film/Video

Living In a Food Desert Documentary - YouTube

How Two Los Angeles Entrepreneurs Are Fighting America's Food Desert Crisis | NBCLX - YouTube

The food deserts of Memphis: inside America's hunger capital | Divided Cities - YouTube

Questions for Research and Reflection:

Which myths based in white supremacy culture did you grow up with?

• Black people sure eat a lot of fried food and junk food.
• Why are Black people fatter than white people?
• If Black people just ate a better diet and exercised, they wouldn’t have diabetes
• Why can’t they just go to the store and get better food?

Self reflection questions:

• How does living in a food desert affect overall physical health? Rates of diabetes? Cardiovascular issues? Dental problems?  Why?
• How does the reduced ability to acquire real estate impact the ability for families to grow their own food?
• What did you learn about nutrition from those who grocery shopped and prepared your meals at home? What did you learn about preparing your own food?
• How does underemployment and salary disparity affect grocery choices?
• When you were growing up, how many grocery stores were in your neighborhood?
• What was the selection of food like? Fresh fruits? Vegetables?
• What sorts of foods did you grow up eating?
• How many fast food restaurants were in your neighborhood?
• How has food access affected your family's health?
• Ask a Black friend or colleague what they remember about grocery stores, fast food, and typical meals growing up.
• Ask a Black friend or colleague:   was their family charged more than other non-Black patrons for common items at the corner store? 

Reckoning with an Unjust Past: a Spoken Word Series by Veronica Wylie

Summary

Early Voter Suppression

"Our nation’s “founding fathers” wrote about a fair and just democracy for all, but this ideal was not realized in the early stages of the American experiment. Only land-owning white men were able to vote. As time passed, laws were modified to allow states to make their own election rules, allowing less privileged people like farmers and commoners the ability to vote, but it did not extend voting rights to all. In 1776, New Jersey gave voting rights to all who lived in the state, but then quickly passed a law to disenfranchise all women and Black men. Native Americans, African Americans, women, and immigrants were barred from voting, and places like Maryland also banned Jewish people from voting.

The 15th amendment ensured that people could not be denied the right to vote because of their race, color or previous condition of servitude, but it also enabled states to oversee elections as they saw fit. Shortly after the Civil War, Mississippi’s Democrats were appalled when two Black men became members of the Senate. They then initiated a campaign of intimidation at the polls that succeeded in restoring white Democrats to power in Mississippi by 1881. Mississippi became one of the first states to put forth a “grandfather clause” that permitted registering anyone whose grandfather was qualified to vote before the Civil War.” This voter-suppression tactic cut the percentage of Black men eligible to vote from over 90% to less than 6% in 1892. Women still could not vote.

Many other states implemented such tactics as poll taxes, literacy tests, and English-language requirements to deliberately reduce voting among African Americans, immigrants, and low-income populations. These tactics became known as Jim Crow Laws. Efforts like the one in Mississippi and other southern states lasted for almost a century."

A History of Voter Suppression | National Low Income Housing Coalition

Personal Narratives

"On Election Day in 1960, four unanswerable questions awaited Clarence Gaskins, a Black voter in Georgia looking to cast his ballot for president. Upon arrival at his designated polling place, he was ushered into a room that held a jar of corn, a cucumber, a watermelon, and a bar of soap. He was informed that in order to vote, he first had to answer the following correctly:

“How many kernels of corn are in the jar? How many bumps on the cucumber? How many seeds in the watermelon? And how many bubbles in the bar of soap?”

Clarence didn’t bother guessing once the polling official admitted there were no right answers. His vote was neither cast nor counted."

Theodore R. Johnson

The New Voter Suppression | Brennan Center for Justice

Methods of Discrimination

1.Voter ID Laws

2.Voter Registration Restrictions (Case Study)

3.Voter Purges

4.Felony Disenfranchisement

Gerrymandering ( Video Case Study)

Threats of violence from white supremacist groups

Leafletting of Black neighborhoods with misinformation about voting

Literacy Tests

Underrepresentation in census-taking

Fraud

Poll taxes

Shutting down polling places in Black communities

Contesting the vote in Black communities

Interfering with census activities to limit count in communities of color

Techniques of Direct Disenfranchisement, 1880-1965

Timelines of Disparity

Timeline: Voter suppression in the US from the Civil War to today - ABC News

Metrics

How We Got Here | Democracy Docket

Articles

[2] Block the Vote: Voter Suppression in 2020 (L. Rafei)

The New Voter Suppression | Brennan Center for Justice

Voter suppression in the United States - Wikipedia

Historic Census Undercount of Black Americans Robs Communities of Billions in Funding and Fair Political Representation | National Urban League (nul.org)

Census Bureau considering changes after minority undercounts - Roll Call

Systematic Inequality and American Democracy (C. D. Solomon)

Block the Vote: Voter Suppression in 2020 (aclu.org)

Analysis: Voter suppression never went away. The tactics just changed. – Center for Public Integrity

Voter Suppression is Still Obstacle to a More Just America | Time

NAACP | NAACP Issues Statement on Historic 2020 Presidential Election Outcome

Want to dismantle structural racism in the US? Help fight gerrymandering

How racial gerrymandering deprives black people of political power - The Washington Post

The Barriers That Keep Blacks and Latinos From Voting - The Atlantic

Today's voter suppression in the South can trace a line back to the Jim Crow laws and lynchings of the 19th and 20th centuries

America’s Relentless Suppression of Black Voters

Books

Uncounted: the Crisis of Voter Suppression in the United States by Gilda R. Daniels

One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy by Carol Anderson

Podcasts

Voter Suppression - Voting suppression in Georgia

Stuff You Should Know - 10 Voter Suppression Methods

Podcast covers past and present of voter suppression - The Fulcrum

A Look At Voter Suppression Tactics Ahead Of The Election : NPR

Film/Video

The History Of Black Voter Suppression — And The Fight For The Right To Vote | NBC News

How Voter Suppression Targets Students & Black People | Op-Ed | NowThis

How Voter Suppression Affects Black People | Unpack That

Voting In Black Neighborhoods vs White Neighborhoods • Voter Suppression • BRAVE NEW FILMS (BNF)

Stacey Abrams on 3 ways votes are suppressed

Suppressed & Sabotaged: The Fight To Vote

Questions for Research and Reflection:

Which myths based on white supremacy culture did you grow up hearing?

• Should people without a good education be allowed to vote? Shouldn't there be a test?
• Voter suppression doesn't happen; voter fraud is a much bigger problem
• Everyone has equal access to polling locations - voting is easy!

Self-reflection questions:

• How do you find out what is on the ballot at the next election? Is the information easy to access?
• Does your local precinct offer voting by paper ballot, electronic voting, or both?  Why or why not?
• Does your precinct offer mail in ballots?  Why or why not?
• How easy was it for you to register to vote?
• Should incarcerated persons (who are counted in the population for representation) be allowed to vote? Why or why not?
• What percentage of the time do you vote in elections?
• Is voting easy in your area? How close by is your polling place?
• Have you ever been turned away from a polling place for lack of the correct ID?
• Have you ever been told that your name was not on current voter registration rolls?
• If you had to wait in line 8+ hours, how would that affect your ability to vote?
• If weekend or evening voting options were not available, how would that affect your ability to vote?

Reckoning with an Unjust Past: a Spoken Word Series by Veronica Wylie

Summary

The banking and informal credit industries formed an integral part of the structures of institutional racism since the founding of this country. Beginning with fraudulent sharecropping arrangements through payday loan schemes, African Americans were preyed upon in a variety of ways.

Personal Narratives

“There was a man had been, was working sharecrop for a gentleman and naturally, he couldn’t read or either write. And every year, regardless of how much cotton he made he would just bring him out so he would have just a little bit left. So he got kinda wise and where he would get at the harvest time. And he made six bales of cotton that year, and he took four to count on the wagon. And his white landlord that he was renting, he was sharecropping with, met him. And there are cotton bales on the street.

When the four bales of cotton was sold the amount of money they came to, they went to the bank. And naturally in sharecropping, the man that you sharecrop with, he pays for half and you pay for half. So when everything was over, he told him, he said, “You did marvelous this year, you cleared $350.” But now this 350 dollars got to last him till they start to farm again.

So the colored fellow didn’t say anything at all, but in a couple of weeks he took two more bales of cotton to town. So when he [the white owner] met him he called him up and told him he wanted to see him in town. So when he met him, he said, “I had an idea that you had been cheating me, but I didn’t have no way of knowing it.” He said, “Now you say I don’t owe you anything?” He says, “No, you paid off and you cleared $350.” He said, “Now when we sell I got two more bales of cotton. ”So, he says, “Why didn’t you tell me that at first? Now, I got to go over all these figures, and you might clear just a little something.”

So anyway from that they started a argument. And this white man jumped on him, and hitched the horses to him, like he was a wagon and drove him, and drug him through the street—in Abbeville, South Carolina—and took him down in the park, and hung him. Now that’s just as true as I’m looking at you. But you wasn’t allowed to say anything about it.” [7]

- Hughsey Childes

[7] “Drug Him Through the Street”: Hughsey Childes Describes Turn-of-the-Century Sharecropping

*******************

"In Newark, New Jersey, an elderly African American woman named Beatrice was pushed into an abusive high-cost adjustable-rate mortgage with a fat balloon payment and a hefty yield spread premium for the broker. In Philadelphia, lenders repeatedly pressured an elderly African American woman named Veronica into more than a dozen high-cost
loans, usually worked out by brokers sitting at her kitchen table; “They make it so easy,” she said; “They tell you they are going to pay off all of your bills. And then they give you a check.
But a couple of months later you are in more debt than before.” In New York’s Bed-Stuy neighborhood, an unlicensed broker lured an elderly widow named Anna Mae into a loan with a monthly payment thirty percent more than her total monthly income. And in Akron, Ohio, an African American widow named Addie received a series of loans from Countrywide that put her in debt for more than 180 percent of her home’s assessed value. Addie, who was by then 90, fell behind on the payments and faced foreclosure. In October of 2008 Addie shot herself in her
bedroom as sheriff’s deputies pounded on the door to enforce an eviction order. When Dennis Kucinich learned about Addie, he went straight to the house floor and read the entire story into the Congressional Record, later telling a reporter, “This is a human face for a great national tragedy.” Addie survived the gunshot, but died in a nursing home six months later."[8]

[8]Anecdotes Foreclosed (ubc.ca)

Methods of Discrimination

‘Company Store’ Sharecropper Credit Schemes

After the Civil War, former slaves sought jobs, and planters sought laborers. The absence of cash or an independent credit system led to the creation of sharecropping.

Sharecropping is a system where the landlord/planter allows a tenant to use the land in exchange for a share of the crop. In the South, after the Civil War, many black families rented land from white owners and raised cash crops such as cotton, tobacco, and rice. In many cases, the landlords or nearby merchants would lease equipment to the renters, and offer seed, fertilizer, food, and other items on credit until the harvest season. At that time, the tenant and landlord or merchant would settle up, figuring out who owed whom and how much.

High interest rates, unpredictable harvests, and unscrupulous landlords and merchants often kept tenant farm families severely indebted, requiring the debt to be carried over until the next year or the next. Laws favoring landowners made it difficult or even illegal for sharecroppers to sell their crops to others besides their landlord, or prevented sharecroppers from moving if they were indebted to their landlord. [6]

Credit Duplicity in the Post-Bellum South

• The roots of predatory lending are embedded in the economic and financial institutions that emerged in the post-bellum era when Black sharecroppers and other agricultural workers depended on “company stores” to provide credit until harvest. Merchants exploited Black borrowers in three ways[2].
• Merchant maintained a two-tiered pricing system with one price for goods purchased with cash and a second price for goods purchased with credit.
• One study compared the cash and credit prices of eleven staple articles and determined that the average credit price was 55.3 percent higher than the cash price (the price differential ranged from a minimum of 33.6 percent to maximum of 89.6 percent[2].
• Merchants established an additional interest rate for goods purchased on credit.
• Typically, an additional interest rate charge of eight to fifteen percent was added to the price of the advance.
• Merchants added an additional interest rate charge of two to five dollars on smaller accounts ranging from ten to twenty-five dollars[2].

Contract Installment Loans:

“Overall, during the time period from 1930 to 1960, scholars have demonstrated that "fewer than one percent of all mortgages in the nation were issued to African Americans." 360 With African Americans unable to obtain the same type of financing available to whites from traditional financial institutions, they were forced to rely on less favorable, often predatory, forms of mortgage financing.”

The contract was subject to predatory abuse in a number of manners. First, the buyer often did not gain title to the property until the last installment payment was made. Second, the installment contract acted to prevent the buyer from gaining any equity in the property over the course of the agreement term. Such a contractual arrangement could be utilized in a predatory manner because if the buyer missed a single payment, the seller could take back the property without foreclosure proceedings, and the buyer would lose not only the property but all payments previously made on the contract.364 Third, usury laws and mortgage interest rate ceilings did not apply since the installment contract was a private contract between the parties, a seller could charge any interest rate that the buyer was willing to pay. Fourth, the buyer could be kept ignorant of the actual value of the property since appraisals were not necessary to finance the transaction.” [2] [pp. 185]

Payday Loans

A payday loan (also called a payday advance, salary loan, payroll loan, small dollar loan, short term, or cash advance loan) is a small, short-term unsecured loan with high interest rates. A 2019 study found that payday loans in the United States "increase personal bankruptcy rates by a factor of two... by worsening the cash flow position of the household.“ A second 2019 study looking at the UK found that payday loans "cause persistent increases in defaults and cause consumers to exceed their bank overdraft limits. “The likelihood that a family will use a payday loan increases if they are unbanked or underbanked, or lack access to a traditional deposit bank account. In an American context the families who will use a payday loan are disproportionately either of black or Hispanic descent, recent immigrants, and/or under-educated. These individuals are least able to secure normal, lower-interest-rate forms of credit. Since payday lending operations charge higher interest-rates than traditional banks, they have the effect of depleting the assets of low-income communities. The Insight Center, a consumer advocacy group, reported in 2013 that payday lending cost U.S communities $774 million a year. [5]

Predatory Lending in the 21st Century, A Legacy

Merchants’ predatory use of credit impeded African American economic progress by encouraging the poor to use greater and greater draws on credit; the payday loan industry is a prime example.

• “Payday loans are available in 36 states, with annual percentage rates averaging 391 percent[3].”
• “African-American neighborhoods have three times as many payday lending stores per capita as white neighborhoods...“This three-fold disparity remains unchanged even when we control for other neighborhood effects.[4].”

Taxation

Black Americans Are Much More Likely to Face Tax Audits, Study Finds - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

How four decades of tax cuts fueled inequality – Center for Public Integrity

Timelines of Disparity

Metrics

44.2 - 74.6 % Interest

The total interest rates charged by merchants in Georgia between 1881 and 1889 ranged from a low of 44.2 percent to a high of 74.6 percent. In contrast, the short-term interest rates in New York City at this time ranged from four to six percent, and never above eight percent. [2]

Articles

[2] The Shadow of Credit: The Historical Origins of Racial Predatory Lending and Its Impact Upon African American Wealth Accumulation (upenn.edu)

[3]  Payday Loan Facts and the CFPBs Impact | The Pew Charitable Trusts (pewtrusts.org)

[4] Race Matters: The Concentration of Payday Lenders in African-American Neighborhoods in North Carolina. 

[5]  Payday loan - Wikipedia

[6] Sharecropping | Slavery By Another Name Bento | PBS

[7] "Drug Him Through the Street": Hughsey Childes Describes Turn-of-the-Century Sharecropping

[8]Anecdotes Foreclosed

The Freedman's Savings and Trust Company and African American Genealogical Research | National Archives

Drowning in Debt: A Health Impact Assessment of How Payday Loan Reforms Improve the Health of Minnesota's Most Vulnerable

Navy Federal Credit Union rejected more than half its Black conventional mortgage applicants last year | CNN Business

Credit scores perpetuate racial disparities, even in America’s most prosperous cities | Urban Institute

How race affects your credit score - The Washington Post

Credit scores in America perpetuate racial injustice. Here's how | US income inequality | The Guardian

Race’s Role in Predatory Payday Lending

Where Credit Is Due: A Timeline of the Mortgage Crisis

Billions Stolen From Black Families by Predatory Lending

America’s Tax Code Leaves Black People Behind: Dorothy Brown - Bloomberg

The Economics of Ferguson: Emerson Electric, Municipal Fines, Discriminatory Policing

The Broken Credit System

In Conversation with Melissa Bradley | by Endeavor | Medium

Books

The White Wall: How Big Finance Bankrupts Black America by Emily Flitter

Color of Money: Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap (M. Baradaran)

How the Other Half Banks: Exclusion, Exploitation, and the Threat to Democracy (M. Baradaran)

Predatory Lending and the Destruction of the African-American Dream by Janis Sarra

The Whiteness of Wealth: How the Tax System Impoverishes Black Americans--And How We Can Fix It by Dorothy A. Brown

Slavery's Capitalism: A New History of American Economic Development by Sven Beckert

The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism by Edward E. Baptist

Podcasts

A look at how banks perpetuate racial disparities : The Indicator from Planet Money : NPR

Film/Video

Money as a Democratic Medium | The Color of Money: Banking and Racial Inequality (with Slides)

The Racial Wealth Gap? It All Comes Down to Black Banks | Amanpour and Company - YouTube

Dorothy A. Brown on "The Whiteness of Wealth" and Financial Tips for Black Community | The View - YouTube

Webites:

Racial Disparities and the Income Tax System (urban.org)

Questions for Research and Reflection:

Which myths based on white supremacy culture did you grow up with?

• Anyone can get approved for credit
• Rates are the same for everyone
• If Black people were better with finances, they wouldn't need payday loans
• Can't "they" read the fine print?  Everyone should be able to spot a bad deal.
• Everyone has a bank account, right?

Self-reflection:

• Did any of your family members farm through the 1930s?
• Did they have sharecroppers on their land? What sort of contracts did they have?
• Ask a Black colleague or friend if any family stories about sharecropping have been passed down.
• Is there a payday loan shop near your home?  Why or why not?
• Have you ever taken out a payday loan? What rate did you get? How long did it take to pay it back?
• Has anyone in your family fallen prey to a predatory lending scheme?
• How many big-ticket items have you been able to purchase in cash versus on credit?
• Was your credit history ever tied to your parents’ when you first started building credit?
• Have your parents ever had to bail you out of credit debt?  Have you ever bailed your children out of debt?
• How quickly have you built (or rebuilt) your 6-month “rainy day fund”?
• How might differences in access to resources affect net worth over generations?

Reckoning with an Unjust Past: a Spoken Word Series by Veronica Wylie

Summary

"New York Life, the nation’s third-largest life insurance company, opened in Manhattan’s financial district in the spring of 1845. The firm possessed a prime address — 58 Wall Street — and a board of trustees populated by some of the city’s wealthiest merchants, bankers and railroad magnates.

Sales were sluggish that year. So the company looked south.

There, in Richmond, Va., an enterprising New York Life agent sold more than 30 policies in a single day in February 1846. Soon, advertisements began appearing in newspapers from Wilmington, N.C., to Louisville as the New York-based company encouraged Southerners to buy insurance to protect their most precious commodity: their slaves.

Alive, slaves were among a white man’s most prized assets. Dead, they were considered virtually worthless. Life insurance changed that calculus, allowing slave owners to recoup three-quarters of a slave’s value in the event of an untimely death.

James De Peyster Ogden, New York Life’s first president, would later describe the American system of human bondage as “evil.” But by 1847, insurance policies on slaves accounted for a third of the policies in a firm that would become one of the nation’s Fortune 100 companies."

Rachel L. Swarns

Insurance Policies on Slaves: New York Life’s Complicated Past - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

Modern insurance practices demonstrate considerable disparities in the treatment of Black vs white customers.  State Farm is facing lawsuits from customers, agents and former employees accursing it of racial discrimination.

"It took years for Darryl Williams to build up the small real estate portfolio that became Connectors Realty, his business on the South Side of Chicago. In early 2017, when a pipe burst in his prized property — a building containing six apartments — Mr. Williams turned to his insurer, State Farm, to help repair the damage.

Mr. Williams said a State Farm claims adjuster told him that she did not believe his version of events. “We have a lot of fraud in your area,” he said the adjuster had told him. Like the majority of people in his neighborhood, Mr. Williams, 58, is Black.

State Farm eventually paid Mr. Williams a small fraction of his claim. By then, his expenses had snowballed. He sold his buildings to pay his bills...."

Where State Farm Sees ‘a Lot of Fraud,’ Black Customers See Discrimination - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

Quotes

That racial bias was built into these (burial) policies was long an open secret in the insurance industry. Insurance forms asked the applicant’s race, and black were routinely charged more than whites for the same coverage, the insurance industry now publicly acknowledges.

Typically, it was one third more, according to lawyers representing black policy holders.
Throughout the 20th century, an occasional government report, lawsuit, or news article questioned the morality or legality of this practice, but until recently there were no organized challenges.

For decades, the insurance industry defended the discriminatory practice, arguing that blacks on average didn’t live as long as whites, making them a worse insurance risk.

“At that point, discrimination was considered an actuarial science,” says Joanne Stone Morrissey, president of the insurance researcher Firemark Group in Morristown, N.J.
However, attorneys for black policyholders say, many insurers continued the practice long after it became known that it was poverty, poor medical care and risky jobs — not race — that contributed to shorter life spans. That meant blacks continued to pay more than whites who faced similar risks.  Insurance industry facing lawsuits, restitution (nbcnews.com)

Personal Narratives

“Even though plantation slaves were valuable in the marketplace, they were never insured,” Ralph said. “They were viewed more as livestock. They enhanced the value of the plantation but their skills weren’t seen as valuable or premium.” Instead, slave owners would insure coal miners, Blacksmiths, carpenters, railroad workers and other slaves with valued skills. Miners, for example, made up 15.4 percent of the insured slave workforce, according to the project. Steamboat workers accounted for 12.6 percent of those insured and domestic workers accounted for 14.6 percent of the insured slave population, according to the ledger.”

New York University Professor Michael Ralph   

Visualizing the slave insurance industry.  

*****************

In 2005, JP Morgan Chase conceded that two of its subsidiaries Citizens' Bank and Canal Bank in Louisiana accepted enslaved people as collateral for loans. 

Historical analysis conducted for J.P. Morgan by History Associates Inc. of Rockville found that between 1831 and 1865 the two banks accepted approximately 13,000 slaves as collateral and ended up owning about 1,250 slaves.

*****************

On September 30, 2000, Governor Gray Davis of California signed two bills relating to slave insurance. One bill was written by former California State Senator Tom Hayden.[3] The California legislature found that:

Insurance policies from the slavery era have been discovered in the archives of several insurance companies, documenting insurance coverage for slaveholders for damage to or death of their slaves, issued by a predecessor insurance firm. These documents provide the first evidence of ill-gotten profits from slavery, which profits in part capitalized insurers whose successors remain in existence today.[4]

Methods of Discrimination

Insurance policies on slave-trading ships

Beginning in the 18th century, maritime insurance for the slave-trade became a lucrative revenue source for British insurance companies

The story of the Zong slave ship: a mass murder masquerading as an insurance claim | Studying law | The Guardian

Underwriting Souls

Insurance on highly skilled individual slaves

By the mid-1840s American insurance companies were providing insurance covering a highly skilled class of African slaves, while enslaved plantation workers were rarely covered.

Refusal to insure mortgages and homes in redlined areas

Despite wide availability of mortgages and a new ability for lower middle-class people to buy homes, African Americans are blocked from doing so, due to refusal from insurance providers to cover their home purchases. 

Charging African Americans more for auto, homeowner insurance and life insurance

Regardless of credit-rating, African Americans are charged more for all types of insurance.

“African-Americans are disproportionately represented in the higher premium categories, as Table 1 illustrates, which leads to higher prices for the exact same coverage, even before considering geographic pricing disparities. CFA found, in a 2015 report, that ZIP codes with predominantly African American residents face premiums that are 60% higher than predominantly white ZIP codes, after adjusting for population density. Taken all together, it is clear that African Americans will pay more for auto insurance than white drivers, even when everything related to driving safety and vehicle type is held constant.” [5]

Accusing African Americans of fraud with regard to claims; not honoring claims.

Timelines of Disparity

1790s

Historians have estimated that the slave and West India trades combined accounted for 41% of British marine insurance in the 1790s.

 https://consumerfed.org/press_release/systemic-racism-in-auto-insurance-exists-and-must-be-addressed-by-insurance-commissioners-and-lawmakers/

1860

Aetna, AIG and New York Life Insurance become the primary insurers of the slave trade in the U.S. 

https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/22/visualizing-the-slave-insurance-industry/?guccounter=1

1920s

In the 1920s and 1930s racial and ethnic minorities were assumed to be bad risks for insurance. A 1933 report concluded that screening based on risk should not be performed by the name, but by further investigation into racial or ethnic backgrounds. 

https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/international/2020/06/19/572859.htm

Metrics

“African-Americans are disproportionately represented in the higher premium categories, as Table 1 illustrates, which leads to higher prices for the exact same coverage, even before considering geographic pricing disparities. CFA found, in a 2015 report, that ZIP codes with predominantly African American residents face premiums that are 60% higher than predominantly white ZIP codes, after adjusting for population density. Taken all together, it is clear that African Americans will pay more for auto insurance than white drivers, even when everything related to driving safety and vehicle type is held constant.” [5]

Websites

Underwriting Souls

Articles

[1] Visualizing the slave insurance industry (M. Dickey)

[4] Race Matters: The Concentration of Payday Lenders in African-American Neighborhoods in North Carolina

[5]Systemic Racism in Auto Insurance Exists and Must Be Addressed By Insurance Commissioners and Lawmakers

[6] Some Facts About London’s Role in Insuring the Slave Trade (G. Faulconbridge)

[8] The Racist Housing Policy That Made Your Neighborhood (A. Madrigal)

[9] Ending Jim Crow Life Insurance Rates (M. L. Heen)

[9] The Treasury of Weary Souls - insurance policy records for enslaved Africans

Slave insurance in the United States - Wikipedia

Insurance Policies on Slaves: New York Life’s Complicated Past (R. Swarns)

The story of the Zong slave ship: a mass murder masquerading as an insurance claim | Studying law | The Guardian

Insuring the Transatlantic Slave Trade | The Journal of Economic History | Cambridge Core

Decoder: The Slave Insurance Market – Foreign Policy

The Price of Life: From Slavery to Corporate Life Insurance | Dissent Magazine

Where State Farm Sees ‘a Lot of Fraud,’ Black Customers See Discrimination

Books

The White Wall: How Big Finance Bankrupts Black America by Emily Flitter

Investing in Life: Insurance in Antebellum America by Sharon Ann Murphy

Podcasts

The Assets | Uncivil (gimletmedia.com) - Rachel Swarns on slavery and the insurance trade

Film/Video

Underwriting Souls (youtube.com)

How Banks Made Money From Slavery | Empires of Dirt - YouTube

Questions for Research and Reflection:

Which myths based in white supremacy culture did you grow up with?

• Anyone can get mortgage insurance; you just need good credit
• Policies and rates are the same for everyone
• Why don't "they" just read the small print?  Can't we all spot a bad deal?

Ask a Black colleague or research on your own:

• Did family members have problems obtaining insurance of any type from the 1930s – 1980s?
• Were any family members sold fraudulent insurance policies, such as those during the Jim Crow era that purported to cover funeral costs?
• When did you learn about life insurance and or renter's insurance? Who introduced you to these concepts? Could you easily afford policies?
• How might differences in access to resources affect net worth over generations?

Reckoning with an Unjust Past: a Spoken Word Series by Veronica Wylie

Summary

African Americans face a systemic disparity in taxation compared to their white counterparts, perpetuating a cycle of economic inequality. This inequity manifests across various tax types, including property, sales, and income taxes.

Property taxes often burden African American communities disproportionately due to historical segregation and devaluation of their properties, leading to higher rates relative to property value.

Sales taxes, which typically apply uniformly regardless of income level, hit lower-income African Americans harder since this population spends a larger portion of their income on taxable goods.

Moreover, income tax policies tend to favor wealthier individuals through loopholes and deductions, exacerbating the tax burden on African American families who often have lower incomes.

These disparities in taxation contribute significantly to the racial wealth gap by further diminishing the financial resources available to African American households. Higher tax rates on property and sales decrease disposable income, making it harder for families to accumulate wealth or invest in education and homeownership. Ultimately, the disproportionate taxation of African Americans not only exacerbates economic inequality but also reinforces systemic barriers that hinder Black socioeconomic advancement.

Quotes

Personal Narratives

How the “Black tax” impacts Black wealth, including my family - Vox

Methods of Discrimination

Methods of tax discrimination against African Americans include:

1. Property Taxes: Historically, discriminatory practices such as redlining have led to lower property values in African American communities, resulting in disproportionately higher property tax rates relative to property value.

2. Sales Taxes: Lower-income individuals, including many African Americans, spend a larger proportion of their income on taxable goods, thereby bearing a heavier burden from sales taxes compared to wealthier individuals.

3. Income Taxes: Tax policies often favor wealthier individuals through loopholes and deductions, while lower-income African American families face higher effective tax rates due to their limited access to these benefits.

4. Tax Enforcement: African American communities may face greater scrutiny and harsher penalties from tax enforcement agencies, leading to higher rates of audits and legal actions compared to predominantly white communities.

Timelines of Disparity

Here is a timeline outlining key moments in the history of discrimination against African Americans in tax policy:

1. Slavery Era (1619-1865):

• • Enslaved Africans were treated as property and thus were not subject to taxation themselves. Instead, their labor contributed to the wealth of enslavers, who were often exempt from certain taxes or paid lower rates.

1. Post-Civil War Reconstruction Era (1865-1877):

• • Despite being freed from slavery, African Americans faced discriminatory tax policies such as poll taxes and unfair property assessments designed to suppress their economic and political power.

1. Jim Crow Era (Late 19th Century - Mid-20th Century):

• • Southern states implemented poll taxes, literacy tests, and other measures to disenfranchise African Americans from voting. These taxes were often designed to be prohibitively expensive for African Americans, further marginalizing their political representation.

1. Redlining and Housing Discrimination (20th Century):

• • Government-backed housing policies, such as redlining, systematically denied African Americans access to homeownership and wealth accumulation. These and other federal, state, and local policies led to disparities in property taxes, as African American communities often had lower property values due to discriminatory lending practices and housing policies.

1. Civil Rights Movement (1950s-1960s):

• • The Civil Rights Movement brought attention to discriminatory tax policies and their role in perpetuating racial inequality. Discriminatory practices such as unequal property assessments and access to tax benefits continue to be challenged.

1. Modern Era (Late 20th Century - Present):

• • Despite legal advances in civil rights, racial disparities in taxation persist. African American communities continue to face higher property tax rates due to historical inequities, and income inequality exacerbates disparities in income taxation.

This timeline illustrates how tax discrimination against African Americans has been deeply ingrained in American history, from the era of slavery to modern-day challenges in achieving tax equity and economic justice.

Metrics

To understand discrimination in the American tax code, researchers should consider various metrics across different taxation and socioeconomic factors dimensions. Some key metrics to research and review include:

1. Effective Tax Rates: Analyzing effective tax rates across income levels and demographic groups can reveal disparities in tax burdens. Examining how different income groups, including racial and ethnic minorities, are affected by various tax policies is necessary in order to achieve equity.
2. Wealth Distribution: Assessing wealth distribution by race and ethnicity can uncover disparities in asset ownership and wealth accumulation. This analysis must include examining the impact of property and inheritance taxes on intergenerational wealth transfer.
3. Tax Expenditures and Credits: Investigating the distribution of tax expenditures and credits can reveal whether certain tax benefits disproportionately benefit specific demographic groups. This analysis must examine eligibility criteria and utilization rates among different racial and ethnic communities.
4. Tax Compliance and Enforcement: Studying tax compliance rates and enforcement actions across demographic groups can identify disparities in tax compliance and enforcement practices. This analysis must assess audit rates, penalties, and legal actions against different populations.
5. Access to Tax-Advantaged Accounts: Examining access to tax-advantaged accounts, such as retirement accounts and college savings plans, can highlight disparities in access to financial resources and opportunities for wealth accumulation.
6. Impact of Tax Policies on Social and Economic Outcomes: Assessing tax policies' broader social and economic outcomes can reveal their differential impact on racial and ethnic minorities. This analysis must examine the effect of tax policies on poverty rates, educational attainment, homeownership rates, and economic mobility.
7. Historical Context and Policy Intentions: Understanding the historical context and policy intentions behind tax policies is crucial for interpreting their impact on different demographic groups. The analysis must include examining the legacy of discriminatory policies and their implications for contemporary tax equity efforts.

By researching and reviewing these metrics, policymakers and researchers can comprehensively understand discrimination in the American tax code and identify opportunities for reform to promote tax equity and economic justice.

Articles

Property Tax

How the property tax system harms Black homeowners and widens the racial wealth gap | Brookings

Opinion | Property Taxes Drive Racism and Inequality - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

What Policymakers Need to Know about Racism in the Property Tax System | Housing Matters (urban.org)

TaxProf Blog (typepad.com)

Racial Inequality: Broken Property-Tax System Blocks Black Wealth Building - Bloomberg

Federal Tax

How federal tax law hurts Black Americans – Center for Public Integrity

Disparities in the Benefits of Tax Expenditures by Race and Ethnicity | U.S. Department of the Treasury

Taxes and Racial Equity: An Overview of State and Local Policy Impacts – ITEP

How the “Black tax” impacts Black wealth, including my family - Vox

#BlackTaxpayersMatter: Anti-Racist Restructuring of U.S. Tax Systems (americanbar.org)

Books

The Whiteness of Wealth: How the Tax System Impoverishes Black Americans—And How We Can Fix It by Dorothy A. Brown | Goodreads

The Black Tax: The Cost of Being Black in America by Shawn D Rochester | Goodreads

The Black Tax: 150 Years of Theft, Exploitation, and Dispossession in America by Andrew W. Kahrl | Goodreads

Podcasts

Journey To Launch: The Black Tax: The Cost of Being Black in America with Shawn Rochester on Apple Podcasts

The hidden history of race and the tax code : Planet Money : NPR

Confronting Racial Inequities Within the US Tax Code (Podcast) (bloombergtax.com)

Film/Video

The Black Tax: The Cost of Being Black in America | Shawn Rochester | TEDxNewHaven (youtube.com)

The Whiteness of Wealth: How the Tax System Impoverishes Black Americans – and How We can Fix It (youtube.com)

Andrew Kahrl: "The Black Tax" (youtube.com)

Questions for Research and Reflection:

Reckoning with an Unjust Past: a Spoken Word Series by Veronica Wylie

Summary

In northern cities new forms of exploitation worked to secure an urban Black labor force and prevent the mobility of Black bodies physically and financially. In this section we take a look at transportation. 

In 2015, Maryland’s governor cancelled a proposed rail link to Baltimore’s west-side Black neighborhood, saying the funds were needed for highway improvements.  The NAACP Legal Defense Fund then filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Transportation, claiming that Maryland’s priority for highways over mass transit had a disparate impact on African Americans.  The case was still pending when Obama left office.

Personal Narratives

“ Another policy that on its face is race-neutral but has a discriminatory effect is our national transportation system. We have invested heavily in highways to connect commuters to their downtown offices but comparatively little in buses, subways and light rail to put suburban jobs within reach of urban African Americans and to reduce their isolation from the broader community.”

Richard Rothstein, “The Color of Law”

Methods of Discrimination

In a 2016 interview for ThinkProgress US Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx discusses the use of transportation projects in Brooklyn, NC to intentionally displace Black residents for White economic benefit, a pattern practiced across the US[2].

• White Desires: “By 1912, the local paper captured the prevailing views that Brooklyn was far too valuable to be left to African-Americans,” Foxx said. “They wrote in fact that ‘Far-sighted men believe that eventually this section, because of its proximity to the center of the city, must sooner or later be utilized by the White population.”
• White Actions: “Road projects served as scalpels...First came Independence Boulevard, which cut a gash through the community,” the Secretary said. “Later, an inner beltway, I-277, which remains to this day,” stabbed fork-like into the neighborhood’s heart.”
• Black Outcomes: “In a single decade, white city leaders ripped out almost 1,500 buildings in Brooklyn, displacing over a thousand Black families and 200 mostly Black-owned businesses.”

Metrics

“Between 1992 and 2000, households with incomes of less than $20,000 saw the amount of their income spent on transportation increase by 36.5 percent or more (households with incomes between $5,000 and $9,999 spent 57 percent more on transportation than they did in 1992). In comparison, households with incomes of $70,000 and above only spent 16.8 percent more on transportation expenses than they did in 1992. This research suggests not only that low-income families are spending more of their incomes on transportation, but also that transportation costs are increasing at a faster rate for these households [1].”

Articles

[1] MOVING TO EQUITY: Addressing Inequitable Effects of Transportation Policies on Minorities, (Sanchez, Stoltz, Ma)

[2] How Segregation Caused Your Traffic Jam

[3] Top infrastructure official explains how America used highways to destroy black neighborhoods

California reparations task force discusses infrastructure's discriminatory history - capradio.org

Advocates Rally to Tear Down Highways That Bulldozed Black Neighborhoods

How Black neighborhoods in Columbus were destroyed in '60s by highways

The Road to Disinvestment: How Highways Divided the City and Destroyed Neighborhoods

America’s transportation system discriminates against minorities and poor: Federal funding for roads, buses, and mass transit still segregates Americans

Racism has shaped public transit, and it’s riddled with inequities | The Kinder Institute for Urban Research

Dismantling Transportation Apartheid in the United States Before and After Disasters Strike

Roads to nowhere: how infrastructure built on American inequality

WEB SPECIAL: The Anatomy of Transportation Racism

How infrastructure has historically promoted inequality | PBS NewsHour

Books

Highway Robbery: Transportation Racism and New Routes to Equity (R.D. Bullard)

Podcasts

Episode 305: Talking Anti-Racist Transportation Policy | Podcast

Transportation Nation | Back of the Bus: Race, Mass Transit and Inequality

Talking Headways Podcast: Transportation and Law, Part I – Streetsblog USA

The Mobility Podcast

The Rail~Volution Podcast

A Brief History Of How Racism Shaped Interstate Highways : NPR

Film/Video

"StudentCam 2022 Grand Prize - What Happened to Gibson Grove?"

Moving to Racial Equity in Transportation - Commemoration for Rep. Elijah Cummings

Our Work is Never Done: Examining Equity Impacts in Public Transportation

How highways wrecked American cities

How Can We Do Better? Limits on Black Mobility in Transportation

The Power of Transportation to Transform Communities | Allison Billings

Questions for Research and Reflection:

Which myths based on white supremacy culture did you grow up with?

• Freeways are planned with the whole community in mind
• Eminent domain is a beneficial policy used to clear the way for transportation projects
• Public transportation routes give equal access to all parts of the city.
• School bussing is good for "minorities."
• Light rail routes benefit everyone equally
• Doesn't everyone own a car?

Self-reflection questions:

• When you were growing up, did your parent(s) drive to work or take public transportation?
• How did you get to school?
• How would you rate public transportation options – buses, light rail, subways in the neighborhood you grew up in?
• What were the main routes from your neighborhood to your parent’s work like? 
• Was there a historic Black neighborhood near your community? Does a freeway now bisect that community?
• How pedestrian-friendly is your neighborhood? Your city? When were sidewalks installed?
• How has the cost of mass transit options changed during your generation?
• How convenient (near neighborhoods) are mass transit stops? Would someone still need to walk a mile or more to get to the closest stop?
• How regularly are the public roads near you maintained? How quickly do potholes get filled? Snow removed? What about in historically Black neighborhoods?
• How does spending more per capita for transportation costs affect generational net worth?

Reckoning with an Unjust Past: a Spoken Word Series by Veronica Wylie

Summary

Origins of Modern-Day Policing

The origins of our modern-day police mentality can be traced back to the “Slave Patrol”. The earliest formal slave patrol was created in the Carolinas in the early 1700s, with the following mission: to establish a system of terror in response to slave uprisings with the capacity to pursue, apprehend, and return runaway slaves to their owners, including the use of excessive force to control and produce desired slave behavior.  Slave Patrols allowed forcible entry into any home solely based on suspicions of protecting runaway slaves.  Slave Patrols continued until the end of the Civil War and the passage of the 13th Amendment.

Following the Civil War, during the Reconstruction Period, slave patrols were replaced by militia-style groups who were empowered to control and deny access to equal rights to freed slaves that looked to join the workforce and integrate with society.  Their work included the enforcement of Black Codes, strict local and state laws that regulated and restricted access to labor, wages, voting rights, and general freedoms for formerly enslaved people.

In 1868, ratification of the 14^th Amendment technically granted equal protections by laws of Constitutional rights to African Americans – essentially meant to abolish Black Codes.  Shortly after the abolishment of Black Codes, Jim Crow Laws, and state and local statutes that legalized racial segregation were enacted.  Jim Crow laws looked to vanquish all protected rights of African Americans.  By the 1900s, local municipalities began to construct police departments to enforce local laws in areas of the East Coast and Mid-West, including Jim Crow Laws. Local municipalities leaned on police to enforce and exert excessive brutality on African Americans who violated any Jim Crow law. Jim Crow Laws continued through the end of the 1960s.

Since then, African American communities have continued to be under surveillance and targeted by police, including, but not limited to, the era of War on Drugs and mass incarceration.

NAACP | Criminal Justice Fact Sheet

Personal Narratives

"The first time I fit the description of a suspect I was ten. And the more I was stopped for conversations with police, the more I began to make adjustments in my life.

I had to learn not to stand outside the house with nondescript cups, or ride four-deep to the club. Some of our friends like to keep all the registration papers in their glove box ultra-updated. Others get nervous about how many people in their backseats are wearing ball caps.

For as long as the term racial profiling has been around, fools have been denying the phenomenon exists. But I contend every black man in America, at some point, will be racially profiled or harassed by the police. It's a part of the DNA of our experience in the United States.

One morning last spring while I was parking my car at the BART train station, a police officer looked at me and ran my license plate. He entered a false number, and my Oldsmobile Royale Brougham 88 came back as a stolen Honda. So now I'm a car thief. My friend, Elmer(ph), and I weren't prepared for what happened next.

ELMER: Our conversation was interrupted very rudely and abruptly.

Mr. HOWELL: I mean, just how to - what happened.

ELMER: In the distant background I hear the voice of a police officer saying, everybody move aside. And I turned around to see the barrel of this officer's handgun staring me down, face to face. And he tells me to step back and stand on the concrete.

He said, you know, brothers like you, I know how you all get down. You all be in the street, you all steal cars. You're like, you know, he's not talking to us like, you know, like citizens, you know. He's talking to us like we're convicted criminals that he's delivering to Massachusetts for multiple murders..."

Anyi Howell

A Personal Story of Racial Profiling: NPR

*****************************

"In Thin Blue Lie, author Matt Stroud details the troubling history of the taser, the incorporation of various technologies (dash cams, body cams, etc.) in police departments across the country, and the increasing militarization that came with them. He touches on half-hearted federal, state, and municipal attempts at police reform, and he also says this:

“Policemen deal with people when they are both most threatening and most vulnerable, when they are angry, when they are frightened, when they are desperate, when they are drunk, when they are violent, or when they are ashamed. . . . Every police action can affect in some way someone’s dignity, or self-respect, or sense of privacy, or constitutional rights.” (p. 9)

I find it intriguing that the very ways he mentions police action can affect others — dignity, respect, privacy (bodily autonomy), and Constitutional rights — were actively denied to my grandfather and his partner, both as regular citizens, and as police officers. Like countless Black officers across the country at the time, they were told not to bother white citizens in the county, and that they did not have [arrest] authority over them. This county was, and still remains, overwhelmingly white. This is something that has always bothered me when people try to counter #BlackLivesMatter with #BlueLivesMatter. This is aside from the fact that “blue” is not an artificial, settler-colonial white supremacist racial category, but is a chosen profession. It was made abundantly clear by the department and reinforced by white citizens, that they were to be treated as n-words first; respecting the authority of the uniform was optional. Barnes would stay an officer for four years, my grandfather, for six and a half.[6]"

Methods of Discrimination

• Black People have disproportionate levels of police contact leading to a disproportionate level of investigations. Specific policies target Black communities[1].
• The War on Drugs which disproportionately targets drug activity in black vs white communities.
• “Broken Windows” policies which zero in on petty offenses (Black codes)
• Stop, Question, and Frisk policies target Black male residents in low-income communities disproportionately.
• Jury selection has historically reflected " a jury of peers."
• Unequal treatment of Black law enforcement officers

Pretrial Incarceration & Bail

• In 2016, African Americans were incarcerated in local jails at a rate 3.5 times that of non-Hispanic whites.
• Pretrial detention increases the odds of conviction.
• Pretrial releases require money bond.
• Blacks are more likely than whites to be assessed higher safety and flight risks, denied bail, to have a higher money bond set, and to be detained because they cannot pay their bond[3].

Jury Selection

Nearly 135 years after Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1875 to eliminate racial discrimination in jury selection, people of color continue to be excluded from jury service because of their race, especially in serious criminal trials and death penalty cases.

In 2010, EJI released the most comprehensive study of racial bias in jury selection since the Supreme Court tried to limit the practice in Batson v. Kentucky in 1986.[5]

Sentencing

Racial disparities in sentencing are compounded by disparities in policing and pretrial. Discretionary decision making and sentencing policies tax the already overburdened[1].

1.In comparison to white people, Prosecutors are more likely to charge black people with crimes that carry heavier sentences, offenses that carry a mandatory minimum sentence and make use of habitual offender laws.

2.Public Defenders are underfunded, have excessively high caseloads often offering presumed offenders services of little quality.

Parole

Parole boards can exercise discretion in releasing prisoners early[1].

1.Studies suggest that parole boards are influenced by an applicant’s race in their decision making.

2.Racial bias in correctional officers also shape parole decisions.

3.Once released, parole and probation officers are more likely to revoke people of color than whites for comparable behavior leading to higher recidivism rates.

Collateral Consequences

A host of barriers have been enacted against people with criminal records that limit their access to consistent employment and housing, social benefits, federal student aid, and exercising their voting rights[1].

Racial Bias in Exoneration

25000 Years.pdf (umich.edu)

Timeline of Disparity

Timeline of the Modern Prison (Truah Org)

1829 Eastern State Penitentiary, the 1st modern prison,
opens in Philadelphia. It pioneers the use of solitary
confinement, to give incarcerated people time for reflection
and “penitence.” 

1838 Debtors’ prisons, where people could be incarcerated
for failing to pay their debts, banned under federal law.
Bankruptcy law subsequently replaces debtors’ prisons.

1866 Convict leasing—the practice of leasing out
incarcerated people (usually black men) to work for private
individuals—begins. 

1914 Congress passes Harrison Narcotics Tax Act,
restricting the sale of opiates and cocaine, launching the
country’s “first war on drugs.” 

1927 first federal women’s prison opens in Alderson, WV. 

1928 Alabama becomes the last state to outlaw convict leasing.

1943 “Zoot Suit Riots” in LA and Detroit riots, two
examples of racial violence that break out during and after
WW2; this leads to calls for increased national attention to
police brutality and misconduct. Before WW2, most criminal
justice policy in the US was in the hands of local or state
authorities.

1955 Deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill begins;
closing of mental hospitals and reduction in overall state care
for people with serious mental illness. Jails and prisons
eventually take up the slack.

1960’s US and most western countries experience dramatic
increase in crime. From 1962-1972, the annual number of
homicides more than doubles. Homicide rate among
blacks had been several times higher than whites since at least
the 1930’s.

1963 Supreme Court — in Gideon v. Wainwright — rules
that indigent criminal defendants have a right to a lawyer.
#e Court says nothing about how to pay for such counsel,
leading to a rise in fees charged to defendants. (See more
under “Poverty and Mass Incarceration,” p. 35.) In the 1960’s,
a number of rulings by the Warren Court expand the rights of
incarcerated people and people being policed, at the expense
of police power.

1964 Goldwater campaign uses explicitly racial language to
discuss crime. Conservatives conflate riots, street crime, and
political activism.

1965 Johnson creates Office of Law Enforcement
Assistance, with support from left and right. OLEA provides
funding and programs to expand and improve state and local
criminal justice systems.

Metrics

“African Americans are more likely than white Americans to be arrested; once arrested, they are more likely to be convicted; and once convicted, and they are more likely to experience lengthy prison sentences...African American adults are 5.9 times as likely to be incarcerated than white adults.” -The Sentencing Project [1]

The ACLU found that blacks were 3.7 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than whites in 2010, even though their rate of marijuana usage was comparable [2].

In 2010, 1 out of every 3 African American males had a felony conviction. 

Visualizing the racial disparities in mass incarceration | Prison Policy Initiative

Articles

[1] Report to the United Nations on Racial Disparities in the U.S. Criminal Justice System

[2] The War on Marijuana in Black and White (Edwards, Bunting, Garcia)

[3] “Give Us Free”: Addressing Racial Disparities in Bail Determinations (C.E. Jones)

[4] NAACP | Criminal Justice Fact Sheet

[d] The Color of Justice: Racial and Ethnic Disparity in State Prisons (A. Nellis)

[5] Illegal Racial Discrimination in Jury Selection (eji.org)

[6] Black and Blue: What Say You? | Medium

The History Of Policing In The United States, Part 1 | Police Studies Online |

Rollback of Carceral System Reform Spurs Rikers Island Crisis (theintercept.com)

The History of Policing in the United States, Part 2 | Police Studies Online

How the 13th Amendment Kept Slavery Alive: Perspectives From the Prison Where Slavery Never Ended - Innocence Project

Police Militarization_Costs of War_Sept 16 2020.docx

Angola - Louisiana State Penitentiary - Wikipedia

The Company Store and the Literally Captive Market: Consumer Law in Prisons and Jails

Conviction, Imprisonment, and Lost Earnings: How Involvement with the Criminal Justice System Deepens Inequality | Brennan Center for Justice

What 'Stop-and-Frisk' really means | Prison Policy Initiative

How race impacts who is detained pretrial | Prison Policy Initiative

Assessing Racial Disparities in Parole Release on JSTOR

Reducing-Racial-Disparity-in-the-Criminal-Justice-System-A-Manual-for-Practitioners-and-Policymakers.pdf (sentencingproject.org)

What You Need To Know About Ending Cash Bail

After Cash Bail | The Bail Project

End Money Bail

Families of Prisoners Sue Nation’s Largest Providers of Inmate Calling Services for Fixing and Lying about Prices

Books

The New Jim Crow (M. Alexander)

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (B. Stevenson)

From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America (E. Hinton)

No Equal Justice: Race and Class in the American Criminal Justice System (D. Cole)

Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America (J. Foreman Jr.)

Podcasts

Justice in America - The Appeal

Washington Post Live - Race in America: Fighting for Justice with Bryan Stevenson

Your Weekly Fix - Ep. 15 What the Criminal Justice System Should Look Like Through My Eyes Part 1 | Mass Incarceration, Racial Disparities, Over-Policing & More

New Criminal Justice Podcast Launches with Look Into the Criminalization of Black Girls

Episodes About Police And Race From NPR's Code Switch : Code Switch : NPR

Film/Video

"The New Jim Crow" - Author Michelle Alexander, George E. Kent Lecture 2013

Slavery to Mass Incarceration - EJI

Mass Incarceration & Rebuilding the Black Community | Jondhi Harrell | TEDxWilliamPennCharterSchool

We need to talk about an injustice | Bryan Stevenson

Bryan Stevenson: There’s a Direct Line From Lynching to George Floyd | Amanpour and Company

Policing the Black Man: A Conversation with Angela J. Davis and Sherrilyn Ifill - YouTube

Questions for Research and Reflection:

Which myths based on white supremacy culture did you grow up hearing?

• I've always had a good relationship with our police officers.  Why can't "they?"
• If "those" people would just behave well, they wouldn't get in trouble with the police
• Black people are naturally violent
• The criminal justice system treats all people the same
• Same crime, same punishment - sentencing is the same for everyone.
• Anyone should be able to afford bail

Self-reflection questions:

• What has been your experience with law enforcement officers?  How does skin color affect treatment?
• If you were stopped by a policeman, would you expect to be helped or harmed? Why?
• How were you affected by the death of George Floyd?  What did you learn about criminal justice?
• Should armed police officers respond to every 911 call?  Is there a better way to handle mental health, homelessness and social-service related calls?
• How many family members, friends or colleagues have been incarcerated?  How does their story compare to the stories on this page?

Reckoning with an Unjust Past: a Spoken Word Series by Veronica Wylie

Summary

"Poor, rural and overwhelmingly black, Warren County, North Carolina, might seem an unlikely spot for the birth of a political movement. But when the state government decided that the county would make a perfect home for 6,000 truckloads of soil laced with toxic PCBs, the county became the focus of national attention.

The dump trucks first rolled into Warren County in mid-September, 1982, headed for a newly constructed hazardous waste landfill in the small community of Afton. But many frustrated residents and their allies, furious that state officials had dismissed concerns over PCBs leaching into drinking water supplies, met the trucks. And they stopped them, lying down on roads leading into the landfill. Six weeks of marches and nonviolent street protests followed, and more than 500 people were arrested -- the first arrests in U.S. history over the siting of a landfill.

The people of Warren County ultimately lost the battle; the toxic waste was eventually deposited in that landfill. But their story -- one of ordinary people driven to desperate measures to protect their homes from a toxic assault -- drew national media attention and fired the imagination of people across the country who had lived through similar injustice. The street protests and legal challenges mounted by the people of Warren County to fight the landfill are considered by many to be the first major milestone in the national movement for environmental justice." [5]

Renee Skelton  Vernice Miller 

The Environmental Justice Movement | NRDC

Methods of Discrimination

Location of dump and industrial sites near African American schools and neighborhoods

Bisection of African American neighborhoods by freeway systems

Lead poisoning of children due to lead water pipes; lack of mitigation funds in Black communities

The locations of many communities of color in areas with unmitigated floodplains; frequent flooding results in buildups of toxic levels of mold and mildew

Lack of parks and green space in African American neighborhoods

Metrics

“Studies show that zip code is the number one predictor of environmental health. Evidence also shows that the most significant determinant of which zip codes will host toxic facilities is race.”- JACQUELINE PATTERSON  Director of the NAACP Environmental and Climate Justice Program.

Over 78% of African Americans live within a 30-mile radius of coal fired power plants, which emit noxious sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, mercury, arsenic, and lead[1].

71% of African Americans live in counties in violation of EPA air quality standards[1].

According to the Center for Disease Control, Black people are three times more likely to die from asthma, especially Black women, than any other group[2].

As of June 10, 2020 overall the COVID-19 mortality rate, a disease of the respiratory system, for Black Americans is 2.3 times as high as the rate for Whites and Asians, and 2.2 times as high as the Latino rate[3].

“An African American family making $50-$60,000 per year is more likely to live next to a toxic facility than a White American family making $10-$15,000 per year[1].”

Articles

[1] Geopolitics of Climate Change-A Civil Rights Perspective (J. Patterson)

[2] Asthma Facts. 

[3] COVID-19 deaths analyzed by race and ethnicity

[4] What is environmental racism and how can we fight it? | World Economic Forum

[5] The Environmental Justice Movement | NRDC

Sewage Crisis in Alabama’s Black Belt Spawns Complaint - Capital B (capitalbnews.org)

His Home Sits Alongside America’s First Superfund Site. No One Told Him. - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

CenterPoint pipeline in Houston raises environmental justice concerns (usatoday.com)

Toxic metal pollution is 10 times worse in racially segregated communities (richmond.com)

Environmental Justice & Environmental Racism – Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice

A Black town’s water is more poisoned than Flint’s. In a white town nearby, it’s clean | Water | The Guardian

Environmental Racism Has Left Black Communities Especially Vulnerable to COVID-19

A New EPA Report Shows That Environmental Racism is Real

U.S. Department of Justice sues city of Jackson over water crisis | NationofChange

The Racist Roots Of Flint's Water Crisis | HuffPost

Concrete is the Reason Cities are Hotter Than Rural Areas | Time

Concrete: the most destructive material on Earth | Cities | The Guardian

Racial Justice in These Times: A Conversation with Konda Mason and Drew Dellinger

People of Color Breathe More Hazardous Air. The Sources Are Everywhere. - The New York Times

Books

A Terrible Thing to Waste: Environmental Racism and Its Assault on the American Mind by Harriet A. Washington

Clean and White: A History of Environmental Racism in the United States by Carl Zimring

Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class, and Environmental Quality by Robert D. Bullard

Confronting Environmental Racism: Voices From the Grassroots by Robert D. Bullard

There's Something in the Water: Environmental Racism in Indigenous & Black Communities by Ingrid R.G. Waldron

Waste: One Woman’s Fight Against America’s Dirty Secret by Catherine Coleman Flowers

Podcasts

Environmental racism and the struggle for climate justice

High-Schoolers' Winning Podcast Tackles Environmental Racism : NPR

Film/Video

Growing Smarter: Achieving Healthy Communities and Environmental Justice For All | Bullard

Robert Bullard: How Environmental Racism Shapes the US

Endocrine disruption, environmental justice, and the ivory tower | Tyrone Hayes

Environmental racism is the new Jim Crow - The Atlantic

Toward Racial Justice – A Conversation on Environmental Justice

When Race and the Environment Collide: The Impact on Systemic Racism on Environmental Justice

Questions for Research and Reflection:

Which myths based in white supremacy culture did you hear growing up?

• Why do "they" choose to live in those dirty neighborhoods?
• Black people sure seem to have a lot of asthma problems
• Why would anyone choose to live so close to the freeway?

Personal Reflection Questions:

• When you were growing up, where were the power or chemical plants, animal processing plants, railroads, and county dump sites located?
• How far away were they from your home?
• Did you detect any constant unpleasant odors in your neighborhood?
• Ask a Black colleague about industrial sites near their neighborhood.
• What sort of industries were nearby?
• Were there any health impacts to their families?

Reckoning with an Unjust Past: a Spoken Word Series by Veronica Wylie

Summary

Quotes

Methods of Discrimination

Tokenism :

Definition  “including a small number of under-represented groups in an effort to appear diverse”- How to avoid tokenism - Theatre and Dance

Cultural appropriation: 

Definition:  “ “Taking intellectual property, traditional knowledge, cultural expressions, or artifacts from someone else’s culture without permission. This can include unauthorized use of another culture’s dance, dress, music, language, folklore, cuisine, traditional medicine, religious symbols, etc. It’s most likely to be harmful when the source community is a minority group that has been oppressed or exploited in other ways or when the object of appropriation is particularly sensitive, e.g. sacred objects.”(Who Owns Culture? Appropriation and Authenticity in American Law; Susan Scafidi)” -What is Cultural Appropriation? - NCCJ

         Little Richard: King and Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll - Stream the documentary now | American Masters | PBS

Intellectual property & copyright violations: 

Example: Copyright, Culture & (and) Black Music: A Legacy of Unequal Protection

Lack of representation :

the art world is overwhelmingly white and male, the exclusion of black art and artists of all genders was intentional

How Top U.S. Art Museums Excluded Black Artists During the 1980s – ARTnews.com

Difference in valuation and wages between white and black artists

Example: BIPOC respondents in a 2021 LA survey “reported an average income of just $32,027, while white arts workers earned $43,437, or 35 percent more.”- Arts Workers of Color in Los Angeles Earn 35 Percent Less in Wages Than Their White Colleagues, a New Study Finds | Artnet News

Metrics

Mark Wahlberg was paid $5 million to appear in “All the Money in the World.” His co-star Michelle Williams was paid $625,000. His co-star had twice the Oscar nominations on her resume and Mark was vote #1 most overpaid actor in the US. For movie reshoots, Wahlberg’s was paid $1.5 million to Williams’ $1,000 -Hollywood, black actresses and the squishy metrics of who gets paid what - Chicago Tribune

”…85.4% of the works in the collections of all major US museums belong to white artists, and 87.4% are by men. African American artists have the lowest share with just 1.2% of the works; Asian artists total at 9%; and Hispanic and Latino artists constitute only 2.8% of the artists.”-Artists in 18 Major US Museums Are 85% White and 87% Male, Study Says

“…less than three percent of museum acquisitions over the past decade have been of work by African American artists.”-African American Artists Are More Visible Than Ever. So Why Are Museums Giving Them Short Shrift? | Artnet News

Timeline

History of Racist Minstrelsy  Why Is Everyone Always Stealing Black Music? - The New York Times

Timeline of Black Representation in Film:

A History of Black Representation in Film | Stacker

Articles

“Ain’t Got Enough Money to Pay Me Respect”: Blackfishing, Cultural Appropriation, and the Commodification of Blackness

Why Is Everyone Always Stealing Black Music? - The New York Times

Copyright, Culture & (and) Black Music: A Legacy of Unequal Protection

*“COPYNORMS,” BLACK CULTURAL PRODUCTION, AND THE DEBATE OVER AFRICAN-AMERICAN REPARATIONS

Can You Copyright a Quilt? | The Nation

*Stealing the Blues: Does Intellectual Property Appropriation Belong in the Debate Over African-American Reparations?*

The 10 Biggest Cultural Thefts in Black History

How Top U.S. Art Museums Excluded Black Artists During the 1980s – ARTnews.com

The Grammys rarely award Black artists with top honors, new study finds - CNN

Black Curators Are Encountering a Complicated Reality Inside Museums – Robb Report

Report shows diversity on the charts, but not in executive ranks of music companies

If you’re lucky enough to earn a living from your art, you’re probably white - The Washington Post

Race and Art: Prices for African American Painters and Their Contemporaries on JSTOR

Arts Workers of Color in Los Angeles Earn 35 Percent Less in Wages Than Their White Colleagues, a New Study Finds | Artnet News

How Internalized White Supremacy Manifests for My BIPOC Students in Art School - Art Journal Open

Quality, art, the culture of sameness, and white men’s egos - The Black Youth Project

One Man’s Quest for Reparations in the Music Business - Rolling Stone

Black Curators Are Encountering a Complicated Reality Inside Museums – Robb Report

Books

Black Cool: One Thousand Streams of Blackness by Rebecca Walker

Art on My Mind: Visual Politics by bell hooks

The Rib King by Ladee Hubbard

White Negroes: When Cornrows Were in Vogue … and Other Thoughts on Cultural Appropriation by Lauren Michele Jackson

Soul Thieves: The Appropriation and Misrepresentation of African American Popular Culture by Baruti N. Kopano

Podcasts

Episode 7: Representation or Tokenism? | Art of Citizenry

https://antiracistartist.com

Episode 3: The Birth of American Music - The New York Times

Listen to Why Race Matters Podcast Ep. 7: Black Artists and Appropriation

Film/Video

Watch Why Race Matters Ep. 7: Black Artists and Appropriation

Little Richard: King and Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll - Stream the documentary now | American Masters | PBS

ReMastered: The Lion’s Share | Official Trailer | Netflix

Racism in the Art World

These 3 Black Artists are Confronting Racism - Grotto Network

Sorry Not Sorry, Tokenism and White Liberal Proverbs | Jacob V Joyce | TEDxUCLWomen

Questions for Research and Reflection:

Think of your last visit to a museum: what percentage of the work there came from Black artists? 

How has art been weaponed as an agent of anti-Black oppression? 

Why did artists like Elvis find it easy to appropriate Black music? 

What’s your own relationship with cool and what does it have to do with the aesthetics of Black culture? 

Reckoning with an Unjust Past: a Spoken Word Series by Veronica Wylie

Summary

For hundreds of years, starting in the 15th century with issuance of the Dum Diversas, the Catholic Church was the biggest advocate of slavery in the world:

“We grant you [King of Portugal], by these present documents, with our Apostolic Authority, full and free permission to invade, search out, capture, and subjugate the Saracens and pagans and any other unbelievers and enemies of Christ wherever they may be, as well as their kingdoms, duchies, countries, principalities, and other property... and to reduce their persons into perpetual slavery.”

Pope Nicholas V

Dum Diversas, 18 June, 1452

Though certain religious figures and movements did join the struggle against slavery, segregation, and violence at various times and places, the majority of white American Christendom fell somewhere on the spectrum between open endorsement and quiet acceptance. Today, as debates over racism continue to dominate our national conversations and controversies, religious influence remains central to large scale social change.

In his new book, The Color of Compromise, Jemar Tisby surveys this history with an eye toward the innumerable moments when white American Christians could have interceded on behalf of racial justice, but did not. Taken together, he argues, from the founding of the United States to the present, these moments constitute an ignominious timeline spanning four centuries of suffering, so that today’s headlines are connected to seemingly ancient atrocities. By the end, it is clear that past and current events retain a striking similarity regarding the church and race.

Eric C. Miller spoke with Tisby about the book recently by phone. Their conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

Eric Miller: As the subtitle states, your book is a sweeping survey of the American church’s complicity in racism. To your mind, what constitutes complicity?

Jemar Tisby: The book opens with the story of four girls who died when the 16th Street Baptist Church was bombed in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963. Shortly after that event, a white lawyer named Charles Morgan Jr. got up in front of an all-white business club and gave an address in which he asked who was responsible for throwing that bomb. In answer to his own question, he said, “We all did it.”

The American Church’s Complicity in Racism: A Conversation with Jemar Tisby | (E. Miller)

Personal Narratives

Christian contemporary singer Jamie Grace recently opened up about racism she experienced in church. A white pastor who invited her to sing at his church didn’t know she was Black, and when he found out, he seemed to regret it. 

“If I had known Jamie Grace was black, I definitely would not have brought her here…” she wrote on Twitter, telling fans how a white pastor said this to her merchandise manager who was setting up her banner in the lobby of the pastor’s church. 

Methods of Discrimination

• Christian leaders relied on biblical passages to build the case for the superiority of the white race and support the institution of slavery
• Many church structures were built by enslaved people
• Some religious institutions and communities owned slaves and ran plantations to support operations
• Some religious institutions joined entire villages in investing in shipbuilding and other elements of slave trading voyages.
• Many churches were involved in the creation and support of neighborhood racial covenants and redlining
• Many churches refused to open their doors to African Americans
• Christian church's complicity with white supremacy
• The portrayal of Jesus as white and blue-eyed

Articles

American Christianity’s White-Supremacy Problem | The New Yorker

The American Church’s Complicity in Racism: A Conversation with Jemar Tisby |

Christian complicity with racism - Books - WORLD

A Note on the Relationship between the Protestant Churches and the Revived Ku Klux Klan

White Supremacist Ideas Have Historical Roots In U.S. Christianity

Slavery and the Church | JSTOR Daily

The church must make reparation for its role in slavery, segregation | National Catholic Reporter

Maryland church donates $500K in slavery reparations

More U.S. churches commit to racism-linked reparations

Union Seminary creates $1M endowment in support of reparations for enslaved African Americans | Union Presbyterian Seminary

Reparations would help close the staggering racial wealth gap: A review of From Here to Equality

Catholic Church and slavery - Wikipedia

Books

The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism by Jemar Tisby

White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity by Robert P. Jones

Mormonism and White Supremacy: American Religion and the Problem of Racial Innocence by Joanna Brooks

The Sin of White Supremacy: Christianity, Racism, and Religious Diversity in America by Jeannine Hill Fletcher

Neighborliness: Finding the Beauty of God Across Dividing Lines by David Docusen

Podcasts

Centuries of Complicity - United Church of Christ (ucc.org)

White Christians Grapple With Their Faith's Racist Past And Present : 1A : NPR

The Liturgists Podcast - Episode 34 - Black and White: Racism in America

‎KQED's Forum: The Long History of White Supremacy in American Christianity

Ep. 18: White supremacy and American Christianity - BJC

Film/Video

The Black Church with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. | Episode 1 | PBS

Reverend: White supremacy sometimes "masquerades as faith" in Christian churches

The Spiritual Foundations of White Supremacy

White Supremacy in Evangelicalism - Hidden in Plain Sight - 170

Rickey Smiley on How the Bible Upholds Racism and White Supremacy (Part 4)

Still Seeking Freedom: What Role Did Christianity Play In Keeping Africans Enslaved In America?

Jesus wasn't white: he was a brown-skinned, Middle Eastern Jew. Here's why that matters

Organizations

Front Page - Mission Reconcile (iamareconciler.org)

Open Letter to Pope Francis I | All-African People’s Revolutionary Party (GC)

Questions for Research and Reflection:

• What is the racial makeup of your congregation?  If there are few people of color, why is that?
• Are you a member of a congregation or other religious community whose buildings were constructed by enslaved peoples? How is your church reconciling its history?
• Did your church participate in local or state redlining or neighborhood covenant restrictions to prevent Blacks from moving to the neighborhood?
• Has your church ever been affiliated with the KKK or espoused white supremacist thinking?
• What were your church's stances during the civil rights movement?
• Does your church support a racial justice agenda?  How?
• Does your church  incorporate current events into worship services?  How?
• Does your church support the reparations movement?  Why of why not?