injustice racial essay

Black people are still seeking racial justice – why and what to do about it

Subscribe to how we rise, kwadwo frimpong kwadwo frimpong research associate.

November 12, 2020

On July 9 th 2020, in the wake of nation-wide protests over George Floyd and other Black victims of police violence, David M. Rubenstein Fellow in Governance Studies Rashawn Ray joined actor and producer Boris Kodjoe to talk about policy solutions to address systemic racism and police brutality. Below are highlights from their conversation for the Instagram podcast series #19for20 , which aims to inspire public dialogue about difficult topics in social justice. You can watch the full interview here .

What is different about today’s climate compared to prior national uprisings around race?

Ray highlighted how both the visceral public display of George Floyd’s murder and COVID-19 had engulfed the nation in a manner markedly distinct from Ferguson, Black Lives Matter (BLM) and other previous nation-wide racial justice movements.

“George Floyd is the twenty first century Emmett Till, a moment similar to [his] murder in 1955 [and] by his mother having the foresight and also the bravery to show his decomposed body in that casket”, he said.

The gruesome imagery of witnessing another human being lose their life , with their neck buried under the knee of a police officer for roughly 8 minutes and 46 seconds languishes us psychologically, emotionally and physically. At the same time, with the globe and mainstream media gripped in the sweeping standstill of the pandemic, BLM took to social media, unleashing raw footage of Floyd and other Black victims to signify that they were not isolated, but were the remnants of a larger scourge of racially charged police violence rippling across the country.

https://www.instagram.com/tv/CCcTIIUIu1K/?igshid=ri56lt8dfddf

Why do Black Lives continue to be devalued and over-criminalized?

Ray remarked on how the nation’s historical legacy of slavery continues to be the foundational epicenter of racial discrimination against Blacks and other minorities. “Bad apples often times come from a rotten tree. And that tree in the United States of America is rooted in systemic racism, particularly when it comes to law enforcement that has roots back to slavery”, he explained. What’s more, according to recent research , disturbing levels of white nationalism and domestic extremist groups have been shown to have infiltrated law enforcement.

Kodjoe described a personal encounter he had had with a white businessman in his own neighborhood while dressed in a hoodie and flip flops to illustrate what he referred to as “ the magic pause ”: how Black individuals continually internalize and deflect a series of micro-aggressions and discriminatory behavior from white individuals. The man was initially disdainful towards Kodjoe but after noticing that he owned one of the most opulent houses in the community, he sharply reversed his tone, adopting a more friendly and positive demeanor. “And that criminalization of Black people is the direct result of the lack of those muscles and the lack of consideration for the fact that I’m a father, I’m a husband, I’m a professional, I have family, I have a job,” Kodjoe emphasized.

Ray concurred, remarking that “ the magic pause ” also reflects the collective memory of traumatic experiences that Blacks have undergone in the past, triggering fresh waves of encounters that either did or could have ended fatally, but also revealing how a white person will attempt to code-switch according to the perceived social class of a Black person. “And I think fundamentally it highlights that we can’t outclass racism. It doesn’t matter if you’re Boris Kodjoe [and] that you have the biggest house on the street….all that matters is that in that moment, he’s seen your skin tone and his skin tone, [which gives] him the script for how to make sense of what was going on,” he added.  In essence, these racial attitudes undergird and perpetuate the over-policing and dehumanization of Black people and the long-standing perceptions that they are not only one-dimensional but are more likely to engage in crime. Conversely, crime is inherently racial but there is a tendency to zero in on Black related violence. “ 94% of Black people kill other Blacks, 86% of white people kill other whites. But we never say white-on-white crime. It’s only talking about Black-on-Black crime,” Ray underscored.

What remedies can help shape the path forward?  

1.  Re-allocate and re-invest in police departments

Simply assigning more police officers to these crises will not solve the underlying issues. Further, not only is crime hovering at historic lows but existing law enforcement funds are not being utilized efficiently: Roughly 40% of homicides and 70% of robberies go unresolved and  9 out of 10 response calls handled by law enforcement stem from non-violent issues, ranging from mental health to homelessness. Defunding the police or re-assigning non-violent crimes to entities better equipped to handle these societal challenges will help to boost efficiency and augment the clearance rate for resolving violent crimes.

2.  Implement accountability & transparency in law enforcement

Not only does the status quo reward police officers who ratchet up the highest quotas of tickets and arrests but taxpayers routinely foot the bill for civil payouts involving victims of police brutality and even then, the culpable officers are rarely held financially or criminally liable.

• Institute police department liability insurance: By shifting the source of funds for civilian payouts from taxpayers to police budgets , police departments will not only have a greater incentive to hold police officers accountable for misconduct but the aggrieved families will receive more just recompense for the loss of their loved ones, through the parties that are directly responsible as opposed to through their own hard-earned tax dollars.
• Create a national registry : This will allow police officers to be terminated for misconduct or if they resigned under trial for misconduct as outlined in the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act .
• Remove qualified immunity : This is a legal safeguard currently upheld by the Supreme Court which shields police officers from criminal liability and being sued financially, however, recently enacted state led reforms such as in Colorado can serve as a promising model.

3.  Active civic engagement, particularly down ballot

Activism across the electoral spectrum is paramount but local politics largely determines the policies and outcomes within one’s immediate community. Rallying and electing local officials such as state representatives and attorney generals who can impact the judicial system can yield concrete pathways towards significant results.

4.  Corporate America needs to embrace meaningful action, not just slogans and words

Black assets and intellectual property have been systematically disenfranchised and under-invested in and members of the C-suite and other large conglomerates have a significant role to play in not only reshaping the narrative and incentive structure around business but by also leveraging the existing resources within the Black community to drive sustainable and meaningful change. ”[We] don’t need handouts, we need real partnerships and corporate allies that are ready to invest in us,” Kodjoe reiterated.

• Invest in minority-owned small businesses . Roughly 40% of black small businesses went under because 90% didn’t receive relief funds, however, large corporates can leverage their existing sub-contracts to combat this area.
• Diversity upper management; there is a rich pool of untapped talent to be capitalized upon.
• Compensate individuals for doing the emotional work of anti-racism; they are not there to do it for free.
• Institute bi-annual surveys for minorities to capture their experiences in the workplace and promote greater equity.
• Implement reparations to close the racial wealth gap.

In essence, Black people don’t want a seat at the table, they want their own table, apportioned with equal weight and size to be acknowledged, seen, and heard across all spectrums of society. W.E.B Dubois encapsulated this enduring plight of Black individuals over a century ago as “ double consciousness ”, a longing to be both Black and American without having the doors of opportunity closed roughly in one’s face. And yet Blacks are still clamoring for that promise of equal justice and opportunity to be recognized as fully equal citizens in America.

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Racial Injustice in America: Where Are We Now?

Are we moving in the right direction.

Posted October 12, 2021 | Reviewed by Abigail Fagan

• A review of American systems suggests that racism persists in society, despite the refusal of some to acknowledge it.
• Many argue that the murders of Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, and Breonna Taylor raised American consciousness regarding racial injustice.
• While there have been some measures taken toward improving race relations, changes continue to fall short.
• It is clear that Americans, from all backgrounds, need education about racial inequality, or we are doomed to continue to repeat the cycle.

By Douglas E. Lewis, Jr., Psy.D., on behalf of the Atlanta Behavioral Health Advocates

Alfred Adler, a psychiatrist known as the father of individual psychology, developed the use of Early Recollections (ERs) as a technique for psychotherapy . Adler believed that ERs, a small collection of an individual’s memories occurring before age 10, were a projection of an individual’s present-day thought or behavioral patterns on the past. The psychotherapist and the individual discuss these ERs, and through collaborative interpretation acquire a deeper understanding of the individual’s personality and behavioral functioning.

My earliest memory is when I visited the local health department for my “shots” or vaccinations. I could not have been older than three years old. I recall a White American child, presumably my same age, kindly sharing his Cheerios with me. My dad noticed the exchange after I ate a handful, and he forcefully told me to stop! What I now recognize is that my dad did not only seem annoyed by my apparent disobedience or social infraction, but he also seemed fearful or concerned. Immediately following his command for me to stop, the other child’s mom reassured my dad that it was “okay” for me to have some Cheerios. It has been three decades since that experience, and it remains etched in my memory.

The murders of Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, and Breonna Taylor last year appeared to raise American consciousness about the impact of race in a way not previously observed. The American Congress put forth the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, “Juneteenth” was declared a paid federal holiday, and Corporate America as well as institutions of higher learning put in place a number of initiatives seeking to improve race relations.

Despite these actions, events of late show us that change is slow moving, and there are indications that many still wish to undermine or hinder any progress, as they refuse to acknowledge that present-day racial injustice exists. Others take this belief further, suggesting that certain details concerning America’s dark history shouldn’t be taught to children for fear that White children may experience guilt or shame while children from racial minority groups may feel inferior. Does banning the history of racial inequality from curricula improve or worsen the experiences of American children?

The current state of race relations in this country suggests that banning this history certainly will not improve the experiences of people of Color over their lifetimes. In recent weeks, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act has stalled in Congress and is unlikely to be enacted. Following the tragic death of a young woman, there’s been a groundswell of conversation about “missing White woman syndrome,” as thousands of people of Color are reported missing with little to no news coverage. There has been great criticism and passionate discussion about the perceived difference in treatment of Haitian immigrants at the United States border, as men were seen on horseback brandishing whips to subdue them. The list feels endless.

The issue of race is ever-present in American society, and the totality of events occurring in just the past year show that fleeting emotions alone don’t seem to promote real change. Unfortunate events thrust racial injustice into the greater society’s awareness for a moment, and then, in the next, many whose daily lives are unaffected return to business as usual.

I began experiencing race-related issues almost as early as I began to speak. My early recollections suggest that such experiences impact my present-day thoughts and behaviors. While I don’t have a magic wand or a “cure-all” for America’s “race problem,” I feel strongly that education about racial inequality is a step in the right direction. What led me to draw that conclusion?

At age 10, my testing results qualified me for the academically gifted program within my school district. I was transferred to a different school and placed in a class wherein I was one of only two Black children. I recall spending most lunches and recess periods alone. It took several years to acquire genuine friendship with some of my peers, but not without enduring race-based teasing about how I pronounced words, about how my hair grew, or about how our teachers must favor me because I performed well.

Years later, at age 28, I reconnected with one of those classmates, at which time he spontaneously apologized to me: “I took a diversity course in graduate school and had no idea how racist and insensitive the things we used to say to you were. I really just didn’t know the experiences of Black people.” Not only did I believe him, but I also readily accepted his apology . We were in the same classes between grades 5 and 12, and not once did we celebrate or learn Black American history. My formal education on the subject matter, too, was not acquired until I attended college, as I only knew my lived experiences. Who did that help or benefit? If we fail to teach this history, we ensure that we will remain “stuck” on whether there’s even a problem.

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Racial Injustice in America

Home » Blog » Personal Injury » Racial Injustice in America

Systemic injustice and racism have deep historical roots in this country. Broadly speaking, these terms are defined as deeply ingrained racist thinking, practices, and actions embedded in the core foundations of American society that have persisted over centuries and continue today.

The struggle against racial injustice issues in America boiled over once again in 2020 following the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and countless other Black men and women. Attorney Ben Crump – a fierce advocate for equality, justice, and civil rights – represents the Floyd, Taylor, and Arbery families, and many more families of those killed, harmed, or marginalized due to systemic injustice and racism.

This article highlights racial injustice in America and reveals the many ways that it affects Black people’s health, education, livelihoods, and lives. Readers will come away with a heightened awareness of how the web of systemic inequities in America works against Black Americans.

Racial Injustice Definition

To understand how racial injustice affects the lives of people of color in the United States, we must first understand the meaning of racial injustice. Anytime a person is denied their constitutional rights based upon the color of their skin, racial injustice has occurred. Whether it is apparent or not, this form of discrimination is woven into the very fabric of our society, from our economy to our healthcare system to our education system.

For a free legal consultation, call 800-730-1331

Civil Rights Lawyer Ben Crump Explains Racial Injustice

Attorney Ben Crump is a civil rights crusader who has dedicated his career to combating racial injustice. Here, he explains how racial inequality affects many issues in the US.

Institutional and Systemic Racism in America

Discrimination is pervasive in american life, environmental injustice in america, black lgbtq discrimination in america, racism and discrimination in sports, injustice in the workplace, racism and black mental health, black protest, income inequality, political inequality and voting while black, racial inequalities in education, healthcare inequalities: covid, criminal justice inequalities, #livingwhileblack, #breathingwhileblack.

If you think of contemporary forms of racism such as police brutality, racial profiling and racial disparities as the leaves or fruit of white supremacy, then the roots of this metaphoric tree would be colonialism, slavery, Jim Crow, and other past structural inequalities that have subjugated Black people and people of color.

The terms institutional racism and systemic racism are now often used interchangeably to describe broad systems of racial oppression that occur in social and other institutions. While some contemporary forms of discrimination or racism may look or seem new to some, anti-Black racism is fundamentally unchanged.

During the Black Power movement of the 1960s, activists Stokely Carmichael and Charles Hamilton coined the term institutional racism in their book Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America (1967) to distinguish between individual and institutional racism.

As Michael Eric Dyson reminds us in Tears We Cannot Stop, “Institutional racism requires neither conscious effort nor individual intent.”

In short, racism is deeply ingrained in all aspects of our society, producing social, economic, and political inequalities that are inextricably connected to the past. In 1939 Billie Holiday sang about “strange fruit” hanging from trees, a reference to lynched Black bodies in the South. Systemic racism tells us that the seeds of this “strange fruit” were sown long ago and that this fruit continues to rot in our present.

The tragic killing of George Floyd is a modern day example of that.

Some people assume that racism happens primarily on an individual level or that only people enact racism. They see racism as the use of racist epithets like the n-word or in overt displays of white supremacy like the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. However, racism is also insidious. Nearly everything we experience is influenced by our skin color.

According to a 2020 Urban Institute report, “Lower housing equity contributes to less overall wealth for Black and Hispanic households. In addition, Black and Hispanic homeowners rely more heavily on housing equity to increase their overall net worth” (Neal and McCargo).

Consider the 2019 Annual Homeless Assessment Report which determined that Black people disproportionately make up almost half (40%) of the homeless population, while only making up 13% of the U.S. population.

The most recent statistics also paint a grim picture of ingrained racial discrimination in the criminal legal system. Innocent Black people are seven times more likely to be the victims of wrongful conviction and wrongful incarceration in murder cases than innocent white people. Moreover, more than half of the people currently on death row are Black. And speaking of, more than half of death row inmates exonerated since 1973 were Black.

The point is that racism impacts almost every facet of American life, and systemic racism can be seen in every aspect of our society, from the gentrification of our cities to the fact that black mothers are far more likely to die in childbirth in our hospitals. Nowhere is it more apparent than in the surveillance and mass incarceration of Black and Brown people.

An often overlooked example of systemic racism is environmental racism which Robert Bullard, “ Father of Environmental Justice ,” defines in his article “The Threat of Environmental Racism” as “any environmental policy, practice, or directive that differentially effects or disadvantages (whether intended or unintended) individual groups, or communities based on color.”

A prime example is the Flint water crisis in Flint, Michigan where many of the victims (most of whom are Black and all of whom are low-income) were poisoned with lead in their drinking water. According to a report from the Michigan Civil Rights Commission : “racism played a significant role in creating the conditions that allowed the lead contamination to happen and in the failure to recognize and address it in a timely fashion.”

Civil Rights attorney Ben Crump (who donated to the Flint community) said it best in his Time article, “ Flint Officials Must Pay for Poisoning Black, Poor Community ”: “Politicians, judges, prosecutors and police all proclaimed this [the War on Drugs in the 1980s] was done because drug dealers were poisoning low-income communities and communities of color. In Flint, elected officials played a role in actually poisoning a community of Blacks and poor people.”

Poisoned water is not the only environmental hazard Black people are exposed to disproportionately; studies have shown Black people are more likely to breathe polluted air. Water and air give life; however, in some communities, Black people cannot safely drink water or safely breathe the air.

The American Lung Association cites EPA research which finds Black people in low-income areas “faced higher risk from particle pollution” (“Disparities in the Impact of Air Pollution”). According to a 2017 study by Princeton University , Black children are more likely to suffer from asthma than children of other races (they had doubled the rate when compared to non-Black children in 2010) because residential segregation makes them more exposed to polluted air.

In short, various forms of systemic racism can make it difficult or impossible for Black people to breathe. These two examples of environmental injustice demonstrate how inequalities Black people face are rooted in longstanding systems of oppression including economic disenfranchisement, unequal access to housing, segregation, and limited political power.

While Black people from all walks of life are victims of systemic racism, certain marginalized groups face particular hardships, especially low-income communities and members of the LGBTQ community. In addition to dealing with racism, Black LGBTQ people must contend with homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, and anti-queer discrimination and violence.

Often, the wider LGBTQ community reinscribes white privilege. At the same time, Black queer people may face homophobia, bias, bullying, or violence within Black communities.

Black queer youth are a particularly vulnerable group. Studies show that queer Black and Latinx people are at risk for more suicide attempts than their white peers; see “ Increased Risk of Suicide Attempts Among Black and Latino Lesbians, Gay Men, and Bisexuals ” from the American Journal of Public Health .

In April 2019, fourteen-year-old Nigel Shelby committed suicide after being bullied for being gay; he was reportedly told that being gay “was a choice.” Nigel’s mother hired Ben Crump and others to investigate the circumstances of his death. Crump’s work on this case affirms his belief that being treated as equal is not only a civil right; it is a basic human right.

It is clear that depression and anxiety among queer Black youth is only intensified by racial disparities that marginalize and oppress Black communities. Teenagers like Nigel deserve the necessary resources needed to combat institutional racism and homophobia. In Killing Rage, Ending Racism , bell hooks maintains, “All our silences in the face of racist assaults are acts of complicity.”

Our silences as they relate to Black LQBTQ injustice are also acts of complicity. The economic disenfranchisement of Black LGBTQ people is shaped by discrimination, housing inequities, and healthcare.

Scholar Cathy J. Cohen writes in “ Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens: The Radical Potential of Queer Politics ,” “While the politics of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered activists of color might recognize heteronormativity as a primary system of power structuring our lives, it understands that heteronormativity interacts with institutional racism, patriarchy, and class exploitation to define us in numerous ways as marginal and oppressed subjects.”

For example, a 2012 report, “ LGBT Families of Color: Facts at a Glance ,” reports that “32% of children raised by gay male Black couples live in poverty, compared to 13% of children raised by married heterosexual Black parents and 7% of children raised by married heterosexual white parents.”

Black transgender people face even more precarious socioeconomic conditions. According to the American Medical Association, violence against transgender people of color is an epidemic. Thirty-four percent (34%) of Black transgender people live in poverty compared to 9% of non-transgender Black people (“ Injustice at Every Turn ”).

Violence against Black transgender people, particularly Black transwomen, is on the rise. According to the Human Rights Campaign , there were at least 26 transgender or gender non-conforming people fatally shot or killed in 2019; 91% of these deaths were Black women. However, this number does not accurately reflect the true number as data collection pertaining to transgender or non-binary people is incomplete or unreliable.

Just as Black Lives Matter, Black Trans lives must matter.

Although some Americans view sports as somehow immune from racial politics (or think that racial politics don’t belong in sports), it is clear that the history and culture of sports are deeply affected by racism and racialist thinking.

A perusal of scholarly titles on race and sports like William Rhoden’s Forty Million Dollar Slaves: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Black Athlete (2006) and Billy Hawkins’ The New Plantation: Black Athletes, College Sports and Predominantly White NCAA Institutions (2010), underscore the connection between sports and past racial subjugation, namely slavery.

Sports continue to play an important role in the maintenance of white privilege and wealth. At all levels, sports and sports culture can reproduce unequal power relations and expose racial power imbalances. At the same time, sports can also provide unique opportunities for Black protest.

During the 2016 NFL season, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick infamously kneeled during the national anthem to protest Black oppression. His and other athletes’ activism on and off the field follows a long line of athlete-activists (Wilma Rudolph, Muhammad Ali, Tommie Smith, John Carlos, Jim Brown to name a few) and highlights the continued intersection between race and sports.

In 2016, Kaepernick launched a youth empowerment program titled “Know Your Rights Camp,” founded “to advance the liberation and well-being of Black and Brown communities through education, self-empowerment, mass-mobilization.” To this end, his camp has chosen an impressive array of speakers since its founding to encourage and inspire camp participants.

Ben Crump proudly wore a “I Know My Rights” t-shirt and spoke to Black and Brown youth at the camp in 2019. Families of several Black male youth killed by police have sought Crump’s counsel, and his participation in such programs is a powerful testament to his commitment to social justice outside of his legal counsel.

Workplace environments don’t provide respite from racism. This is the perniciousness of systemic racism: you can’t escape it at home, in society, or at work.

Studies show that Black applicants are less likely to get interviews for jobs in the first place. For example, a Harvard Business School Study showed that Black and Asian applicants with ethnically sounding names were less likely to be called for interviews (“ Whitened Résumés: Race and Self-Presentation ”).

When they do get jobs, Black workers can face microaggressions, stereotyping, discrimination, and/or hostile work environments. When they speak up or file complaints, they often fear retribution.

Racial power imbalances in the workplace position Black people at all kinds of disadvantages (financial, social, and emotional). The average Black worker earned 62% less compared to what his white counterpart made in 2018. Even worse, a Black woman earned 66% less than her white male counterpart ( Business Insider ).

It should be noted that Black women face a double bind as they lack the most power and wealth due to their gendered and racialized position.

In her book, You Don’t Look Like a Lawyer: Black Women and Systemic Gendered Racism , Tsedale M. Melaku discusses how the “invisible labor clause” affects Black female lawyers at work though the term applies to most Black people in work environments. She defines the “invisible labor clause” as the “added emotional, mental and physical labor” Black people take part in so they can more easily navigate their work environments.

While Black people often put in extra or invisible labor, they get compensated less for their work.

What is the toll of racism, discrimination, and prejudice on Black people? They are unfairly burdened by the many ways institutional and individual racism affects their day-to-day lives. Social media, along with the 24-hour news cycle, makes it such that we are constantly hearing and seeing Black bodies victimized and under attack. The ubiquity of racism on our phones and televisions can be traumatic and triggering.

There is no question that there is a link between racism and one’s psychological health.

Indeed, the American Psychological Association states, “Racism is associated with a host of psychological consequences, including depression, anxiety, and other serious, sometimes debilitating conditions, including post-traumatic stress disorder and substance use disorders.

The stress caused by racism can contribute to the development of cardiovascular disease and other physical diseases.” The Anxiety and Depression Association of America reports that African Americans are 20% more likely to suffer from mental health issues.

In addition to the emotional and psychological effects of racism and discrimination, Black people must contend with institutional racism and racial disparities in mental health care including less access to care and services, provider bias, and misdiagnosis.

There is an overdiagnosis of some mental illnesses in Black populations (like schizophrenia) and an underdiagnosis of others. As Ben Crump said in defense of a mentally ill Texas woman, Pamela Turner, killed by police officers, “Just because you are Black and you have a mental illness shouldn’t equivocate that you should receive the death penalty.” ( CBS News )

Turner’s family, who sought Crump’s representation, said that Turner suffered from schizophrenia. She was shot by police when picking up trash in her neighborhood at night.

The way law enforcement deals with all people with mental illnesses regardless of race is problematic; however, Black people with mental illnesses are at particular risk when it comes to policing.

Black protest has taken many forms in the 20th and 21st centuries: sit-ins, boycotts, marches, demonstrations, militant resistance, and other economic, political, and social protest activities. Although #BlackLivesMatter was founded in 2013 and gained nationwide attention following the murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, it follows a long and rich tradition of Black people organizing and fighting for Black equality.

Princeton professor Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor writes in #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation , “Historically, incidents of police brutality have typically sparked Black uprisings, but they are the tip of the iceberg, not the entirety of the problem. Today is no different.”

Recent Black Lives Matter protests demanding change after the death of George Floyd , Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery are, of course, about these senseless killings of Black people by police and racist vigilantes, but they are also responding to a history of Black lives not mattering in this country.

When protestors chant “No Justice, No Peace,” wear t-shirts that read “I Can’t Breathe,” and demand that we say his/her/their name, they are also condemning and responding to the extensive social, educational, political, economic, legal, and psychological effects of racism that have circumscribed Black lives.

From Trayvon Martin, to Michael Brown, to Breonna Taylor, to George Floyd , Ben Crump is dedicated to demanding justice for Black families. Dubbed “the Black Gloria Allred” ( The New Yorker ), referred to as the “go-to attorney for racial justice” ( The Washington Post ), and called “the African-American family’s emergency plan” ( PBS NewsHour ),

Crump is a force against anti-Black violence, brutality, and hate crimes. At George Floyd’s Minneapolis memorial , Crump pronounced, “Do not cooperate with evil– protest against evil.” Indeed, protests are and have always been one of the many necessary forms of resistance against white supremacy.

In a July 2020 New York Times article titled “ Black Lives Matter May Be the Largest Movement in U.S. History ,” the authors note that 15 to 26 million people in the United States have taken part in a demonstration in response to George Floyd’s murder and Black Lives Matter. The protests have gone international, prompting a global rejection of white supremacy and Black oppression on the streets from Paris to Tokyo.

The protests have reminded us of James Baldwin’s words: “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” Recent protests show that many Americans are ready to face this nation’s ugly racial realities and demand change and racial justice.

In 2018, Fortune 500 CEOs, who earned approximately $14.5 million on average, included just four Black people and ten Latinos — less than 3 percent of the total. By contrast, these groups made up 44.1 percent of the U.S. workers who would benefit from a raise in the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour by 2025, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Blacks and Latinos comprise 31.7% of the U.S. population.

As of the last quarter of 2019, the median white worker made 28 percent more than the typical Black worker and more than 35 more than the median Latino worker, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The median Black family, with just over $3,500, owns just 2 percent of the wealth of the nearly $147,000 the median white family owns. The median Latino family, with just over $6,500, owns just 4 percent of the wealth of the median white family.

Put differently, the median white family has 41 times more wealth than the median Black family and 22 times more wealth than the median Latino family. Source: Inequality.org

The 2020 presidential election has brought renewed national attention to the myriad of ways systematic racism affects the electoral system, including general voter suppression, voter intimidation, unfair voter ID laws, gerrymandering, and other practices intended to disenfranchise communities of color.

According to the ACLU, one in 13 African Americans is unable to vote because of disenfranchisement laws in the United States. Unsurprisingly, they report that counties with higher numbers of people of color have fewer polling sites and poll workers.

In addition to this, researchers have used cell phone user data to confirm that those who vote in black neighborhoods wait longer in lines to vote than those in white neighborhoods, as reported in the Washington Post .

The seminal 1965 Voting Rights Act is under threat. A 2013 Supreme Court ruling served a blow to democracy, “freeing nine states, mostly in the South, to change their election laws without advance federal approval,” reported the New York Times . These states have a history of discriminating against people of color; thus, this decision summons past injustices of America to rear their ugly head in the present.

One of these nine states is Georgia, which presents a particularly appalling example of the black vote being suppressed. In 2018, then-Secretary of State Brian Kemp was accused of suppressing the black vote when he was running for governor. Kemp’s “exact match” law flagged over 53,000 voter registrations that his office said showed discrepancies when compared with official state documents.

The ACLU reports that 70% of the voters who were purged in Georgia in 2018 were Black. Georgia is just one example of the kinds of voter suppression happening all over the country.

Racial disparities in education continue in 2020, confirming that our nation’s public school systems remain separate and unequal. Black youth are presented with unequal opportunities at school; these inequities can persist over lifetimes. A 2019 New York Times article reported that over half of the children in the U.S. attend schools in “racially concentrated districts where over 75 percent of students are either white or nonwhite.”

In addition, Black students often attend schools that receive less funding and provide a lower quality of education. As reported in The Atlantic , Research drawing on data from school districts in Pennsylvania found that funding was directly tied to race, not poverty: “No matter how rich or poor the district in question, funding gaps existed solely based on the racial composition of the school.

Just the increased presence of minority students actually deflated a district’s funding level.” In general, school districts with less funding are likely to have increased class sizes, reduced school services, lower teacher salaries, and higher teacher lay-offs.

Black students are more likely to attend schools where there is less exposure to advanced classes, schools that have lower high school completion rates, and schools that have fewer opportunities for students. For example, the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights 2014 “Civil Rights Data Collection: Data Snapshot” found that Black, Latino, and Native American students had more first year teachers in their schools than their white peers.

Black students were three times more likely to attend a school where little more than half of the teachers meet all state certification and licensure requirements.

Blackness is criminalized regardless of one’s age, and thus it is not surprising that Black students were expelled at three times the rate of their white peers. Stereotypes about Black females likely contribute to Black girls being suspended at higher rates than all other girls (and most boys).

Racial disparities in the healthcare system have devastating effects on Black communities in the United States. Black people often live in neighborhoods where their access to healthcare services is limited and the quality of health care is lower.

The current COVID-19 pandemic has had a disproportionate impact on Black, Latino, and Native American communities. CDC data has shown that Black and Latino people are nearly three times more likely to be infected than white people ( New York Times ).

Various pre-pandemic issues and disparities contribute to this high number including income, geography, and occupation. For example, a Center for Economic and Policy Research study reported that Black people make up about one in nine workers in general but account for one in six front-line-industry workers.

Black people are disproportionately employed in grocery, convenience, and drug stores; public transit; trucking, warehouse, and postal service; health care; and childcare and social services.

Merlin Chowkwanyun and Adolph L. Reed write in the New England Journal of Medicine , “Covid-19 disparities should be situated in the context of material resource deprivation caused by low SES [socioeconomic status], chronic stress brought on by racial discrimination, or place-based risk.”

COVID-19 infections affect African Americans of all ages. For instance, recent data from the CDC suggests that Black and Latino children are more likely to be infected with COVID-19 (13% of infected children were white; 40% were Hispanic; 33% were Black).

These distressing statistics remind us that COVID-19 is not an “equal opportunity” killer as some have suggested. While it is true that anyone can be infected with the virus, people of color and low-income Americans are devastatingly more at risk.

The criminal justice system in this country generates, supports, and sustains racial inequalities. In Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness , she calls mass incarceration a “racial caste system” to emphasize how Black people are stigmatized and oppressed by laws, customs, and practices that have been structured to work against them.

The ACLU points out a staggering statistic: today there are more Black people in prison or controlled by corrections departments than there were slaves (see “Race and Criminal Justice”). Black people are disproportionately affected by disparities in policing, sentencing decisions, selective law enforcement, and police brutality.

According to The Sentence Project’s report to the United Nations on Racial Disparities in the U.S. Criminal Justice System, African Americans are more likely to be arrested, convicted, and have longer prison sentences than their white counterparts. In addition, “African-American adults are 5.9 times as likely to be incarcerated than whites and Hispanics are 3.1 times as likely.”

An NAACP Criminal Fact Sheet notes that although African Americans represent 13% of the population, they make up 35% of all that have been executed under the death penalty in the last 40 years.

A particularly grievous example of racial disparities is the criminalization of drug use and possession for Black people. For instance, although drug usage is about the same across groups, Black people are almost four times more likely to be arrested for having marijuana than white people (“ The War on Marijuana in Black and White ”).

Across the board, the criminal justice system assumes Black guilt, disproportionately punishes, and sets up Black and Latino communities to feed into the prison system.

#LivingWhileBlack is a hashtag often used on social media to bring to light all the ways Black people are racialized, stereotyped, and victimized in public spaces (though sometimes also in private spaces as the murders of Botham Jean in 2018 and Breonna Taylor in 2020 attest).

In Racial Formation in the United States , sociologists Michael Omi and Howard Winant define racialization as “the extension of racial meaning to a previously racially unclassified relationship, social practice, or group.”

#LivingWhileBlack critiques how racialization and racism work together to disadvantage, harm, or oppress; it identifies all the ways Black people are discriminated against or racially profiled when they shop, work, exercise, run errands, get an education, or pursue recreational interests.

The news stories invoking #LivingWhileBlack are endless – they detail Black people being questioned, harassed, and profiled when engaging in everyday activities as innocuous as swimming. One recent example was in June 2020 when a white Hampton Inn employee called the police on a Black family who was using the hotel pool in Williamston, North Carolina.

Ednitta Wright, who has retained Ben Crump as her lawyer, was staying at the hotel with her children yet was asked to provide proof of guest status to the hotel and to police who were called. Wright was deservedly indignant and refused to provide her identification (though she provided her hotel room key) since she committed no crime. Police obtained her name from her vehicle license plate, affirming she was indeed a guest.

The fact that she and her children’s presence was questioned in the first place highlights how Black people are often viewed as intruders, trespassers, or criminals. The incident at the Hampton Inn is just one example of white employees, hotel guests, or apartment complex residents calling the authorities on Black people at pools.

Some of the people who have reported Black people for swimming have received nicknames on social media. These include “ Pool Patrol Paula ” in South Carolina in June 2018 and “ID Adam” in North Carolina in July 2018. It should be noted that the aforementioned incidents are particularly upsetting given the history of whites-only or segregated public pools in this country.

In Jeff Wiltse’s Contested Waters: A Social History of Swimming Pools in America , he notes that in the early 20th century, public pool attendants in the North would dissuade Black people from entering. He writes “Enforcement then fell to white swimmers who often harassed and assaulted Black Americans who transgressed the new racial boundary. In this way, segregation was frequently achieved through violence.”

When white people question, harass, and/or call the police on Black people at pools, it recalls a long history of discrimination and violence at American swimming pools.

Black people have long suffered racial discrimination from financial institutions, including the practice of red-lining and banks refusing services, denying loans, and raising interest rates based on the race of the patron.

Just like at swimming pools, Black people are viewed suspiciously at banks. It serves bank interests to be welcoming to customers and to project an image of security, success, and safety. However, pernicious stereotypes of Black people as lawbreakers position Black customers as threatening when they enter banks.

#BankingWhileBlack means being thought of as a wrongdoer at best or a criminal at worst when simply attempting to use bank services like cashing a check.

One particularly egregious case of racial discrimination at a bank happened in January 2020 when Sauntore Thomas attempted to deposit a lawsuit settlement check he received after being racially discriminated against by his former employer in Livonia, Michigan. Thomas says he was treated as if he was engaging in fraud; the bank called the police. The bank manager, who was Black, repeatedly asked Thomas how he got the money, highlighting systemic racism at play.

In other words, the behavior and assumptions of all bank employees, regardless of their race, can be affected by banking culture where racial biases are deeply embedded, even when the employees themselves are Black.

As a 2019 New York Times article asserts, “There are few Black executives in the upper echelons of most financial institutions. Leading banks have recently paid restitution to Black employees for isolating them from white peers, placing them in the poorest branches and cutting them off from career opportunities.” When the culture of a corporation engages in racial discrimination, it is so entrenched that all levels typically follow suit.

#BankingWhileBlack affects all African Americans, regardless of their socioeconomic status. For example, former NFL player Jimmy Kennedy was discriminated against by a JPMorgan Chase Arizona branch in 2018 where he wished to attain private client status but was given the runaround. He was told by a Black bank employee that his race and size made other employees fear him.

A 2019 New York Magazine article on Ben Crump begins with a description of a meeting Crump had with a finance executive who was arrested for attempting to cash a $2,000 check at a bank he mistakenly assumed was the correct one. He spent part of the night in jail as a result of the bank’s wrongful actions. Deciding not to pursue a lawsuit, he signed a nondisclosure agreement for a settlement.

Both examples remind us that one’s level of education, occupation, or personal wealth provides little protection when banking while Black.

Restaurants and stores have historically been places where Black people report feeling unwelcome, insulted, treated differently, or feared. Regardless of geographic locale, income bracket, or age, most Black people know the feeling of being closely watched or followed when shopping.

Sometimes a Black person feels that they wait longer for a store employee to assist them; at other times, they may feel overtly harassed or targeted. Shopping while Black means always being presumed to be guilty, being accused of shoplifting, or being regarded with suspicion at all kinds of retails stores from drugstores, to department stores, to high-end designer stores, and malls.

A review of the most recent data (a 2018 Gallup poll ), suggests that 59% of African Americans said they are treated less fairly than white Americans in shopping malls and other stores. In that poll, 29% of African Americans felt they had received unfair treatment while shopping in the last 30 days, a higher percentage than those who felt unfair treatment at work or in interactions with the police.

A high-profile story made the news in 2013 when Oprah Winfrey said she was discriminated against in a high-end store in Zurich, Switzerland ( CNN ). She reportedly went into the store and asked a saleswoman to show her an expensive bag that cost close to $40,000. Rather than taking the bag down to show her, the saleswoman steered her away from the bag (despite Winfrey asking several times to see it), stressing how expensive it was.

Although the store and saleswoman claimed this incident was a misunderstanding, it symbolizes how Black people are made to feel they do not belong even when they are eager consumers.

One could say shopping (including window shopping and making purchases) is an American pastime. However, consumer racial profiling can make shopping trips stressful and unpleasant for Black people.

Sociologist Cassi Pittman writes, “Retail settings are often sites where anti-Black bias is made evident, requiring Black shoppers to navigate racial hierarchies while procuring goods. Discrimination alters the experience of shopping, arguably raising the costs and reducing the rewards derived from consumption … shopping no longer becomes a form of leisure.”

Shopping while Black is yet another example of how discrimination affects even the regular daily activities of Black people.

The commercial airline industry has a history of excluding Black people. The first African American flight attendant and pilot were not hired until 1958 and 1964, respectively.

In Louwanda Evans’s Cabin Pressure: African American Pilots, Flight Attendants, and Emotional Labor , she discusses how Black crewmembers experience systemic racism at work, particularly the extra, invisible work that being a Black person in the airline industry entails.

Evans writes that the industry “has developed as a white space—a space in which whites, especially white males, created and continue to maintain the ideological and normative frameworks of who belongs and doesn’t belong in the cockpit” and, one could say, the cabin as well. Consider data from the 2019 Bureau of Labor and Statistics that African Americans make up only 3% of commercial pilots in the United States.

Whether a Black person is flying the plane, working on a plane, or traveling by plane, they are likely to encounter racial bias. In Yale professor and poet Claudia Rankine’s autobiographical collection of poetry and prose, Citizen , she recounted being treated as lesser-than when two passengers realize their seats are next to her.

In one of Rankine’s essays, a passenger looked at the black author and told her mother, “These are our seats, but this is not what I expected.” This brief encounter is an example of the microaggressions and subtle instances of racial prejudice that often go unreported or remain unpublicized.

More overt examples of racism on planes frequently make the news or are shared on social media, accounting for the #FlyingWhileBlack hashtag. Racial incidents on American Airlines were so bad that in 2017 the NAACP issued a national travel advisory for African Americans flying this airline.

These incidents happen on all airlines and typically include but are not limited to instances of Black people being removed from flights, being treated poorly by flight attendants and other airline employees, being subjected to racial harassment from fellow passengers, and being questioned when sitting in First Class.

The phrase “I can’t breathe” can be seen on cardboard signs, t-shirts, and face masks; it has been graffitied on walls and unveiled on yard signs. The words have been worn, shouted, or displayed by activists, protestors, allies, artists, professional athletes, and celebrities.

Although Eric Garner was not the first Black person to utter these words before being killed by police, the phrase first gained attention when Garner was killed in 2014 after uttering “I can’t breathe” fourteen times before losing consciousness and later dying at the hands of police.

Tragically, George Floyd said these same words over 20 times when begging for his life in May 2020. Police officer Derek Chauvin continued to press his knee on Floyd’s neck, telling him, “It takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk.”

We will never know how many Black men and women have told officers “I can’t breathe” before perishing, but we know that Javier Ambler (TX), Manuel Ellis (WA), Elijah McClain (CO), Derrick Scott (OK), Bryon Williams (NV), Christopher Loew (NV), and others have said these words before being killed (see this New York Times article for more examples).

When we #SayTheirNames, we use our breath, calling attention to the fact that they were tragically unable to breathe at the end of their lives.

One of the basic requirements for human life is breathing. The words “I can’t breathe” have become a slogan that not only condemns the torture and murder of Black people by police, but speaks more generally to all the ways Black people are denied basic human rights. “I can’t breathe” means that African Americans metaphorically cannot breathe; they are still treated like second-class citizens.

Rev. Al Sharpton powerfully said it best when he repeated, “Get your knee off our necks,” at George Floyd’s memorial service in Minneapolis. Sharpton’s words connect a history of Black oppression, protest, and resistance to the contemporary moment, underscoring the fundamental purpose of Black Lives Matter.

Allowing Black people to breathe and matter is one of the least things this country can do for a group of people that has been and continues to be maligned and oppressed.

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Stanford scholars examine racism, social change and how to build a more just future

The recent acts of violence perpetrated against Black communities has led many to question racism and racial injustice embedded in American society. Stanford scholars have been looking for ways to reduce racial disparities and how to create meaningful change.

The tragic deaths of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia and Breonna Taylor in Kentucky have shown the world how deeply embedded racial injustice and racism are in the social fabric of the United States.

These recent acts of violence have raised a set of complex and challenging questions about inequality in our society: Why are Black Americans repeatedly targeted by the police? What can be done to stop further atrocities against minority communities from occurring? As some protests against these deaths turn violent, are political protests and demonstrations an effective way to instigate change? How can we build a more just society?

These important questions are among the subjects of Stanford scholars’ work. Some researchers have worked with police agencies to develop recommendations for how officers can build safer and stronger relationships with the communities they serve. Others have examined what makes some political protests effective and why others turn violent. Researchers have also looked at how racial injustice cuts across other parts of society – such as schools and workplaces – and what can be done to reduce disparities. Here is some of that research and more.

Identifying bias in the police

Stanford social psychologist Jennifer Eberhardt  has worked with police departments across the country to help them recognize implicit bias and understand racial disparities in policing. Her work with the Oakland Police Department, for example, resulted in 50 recommendations about how police agencies can build better relationships with the communities they serve.

Eberhardt’s work with the Oakland Police Department underscores how important data and transparency is for police agencies to identify specific problem areas and create evidence-based solutions.

“Our recommendations are broad but are anchored in our primary mission of pushing agencies to collect more data and to do more with the data they collect,” wrote Eberhardt in the report. “For many agencies, this will require a change in mindset: it requires seeing themselves not only as crime-fighting institutions but also as institutions of learning.”

Helping communities leverage better data between the police and the public are Sharad Goel, a professor of management science and engineering, and Cheryl Phillips, a computational journalist and lecturer at Stanford. Together, they founded the Stanford Open Policing Project , to help researchers, journalists, and policymakers investigate and improve interactions between police and the public.

Cops speak less respectfully to black community members

Professors Jennifer Eberhardt and Dan Jurafsky, along with other Stanford researchers, detected racial disparities in police officers’ speech after analyzing more than 100 hours of body camera footage from Oakland Police.

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

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

Numbers about inequality don’t speak for themselves

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

Helping journalists use data for investigative reporting

Stanford University scholars are launching a data-driven initiative to help journalists find stories at a lower cost, to support local newsrooms explore public interest issues and fight against misinformation.

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

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

Race and mass criminalization in the U.S.

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

Raising awareness and creating change

As protest erupts across the country, what makes some demonstrations more effective than others? Stanford sociologist Robb Willer is studying what causes certain social protests to be successful and others to backfire. For example, he studied violent confrontations between white nationalist protesters and anti-racist counter-protesters in both Charlottesville, Virginia, and Berkeley, California, and found that violence by anti-racist protesters can lead people to view them as unreasonable, which may, in turn, lead to people identifying less with the group.

Willer, a professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences and the Graduate School of Business (GSB), also found that when anti-racists turn their protest into violence it can backfire even further: In some cases, it can even result in support for the other side.

Some of Willer’s colleagues in GSB have also studied what makes social movements successful. For example, Sarah A. Soule , the Morgridge Professor of Organizational Behavior, has studied how social movements are more effective when they are part of coordinated efforts with legislators. 

“With the rise of the internet,” Soule said, “modern movements can mobilize constituents through their websites and social media. If your end goal is to get 500,000 people to turn up on the Mall in Washington, D.C., Twitter is great at that. Facebook is great at that. But if your goal is to actually make lasting change in the system, you have to work within the system – to essentially get a seat at the table.”

How violent protest can backfire

When a protest group with strong public support turns violent, people may perceive them as less reasonable. In turn, this leads people to identify with them less, and ultimately become less supportive, according to a new study by Stanford sociologist Robb Willer.

It takes more than mass protests to drive change

Those large-scale protests on everything from climate change to wealth inequality make for engaging news segments. But do they result in real change? It turns out social advocacy organizations have greater impact on federal legislation when their experts get to testify.

Robb Willer: The powerlessness paradox

Researchers find that feeling powerless can lead people to support systems that disadvantage them.

Seven factors contributing to American racism

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

Where do advocates come from?

A strong sense of conviction can both encourage and discourage people from speaking out.

How protests can swing elections

A new study shows that both liberal and conservative protests have had a real impact on U.S. House elections.

A better way to diffuse racial discrimination

Research shows why understanding the source of discrimination matters.

Building a more just future

Overcoming racial injustice requires a critical examination of how it cuts across different sectors of society, such as in the workplace and in schools. 

Sean Reardon , a professor in the Graduate School of Education, has looked closely at how poverty intersects with the educational achievement gap. While racial segregation is a major indicator of educational inequality, Reardon’s research has also shown the impact of attending impoverished schools on Black and Hispanic students.

“It’s not the racial composition of the schools that matters. What matters is when Black or Hispanic students are concentrated in high-poverty schools in a district,” said Reardon, who has set up the Educational Opportunity Project to help other researchers identify solutions in their areas to reduce educational disparities throughout the U.S.

Meanwhile, other researchers have shown how academic achievement can be hindered in other ways. For example, Claude Steele , a professor of psychology in the School of Humanities and Sciences, found that even if students are well-prepared, negative stereotypes can affect how they perform. 

School is not the only setting where stereotyping results in devastating consequences. Stanford research has also shown how it leads to hiring discrimination and underfunded companies, among other problems.

New evidence shows that school poverty shapes racial achievement gaps

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

Access to program for black male students lowered dropout rates

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

Science lessons through a different lens

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

Toolkits help tackle real-world problems

A lab in the Psychology Department at Stanford has created a set of free toolkits to help people resolve complicated issues, including resources to help people deal with disagreements.

Stereotyping makes people more likely to act badly

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

Race influences professional investors’ judgments

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

How emotions may result in hiring, workplace bias

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

Racial disparities in school discipline are linked to the achievement gap between black and white students nationwide

Research using a Stanford database of test scores from all U.S. public schools is the first to document the relationship at a national level.

Teaching difficult histories

Michael Hines talks about why students need to hear their own stories reflected in history books and classes.

Reducing racial disparities in school discipline

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

Racial Justice in the 21st Century: New Remedies for Persistent Problems

Many groups of people have suffered invidious discrimination in America, and some still do. In addition to people of African descent, women, gays, Latinos, Jews, Muslims, Catholics and many other religious groups, atheists, the Irish (“No Irish need apply!”), Germans and Italians (especially during wartime), Asians and, to one extent or another, virtually every ethnic immigrant group, as well as the disabled have all suffered grievously and unjustly from invidious discrimination-in employment, housing, education and public accommodations. Such discrimination has limited those opportunities that are supposed to be part of the American ethos, and has fostered inequalities that are dissonant to the American dream and to the reason that many immigrants came to this country in the first instance.

But of all these groups, only those of African descent were captured in their homelands, brought here against their will, sold into slavery, fundamentally dehumanized and had their family structure brutally broken. And only African-Americans, following slavery, were subjected to Jim Crow laws for an additional century, enforced by state-sanctioned terrorism. This unique and legalized subjugation, based on skin color and national origin, stifled opportunity, suffocated ambition, especially in the young, and imposed inequalities far more severe and far more durable, than any suffered by any other discriminated-against group. It does not diminish the injustice or the damage done to other groups to suggest that what this country, by state action and inaction at every level, did to people of African descent was fundamentally different in kind and that this difference accounts for the special difficulties we have experienced in recent years in finding remedies that are just, lasting and effective.

The end of slavery and the promises of Reconstruction foundered quickly as the jungle of racial injustice took back the road of equal rights and opportunities. The politics and the dominant culture of white supremacy swiftly reasserted themselves, Jim Crow laws were established throughout the South and for another century African-Americans remained subjugated and dehumanized based on the color of their skin to a degree unmatched by any other form of American discrimination. By the time the modern civil rights movement arose during the mid-20th century, an unprecedented subjugation, blessed by law, had flourished for nearly three hundred years. It was precisely this legalized subjugation that was the major target of the modern civil rights movement. And it succeeded to a remarkable degree, and at a surprising pace. Brown v. Board of Education was decided in 1954; Rosa Parks sat down in a Montgomery bus in 1955; the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom took place in 1963; and in an exhilarating five year period, three federal laws were passed-the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968-that taken together established a legal framework for racial justice. Over intense, often violent, opposition, with much courage and with more than a little bloodshed, the civil rights movement had succeeded, by 1968, in dismantling the legal infrastructure of Jim Crow and replacing it with a legal infrastructure designed to ensure legal equality and remedy both individual and systemic instances of discrimination. And despite the enormous difficulties inherent in the enforcement efforts that followed the passage of these laws, and the much-too-slow pace of enforcement, it is fair to say that the regime of legalized discrimination based on skin color no longer exists and that formal, legal equality does.

However, the establishment of formal, legal equality has not led to the elimination of unjust differences based on skin color: major disproportions persist in education, housing, imprisonment, family structure, unemployment, wealth and opportunities for advancement. To some commentators, notably those who, like Charles Murray, never were prominently involved in the effort to dismantle Jim Crow or establish formal equality, the persistence of these disproportions is evidence of innate inferiorities linked to skin color. To others, notably those who were in the forefront of the civil rights movement, the persistence of these disproportions is evidence that the institutionalized injuries imposed by centuries of slavery and legalized skin-color subjugation were far more severe and durable than imagined, and that the remedies for such injuries lie somewhere beyond the establishment of formal, legal equality.

Melvin Oliver’s work on the huge and persistent differentials in wealth and assets, as distinct from the narrowing differentials in income, provide a profound example of the way in which past injuries have functioned as a kind of seniority system for inequality.

Seniority systems in employment, in the absence of prior skin-color discrimination, would seem to be a fair way of distributing scarce jobs and promotions. But layered on top of centuries of skin-color discrimination and exclusion, seniority systems have the effect, if not the intention, of replicating and reifying inequality, of rewarding the unjust beneficiaries and punishing the victims of prior discriminations and exclusions, thereby deepening and aggravating the initial injury. This is true even if the seniority system is currently and prospectively implemented in a race-neutral way; indeed, race-neutral mechanisms layered onto systems created by prior exclusions and discrimination almost always and inevitably have the function and effect of perpetuating and worsening the original exclusion. This fact is the basis for the moral and legal foundation for affirmative action.

But while such affirmative action remedies, if implemented, may cure structurally discriminatory employment systems, the deeper inequalities in wealth and assets — and the ways in which those deeper inequalities limit equal opportunities across a broad spectrum of essential items such as housing, jobs, education and capital formation — do not yield and probably cannot yield to such legal remedies. In effect, such deeper inequalities are able to maintain themselves without any current violation of law and in the absence of any current discrimination. For although those structural inequalities based on skin color were created and maintained by governmental actions, they do not require any governmental action now or prospectively in order to maintain unjust skin-color differentials into the indefinite future. Nor is it necessary for anti-discrimination laws to be violated in order for such differentials to endure. In effect, a regime of formal equality, layered on top of these structural inequalities, functions as a seniority system for injustice, placing a veneer of fairness over a fundamentally unfair structure. Indeed, it is for this reason that the remedies of formal equality, developed during the era when establishing formal equality was critical, are no longer sufficient to establish remedies for racial injustice and in some instances may even be regressive.

It is as if the soft and mobile substance of social opportunities had been constrained and deformed for centuries by the hard shell of legalized skin-color subjugation. The heroic and revolutionary achievement of the civil rights movement of the mid-20th century was to break apart and remove that hard outer shell. But when it did, to the deep disappointment of advocates for racial justice, we discovered that the inside had assumed the form of the shell: too many decades of constraint had robbed it of its elasticity; the deformation had become ossified. Moreover, the obligation to do more must be upon the society as a whole and the government in particular because it was society and the government, at every level through action and inaction that created and maintained the injuries and the consequences that we now face and endure. The obligation to remedy derives from the source of the injury. This is the moral and philosophical basis for both affirmative action and the recent movement for reparations; it is not necessary to endorse any particular affirmative action proposal or any particular reparations proposal in order to recognize the moral and philosophical societal obligation to repair the institutionalized damage done.

New paradigms will have to be developed, new ways of thinking about and analyzing the problem, new ways of conceiving the problem will have to be invented before remedies can be found for the racial injustice lying ossified beneath the hard, outer shell. The fact is that the search for such remedies represents an entirely different stage of the quest for racial justice. As it turns out, the legal paradigms and remedies that were developed for the successful assault on the hard outer shell of legalized skin-color subjugation, and which were responsible for the establishment of formal equality-an immense and revolutionary accomplishment-are insufficient for the next stage of the struggle: the assault on the ossified social and economic inequalities created by centuries of legalized subjugation. And it is also possible that the people-heroes all-who led the initial assault on the outer shell, many of whom were lawyers, are too confined by their training and by their past success to be the ones likely to develop new paradigms and new weapons; certainly, they are unlikely to be the exclusive ones or even the dominant ones, as they were during the first stage. It is for this reason that the Glasser Fellows should be chosen from a broad spectrum of backgrounds: e.g., journalists, economists, sociologists, political scientists as well as lawyers. And because experience sometimes serves as a barrier to new thinking and because young people unburdened by old paradigms often look at an old problem with fresh eyes (it is interesting to note in this regard that virtually every major historical breakthrough in mathematics and theoretical physics has been made by people younger than 30, and that over a long and rich scholarly life Einstein never again reached the level of new thinking that he did as a young man when he developed the Special and General Theory of Relativity; that example is typical, not aberrational), it might well be advisable to choose some of the Fellows from among the young, as well as from the accomplished, providing those special few can be identified.

At the same time, it would be a mistake to assume that because formal equality exists, current skin-color and ethnic discrimination does not. To the contrary, traditional discrimination-against Latinos, Asian Americans, Arab-Americans and others, as well as African-Americans– continues to escape the enforcement of civil rights laws. More significantly, new forms of government-driven skin-color subjugation have developed, of which drug prohibition and the explosion of incarceration provide one outstanding and consequential example. The racially targeted enforcement of drug prohibition and the racially skewed and exponential growth of the prison population now function as a successor state-action system to Jim Crow injustice. This is evident from arrest patterns, search and seizure patterns, conviction rates, sentencing disparities, racial profiling on highways and customs checkpoints and felony disenfranchisement. In effect, the racially skewed prosecution of the drug war represents a partial resurrection of the hard outer shell of legalized discrimination, and must be attacked as such. The targeting of Arab-Americans during post- 9/11 civil liberties violations provides another example. Thus, the focus of the Fellows program cannot be exclusively devoted to the second-stage problem described above, but must also be focused on new forms of old injustices, some of them arising in ways that traditional civil rights advocates have not always been swift to recognize.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"On Juneteenth" by Annette Gordon-Reed

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

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

Purchase "On Juneteenth" here>>

"The Case for Reparations" by Ta-Nehisi Coates

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

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

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

Read it here>>

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

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

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

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

"Many Thousands Gone" by James Baldwin

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"The First White President" by Ta-Nehisi Coates

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

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

"Just Walk on By" by Brent Staples

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

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

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

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

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

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

"A Report from Occupied Territory" by James Baldwin

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

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

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

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

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

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Essay About Racial Discrimination

Racial discrimination has been ranked as one the most pervasive issue in the world around today. Anyone judged by the skin colour, nationality, religion rather than by the content of character can be very dehumanizing experience that can have lasting effects on an individual’s life (Fischer 2008). Racism disturbs both individual and the learning environment in schools. It generates tension that alter cultural understanding and narrow the educational experiences of all students. According to (Berlak 2009) discrimination occurs in any stage of education from preschool through college and can be practiced by teachers or students. Racism occur in various forms such as teasing, name calling, teasing, verbal abuse and bullying. Therefore this literature review, discusses the types, effects and solution to this unstoppable issue in education system.

Types of Racial Discrimination

Racism is frequently thought of as individual demonstrations of inclination. While discrimination is still particularly a reality, concentrating on individual demonstrations of prejudice can darken the substances that make and keep up racial disparity all the more comprehensively. According to De la luz, there are three types of racial discrimination which are individual racism, instituinal racism and systematic racism. To completely address the effects of racism it is essential to address all parts of racial disparity. Individual racism, likewise called personal racism, is the sort of prejudice that a great many people consider when they consider “racism.” Individual prejudice happens when a man’s convictions, states of mind, and activities depend on inclinations, generalizations, or preferences against another race. Institutional racism refers to an establishment settling on decisions that deliberately single out or hurt ethnic minorities. Systematic racism, is maybe the most upsetting and slightest examined type of racism. It systematizes individual, social, and different sorts of prejudice in ceaseless frameworks. Like institutional prejudice, basic racism centre around associations instead of individuals. However, while institutional racism may intentionally attempt to single out a specific gathering, auxiliary bigotry is unbiased all over. This impartiality makes basic prejudice hard to gauge and significantly more hard to end.

Effects of Racial Discrimination

It is believed that racism is one term that describes the whole issue, however it is a complex system that describes many types of biased behaviours and systems (Jonnes 2018).According to the Human Rights Commission (2017), racism as an act that humiliates human behaviour and affects the life of an individual physically, mentally and socially. It takes various forms such as name calling, comments, jokes, verbal abuse, harassment, bullying or commentary in the media that inflames hostility towards certain groups. In serious case, it results in physical abuse and violence. Racial discrimination is a deadly virus that affects all, individual, families, communities and the learning and working environment. Racism can unpleasantly affect the educational outcomes, individual happiness and self-confidence, cultural identity, school and community relations and most commonly is the student’s behaviour and academic achievements (Kohli, 2017). Hence if it is unaddressed than racism can generate tensions within the school communities and these will affect the educational experiences of all students. It can demoralise students self -confidence and can result in students displaying a range of negative behaviours Students who are disaffected with school are less likely to attend school regularly and more likely to drop out of school earlier than other groups of students. The increase rate of the incidence of absenteeism and stress is due to racism been link to diminished morale and lower productivity (Fields 2014),The presence of racism in schools affects the educational outcomes due to lower participation rates, behavioural problems and feelings of alienation. Hence the educational success depends on the regular sustained attendance of each students and the ability to participate in the classroom. With racism in the learning environment, the balance is disrupted and educational outcomes maybe limited as a result (Triaki 2017).

Moreover, racism could be minimised even though it will decade to erase it from our beautiful world. Advancing positive ethnic and racial character decreases sentiments of detachment or prohibition and enhance students capacity to focus in the classroom. Teachers can enable students to create positive opinions about their ethnic and racial personality by presenting them to assorted good examples, and making a sheltered space for them to commend their disparities. A definitive answer for this issue is diminishing understudy introduction to racial separation and enhancing race relations in the U.S. In the interim, there are ways minding and concerned grown-ups can enable understudies to manage the pressure be minimised even though it will take time to prevent it from being practiced in schools. (Collins 2015).Racism has been around everlastingly however it can be diminished, just with a lot of exertion. Education is the key for some muddled issues we look in this world. Education can change the manner in which people think and lead us to a superior world. We can battle racism with education (Hwang 2008). On the off chance that we instruct and show sympathy, at that point there will be less need to discuss how we can stop racism. It will be difficult to stop racism if racist considerations are still with us. It is dependent upon us to get ready for the future by teaching our family and others on the difficulties of racial discrimination. At exactly that point will we overcome racial discrimination in our societies and schools.

Racial discrimination could be described as a weapon that destroys the society and the education system as whole. It affects the students in various ways that hinder their academic achievement and also affects them mentally, physically and socially. It was also stated that racial discrimination can occur at any stage either preschool, high schools or even tertiary institution. Hence there are possible ways where racism could be minimized even though it will take time to be erased. Therefore education is an important tool in everyone’s life since it can change the world and every individual.        

Racism and History of Discrimination Essay

Racism and other kinds of discrimination have existed for centuries and still prevail in modern-day society. While many people view racism as a social construct that only exists among ordinary people, it is much more frequent among government authorities and law enforcement agencies, with police brutality being one of the most acute issues. Such an issue is not merely a local or state problem but a federal one, permeating the entire country. As a result, while different policies aim to eradicate racism-caused police brutality, it still exists and causes many deaths.

There are many instances of the given issue that led not just to disabilities but also to deaths. For example, despite a 1993 prohibition on chokeholds by the New York Police Department, policeman Daniel Pantaleo nonetheless fatally choked Eric Garner in 2014 (The Economist, 2020). In one of the latest occurrences, Derek Chauvin, a Minneapolis law enforcement officer, knelt on George Floyd’s neck for 8 minutes on May 25, 2020, causing George Floyd to pass away (Valbuena et al., 2020). As a result, the policy sector this sort of social injustice falls under is criminal justice. According to the United Nations, among the core problems that impact this sector are “racial profiling, harassment, verbal abuse and abuse of power by law enforcement officials” (United Nations, 2022). As a result, advocacy should be aimed at creating new models in criminal justice that will ensure the protection of all minority groups and due process. As has been mentioned by the UN, “racial discrimination in law enforcement and the criminal justice system cannot be separated from systemic racism” (United Nations, 2022). Therefore, such a macro policy intervention should aim at holding those law enforcement officers responsible for the brutality.

Hence, despite efforts to end racism-related police violence, it still occurs and claims many lives. Criminal justice is the area of policy that deals with this kind of social injustice. Racial discrimination, harassment, emotional insults, and the misuse of authority by law enforcement authorities are among the significant issues that have an influence on this industry, according to the United Nations. Therefore, advocacy efforts should focus on developing new criminal justice models that would guarantee the protection of all minority groups and due process. The goal of such a macro-political intervention should be to hold violent law enforcement personnel accountable.

The Economist. (2020). In America protests have already brought policy changes . The Economist. Web.

United Nations. (2022). Addressing and responding to racial discrimination in the criminal justice system . UN. Web.

Valbuena, V., Howard, R., Bonner, S., & Dimick, J. (2020). Let us not be silent . Annals of Surgery , 272 (6), 915-916. Web.

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IvyPanda. (2024, January 19). Racism and History of Discrimination. https://ivypanda.com/essays/racism-and-history-of-discrimination/

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1. IvyPanda . "Racism and History of Discrimination." January 19, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/racism-and-history-of-discrimination/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Racism and History of Discrimination." January 19, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/racism-and-history-of-discrimination/.

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• Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” Album Analysis
• Music Technology in Michael Jackson and Pink Floyd' Songs
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Read our research on: Abortion | International Conflict | Election 2024

Regions & Countries

1. views on discrimination in our society.

Large shares of Americans say there is at least some discrimination against several religious, racial and ethnic groups in our society. About eight-in-ten see discrimination against Muslims and Jews, as well as against Arab, Black and Hispanic people.

Three-quarters also see at least some discrimination against Asian people.

Half or fewer see at least some discrimination against evangelical Christians and White people.

The shares of Americans who say there is a lot of discrimination against each group vary considerably. Muslims are most widely perceived to face a high degree of discrimination: 44% of U.S. adults say there is a lot of discrimination against Muslims, which is slightly more than the shares saying this about Black people (40%), Jews (40%) and Arab people (39%). Somewhat fewer think there is a lot of discrimination against Hispanic people (28%) and Asian people (24%). Americans are least likely to say there is a lot of discrimination against evangelical Christians (14%) and White people (13%).

Across all age groups, solid majorities see at least some discrimination against Muslim, Jewish, Arab, Black, Hispanic and Asian people.

Young adults (ages 18 to 29) stand out for being more likely than older adults to perceive a lot of discrimination against certain groups. This is particularly the case when it comes to Black people: 51% of adults under 30 say there is a lot of discrimination against Black people in our society, while about a third of those ages 65 and older say the same (34%). This pattern holds for perceptions of discrimination against Muslims, Arab, Hispanic and Asian people.

But younger adults are much less likely than older people to perceive a lot of discrimination against Jews. Of all the age groups analyzed, adults 65 and older are the most heavily inclined to say there is a lot of discrimination against Jews in our society today (50%), while adults under 30 are the least likely to say this (31%). Younger adults are also less likely than older people to say there is a lot of discrimination against evangelical Christians and White people.

Partisanship

Two-thirds or more of Republicans and Democrats see at least some discrimination against Jewish, Muslim, Black, Hispanic, Asian and Arab people.

Still, the party coalitions diverge when it comes to which of those groups experience a lot of discrimination. For example, Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents are 45 percentage points more likely than Republicans and Republican leaners to say there is a lot of discrimination against Black people.

Democrats are also more likely than Republicans to say there is a lot of discrimination against Muslim, Arab, Hispanic and Asian people.

On the other hand, Republicans are more likely than Democrats to see discrimination against evangelical Christians and White people.

Only in the case of Jews do partisans on both sides largely agree: Four-in-ten Republicans and Democrats alike say Jews face a lot of discrimination in our society today.

Overall, Democrats are generally much more likely than Republicans to perceive a lot of discrimination against various groups. Aside from Jews (40%), no group is seen as facing a lot of discrimination by more than 27% of Republicans, whereas more than 40% of Democrats see a lot of discrimination against five of the listed groups.

Race and ethnicity

Among adults in each of four large racial and ethnic categories – White, Black, Hispanic and Asian Americans – about three-quarters or more say that Black, Hispanic and Asian people face at least some discrimination in our society today. Black Americans themselves are particularly likely to feel that Black people face a lot of discrimination (73% say this).

Roughly eight-in-ten or more Americans across all four racial or ethnic groups also feel that Muslims and Arab people face at least some discrimination.

White Americans are the most likely to say that Jews face at least some discrimination (85%). Slightly fewer Black (78%), Hispanic (75%) and Asian (71%) Americans express the same view.

Like the overall public, fewer people in most of these racial or ethnic groups think there is discrimination against evangelical Christians, though about half of White (52%), Black (51%) and Hispanic (46%) adults say there is at least some discrimination against evangelical Christians.

White adults are far more likely than any of the other racial or ethnic groups to feel there is at least some discrimination against White people (52%).

Religious groups differ significantly in their assessments of discrimination in our society. To begin with, each religious group tends to be especially likely to perceive discrimination against itself .

Take, for example, views of discrimination against Jews: 72% of Jewish Americans say there is a lot of discrimination against Jews in our society today, but fewer than half of adults in any other religious group in the survey say the same. Muslim Americans stand out for a particularly small share saying Jews face a lot of discrimination (17%).

Similarly, Muslim Americans are significantly more likely than most other religious groups to say that Muslims face a lot of discrimination (67%). Still, around half or more of Jewish Americans (57%), religiously unaffiliated Americans (52%) and Black Protestants (51%) also perceive a lot of discrimination against Muslims. White evangelical Protestants (27%) are among the least likely to say Muslims face a lot of discrimination.

Indeed, White evangelical Protestants are as likely to say that evangelical Christians face a lot of discrimination (30%) as they are to say that Muslims face a lot (27%). But more White evangelical Protestants feel there is a lot of discrimination against Jews (46%) than feel there is a lot against evangelical Christians. 2

How views of discrimination have changed over time

Against muslims.

The percentage of U.S. adults who say Muslims face a lot of discrimination in our society has ticked up 5 percentage points since 2021.

Still, it was markedly higher in 2017 than it is today. At that time – shortly after the election of former President Donald Trump and amid court battles over his effort to “ban” travel to the United States from several Muslim-majority countries – 87% said there was at least some discrimination against Muslims, including 56% who said there was a lot.

Our directly comparable trends only go back to 2017. Prior to that, Pew Research Center asked about discrimination in a slightly different way: We asked Americans on the telephone whether there was a lot of discrimination against each group in a list, using a “yes/no” format.

Using the old question, the perceived level of discrimination against Muslims was higher in 2017 than it had been in prior years (2009, 2013 and 2014). And using the new question, it has been lower in subsequent years (2019, 2021 and 2024) than it was in 2017. This does not mean, however, that 2017 was necessarily an all-time peak; to make that judgment, one would need comparable survey data going back much farther, including data from before and after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Pew Research Center has conducted three major, national surveys focusing specifically on Muslim Americans. These surveys – in 2007 , 2011 and 2017 – found that the share of Muslims who said they personally had experienced discriminatory treatment in the past year grew from 40% in 2007 to 48% in 2017 .

Against Jews

While the share of Americans who believe Muslims face a lot of discrimination has been relatively high for more than a decade, the share of Americans who say Jews face a lot of discrimination in our society has risen sharply in recent years.

Today, 40% of U.S. adults say Jews face a lot of discrimination – twice the share who said this in 2021 (20%). While most demographic groups analyzed now say Jews face more discrimination than three years ago, opinions have shifted more markedly among some groups than others.

Most notably, among Americans ages 65 and older, the sense that Jews face a lot of discrimination has risen 29 percentage points since 2021, from 21% to 50%. Among adults ages 18 to 29, the share increased 11 points over the same period. This has opened a sizable age gap in views of discrimination against Jews, which was not present in 2021.

With the doubling in recent years, the share of the overall U.S. public saying Jews face a lot of discrimination is now identical to the share saying the same about Black people (40%) and close to the figure for Muslims (44%). By comparison, in most of our past surveys, Americans were much less likely to say there was a lot of discrimination against Jews than to say the same about other groups, including Muslims and Black people .

Pew Research Center has conducted two major, national surveys focusing specifically on Jewish Americans. Both of those surveys – in 2013 and 2020 – posed questions about discrimination against Jews and other groups. They found that while many Jews perceived anti-Jewish discrimination in the U.S., larger shares of Jews perceived a lot of discrimination against other groups . 3 In 2020, for example, 48% of U.S. Jewish adults surveyed said Jews face a lot of discrimination in our society – but 60% said the same about Muslims and 54% said this about Black people. 4 Today, the pattern is different: Jewish Americans are now more likely to say that Jews face a lot of discrimination in our society (72%) than to say the same about Muslims (57%) or Black people (52%).

Against evangelical Christians, racial and ethnic groups

Perceptions of discrimination against evangelical Christians have been stable across our surveys in recent years – and the share saying this remains relatively low.

There also has not been much change in views of discrimination against Black, Hispanic, Asian and White people in the past few years .

How the American public thinks discrimination has changed since the start of the Israel-Hamas war

In addition to asking survey respondents how much discrimination various groups face in our society, the new survey asked whether discrimination against three groups – Muslims, Jews and Arab people – has increased, decreased or stayed about the same since the start of the Israel-Hamas war.

A majority of Americans (57%) say that discrimination against Jews has increased since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, while 19% say it has stayed the same and 3% say it has decreased. Around one-in-five are not sure.

Meanwhile, 38% say discrimination against Muslims has increased since the start of the war, while 30% see no change, 5% say it has decreased and around a quarter are not sure.

Views of discrimination against Arabs are roughly similar to views about Muslims: 36% of U.S. adults say discrimination against Arab people has increased since the war began, while 31% say it has stayed the same, 5% say it has decreased and 27% are not sure.

U.S. adults under 30 are about equally likely to say that discrimination has increased against Muslims, Jews and Arabs since the start of the Israel-Hamas war (47% say this about each).

These young adults are more likely than older Americans to say that discrimination against Muslims and Arabs has increased, and less likely than older Americans to say the same about Jews.

Among adults ages 65 and older, a significantly larger share say discrimination against Jews has increased since the start of the Israel-Hamas war (73%) than say the same about Muslims (41%) or Arabs (38%).

Americans aligned with both parties largely agree that discrimination against Jews has increased: 57% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents express this view, as do 61% of Republicans and Republican leaners.

But there are significant partisan differences when it comes to whether Muslims and Arabs have experienced more discrimination since the start of the war.

Democrats are about twice as likely as Republicans to say that discrimination has risen against Muslims (52% vs. 26%) and Arab people (49% vs. 23%). Among Republicans, a plurality say that discrimination has stayed the same in the case of both Muslims (41%) and Arab people (42%), and only about one-in-ten or fewer say discrimination against either group has decreased.

Religious groups differ in their perceptions of how discrimination has changed since the start of the Israel-Hamas war.

The vast majority of Jewish Americans (89%) think discrimination against Jews has increased since the start of the war. This is the highest share of any religious group we analyzed – although smaller majorities of White evangelical Protestants (66%), White Catholics (69%), White nonevangelical Protestants (62%) say the same. Fewer Muslim Americans agree (36%).

A large majority of Muslim Americans (70%) say discrimination against Muslims has increased since the start of the Israel-Hamas war. Around half of Jews (49%) share this view, while fewer Christians in any of the broad groups we can analyze – including White Catholics (36%) and Hispanic Catholics (42%) – agree. White evangelical Protestants (25%) are among the least likely of the religious groups studied to say that discrimination against Muslims has increased.

Views of discrimination against Arabs largely mirror views about Muslims.

How perceptions of increased discrimination since the conflict began vary based on people’s experiences with the Israel-Hamas war

As part of this survey, we asked Americans how closely they are following news about the Israel-Hamas war .

• Those who say they closely follow news about the war are more likely than those who don’t to perceive a rise in discrimination against all three groups (Muslims, Arabs and Jews) since the start of the war.

The survey also asked whether respondents have ever been personally offended by comments about the war – either because of something they saw on the news or social media, or because of something someone said around them.

• People who say they have been offended are more likely than those who haven’t to perceive a rise in discrimination against all three groups.

Some Americans also reported that they have stopped talking to someone, or unfollowed or blocked someone online, because of something that person said about the Israel-Hamas war. (For more about this, read Chapter 2 of this report . )

• People who have cut off communication with someone in this way are more likely than those who haven’t to say discrimination against both Muslims and Arabs has increased.

Where people say their sympathies lie in the Israel-Hamas war is also related to their perceptions about discrimination in the U.S.

• 78% of those who sympathize entirely or mostly with the Israeli people say discrimination against Jews has increased. Fewer say this among those who sympathize entirely or mostly with the Palestinian people (55%) or who sympathize equally with both groups (62%).
• By comparison, those who sympathize entirely or mostly with the Palestinian people are more likely to say discrimination against Muslims (66%) and Arabs (64%) has increased. Fewer of those who sympathize predominantly with Israelis (29% and 25%, respectively) or equally with both groups (48% and 45%, respectively) say the same.
• We also looked at evangelical Christians as a whole – not just among White Protestants and not including those who only identify as born-again but not evangelical. In that case, 76% of evangelical Christians say there is at least some discrimination against evangelical Christians in our society, including 29% who say there is a lot . ↩
• The 2013 survey of Jewish Americans included a similar question about discrimination, but the response options were different. The 2020 survey response options were “A lot,” “Some,” “Not much” or “None at all,” while in the 2013 survey the response options were “Yes, there is a lot of discrimination” and “No, not a lot of discrimination.” Despite this change, both surveys found that more Jews perceived a lot of discrimination against some other minority groups than against Jews. ↩
• The latest survey analyzes only those who are Jews by religion – people who answer a question about their present religion by saying they are Jewish. The 2013 and 2020 surveys, which focused specifically on Jews, were designed to enable analysis of additional forms of Jewish identity, including “Jews of no religion” – people who say they have at least one Jewish parent and who consider themselves Jewish in some way (such as by culture, ethnicity or family background) but who describe their current religion as atheist, agnostic or nothing in particular. ↩

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Table of contents, younger americans stand out in their views of the israel-hamas war, how u.s. muslims are experiencing the israel-hamas war, how u.s. jews are experiencing the israel-hamas war, majority in u.s. say israel has valid reasons for fighting; fewer say the same about hamas, how americans view the conflicts between russia and ukraine, israel and hamas, and china and taiwan, most popular.

About Pew Research Center Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts .

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A Reversal Cannot Undo the Damage Caused by This Voting Fraud Case

By Gregory Nolan

Mr. Nolan is a senior counsel at Brown White & Osborn and a former federal prosecutor and counsel at States United Democracy Center.

When a Texas appeals court reversed itself last week and acquitted Crystal Mason, a mother of three, in a voting fraud case, it ended almost a decade in which Ms. Mason lived in fear of being torn away from her family and imprisoned.

In 2018, she was sentenced to a five-year prison term for illegally casting a provisional ballot in the 2016 election.

While the prosecution of Ms. Mason may have failed, it still could have broader consequences in chilling people’s willingness to exercise their right to vote. Few would want to vote if it means going through what Ms. Mason did. As such, the reversal in her case cannot undo much of the damage that irresponsible Texas prosecutors wrought.

As the federal circuit court of appeals that oversees Texas recognized decades ago, “short of physical violence,” nothing has “a more chilling effect” on voting than “baseless arrests and prosecutions.” Unfortunately, that may be the point of bringing cases like Ms. Mason’s, as they suggest apparent racial disparities at work in voting-fraud prosecutions.

In November 2016, Ms. Mason went to vote in the presidential election. She was on the fence about voting, but her mother convinced her : “If you can vote, go vote, you have to have your voice heard,” Ms. Mason recalled her saying.

But when she arrived at her precinct, she was surprised to learn that her name wasn’t on the rolls, so she cast a provisional ballot. In return for trying to do her civic duty, Texas prosecutors tried to put her in prison .

When Ms. Mason voted, she was on federal supervised release, which is like a term of probation that federal criminal defendants serve after leaving prison. Those on release must obey certain court-ordered conditions but are otherwise free to live their life as they see fit. Under Texas law, such individuals are ineligible to vote, which Ms. Mason did not know. Prosecutors charged her anyway, convicting her on a theory that they did not have to prove that she knew she was ineligible; they just had to prove that she was ineligible.

An appellate court agreed with prosecutors’ theory and upheld her conviction, while noting : “The evidence does not show that she voted for any fraudulent purpose.”

Texas’ highest criminal court ruled that the state’s voter fraud statute requires proof that a defendant knew she was ineligible and sent the case back to the lower appellate court, where Ms. Mason’s conviction was overturned .

Last year, I represented a bipartisan group of former state attorneys general, U.S. attorneys and Justice Department officials who argued as amici curiae in Ms. Mason’s appeal that “if eligible voters believe that a mistake about their eligibility could lead to prosecution and conviction, they will understandably think twice before voting.”

Other unjust voter fraud cases, like a number of those following the enactment of an election police unit by Gov. Ron DeSantis, unleashed havoc in those defendants’ lives, even though a large proportion of the cases were dismissed. And anecdotal evidence indicates that the chilling effect from these Florida cases is very real, not theoretical. As a voting rights attorney with the N.A.A.C.P.’s Legal Defense Fund recounted , “We’ve heard stories about voters who are eligible to vote but have a criminal conviction in their past, and they are now scared to register and vote.”

To avoid such misguided prosecutions, prosecutors need to adopt the maxim that when a potentially criminal act has a close relationship to a constitutional right, only cases with robust evidence of criminal intent should be prosecuted.

Prosecutorial restraint is especially critical in the context of former felons who impermissibly try to cast a ballot, like Ms. Mason. As a Brennan Center report explains: “The laws concerning eligibility vary from state to state and can be confusing: Different voters are disenfranchised for different convictions for different lengths of time.”

The same report even provides survey data showing that election officials often do not know the correct law in their state for felon re-enfranchisement. Commenting on Ms. Mason’s case in 2021, a Republican legislator in Texas said , “I would not have known that being on supervised release would have made you ineligible” to vote.

Notably, felon-disenfranchisement laws do not affect racial groups equally. A 2022 report from the Sentencing Project shows that “one in 19 African Americans of voting age is disenfranchised, a rate 3.5 times that of non-African Americans,” with more than 1 in 10 being disenfranchised in seven, mostly Southern states. So when prosecutions under these laws chill votes, it is Black votes that they are disproportionately chilling. Indeed, approximately two-thirds of those rounded up in the first wave of Governor DeSantis’s election unit’s arrests were Black.

Sentencing can add another layer to the racial aspect, which should be no surprise, given the disproportionately harsher sentences that Black defendants generally endure. Facing similar charges, Ms. Mason and well-heeled white offenders received strikingly divergent sentences — a five-year prison sentence for her, a slap on the wrist for them. In Ms. Mason’s home county, for example, a justice of the peace who falsified names to get on a primary ballot was sentenced to probation. In Georgia, a state Republican official just last week received a $5,000 fine for illegally voting nine times.

The problem with prosecuting marginal voter fraud cases goes beyond its chilling concerns. If the goal is truly to ensure that only eligible voters vote, it is actually an ineffective tool in a state’s arsenal. Texas, for instance, has numerous safeguards in place that are designed to permit only lawful votes to be counted. In the context of felons improperly voting, these safeguards exist at the local, state and federal levels. Indeed, in Ms. Mason’s case, such safeguards worked: The provisional vote that almost cost her five years of her life was never counted.

It is injustice for all those who do not vote because reckless prosecutors in cases like Ms. Mason’s intimidated them. As Ms. Mason’s own case demonstrates, courts cannot stop these injustices from happening; only ethical prosecutors with a firm commitment to safeguarding constitutional rights can do that.

Gregory Nolan is a senior counsel at Brown White & Osborn and a former federal prosecutor and counsel at States United Democracy Center.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

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Should college essays touch on race? Some feel the affirmative action ruling leaves them no choice

CHICAGO — When she started writing her college essay, Hillary Amofa told the story she thought admissions offices wanted to hear. About being the daughter of immigrants from Ghana and growing up in a small apartment in Chicago. About hardship and struggle.

Then she deleted it all.

“I would just find myself kind of trauma-dumping,” said the 18-year-old senior at Lincoln Park High School in Chicago. “And I’m just like, this doesn’t really say anything about me as a person.”

When the Supreme Court ended affirmative action in higher education, it left the college essay as one of few places where race can play a role in admissions decisions. For many students of color, instantly more was riding on the already high-stakes writing assignment. Some say they felt pressure to exploit their hardships as they competed for a spot on campus.

Amofa was just starting to think about her essay when the court issued its decision, and it left her with a wave of questions. Could she still write about her race? Could she be penalized for it? She wanted to tell colleges about her heritage but she didn’t want to be defined by it.

In English class, Amofa and her classmates read sample essays that all seemed to focus on some trauma or hardship. It left her with the impression she had to write about her life’s hardest moments to show how far she’d come. But she and some of her classmates wondered if their lives had been hard enough to catch the attention of admissions offices.

“For a lot of students, there’s a feeling of, like, having to go through something so horrible to feel worthy of going to school, which is kind of sad,” said Amofa, the daughter of a hospital technician and an Uber driver.

This year’s senior class is the first in decades to navigate college admissions without affirmative action . The Supreme Court upheld the practice in decisions going back to the 1970s, but this court’s conservative supermajority found it is unconstitutional for colleges to give students extra weight because of their race alone.

Still, the decision left room for race to play an indirect role: Chief Justice John Roberts wrote universities can still consider how an applicant’s life was shaped by their race, “so long as that discussion is concretely tied to a quality of character or unique ability.”

“A benefit to a student who overcame racial discrimination, for example, must be tied to that student’s courage and determination,” he wrote.

Scores of colleges responded with new essay prompts asking about students’ backgrounds. Brown University asked applicants how “an aspect of your growing up has inspired or challenged you.” Rice University asked students how their perspectives were shaped by their “background, experiences, upbringing, and/or racial identity.”

WONDERING IF SCHOOLS 'EXPECT A SOB STORY'

When Darrian Merritt started writing his essay, he knew the stakes were higher than ever because of the court’s decision. His first instinct was to write about events that led to him going to live with his grandmother as a child.

Those were painful memories, but he thought they might play well at schools like Yale, Stanford and Vanderbilt.

“I feel like the admissions committee might expect a sob story or a tragic story,” said Merritt, a senior in Cleveland. “And if you don’t provide that, then maybe they’re not going to feel like you went through enough to deserve having a spot at the university. I wrestled with that a lot.”

He wrote drafts focusing on his childhood, but it never amounted to more than a collection of memories. Eventually he abandoned the idea and aimed for an essay that would stand out for its positivity.

Merritt wrote about a summer camp where he started to feel more comfortable in his own skin. He described embracing his personality and defying his tendency to please others. The essay had humor — it centered on a water gun fight where he had victory in sight but, in a comedic twist, slipped and fell. But the essay also reflects on his feelings of not being “Black enough” and getting made fun of for listening to “white people music.”

“I was like, ‘OK, I’m going to write this for me, and we’re just going to see how it goes,’” he said. “It just felt real, and it felt like an honest story.”

The essay describes a breakthrough as he learned “to take ownership of myself and my future by sharing my true personality with the people I encounter. ... I realized that the first chapter of my own story had just been written.”

A RULING PROMPTS PIVOTS ON ESSAY TOPICS

Like many students, Max Decker of Portland, Oregon, had drafted a college essay on one topic, only to change direction after the Supreme Court ruling in June.

Decker initially wrote about his love for video games. In a childhood surrounded by constant change, navigating his parents’ divorce, the games he took from place to place on his Nintendo DS were a source of comfort.

But the essay he submitted to colleges focused on the community he found through Word is Bond, a leadership group for young Black men in Portland.

As the only biracial, Jewish kid with divorced parents in a predominantly white, Christian community, Decker wrote he constantly felt like the odd one out. On a trip with Word is Bond to Capitol Hill, he and friends who looked just like him shook hands with lawmakers. The experience, he wrote, changed how he saw himself.

“It’s because I’m different that I provide something precious to the world, not the other way around,” he wrote.

As a first-generation college student, Decker thought about the subtle ways his peers seemed to know more about navigating the admissions process . They made sure to get into advanced classes at the start of high school, and they knew how to secure glowing letters of recommendation.

If writing about race would give him a slight edge and show admissions officers a fuller picture of his achievements, he wanted to take that small advantage.

His first memory about race, Decker said, was when he went to get a haircut in elementary school and the barber made rude comments about his curly hair. Until recently, the insecurity that moment created led him to keep his hair buzzed short.

Through Word is Bond, Decker said he found a space to explore his identity as a Black man. It was one of the first times he was surrounded by Black peers and saw Black role models. It filled him with a sense of pride in his identity. No more buzzcut.

The pressure to write about race involved a tradeoff with other important things in his life, Decker said. That included his passion for journalism, like the piece he wrote on efforts to revive a once-thriving Black neighborhood in Portland. In the end, he squeezed in 100 characters about his journalism under the application’s activities section.

“My final essay, it felt true to myself. But the difference between that and my other essay was the fact that it wasn’t the truth that I necessarily wanted to share,” said Decker, whose top college choice is Tulane, in New Orleans, because of the region’s diversity. “It felt like I just had to limit the truth I was sharing to what I feel like the world is expecting of me.”

SPELLING OUT THE IMPACT OF RACE

Before the Supreme Court ruling, it seemed a given to Imani Laird that colleges would consider the ways that race had touched her life. But now, she felt like she had to spell it out.

As she started her essay, she reflected on how she had faced bias or felt overlooked as a Black student in predominantly white spaces.

There was the year in math class when the teacher kept calling her by the name of another Black student. There were the comments that she’d have an easier time getting into college because she was Black .

“I didn’t have it easier because of my race,” said Laird, a senior at Newton South High School in the Boston suburbs who was accepted at Wellesley and Howard University, and is waiting to hear from several Ivy League colleges. “I had stuff I had to overcome.”

In her final essays, she wrote about her grandfather, who served in the military but was denied access to GI Bill benefits because of his race.

She described how discrimination fueled her ambition to excel and pursue a career in public policy.

“So, I never settled for mediocrity,” she wrote. “Regardless of the subject, my goal in class was not just to participate but to excel. Beyond academics, I wanted to excel while remembering what started this motivation in the first place.”

WILL SCHOOLS LOSE RACIAL DIVERSITY?

Amofa used to think affirmative action was only a factor at schools like Harvard and Yale. After the court’s ruling, she was surprised to find that race was taken into account even at some public universities she was applying to.

Now, without affirmative action, she wondered if mostly white schools will become even whiter.

It’s been on her mind as she chooses between Indiana University and the University of Dayton, both of which have relatively few Black students. When she was one of the only Black students in her grade school, she could fall back on her family and Ghanaian friends at church. At college, she worries about loneliness.

“That’s what I’m nervous about,” she said. “Going and just feeling so isolated, even though I’m constantly around people.”

The first drafts of her essay focused on growing up in a low-income family, sharing a bedroom with her brother and grandmother. But it didn’t tell colleges about who she is now, she said.

Her final essay tells how she came to embrace her natural hair . She wrote about going to a mostly white grade school where classmates made jokes about her afro. When her grandmother sent her back with braids or cornrows, they made fun of those too.

Over time, she ignored their insults and found beauty in the styles worn by women in her life. She now runs a business doing braids and other hairstyles in her neighborhood.

“I stopped seeing myself through the lens of the European traditional beauty standards and started seeing myself through the lens that I created,” Amofa wrote.

“Criticism will persist, but it loses its power when you know there’s a crown on your head!”

Ma reported from Portland, Oregon.

The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org .

Racism, harassment and discrimination takes a terrible toll on ethnic minority NHS staff

Lecturer in Society and Mental Health, King's College London

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Rebecca Rhead receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council and the Wellcome Trust. She has also previously received funding from the Medical Research Council.

King's College London provides funding as a member of The Conversation UK.

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During the COVID-19 pandemic, a time filled with uncertainty and fear, ethnically minoritised NHS staff have not only had to contend with the virus but also a workplace fraught with inequalities.

Recent reports highlight concerning – and ongoing – issues for these NHS staff. For example, ethnically minoritised nurses face significant obstacles in securing promotions or new positions , and ethnically minoritised ambulance staff are twice as likely to suffer discrimination . These revelations confirm the persistent racial inequalities within the NHS, underscoring the urgent need for systemic change.

Such challenges harm not only their health and wellbeing but also the quality of care they provide at work. Moreover, these challenges have implications for their career progression and intentions to remain in the NHS – underfunded and overstretched as it is. Ultimately, the health of the NHS workforce has a big impact on the health of the nation.

As part of a team of researchers, I conducted a survey during the pandemic to identify inequalities in workplace experiences and to assess the health and wellbeing of staff. Participants included 4,622 NHS staff from across 18 NHS Trusts in England, between February and October 2021.

Our survey was developed with the Tackling Inequalities and Discrimination Experiences in Health Services (Tides) project , a national stakeholder group, as well as NHS peer researchers. It was part of the broader NHS Check study , which aimed to assess NHS staff wellbeing during the pandemic.

Consistently bleak picture

We found that staff from black, mixed and other ethnically minoritised groups were more likely to face difficulties accessing personal protective equipment (PPE) than their white British colleagues, and also more likely to experience harassment and discrimination from fellow staff members during the pandemic.

These findings align with similar studies such as the UK-Reach study of ethnicity and COVID-19 outcomes in healthcare workers, and the NHS’s own staff survey . All paint a consistently bleak picture of the challenges faced by ethnically minoritised groups within the NHS.

This situation was compounded by a consistent increase in harassment and discrimination that was identified in the years preceding the pandemic.

It echoes findings from my past research, conducted in London Trusts . This study found that ethnic minority staff were more likely to experience and witness bullying and discrimination. Such experiences were associated with poor health outcomes, low job satisfaction, and increased sick leave.

The toll on NHS staff health from negative workplace experiences is significant. Our latest findings indicate a link between adverse working conditions and poorer levels of physical and mental health. The unavailability of PPE was associated with an approximately twofold increase in depression and anxiety. Harassment and discrimination were associated with a threefold increase.

Overall, 23% of our survey participants reported symptoms suggesting probable depression, while 18% appeared to have probable anxiety. And 23% experienced medium-to-severe somatic symptoms – chronic physical symptoms that coincide with emotional problems.

How to address these issues

Our study also identified that awareness of employment rights is essential to the mental health of ethnic minority staff. For example, the survey showed an association between involvement in redeployment decisions and better mental health outcomes. One recommendation is that all NHS staff should be educated on their employment rights and provided with knowledge of, and access to, available support systems.

This would ensure they are able to advocate for themselves and their colleagues. It would offer more opportunities to engage in discussions, provide feedback, and question decisions concerning their working conditions without fear of negative consequences.

Our team’s previous research found that ethnically minoritised NHS staff often feel disempowered and fear the repercussions of speaking out against their working conditions. These concerns can be grave enough that affected staff transfer to different teams or quit the NHS altogether to escape these organisational inequities.

Innovative approaches to training, such as those developed through our Tides project, highlight a forward path. We have pioneered the use of virtual reality (VR) training scenarios to simulate the experiences of ethnically minoritised staff. This approach is designed to promote empathy and deeper understanding of their challenges and perspectives.

By immersing NHS managers and senior leaders in these realistic scenarios, VR training can offer a powerful means to combat racism and discrimination.

Initial piloting of this approach indicates that it can alleviate the emotional burden on ethnic minority staff by removing the need for them to recount traumatic experiences. It also paves the way for meaningful, experiential learning.

Public health imperative

Our research underscores the importance of addressing racism and racial discrimination in the NHS not merely as a matter of ethics, but as a public health imperative.

Now is the time for structural change that addresses the systemic roots of racism within the NHS. We need clear rules that hold all levels of management accountable. Leadership within NHS trusts also needs to start taking responsibility for actively combating racism. This should involve more detailed annual reports, specific targets for improvement, and the sharing of data, strategies and outcomes with regulatory bodies such as the Care Quality Commission to ensure transparency.

We also need clear and open ways for staff to report racism without fear of backlash. Providing training for all NHS staff on how to recognise, challenge and report racism and harassment is essential. Anti-racism resources, such as those developed by the NHS’s chief nursing and chief midwifery officers, can support staff and drive meaningful change.

Reflecting on the lessons learned from the pandemic, the path to recovery for the NHS lies in embracing practices that ensure equity for all its staff. This is not just about rectifying past oversights but about building a stronger, more inclusive health service that values and protects its workforce, regardless of their ethnic background.

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Texas' immigration law is being challenged in court amid racial profiling concerns

Adrian Florido

Texas' immigration law has raised fear that it'll promote racial profiling by police. The concerns evoke memories of what happened after Arizona passed its so-called "show me your papers" law in 2010.

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

A federal appeals court today heard arguments over the Texas immigration enforcement law known as SB4. It empowers local law enforcement to arrest and deport people who are in the state illegally. SB4 is currently on hold while the Biden administration's legal challenge makes its way through the federal courts. Many of the measure's critics worry that, if it takes effect, it will lead to rampant racial profiling by police. It all sounds very similar to a battle over a law that Arizona passed in 2010 which made it a crime to be undocumented in the state and required police to check the status of people they suspected. NPR's Adrian Florido has this look-back.

ADRIAN FLORIDO, BYLINE: When Arizona's SB1070 was passed in 2010, Reyna Montoya was a college student, undocumented, living with her parents. And the so-called show me your papers law had them in constant fear.

REYNA MONTOYA: My mom, for example, didn't allow me to go to the movie theaters with my friends, and she said that it was better to be cautious and to be safe than sorry.

FLORIDO: When she did go out, avoiding the police became vital.

MONTOYA: Whenever I would get to a stop sign, I started counting five Mississippis very slowly. So I just remember that my hands would start sweating, and I would be extra cautious to ensure that I wouldn't get in any type of encounter with law enforcement.

FLORIDO: Latinos and immigrants like Montoya knew that just the way they looked or spoke could give police a reason to suspect they were undocumented. The law even put Native Americans on alert, along with other U.S. citizens. Mario Carrillo, who's Mexican American, remembers that, when he took a road trip to Tucson from his home in Texas, he made sure to pack his U.S. passport.

MARIO CARRILLO: I can tell you for a fact that if SB1070 had not been put into law right around that time - that I would not have taken my passport. I wouldn't have felt the need to take it.

FLORIDO: As it turned out, he says that, once in Arizona, he was pulled over by a Border Patrol agent who asked if he was a U.S. citizen and who took his passport back to his patrol truck to verify it.

CARRILLO: I'm sure if I had been blond, blue-eyed, you know, I doubt that that same question would have come up.

FLORIDO: Just like the federal government is challenging Texas' law today, it also challenged Arizona's on the grounds that immigration enforcement was a federal responsibility. But a coalition of civil rights groups filed a separate lawsuit in Arizona on different legal grounds. Nicholas Espiritu is one of the attorneys who litigated that case. He's with the National Immigration Law Center. And he says the goal of the lawsuit was to show that SB1070 would have racist outcomes and that it was written with racist intent.

NICHOLAS ESPIRITU: We also wanted to highlight that the whole law was designed in part because of a desire to discriminate against Latinos, and we presented a large amount of evidence in the record to that effect.

FLORIDO: They found emails, writings and speeches in which the law's Republican authors talked about an invasion from Mexico and used other stereotypes to talk about Latinos. Ultimately, in 2012, the Supreme Court ruled, though only on the government's challenge.

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MELISSA BLOCK: To the Supreme Court now and a much-anticipated decision on Arizona's controversial immigration law.

FLORIDO: It struck down parts of the law that criminalized being in the state as an undocumented immigrant, but it upheld the section allowing police to investigate people's immigration status if they suspected they were in the country illegally. The civil rights groups spent several more years fighting that provision and eventually settled with the state's attorney general after he agreed to instruct police departments to essentially ignore that part of the law. While it remains on the books today, attorney Nicholas Espiritu says...

ESPIRITU: It can't be used as a mechanism to engage in racial profiling.

FLORIDO: Lisa Magana, a political scientist at Arizona State University, says one reason state officials threw in the towel was because of the immense public backlash. The state gained a reputation as racist. Artists and corporations boycotted.

LISA MAGANA: The state lost lots of money. The impact of boycotts and cancellations of conventions and concerts is what I think had the state rethink these types of laws.

FLORIDO: SB1070 also led many young Latinos and immigrants to activism. That wave of organizing helped turn Republican Arizona into the battleground state it is today. Reyna Montoya, who used to count to five at stop signs, founded a nonprofit called Aliento that helps young undocumented immigrants work through trauma stemming from their status. Many were children during the years of SB1070 and remember worrying their parents might not come home. She says the recent news about Texas' immigration law...

MONTOYA: This has been very triggering and opening up old wounds.

FLORIDO: And also opening up a deep worry, she says, that police could once again get a license to racially profile people who look like them.

Adrian Florido, NPR News.

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