The “Coming White Minority”: Brazilianization or South-Africanization of U.S.?

August 31, 2015 • Joe • "coming white minority", Americans of color, demography, desegregation, racial segregation, social change, white privilege

To understand the so-called “browning of America” and “coming white minority,” we should accent the larger societal context, the big-picture context including systemic racism. “Browning of America” issues have become important in the West mainly because whites are very worried about this demographic trend. Black-British scholar, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, has noted that whites are fearful

because for such a long time the world has been their own. . . . There is an underlying assumption that says white is right. . . . There is a white panic every time one part of their world seems to be passing over to anyone else. . . . There was this extraordinary assumption that white people could go and destroy peoples and it would have no consequence.

Let us consider a few reasonable, albeit speculative, extrapolations of current social science data to social changes from now to the 2050s:

(1) Dramatic demographic changes are coming: According to US Census projections this country will become much less white, with the greatest relative growth in the Latino, Asian, and multiracial populations. By 2050 it will be about 439 million people, with a majority of people of color (53 percent), the largest group being Latino (30 percent). Long before, a majority of students and younger workers will be of color. Over coming decades immigrant workers of color and their descendants will keep more cities from economic decline. Census data for 2050 indicate the oldest population cohort will be disproportionately white and younger cohorts will be disproportionately people of color–thereby overlaying a racial divide with a generational divide, probably generating racial-generational conflicts (See William Frey, The Diversity Explosion).

(2) This growing population of color will likely mean significant increases in an array of significant US socio-racial patterns, including interracial relationships and marriages, number of multiracial Americans, more diversity in media presentations, and a major religious shift in direction of (Latin American) Catholicism and Asian religions. (In 2050 white Christians will probably be only about 30 percent of the population.)

(3) Uneven changes in still high racial (residential) segregation will occur: At the census tract level, we will likely see variable but decreasing group segregation within cities (for example, Latino replacement of whites or blacks, scattered white gentrification). At the larger metropolitan area level, we are likely to see continuing, substantial racial segregation (less-white inner suburbs or central city areas versus disproportionately white outer suburbs, exurbia, smaller cities). (On this macro-segregation, see D. Lichter et alia here) Likely thus is significant white migration favoring these segregated, white-run political entities, such as in the inner areas of the West. Likely too is significant continuing migration of immigrants and other people of color to coastal cities, but also increasingly to cities across the country. These migrations will increase regional diversity, but not necessarily at the metropolitan area level within them.

(4) The growing fear of ordinary whites about increases in Americans of color seems based substantially on concern about losing much racial privilege and related social status, and probably about more egalitarian interactions with those deemed inferior. Social science research has long shown that the relative size of black or nonwhite populations correlates not only with occupational, income, educational, health inequalities, and voter suppression efforts, but also with white racist attitudes, support for public programs, and votes for conservative candidates. With growing populations of color, many ordinary whites are likely to continue to insist on what W. E. B. Du Bois called the “public and psychological wage of whiteness” (white privilege, racial inequalities) as they accept more elite white actions harming them socioeconomically.

(5) Modest change will occur in a still oligarchical society. Elite white men will still run this country in their interest, with increased elite representation of white women. For centuries they have ruled as a minority and conceivably can do that for many more years. In the capitalistic economy there will be continuing large-scale inequality and control by a mostly white corporate elite, with token infusions of executives and professionals of color. Just below that elite, important professional and managerial spheres will remain disproportionately white. Great technological change will continue, substantially rooted in computerized automation of perhaps half of current U.S. jobs, thereby probably increasing unemployment–especially for the then majority of working and lower middle class workers of color). Income and wealth inequalities along racial/class lines will likely stay very substantial. Internationally, however, the U.S. is likely to lose some of its dominant position economically and politically as the world becomes more polycentric, with other countries becoming more powerful, most predominantly of color.

(6) Some significant changes in a firmly oligarchic government system are coming: We will have a majority of voters of color in many areas, but continuing undemocratic political institutions—nationally, an unelected Supreme Court, unrepresentative Senate, and unrepresentative Congress controlled directly or indirectly by the white elite’s political-economic power. Major political organizations will see more diversification as people of color participate more; the Democratic Party will probably become the major political party in numerous legislative bodies. (Liberal representatives of color will likely often replace white liberals, with less net change in liberal political influence.) U.S. foreign policy is likely to shift to a greater emphasis on Latin America, Asia, and Africa, because other countries are becoming more economically and militarily powerful.

At the local political level, we will likely observe significant political change, with many places having majorities of voters of color and greater representation for them and their perspectives. Some whites will try to create political coalitions with more “acceptable” middle class people of color. At local, state, and national levels, we will likely see conflict between (often younger) voters of color seeking greater political representation and necessary public services (e.g., good schools) and disproportionately older white voters (led by the white elite) who view many public services as “black/brown” services and fight as propertied taxpayers to keep government taxes and regulation low–preserving white political-economic interests. Impoverished communities of color will continue to suffer disproportionate overcrowding, poverty, and environmental racism (aggravated by major climate change). Over coming decades, white political and economic leaders will persist in a “neoliberal” emphasis on government austerity, deregulation, privatization, and lower taxes, protecting their elite interests. (See the pioneering work of Randy Hohle on racism and neoliberalism)

Additionally, the demographic trend toward a “majority minority” country will itself do little to redress the major effects of past racial oppression. Huge losses in people and resources suffered by Native Americans, the first victims of genocidal oppression, and of African Americans, the first whose labor was stolen on a large scale, top the list, but the oppression costs suffered by other groups of color, including Asian Americans and Latinos, are also massive. Few costs are likely to be dealt with by government redress in a world where whites still have disproportionate political-economic power. Generationally inherited unjust enrichments for whites from past oppressions will make major structural change very difficult.

A Panoramic View: Brazilianization or South-Africanization?

In recent years numerous scholars and media analysts have suggested the idea of significantly greater racial intermediation coming as the U.S. becomes much less white. Taking a panoramic view, they suggest a future that involves a “Brazilianization” or “Latinization’ of the United States.

Brazil’s racialization process has distinguished large mixed-race, mostly lighter-skinned groups and placed them in a middling status between Brazilians of mostly African ancestry and those of heavily European ancestry. Middle groups are relatively more affluent, politically powerful, and acceptable to dominant white Brazilians, who still mostly rule powerfully at the top of the economy and politics. About half the population, darker-skinned Afro-Brazilians and indigenous Brazilians, remains very powerless economically and politically. Possibly, in the U.S. case by 2050, a developed tripartite Brazilian pattern—with increasing and large but white-positioned intermediate racial groups, such as lighter-skinned middle class groups among Asian Americans and Latinos, moving up with greater economic and socio-political power and providing a racial buffer between powerful “whites” and powerless “blacks” and other darker-skinned people of color. Even then, it seems likely that many in U.S. middle groups will find their white-framed immigration, citizenship positions, or other inferiorized status still negatively affecting additional mobility opportunities.

An alternative future for the United States is somewhat different, at least in emphasis, what one might term “South-Africanization.” Both scenarios see whites in substantial economic control, but South-Africanization suggests, even if people of color gain large-scale political power, they will be severely handicapped by whites holding economic power. With the downfall of apartheid in South Africa two decades ago, black South Africans gained direct political control, but very modest increases in economic power. (Black South Africans are substantial majority of the population but control maybe 10 percent of the corporate economy.) From its beginning as a European colony, a large black African majority has been economically controlled by a small white minority. South Africa has an essentially two-category system, since intermediate groups of Asian and mixed-race citizens remain relatively small (if more powerful than blacks). This pattern might be an alternative U.S. future, with ever increasing Americans of color eventually gaining very substantial political power in local and national political systems, especially in areas where they are large majorities. Yet that political system will be one where the mostly white economic elite remains firmly in control of the national economy and will also directly or indirectly control most important policymaking by top officials, white or not-white, especially on major economic developments. As in South Africa, Americans of color will not gain major control at the top of the capitalistic system where much societal power lies. That has not happened in South Africa, and seems very unlikely for the U.S. over coming decades.

In my view, thus, the so-called “browning of America” and “coming white minority” will mostly mean a major demographic shift and probably modest political-economic changes, rather than a major departure from this country’s systemic white dominance in all its major, mostly undemocratic institutions.

A Salute to John Conyers

January 11, 2015 • Sean Elias • African Americans, politics, reparations, social change, social justice

On January 6, 2015, distinguished guests and US politicians gathered to celebrate the unveiling of Representative (now Dean of the US House of Representatives) John Conyers’ portrait that will now hang rightfully on the walls of the Capitol Building. That this is the first portrait of an African American congressional representative to grace the walls of the House Judiciary committee meeting room in the Capitol is telling. Like all honors earned by African Americans, Conyers’ portrait symbolizes a long, obstacle-laden struggle for recognition of service to the nation and a deserved place in the memory of US politics.

As Vice President Biden remarked, future generations of US lawmakers will respectfully point to this portrait and note the vast achievements Conyers accomplished during his service to and uplift of the American people. Representative James Clyburn correctly observed that Conyers was the catalyst for establishing a new paradigm in American political thought and action. Reflecting on the political capital, leadership skills, mentoring successes, and role model qualities of Conyers, US Attorney General, Eric Holder, stated that he, Barack Obama and other African American government leaders stood on the shoulders of Conyers. Minority Leader of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi made clear that Conyers has battled for the rights of all the disenfranchised and oppressed in the US, championing the Violence Against Women Act (1994) and House Resolution 288, a bill to dissuade religious intolerance, particularly intolerance directing at the US Muslim population.

As the longest serving member in the House of Representatives, John Conyers has advanced a progressive and positively “disruptive” (the term used by Nancy Pelosi) political agenda for fifty years now. During this period, Conyers was one of the founding members of the Congressional Black Caucus, a group of representatives who have addressed the unique sets of issues affecting the African American community and served as a critical moral consciousness for US government policies and US politicians, including Barack Obama (possibly why Obama was a no show at the unveiling?). One of Conyers’ great achievements was introducing a bill to create a national holiday commemorating Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Another profound political effort led by Conyers has been his call for a commission to study reparations for African Americans, to research how slavery has affected the lives of African Americans and the zeitgeist of US society up until this day.

Conyers has fought against the destructive culture and business of online gambling, cuts in Medicaid, Social Security and Medicare, discriminatory electoral practices, hate crimes, and racial profiling. He has introduced legislation and supported projects such as the Alcohol Warning Label Act, Help America Vote Act, Firearm Reduction Initiative, Workforce Investment Act, State Public Funds Protection Act, Helping Families Save Their Homes Act, and the Former Prisoners Project. In his distinct of Southeast Michigan, Conyers has generated a number of programs for economic development and social justice.

Assessing his long list of achievements, it is clear that Conyers fights for the marginalized, dispossessed, oppressed and exploited in US society. This ongoing battle distinguishes the work of Conyers from so many career politicians on the Hill. As just about every speaker at Conyers’ portrait unveiling acknowledged, John Conyers is a rare person of “integrity,” high principles and intellect, human qualities absent among many members of Congress. Indeed, few people work for improving the lives of others, not themselves, and even those who devote their energies toward advancing the human condition rarely possess the devotion and cogency of a person like John Conyers.

Conyers is an unsullied role model for those fighting for racial justice and human justice in general, and should be recognized as one of the true protagonists of US society. While many US citizens will never respect his achievements and a certain element will attempt to vilify his pro-justice actions (he was one of the key figures on Nixon’s “enemy list”), it is up to those who strive for justice and human community to follow, as best they can, in the footsteps of this Giant.

Juneteenth — Marking the End of Slavery

June 19, 2014 • Jessie Daniels • African Americans, slavery, social change

Today is Juneteenth, a celebration of the end of slavery. As you may already know, the news of the Emancipation proclamation came late two months late to Texas, and the holiday is meant to mark the arrival of that news. What began as a regional celebration in Galveston, Texas has grown to a national commemoration. Yet, that celebration is a bittersweet one given what the reality of emancipation must have been, according to a new scholarly book.

(Emancipation Day, Austin, Texas, 1900,image source)

According to a new book, Sick From Freedom (Oxford University Press), by Jim Downs (Assistant Professor, Connecticut College), emancipation from slavery was also a health crisis for those formerly enslaved. A health crisis that has been largely ignored both by whites at the time and by mostly white historians since then.

At least one quarter of the four million former slaves got sick or died between 1862 and 1870, Downs writes, including at least 60,000 (the actual number is probably two or three times higher, he argues) who perished in a smallpox epidemic that began in Washington and spread through the South as former slaves traveled in search of work — an epidemic that Downs says he is the first to reconstruct as a national event.

Downs first became interested in the health of newly liberated slaves when he was a graduate student at Columbia University with a job as a research assistant in the papers of Harriet Jacobs, the author of the 1861 autobiography “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” and a vivid chronicler of the often abysmal conditions in the “contraband camps” where escaped slaves congregated during the war and in settlements of freed people more generally after it. The papers were full of heart-wrenching encounters with sick and dying freed people — references that he noticed were strikingly absent in recent scholarship.

To do this research, Downs sorted through the little-explored records of the medical division of the Freedmen’s Bureau and other archives, he found reams of statistical and anecdotal accounts of sick and dying freed people, whose suffering was seen by even some sympathetic Northern reformers as evidence that the former slaves, as a “race,” were doomed to extinction.

And, perhaps surprisingly, this is where I see a connection to much of the research that I’ve done on racism in the digital era. One of the ways that white supremacists and others not working against racial justice frame their discourse, is to talk about “slavery as a humane institution.” Just to be clear, it would mean coming to the wrong conclusion to read Downs’ work as implying that slavery was better than emancipation. It wasn’t. Emancipation was a moral and a material victory in every sense. And yet, at the same time, it was complicated by the crushing inequality and brutal continuation of racism after the official end of slavery that guaranteed that oppression manifested itself in the bodies and under the skin of the formerly enslaved. Even when the physical shackles were removed, there were a hundred ways that people could still be oppressed by the lack of food, housing, and clean running water.

So, when I see those historical photos of early Juneteenth celebrations (like the one above), and I see how small and sober these events seem, I think what a bittersweet moment that must have been – celebrating emancipation and commemorating all those that didn’t make it, whether in the Middle Passage, or who were too sick to finally enjoy freedom.

[reposted from 2012]

Amy Chua’s “Triple Package”: Success Formula for Some?

March 2, 2014 • Edna Chun • "model minority", African Americans, Americans of color, identities, immigration, inequality, methodology, social change, stereotyping, systemic racism, white privilege, white racial frame

Is success monolithic and limited to certain groups? Attributes of success cannot be monopolized by certain groups, cultures, ethnicities, or religious groups. Most people that are successful, in fact, appear to have characteristics in common and these characteristics are not driven by their membership in certain groups. The premise of the American democracy is based on the notion that all can succeed through hard work and access to opportunity. In Outliers, the Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell observes:

Nor is success simply the sum of the decisions and efforts we make on our own behalf. It is, rather a gift. Outliers are those who have been given opportunities—and who have had the strength and presence of mind to seize them.

Yet according to Amy Chua and Jeb Rosenfeld in their new book, The Triple Package, the combination of three cultural characteristics has led to the success of eight groups in America (Chinese, early Cuban exiles, Indians, Nigerians, Mormons, Iranians, Lebanese and Jews): 1) a superiority complex; 2) a sense of insecurity; and 3) impulse control. In fact, they assert,

all of America’s disproportionately successful groups have a superiority complex; in fact most are famous for it” (p. 72).

This superiority complex, they state, is “deeply ingrained” (p. 83). And strikingly, the authors do not support these sweeping statements with research findings or empirical sources of evidence.

Chua and Rosenfeld’s thesis has distinct Orwellian overtones by suggesting that some groups have what it takes to be more equal or successful than others. As NYU professor Suketu Mehta points out in an article titled “The ‘Tiger Mom Superiority Complex’” in Time Magazine,the book represents “a new strain of racial, ethnic, and cultural reductivism,” a sort of “ethnocentric thinking writ large” or what he terms “the new racism.” And, he adds, “I call it the new racism—and I take it rather personally.”

The Triple Package touches on some important themes, but also suffers from a number of critical flaws. Most importantly, the book does not address the nature of structural discrimination that is reflected in disparate historical, economic, and social realities for minorities through the predominance of what social theorist Joe Feagin calls the “white racial frame.” According to Feagin, this frame is comprised of racial stereotypes, racial narratives, racial images, and racialized emotions that shape how many whites behave and interact with all Americans of color. Systematic, structural forms of exclusion of minorities have pervaded access to housing, education, distribution of economic resources, and job opportunities.

Arguably, the sense of superiority of any group is affected by forces of social oppression and the internalization of these forces has an impact on the psyche of affected individuals. Chua and Rosenfeld have correctly identified the fact that blacks have been systematically denied access to a group superiority complex and bear a significant cultural burden by susceptibility to stereotype threat. However, the omission of African Americans from the chapter on impulse control seems to do a disservice to hardworking African Americans who have been highly successful.

Second, the co-authors’ emphasis is on immigrant success. Factors in immigrant success, however, are not representative of the American population as a whole. For the most part, the legal immigration system has provided upper and middle class individuals the opportunity to emigrate to the United States. Take, for example, the fact mentioned by Chua and Rosenfeld indicate that 65 percent of Iranian Americans are foreign born. They also distinguish between the success of the first wave of Cuban immigration between 1959 and 1973 which included an influx of mostly white middle and upper class professionals “at the pinnacle of a highly stratified society” (p. 37) with the later wave of Cuban immigrants who were black or of mixed race or mostly poor. As the authors observe, these individuals were not successful in business and are absent from Miami’s power elite. Yet rather than cultural factors, the racism and classicism evident in the treatment of second-generation Cuban immigrants represent powerful structural, social influences in their relative lack of mobility and success.

Third, the authors assert that the Triple Package is a cultural explanation of group success that does not include education or hard work as core components. In their view, education and hard work are dependent and not independent variables. This dismissal of education flies in the face of Horace Mann’s view that education is

a great equalizer of the conditions of men,–the balance wheel of the social machinery” that “gives each man the independence and the means by which he can resist the selfishness of other men.

Or to put it in a more contemporary framework, as Jamie Merisotis, President and CEO of the Lumina Foundation points out, “college-level learning is key to individual prosperity, economic security, and the strength of our American democracy.”

And, in Chua and Rosenfeld’s view, America previously had the Triple Package culture, but,

in the latter part of the twentieth century, something happened. America turned against both insecurity and impulse control (p. 208).

As a result, the authors indicate that to recover the Triple Package, Americans would have to recover from “instant gratification disorder” (p. 218).

The basis for these statements is not explained, documented, or footnoted. In essence, individuals from oppressed groups, no matter which group, have similar aspirations and wish for a better life and to be part of the American dream. These aspirations are not driven by cultural characteristics and can be advanced through education, hard work, and structural and opportunity mechanisms that facilitate individual progress. Due to the lack of evidence offered for the assertions of the Triple Package, the book essentially provides commentary on a very complex subject rather than scholarship and, as such, lacks credibility. Should certain groups accept the unsupported premises of this book, self-fulfilling prophecies could set in, and public opinion and debate could be affected by unverified statements that are not grounded in empirical data or social science research.

The Black Counter Frame: Critical for Much Racial Change

October 13, 2013 • Joe • African Americans, counter-frame, social change, social justice, white elites, white racial frame, whites

In my The White Racial Frame book I not only discuss this age-old white racial frame, which accents both white virtue material and anti-others material, but also the important counter frames to this dominant white frame that people of color have developed. In the U.S. case African Americans have developed an especially strong counter frame over centuries, perhaps because they have had the longest period of time situated firmly within this systemically racist society.

This counter frame has for centuries been an impetus for many important black protests, and thus in large part for the few major changes that have been made in this country’s racist system over the centuries.

One feature of U.S. systemic racism involves a rather intentional collective forgetting by whites of key African Americans who articulated and often organized around a strong counter frame. Let me remind our readers of a few of these great Americans.

One of the first to put counter frame down on paper was David Walker, a young African American abolitionist working in Boston. In 1829 he published a strong manifesto, entitled Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World. Demanding full equality, he wrote to his fellow African Americans with revolutionary arguments in an anti-oppression framing, so much so that slaveholding whites put a large cash bounty on his head. (He died young, probably as a result.) Walker analyzes slavery and racial segregation for free blacks quite bluntly. Most whites are “cruel oppressors and murderers” whose “oppression” will be overthrown. They are “an unjust, jealous, unmerciful, avaricious and blood-thirsty set of beings.” Whites seek for African Americans to be slaves to them

and their children forever to dig their mines and work their farms; and thus go on enriching them, from one generation to another with our blood and our tears!

He then quotes the words “all men are created equal” from the Declaration of Independence and challenges whites:

Compare your own language above, extracted from your Declaration of Independence, with your cruelties and murders inflicted by your cruel and unmerciful fathers and yourselves on our fathers and on us–men who have never given your fathers or you the least provocation! . . . . I ask you candidly, was your sufferings under Great Britain one hundredth part as cruel and tyrannical as you have rendered ours under you?

A little later in the 19th century, an admirer of Walker, the African American abolitionist Henry Garnet, gave a radical speech, “An Address to the Slaves of the United States of America,” at a National Negro Convention. Garnet’s counter framing is very assertive and to the point, and it is also an address to those enslaved. He offers a structural analysis of “oppression,” arguing too that the white “oppressor’s power is fading.” African Americans like “all men cherish the love of liberty. . . . In every man’s mind the good seeds of liberty are planted.” He calls on those enslaved to take revolutionary action:

There is not much hope of redemption without the shedding of blood. If you must bleed, let it all come at once—rather die freemen, than live to be slaves.” He concludes with a strong call to rebellion: “Brethren, arise, arise! Strike for your lives and liberties.

One of the most brilliant of the 19th century analysts of systemic racism was the great abolitionist, Martin Delaney, who among other actions worked in revolutionary efforts to overthrow the slavery system. (In May 1858, he and John Brown gathered black and white abolitionists for a revolutionary meeting in Chatham, Canada. Four dozen black and white Americans wrote a new constitution to govern a growing band of armed revolutionaries they hoped would come from the enslaved US population.) Directing a book at all Americans, Delaney emphasizes the

United States, untrue to her trust and unfaithful to her professed principles of republican equality, has also pursued a policy of political degradation to a large portion of her native born countrymen. . . . there is no species of degradation to which we are not subject.

His counter framing is one of resistance and extends the old liberty-and-justice frame beyond white rhetoric:

We believe in the universal equality of man, and believe in that declaration of God’s word, in which it is positively said, that ‘God has made of one blood all the nations that dwell on the face of the earth.’

Delaney attacks whites’ stereotypes of African Americans with a detailed listing of important achievements of numerous free and enslaved African Americans and emphasizes how enslaved workers brought very important skills in farming to North America that European colonists did not have. African American workers were the “bone and sinews of the country” and the very “existence of the white man, South, depends entirely on the labor of the black man.” Delaney emphasizes that African Americans are indeed very old Americans:

Our common country is the United States. . . . and from here will we not be driven by any policy that may be schemed against us. We are Americans, having a birthright citizenship.

Let us bring these and other important 19th African Americans back into our contemporary history, as they were both thinkers and activists in the long tradition of people fighting for liberty in the United States. Note too essential elements of the black counter frame in these and many other black thinkers and activists too often forgotten writings from the 19th century: a strong critique of racial oppression; an aggressive countering of white’s negative framing of African Americans; and a very strong accent on the centrality and importance of liberty, justice, and equality for all Americans. African Americans have been perhaps the most central Americans in keeping these liberty and justice ideals constantly alive and imbedded in resistance organizations over four long centuries of freedom struggles in the racist history of the United States.

Reading for National Dialogue on Race Day

September 12, 2013 • Joe and Jessie • African Americans, Americans of color, democracy, police, political parties, politics, poverty, racial profiling, racism, social change, social justice, systemic racism

The National Dialogue on Race Day happening later today at Tufts University Center for the Study of Race and Democracy hosted by Prof. Peniel Joseph will focus on three broad themes and questions. In anticipation of the event, we’ve selected a few previous posts from the six years of blogging here that touch on these topics.

50 Years after the March On Washington for Jobs and Freedom: How Far Have we Progressed as a Nation in Achieving Dr. King’s Dream of Multicultural and Multiracial Democracy?

Black Unemployment in the U.S.: So Bad, the UN is Investigating Jessie Daniels (April 28, 2010)
The Moral Issue Remains Charles Gallagher (June 14, 2013)
Increasing Racial Gaps in Wealth and Income Joe Feagin (July 31, 2012)
Labor Day: Considering the Legacy of Stolen Labor Jessie Daniels (September 2, 2013)

Trayvon Martin, Mass Incarceration, and the public school to prison crisis

“Trayvon Martin Could Have Been Me”: A Watershed Moment for the U.S. Joe Feagin (July 21, 2013)
Justice for Trayvon: Action You Can Take, Showing Up for Racial Justice, SURJ (July 25, 2013)
The Failure of Education: Reproduction of Racism & Black Males, Dr. Terence Fitzgerald (August 27, 2012)
Research on Racial Diversity and the University of Texas Case, Joe Feagin (August 15, 2012)
A Black Boy is Dead, Tommy Curry (July 7, 2013)

Race and Democracy in the 21st Century: What does racial integration, justice, and equality mean in contemporary America and how can we shape and impact this dialogue in our respective communities, nationally and globally?

Faking Democracy: More Evidence of Racist Barriers in U.S. Voting Joe Feagin (August 7, 2010)
Prom Night in the Deep South Earl Smith (May 11, 2013)
Police Brutality in the South Several authors (April 4, 2013)
Democracy, Class, and Change Robert Jensen (June 7, 2013)
White Men as the Major “Social Problem” for US Present and Future Joe Feagin (December 17, 2012)

Read up and join the conversation! You can participate lots of ways, by commenting here, by watching the livestream from Tufts (beginning at 7pm ET) or through Twitter at the hashtag #NDRD.

National Dialogue on Race

September 6, 2013 • Peniel Joseph • democracy, judicial system, politics, social change

Trayvon Martin’s tragic death has inspired nationwide demonstrations and calls for action that have reverberated all the way to the White House. President Obama’s spontaneous and heartfeltwords about the plight of race relations in America touched upon the need for a national conversation about race but expressed skepticism that politicians might effectively lead such an endeavor.

Obama is right on this score. It’s time for all citizens to participate in a dialogue on race in America because we all have a stake in our nation’s democratic institutions.

Such a day could go a long way toward jump-starting the dialogue on race, democracy and public policy that is desperately needed around the nation, especially (but not only) in poor communities of color. In contrast to previously called for conversations on race (including one launched by the Clinton administration) that bore little tangible fruit, this dialogue should be purposeful and policy-driven in pursuit of an agenda of democratic transformation at the local, state and national levels.

The dialogue would be led by activists, civil rights organizers, policy experts and community leaders for the express purpose of crafting public-policy solutions connected to issues of racial disparities in criminal justice, employment, public schools, housing, health care and overall life chances in America.

Fifty summers ago, the heroic period of the civil rights movement inspired a national conversation about race and democracy that engaged citizens of all races and affected virtually every sector of American life. Religious leaders, labor activists, welfare mothers, prisoners and politicians participated in this dialogue, one that included roiling street protests often accompanied by the passage of watershed legislation. The idea for a National Dialogue on Race Day is inspired by the collective activism and action of these citizens, many of whom turned out in droves for the Aug. 28, 1963, March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

The march united disparate political strands into a mighty and unifying call for racial justice, economic equality and multicultural democracy. The historic event galvanized social, political and cultural awareness of racial injustice and helped lead to substantive public-policy transformations in the form of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965. The March on Washington’s approaching 50th anniversary should be a time of national reflection and democratic renewal to assess how far we have actually come.

But to continue the conversation, the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy at Tufts University is convening a National Dialogue on Race Day on Sept. 12, and we invite all to participate in local communities across the country.

(Download the NDRD Flyer here.)

The agenda for the inaugural National Dialogue on Race Day will be organized around three major issues:

Fifty years after the March on Washington, how far have we progressed as a nation in achieving Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream of multicultural and multiracial democracy?
Trayvon Martin, mass incarceration and the public school-to-prison crisis.
Race and democracy in the 21st century: What do racial integration, justice and equality mean in contemporary America, and how can we shape this dialogue locally, nationally and globally?

Community groups, universities and colleges, civic organizations, churches, synagogues and civil rights activists have natural constituencies to organize single panels or all-day symposiums to which students and surrounding community members would be invited to join in the conversation. Citizens seeking to participate might attend a live local event or simulcast of an event at a different location, stream an event online from their own computers and/or share their thoughts on social media with the hashtag #NDRD. Event organizers would publicize their affiliation with NDRD both on and offline. Ideally, a National Dialogue on Race Day could simultaneously occur in every community across the nation, and even those unable to organize such an event locally could easily participate online.

Ella Baker, the founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, famously remarked that “strong people don’t need strong leaders.” Neither the African-American community nor the nation as a whole can afford to wait on politicians to lead a discussion that will cast a strobe light on issues of inequality, racism and injustice. It’s uncomfortable because we’re out of practice — but we need to do it anyway.

The aftermath of the Supreme Court’s recent voting-rights and affirmative action decisions, as well as proliferating urban violence, poverty and mass incarceration, make this conversation more necessary now than ever. A deliberate, widespread dialogue among American citizens is critical to push forward the transformation of our democratic institutions. Now is the time to revisit the energy and activism of the March on Washington to revive the goal of racial justice.

The same summer as the march, in a national television address to the nation, President John F. Kennedy defined institutional racism as a “moral” issue that reverberated through political institutions. Two months later Martin Luther King Jr., during his historic “I Have a Dream” speech, proclaimed that African Americans had come to the nation’s capital to cash a check that had been marked “insufficient funds.” King refused to believe, in his words, that the bank of American democracy could be bankrupt. Despite evidence to the contrary, many Americans of diverse backgrounds continue to believe in King’s dream of racial equality and economic justice.

President Obama’s recent admission that we are not in a “postracial” nation goes a long way toward combating the “colorblind” racism that stubbornly declares racial equality while ignoring growing social, economic and political disparities based on race. But politicians cannot lead this national conversation.

We are capable of being the architects of the democracy in which we want to live. This requires confronting racism openly and educating our fellow citizens that merely discussing, recognizing or “seeing” race does not make one a racist. The idea that one does not “see” race should be reserved for the political satire of Stephen Colbert and not be viewed as a serious political perspective. Only by seeing race can we begin to transform public policy and democratic institutions.

America is well on its way to becoming a majority-minority nation, but we still too often think and speak about race in binaries. A National Dialogue on Race Day should rightfully include the diverse racial and ethnic panorama that makes up 21st-century America.

As we approach the cusp of the 50th anniversary of King’s dream, a national conversation on race and democracy led by activists, scholars, community organizers and active citizens will help us reimagine American democracy while confronting the social, political and racial injustices that threaten King’s dream and our own.

~ Guest blogger Peniel E. Joseph is founding director of the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy (follow the Center on Twitter). and a professor of history at Tufts University. Follow Professor Joseph on Twitter. This post originally appeared on The Root.

~ Racism Review is pleased to be a participant in the National Dialogue on Race Day.

When the Bullets Aren’t Rubber: Racism and Violence in Brazil’s Protests

July 3, 2013 • Katherine Jensen • Brazil, racism, social change, social movements

On June 13, Brazilian military police shot journalist Giuliana Vallone in the eye with a rubber bullet. That night police violently repressed a street protest in São Paulo, Brazil where thousands had gone to demand the reversal of a recent 7% bus fare increase. Local media and organizations like Amnesty International denounced the police’s “excessive use of force,” including its indiscriminate use of tear gas and rubber bullets. News of the police repression in São Paulo sparked indignation across the country. This photo of Vallone went viral.

(Image source)

Within the week, mass mobilizations spread across Brazil reaching numbers unprecedented in its recent history. On June 20, more than a million protesters demonstrated in the streets. As the movement grew, protesters called for an end to political and financial corruption and – instead of the 2014 World Cup – better healthcare, better education, and affordable (if not free) public transit.

Yet the degree of indignation the earlier image of Vallone caused, and the photo’s subsequent place as a rallying cry in the movement as posters emerged stating “we will not forget,” warrants particular attention.

(Image source)

Vallone, as a young white Brazilian woman, came to serve as a somatic representative of the national body politic. An attack on her “innocent” body was seen as an attack on all Brazilians.

As both the movement and the corresponding police repression continued to grow, photos of violence enacted on white female bodies also continued to go viral. While the photo of Vallone played a unique role in sparking increased indignation and mobilizations, later photos of white female victims were similarly privileged. Other examples of this trend can be seen in this image, where a white woman is being pepper sprayed by the police.

(Image source)

And, it’s also evident in this image, where a black police officer hits a white Brazilian woman with his baton, forcing her to fall into the arms of another light-skinned protester.

(Image source)

These three images appeared again and again in domestic and international media coverage, as well as through social media platforms like Facebook and in YouTube videos that compiled images of police repression.

Media coverage of participants in the June 2013 demonstrations in Brazil framed whites as legitimate protesters and representative members of the national body politic, and, particularly white women, as the wrongful victims of police repression. But how have black Brazilian protesters been represented within the movement and in media coverage? Is violence against them similarly understood as an illegitimate attack on the national body politic?

In and out of the movement, black Brazilians were largely stripped of their right to demonstrate. The media, among others, branded them not as concerned protesters, but as violent vandals, whose own experiences of police brutality were deemed of little interest. Not only has the police brutality against nonwhites not appeared in media coverage, the media’s visual accompaniments have marked them instead as the instigators of illegitimate “violence.”

(Image source)

In one Washington Post piece, for example, the contrast is startling. While it includes two photos of white women suffering the effects of tear gas and pepper spray, the two images of black men show one with an Anonymous mask in front of a burning barricade, and the other in front of a line of vandalized ATMs (photo above). While neither is actually engaged in an illegal act, the photographs’ compositions work to associate black youths, and indeed, blackness, with vandalism. These photos of black male protesters work to generate a very different type of indignation. While the photos of white female protesters produce a rallying cry against the external threat of police repression to the movement and its members, photos of black male protesters work to mark and chastise them as an internal threat to the movement’s success and future.

These racist framings were also palpable on the streets. On June 20, I watched as a mob of thousands heckled a lone black male protester for attempting to attach a (likely political) poster to a downtown statue. They jeered at him, gesturing thumbs down in unison, as many flashed green lasers into his eyes, making it impossible for him to climb down from atop the statue structure. Through multiple levels of coverage, discourse and practices, black male protesters became not civilians engaging in their civil right to protest against concerns affecting both the nation as a whole and their communities specifically, but – in the words of Brazilian journalist Elio Gaspari – “violent troublemakers.”

These examples are not the only black bodies that appeared in media coverage, nor are only black protesters linked with acts of vandalism. Yet the overwhelming tendency within the movement and from local and international media sources has been to reinforce particular discourses of violence and the nation that circumscribe nonwhite Brazilians, particularly young men, as illegitimate members of the nation engaged in illegitimate acts. In the words of Brazilian anthropologist Jaime Alves, the “black position within the Brazilian racialized regime of citizenship points to the ontological impossibility of fully participating in the nation.”

These exclusionary discourses manifest themselves in racist practices with lethal consequences. The police repression white middle-class Brazilian protesters have experienced over the last few weeks pales in comparison to the violent police brutality nonwhites experience everyday throughout Brazil. This differential treatment has not escaped the recent wave of protests.

On June 24, military police action by the BOPE Special Forces (the inspiration for Elite Squad) in the favela community Nova Holanda, in the Complexo da Maré, left 9 residents dead. The deadly raid followed a peaceful demonstration in the neighboring area Bonsucesso.

While subsequent protests have made reference to these deaths, the massacre in Maré has failed to spark the same level of indignation or coverage seen with the rubber bullet that struck white female journalist Vallone. While the racial identities of the victims are still unknown, statistics regarding the confluence of race and class in Brazil, particularly with regard to sociospatial relegation to Rio’s favelas, has left little doubt in many people’s minds. As one protest sign I observed during a demonstration in Rio on June 27, “I am black, woman, young, from Maré…don’t kill me, please!!!”

Troublingly, domestic coverage in the U.S. has highlighted that only two of the dead did not have criminal records. Media sources more generally have called them “gang members” and drug traffickers, unquestioningly accepting police claims, even though there remains great uncertainty regarding the reasoning for the police raid or its high death toll. In the meantime, and with the recent end of the Confederations Cup soccer tournament, it seems that much of the international media has already moved on.

(Image via Facebook)

This protester’s sign, from a protest in the days before the Maré massacre, resonates now with even greater tragic weight and sadness: “Why do the rubber bullets against white skin move [people] more than the real bullets that kill the black population everyday?”

~ Katherine Jensen is a PhD student in sociology at the University of Texas at Austin, currently living and doing research in Brazil.

Little Known Executive Order on Diversity & Inclusion: Obama’s Pragmatic Progressivism

September 27, 2012 • Edna Chun • affirmative action, Americans of color, government action, Obama, racism, social change, under reported, women, women of color

Executive Order 13583 issued by President Obama in 2011 is perhaps one of the least-discussed and little known executive orders, despite its significant contribution to diversity and inclusion in the federal government. Lyndon Johnson’s Executive Order 11246 issued in 1965 was undoubtedly the watershed presidential Executive Order in the field of Affirmative Action for federal contractors. Now, nearly a half century later, President Obama’s Executive Order 13583 breaks new ground by setting the stage for progress in the field of diversity and inclusion in governmental agencies.

This forward-looking Executive Order directs executive departments and agencies of the federal government “to develop and implement a more comprehensive, integrated, and strategic focus on diversity and inclusion as a key component of their human resource strategies.” The alliance of HR strategies with diversity and inclusion is specifically designed to create “high-performing organizations for the 21st century” — workplaces that attract, develop, and retain diverse and talented employees.

The government-wide Diversity and Inclusion Strategic Plan issued following the Executive Order in 2011 articulates the business imperative for inclusion and has three specific goals:

1. Workforce Diversity. Recruit from a diverse, qualified group of potential applicants to secure a high-performing workforce drawn from all segments of American society.
2. Workplace Inclusion. Cultivate a culture that encourages collaboration, flexibility, and fairness to enable individuals to contribute to their full potential and further retention.
3. Sustainability. Develop structures and strategies to equip leaders with the ability to manage diversity, be accountable, measure results, refine approaches on the basis of such data, and institutionalize a culture of inclusion.

And the Executive Order called for federal agencies to develop a Diversity and Inclusion Strategic Plan within a 120-day time-frame that addresses recruiting, hiring, training, developing, promoting, and retaining a diverse workforce. Veronica Villalobos, the Office of Personnel Management’s Director of Diversity and Inclusion, is responsible for designing and developing strategies to promote a diverse federal workforce. As a model for organizations seeking to implement more diverse workplace practices, the governmental plan articulates clear strategies, actions, and accountability structures that promote the attainment of inclusion.