Seventy-one percent of Black officers at the police department in Knoxville, Tennessee in the U.S. said they have experienced racial discrimination by the organization, according to a recent report conducted by 21CP Solutions, an organization of policing experts.
“If you are a Black officer, you have to work five times harder, and officers will always second-guess you,” one anonymous officer was quoted as saying in the report.
“When applying for posted positions and training, if more than one Black officer applied for a job that has multiple open slots, only one Black officer would get selected, and the other one would be told to wait until the next posting,” said another officer.
Knoxville Police Department’s new chief, Paul Noel, told NBC News in an interview that 21CP Solutions’ assessment was commissioned by him, noting that takeaways from the report are “pretty clear.”
“These are all things that people in the community and the police department anecdotally knew,” he was quoted as saying. “But this is the first time we had a jumping-off point to actually create change.”
The findings come after years of allegations, covered by the Knoxville News Sentinel, of longstanding racist behavior in the department, serving a town of over 180,000 people in eastern Tennessee.
Black representation in U.S. police forces has long been hampered by discrimination in hiring and promotion, some law enforcement officers told Reuters as early as 2020.
U.S. police forces remain generally whiter than the community that surrounds them, despite decades of attempts to reform, according to U.S. Federal data released in 2020.
The Washington Post has written on several studies detailing the link between police diversity and community relations. Lydia DePillis noted that a 2004 analysis of data from St. Petersburg, Florida and Indianapolis, Indiana concluded “black officers are more likely to conduct coercive actions” than their white colleagues when resolving conflicts. DePillis also references a 2006 analysis of Cincinnati Police Department records; in her words, the study found “white officers were more likely to arrest suspects than black officers overall—but it also found that black officers were significantly more likely to make an arrest when the suspect was black.”
Every day in the United States, Black children are investigated by the child welfare system and forcibly separated from their parents, at rates far greater than their white peers. Decades of data, research, and lived experiences reveal the deep disparities and discrimination within this system.
Over 50 percent of Black children in the U.S. will experience a child welfare investigation before their eighteenth birthday (nearly double the rate of white children). Nearly 10 percent of Black children will be removed from their parents and placed into foster care (double the rate of white children). One in 41 Black children will have their relationship with their birth parent or parents legally terminated (more than double the rate of the general population). Let those numbers sink in for a moment.
Each of these numbers represents a child and a family for whom contact with the child welfare system has caused harm—from intrusion and disruption to shattered lives. These horrifying statistics don’t even account for the additional trauma Black children often face within the child welfare system (a point we will return to). Involvement with this system, which authorizes the surveillance, regulation, control, and separation of families, causes immeasurable harm to Black children, families, and communities.
That the state can intrude into the private lives of families and separate children from their mothers and fathers hits at some of the most fundamental aspects of our humanity. It touches on the right to family integrity and on a child’s right to his or her identity, and, when compounded by the racial discrimination our child welfare system is structured to impose, it becomes a question of basic equality and human dignity.
Racial discrimination in U.S. child welfare is, in other words, a human rights issue. And a key body of the United Nations (UN) agrees. On August 30, 2022, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), a group of international experts charged with monitoring state compliance with human rights obligations on racial discrimination, expressed concern at the “disproportionate number of children of racial and ethnic minorities removed from their families and placed in foster care” in the U.S. The UN committee called on the Biden administration to “take all appropriate measures to eliminate racial discrimination in the child welfare system, including by amending or repealing laws, policies and practices that have a disparate impact on families of racial and ethnic minorities.” We could not agree more.
If you can even call it that, the American history curriculum is a flimsy thing. The United States lacks national guidelines for what history lessons should cover for children in public schools, in contrast to many other nations. Each state establishes its own curriculum standards, although they are often flexible given that 13,000 school districts choose their own textbooks and that individual instructors have a significant deal of authority.
Donald Yacovone, a scholar at Harvard and the author or editor of multiple works, most of which are on the Civil War era, is the most recent author to concentrate on the topic. His first book on education, “Teaching White Supremacy,” is based, as he notes in the preface, on approximately 3,000 American history curriculum textbooks from the 1800s to the 1980s that are kept in the collection of the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Yacovone’s argument that Northern publishers, universities, religious leaders, and social activists were more responsible than Southern ones for spreading a persistent ideology of white superiority and Black inferiority that outlived the institution of slavery and was vehemently expressed in school materials is compelling and convincing. This worldview frequently coexisted with ardent support for the Union and the abolition of slavery, linking the survival of the Republic to the notion of America as a white nation.
Yacovone expertly examines the pervasive racism that existed in 19th-century Northern progressive movements. Abolitionists who were white and Christian frequently wanted to send freed Black people to Africa. Some white feminists made the claim that white women were morally and intellectually superior to freshly freed Black males in order to support women’s suffrage. Black Americans were frequently seen by northern white labor advocates as undesired employment competitors. Textbooks for elementary school represented all of these concepts.
Yacovone also makes some perplexing decisions on which authors and philosophers to highlight. He seems to believe that the Democratic Party propagandist and 19th-century New York publisher John H. Van Evrie holds the key to comprehending the white supremacy seen in school textbooks. Van Evrie popularised scientific racism, such as the ridiculous polygenesis idea, which claimed that black people and white people were two distinct species and that slavery was a natural state for the lower, Black order.
Read the complete article at: The New York Times
With the awarding of its first government funding to demolish a road designed to sustain racial discrimination, the Biden administration is rounding off the president’s recent visit to Michigan, which was mostly focused on worker rights and transportation innovation.
The action is a part of the Biden administration and its larger initiative to redesign America’s infrastructure in a fairer way, which also includes correcting racist roadways that were built to encourage white flight and deny Black people access to housing and business opportunities.
I-375, the highway that divides Detroit’s Black Bottom neighbourhood and Paradise Valley, the city’s epicentre of Black business, will be demolished using $104.6 million in federal funds from last year’s bipartisan infrastructure bill, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg confirmed to The Associated Press on Thursday.
The money is being given to Detroit as a part of a $1.5 billion grant programme for states to advance important projects called Infrastructure for Rebuilding America, or INFRA.
Buttigieg described the Detroit roadway to the AP as “cutting like a gash across the neighbourhood, one of many examples I have seen in neighbourhoods around the country where a piece of infrastructure has become a barrier.”
With the help of this money, he said, “we’re now working with the government and the neighbourhood to make it a route that will unite rather than divide.
Millions more were included in the Biden administration announcement on Thursday for various projects in Arizona, Colorado, New York, and other states throughout the nation. The large sum required to rebuild Black Bottom and its neighbourhood demonstrates how detrimental America’s racial infrastructure has been. And it’s an indication that far more money will be required to solve the issue on a national scale.
Congressman Shashi Tharoor and many Twitter users are furious about a US TV anchor who extolled the benefits of British colonialism in India and asserted that the nation benefited under British control, according to a story in the Independent. The Fox News host Tucker Carlson also made the erroneous assertion that India did not produce any architectural wonders prior to the start of the British colonial era. Many users, including tennis player Martina Navratilova, have denounced his remarks as “racist” and “supremely misinformed.”
The US TV anchor had a protracted diatribe about how the British empire was “more than simply genocide” on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” last Thursday.
We (the United States) left Afghanistan, we left airstrips, weapons, and guns. When the British pulled out of India, they left behind an entire civilization, a language, a legal system, schools, churches, and public buildings, all of which are still in use today. At least the English took their colonial responsibility seriously. They didn’t just take things, they added.
Congressman Shashi Tharoor participated in the Twitter discussion that was started by the comments.
In response to Mr. Carlson’s remarks, Ms. Navratilova tweeted, “Hey @TuckerCarlson – your utter ignorance of history is quite staggering. I suggest you read the book “Inglorious Empire” by Shashi Tharoor and then try again. Your racism is off the charts and your stupidity on this specific issue is of Olympic proportions!!!”
The US TV anchor has not addressed the criticism as of now.
The United States government has renamed hundreds of peaks, lakes, streams, and other physical features on federal properties in the West and elsewhere, joining a ski resort and others who have stopped using a racist terms for Native women.
Nearly 650 locations now have new names to replace the derogatory epithet “squaw,” including names that are mundane (Echo Peak, Texas), strange (No Name Island, Maine), and Indigenous (Nammi’I Naokwaide, Idaho) phrases whose meaning is obscure to people who are not familiar with Native languages.
The tribes recommended the new name, Nammi’I Naokwaide, which means “Young Sister Creek” and is located in the traditional territories of the Shoshone and Bannock tribes in southern Idaho.
“I feel a strong responsibility to utilize my position to make sure that our public lands and rivers remain open to the public and friendly. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in a statement that this process “begins with eliminating racist terms and disparaging names that have adorned federal locations for far too long.
The adjustments made public on Thursday put an end to a nearly 12-month process that started in 2021, shortly after Haaland became the first Native American to head a Cabinet department. Haaland is a Laguna Pueblo native.
A non-profit legal organization called the Native American Rights Fund applauded the modifications.
While the pejorative epithet in question, “squaw,” was named by the Interior Department on Thursday, has only lately drawn widespread derision in the United States, changing place names in response to growing anti-racism sentiment has a long history.
In 1962, the government mandated the renaming of locations with discriminatory terms for Black people, and in 1974, it ordered the renaming of locations with negative terms for Japanese people.
Meanwhile, California has made its own efforts to get the term removed from place names. The phrase would be eliminated from more than 100 locations starting in 2025, according to a measure that the California Legislature enacted in August.
Gavin Newsom, the Democratic governor, has until the end of September to decide whether to sign the legislation into law.
A lady in the US state of Texas allegedly assaulted four Indian American women during a racist attack after calling them racial slurs and telling them to “get back to India.”
The event happened on Wednesday evening at a Dallas, Texas, parking lot. The footage shows the woman—who has since been detained—hitting a group of Indian Americans.
She may be seen in the video ordering the women to “Return to India. You guys are destroying our nation, “said CBS News.
The video has now gone viral, shocking the Indian American community all across the country.
The racist woman is shown on camera screaming racial obscenities and hitting at least two of the Indian ladies on camera.
This event happened in Dallas, Texas, after my mother and her three friends had gone out to supper, according to the individual who submitted the video.
The mother is shown refuting the woman’s claims while maintaining her composure. She is seen asking the assailant to stop using racist epithets.
Esmeralda Upton was taken into custody by Plano Police Detectives on Thursday afternoon. She has been charged with assault, causing bodily harm, and making terroristic threats. Her total bond is $10,000.
“While we are grateful that our community members are safe, hearing to their pleas for assistance from the verbal, physical, and racist attack this lady was unleashing in that dark parking lot is frustrating,” said Chanda Parbhoo, executive director of South Asian American Voter Engagement of Texas.
The Madison Museum of Contemporary Art (MMoCA), which is hosting the Wisconsin Triennial this year, has been accused of “institutional racial violence” by black female artists who are participating in the exhibition.
The paintings of around half of the 23 artists that are featured in the exhibition have been withheld in protest. The accusations were made public by “the collective artists of the MMoCA 2022 Wisconsin Triennial” in an open letter. The performance began in April and is scheduled to end in late October.
They charged the museum with “shameful maltreatment of the Black artists, contractors, and personnel during the show” in the letter, which was released on August 19.
In a statement released after the letter was published, the museum refuted the accusations, calling them “inappropriate and false.”
The damage to an installation created by Madison-based artist Lilada Gee is the focus of the claims. The artwork was vandalized in June when it was placed in the museum’s incomplete state using paint and glitter that were readily available in the exhibition gallery. The artwork, according to the museum, was misunderstood by a family with young children as an interactive piece.
Prior to the triennial, the museum’s administration had made several requests to address racial violence and equity-related concerns. Twenty artists, curators, and activists wrote to the museum in the months before the occurrences involving Gee and her artwork to support the hiring of Laster. The charges in that letter, which was delivered to Brungardt and the museum’s board of trustees, concerned Laster’s engagement as curator and “internal dissent.”
A Connecticut boy was out selling discount cards in the annual fundraiser for Enfield’s football team on Saturday when he was racially abused, intimidated and called a racial slur by one of the households, he approached on Haynes Street.
“As he walked onto their property, a woman yelled at him to get off her property, and then I guess the son opened the window, he is 22, and proceeded to tell my son to get off the property or he will shoot him, and then called him the n-word and proceeded to berate him as he walked away,” Jackson said.
Kelley Jackson said her 14-year-old son Jakobi backed away from the property, hands in the air.
“Because he simply wanted to let them know I’m leaving and I’m fine,” Jackson explained.
Jakobi informed his brother and the football coaches, who contacted the police.
Jackson described her son as “humble.” He began playing football when he was six years old.
According to Enfield police, the incident was thoroughly investigated, and one of the residents acknowledged to using a racial slur. Authorities claim Jakobi and the resident had conflicting reports of whether or not a threatening statement was made.
“According to the police, it’s a case of he said, she said.” “According to the homeowner, he did not make these threats,” Jackson explained.
Officials argue that even though the racial epithet is profoundly hurtful, using it alone does not break any criminal statute.
The town manager responded to Saturday’s incident, saying what happened was unacceptable.
“I believe I speak for the majority of the community when I say we were both appalled and upset that incidences like this continue to occur across the country, state, and even in our own town,” Town Manager Ellen Zoppo-Sassu said.
On Tuesday at 5:30 p.m., the town green will hold a community conversation about race, diversity, and equity.
A small Mississippi city and its police department are being sued weeks after the police chief was fired after bragging about shooting and killing people in a racist and homophobic rant.
Five Black Mississippians have filed a federal lawsuit requesting a restraining order against the Lexington Police Department to prevent officers from infringing upon citizens’ constitutional rights, according to a copy of the lawsuit obtained by USA TODAY.
The lawsuit, filed by civil-rights law firm JULIAN, is intended to stop law enforcement in Lexington from “threatening, coercing, harassing, assaulting or interfering” with the city’s largely Black population, the group said.
The suit claims the department has a pattern and practice of using excessive force, making false arrests and retaliating against officers who report misconduct.
The suit names Dobbins and interim Chief Charles Henderson. Henderson and Lexington Mayor Robin McCrory did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Dobbins was unable to be immediately reached.
JULIAN is also calling for a federal investigation into “systemic, condoned racism in both the police department and in Lexington’s municipal government as a whole,” according to a press release.
After Dobbins was fired, Henderson told USA TODAY that his new administration would have zero tolerance for racism.