US President Joe Biden has urged people to speak out against racism and promised to persuade Congress to take more action to make social media corporations liable for inciting hatred.
At the United We Stand Summit of regional leaders, professionals, and survivors on Thursday, Biden declared that “white supremacists will not have the final word.”
When Biden stated that he wants Congress to “hold social media firms accountable for propagating hate,” the audience applauded him for standing up.
The removal of social media corporations’ special immunity and the imposition of considerably stricter transparency standards for all of them, Joe Biden demanded of Congress.
The White House has advocated for the repeal of Section 230, a statute that exempts internet businesses from being held accountable for user-posted information, as well as for stepping up antitrust and transparency enforcement against technology firms.
Large technological corporations also entered the conversation. YouTube said that it was stepping up its efforts to prevent “violent extremism” by eliminating materials that promote violent behavior with the intention of motivating people to hurt others, generate money, or recruit.
Microsoft announced that it was extending the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities to identify violent threats that were likely to materialize and to use games to foster empathy.
The Joe Biden administration also provided $20 million earlier this week to dozens of organizations devoted to preventing hate-related violence. Two historically Black schools and institutions, as well as two organizations that support the LGBTQ community, were among the awardees.
Alejandro Mayorkas, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, said in a statement on Wednesday, “Through the grant awards we are announcing today, we are equipping local communities and organizations — including those historically underserved — with needed resources so they can become more effective partners, strengthen our security, and help the American people feel safe and secure in our daily lives.
The 2020 U.S. Census largely undercounted Black, Latino and Native American communities, raising skepticism about the accuracy of its data. Even if the census had counted more accurately, it faces a more fundamental problem: Its race and ethnicity measurements overlook Afro-Latinos.
The 2020 Census faced many obstacles: the pandemic, natural disasters, labor shortages, President Donald Trump’s racist rhetoric against Black and Latino immigrants, and his attempt to add a citizenship question. Many were thus reassured when the Census Bureau announced its first Latino and non-White director, Robert Santos.
However, even if the census improves enumeration, it still makes some identities invisible. The questions that it asks about race and ethnicity exclude Afro-Latinos — Black people with Latin American ancestry — from representation.
Afro-Latino identity has been complicated by transnational anti-Blackness and the particular history of race in the Latin American diaspora.
For centuries, Latin American political elites emphasized narratives of national sameness, playing down racial differences, even while their Black and Indigenous communities were regularly disenfranchised. American racism is largely based on physical differences, while racism in Latino communities erases and denies different racial groups’ diverse experiences. These inequities persist among U.S. Latinos.
Many Latinos are proud of their complex racial background, seeing themselves as having a beautiful mixture of Spanish, Indigenous and Black African cultures. Thus, Latinos tend to embrace cultural affinities to Africa, even as their physical appearances range the full spectrum of color. Survey research misses this complexity. For instance, it is hardly surprising that in a survey that asked Latino respondents whether they identified as “Afro-Latino,” most identified their race as only White.
Nationally representative samples of Latinos contribute to Afro-Latino erasure by favoring the densely populated Western region over the north and southeast coasts, where Afro-Latino enclaves predominate. This adds greater weight to non-Black Latinos and disregards the hardships specific to Afro-Latinos.
Though surveys treat Black Latinos as Latinos, U.S. society and institutions treat them as Black based on their appearance. Afro-Latinos’ looks can determine whether they are seen as professionals or as dangerous, as citizens to be protected or threats to be detained. As such, Black Latinos experience higher rates of discrimination than non-Black Latinos.
A Reuters investigation on May 6 indicates that a significant number of U.S. police instructors have ties to a constellation of armed right-wing militias and white supremacists hate groups, a report that adds to a fast-growing body of evidence showing a deadly threat inside U.S. police departments.
The analysis found that some of the instructional information presented by police trainers was explicitly racist, and that some instructors endorsed and interacted with white supremacist criminal groups such as the Proud Boys.
The investigation adds to mounting academic research, government audits and news reporting that demonstrates the pervasiveness of white supremacy in U.S. law enforcement, and a continuing series of incidents documenting the presence of extremist groups and views among law enforcement.
More and more, the evidence suggests the “white supremacist infiltration of law enforcement” that the FBI warned about back in 2006 is getting worse. And it points to a desperate need for policies – departmental and legislative – to prohibit people who engage in racist conduct or join white supremacist groups from becoming police officers or remaining on the force.
The analysis by Reuters found at least 15 self-identified law enforcement trainers and dozens of retired instructors listed in a database of members of the Oath Keepers, one of several violent anti-government groups that led the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
A federal judge in Los Angeles found that local sheriff’s deputies were involved in a neo-Nazi, white supremacist gang that targeted Black and Latino people more than 25 years ago, in 1991, Johnson said. Yet Los Angeles is still dealing with racist gangs in its police department even today.
A number of additional high-profile examples of explicit police racism have emerged even in the few months since Johnson’s article was published earlier this year. Government investigations released just last month found widespread racism, bigotry and anti-immigrant sentiment within the Minneapolis Police Department and in police agencies across California, for example.
The FBI said last year that the top domestic violent extremist threat facing the U.S. is from “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists, specifically those who advocate for the superiority of the white race.”
Target is being accused of racism after one of its stores put the darker shades of makeup in a security box, while the lighter shades were left unprotected.
Eli Levi, 21, from New York City, was shopping in the popular department store chain when he noticed that darker shades of makeup and tones of the Versed Luminizing Glow Drops were being kept inside a sealed plastic bin to prevent stealing, while the lighter ones sat on the shelf with no protection.
He took a video of it and uploaded it to TikTok, slamming the store and calling it ‘racism at its finest.’
The video quickly went viral, gaining more than 500,000 views in a matter of days, and it left many people on the internet outraged.
‘Target, please explain to me why the lighter shades are perfectly out while the darker shades are packaged and security sealed, ‘ he said in the clip.
‘That is racism at its finest in the beauty section at Target.’
The product comes in two different shades: sheer golden (which is the one that sat freely on the shelf) and sheer bronzed (which is the one that was locked up), and the latter is a visibly darker shade.
However, on its website, the brand insists that the glow drops are actually designed for all skin tones.
‘Choose between Sheer Bronzed and Sheer Golden (or don’t – both shades work well on almost all skin tones and can be mixed together),’ the brand’s description of the products read.
Many people were horrified with Target’s actions and took to the comment section to share their dismay, tagging the company and asking for a response.
‘@Target do better,’ wrote one disgruntled TikToker.
‘Yup, they’ve been getting away with this for years. #Shopsmall,’ added another.
Racism is killing mothers and babies in Michigan – and initiatives across the state are working to tackle that root cause and save lives.
Michigan’s Black and Indigenous mothers experience nearly three times the risk of infant death compared to white mothers. Michigan’s Black mothers are more than twice as likely as white women to die from pregnancy-related causes. The sheer stress of everyday life within a racist society increases the likelihood of premature birth, the leading cause of infant death. And these disparities persist despite the mother’s socioeconomic status or educational level.
“Obviously, there are usually medical causes at play. But when you dig down and actually listen, there’s systemic racism at the core of these disparities,” says Amy Zaagman, executive director of the Michigan Council for Maternal and Child Health (MCMCH). “The conditions that have been created over generations in communities are contributing to the stress level. The environment and the circumstances in which things compound create scenarios where the response is not what it would be for someone who was white. It’s entrenched and long-standing, but it’s something that we as a society should and could change.”
While social determinants of health like income, education level, and access to healthy food, transportation, and housing affect a woman’s health during pregnancy and infants’ health during that first year, recent studies have concluded that racism is the underlying cause.
“Systemic racism is such a huge and ugly beast that we do not like to address in our health care systems,” says Kyna King, Berrien County Health Department family health programs manager. “Until we address systemic racism with action plans, we’re not addressing this right. How do we provide the undergirding to support families while we’re trying to also dismantle some of these systems?”
Source: Modeldmedia
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Vice President Kamala Harris said the verdicts in murder trial of Ahmaud Arbery “send an important message” but warned there is still “work to do.”
“Today, the jury rendered its verdicts and the three defendants were found guilty of murdering Ahmaud Arbery,” Harris said in a statement Wednesday. “Still, we feel the weight of grief. Ahmaud Arbery should be alive, and nothing can take away the pain that his mother Wanda Cooper-Jones, his father Marcus Arbery, and the entire Arbery family and community feel today. I share in that pain.”
The vice president’s comments come after jurors in Georgia found Travis McMichael and his father Greg McMichael guilty on in the killing of Arbery Wednesday.
Travis McMichael was found guilty of malice murder, four counts of felony murder, two counts of aggravated assault, false imprisonment and criminal attempt to commit a felony.
Greg McMichael was also found guilty on four counts of felony murder, two counts of aggravated assault, false imprisonment and criminal attempt to commit a felony. Jurors found him not guilty on charges of malice murder.
The McMichael’s neighbor, William “Roddie” Bryan, was found guilty of felony murder and aggravated assault.
“These verdicts send an important message, but the fact remains that we still have work to do,” Harris said. “The defense counsel chose to set a tone that cast the attendance of ministers at the trial as intimidation and dehumanized a young Black man with racist tropes. The jury arrived at its verdicts despite these tactics.”
Harris was not the only prominent Democrat to speak out about Wednesday’s verdict, with Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison and DNC Black Caucus Chair Virgie Rollins also releasing a statement celebrating the verdict.
Source: Fox News
Also Read: Georgia man who killed Ahmaud Arbery wrote racist messages, prosecutors say
Dozens of Iowa City community members turned out for a second school board meeting in a row Tuesday to send a message: The district must take action against racism.
Speakers stressed that events earlier this month, when two West High students used blackface and a racist slur on social media, are emblematic of a much larger and long-unaddressed issue in the district. Many of the calls for action and accountability came from community leaders, including members of the city’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the Johnson County Interfaith Coalition and the Black Voices Project.
“I went to the Iowa City Community School District, kindergarten through 12th grade,” commission Chair Mohamed Traore, the first of 20 speakers, said Tuesday evening. “In that time, I experienced what a lot of Black students experience: constant bullying, racism, administrators doing next to nothing about it.”
“You need to act now,” Traore told the school board. “Otherwise, you are going to see minority students leave this district in droves.”
Concerns about the treatment of students of color in the district were at the center of two hours of public comments at the board’s previous meeting, on Nov. 9. Students at West High School and Northwest Junior High School held protests that Monday and Tuesday; about 100 high school students from across the district protested again on Nov. 19.
But the events of early November aren’t singular, and many commenters Tuesday night included current students.
This week, the district alerted families of another racist social media post made by a student.
On Monday, Tate High School Assistant Principal Luke DeVries sent a message to families, staff and students saying school officials learned over the weekend of a “racially charged social media post by a Tate High student which included the use of the N-word.”
Source: Press-Citizen
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A group of universities and colleges from across Canada are signing a charter to fight anti-Black racism in post-secondary institutions.
The 22-page document requires those signing it to respect certain principles as they develop their own action plans to foster Black inclusion.
Referred to as the Scarborough Charter, the document was drafted by an advisory committee that emerged from an event hosted by the University of Toronto last year as anti-Black racism was in the international spotlight.
“There was an opportune moment for us to say, ‘well, there are a lot of statements being issued, but this may be the time for us to come together and do this together,” charter committee chair Wisdom Tettey said in an interview.
The committee asked universities and colleges for their feedback to refine the charter and met with several organizations and groups, including Universities Canada and the parliamentary Black caucus, said Tettey, vice-president of the University of Toronto.
Forty-six universities and colleges, including the country’s largest post-secondary institutions, are signing the charter virtually on Thursday.
They include the University of Toronto, McGill University, York University, the University of British Columbia, the University of Calgary and the University of Waterloo.
Tettey said more universities and colleges are expected to sign the charter in the near future. There are 96 publicly-funded universities and 139 publicly-funded colleges in Canada.
“We expect each partner institution to commit to the principles of black flourishing,” Tettey said.
“The idea of black flourishing is to make sure that our institutions are places where Black people, faculty, staff, students and community members can feel a sense of belonging, can see themselves in our mission and can be supported to flourish.”
At the University of Toronto, part of the school’s plan to remove barriers faced by Black students includes providing better mental-health support for them, Tettey said.
Source: Global News
In Wednesday, on Twitter, in a retweet of a claim of his from Sally Goldenberg, Politico‘s New York City Hall bureau chief, the Brooklyn borough president declared, “Yup. Racism is built into our infrastructure, and we need to confront and combat it. Capping the Cross Bronx Expressway is just the start!”
With his tweet, Adams joined Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, as well as New York Rep. Ritchie Torres, who all noted that racism inspired a lot of the design of America’s highway system.
For example, a freeway cap — also known as a freeway lid — is a type of deck bridge built on top of a controlled-access highway or roadways like the Cross Bronx Expressway. Adams, Schumer and Torres all support the idea of adding a cap to the Cross-Bronx, which would — according to an Adams interview on WNYC’s The Brian Lehrer Show, per The New York Post — “roll back the Robert Moses division of our city and reunite neighborhoods and communities,” the mayor-elect said, “and I love that idea.”
“You cap it. You bring communities together. Greenspace. There’s some great things we can do with that,” Adams said.
Schumer, at a press conference Tuesday in New York, was joined by Torres and a host of local activists and advocates as they celebrated the passage and plans of the newly-passed infrastructure bill, which includes $7.5 billion for programs that can reduce the impact of highways on surrounding neighborhoods, including making a positive impact on environmental injustice.
“We are here to hit the gas on a plan to mitigate the harmful effects of the Cross Bronx Expressway,” Schumer said. “This expressway built by Robert Moses is one of the greatest examples of environmental injustice. When it was planned, they didn’t give a hoot about the community.”
Source: Yahoo!
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NYC NYC
Speaking at a White House news briefing Speaking at a White House news briefing Monday, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg described how the recently passed federal spending bill would allow his agency to address a number of issues and problems marring Monday, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg described how the recently passed federal spending bill would allow his agency to address a number of issues and problems marring the country’s infrastructure. In response to a question, he acknowledged that that potentially meant doing away with the racism that guided past decisions on how roads and bridges were built.
The question was asked because Buttigieg has mentioned those design decisions before.
“I’m still surprised that some people were surprised when I pointed to the fact that if a highway was built for the purpose of dividing a White and a Black neighborhood,” he said, “or if an underpass was constructed such that a bus carrying mostly Black and Puerto Rican kids to a beach — or it would have been — in New York, was designed too low for it to pass by, that that obviously reflects racism that went into those design choices. I don’t think we have anything to lose by confronting that simple reality.”
When the Hill shared a video of Buttigieg making that claim, it quickly (again) became a focus of mockery among right-wing commentators and some Republican politicians. But in short order, Buttigieg’s comments also served as an opportunity not only to elevate the specific story to which he was referring but the utility of educating Americans about a complicated history of systemic racism.
The secretary was referring to a story from Robert Caro’s “The Power Broker,” a book that is generally recognized as one of the premier examples of journalism in modern American history. It centers on Robert Moses, a mid-century New York City official who set out to reshape how the city’s residents moved — mostly successfully. In that book, Caro describes one particular goal of Moses’s: keeping poor Black people from busing to Long Island’s Jones Beach.
Source: The Washington Post
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