Systemic Racism

Introduction

A children's march on June 9 in New York City calls for racial justice in the United States. Street protests sparked by the police killing in May of George Floyd, an African American from Minneapolis, may have been the largest civil rights demonstrations in U.S. history. (AFP/Getty Images/Angela Weiss)

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Overview

It was midafternoon on a Monday when 17-year-old Darnella Frazier walked her 9-year-old cousin to a convenience store in their Minneapolis neighborhood. The scene they encountered would make news around the globe.

Frazier saw Derek Chauvin, a white Minneapolis police officer, with his knee on the neck of George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man who, it was later learned, was suspected of passing a counterfeit bill to buy cigarettes at the store. She pulled out her phone and began recording.

Chauvin did not move as Floyd pleaded for his life, repeatedly coughing out, “I can't breathe.” For more than eight minutes, Floyd's killing was captured by a pair of children.1

“I don't believe she had any idea she was going to witness a murder,” Seth Cobin, Frazier's attorney, said in June. “She thought this was just another act of police brutality, the sort of thing that unfortunately is routine in her neighborhood. It escalated into something much greater than that.”2

In June, a section of 16th Street in downtown Washington, D.C., was renamed the Black Lives Matter Plaza. Protesters marching under the banner of the Black Lives Matter movement focused public attention on systemic racism in American life. (Getty Images/Tasos Katopodis)

The video not only helped ignite what is possibly the largest civil rights protest in U.S. history, it also intensified a national conversation about what many call systemic racism and the collective impact of more than a century of discriminatory practices in the United States. Floyd's death elevated the conversation about race in America in ways that few events have done, raising important questions about equality and opportunity in the United States.

The National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders sent a report to the president and Congress saying that “our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white — separate and unequal.” It warned that the nation could experience “continuing polarization of the American community and, ultimately, the destruction of basic democratic values.” That report was delivered in 1968.3

Activists, politicians, scholars and others say America has not seen enough change since then. The long struggle for equality, many say, is making this year's protests more powerful and more potent as frustration boils over. Millions of people — Black and white — flocked to the streets under the banner of Black Lives Matter, an organization and a movement that has become a rallying point to fight racial injustice.4 (See Short Feature.)

Exact numbers do not exist, but protests took place over the summer in more than 500 U.S. cities, as well as many abroad, and polling shows that between 15 million and 26 million people in the United States attended a protest-related event in June alone. It is far more people than attended both the March on Washington in 1963 and the Women's March in 2017.5

“It's hard to overstate the scale of this movement,” said Deva Woodly, an associate professor of politics at the New School in New York City.6

Even as protests ebbed later in the summer, the conversation about systemic racism, also called structural or institutional racism, continued. While the deaths of Floyd and other Black Americans served as a catalyst, the force driving many Americans to the streets was a sense of a ubiquitous inequality codified in institutions that govern justice, safety, housing, education, health care and economic opportunity.

“That's what structural racism is,” said Melvin Oliver, co-author of Black Wealth/White Wealth: A New Perspective on Racial Inequality. “It's built into a system that continually advantages one group and systematically disadvantages another over time. And as long as you don't do anything about it, it's going to continue to create those outcomes.”7

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A number of Republicans and conservatives deny that systemic racism exists, or minimize its impact. When asked about systemic racism in September, President Trump said, “I don't believe that.” He also has ridiculed the idea that white privilege exists. During an interview with Trump, journalist Bob Woodward argued that systemic racism and white privilege are real problems. Trump responded, “You really drank the Kool-Aid, didn't you? Just listen to you. Wow.”8

Vice President Mike Pence addressed systemic racism in an October debate with Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris. He decried “this presumption that you hear consistently from [Democratic presidential nominee] Joe Biden and Kamala Harris that America is systemically racist.” He said Biden believes “that law enforcement has an implicit bias against minorities” and called that belief “a great insult to the men and women who serve in law enforcement.”9

White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow was even more direct in June: “I don't believe there's systemic racism in the U.S.”10

Van Jones, an activist, author and political commentator, responded quickly on Twitter. “It's unfortunate to hear Larry Kudlow deny systemic racism,” he wrote. “A continent of common ground is materializing around this issue and somehow Kudlow has fallen off the continent.”11

Indeed, Black leaders, academics and others say systemic racism is quantifiable. Studies show that Black Americans trail white Americans by substantial margins in many areas:

• Income. Black households make far less money on average than white households. In 2019, median household income was about $45,000 for Black families and $76,000 for white ones, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.12

• Homeownership. Following decades of discriminatory lending practices, the homeownership rate for African Americans in the second quarter of 2020 was 47 percent, far lower than the 76 percent for whites, according to the Census Bureau.13 Last year, 52 percent of families experiencing homelessness were Black, even though Black Americans make up just 13 percent of the population.14

• Education. The high school graduation rate for Black Americans was 79 percent in the 2017-18 school year, 10 percentage points lower than for whites.15 On the college level, the six-year graduation rate for white students seeking a bachelor's degree was 64 percent, compared with 40 percent for Black students.16

• Safety. The percentage of Black Americans shot and killed by police is disproportionately high. A five-year study by The Washington Post shows that while Black Americans represent about 13 percent of the population, they account for 26 percent of those fatally shot by police — and 36 percent of unarmed people shot and killed by police.17

• Traffic Stops. Thanks in part to racial profiling, Black motorists are significantly more likely to be pulled over than white drivers, according to a Stanford University study of 95 million traffic stops from 2011 to 2018.18

• Incarceration. Black inmates accounted for 33 percent of the adult U.S. prison population in 2018, according to the Pew Research Center, a Washington think tank. White inmates were only 30 percent of the prison population, even though 63 percent of the U.S. population was white.19

• Health Care. In 2018, 11.5 percent of Black Americans had no health insurance, compared with 7.5 percent of whites.20

• Environmental Hazards. Studies show that pollution has a greater impact on minority communities than on the rest of the population. Black Americans were 75 percent more likely than others to live near facilities that produce hazardous waste, according to a report by the NAACP, a civil rights group.21 Accordingly, they breathe in 1.5 times more of certain types of pollution, a study published in the American Journal of Public Health found.22

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“We need to be careful not to fall into a narrow understanding of racism, that it's just when somebody calls somebody else a name,” says Deval Patrick, a Democrat and former governor of Massachusetts. “It's historical evils that we have come to accept as simply the way things are. We live with chronic and extreme wealth disparities. We're living with income inequality…. We're dealing with chronic health disparities.”

“As a group,” Patrick says, “the stress of poverty is different for Black people.”

Perhaps the most obvious area of disparity lies in the criminal justice system, where statistics suggest massive inequality.

“African Americans are more likely than white Americans to be arrested; once arrested, they are more likely to be convicted; and once convicted, … they are more likely to experience lengthy prison sentences,” said a 2018 report to the United Nations by the Sentencing Project, an organization that works for criminal justice reform in the United States.23

Black Americans are also more likely to be falsely accused. Of the 2,000 people convicted of crimes — including murder — whose convictions were later overturned in the past three decades, more than half were Black, according to data from the National Registry of Exonerations, a collaboration of three universities that catalogs every known exoneration in the United States since 1989.24

“The rhetoric of the criminal justice system sends the message that our society carefully protects everyone's constitutional rights, but in practice the rules assure that law enforcement prerogatives will generally prevail over the rights of minorities and the poor,” David Cole, national legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union, wrote in his 1999 book, No Equal Justice. 25

Many experts on race relations say progress hinges on Black and white Americans having more opportunities to talk, interact and understand one another. Patrick cited as an example a national service organization where young Americans can work together and “break down the cartoonish impressions we all have.”

Katharine Gorka, director of the Feulner Institute's Center for Civil Society and the American Dialogue at the conservative Heritage Foundation in Washington, says that the conversation should take place without blame or finger pointing. “I don't think that helps us get closer to healing the wounds we have in this country,” she says.

In the debate over policy prescriptions, police and criminal justice reforms that could prevent cases like Floyd's have been front-and-center in recent months — so much so that the Trump administration issued an executive order on police use of force and the Democratic-controlled House passed a sweeping bill that would ban chokeholds and mandate greater police accountability.26 Beyond criminal justice, many of the proposals focus on trying to increase opportunity for Black Americans.

Service Employees International Union members kneel during a rally in front of the Massachusetts Statehouse in Boston on “a day of reckoning” for Black lives on July 20. Protests took place in more than 500 cities over the summer. (Getty Images/The Boston Globe/Pat Greenhouse)

“Money and education, those economic advantages equal options, they equal choices,” says Jamila Larson, a social worker in Washington, D.C., who has worked with thousands of disadvantaged children. “Institutional racism limits those choices. The prevailing economic system doesn't work for people. It makes them more vulnerable.”

Many proposals being put forward, most often by Democrats, focus on creating jobs, eliminating barriers to homeownership, increasing funding for Black-owned businesses and lowering the cost of education.

“We can end structural issues by dealing with the structure,” Patrick says.

As activists, academics, lawmakers and citizens debate racism in the United States, here are some of the questions they are asking:

Have attitudes toward racism changed fundamentally as a result of this year's protests?

Polls show that attitudes toward race have changed dramatically in the past year as race relations often dominated the national conversation. But the surveys also show that the public — Black and white, Republican and Democrat — are sharply divided in their views of the U.S. racial climate, and many experts question whether changes in attitude will last.

“We've seen a door open to begin discussing racism in general, where people — a lot of them for the first time — have their eyes open to racism,” says Stanley Nelson Jr., a documentarian whose films focus on African American history and experiences. “With systemic racism, you are talking about changing systems, and that takes time. It benefits white people in so many different ways…. The hard part is when they have to give something up. We don't end racism without white people giving up something.”

Gallup polling shows that almost two-thirds of all American adults (65 percent) in June and July said they were dissatisfied with the way that Black Americans were treated. That is a large increase from 54 percent in 2018.27

Yet, the differences between Black and white respondents were stark. Almost eight in 10 Black Americans (79 percent) were dissatisfied with the way Black people are treated in the United States, about the same as 2018 (80 percent). Sixty-six percent said they were “very dissatisfied,” up from 62 percent in 2018.

By contrast, only 59 percent of white respondents were dissatisfied with how Black Americans are treated, although that was up from 48 percent in 2018. Just 39 percent said they were very dissatisfied, up from 24 percent in 2018.28

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“White and Black Americans perceive the world through separate lenses, with Blacks describing a much more challenging set of experiences than what whites perceive,” wrote Frank Newport, a senior scientist at Gallup and the author of Polling Matters: Why Leaders Must Listen to the Wisdom of the People. 29

Indeed, 45 percent of Black respondents in June named race relations as the most important problem facing the United States, according to Gallup. Only 15 percent of white respondents felt the same.30

While attitudes are changing, some polls show that concerns have receded since the days of fresh outrage and heavy protests in May and June. A CNN poll released in September found that 55 percent said that racism is a major problem, down from 67 percent earlier in the summer. While 84 percent said in June that protests were justified, only 72 percent said so in September.31

Many experts question whether white Americans will maintain their focus on systemic racism and correcting inequities, now that protests are waning.

“All of these white people on the front lines of these protests go back to their white neighborhoods and their overwhelmingly white and better schools,” said Hakeem Jefferson, a political scientist at Stanford University. “As much as people really want that progress narrative, I don't think it exists yet.”32

However, Seft Hunter, director of Black-led organizing and power building at Community Change, a nationwide organization that trains community activists, says he sees progress since the protests began.

“More people understand what needs to be done to make our country more equitable,” he says. “There's no way to get systemic change unless we get to a place of shared concerns. We are at that place. We have greater shared concern now than we've ever had.”

Experts say a conservative backlash against the Black Lives Matter movement has also emerged.

The White House has criticized Black Lives Matter and used racial justice protests as a way to attack Democratic-governed cities and liberal groups that the administration says are out of control. Pointing to violence in Portland, Ore., Seattle and elsewhere, President Trump has denounced the protesters as leftist radicals.

“The homes and churches and businesses of Black and Hispanic Americans have been looted; you know that,” Trump said at a White House event in October. “They've been vandalized and burned by left-wing fanatics. Total bad people.”33

The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, a nongovernmental organization that collects data on political protests worldwide, said that about 10,600 protests were held in the United States from May 24 to Aug. 22 and that nearly 95 percent have been peaceful.34 Gorka at the Heritage Foundation says the violence that occurs often gains outsized attention. “Because it is alarming and loud, it started dominating the conversation,” she says.

Events in Kenosha, Wis., for example, gained national attention when a 17-year-old white teenager was charged in connection with the shooting deaths of two racial justice protesters and the wounding of another at a demonstration in August. The violence occurred after police there shot 29-year-old Jacob Blake, an African American, seven times in the back, leaving him partially paralyzed.35

Right-wing groups have been holding counterprotests and gathering in armed groups to protect local businesses — activities that have garnered criticism on the left and accusations that Trump is encouraging white supremacists with his rhetoric. The president repeatedly declined to directly condemn white supremacy, both in a Sept. 29 presidential debate and in interviews, until he eventually did so in an appearance on Fox News days after the debate. He has also ramped up criticism of Black Lives Matter, most recently in a long interview with conservative radio show host Rush Limbaugh and the Oct. 22 presidential debate.36

“The first time I ever heard of Black Lives Matter, I said ‘that's such a terrible term,’ because it's such a racist term,” Trump told Limbaugh. “It's a term that sows division between Blacks and whites and everybody else, and it's a very bad term — for Blacks. But they were very angry. It's a Marxist organization.”37

Alicia Garza, co-founder of Black Lives Matter, has not let the attacks go unanswered. “What we have seen … is what we have been seeing throughout his whole presidency and, frankly, throughout his career,” she said. “He has attacked communities that are already vulnerable for his own political and personal gain.”38

Will street protests translate into policy changes?

Polls show that many Americans are optimistic that the protests can lead to change. In CNN's September poll, six in 10 people said that protests can change the way that Black Americans are treated, a majority that held across many demographic groups. White respondents (62 percent), people of color (61 percent), women (65 percent), men (56 percent), young people (57 percent) and older Americans (64 percent) all agreed with the sentiment.39

As Jones, the activist and author, put it, “Out of a breakdown, you can have a breakthrough.”40

Yet those who watch race relations closely are split on whether massive protests will translate into concrete action. Although many say they are encouraged by the discussion the protests generated, real change in the form of legislation or programs that can make a difference in people's lives remains uncertain.

“It's a question of what kind of country you want to live in and what we do to get to that,” says Nelson, the documentary filmmaker. “We don't have to live in a country where there's a permanent underclass. I'm optimistically pessimistic. I'm optimistic that we are talking. Half a little baby step has been taken.”

Patrick, the former Massachusetts governor, says the size of the protests and the idea that many of those leading the demonstrations are young Americans give him hope that action will follow. He describes the protesters as “overwhelmingly patriotic.”

“These people are not going to give up on America,” he says. “They want America to be true to her ideals.”

Concrete action has been rare this year, however, at least on the federal level. Fueled by the pandemic that has killed more than 200,000 Americans — and which statistics show is harder on African Americans — Democrats in the House and Senate introduced a bill that would treat systemic racism as a public health crisis, appropriating resources to study and recommend policy changes.41

But Congress has yet to approve a bill that would address systemic racism, in whole or in part. In the states, where legislation can often pass much more quickly than in Washington, more than 600 bills were introduced in legislatures nationwide in 2020 to address all aspects of policing, roughly a third of them focusing on use-of-force issues, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. But fewer than a dozen had passed by the beginning of October.42

Some political scientists say the lack of action in the face of massive protests is because Republicans and Democrats view the subject so differently.

“You've got a philosophy going on here about who should be helped and under what circumstances,” Terry Madonna, director of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin and Marshall College, says of Democrats. “Republicans do have more concerns about what they would argue is the downside … that you are favoring one group over another.”

Many activists and academics say the outcome of the November election will do more to steer the course of action than anything else. A re-elected Trump is likely to stay the course, while a Biden administration is likely to push change, especially if Democrats control both chambers of Congress.

“The outcome of the election will be a big decider of what moves forward,” says Kate Coventry, a senior policy analyst at the DC Fiscal Policy Institute, which works to reduce poverty and income inequality in Washington. “We haven't seen any positive movement in the past four years.”

“We need to make more investments in housing, more investments in job training, more investments in early childhood,” she says. “There really isn't a commitment to that right now at the national level.”

Coventry says a lack of action by federal officials affects local activists who are trying to help. “What they don't do, we have to figure out how to do locally,” she says. “We have to try to fill in the gaps when that happens.”

Some activists, even those who address the impact of systemic racism on a daily basis, say they remain optimistic that policy on issues such as housing, income and health care can change, and the country along with it.

Judith Sandalow, executive director of the Children's Law Center in Washington, has spent more than 20 years helping children of low-income families. She says she is hopeful that the protests can result in action on policy.

“I couldn't do the job if I didn't have optimism that we could make change,” she says, adding that “I'm hopeful that we are having these conversations. What I'm hopeful about is that more of us are spending more time looking for these moments and trying to do something about it.”

Should African Americans receive reparations from the federal government for past injustices?

For decades, the idea has circulated that descendants of enslaved people should be compensated by the government with a one-time payment for the abuse, theft and discrimination that took place during and after slavery.

The proposal has never gained much traction in Washington, despite arguments that reparations could help advance a discussion of systemic racism. But California has seen some progress: In October, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill to create a task force to study options for reparations in the state.

“As a nation, we can only truly thrive when every one of us has the opportunity to thrive,” Newsom in a statement. “Our painful history of slavery has evolved into structural racism and bias built into and permeating throughout our democratic and economic institutions.”43

During this year's Democratic presidential primaries, several candidates endorsed the idea that Congress should investigate reparations. One of those was Harris, now Biden's running mate.

“This stuff needs to be studied,” Harris said last year. “Because America needs a history lesson, to be honest about it…. It can't just be, ‘Hey … write some checks.’”44

There is precedent for compensating descendants for past wrongs. Germany paid billions of dollars in reparations over decades to victims of Nazi crimes during World War II. While the comparison may be uncomfortable for many Americans, those who support exploring reparations remind the nation that atrocities — including thousands of lynchings and more than a century of oppression, economic and otherwise — took place on U.S. soil even after slavery was fully abolished in 1865. African Americans also suffered under “Jim Crow” laws in the South that enforced segregation in public spaces.45

“Having been enslaved for 250 years, Black people were not left to their own devices,” wrote the author Ta-Nehisi Coates of the period after the Civil War. “They were terrorized. In the Deep South, a second slavery ruled. In the North, legislatures, mayors, civic associations, banks and citizens all colluded to pin Black people into ghettos, where they were overcrowded, overcharged and undereducated. Businesses discriminated against them, awarding them the worst jobs and the worst wages. Police brutalized them in the streets. And the notion that Black lives, Black bodies and Black wealth were rightful targets remained deeply rooted in the broader society.”46

Still, polls show that reparations are unpopular, even after this year's racial justice protests. A Reuters/Ipsos survey in June showed that only one in five Americans supported the idea. Even Black Americans were lukewarm, with half supporting the idea, while only one in 10 white Americans backed reparations.47

Yet, lawmakers have not dismissed the idea. The late Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., doggedly pushed a bill to study reparations in every legislative session from 1989 until his retirement in 2017. The bill would be a vehicle for Congress to acknowledge the atrocity of American slavery, establish a commission to study reparations and require a report to lawmakers.

Since Conyers retired, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, has taken up the mantle of introducing and shepherding the bill. The legislation has had hearings over the years, most recently in 2019, when the House Judiciary Committee discussed the bill in honor of the Juneteenth holiday, which commemorates the emancipation of Black Americans enslaved in the South.48

Journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates testifies before a U.S. House Judiciary subcommittee in Washington in 2019 on the need for reparations for slavery and racism. “Having been enslaved for 250 years, Black people were not left to their own devices” after the Civil War, he wrote in an influential 2014 magazine article calling for reparations. “They were terrorized.” (Getty Images/Zach Gibson)

Sen. Cory Booker, a New Jersey Democrat who introduced a version of the bill in the Senate, spoke before the House panel. “We have not had a direct conversation about a lot of the root causes of the inequities and the pain and the hurt manifested in economic disparities, manifested in health disparities, manifested in a criminal justice system that is indeed a form of new Jim Crow,” said Booker, who was a presidential candidate at the time. “We as a nation have not yet truly acknowledged and grappled with racism and white supremacy that has tainted this country's founding and continues to persist.”49

Republicans and some liberals, however, largely oppose a reparations bill, with many arguing that costs would be high — some estimates run to trillions of dollars — and that the logistical challenge of compensating the right people could be extremely difficult.

Rep. Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, acknowledged that a reparations bill could be cathartic but also said such conversations could be divisive. “Many people of good conscience believe they'll distract from the many persistent causes of current racial disparities.” he said.50

Whatever the merits, the bill's chances of advancing appear slim this year, in part because Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is unlikely to bring it to the floor.

“I don't think reparations for something that happened 150 years ago for whom none of us currently living are responsible is a good idea,” he said. “We've tried to deal with our original sin of slavery by fighting a civil war, by passing landmark civil rights legislation. We've elected an African American president. I think we're always a work in progress in this country, but no one currently alive was responsible for that.”51

But supporters argue that the time has come for America to address its past and to do so with action that can help Black Americans today.

“It's about more than a check,” said Shaniyat Chowdhury, a Democratic candidate for Congress in New York who made reparations a campaign issue this year. “It's about improving the quality of life for Black Americans. It's about addressing the sins of this nation over 400 years.”52

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Background

Racism's Underpinnings

Racism has deep roots in the nation's history.

The first enslaved Africans landed on North American soil in 1619, one year before the Mayflower made port at Plymouth in what became the Massachusetts Bay Colony. These 20 men and women from what is now Angola were captured and shipped to Virginia, where colonists traded food and supplies to purchase their human cargo. The exchange was not the first on the continent, but historians consider it the birth of slavery in what would become the United States.53

“It is a moment that defined the nation — what became the nation,” said Mary Elliott, curator of American slavery at the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture.54

The trade in human cargo would ultimately bring 389,000 Africans to the United States. That was only a small portion of the more than 12.5 million people who were captured and sold into servitude worldwide.55

But the number of slaves in the United States would explode as generations of people were born into slavery on U.S. soil. In 1790, about 700,000 people — 18 percent of the nation's population — were enslaved in the United States. By 1860, according to the last U.S. census before the Civil War, that number had risen to almost 4 million, meaning almost nine out of every 10 African Americans in the United States were enslaved.56

Slavery was central to the colonial economy, especially in the South, where plantations grew tobacco, cotton, rice and other products. As the conflict with Great Britain over colonial rights grew in the 1760s and the independence movement gained strength in the early 1770s, more colonists began to question the enslavement of Black Americans in a land that proclaimed its dedication to liberty.

When Thomas Jefferson penned a draft of the Declaration of Independence, he inserted a paragraph attacking King George III for his involvement in the global slave trade.57

“He has waged a cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation,” the paragraph read in part.58

Ultimately, the Continental Congress removed the paragraph when it adopted the Declaration. “It is worth considering whether our history would have taken a different course had the men of the Congress been enlightened enough to include it,” David K. Shipler, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, wrote.59

British critics pointed out the hypocrisy of slave-owning delegates — including Jefferson — asserting in the Declaration that “all men are created equal.” Thomas Day, an English author and supporter of abolishing slavery, wrote in a 1776 letter, “If there be an object truly ridiculous in nature, it is an American patriot, signing resolutions of independency with the one hand, and with the other brandishing a whip over his affrighted slaves.”60

A nascent abolition movement arose in the 1780s after the United States had won its independence, and slavery was again debated during the drafting of the U.S. Constitution. The document does not mention slavery expressly, but the fate of the enslaved hung over the new government. One famous — or notorious — provision in the Constitution is the so-called three-fifths compromise, which treated three out of five slaves as people for the purposes of apportioning members to the House of Representatives and the Electoral College.

When the Constitution took effect in 1789, giving birth to what would become the world's greatest democracy, it banned the importation of slaves after 1808 but did nothing else to end slavery.

Slavery's Spread

Northern states began to abolish slavery after the American Revolution, some quickly. Others ended the institution gradually, decreeing that only the children of slaves would be freed once they reached adulthood. Despite the prevalence of abolitionist ideology, major cultural rifts endured. Many whites feared for their safety if slave owners freed large numbers of African Americans.

“As it is, we have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go,” Jefferson wrote in 1820. “Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other.”61

President Abraham Lincoln meets with abolitionist Sojourner Truth at the White House. Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 freeing slaves in the Confederacy. (Getty Images/Photo12/Universal Images Group/Contributor)

Southern states, meanwhile, became increasingly reliant on slave labor to power an economy driven by the exportation of plantation crops such as cotton. Eli Whitney's invention in 1793 of the cotton gin, a device that mechanically separated cotton fibers from seeds, made large-scale cotton production viable, but brought with it the need for large amounts of slave labor. The Southern economy became even more dependent on slavery as a result.

The bitter debate over slavery came to a head in 1860 with the election of Abraham Lincoln, a Republican, who won the presidency after waging an anti-slavery campaign. In response, seven Southern states seceded from the Union, and four more soon joined them. In 1861, the Civil War began when Confederates opened fire on a federal garrison at Fort Sumter in Charleston, S.C.

When it became clear that slaves were an important asset to the Confederacy's economy and its military, the Union began offering refuge to African Americans. In 1863, Lincoln signed an executive order that became known as the Emancipation Proclamation, which on paper freed 3 million slaves living in Confederate states — but not enslaved people in states that remained in the Union. Emancipation, however, depended on the North winning the war.

Victory came in 1865. That year, the 13th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, abolishing slavery throughout the nation. The 14th Amendment, in 1868, guaranteed equal protection under the law and the 15th Amendment, in 1870, assured citizens the right to vote, regardless of race. Southern whites, however, violently resisted Northern attempts to implement racial equality in the era known as Reconstruction. This period began at war's end and ran until 1877, when an elaborate political compromise allowed Republican Rutherford B. Hayes to become president in return for the end of Northern interference in Southern affairs. The Ku Klux Klan, a notorious white supremacy group, was born in Tennessee in 1865 and spread throughout the South.

Jim Crow

As Reconstruction ended, segregation took hold. A series of state laws and local ordinances, known collectively as Jim Crow laws, segregated public spaces, limited job opportunities for African Americans, suppressed their voting, hindered education and denied equal rights.

Violence toward Black Americans — including lynchings and other killings — became common in the South as a form of intimidation. Almost 4,400 Black Americans were lynched between 1877 and 1950, according to a report by the Equal Justice Initiative, an Alabama-based group working to end racial inequality. The great majority of these extrajudicial killings took place in 12 Southern states.62

“Lynching in America was a form of terrorism that has contributed to a legacy of racial inequality that our nation must address more directly and concretely than we have to date,” the report said. “The trauma and anguish that lynching and racial violence created in this country continues to haunt us and to contaminate race relations and our criminal justice system.”63

In Plessy v. Ferguson, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1896 that racial segregation was legal under a doctrine known as “separate but equal.” Discrimination and poverty led Black Southerners to begin moving north in numbers so large that their exodus became known as the Great Migration. Between 1916 and 1970, roughly 6 million African Americans left the South. The Black population swelled in cities such as Chicago, Detroit and New York.

“Merely by leaving, African Americans would get to participate in democracy and, by their presence, force the North to pay attention to the injustices in the South and the increasingly organized fight against those injustices,” Isabel Wilkerson, a historian of the migration, wrote in Smithsonian Magazine. “By leaving, they would change the course of their lives and those of their children.”64

Systemic racism existed in the North as well, however, even in government programs. During the New Deal, a package of programs and reforms in the 1930s designed to end the Great Depression, many of these programs, such as the minimum wage and low-cost government mortgages, often worked against Black Americans.

For example, new minimum wage standards made it harder for employers to hire low-wage workers or those with minimal skills, putting an estimated 500,000 African Americans out of work. At the same time, the law exempted domestic workers and agricultural laborers — two occupations that were predominately African American in the South — from the minimum wage law at a time when the Depression was already harming family incomes. While the New Deal empowered labor unions, many of these unions excluded Black workers or ignored them in organizing drives.65

Perhaps more destructive were federal housing policies, which included loan underwriting standards that promoted segregation. While many white Americans enjoyed access to government mortgages, Black Americans often did not.

In 1935, just a few years after the Federal Housing Authority was established, federal authorities began categorizing residential real estate in cities nationwide according to the level of perceived risk involved for lenders. Color-coded maps were used, with the riskiest neighborhoods in each city marked in red. Because this happened at a time when America was segregated and racial discrimination was common, the “redlined” neighborhoods were disproportionately Black. Redlining, as the practice came to be called, made it extremely difficult for Black Americans to receive mortgage loans and to buy homes.66

“The effects lingered for decades,” wrote journalist Charles Lane, who covers housing issues. “Homeownership was a key path to wealth in postwar America, yet many Blacks were excluded.” In the second quarter of 2020, statistics show that the rate of homeownership for Black Americans still lags that of white Americans, by almost 30 percentage points.67

Civil Rights Activism

While many New Deal policies and other government actions promoted structural racism, change began to take hold in the 1950s and 1960s, starting with education.

In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously in Brown v. Board of Education that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. The ruling shattered the doctrine of “separate but equal” by holding that separate was inherently unequal.68

In a challenge to segregated bus terminals, activists known as Freedom Riders in 1961 rode interstate buses into Southern states and were met with violence. In 1963, a March on Washington demanding racial equality brought roughly 250,000 people to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous “I have a dream” speech.

Civil rights activists known as Freedom Riders, who were working to desegregate Southern buses and bus terminals, sit beside a burned-out Greyhound coach after it was torched and they were attacked by a white mob in 1961. (Getty Images/Bettmann/Contributor)

“It is now 100 years since this nation, lagging behind other civilized countries, abolished slavery,” the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights said in a report to the president and Congress that same year. “Yet today, the descendants of those freed slaves still suffer from customs, traditions and prejudices that should have died with the institution in which they flourished.”69

In 1964, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, which prohibited discrimination based on color, race, gender, religion and — decades later, after several court cases — sexual orientation. The Fair Housing Act, which made discrimination in housing illegal, followed in 1968.

Throughout the 1960s, from Birmingham, Ala., to the Los Angeles neighborhood called Watts, the United States was torn by rioting over racial injustice. Black anger exploded anew in 1968 when King was killed by an assassin's bullet in Memphis, Tenn., marking a turning point in the civil rights movement.

The movement managed to end segregation in public spaces, but its efforts to achieve equality in the economic and judicial realms stalled.

Beginning in the 1970s and accelerating during Republican Ronald Reagan's eight-year presidency in the 1980s, laws intended to reduce crime became popular nationwide. The impact of these laws, which included mandatory minimum sentences, tough drug laws and “three strikes” provisions that required prison time for three felony offenses, fell disproportionately on Black Americans. The laws were advanced in Republican administrations, such as that of George H.W. Bush, who ran a “tough on crime” campaign, but also Democratic ones, including that of Bill Clinton, who signed a federal crime bill in 1994.

The laws gave rise to an era of mass incarceration in which the U.S. prison population, including adults in local, state and federal facilities, went from less than 504,000 in 1980 to more than 1.1 million in 1990 — and higher still in the decades thereafter. Black Americans continue to make up a disproportionately high percentage of those in U.S. prisons.70

In 1991, four Los Angeles Police Department officers chased and stopped a Black driver named Rodney King, pulling him out of his car and beating him in a nighttime incident that was captured on video. The decision by a mostly white jury to acquit the officers a year later ignited riots in Los Angeles, in which more than 50 people were killed and thousands were arrested over several days.71

The King case was one of the first in which police brutality against a Black citizen was captured on video and shown nationwide via television. It would not be the last. Case after case would appear in the next three decades, accelerated by the advent of the internet and the ubiquity of mobile phones.

In 2008, Barack Obama became the first Black American to be elected president, shattering a racial barrier that many in the United States thought they would never see fall in their lifetime. The Democratic incumbent won re-election in 2012.

Obama's administration tackled structural racism on several fronts. In 2010, the departments of Education and Justice investigated whether school districts were disciplining Blacks students more often than white students. In 2014, the president also accused the police of unfairly targeting people of color. And a year later, the administration implemented a housing rule requiring municipalities to track racial segregation in suburban neighborhoods, take corrective measures and report the results to the federal government. The Trump administration dismantled the program this year, pleasing critics who say it was an undue burden on local governments and angering those who saw it as protection against discrimination.72

“This is … an attempt to return us to an era when the federal government actively implemented racist policies based on the false notion that Black families moving to white communities brings down property values,” said Shaun Donovan, Obama's Housing secretary, who created the initiative.73

Congress passed the First Step Act in 2018, ushering in the largest prison and sentencing reforms in decades. The goal was to reduce the federal prison population, which remains disproportionately Black and a major focus of civil rights activists who say the system is biased against African Americans. The bill enjoyed bipartisan support, and President Trump signed and lauded it.

The Department of Justice, however, is working to limit the reduced sentences enabled by the bill. “The irony of this administration working against itself is mind-boggling, especially with lives on the line,” said Brittany Barnett, a defense attorney.74

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Current Situation

Electoral Calculations

The presidential contest has drawn sharp rhetorical lines between Republicans and Democrats on issues of race and equality. But what happens next will boil down to practical matters, namely which party controls the White House and the Senate.

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden speaks by video link at the Houston funeral of George Floyd on June 9. Biden released a plan that month addressing structural racism. (AFP/Getty Images/Godofredo A. Vasquez)

If Trump remains president and Republicans continue to control the Senate, the next four years would look similar to the past two, with the president ruling via executive order and bipartisan legislation in short supply. A victory by Biden and Democratic Senate candidates could augur ambitious reforms.

“This is the most important election of my lifetime,” says documentary filmmaker Nelson, who is 69. “I can't think of a more important election.”

Biden released a 26-page plan addressing structural racism in June. It called for investment in affordable housing, facilitating homeownership and boosting small businesses in minority communities. The plan includes a business opportunity fund to raise venture capital and low-interest business loans for people of color and others; tax credits for first-time homebuyers; student loan relief; and free tuition for households with less than $125,000 in annual income.

The plan promises “an economy more vibrant and more powerful precisely because everybody will be included in the deal. An economy where Black, Latino, Asian American and Pacific Islander, and Native American workers and families are finally welcomed as full participants.”75

The Republican prescription is far different. Trump has stressed that the best way to help African Americans is to create more jobs for everyone. Black unemployment fell in the first three years of Trump's presidency but increased substantially this year because of the pandemic, according to a report by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. The seasonally adjusted yearlong low was 5.8 percent in February. In September, it was 12.1 percent, down from a high of 16.8 percent in May.76

Pointing to the First Step Act, bipartisan legislation that implemented prison and sentencing reforms in 2018, funding for historically Black colleges, and the economy in general, Trump has stressed that his policies have benefited Black Americans.

Howard University graduates celebrate at the 2018 commencement in Washington, D.C. A number of leading Democrats, including presidential nominee Joe Biden, are calling for investment in education to reduce structural racism. (Getty Images/Drew Angerer)

“I think I've done more for the Black community than any other president” with the possible exception of Abraham Lincoln, he said.77

Trump also signed an Executive Order on Safe Policing for Safe Communities outlining reforms to police procedures. The order calls for the Department of Justice to create a national database to track police misconduct; for police departments to pursue credentialing and training on the use of force and how to de-escalate situations in order to receive certain federal grants; and for the federal government to facilitate “co-responder” programs, which would dispatch social workers along with police when warranted.

“All Americans are entitled to live with the confidence that the law enforcement officers and agencies in their communities will live up to our Nation's founding ideals and will protect the rights of all persons,” the order said. “Particularly in African American communities, we must redouble our efforts as a Nation to swiftly address instances of misconduct.”78

The Republican-controlled Senate, however, has declined to take up a House bill containing police reforms, and Democrats blocked an effort by Republican senators to pass their own bill, saying the measure was inadequate.

Despite bipartisan action on a spate of bills to deliver more than $3 trillion in pandemic relief this year, Republicans and Democrats are unlikely to come together on police reforms — or anything else — for the rest of the year, according to political analysts. Congressional attention is focused on additional stimulus bills to help industries hit hard by the pandemic and the battle over Trump's Supreme Court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, who was confirmed by the Senate on Oct. 26.

Lawmakers will also likely restart budget negotiations after the election in order to avoid a government shutdown in the final weeks of the year. Under the latest continuing resolution approved by Congress and signed by Trump, the federal government can operate at current spending levels through Dec. 11. Additional funding will require further action.79

Any legislation aimed at police and criminal justice reform, or other issues related to systemic racism, will almost certainly have to wait until 2021.

Federal Legislation

Although legislation to address equality issues is unlikely to be taken up this year, plenty of bills and plans have been introduced in recent months that could be acted upon should the political will arise in 2021.

One is the Justice in Policing Act, a bill authored by Democratic lawmakers and passed in June in the House on a party-line vote carried by Democrats, who control the chamber. The bill contained an array of reforms to address police abuses, including ending the legal doctrine of qualified immunity, which protects police officers from civil lawsuits; stopping the use of police chokeholds on suspects; banning no-knock search warrants that allow police to break down doors and perform searches in drug cases; prohibiting racial profiling; ending the transfer of military-grade equipment to local law enforcement agencies; mandating additional training and the use of police body cameras; and codifying that the use of deadly force should be a last resort.

A statement by the Congressional Black Caucus and other House supporters of the package said it was the first comprehensive effort to “change the culture of law enforcement, empower our communities, and build trust between law enforcement and our communities by addressing systemic racism and bias.”80

The legislation stalled after House passage because the Republican-controlled Senate has refused to take up the bill and Trump opposes it. Instead, the president issued his Executive Order on Safe Policing for Safe Communities. But the order's potential impact is unclear because it does not carry the force of law and appropriates no federal funds to institute change. Some critics have called it a symbolic effort that falls far short of what Congress could do if Republicans and Democrats came together.

“We haven't seen action yet that goes to reimagining the system,” former Massachusetts Gov. Patrick says. “But there are lots of proposals.”

The Anti-Racism in Public Health Act is a good example. The bill, sponsored by Democrats in the House and Senate, would create a National Center for Anti-Racism and a Law Enforcement Violence Prevention Program under the umbrella of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“For far too long, our federal government has failed to recognize and address the structural racism that has devastated Black and brown communities,” Rep. Ayanna Pressley, a Massachusetts Democrat, said in a statement. “It is time we recognize and treat structural racism and police brutality as the public health crises that they are.”81

The bill has support from high-level Democrats, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., but its future is uncertain.

Politicians are not the only ones addressing systemic racism. The American College of Physicians (ACP), an advocacy group for internists, released a policy brief that declares its members stand against racism and for what it called common-sense reform. The organization supports creating a comprehensive national database of deaths caused by law enforcement, incidents of excessive force and discriminatory practices.

“We are an organization representing physicians on the front lines treating patients impacted by racism, discrimination and violence,” Dr. Jacqueline W. Fincher, the organization's president, said in a statement. “ACP offers these policy recommendations to address the sources of these social determinants of health and protect the health of the public.”82

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Outlook

Bending the Arc

Can America end — or at least minimize — structural racism? The question generates passionate debate.

“It's a 401-year-old problem that we have as a country,” says Hunter, the activist with Community Change. “Think about how protracted structural racism is. You could say all is lost. The alternative view is that we have not made progress at the pace we want, but we have made some progress.”

Hunter remains optimistic. “We have to take a full, complete, all-of-government approach to bend the arc toward justice,” he says.

Nelson, who has made documentary films on lynching victim Emmett Till, jazz musician Miles Davis, the Freedom Riders, the militantly anti-police Black Panthers group and many others (winning three Emmy Awards in the process), is also optimistic.

“You can change people's minds,” he says. “You just have to have the will and to know what you want the country to be.”

Nelson points to the LGBTQ community as an example. “It's not impossible,” he says. “Look at how the country looks at gay people. It's still not perfect, but it's a long way from what it was 10 years ago.”

Patrick, the former Massachusetts governor who flirted with a presidential run this year, is equally certain. “We can invest time, ideas and money in public schools,” he says. “We can be intentional about how we invest in housing and business, so that Black people have the opportunity to create wealth. If we fix the system in a serious way, it benefits everybody.”

Gorka, of the conservative Heritage Foundation, says the United States can make progress with honest dialog that is not combative or restricted, but instead focuses on sharing experiences. “There's an incredible opportunity for us as a nation to have a serious, heartfelt conversation about racism,” she says. “I think we get sidetracked.”

Many who work to end structural racism say the 2020 election puts the country at a crossroads because Republicans and Democrats have very different visions of how to address systemic racism in the United States.

“We are seeing a new racial and cultural divide between the parties, not within them,” wrote Lilliana Mason, an associate professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland. “The racial divide in U.S. politics is organized around party lines.”83

Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, says that those who oppose reforms do so out of fear and self-interest. “It's as old as human beings,” he says. “Fear of losing your position and your privilege. It's as simple as that.”

He says the United States will act when younger generations take over. “You do have generational replacement,” he says. “Change will come generationally.”

Others say it can and should be intentional. “We can take the tragedy of George Floyd's death … and turn it into something positive for this country,” Nelson says. “The awareness of systemic racism is important.”

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Pro/Con

Are street protests the best way to bring about racial equality?

Pro Seft Hunter Director, Black-Led Organizing and Power Building, Community Change. Written for CQ Researcher, October 2020 Since the highly public murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May, the nation has been rocked by protests calling for systemic reform in policing and expansion of economic opportunity for the poor and people of color. While these protests have been highly effective at galvanizing broad and sustained attention around the world, the protests are in fact not the goal, but rather a means to build power among the marginalized. In a direct democracy, protests offer a reliable check on power. They provide an immediate way for citizens to voice their support for, or opposition to, policies or ideas that elected or appointed leaders are seeking to advance. Protests provide a direct way for citizens to recenter power and reassert the notion that consent is a necessary element of democratic governance. In other words, officials should work for the people, and protests can help hold them accountable. And it works: consider this list of actions taken and demands met following weeks of racial justice protests in June. Further, protests are the best indicator that other pathways to petitioning the government have failed. Community organizers and public advocates are seeking approval for policies that extend opportunities to the people in places where residents feel the government has been unresponsive. We take to the streets when phone calls and constituency meetings are not yielding results. In doing so, we are forcing a conversation on our issues while providing a visual display of the level of support our ideas enjoy. Finally, protest helps set the public agenda and create a new reality around what is possible. At the height of the Black Lives Matter protest this summer, a Pew poll found support for the movement topping out at 67 percent, with 69 percent of respondents reporting that in the past month they had had a conversation with a friend or family member on racial injustice. These findings reflect a seismic shift from where public support was for the movement just a few years ago. We have seen similar shifts in support for increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour, expanding and retaining the Affordable Care Act and other issues. Support for these initiatives did not happen by accident but were rather a result of diverse people taking to the street to demand what they need for their families to thrive.

Con Katharine C. Gorka Director for Civil Society and the American Dialogue, Heritage Foundation. Written for CQ Researcher, October 2020 Protests can be one of the most effective ways to produce change. America's Founders understood that. Indeed, the United States is a country today and not a British colony because our Founders protested the tyranny of George III. So committed were they to the importance of protest that they then enshrined the right to protest in the Constitution. The civil rights movement also effectively used peaceful protest in the 1960s to challenge Jim Crow laws and deeply entrenched racism. Sweeping changes resulted, both in the laws but perhaps more importantly in people's hearts. Similarly, this year's protests communicated wide-scale condemnation of the injustice of George Floyd's death. The protests also effectively launched a national conversation about the racism that remains. But whether those protests will bring about racial equality depends on three factors: First, protests can be effective when they remain peaceful. Martin Luther King Jr.'s message of nonviolence and the accompanying peaceful protests elevated the civil rights agenda in the public consciousness. But when protesters used violence, it weakened their cause. Moreover, the destruction harmed the Black populations the protests were ostensibly trying to help. As economists Robert Margo and William Collins found, “The riots were unambiguously negative. They reduced incomes of African American's employment, and they reduced housing values.” In 2020, the wide-scale violence is drowning out the conversation about racism and other social ills and hurting Black business and property owners and wage earners. Second, protests are effective when the conversation is truthful and well reasoned. The Founders meticulously documented the “long train of Abuses and Usurpations” that justified independence from Britain. Today's protesters have weakened their cause by straying from the facts (claiming all white people are racist, all police abuse their power), and calling for unrealistic changes, such as abolishing the police. Third, whether the street protests will bring about racial equality will depend on what the protesters are ultimately advocating. Some call for the overthrow of the American system and the introduction of Marxist socialism. That will certainly fail because socialism never brings about equality, except perhaps equality of poverty. Socialism has always resulted in tyranny, corruption and stagnation. The U.S. constitutional order, on the other hand, has provided more people with opportunity, prosperity and the freedom to pursue their dreams than any other country in history. Can we do better? Without a doubt. But history tells us that the best chance we have for success is to build on the foundation we currently have.

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Short Features

At Black Lives Matter, Marchers Lead the Way

After George Floyd died at the hands of Minneapolis police in May, millions of Americans took to the streets in protest. But there was one thing absent as waves of marches for racial justice engulfed U.S. cities: a single, vocal leader speaking at protests, writing opinion pieces and appearing nightly on cable news shows.

Black Lives Matter (BLM) is operating in a strikingly different way from activist groups of the past, according to experts. The organization describes itself as a “collective” and a “member-led global network,” and its lack of a visible, central leader is intentional. BLM invites people to sign up and join in order to receive communiques and updates but has not said how many are involved.

“It's much more decentralized, and that was by design,” says Seft Hunter, director of Black-led organizing and power building at Community Change, a nationwide organization that trains community activists. “It was a conscious decision to leave it loosely structured. The leaders recognize that we are in a different time.”

People supporting Black Livers Matter are free to organize their own events, without permission from the organization, Hunter notes. “There's tremendous power in that,” he says.

Others say that a decentralized organization is less vulnerable to disruption than a centralized one. In a traditional structure, leaders can be discredited, indicted — even assassinated, as happened to civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968. A decentralized movement is less vulnerable to such problems.

“It's the movement that's important,” says Stanley Nelson Jr., a documentarian whose films focus on African American history and experiences. “It's hard for a movement like this to falter if its leaders falter.”

Yet Black Lives Matter does have leaders. A trio of human rights activists, Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi, founded it in 2013 after a neighborhood watch coordinator was acquitted of second-degree murder in the killing of Treyvon Martin, a Florida teenager. Garza coined the term Black Lives Matter. Cullors added the hashtag.1

BLM's mission at its founding was to counter violence and injustice against Black people, inviting participation by women and members of the LGBTQ community and anyone else who supports the cause. Later, the Black Lives Matter Foundation Inc. was formed, and Cullors now serves as executive director and board president. The organization, which has 40 chapters in the United States and abroad, raises money and sells merchandise.

Superstar LeBron James of the Los Angeles Lakers shows solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement at an NBA game in Lake Buena Vista, Fla., in August. The BLM organization has garnered an influential following in the sports world. (Getty Images Sport/Kim Klement)

Garza, Cullors and Tometi were named to Time magazine's list of the 100 most influential people in 2020. But they do not play the same role that King did in the 1960s civil rights movement. While they sometimes join protests, appear on television and write articles, the BLM leaders are not publicly steering the movement as other leaders have throughout history.2

BLM “is adaptive and decentralized, with a set of guiding principles,” the Black Lives Matter website says. “Our goal is to support the development of new Black leaders, as well as create a network where Black people feel empowered to determine our destinies in our communities.”3

The movement has made several demands, the most controversial a call to “defund the police” in which local governments would cut law enforcement budgets and invest more “in our communities and the resources to ensure Black people not only survive, but thrive.”4 It supports the Breathe Act, a proposal to transfer federal police funding to other public safety measures.

This position has triggered fierce criticism from President Trump, police groups and conservative politicians and commentators. The BLM movement “wants to see the radical dismantling of our criminal justice system with no clear plans for how it would be rebuilt,” Christine Rosen, a writer at the conservative magazine Commentary, wrote in September. Trump has also criticized the demand and called the Black Lives Matter slogan itself racist and divisive.5

Presidential adviser and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner said on Oct. 26 that BLM and its supporters are shallow. At racial justice protests, “you saw a lot of people who were just virtue signaling,” he said. “They go on Instagram and cry or they would put a slogan on their jersey or write something on a basketball court and quite frankly that was doing more to polarize the country than it was to bring people forward.”6

BLM has defended its tactics, while Hunter of Community Change calls BLM “a continuation of the civil rights movement. The individuals taking to the streets are immensely clear about what they are putting forth. These are not new demands. This is, in essence, unfinished work.”

Black Lives Matter has picked up high-profile supporters who amplify the group's message, including NBA superstar Lebron James of the Los Angeles Lakers and athletes in sports ranging from football and basketball to surfing and NASCAR.

The sheer numbers behind the protests speak to the changing nature of today's protesters. Ximena Hartsock, an expert on advocacy and a co-founder of the advocacy software company Phone2Action, has found stark differences between modern protesters and those from decades past.

“In the 1960s, protests were easier to explain,” she wrote. “Civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. mobilized activists behind basic values and tangible objectives. No one wondered what anti-Vietnam War activists wanted and why.”7

She called today's activists “New Citizens” who are “leaderless and self-directed. They are upset and angry. They are not attached to a political party, organized movement or advocacy organization. They feel that the political establishment doesn't represent their interests or actively undermines them.”

Hartsock noted that today's protesters are using Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, WhatsApp, Telegram and other technologies to organize. There is even an app that monitors 911 calls, which protesters use to track police movements. The digital nature of this activism has consequences. “They don't give governments an obvious way to respond,” she wrote.

“Their action is connective rather than collective,” Hartsock said.8

— Glen Justice

[1] Patrisse Cullors, “6 Years Later and Black Activists Are Still Fighting,” Black Lives Matter, https://tinyurl.com/yyl2so2b.

[2] Sybrina Fulton, “Black Lives Matter Founders Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi,” Time, Sept. 22, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/yy2tx8wx.

[3] “Herstory,” Black Lives Matter, https://tinyurl.com/t7r4x8b.

[4] “#DefundThePolice,” Black Lives Matter, May 30, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/yah79b73.

[5] Christine Rosen, “Deon Kay and Black Lives Matter's Credibility Problem,” Commentary, Sept. 8, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/yxfhferg; “Trump Interview With Rush Limbaugh Slams Black Lives Matter,” DNN, YouTube, Oct. 9, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/y5bksgpv.

[6] Jennifer Jacobs and Misyrlena Egkolfopoulou, “Jared Kushner Says African-Americans Must ‘Want to Be Successful,’” Bloomberg, Oct. 26, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/y5rgbgr2.

[7] Ximena Hartsock, “A New Citizen Is Emerging. Will it Strengthen or Kill Democracy?” Medium, March 2020, https://tinyurl.com/y4b79aq5.

[8] Ibid.

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Political Parties Are ‘Like Two Islands’ on Racial Issues

The numbers are stark.

While 84 percent of Democrats say racism is a big problem, only 22 percent of Republicans hold that view, according to a CNN poll in September. Moreover, the Republican number has declined significantly from the summer, when 43 percent said racism was a big problem.9

Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, says the two parties have rarely been as far apart as they are now. “It's like two islands suffering from continental drift,” he says. “Soon, they won't even be able to see each other.”

After the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May and the massive protests that followed, 67 percent of American adults felt racism was a big problem in the United States, according to the CNN poll. That number fell to 55 percent in September, a decline that was seen across party affiliation.

Yet while the number of Democrats and independents who felt that way each fell by 6 percentage points from the time when the protests were at their height, the drop among Republicans was 21 points.10 Rhetoric in the presidential race, where the two nominees have taken starkly different approaches to race, is likely a factor.

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has been sympathetic to protesters and has acknowledged systemic racism, releasing a plan in June to address inequality in housing and economic opportunity if he is elected president.

“We can't leave this moment thinking we can once again turn away and do nothing — we can't,” Biden said days after Floyd's death. “The moment has come for our nation to deal with systemic racism. To deal with the growing economic inequality in our nation. And to deal with the denial of the promise of this nation…. It will take more than talk. We've had talk before. We've had protests before. Let us vow to make this, at last, an era of action to reverse systemic racism with long overdue and concrete changes.”11

Biden took a knee, in a symbolic gesture of support for the protesters. He also gave a virtual speech at Floyd's funeral.

President Trump, by contrast, denies that systemic racism plagues the nation. He refused to condemn white supremacy in the Sept. 29 presidential debate and in interviews afterward, although he did so days later. He has characterized the protests as lawless, advocated federal intervention when they have turned violent and spoken repeatedly about a need for “law and order.”

After clashes with law enforcement, two racial justice demonstrators raise their fists as a fire burns in Seattle in early June. Republicans and Democrats are far apart in their views of racism and the protests. (Getty Images/David Ryder)

While the Trump campaign highlighted minority supporters at the Republican National Convention and at campaign events late in the race, polls continue to show that Biden holds a substantial lead among Black and Hispanic voters. In a Pew Research Center survey of registered voters in early October, 89 percent of Black voters supported Biden, compared with 8 percent for Trump. Among Hispanic voters, Biden's support was 63 percent, compared with Trump's 29 percent.12

Yet Trump's approach seems to resonate with Republicans. While 79 percent of Republicans said the protests were justified in June, just 60 percent said so in September, the CNN poll found. And 72 percent said in September that the president's approach to the protests was helpful, up from 62 percent in June.13

“The amount of polarization and partisanship is incredibly strong,” says Terry Madonna, director of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa.

Whatever the impact on this year's elections, political scientists say, Republican attitudes on race could do long-term harm to the party, primarily due to changing demographics. By 2045, white Americans will make up less than half of the U.S. population, the Census Bureau projects.14

A July report by the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, showed that in the past decade the country's white population declined for the first time in history. In addition, 2019 was the first year in which more than half of Americans under 16 identified themselves as a racial or ethnic minority.

“Racial and ethnic diversity will be an essential ingredient of America's future,” wrote William Frey, a senior fellow with Brookings' Metropolitan Policy Program. “The mostly white Baby Boomer culture that defined the last half of the 20th century is giving way to a more multihued, multicultural nation.”15

Seen through that lens, political scientists say, Trump's strategy could hurt his party's long-term prospects.

“The question is not how quickly can they repair it,” Sabato says of Republicans, “but whether they can repair it at all.”

— Glen Justice

[9] Jennifer Agiesta, “CNN Poll: Views on racism, protests grow more partisan this summer,” CNN, Sept. 4, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/y3mprndv.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Fabiola Cineas, “How Biden has — and hasn't — harnessed the national reckoning on race,” Vox, Aug. 19, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/yy68ujfp.

[12] “The Trump-Biden presidential contest,” Pew Research Center, Oct. 5, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/y3jhmzoy.

[13] Agiesta, op. cit.

[14] William Frey, “The US will become ‘minority white’ in 2045, Census projects,” Brookings Institution, March 14, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y79ya3qr.

[15] William Frey, “The nation is diversifying even faster than predicted, according to new census data,” Brookings Institution, July 1, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/y9fget85.

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Bibliography

Books

Khan-Cullors, Patrisse , When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir , St. Martin's Griffin, 2017. A co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement discusses her life, her beliefs on race and the founding of the organization in a New York Times bestselling book.

Oliver, Melvin, and Thomas M. Shapiro , Black Wealth/White Wealth: A New Perspective on Racial Inequality , Routledge, Taylor & Francis, 2006. Two professors in social sciences and public policy look at racial disparities through the prism of wealth, including income, debt and total assets, and show how public policy has failed to close the wealth gap.

Shipler, David K. , A Country of Strangers: Blacks and Whites in America , Vintage Books, 1998. A Pulitzer Prize-winning writer explores the relationship between Black and white America to better understand stereotypes and prejudices.

Articles

Bellware, Kim , “Calls to declare racism a public health crisis grow louder amid pandemic, police brutality,” The Washington Post, Sept. 15, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/y6ahkgt6. Many experts in public service say systemic racism should be declared a public health crisis.

Buchanan, Larry, Quoctrung Bui and Jugal K. Patel , “Black Lives Matter May Be the Largest Movement in U.S. History,” The New York Times, July 3, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/y8qt9ftc. Four polls show that the protests over racial injustice drew between 15 million and 26 million Americans in May and June.

Coates, Ta-Nehisi , “The Case for Reparations,” The Atlantic, June 2014, https://tinyurl.com/y6j2pskl. An influential article brings reparations into the national spotlight, arguing that descendants of enslaved Black Americans deserve financial compensation from the United States.

Fox, Joe , et al., “What we've learned about police shootings 5 years after Ferguson,” The Washington Post, Aug. 9, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y4skqjat. A five-year investigation shows that Black Americans are more likely to be shot and killed by police than white Americans.

Newport, Frank , “American Attitudes and Race,” Gallup, June 17, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/y5k6nkcz. A Gallup polling scientist says American attitudes toward race relations have changed little over the decades.

Wilkerson, Isabel , “The Long-Lasting Legacy of the Great Migration,” Smithsonian Magazine, September 2016, https://tinyurl.com/y6c5udmy. The decades-long migration of more than 6 million Black Southerners remade the Northern cities they settled in, according to a historian of the exodus.

Studies and Reports

“COVID-19 Hospitalization and Death by Race/Ethnicity,” U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Aug. 18, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/yx9esqs7. A report by the nation's top public health agency shows that Black Americans were more likely to contract COVID-19 than white Americans.

“Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror,” Equal Justice Initiative, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/yb24vmgy. A civil rights organization documents more than 4,000 lynching deaths in the United States between 1877 and 1950.

“Report to the United Nations on Racial Disparities in the U.S. Criminal Justice System,” The Sentencing Project, April 19, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/wzm7tt5. A report by a research and advocacy organization shows that Black Americans are more likely to be incarcerated than white Americans.

Artiga, Samantha, Kendal Orgera and Anthony Damico , “Changes in Health Coverage by Race and Ethnicity since the ACA, 2010-2018,” Kaiser Family Foundation, March 5, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/y2lnboh6. A study finds that Black Americans are less likely to have health insurance than white Americans.

Fleischman, Lesley, and Marcus Franklin , “Fumes Across the Fence Line,” NAACP, November 2017, https://tinyurl.com/y7wlp5v7. A civil rights organization concludes that Black Americans are more likely to breathe in air pollution than white Americans because they are more likely to live near industrial facilities.

Nichols, Andrew Howard, and Marshall Anthony Jr. , “Graduation Rates Don't Tell the Full Story: Racial Gaps in College Success Are Larger Than We Think,” The Education Trust, May 5, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/y32pmoyr. A report on racial disparities in U.S. higher education says that Black students graduate at a lower rate than white students.

Semega, Jessica , et al., “Income and Poverty in the United States: 2019,” U.S. Census Bureau, September 2020, https://tinyurl.com/y64s8jdq. A statistical report on income and poverty in the United States shows that white households have far higher incomes than Black households.

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The Next Step

Criminal Justice

Forliti, Amy , “Judge dismisses 1 charge against former cop in Floyd's death,” The Associated Press, Oct. 22, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/y5d7rwd7. A Minnesota judge dismissed a third-degree murder charge against the officer who pressed his knee against George Floyd's neck, but found probable cause for second-degree unintentional murder and manslaughter charges.

Laurer, Claudia , “Black officers break from unions over Trump endorsements,” The Associated Press, Oct. 18, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/yxemfqqy. After several police unions nationwide endorsed President Trump's re-election, some Black officers criticized these actions, saying their concerns were overlooked.

Tully, Tracy , “Should N.J. Legalize Marijuana? The Voters Will Decide,” The New York Times, Oct. 6, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/y5uho7lw. Race and policing are at the center of the discussion about a New Jersey ballot measure that would legalize marijuana, because Black residents in the state are three times as likely as white residents to be charged with marijuana possession.

Economic Disparities

Folley, Aris , “New research details effect of ‘Black tax’ on African American homeownership,” The Hill, Oct. 22, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/y4gvaer2. Black homeowners pay more annually than white homeowners in mortgage interest, mortgage insurance premiums and property taxes, according to a Massachusetts Institute of Technology study.

Menton, Jessica , “Unemployment benefits: Racial disparity in jobless aid grows as Congress stalls on COVID-19 stimulus,” USA Today, Oct. 22, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/y3wd4g7t. The disparity in job losses between Black and white workers has grown during the pandemic and as unemployed African Americans continue to receive less unemployment aid, on average, than Americans of other races.

Smith, Kate , “1 in 6 women of color are facing food insecurity because of the pandemic, study finds,” CBS News, Oct. 22, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/y6am98yg. A greater share of Black and Hispanic women report losing income, falling behind on rent payments and not having enough food during the COVID-19 pandemic than white women.

Policy

Aklilu, Simret , “Compton pilot program will guarantee free, recurring cash payments to hundreds of its low-income residents,” CNN, Oct. 21, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/y35nprh4. Compton, Calif., is launching a guaranteed income program for 800 residents, with the aim of challenging “racial and economic injustice” in a city where more than 20 percent of residents live below the poverty line.

Lopez, German , “How 2020 voters could change the criminal justice system, in 6 ballot measures,” Vox, Oct. 22, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/y6gxpjkz. Ballot measures in several states, including ones that would end cash bail and harsh sentencing add-ons, could significantly change criminal justice policies that, according to activists, disproportionately affect people of color.

Lynn, Samara, and Catherine Thorbecke , “What America owes: How reparations would look and who would pay,” ABC News, Sept. 27, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/y5gbcxsx. Advocates for reparations argue that centuries of economic disadvantages for Black Americans justify compensation, but just how much is difficult to calculate.

Protests

Atkins, Chloe , “Louisville therapists are embedding with protesters to help them deal with trauma,” NBC News, Oct. 19, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/y3roowwq. A network of volunteer therapists is offering free or discounted sessions to protesters in Louisville, Ky., in the wake of the police shooting of Breonna Taylor and a subsequent shooting at a protest.

Hadero, Haleluya , “Black immigrants find camaraderie, divide amid protests,” The Associated Press, Oct. 17, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/y2bj99tp. While some older Black immigrants are hesitant to protest racial injustice, their children are often finding solidarity with other Black Americans on the issue of police brutality.

Speri, Alice , “How the Protests Upended Portland's Mayoral Race,” The Intercept, Sept. 25, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/y59ws6ea. After more than 100 days of protests over police violence in Portland, Ore., a liberal challenger's bid to unseat Democratic Mayor Ted Wheeler has grown stronger.

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Contacts

American Civil Liberties Union
125 Broad St., 18th Floor, New York, NY 10004
212-549-2500
aclu.org
Civil rights group that aims to protect constitutional rights.

Black Futures Lab
blackfutureslab.org
Organization that engages Black voters to advocate on social justice issues.

Black Lives Matter
blacklivesmatter.com
Activist organization formed in 2013 to counter violence and injustice against Black people.

Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America
96 Waterman St., Providence, RI 02912
401-863-5775
brown.edu/academics/race-ethnicity/home
A Brown University organization that conducts research on race and ethnicity.

Center on Race, Inequality and the Law
40 Washington Square South, New York, NY 10012
212-998-6100
law.nyu.edu/centers/race-inequality-law
An organization at the New York University School of Law that challenges laws, policies and practices that it believes lead to oppression.

Community Change
1536 U St., N.W., Washington, DC 20009
202-997-3208
communitychange.org
National organization that trains community activists to fight racial and economic injustice.

NAACP
4805 Mount Hope Drive, Baltimore, MD 21215
410-580-5777
naacp.org
Century-old civil rights organization working to eliminate race-based discrimination.

Pew Research Center
1615 L St., N.W., Suite 800, Washington, DC 20036
202-419-4300
pewresearch.org
Nonpartisan research organization that studies racial issues, public attitudes and trends worldwide.

Urban League
80 Pine St., 9th Floor, New York, NY 10005
212-558-5300
nul.org
A 110-year-old civil rights and urban advocacy organization.

U.S. Census Bureau
4600 Silver Hill Road, Suitland-Silver Hill, MD 20746
301-763-4636
census.gov
Government agency that collects data on the U.S. population and the economy.

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Footnotes

[1] “POCI Caucus Statement on the Death of George Floyd,” Minnesota House of Representatives, May 26, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/y3mu7xse.

[2] “Darnella Frazier's attorney discusses teen and the impact of her recording of George Floyd's death,” CBS This Morning, June 15, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/y5zddupw.

[3] Frank Newport, “American Attitudes and Race,” Gallup, June 17, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/y5k6nkcz.

[4] Black Lives Matter, https://tinyurl.com/y2adl32m.

[5] Larry Buchanan, Quoctrung Bui and Jugal K. Patel, “Black Lives Matter May Be the Largest Movement in U.S. History,” The New York Times, July 3, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/y8qt9ftc.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Toluse Olorunnipa and Griff Witte, “Born with two strikes,” The Washington Post, Oct. 8, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/y496ntr6.

[8] “‘I don't believe that:’ Trump denies systemic racism in US,” CNN, Sept. 1, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/yxuw5lpn; Eugene Scott, “‘I don't feel that at all’: Trump scoffs at White privilege in Woodward book,” The Washington Post, https://tinyurl.com/y5rn43mk.

[9] Susan Page, “Read the full transcript of vice presidential debate between Mike Pence and Kamala Harris,” USA Today, Oct. 8, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/y2knwpoa.

[10] Orion Rummler, “Larry Kudlow: “I don't believe there's systemic racism in the U.S.,” Axios, June 10, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/y247233j.

[11] Van Jones, Twitter post, June 10, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/y5y4evf2.

[12] Jessica Semega et al., “Income and Poverty in the United States: 2019,” U.S. Census Bureau, September 2020, p. 5, https://tinyurl.com/y64s8jdq.

[13] “Quarterly Residential Vacancies and Homeownership, Second Quarter 2020,” table 7, U.S. Census Bureau, July 28, 2020, p. 9, https://tinyurl.com/y3trhrnr.

[14] “The 2019 Annual Homeless Assessment Report (AHAR) to Congress,” U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, January 2020, https://tinyurl.com/y2tvjrvt.

[15] “Public High School Graduation Rates,” National Center for Education Statistics, May 2020, https://tinyurl.com/j6ubcbu.

[16] “Indicator 23: Postsecondary Graduation Rates,” National Center for Education Statistics, February 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y8jsepzd.

[17] Joe Fox et al., “What we've learned about police shootings 5 years after Ferguson,” The Washington Post, Aug. 9, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y4skqjat.

[18] Emma Pierson et al., “A large scale analysis of racial disparities in stops across the United States,” Nature Human Behavior, July 2020, https://tinyurl.com/yd4jetqn.

[19] John Gramlich, “Black imprisonment rate in the U.S. has fallen by a third since 2006,” Pew Research Center, May 6, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/y3yscjlk.

[20] Samantha Artiga, Kendal Orgera and Anthony Damico, “Changes in Health Coverage by Race and Ethnicity since the ACA, 2010-2018,” Kaiser Family Foundation, March 5, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/y2lnboh6.

[21] Lesley Fleischman and Marcus Franklin, “Fumes Across the Fence Line,” NAACP, November 2017, https://tinyurl.com/y7wlp5v7.

[22] Ihab Mikati et al., “Disparities in Distribution of Particulate Matter Emission Sources by Race and Poverty Status,” American Journal of Public Health, Dec. 16, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/y3eukvu8.

[23] “Report to the United Nations on Racial Disparities in the U.S. Criminal Justice System,” The Sentencing Project, April 19, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/wzm7tt5.

[24] Niraj Chokshi, “Black People More Likely to Be Wrongfully Convicted of Murder, Study Shows,” The New York Times, March 7, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/y53l4q94.

[25] “Report to the United Nations on Racial Disparities in the U.S. Criminal Justice System,” op. cit.

[26] “Executive Order on Safe Policing for Safe Communities,” The White House, June 16, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/ycywoea3; Sarah Ferris, Heather Caygle and John Bresnahan, “House passes sweeping police reform bill,” Politico, June 25, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/y7duwuoo.

[27] “Race Relations,” Gallup, https://tinyurl.com/r82dak6.

[28] Ibid.

[29] Newport, op. cit.

[30] Ibid.

[31] Jennifer Agiesta, “CNN Poll: Views on racism, protests grow more partisan this summer,” CNN, Sept. 4, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/y3mprndv; “CNN and SSRS Poll — Aug. 28-Sept. 1, 2020,” CNN, https://tinyurl.com/y58grqe8.

[32] Amy Harmon and Sabrina Tavernise, “One Big Difference About George Floyd Protests: Many White Faces,” The New York Times, June 12, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/ycgypz4k.

[33] “Remarks by President Trump at a Peaceful Protest for Law and Order,” The White House, Oct. 10, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/yy85ot4y.

[34] “U.S. Crisis Monitor Releases Full Data for Summer 2020,” Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, Aug. 31, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/y2b93yd9.

[35] Julie Bosman, “Some Conservatives Rally Behind Teenager Charged in Protesters' Deaths,” The New York Times, Oct. 9, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/y5l23pe2; Christina Morales, “What We Know About the Shooting of Jacob Blake,” The New York Times, Sept. 10, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/y677pec9.

[36] Maya King and Laura Barrón-López, “Trump's refusal to condemn white supremacists launches an online furor,” Politico, Sept. 30, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/y3lettbt; Tasneem Nashrulla, “Trump Once Again Mischaracterized The Blacks Lives Matter Movement By Falsely Linking It To An Anti-Police Chant,” BuzzFeed, Oct. 22, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/y4vu8pjj; and Brooke Singman, “Trump denounces White supremacy, says he will accept a ‘peaceful transfer of power' but wants ‘to win,’” Fox News, Oct. 15, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/y448fe7k.

[37] “Trump Interview With Rush Limbaugh Slams Black Lives Matter,” DNN, YouTube, Oct. 9, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/y5bksgpv.

[38] “Black Lives Matter Co-Founder Alicia Garza Says Your Health and Safety Is at Stake in This Election,” NBC Dallas-Fort Worth, Sept. 23, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/y33fsjzz.

[39] Agiesta, op. cit.

[40] “Van Jones On George Floyd, Police Brutality, & What Comes Next,” Conan on TBS, YouTube, June 1, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/yycrmusg.

[41] “Pressley, Warren, Lee Introduce Legislation to Confront the Public Health Impacts of Structural Racism,” press release, Office of Rep. Ayanna Pressley, Sept. 3, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/y3y36lbr.

[42] “Legislative Responses for Policing-State Bill Tracking Database,” National Conference of State Legislatures, https://tinyurl.com/yywssc56.

[43] Madeline Holcombe, “California passes a first-of-its-kind law to consider reparations for slavery,” CNN, Oct. 1, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/y7h9qqmt.

[44] Barbara Rodriguez, “Kamala Harris on reparations for slavery: ‘It can't just be, ‘Hey … write some checks,’” Des Moines Register, Aug. 11, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y65vc297.

[45] Melissa Eddy, “For 60th Year, Germany Honors Duty to Pay Holocaust Victims,” The New York Times, Nov. 17, 2012, https://tinyurl.com/y738yc22.

[46] Ta-Nehisi Coates, “The Case for Reparations,” The Atlantic, June 2014, https://tinyurl.com/y6j2pskl.

[47] Katanga Johnson, “U.S. public more aware of racial inequality but still rejects reparations: Reuters/Ipsos polling,” Reuters, June 25, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/y8n3mvpg.

[48] Melissa Nann Burke, “House panel credits Conyers for efforts on slavery reparations,” Detroit News, June 19, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/yxpuuusp.

[49] Ibid.

[50] Ibid.

[51] Ibid.

[52] Emma Goldberg, “How Reparations for Slavery Became a 2020 Campaign Issue,” The New York Times, June 18, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/y84yhvzh.

[53] Ben Finley, “Virginia marks pivotal moment when African slaves arrived,” The Associated Press, Aug. 22, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y32snsvl.

[54] Ibid.

[55] Henry Louis Gates, “How Many Slaves Landed in the U.S.?” PBS, https://tinyurl.com/y5s754am.

[56] Aaron O'Neill, “Black and slave population of the United States from 1790 to 1880,” Statista, Feb. 12, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/y3alj4gv.

[57] David K. Shipler, “The Paragraph Missing From The Declaration of Independence,” Shipler Report, July 4, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/y5ygr788.

[58] “Declaration of Independence, ‘Original Rough Draught,’” PBS, https://tinyurl.com/y5zp7vpp.

[59] Shipler, op. cit.

[60] David Armitage, The Declaration of Independence: A Global History (2007), https://tinyurl.com/y5ek6be2.

[61] “Thomas Jefferson to John Holmes,” Library of Congress, April 22, 1820, https://tinyurl.com/ybo4bbyh.

[62] “Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of racial Terror,” 3rd ed., Equal Justice Initiative, https://tinyurl.com/yb24vmgy.

[63] Ibid.

[64] Isabel Wilkerson, “The Long-Lasting Legacy of the Great Migration,” Smithsonian Magazine, September 2016, https://tinyurl.com/y6c5udmy.

[65] Jim Powell, “Why Did FDR's New Deal Harm Blacks?” Cato Institute, Dec. 3, 2003, https://tinyurl.com/ha5q6jk; Eileen Boris and Michael Honey, “Gender, race, and the policies of the Labor Department,” Monthly Labor Review, February 1988, p. 75, https://tinyurl.com/yxey4hzz.

[66] Charles Lane, “The New Deal as raw deal for blacks in segregated communities,” The Washington Post, May 25, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/y4rj6rlw.

[67] “Quarterly Residential Vacancies and Homeownership, Second Quarter 2020,” table 7, U.S. Census Bureau, July 28, 2020, p. 7, https://tinyurl.com/y3trhrnr.

[68] “Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954),” U.S. Supreme Court, May 17, 1954, https://tinyurl.com/yckcqlmf.

[69] Newport, op. cit.

[70] “Incarceration Rate, 1980-2016,” Bureau of Justice Statistics, https://tinyurl.com/y4d85hxp.

[71] Anjuli Sastry and Karen Grigsby Bates, “When LA Erupted In Anger: A Look Back At The Rodney King Riots,” NPR, April 26, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/yylgw5mo.

[72] Steven Malanga, “Obama's Biggest Failure,” City Journal, July 9, 2016, https://tinyurl.com/y3hmkj8f; Hailey Fuchs, “Trump Moves to Roll Back Obama Program Addressing Housing Discrimination,” The New York Times, Aug. 17, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/y29xcqq5.

[73] Fuchs, ibid.

[74] Neena Satija, Wesley Lowery and Josh Dawsey, “Trump boasts that his landmark law is freeing these inmates. His Justice Department wants them to stay in prison,” The Washington Post, Nov. 7, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/yxwnnzc4.

[75] Barbara Sprunt, “Biden Details Proposal To Advance Racial Equity In America,” NPR, July 28, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/yyfmwwx2.

[76] “Unemployment Rate — Black or African American,” Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, Oct. 2, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/v44b6ak.

[77] Dan Mangan, “Trump suggests Lincoln's legacy is ‘questionable,’ brags about his own work for Black Americans,” CNBC, June 12, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/ycgpass9.

[78] “Executive Order on Safe Policing for Safe Communities,” op. cit.

[79] Nicole Ogrysko, “Trump signs continuing resolution, averting government shutdown,” Federal News Network, Sept. 30, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/y3g3sk2w.

[80] “Fact Sheet: Justice in Policing Act of 2020,” Congressional Black Caucus, House Judiciary Committee, https://tinyurl.com/ycbfex75.

[81] “Pressley, Warren, Lee Introduce Legislation to Confront the Public Health Impacts of Structural Racism,” op. cit.

[82] “ACP Proposes Policies and Action to Confront Systemic Racism, Discrimination and Injustices in Health and Law Enforcement,” press release, American College of Physicians, June 19, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/y5v7luoz.

[83] Lilliana Mason, “Both the Democrats and Republicans were once white majority parties. Now race divides them,” The Washington Post, Dec. 2, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/s3jtc4n.

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About the Author

Glen Justice has covered advocacy and political influence for two decades, working on staff at The New York Times and other publications. He currently runs Outside Voice, the custom content company that he founded, and writes for numerous publications.

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