Category Archives: African American Studies

“I’m Black and I’m Gay”: The everydayness of Jason Collins

Posted on by

—Mark Anthony Neal

As a lifetime New York Mets fan, I rarely need to be reminded that spring training signaled the beginning of a new baseball season. Yet, for a few years, I could have been reminded by the seemingly annual press conferences from Mets catcher Mike Piazza in which he announced to the world that he was not gay. That Piazza felt compelled to hold a press conference to announce such non-matters, speaks both to the proverbial stakes for male professional athletes (particularly in the so-called four “major” sports), and the absurdity of the national discourse regarding sexual identity.

There was no such press conference for Jason Collins, a twelve-year journey man in the National Basketball Association—just a Sports Illustrated cover story in which he admitted that he was “Black” and “Gay.” Indeed there was a mundane quality to Collins’ admission—it’s not like Collins is the first Black and Gay person to walk the earth. Perhaps, far more remarkable is that Collins has survived the last few seasons as a Black athlete who sits on the end of the bench, in a position that long served as the NBA’s quota program for a league that is still to visibly “Black” for some.

This is not to say that Collins’ “coming out”—a term that really just reproduces the very marginalization that homophobia constructs in the first place—was not brave and that the kudos that he’s received from Team Obama and high-profile colleagues like Kobe Bryant (only a few years removed from his own courtside use of a pejorative directed at Gays) and the always-already surreal Metta World Peace, were not thoughtful. It stands to reason, though, that President Obama will not be making a call to every Black man or women who will admit to a friend, family member, clergy leader or employer that he or she is gay—or more importantly, he won’t be calling those who will be shunned from the comforts of family and community because they did.

But what exactly are we really celebrating in highlighting the decision of one Black and Gay man to tell the world how he has lived everyday for much of his mature life?

As is too often the case in these matters, the attention that Jason Collins is getting is really about the need of our society to pat ourselves on the collective back for being open and tolerant enough to allow a veteran basketball player, close to the end of his career, to tell us that he is Black and Gay. In this regard, I’m not impressed. Nevada State Senator Keith Atkinson recently also admitted that he was “Black” and “Gay” to his legislative colleagues during a debate on Same-Sex marriage, which apparently doesn’t make us feel as good.

To be sure, Jason Collins represents an important moment in professional sport in the United States. As he symbolically raised his hand, hopefully he will find others willing to raise their hands alongside him and encourage a generation of younger athletes to be comfortable enough in their own skins to feel free to express whoever “they be.”  Until then I’m just waiting for the press conference or cover story that announces that such things no longer matter.

Mark Anthony Neal is Professor of African & African American Studies at Duke University. He is the author of several books, including Looking for Leroy: Illegible Black Masculinities (NYU Press, 2013), and the host of the weekly webcast Left of Black.

Book giveaways!

Posted on by

It finally feels like spring! We’re celebrating the season by hosting Goodreads giveaways for two new titles from our spring catalog. Check ‘em out below, and enter to win a copy of one—or both!

A powerful examination of the portrayal of black men in popular culture

LOOKING FOR LEROY
Illegible Black Masculinities
by Mark Anthony Neal

Released April 22, 2013

“[N]o one but Neal would manage to produce a theory of black masculinity capable of explaining the smoothness of Luther Vandross, the cosmopolitan genius of Jay-Z, the enigma of Leroy from Fame, and the sheer brute force of Snoop from The Wire. Genius.“—Jack Halberstam, author of Gaga Feminism

2 copies available. Giveaway ends on May 10, 2013. Enter to win!

 

A creative reinvestigation of murder, insurance fraud, and a Supreme Court ruling

A DEATH AT CROOKED CREEK
The Case of the Cowboy, the Cigarmaker, and the Love Letter
by Marianne Wesson

Releases May 24, 2013

“Known for her legal thrillers, University of Colorado law professor Wesson employs her expertise to great effect in this exhaustive study… [A] true crime drama that’s well researched, easy to read, and oddly compelling.”
—Publishers Weekly

3 copies available. Giveaway ends on May 24, 2013. Enter to win!

Good luck, and spread the word!

UB Law’s Higginbotham takes on the lingering effects of Jim Crow

Posted on by

[Note: This article originally appeared in the Daily Record here. ]

In May 2004, University of Baltimore School of Law professor F. Michael Higginbotham gave a speech to mark the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court’s historic ruling that found segregated public schools were inherently unequal.

Despite the dismantling of the Jim Crow laws, “people need to clearly understand that there are separations that still exist in society,” F. Michael Higginbotham says.

“I started to think about how far we have come and how much progress we have made, but also how much further we needed to go,” Higginbotham said.

That was the spark that led to an almost nine-year journey culminating with the publication of his new book, Ghosts of Jim Crow: Ending Racism in Post-Racial America.

At the core of the book is the existence of what Higginbotham called a “racial model” — created during slavery and nurtured by the segregationist Jim Crow laws and practices after the Civil War — that still exists in our society, with many people of both races still desiring isolation.

“What I am trying to do is get those individual people with those views to begin a conversation about how to recognize those views and how to end this racial model,” Higginbotham said.

There is also an element of racial victimization — both internally, among African-Americans, and externally, in laws and practices that discriminate against them, said Higginbotham, who served as the law school’s interim dean last year.

“It’s a failure of blacks themselves to value education and other upward-mobility vehicles and they turn to crime because of these perceived notions,” Higginbotham said.

Higginbotham has been at UB Law for about 25 years and teaches a class on race law. He grew up in Ohio and Beverly Hills, Calif., and attended Brown University for his bachelor’s degree before Yale Law School.

Some of the ideas in the book stem from his childhood in Beverly Hills. In the book’s preface, he recounts an evening riding his bike home as a 13-year-old when he was stopped by police. He was told he was out after curfew, but later discovered from friends that there was, in fact, no curfew in the neighborhood.

Higginbotham published his first and only other book in 2010. The textbook, Race Law: Cases, Commentary, and Questions explores race in the legal process from 1787 to the present.

“The difference in writing this one was I was able to put more of my own opinions into Ghosts,” Higginbotham said. “[Ghosts] was more of a reflection of what I believe from a personal standpoint, whereas a textbook must be a reflection of others.”

In the first part of the book, Higginbotham maps out these ideas, supported with historical and recent examples.

“I thought we had dealt with this,” Higginbotham said. “People need to clearly understand that there are separations that still exist in society that reflect what we think [happened] in the Jim Crow days,” Higginbotham said.

Once he decided to write the book, what followed was extensive research: reading cases, legislation and historic documents, Higginbotham said.

The writing, he said, he tried to make clear and concise, steering away from complicated legal prose. Higginbotham said he wrote mostly during winter and summer breaks and on weekends during the school year.

“I tried to break cases and legislation down so that anyone interested in race relations today and racial inadequacies, whether it’s junior high students, high school students or simply people who personally enjoy reading, that this would be something they could enjoy,” Higginbotham said.

Higginbotham went through several drafts, which he had colleagues read and edit, then sent it to publishers in early 2008 — about eight months before the presidential election. A publisher who was interested told Higginbotham the company liked the book, but told him he needed to factor in then-presidential hopeful Barack Obama.

Higginbotham spent the next several years weaving the effects of Obama’s presidency on race relations into his book, which was published by NYU Press and released on March 18.

The last part of the book focuses on Higginbotham’s ideas on how to shepherd in a new era of racial relations. Higginbotham suggests that people need to recognize there is a problem, empower the black community and equally integrate society.

“I’m not suggesting I have all the answers,” Higginbotham said. “I am saying the solutions I put forward would help eliminate the racial paradigm.”

Supreme Court must protect minority rights

Posted on by

—F. Michael Higginbotham

Recently, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Shelby County v. Holder, examining the constitutionality of Section 5 “pre-clearance” provisions of the Voting Rights Act. Section 5 mandates that states or portions thereof with a history of discriminatory voting laws get prior approval by the Department of Justice for any changes to their election laws. In 2009, the Supreme Court upheld Section 5, but Chief Justice Roberts indicated that the section creates “serious constitutional questions” and should be “justified by current needs.”

For 47 years, the Voting Rights Act has prohibited certain racially discriminatory election practices and given the federal government supervisory powers over jurisdictions that used such practices. This supervisory role has proven crucial to ensuring protections for racial minorities previously excluded from their constitutionally guaranteed right to vote.

In signing the bill, President Lyndon Johnson termed it “a monumental law in the history of American freedom.” He was right. Shortly after the law was enacted, 800,000 blacks registered to vote in covered jurisdictions. Few minorities were registered prior to its passage. Today, there are over 10,000 elected black officials; in 1965, there were approximately 300.

Because of this progress, some question whether Section 5 is still needed. Recent voting irregularities in the covered jurisdictions, where allegations of minority voter suppression have been lodged due to faulty election machines, purges in voter rolls, burdensome voter identification requirements, and winner-take-all at-large districting mandates, suggest that it is.

It is in this last category where Section 5 has been most effective preventing changes in election practices that would undermine the voting power of racial minorities.  The Shelby County case provides insight. Prior to local elections in 2008, the City of Calera, located in Shelby County, redrew its jurisdictional boundaries. The redrawn boundary eliminated the City Council’s only majority-black district by adding several white subdivisions adjacent to Calera while refusing to incorporate a black area located nearby. The lone majority-black district was reduced from 70 to 30 percent black, resulting in the election loss of Ernest Montgomery, the only black city councilperson.  The Justice Department would not approve the redistricting plan and, after extensive negotiations, Calera adopted a more inclusive at-large election system. A system that prevented a white numerical majority from controlling 100 percent of the six positions on the city council and that resulted in Montgomery receiving the most votes of all council candidates.

While much progress has been made over the last few decades including black registration rates equivalent to whites, racially polarized voting patterns coupled with vote prevention and dilution practices suggest a continued need for vigilance.  In  2001, the white mayor and all white city council in Kilmichael, Mississippi cancelled elections shortly after blacks became a majority of registered voters. Last year in Texas, two federal courts identified multiple examples of more sophisticated, yet equally outrageous, discriminatory redistricting practices including removing economic centers from majority-minority districts and placing them in white districts without any financial reasons for doing so, and removing minorities from such districts who have voted in prior elections  and replacing them with minorities who have not recently voted in order to maintain the appearance of a majority-minority district without the likelihood of minorities casting the most ballots. In each situation, Section 5 was used to prohibit the discriminatory practice. With so many clearly identified problems, it is hard to believe that five justices of the Supreme Court would decide that anti-discrimination protections in Section 5 are no longer “justified by current needs”.

F. Michael Higginbotham is the Wilson H. Elkins Professor of Law at the University of Baltimore School of Law. He is the author of Race Law: Cases, Commentary, and Questions and Ghosts of Jim Crow: Ending Racism in Post-Racial America (NYU Press, 2013).

Read: Introduction to Ghosts of Jim Crow

Posted on by

February is drawing to a close, and we’d like to kick off the last few days of Black History Month by featuring the introduction to F. Michael Higginbotham’s forthcoming book, Ghosts of Jim Crow: Ending Racism in Post-Racial America (NYU Press, March 2013).

In Ghosts of Jim Crow, Higginbotham persuasively challenges the notion that we’re living in a post-racial America—and offers prescriptions to heal our country’s racial inequality. But don’t just take it from us. According to Publishers Weekly, Higginbotham “contributes an indispensable perspective on an enduring ‘racial paradigm’ in contemporary American society, while insisting, with concrete proposals, that true racial equality remains within reach.” Start reading below.

Introduction to Ghosts of Jim Crow by F. Michael Higginbotham

Black History Month: “Wrong Complexion for Protection” when disasters strike

Posted on by

—Robert D. Bullard and Beverly Wright

In thinking about Black History Month and the great strides that have been made in the arenas of civil rights and racial equality, an immense body of work about the glaring racial disparities in employment, education, income and wealth, housing and health care comes to mind. However, far less has been written or publicized about the glaring inequities that exist in government response to natural and human-induced disasters. Decades before Hurricane Katrina drowned New Orleans and devastated the U.S. Gulf Coast, millions of African Americans learned the hard way that waiting for the government can be hazardous to their health and health of their community.

In Race, Place and Environmental Justice After Hurricane Katrina: Struggles to Reclaim, Rebuild, and Revitalize New Orleans and the Gulf Coast (Westview Press, 2009), we documented that racial disparities exist in disaster response, cleanup, rebuilding, reconstruction, and recovery. The lethargic and inept emergency response that followed Katrina exposed institutional flaws, poor planning, and false assumptions that are built into the emergency response and homeland security plans and programs.

We expanded this analysis and focus in The Wrong Complexion for Protection (NYU Press, 2012), a book that places the government response to natural and man-made disasters in historical context over the past eight decades—from the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 to the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.  Here, we compare and contrast how the government responded to emergencies, including environmental and public health emergencies, toxic contamination, industrial accidents, bioterrorism threats, and natural and human-induced disasters that disproportionately affect African Americans.

Our analysis chronicles history lessons not learned, government failures, and inadequate and inequitable government response to natural and human-induced disasters and emergencies.  Our goal is to shed new light on issues of health equity, environmental and climate justice, spatial and racial vulnerability, and the government’s role in providing equal protection under the law for all Americans, without regard to race, color, national origin, or income.

Too often, African Americans have experienced slow, unequal or no response from various local, state, and federal government agencies on a range of emergencies.  This scenario has often been the rule—not the exception—as in the case of the USDA and the discriminatory treatment of black farmers and the slow and inept response by the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC) to protect black landowners in Dickson, Tennessee, tagged the “poster child” for environmental racism.

The simple but urgent message of this book is equity, justice and fairness. Centuries of black exploitation, experimentation, drug testing, and forced surgeries have engendered mistrust of government, medical establishment, and biomedical research. Fairness is essential to building trust and reaching any meaningful solution to natural and human-induced disasters and for achieving sustainability and homeland security.  Fairness matters. It matters how we design and plan strategies for addressing public health emergencies, toxic contamination, industrial accidents and spills, earthquakes, extreme weather events such as hurricanes, floods, tornados, droughts, heat waves, and bioterrorism threats. Making disaster response equitable is a matter of civil and human rights, and in the spirit of Black History Month, we must strive for equality in the sectors which have historically excluded or otherwise exploited African Americans.

Robert D. Bullard (Dean of the Barbara Jordan-Mickey Leland School of Public Affairs at Texas Southern University in Houston) and Beverly Wright (founding director of the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice at Dillard University, New Orleans) co-authored The Wrong Complexion for Protection: How the Government Response to Disaster Endangers African Americans (NYU Press, 2012).

Beyond heroism: Rethinking Black History Month

Posted on by

—Dayo F. Gore

As we begin the annual celebration of African American achievements known as Black History Month, I am struck again by the promises and perils of this type of accounting. Initially founded in 1926 by Carter G. Woodson as Negro History Week, it was intended to rectify the exclusion of African American experiences from the national record. It has become a bonanza of lectures, luncheons, and special programing centering the black experience and, more often than not, a collective celebration of “how far we’ve come” as a people born into slavery and a nation built upon it.

Black History Month tends to highlight the most venerable leaders and singular figures in African American life and their most inspiring moments of victory. Yet the messy and complicated details of centuries of oppression and resistance, which I believe make African American experiences so imperative in the national narrative, rarely garner attention during this brief month. Instead, black heroes and heroines are appointed to stand along side white leaders and adventurers, serving as examplars of American progress and triumph.

Now I don’t want to discount the importance of this month of celebration and study, nor the crucial role of historical recovery and inclusion. It is understandable (and maybe even necessary) for Americans to hear heroic narratives about those too often marked as a suspect class and denied access to the halls of power. However, in making their voices fit the dominant narrative of triumphant democracy and progress, we diminish and distort the histories of struggle from which they emerged. Thus we are treated to the oratory power and charismatic leadership of Marin Luther King Jr. at the 1963 March on Washington (with no mention of the jobs theme or political conflicts over message that shaped the event) and engage the victorious moment of Brown V. Board of Education (but with little attention to the long fought battles in the North and South to make law into reality). Too often we are reminded of the unique achievements of particular individuals, while ignoring those who held them up.

I want to encourage a different framework for Black History Month. One that still embraces historical recovery but does so by expanding our conception of “leadership” and looking beyond “victory.” I want to spotlight some of the less successful moments in the black freedom struggle, to look to less well-known leaders and indeed to those who, for all intents and purposes, failed. Paying closer attention to these experiences illuminates a rich history of struggle built on collective action, persistence, and long-term commitments to creating change.

My recent book Radicalism at the Crossroads, which uncovers the voices, intellectual work and activism of a community of black women radicals operating within New York’s black left during the height of the Cold War, embraces such an approach. In making visible the powerful but largely obscured activism of this network of women, which included well-known figures such as playwright Lorraine Hansberry and activists such as Vicki Garvin, my work joins a host of new scholarship that moves beyond heroic narratives of the black experience.

In so doing these studies demonstrate that even in complicated moments of constraint and seeming defeat, there is still much to learn and celebrate about African American life in the U.S. Perhaps if we can make these stories a larger part of Black History Month, we would all gain a better understanding of African Americans’ lived experiences. What’s more, popularizing these narratives might a spark interest in black history that last for more than just one month.

Dayo F. Gore is Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies and Critical Gender Studies at the University of California, San Diego and has previously taught at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. She is the author of Radicalism at the Crossroads: African American Women Activists in the Cold War (NYU Press, 2011) and co-editor (with Jeanne Theoharis and Komozi Woodard) of Want to Start a Revolution? Radical Women in the Black Freedom Struggle (NYU Press, 2009).

NYU Press celebrates Black History Month!

Posted on by

February marks the month-long celebration of the history, influences, and contributions of African American people and culture. To honor Black History Month this year, we’re offering 20% off some of our favorite books in African American studies and history. (Check out the full list, with discounted prices, here.)

The offer ends on February 28, 2013, but not the celebration! This spring, we’re publishing titles in African American studies that are sure to become classics. Take a sneak peek at the forthcoming books below.

In Ghosts of Jim Crow, F. Michael Higginbotham convincingly argues that America remains far away from the  imagined utopia of a post-racial society. Using history as a roadmap, Higginbotham arrives at a provocative solution for ridding the nation of Jim Crow’s ghost, suggesting that legal and political reform can successfully create a post-racial America, but only if it inspires whites and blacks to significantly alter behaviors and attitudes.

» READ: The book’s introduction.

Mark Anthony Neal’s Looking for Leroy is an engaging and provocative analysis of the complex ways in which black masculinity has been read and misread through contemporary American popular culture. In examining figures such as hip-hop artist Jay-Z, the late vocalist Luther Vandross, and characters from the HBO series The Wire, among others, Neal demonstrates how distinct representations of black masculinity can break the links in the public imagination that create antagonism toward black men.

» READ: “Love in the Stacks: Some Thoughts on Black History Month” (Huffington Post)

In We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement, renowned scholar-activist Akinyele Umoja persuasively argues that armed resistance was critical to the efficacy of the southern freedom struggle and the dismantling of segregation. He challenges long-held beliefs about the role of nonviolence within the civil rights movement and uncovers the hidden narratives of Mississippi’s black armed resistance groups.

» VIEW: “Dr. Akinyele Umoja On Alfred ‘Skip’ Robinson“

Stay tuned for more on these titles, and more, throughout Black History Month!

Announcing our Spring 2013 Catalog…

Posted on by

NYU Press Spring 2013 Catalog is now online, featuring an exciting range of new books in history, media studies, law, and more!

Highlights include:
TWO PRESIDENTS ARE BETTER THAN ONE: Making the case for a two-party, two-person presidency, this “pipe dream of a book” presents a “novel and provocative thesis worth hearing out” (Kirkus Reviews).

A DEATH AT CROOKED CREEK: Marion Wesson, author of best-selling and prize-winning legal novels including Render up the Body, combines drama and intrigue  with cutting-edge forensic investigation techniques and legal theory in this superbly imagined historical novel.

CAPITAL OF THE WORLD: Charlene Mires tells the dramatic, surprising, and at times comic story of hometown promoters in an extraordinary race to host the U.N. headquarters at a pivotal moment in history.

(You can also click here to access this catalog via our website, or find our catalogs available on Edelweiss.)

Revisiting the Emancipation Proclamation, 150 years later

Posted on by

—Kidada E. Williams

Eric Foner, in his 2011 Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Fiery Trial, described President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation as one of the most misunderstood documents of American history. Many Americans hold it in the same esteem as they do the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence, but the actual document is rarely read and its context is far more complex. The Emancipation Proclamation will celebrate its 150th anniversary on January 1, 2013. As we approach its sesquicentennial, the time feels right to put the document and its impact into proper historical context.

Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation as a military strategy for winning the war against the Confederate rebellion. By 1862, the war had been going on for longer than either the Union or the Confederacy expected. A number of Unionists concluded that taking away the Confederacy’s most valuable resource, their slaves, was the best way to cripple their ability to continue the fight. Some officials also wanted to arm enslaved black men and believed that the best way to obtain their loyalty to the Union was to free them and their families. As the chaos of war continued, the Lincoln administration searched for military solutions.

Although he was opposed to slavery, Lincoln was slow to use secession and the war to abolish slavery. He understood and respected that the Founding Fathers ensured that the Constitution protected slavery. In the face of mounting demands that he end slavery, Lincoln made clear that his paramount objective was to preserve the Union—the country established by the Patriots who rebelled against Great Britain—and not to destroy slavery.

Lincoln also knew that many white Unionists opposed increasing the size of the free black population for fear of economic and political competition. In his Second Annual Message he explained that a policy of wartime emancipation was the best way to win the war and preserve the Union. The next month, Lincoln used his power as the Commander-in-Chief during a time of armed rebellion to issue the Emancipation Proclamation.

It is important to understand what the proclamation did and did not do. It did not free all enslaved people. The proclamation did free enslaved people in states and parts of the states that were still in rebellion against the United States by January 1, 1863. That left more than 800,000 people legally enslaved.

Instead of being a panacea that destroyed slavery, the proclamation’s effect was quite limited. Confederates dismissed the proclamation, believing they could win the war and create their own slaveholding republic. Additionally, as historian James McPherson pointed out, the proclamation’s effectiveness was hindered by the fact that it could not be enforced in areas Union forces did not control militarily. The armies would not control the Confederacy until the war ends fifteen months later. In the end, the proclamation freed only some enslaved people, which is why Lincoln pushed Congress to pass the Thirteenth Amendment.

One under-appreciated feature of the proclamation is that it authorized the enlistment of African American men in the Union’s military forces. In 1861, when Lincoln called for volunteers to suppress the Confederate rebellion, many free black men answered. Lincoln refused their offer to serve because he believed that allowing them to fight might make people think that his priorities for the war had shifted from saving the Union to abolishing slavery. Down but not defeated, some black men continued to prepare for combat. As the war continued, Union forces suffered high casualties, and Lincoln moved closer to instituting a wartime emancipation policy, the president and others conceded that they should use black men in combat; he included that provision in the proclamation, which allowed roughly 185,000 black men to serve.

Civil War-era Americans’ reactions to the proclamation were mixed. Enslaved and free African Americans as well as white abolitionists were elated. More enslaved people who learned of the proclamation and could escape their masters to find Union forces did. Confederates, however, saw the proclamation as an attack on their very way of life, and it renewed their determination to fight. The Confederate Congress and Army responded further by instituting a policy that determined that any black soldiers captured by Confederate forces could be re-enslaved, enslaved (if they were already free), or executed.

As Gary Gallagher shows, many white Unionists supported the proclamation not because they opposed slavery but because they believed that freeing Confederates’ slaves was the fastest way to win the war. However, others worried about the larger social, economic, and political ramifications of ending slavery, namely sharing the benefits of American citizenship with people who they thought were inferior.

One key to understanding the mixed reactions to the proclamation is to remember that Americans during the Civil War knew that the proclamation did not end slavery or the war. The war continued until 1865 when the Confederates surrendered and slavery continued until the Thirteenth Amendment went into effect in December of that year.

Although the Emancipation Proclamation was a military document that had significant limitations, its political implications cannot be overstated. It marked the legal beginning of Americans’ effort to redeem the nation for what many people call the “original sin of slavery” and authorized the enlistment of black men to military service. The Emancipation Proclamation stands as a symbol of American freedom and deserves its place in the nation’s memory, right alongside the Constitution, Declaration of Independence, and Thirteenth Amendment.

Sources: Emancipation Proclamation Map: http://www.ushistory.org/us/34a.asp.

Kidada E. Williams is Associate Professor of History at Wayne State University and the author of They Left Great Marks on Me (NYU Press, 2012). You can find her on Twitter @kidadaewilliams.

Stop the bleeding: Prescriptions to heal racial economic inequality in America

Posted on by

—F. Michael Higginbotham

Recently, Americans elected Barack Obama as President for a second term. When Obama began his first term, economic disparities between blacks and whites were alarmingly wide. Black unemployment, poverty, and homelessness were twice that of whites. Wealth accumulation for blacks was one twentieth of what it was for whites. A similar disparity existed for Latinos/as. During the last four years, the gap widened.

It’s important to recognize that racial inequality today is a reality. There is no such place as a post racial America. While the causes of racism are more complex than they were under discriminatory laws of the Jim Crow Era, today this divide is primarily caused by choices that result in economic hardship, housing isolation, education inequity, and criminal justice stereotyping.

One choice is exemplified in the story of Tim Carter and Richard Thomas, arrested in 2004 in separate incidents three months apart in nearly the same location in St. Petersburg, Florida. Police found one rock of cocaine on Mr. Carter, who is white, and a crack pipe with cocaine residue, on Mr. Thomas, who is black.

Both men claimed drug addictions, neither had any prior felony arrests or convictions, and both men potentially faced five years in prison. Mr. Carter had his prosecution withheld, and the judge sent him to drug rehabilitation. Mr. Thomas was prosecuted, convicted and went to prison. Their only apparent difference was race.

Another choice is reflected in the pattern of property ownership and the fact that whites continue to embrace the “tipping point” notion in housing integration. “Tipping point” bigotry inspired Jeremy Parady, who pleaded guilty in 2005 to conspiracy to commit arson in a series of fires in a new housing development in Southern Maryland. Parady admitted that he set fire to this development because many of the buyers were blacks and the surrounding neighborhood was mostly white.

While these disparities have been persistent, they need not be permanent. As a long term strategy, let’s equalize funding for public schools, prohibit racial profiling, eliminate laws that have a severe racially disproportionate impact, redefine our notion of racism to include negligent acts, criminalize intentional acts of racism, and increase integration in neighborhoods and schools. Such changes would go a long way to reducing current racial inequities.

For now as a start, let’s pass the American Jobs Act which contains several components that would reduce racial inequality in employment. First, the act is aimed at revitalizing and rebuilding communities where unemployment has risen most sharply, especially urban areas. Many such areas have a high percentage of black unemployment. Second, the act is aimed at neighborhoods where the foreclosure rates are highest. This includes many areas with high concentrations of blacks. Third, the act is aimed at decreasing youth unemployment by creating summer and year-round jobs for impoverished teenagers and young adults. Many of these youths are black with little chance of finding employment under current economic circumstances.

Too many Americans are hurting under this extended economic slump. Blacks and Latinos/as have been particularly hit hard with unemployment near 15%. Healing the racial divide must begin soon. Stopping the bleeding in employment discrimination must begin now.

F. Michael Higginbotham is the Wilson H. Elkins Professor of Law at the University of Baltimore School of Law. He is the author of Race Law: Cases, Commentary, and Questions and Ghosts of Jim Crow: Ending Racism in Post-Racial America (forthcoming from NYU Press, March 2013).

Remembering Katrina, seven years later

Posted on by

—Jodi Narde

Today marks the seven year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. My eyes, as they once were, are glued to the Weather Channel, waiting to see what damage Isaac will bring. As it happens, The Wrong Complexion for Protection, Robert Bullard’s book on how government response to disaster endangers vulnerable communities, is in my peripheral vision. A hopeful New Orleanian-at-heart, I’d like to believe America has learned from Katrina. But have we?

As a Tulane grad and Katrina “survivor,” I have no horror storm stories of my own to share. One of the lucky ones, I charged my newly acquired credit card with a train ride to Memphis—my first experience of both—and spent the long hours sneaking mini-bottles of wine from the dining car, mingling with Loyola undergrads (a chance opportunity), and watching the sun go down over the flatlands of America. (To this day, I still consider train rides the pinnacle of luxury.)

Most likely, whether or not you’ve seen When the Levees Broke, Treme, or read Zeitoun, you know the stories of Katrina. Today, especially, many people are remembering these stories—using social media tools like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube to engage in a national conversation about the legacy of Katrina, and express support for the city and its residents as New Orleans “hunkers down” for another storm. (For a snapshot, see this awesome collection of tweets, from Mashable. Or, #RememberKatrina.)

In light of this widespread share-and-tell and the anniversary of Katrina, we, at NYU Press, would like to share a chapter on New Orleans from The Wrong Complexion for Protection. And to those in areas affected by Hurricane Isaac, we wish you safety!

Bullard, ch 2