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racial inequity
A Public Health Emergency: How Abortion Bans Are Fueling Maternal Deaths in America
People living in states that have banned abortion are nearly twice as likely to die during pregnancy, childbirth, or soon after compared with those in states where abortion remains legal and accessible.
Apr 10, 2026
The maternal mortality crisis in the United States is a national embarrassment, and it’s unfolding in real time. The US continues to have one of the highest maternal death rates among high-income countries, and the situation is getting worse, not better. Behind this trend is a growing body of research showing that state abortion bans directly contribute to increased maternal mortality, especially in communities already burdened by systemic inequities.
Maternal mortality has traditionally reflected deep structural problems in a healthcare system that fails to serve all people equally. In 2024, the US maternal mortality rate ticked upward again, reversing a brief decline and demonstrating that the crisis is far from over. Experts point to a range of causes, including reduced access to prenatal care, maternity care deserts, and strained hospital systems, all problems intensified in states with abortion restrictions and in states with increased Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.
A comprehensive analysis from the most recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) mortality figures shows that people living in states that have banned abortion are nearly twice as likely to die during pregnancy, childbirth, or soon after compared with those in states where abortion remains legal and accessible. What’s more, in supportive states where abortion has remained legal, maternal mortality has declined by about 21% since 2022, suggesting that access to comprehensive reproductive care saves lives.
Restricting abortion does more than eliminate a medical procedure; it forces people to carry pregnancies that pose very real health risks. Childbirth has inherent dangers from hemorrhage and infection to hypertensive disorders and cardiac events, and the risk of death from pregnancy is at least 44 times higher than from abortion. When abortion is inaccessible, people are compelled to continue unwanted or medically unsafe pregnancies. That dynamic alone drives increased deaths that could otherwise have been prevented.
Bans do not reduce the prevalence of abortion; they reduce its safety, push people into riskier medical scenarios, and leave pregnant people with fewer options even when their health is at stake.
Racial and socioeconomic disparities in maternal mortality did not begin with the reversal of Roe v. Wade. Black birthing people in the US have long faced significantly higher death rates than white birthing people, a symptom of deep structural racism in healthcare, poverty, and chronic stress. But abortion bans have exacerbated these inequities.
In states with abortion bans, Black birthing people are more than three times as likely as white birthing people in those same states to die from pregnancy-related causes. Those figures make crystal clear that when we talk about maternal mortality, we are talking about a crisis of racial inequity, class inequity, and political neglect. States with the worst maternal health outcomes, including Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas, are predominantly in the South and have enacted some of the most restrictive reproductive laws.
These disparities compound with other conditions such as limited access to early prenatal care—which the CDC reports has declined across the country, with the steepest drops among Black mothers. Delays in early care are associated with worse outcomes for both mother and baby and are worsened by the closure of maternity care facilities in rural and under-resourced areas.
For undocumented and immigrant communities, the maternal mortality crisis is layered with additional barriers. Fear of immigration enforcement, including ICE, deters people from seeking care, even in emergencies. Clinics in border states with large immigrant populations were already medically underserved before Dobbs, and abortion bans have deepened that inaccessibility. Many undocumented people lack insurance, fear reporting, or face economic barriers that make traveling for care impossible. These structural obstacles do not just delay care, they can literally cost lives.
Immigrant and mixed-status families are disproportionately concentrated in states with abortion bans, like Texas, Arizona, and Florida, meaning that people who already face the greatest systemic barriers to healthcare are also the most likely to lack access to safe abortion or comprehensive maternal services. This intersection of racist policy, reproductive restriction, and anti-immigrant enforcement creates a perfect storm that pushes already vulnerable people further to the margins and deeper toward harm.
Critics of abortion argue from moral or ideological positions, but the evidence shows that access to abortion care is fundamentally a matter of public health. Bans do not reduce the prevalence of abortion; they reduce its safety, push people into riskier medical scenarios, and leave pregnant people with fewer options even when their health is at stake.
We are now witnessing a preventable loss of life, and the window to act is closing.
We know how to prevent many maternal deaths: Expand access to comprehensive reproductive care (including abortion), strengthen prenatal and postpartum support, increase Medicaid coverage, invest in maternity care infrastructure, and dismantle the historic and systemic inequities that predict who lives and who dies. We know these interventions work because states that have protected reproductive rights are already seeing declines in maternal mortality.
To ignore this crisis is to ignore evidence, dignity, and the lives of pregnant people, especially those in Black, Indigenous, immigrant, and economically disadvantaged communities.
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'License to Kill': New Report Finds Higher Homicide Rates in 'Stand Your Ground' States
"These laws change the nature of self-defense, turning everyday disputes into deadly confrontations," the report, compiled by Everytown for Gun Safety, says.
Jul 21, 2025
A new report has found that "Stand Your Ground" laws have led to an increased rate of gun homicides in the United States.
These laws allow anyone who believes they are facing the threat of death or bodily harm to use deadly force without the requirement to first retreat to safety. But according to a report released Monday by the gun control advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety, they have become a "license to kill."
Data compiled by the group shows that these laws have led to around 700 additional gun deaths each year, increasing the number of gun deaths nationally by 8% to 11%. That estimate came from a 2022 study published by the medical journal JAMA Network Open, which looked at data from 1999 to 2017.
Following aggressive lobbying by the National Rifle Association and the firearms industry, the first Stand Your Ground laws were introduced in Florida in 2005. Since then, 29 states have adopted them.
Over that time, those states have seen especially high increases in violence, with Alabama, Missouri, and Florida all having 30% or greater increases to their homicide rates.
Everytown's report details one particularly harrowing story from Florida in which Stand Your Ground laws contributed to the shooting of two children:
In October 2022, William Hale and Frank Allison drove alongside each other on US Highway 1 in Hialeah, Florida. A traffic dispute grew more dangerous as both men began driving erratically. When Hale threw a water bottle at the other car, Allison retaliated with a gun, firing a shot that hit Hale's 5-year-old daughter. In response, Hale fired all of the bullets in his handgun, striking Allison's 14-year-old daughter.
Though both men were initially charged with attempted murder, prosecutors dropped the charges against the man who fired first. Under Florida's so-called "Stand Your Ground" legal defense law, the thrown water bottle justified responding with deadly force, leading to a child being shot. In the end, with two girls wounded in a road rage tragedy, the man who started the shootout was protected by a distortion of self-defense that allows people to shoot first and ask questions later.
"These laws change the nature of self-defense, turning everyday disputes into deadly confrontations," the report says. "Far from empowering victims, Shoot First laws lower the threshold for justifiable homicide, encouraging the escalation of petty arguments and armed vigilantism."
These laws attracted national scrutiny in 2012 following the shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Florida by a neighborhood watchman, George Zimmerman, who was acquitted under the state's Stand Your Ground law.
The 2020 shooting of another young Black man, Ahmaud Arbery, in Georgia, is likewise believed to have been exacerbated by Georgia's Stand Your Ground law, though the three men who killed him were ultimately found guilty.
Stand Your Ground laws also contribute to heightened racial disparities for shooting victims, according to FBI data from 2019-23.
Justifiable homicide rates increased by 55% in states with Stand Your Ground laws, the report found. In those same states, the shootings of Black victims by white shooters are four times as likely to be deemed justified than they would be if the roles were reversed, a higher rate than in states without these laws.
In some Stand Your Ground states like Michigan, Indiana, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, and Kansas, the disparity was more than seven times greater for Black victims than white ones.
And contrary to claims that loose gun restrictions protect women, the report found multiple studies concluding that domestic violence cases in which a woman claimed self-defense were less likely to be deemed justifiable, while women convicted were more likely to serve longer sentences.
"In addition to increased risk of victimization in Shoot First states, convictions are unfairly skewed against people of color and women," the report concludes. "In the decades since the first Shoot First law was enacted, no research shows that these laws lead to better outcomes for anyone. Shoot First was created to solve a problem that does not exist—and Americans are paying the price."
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A Juneteenth Reflection on America’s Unfinished Business
This year, as we celebrate the end of chattel slavery in the United States, we must remember the work that Frederick Douglass called upon us all to do remains unfinished.
Jun 18, 2024
“What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July?” asked Frederick Douglass in his Fourth of July Oration in 1852. “I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty” of America.
Douglass’s speech remains among the most powerful and poignant in United States history more than a century and a half later. With the Civil War nearly a decade away, and the system of chattel slavery still going strong throughout the South and powering the economy throughout the country, Douglass pointed with undeniable clarity at the “venomous creature [that] is nursing at the tender breast of your youthful republic.”
As we celebrate Juneteenth in 2024, the work that Douglass called upon us all to do remains unfinished. The Civil War, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the Reconstruction Amendments formally put an end to the widespread practice of enslavement of Black people in this country. But the work of reconstructing our society and creating the truly equitable and free society promised in our founding documents has a long way to go.
Today we have the job of coming to grips with our history and charting a new path for those who come after us.
That is why on this Juneteenth, we should all ask: What, to us, is Juneteenth? For all of us, and especially for the Black community, it is a day of joyful celebration, marking the anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, as it has been for a century and a half. It marks the end of that “venomous creature” in the republic. To be sure, each one of us should celebrate that important day in 1865, as the Black community did so memorably in Texas that year.
But on Juneteenth, we should also remember that while the snake may have been slain, too much of its venom remains in our system. The venom still takes the form of racism, racial inequity, and the enduring power of white supremacy.
What, to each of us today, is Juneteenth? For those of us in the white community of the United States, I see it as a call to action to do our part to continue the work of reconstruction. We can and should imagine a truly equitable, multiracial America—one we have never before encountered but one which remains a real possibility. There is a fierce pushback against this work today, but this is a pushback we must resist as we continue the unfinished work of Reconstruction.
Like many white Americans whose families have been in the United States for a long time, and in fact came to these shores before the nation even existed, my family has both been involved in the business of enslaving others and has fought for the end of slavery. As Douglass pointed out in his soaring Fourth of July oration, ancestors of mine have done terrible things to others in the name of Christianity, in pursuit of money, and out of ignorance and hate. Others have valiantly fought against friends and families to create a better, fairer society.
Today we have the job of coming to grips with our history and charting a new path for those who come after us. That is why white people must join with others in the work of making our communities and institutions more diverse. Those of us who identify as white and male have a particular obligation to reflect on Juneteenth and consider how we can use what we have to be part of overcoming in the name of a brighter, more sustainable future. We have power to wield, and should wield it, in making our economies more equitable and inclusive.
In Chicago, where I live, there is a fact that I cannot shake. I can’t get it out of my head that a baby born in the predominantly Black neighborhood of Englewood is expected to live 30 years less than a baby born on the same day in the predominantly white, and more wealthy, neighborhood of Streeterville downtown. That is a difference of six miles—and 30 years.
The promise of abolition, a healed and equal society, has not yet been realized. And we can only get there by working together with friends, community, and in solidarity.
This disparity of life expectancy is a combination of a multitude of factors of which racial identity is one, but it boils down to this: a Black baby born in one part of our nation’s third largest city is less likely to enjoy as long and healthy a life as a white baby born a few miles away. There is no way to imagine that this marks an equal society. Health disparities such as this one affect Native American communities and Latin communities across America, too.
Alongside health, consider gaps in education, earnings, and wealth between racial groups in the United States, in state after state. These, in the words of Douglass, remain among our “national inconsistencies.” Black Americans consistently enjoy fewer of the fruits of the republic than those of other racial and ethnic groups. To achieve true racial healing in America, to get the venom truly out of our system, requires us to keep at the work of racial equity.
The promise of abolition, a healed and equal society, has not yet been realized. And we can only get there by working together with friends, community, and in solidarity. At the MacArthur Foundation, we put this approach into practice each day as we collectively strive to lead with a commitment to justice. The progress we have made in the past, and any progress in the future, requires collaboration between people from all kinds of backgrounds.
Juneteenth is a call to do better as a nation, to create an America in which every child born today—no matter their race, their ethnicity, their gender, their neighborhood—has an equal chance to thrive. We remain a long way from that reality. No matter our race, we should do our part on the unfinished work of creating a free and equal society.
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Tax Prep Companies’ Business Model Exploits Low-Income Payers
The average parent in low-income communities is being bombarded with advertising designed to trick them into wasting their hard-earned money that could otherwise be going to groceries, gas, and other necessities.
Apr 16, 2024
How far could an extra nine hours and $150 go for you and your family? That’s how much Intuit’s TurboTax and H&R Block are taking from their average customer in low-income neighborhoods. Many of these customers don’t know that they can access these services for free—and that’s intentional. The average parent in low-income communities is being bombarded with advertising designed to trick them into wasting their hard-earned money that could otherwise be going to groceries, gas, and other necessities.
With Tax Day just passed, corporate tax prep giants are trying to extract every last dollar they can from Black communities and working-class taxpayers. A new report in partnership with Better IRS, titled Preying Preparers: How Storefront Tax Preparation Companies Target Low-Income Black and Brown Communities sounds the alarm on how exploiting low-income taxpayers is core to the business model of tax prep companies.
As it stands, 70% of taxpayers are eligible to file their taxes for free, but less than 3% have actually used the failed, corporate-backed free file service. The overwhelming majority of qualifying taxpayers are being coerced by unscrupulous corporate practices like deceptive advertising, overcharging, or hiding the free options.
Now that the IRS has made Direct File a free option, we call on the agency to expand the program.
Tax prep companies rely on and take advantage of economically disadvantaged communities. In fact, areas with the most people claiming the Earned Income Tax Credit have 75% more tax preparers for each person filing taxes compared to areas with fewer people claiming the credit. Furthermore, these major companies primarily hire what are called “unenrolled” tax preparers who lack expertise, certification, or credentials in tax rules and policy. Tax prep companies bank on their proximity, non-stop advertisement, celebrity endorsements, sweepstakes, and giveaways to legitimize their illegitimacy.
Unsurprisingly, companies like H&R Block have dismissed our report by noting the prolific number of locations, the years of experience of their preparers, and their 100% accuracy guarantee. They believe that because there are 9,000 locations across 50 states and most Americans live within five miles of one of their stores, then surely they must be helping hardworking families.
What this actually confirms is that H&R Block preys on low-income communities and communities of color by saturating the neighborhoods of targeted EITC-eligible taxpayers. Additionally, admitting unqualified preparers have been filing taxes for an average of 10 years or more is cause for concern. The predatory locations and disproportionate filing of EITC-eligible tax returns can both explain why Black taxpayers are audited at higher rates than their counterparts and why many people fail to take the deduction even though they are eligible. In this instance, correlation is causation.
These companies claim they are operating within the rules of the game—of which there are none. In 2010, the IRS tried to regulate the practice citing “an abysmal failure rate among unenrolled preparers” and pointing out that 1 in 4 of the 84,000 unenrolled preparers who took the competency exam failed, and more than 320,000 others never took it. That’s why we’re asking for accountability and for regulation of these tax preparers.
The introduction of the IRS Direct File pilot program represents a significant opportunity to dismantle economic inequality in our tax system. Direct File provides a much-needed alternative to costly tax preparation services in 12 states. This service is simple, free, readily available online, and a step in the right direction that empowers working-class people with an option to keep money in their pockets.
In the fight against corporate greed, we stand firm in our resolve. It’s time to hold these giants accountable, to empower the working class, and to build a fairer, more just system for all. Recent enforcement actions by the Federal Trade Commission are an important step; the public should know if they were overcharged and by how much.
With overwhelming public support for IRS modernization, including competency exams to ensure accountability and professionalism, the time for change is now. Now that the IRS has made Direct File a free option, we call on the agency to expand the program. The pursuit of an economy that works for everyone is ongoing. It starts with holding corporations accountable for their exploitative practices, advocating for policy solutions that prioritize the needs of working-class individuals, and ensuring equal access to resources and opportunities for all tax-payers.
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Fears Grow Over Future of Social Infrastructure in a Second Trump Term
His strategy will shift from “death by a thousand cuts” to abolish, terminate, and destroy.
Mar 11, 2024
The U.S. safety net is not easily understood. Difficult to navigate, it sprawls across numerous federal agencies and departments. Dozens of programs, ranging from free school lunch to disability insurance to unemployment protection have different eligibility criteria, application procedures, and benefit levels. While critical for millions of Americans, recipients are under continuous scrutiny: regularly castigated, accused of laziness, irresponsible behavior, fraud, and, among other chilling characterizations, undeserving. Its fragmented nature and lack of powerful allies makes it difficult to protect and leaves many of its core programs vulnerable to attack and retrenchment.
For decades, Republicans have been intent on instilling more stringent eligibility requirements for safety net programs, reducing program funding, and in some cases eliminating programs and agencies entirely. When Donald Trump entered office in 2016, he sought to strangle the American safety net using a “death by a thousand cuts” strategy that relied heavily on the administrative rule-making process and the judicial system, hence moving policy decision-making away from Congress. Many of these efforts ultimately stalled or failed because of legal challenges and administrative missteps by Trump officials.
Conservatives learned from these failures, and have worked tirelessly over the past four years to craft a sweeping set of reforms that would enable Trump to wield authority far more easily, and be far more reaching, than during his first term. Trump, according to Kevin Roberts, President of the conservative Heritage Foundation, stumbled out of the gate after winning in 2016: “Heritage and our allies in Project 2025 believe that must never be repeated.”
Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise 2025, rectifies this and lays the groundwork for how to pull this off. Biblically-based in Judeo-Christian traditions and service to God, it echoes the racial resentment and discriminatory effects of equity that Trump has stoked for the past eight years. A second Trump administration, run by well-vetted right-wing loyalists, will “identify and reverse all actions taken by the Biden administration to advance progressive ideology and further equity.” “Nothing”, they profess, “is more important than deconstructing the centralized administrative state”. But, as they well know, it will be at the expense of millions who rely on its support and services to live.
How might this unfold?
Despite the fiscal challenges that Social Security and Medicare face, Trump has promised changes, yet offers no concrete plans or proposals. But his GOP allies in Congress, including House Speaker Mike Johnson have proposed benefit reductions and other changes. During his time as chair of the Republican Study Committee, Johnson proposed several reforms that advocates warned were clearly “veiled attempts” to raise the retirement age and ultimately make benefits less generous.
Trump’s attack on the safety net, however, would target programs that do not receive the coverage or political support of Social Security and Medicare. As a guide for action, the Mandate outlines numerous consequential changes for programs related to food and nutrition, shelter, and education programs for poor and low-income children and families.
The repository for all means-tested programs from all agencies and departments slated for reduction or termination will be The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Programs like SNAP, school meals programs, and meals programs for the elderly will be moved out of the Department of Agriculture into HHS so as to remove any inkling of a “welfare-based” focus. Universal free school meals will be eliminated.
Along with the elimination of the Department of Education and Head Start and learning programs that target poor communities, all federal funding will be block-granted to states; an overt response to allowing states freedom to do as they see fit with no federal oversight. Existing research shows that over time, block-granting programs ultimately leads to funding reductions and diversions.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) will be reinvented and existing work requirements will be strengthened to move people toward self-sufficiency. All fair housing regulations designed to further equity and reduce discrimination will be repealed.
Across all departments and programs, racial classifications and quotas will be eliminated.
What does this mean to the millions who rely on social infrastructure programs?
Turning power over to states will have disastrous consequences for low-income children and families. Thirteen red states have already refused federal money for summer meal programs for low-income and poor children, citing philosophical objections with welfare programs and lack of control over what families might purchase with the food-only benefit. At least 21 million children, living in families with annual incomes under $46,000 (for a family of 3), will not have access to a $40 per child monthly grocery benefit. The negative impacts on child health and development in the short-term, and the long-term implications of mired adult achievement and productivity because of poor nutrition in early childhood is, however, of little concern.
The elimination of Head Start will knowingly harm nearly 1 million low-income young children a year at a pivotal stage in their educational and social development: helping them build the skills they need to be successful in school and life while taking a comprehensive approach to meeting the needs of their families. The effects will be most consequential amongst Hispanic and African-American children, dual language learners, children who are homeless or in foster care, those who qualify for free lunch, and those whose mothers didn't graduate high school. Head Start children have a higher likelihood of graduating high school, attending college, and receiving a post-secondary degree, license, or certification as well as reduced teen pregnancy and criminal engagement and increased educational attainment among their children despite Mandate claims to the contrary.
Existing research shows that housing vouchers reduce homelessness, housing instability, and improves numerous outcomes for children and families. The proposed changes at HUD will make housing assistance more difficult for low-income individuals to access, which is difficult to comprehend given how challenging it is to access these programs already. Vouchers are critical to lift people out of poverty and reduce racial inequity. The access challenges will be most heavily concentrated among people with the lowest incomes and people of color as a result of decades of housing and employment discrimination.
At the heart of this attack on America is the resolve to ensure that all intents to promote equity and preserve the dignity, freedom and well-being of individuals are squelched, especially for those not white and who have, in any number of ways, been marginalized by societal and economic injustices. Humanity, protection of those less fortunate than the power elite, civility, and rights to basic needs does not fit with the plan laid out by right-wing zealots in the Mandate.
When Donald Trump assumed the presidency in 2017, it was unclear exactly how he would govern. Many conservatives, and even some liberals, thought the institution of the presidency would constrain him. In some ways, it did. But as his grip on the presidency loosened over the course of 2020 and into 2021, the guardrails that had worked to contain his most dangerous impulses similarly began to slip away.
Trump learned several lessons from his four years in the White House: to prize loyalty above competence or governing experience, and that divisive rhetoric focused on resentment, retribution, and retaliation motivates his base more than programmatic policy positions. His future actions are now easier to predict and will be far more dangerous. As one New York Times report noted, “Forces that somewhat contained his autocratic tendencies in his first term — staff members who saw their job as sometimes restraining him, a few congressional Republicans episodically willing to criticize or oppose him, a partisan balance on the Supreme Court that occasionally ruled against him — would all be weaker.”
The war that Trump would wage on the safety net in a second term would unfortunately, be unsurprisingly cruel. In many ways, his assault on the welfare state would be a continuation of a fifty-year war that began in earnest when Ronald Reagan won the White House in 1980. It was then that the Heritage Foundation put together its original Mandate for Leadership to prepare for Reagan’s presidency, described as “a blueprint for grabbing the government by its frayed New Deal lapels and shaking out 48 years of liberal policy.” Reagan ushered in a new era of opposition to the social safety net, which has left the welfare state in a state of fragmentation, passive neglect, and perpetual inadequacy.
The GOP assault on the safety net has been a decades-long battle, and there is no indication that Trump will suddenly change the party’s positioning on social welfare programs. In fact, the available evidence indicates that if he wins a second term, his strategy will shift from “death by a thousand cuts” to abolish, terminate, and destroy.
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As Affirmative Action Dies, How Can Fairness Thrive?
To right the wrongs of the Supreme Court decision, let us rethink access to higher-ed from the bottom up.
Aug 09, 2023
Could the death of affirmative action stir us to face the many barriers to educational equity hiding in plain sight?
Among Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries we rank sixth, just behind the U.K., in “most educated population.” Not bad, but we can do better. Standing in our way is the daunting cost of higher education combined with income inequality more extreme than in 110 nations. Such inequality most harms Americans of color: a group whose poverty rate in 2019 was more than double that of non-Hispanic white Americans.
Even our public universities require a family to come up with over $100,000 for a child’s four-year education. From 2010 to 2020 the yearly average tuition and fees at public universities grew from $7,132 to $9,349 and at private universities from $22,677 to $32,769. Of course, families must cover housing and living expenses as well.
We need to ensure more Americans can access the socioeconomic springboard that is higher-level education. We can do this by building more public universities; but without the exclusivity found today at many top-class public institutions.
One reason the cost is so high is that for years our colleges and universities have not kept up with growing demand. Over a decade, 2010 to 2020, our population grew by 23 million while the number of degree-granting institutions fell almost 15%, from 4,599 to 3,931. The number of undergraduates dropped by about 3 million.
Yet, earning an undergraduate degree, compared to only a high school diploma, has huge, life-long impacts: Without that degree you are twice as likely to be unemployed. Plus, lifelong earnings are 75% lower without a bachelor’s degree. Overall, despite the burden of college debt, the return on investment associated with getting a degree is 14%—double that of investing in stocks.
These forces have created a squeeze on upper-level education, as more potential students face fewer and fewer opportunities at universities.
As competition tightens it should be no surprise that in 2017 38 top U.S. institutions of higher education had more students from the top 1% of earners than from the entire bottom 60% of earners.
Children with stronger financial footing no doubt feel more parental pressure to go to college and are more likely to have impressive applications. Colleges are 1.5 times more likely to give wealthier students higher scores for extracurriculars than their lower-class peers. Of course, many differences give them an edge: Better-funded schools—due to their towns’ higher property values—no doubt offer superior learning opportunities. Additionally, instead of having to rush to an after-school job, children in wealthier families can pursue their hobbies and academic interests.
More than half of students with 1500+ SAT scores have parents in the top 25% of earners, and one-fifth of top SAT scorers come from the top 1%. True, 80% of schools don’t require these standardized tests. Nonetheless, a good score still gives one an advantage.
Finally, from a purely fiscal perspective, a university would rather admit a kid paying full tuition than one admitted with reduced tuition and loans.
With the number of total undergraduates falling and the share of better-prepared wealthy applicants growing, potentially outstanding students are left behind as opportunities disappear. They are disproportionately Hispanic and African American.
Driving this injustice in college admissions is the overall shortage of opportunities in higher-ed. Students suffering the most are not those who would’ve, could’ve, should’ve gone to Harvard, but because affirmative action died, will have to “settle” for Boston University. Those suffering the most are those denied the chance to go to college at all.
We need to ensure more Americans can access the socioeconomic springboard that is higher-level education. We can do this by building more public universities; but without the exclusivity found today at many top-class public institutions.
Those applying to the upper echelon of schools don’t need more options. Instead, our goal must be making higher-level education available to those now choosing the workforce when, in their hearts, they want education. We need more UMass Bostons (accepting 79% of applicants) and UC Merceds (accepting 87%)—schools that create the diversity in universities that was long the goal of affirmative action.
To achieve racial and economic justice, let us seize the sad death of affirmative action to motivate enlarging educational opportunities for all. We will then no longer fail the poorest Americans of all races.
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Chicago Police 'Disappeared' Over 7,000 People to Notorious Homan Square
Nearly 6,000 of those secretly imprisoned and interrogated at secret interrogation facility were black
Oct 19, 2015
Police in Chicago kidnapped and imprisoned more than 7,000 people between 2004 and 2015 at the secret interrogation warehouse now known publicly as Homan Square, according to new reporting by the Guardian.
Nearly 6,000 of the disappeared were black, which is proportionately more than double the city's black population and 82.2 percent of the 7,185 total individuals sent to the facility. An additional 11.8 percent were Hispanic, and 5.5 percent were white.
Only 68 people--less than one percent--held at the 'domestic black site' were allowed access to lawyers or to tell others where they were. As Common Dreams previously reported, the imprisonments and interrogations at Homan Square happened off the books, without detainees' names being entered into official law enforcement databases, which would have made them easier to find.
"No one knows where that person is at Homan Square," University of Chicago Law School professor Craig Futterman said. "They've disappeared at that point."
The latest disclosures in the Guardian's series on the site, the result of an ongoing transparency lawsuit and investigation, reveal that police officers kept detainees at Homan Square for hours and even days and pressured them to become informants as part of the department's anti-gang operations.
Spencer Ackerman reports:
The police portrayals contrast sharply with those of Homan Square detainees and their lawyers, who insist that "if this could happen to someone, it could happen to anyone". A 30-year-old man named Jose, for example, was one of the few detainees with an attorney present when he surrendered to police. He said officers at the warehouse questioned him even after his lawyer specifically told them he would not speak.
"The Fillmore and Homan boys," Jose said, referring to police and the facility's cross streets, "don't play by the rules."
"Not much shakes me in this business--baby murder, sex assault, I've done it all," one attorney, David Gaeger, told the Guardian. "That place was and is scary. It's a scary place. There's nothing about it that resembles a police station. It comes from a Bond movie or something." Gaeger's client was sent to Homan Square in 2011 for a marijuana arrest.
The majority of those sent to the facility were arrested for drug charges rather than violent crime.
Many others were never even charged.
Meanwhile, police accounts have varied widely from those of the disappeared. In many cases, officers stated that detainees were given access to attorneys when they were not, or the visits proved too short to be useful. One woman, identified as Chevoughn, said she was kept for eight to ten hours at Homan Square over theft allegations, where she was questioned in a "cage" and denied access to a lawyer until she went to the central booking after her kidnapping.
Cook County commissioner Richard Boykin and U.S. Representative Danny Davis demanded that the Department of Justice investigate the activities that took place at Homan Square in March.
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Challenging Racism in the Food System
The Federation of Southern Cooperatives fights for Black lands, agriculture, and equal justice
Oct 14, 2015
The 2015 US Food Sovereignty Prize will be awarded on October 14 in Des Moines, Iowa. This year, one of the two winners is the Federation of Southern Cooperatives, a network of cooperatives comprising mostly Black family farmers across the deep South. The Federation upholds a vision of local production for local consumption and defense of their family land needed for that local production. The second winner, the Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras, has a similar mission and values.
Some Federation of Southern Cooperatives farmers continued working land that the US government had deeded to their ancestors after they were freed from slavery. Ben Burkett, president of the federation and a member of the Mississippi Association of Cooperatives, farms the 164 acres that his great-grandfather was given by the government in 1889. Burkett still has the land title signed by President Grover Cleveland.
Composed of 35 agricultural co-ops, representing 12,000 farm families in 13 states from Texas to North Carolina—primarily African-American but also some Latino, Native American, and white—the Federation employs organizing, political advocacy, and legal strategies to defend land. It also helps develop economically self-sufficient communities, assisting member co-ops in purchasing supplies and finding marketing outlets. Moreover, it offers financial and technical assistance.
The Federation's work to keep land in the hands of the small farmers is one of the foundations of food sovereignty, a framework of policies, principles and practices through which food systems are controlled by, and serve the best interest of, people instead of corporations.
Taking on the "Last Plantation"
In 1920, one in every seven farmers in the US was African-American. Together, they owned nearly 15 million acres. By 1982, however, African-American farmers numbered one in 67, owning only 3.1 million acres. 1 Racism, violence, and massive migration from the rural South to the industrialized North caused a steady decline in the number of Black farmers.
Even for those who have long held onto their family's land, maintaining it today is a constant struggle. Historical patterns of racism and economic pressures in an agribusiness-driven food system have pushed many Black farmers off their land.
Institutional racism in the agricultural policies of the United States Department of Agriculture - nicknamed "the last plantation" - is also to blame for the loss of Black land. Over the years, studies by the US Civil Rights Commission (CRC), as well as by the USDA itself, showed that the USDA actively discriminated against Black farmers. A 1964 CRC study showed that the agency unjustly denied African-American farmers loans, disaster aid, and representation on agricultural committees. 2
In response, in 1997-98, African-American farmers - organized through the Federation of Southern Cooperatives and other Black organizations - filed class-action lawsuits against the USDA for unjustly denying them loans. The lawsuits were consolidated into one case, Pigford v. Glickman, settled in 1999.
However, due to delays in filing claims, nearly 60,000 farmers and their heirs were left out of this settlement. In November 2010, the U.S. Congress passed the Claims Settlement Act, or Pigford II, to compensate Black farmers left out of the first settlement. President Obama signed the Claims Settlement Act a month later, making $1.25 billion available for claimants through cash payments and loan forgiveness. The final settlement allocated about $50,000 each to roughly 16,000 farmers nationwide.
"I never would have thought the government would pay anybody any money," Burkett said of the settlement. "Initially, I would say, 'You never get a dime.' But I was wrong."
"Not As Good As We Want It to Be"
Over the years, each generation of the Burkett family bought more land, so the original 164 acres has expanded to 296 acres. On them, under the name of B&B Farms, Burkett - with the help of his family - grows 15 different varieties of vegetables and timber. Burkett says he believes the co-op structure is the only way to survive as a farmer in the rural South.
Speaking of Pigford and Pigford II, Burkett says he would have preferred that the money had been pooled and put into a trust to borrow against or to help new farmers. He added that that would have provided future generations with some seed funding and current farmers a layer of security.
In an interview, Burkett explains the rationale of the Federation taking a lead in the Pigford v. Glickman lawsuit.
"The lawsuit was about discrimination in the county office of the USDA. I got a loan to buy my equipment, seeds, and fertilizers. I could not write any checks directly. I had to write a check, and somebody in the [USDA] office had to sign it. They were only treating black farmers like that, not white farmers. For example, if I wanted to buy $5,000 worth of soybean seed, I had to find the seed from the Forest County co-op and get an invoice. I then returned to the [USDA] office and got the check. They sign the check, and I sign it, and then I have to take it back to the store. I'm just one of them; they treated me like that.
"A lot of farmers go in and get their loan approved. This happened to me, too. My loan was approved in February or March, but I didn't get the money until July 15th. That's cutting time. Planting is over. It was several things like that that brought the suit about. A lot of black farmers went into the USDA offices and were denied. They wouldn't even give them the application for a loan. The USDA officers told them, 'You can't make any money farming, so. . .' In the lawsuit, [denial of your loan] had to happen to you between '81 and '96. It was happening before then, and it is happening now, after the lawsuit. That's just the price of doing business, I suppose.
"They can pass a rule in Washington, D.C., [in the] USDA or Congress. Then, it comes to the state of Mississippi. If the state says they don't want to, they don't have to. We have a [USDA] county committee comprising five farmers who do the hiring, the firing, and everything else. Those fellows in Washington, D.C., can talk but can't fire anybody. They cannot fire a soul in the state of Mississippi.
"As long as it's set up that way, it won't change. I believe that in my heart. There are all kinds of laws about discrimination [that say] 'regardless of race, religion, creed or color.' Discrimination, morals, people's ideologies... you can't make policy or legislate that away.
"But, it is much better. I remember the '60s, I remember segregation, and it is better now. Not as good as we want it to be, but not as bad as it was."
Because racism persists in the agricultural system, hurting the efforts of Burkett and other Black farmers, the Federation of Southern Cooperatives keeps fighting for equal justice through grassroots mobilizations, in the courts, and through state and national legislation.
Burkett said, "Racism is still here in the marketplace and credit, but we have learned to deal with it and not give up on changing the system. We struggle every day to bring about a change."
Footnotes
- Public Broadcasting System, "Challenging the USDA (1980s and 1990s)," Black Farming and Land Loss: A History.
- Public Broadcasting System, "The Civil Rights Years (1954-1968)," Black Farming and Land Loss: A History.
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A Tale of Two Cities: In New Orleans, Perceptions of Recovery 'Starkly Divided' Along Racial Lines
Aug 24, 2015
Ten years after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita ravaged southern Louisiana, black and white residents of New Orleans are "starkly divided" in their perception of the state's recovery, according to new research published on Monday.
A survey (pdf) conducted by the Manship School of Mass Communication's Reilly Center for Media and Public Affairs at Louisiana State University found that nearly 60 percent of the black residents surveyed said Louisiana has "mostly not recovered," compared with 78 percent of white residents who said the state has "mostly recovered."
This divide was felt across various topics, including the local economy, public schools, hurricane and flood protection, and their communities' overall quality of life.
And among those who returned to New Orleans after Katrina, African-Americans--particularly women--faced the most difficulty getting back into their homes. One year after the storm, 70 percent of white residents were able to return to their homes, while only 42 percent of African Americans could do so.
"White and African-American residents of New Orleans tend to see the past decade in very different ways," said Professor Michael Henderson, who directed the survey. "Most white residents think life in New Orleans is better today - not simply better than the toughest times that followed Hurricane Katrina, but better than before the storm. Most African-American residents do not feel that way."
The findings underscore other outstanding criticisms of the recovery, such as that it led to the privatization of many of the city's services, including schools and hospitals, and the gentrification of many of the historically black and low-income neighborhoods.
Further, according to the study, nearly one-quarter of the city's current residents have moved there since Hurricane Katrina, which has increased racial and economic polarization. "These new arrivals to New Orleans have brought a markedly different demographic and socio-economic profile," the study notes. "They are relatively younger, more highly educated, higher earning, and more white than the long-term residents who lived in New Orleans before the storm and still do today."
Henderson presented his research on Monday at the opening of The Atlantic magazine's conference, New Orleans: Ten Years Later. The event, organized alongside the Urban Institute, features prominent politicians, journalists, artists, and others who are expected to discuss the "city's resilience while evaluating the challenges it and other communities across the country continue to face."
According to Henderson, "One topic on which majorities of white and African-American residents agree, however, is that their voices were not heard in the rebuilding process." Sixty-five percent of black residents and 52 percent of whites said "people like them had no say in the rebuilding process."
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Throughout the Country, Potential Black Jurors Face High Rejection Rates
In Louisiana's Caddo Parish, attorneys rejected 46 percent of potential black jurors on arbitrary grounds, a trend which is reflected in nationwide statistics
Aug 17, 2015
In hundreds of trials over 10 years, prosecutors in a Louisiana county rejected potential black jurors three times as often as they rejected potential jurors of other races--a trend which is reflected in court systems around the country, new reporting published Monday has found.
Blackstrikes: A Study of the Racially Disparate Use of Peremptory Challenges by the Caddo Parish District Attorney's Office (pdf), published by Reprieve Australia, analyzed 332 trials between 2003 and 2012.
While the report focuses on one region of Louisiana, additional research by the New York Times connects those statistics to others from nationwide courts.
In the U.S., peremptory challenges allow attorneys to reject jurors without giving a reason. However, if those dismissals are disputed based on race or gender, prosecutors must give a "neutral" excuse for the decision. According to the Times, such reasons include having long hair, wearing a beard, living in a low-income neighborhood, failing to meet eye contact, having a hyphenated last name, or displaying bad posture, among others. In Caddo, the study found that prosecutors rejected 46 percent of potential black jurors on peremptory grounds.
"Not one defendant was acquitted in a trial where there were two or fewer black jurors," writes Ursula Noye, vice president of Reprieve Australia and the study's author. "The acquittal rate in the 49 trials where the number of black jurors was three or more was 12 [percent]. In trials with five or more black jurors, defendants are acquitted 19 [percent] of the time."
Out of 8,318 potential jurors analyzed during those 10 years, only 35 percent were black--though Caddo's population is 48 percent black. The reasons for that discrepancy, according to Northwestern University School of Law professor Shari Diamond, could themselves be influenced by other racially skewed elements of the American justice system.
Diamond told the Times that "[b]lacks may be less likely to be on jury lists drawn from voter registration records, less likely to appear when called, more likely to qualify for hardship exemptions and more likely to be disqualified for felony convictions."
However, of those 35 percent, prosecutors rejected nearly half through peremptory challenges, while only 15 percent of other potential jurors were rejected on similar grounds.
According to the report:
A statistical analysis of this disparity shows that the difference is significant. Some individual prosecutors struck black prospective jurors at rates of 4.5 and 5 times the rate they struck those who are not black.
While a disparity in the rate of strikes between prospective jurors who are black and not black may be subject to innocent explanation, the consistently high blackstrikes rate across 332 trials over ten years indicates otherwise. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, the pattern disclosed in this study strongly suggests that race has played a role in the exercise of peremptory challenges by the Caddo Parish District Attorney's office.
As part of the national trend, the Times reports:
[I]n Alabama, Louisiana and North Carolina...prosecutors struck black jurors at double or triple the rates of others.
In Georgia, prosecutors excluded every black prospective juror in a death penalty case against a black defendant, which the Supreme Court has agreed to review this fall.
"If you repeatedly see all-white juries convict African-Americans, what does that do to public confidence in the criminal justice system?" asked Elisabeth A. Semel, the director of the death penalty clinic at the law school at the University of California, Berkeley.
In a 1987 death penalty case in Georgia, a 34-year-old black woman was excluded from the jury for being too close in age to the defendant, a 19-year-old black man. However, the prosecutors did not challenge the eight potential white jurors who were 35 or younger.
The U.S. Supreme Court will hear Foster v. Chatman later this year. The Times writes that the Court's decision may change the jury selection process.
Recent human rights protests around the country have highlighted deep-seated institutional racism in the American judicial system, such as the New York Police Department's racial profiling policies, the criminalization of poverty found in Ferguson, Missouri, or decades of off-the-books torture carried out against majority-black detainees on secret sites in Chicago. However, Noye's report exposes the extent those systems can reach. "Next to voting," she told the Times, serving on a jury is "perhaps the most important civil right."
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