Originally posted on TheGrio on Thursday, July 29, 2010

Today, SB 1070, Arizona’s controversial immigration law, went into effect. However, in a partial victory for opponents individual protestors and civil rights organizations to the U.S. Department of Justice–the law will be implemented only in part, and without the mandate for immigrants to carry their papers at all times and for law enforcement to check the immigration status of those they subjectively suspect to be undocumented.

By “tabling” the most violative provisions of civil and human rights law until the courts have resolved the issues, Judge Susan Bolton confirmed that it was “not in the public interest” for Arizona to preempt federal enforcement of immigration law. This decision comes on the heels of revelations that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) set a quota to deport 400,000 undocumented immigrants by September 30, 2010.

Clearly, while Arizona’s law may be problematic, so to are federal enforcement efforts.
According to the ICE Chief John Morton, intentional deportation efforts would prioritize only those immigrants who present a danger to American safety (of which there are not 400,000); however, federal, state, and local efforts to assign quotas or create laws that implicitly encourage racial profiling and demeaning social policy suggest an alternate reality…

To read this article in its entirety, follow this link.

From “Redefining Racism in the Tea Party Era“- Originally posted on The Grio

Recently, some among the Tea Party have declared that “racism” is not always a power relationship; but they are wrong. Racism is always about power. Racism and discrimination are structural (i.e. policy entrenched) barriers that inform actions that can systemically affect whole populations because of their perceived racial and ethnic affiliation. Specifically, “racism” is the negotiation between power and racial bias that shapes physical and social environments, and that determines whether opportunity is hampered or advanced. By definition, then, only those who have amassed full inclusion in the nation’s and world’s power structures can be called “racist.”

For example, a “racist” business model is one that targets African-American and Latino neighborhoods for predatory payday loans, deliberately and systematically trapping them in lending cycles that accumulate exorbitant fees that keep them trapped in poverty. A “racist” and “discriminatory” policy is one that validates the practice of criminalizing children of color (e.g., expulsion, arrest, incarceration, etc.) for abhorrent behaviors, while their white counterparts receive school-based counseling and other non-criminalizing interventions.

Bigotry and prejudice, on the other hand, are personal feelings that reflect a moral or spiritual poverty. Individual acts of bigotry and prejudice–as seen, for example, on political protest signs that hurl racial epithets–can drive the creation of the policy, but these are moral deficits more than they are “racist.” Though used interchangeably at times, bigotry and racism are not the same thing–even in a society struggling to redefine its relationship with the fluid and social nature of “race”…

To read the article in its entirety, follow this link.

From an opinion piece originally posted on TheGrio:

Raleigh, North Carolina is perceived by many as one of the more progressive cities in the nation. However, recent events have challenged that perception. In a recent 5-4 vote, the Wake County School Board ended its busing policy, which had been in place since the 1970s, in favor of a neighborhood-based education plan that would resegregate education and leave African American and Latino children in substandard schools.

According to Rev. William Barber II, NAACP State Conference President and lead protester against the resegregation of education, the policy change is more about a pedagogical challenge to the value of socioeconomic diversity than it is about busing. Busing was a means to an end, a strategy to ensure that children, who were likely to live in segregated residential areas, would have an opportunity to learn in diverse environments.

“Diversity is one of our seven components of school excellence,” Rev. Barber said. “If we don’t challenge this, we’ll see the creation of high poverty, racially identifiable schools.”

I thought we settled this already. In the U.S. Supreme Court’s1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, it was clear that separate was inherently unequal and unconstitutional, and that any effort to segregate education is a violation of civil rights. In the 2003 Grutter v. Bollinger decision, the nation’s highest court reiterated that, “student body diversity is a compelling state interest.” However, the Wake County School Board, by returning to “neighborhood schools” has essentially elected to ignore these decisions…

To read the complete article and see accompanying videos, please follow this link.

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