At a time like this, even modest, and potentially temporary, declines in the unemployment rate deserve a round of applause. Well, unless the decline in the unemployment rate only brings it back to where it was for the first three months of the year. And unless the rate remains significantly higher for people who had been stranded furthest from opportunity even before the recession. So, maybe a golf clap?
The White House is calling the maneuver "a multi-layered effort to target illicit networks trafficking in people, drugs, illegal weapons and money.” But in practice, beefing up border enforcement under existing federal programs has only drained our government resources, has put into serious jeopardy our commitment to due process under the law, and has presented serious human rights implications.
For example, Operation Streamline, an existing Department of Homeland Security program, was instituted in 2005, and mandates the federal criminal prosecution and imprisonment of all people who cross the U.S.-Mexico border unlawfully.
When Rand Paul won a primary last Tuesday, becoming Kentucky’s Republican nominee for the Senate, he declared himself a national leader of the Tea Party movement. It was an important moment for the movement as it, coming on the heels of the election of Scott Brown to the Senate, served as another step in its potential transformation from a loosely confederated group of grassroots groups into national level political force. But, as Dr. Paul’s attacks on the Civil Rights Act of 1964 just two days later highlighted, the true implications of the movement’s ideology are chilling to say the least.
According to a 2007 poll, Americans define human rights as the rights to equal opportunity, freedom from discrimination, a fair criminal justice system, and freedom from torture or abuse by law enforcement. Despite the current political wrangling over how to reform it, a majority of Americans even believe that access to health care is a human right.
There was a time when America’s leaders echoed those sentiments. President Franklin D. Roosevelt embraced them when he told Congress, “Freedom means the supremacy of human rights everywhere.” And in 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed into law the Civil Rights Act, forming the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. The Commission was intended to conduct critical reviews of social needs and public policy – in essence, to be the conscience of the nation. Regardless of circumstances or leadership, the body was to operate as an independent voice for the broad range of civil rights issues facing the country.
A unique challenge faces advocates for meaningful dialogue on racial inequality and injustice in America. As people of color have made even modest gains in education, economic security, and professional opportunities over the past few decades, some Americans have increasingly insisted that racial discrimination is largely a thing of the past. Today that sentiment is more widespread and vocal than ever, just a few days after what would have been Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 81st birthday, and as Barack Obama marks the one-year anniversary of his historic inauguration as the nation’s 44th president.
Equal opportunity is a core national value, and Americans strongly believe that it should not be hindered by gender, ethnicity, race, or other aspects of who we are. However, President Obama’s important political victory threatens to eclipse the large body of evidence documenting the continuing influence of racial bias and other barriers to equal opportunity. Although the current economic crisis has encouraged a welcome focus on socioeconomic inequality, it has often been to the exclusion of racial justice.
The Opportunity Agenda has worked to find new and better ways to talk about equal opportunity and diversity, and the barriers that hamper them. Our latest work in this area is a memo, Ten Lessons for Talking About Racial Equity in the Age of Obama, laying out principles that can help facilitate productive communications on racial justice problems and solutions.
This memo is intended for communications with “persuadables”—that is, audiences who are neither solidly favorable nor unfavorable on these issues, but are capable of persuasion through the right approaches. This includes large segments of the U.S. public, as well as many journalists, policymakers, and opinion leaders who influence the public debate. The recommendations are derived from public opinion and media research as well as practical experience over the last year.
While the election of President Obama marks an incredible milestone in the progress we’ve made as a nation, we still have miles to go.
All people should have the opportunity to succeed in life, regardless of their race. But a recent Illinois district court decision jeopardizes that possibility.
In U.S. v. Board of Educ. of City of Chicago, an Illinois district court ended a twenty-three year old consent decree, which was intended to ameliorate segregation in Chicago public schools. Viewing the Chicago public school system through the lens of the particular constitutional violations that had warranted the initiation of the decree in 1980, the court determined that the consent decree was no longer necessary, because those "vestiges of discrimination" identified in 1980 were "no longer."
With an eye towards racial progress and expanded opportunity in the United States, this narrow view of segregation in public schools is deeply problematic. Although we might hope that race does not matter, too often it does. Even though over fifty years have passed since Brown v. Board of Education, according to a 2005 report by the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, almost 2.4 million students—including about one in six of both black and Latino students—attend schools in which the student population is 99-100% minority. Nearly 40% of both black and Latino students attend schools in which the student population is 90-100% minority; conversely, only 1% of white students attend such schools. Additionally, 72% of black and 77% of Latino students attend schools in which minorities constitute a majority of the students.
Last week, the Labor Department reported that youth unemployment stands at 18.2%, nearly twice the national average of 9.8%. The percentage of young people without a job is a staggering 53.4 percent, the highest figure since World War II. Looking deeper, the statistics for youth of color are terrible and telling.
According to the most recent data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 40.7% of black youth between 16-19 are unemployed, almost double the amount of whites teenagers (23%). For Latinos the same age, the rate is nearly 30%. Get a little older and the gap grows wider. Unemployment for black Americans aged 20-24 is 27.1%, over twice that faced by white youth (13.1%) in the same age range.
The glaring differences indicate that unemployment is not only decidedly raced, but also that the current economic condition is wholly unforgiving for young people of color. Only a massive, well-funded set of green jobs programs explicitly designed to close those racial gaps can create a truly vital, full-employment economy.
After the arrest of respected African-American scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr., which sparked a renewed debate about racial profiling, we should remember that racial profiling is still a common occurrence appearing in different forms and without media attention. Often, even in clear instances of discrimination, not much is done about racial profiling in America.
Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who touts himself as America's Toughest Sheriff, is a prime example of this. Arpaio is Sheriff of Arizona's Maricopa County where his controversial tactics have made him a household name. Among his more incendiary practices is his"Tent City" an extension of Maricopa County Jail, where prisoners are housed in tents in the desert, under inhumane conditions. Additionally, his publicized march of shackled immigrants to a segregated portion of the Tent City last February not only exemplifies Arpaio’s disrespect of detainees' rights to fair treatment, but also demonstrates his continuing disregard for the rights of others, especially Latinos, in Maricopa Country.
Specifically, Arpaio has transformed Maricopa County Police Department into an immigration-enforcement agency, and gained a Department of Justice investigation in the process. A recent New Yorker story also sheds light on his character, speaking volumes about his self-promotion and abuse of power that has led to over 2,700 lawsuits in federal and county courts.
Arpaio is sadly powerful due to his involvement with the 287(g) program, which formalizes partnerships between the federal government and local law enforcement officials under which local police are authorized to enforce federal immigration laws. While Arpaio believes he is enforcing the law, the system in place is short on regulation of his rampant racial profiling. Arpaio has used the program as a pretext to search for undocumented immigrants in numerous immigrant sweeps wherein he stops Latinos for minor traffic violations in order to inquire about their documentation.
Organizations have called for the program’s repeal as it encourages police to target Latinos for minor or fabricated crimes in an effort to get them deported. However, it was recently announced that the program would be, in fact, extended.
Arpaio said he plans to continue to conduct his “immigration enforcement efforts” under state laws. Only time will tell if the current administration will take a step against Apraio’s abuses that have created an environment of fear and intimidation among immigrants communities. Racial profiling is embedded in our society in subtle ways but it is never too late to target a system like 287(g) that allows it to persist. We must uphold the value of racial justice that we should not be judged by the color of our skin. The bigotry of Sheriff Arpaio and his supporters must be exposed, confronted, and overcome, and the system that allows it must be dismantled.
Only two people know what actually went down between Professor Henry Louis Gates and Sergeant James Crowley last week, and even they disagree—apparently in good faith—about what transpired. So as the two prepare to have a beer with President Obama later this week, let’s move on to a more productive conversation about race and law enforcement.
Whatever happened at Gates’s Cambridge home, Americans correctly see disparate law enforcement based on race as a serious problem that needs remedying. In a 2007 national poll commissioned by The Opportunity Agenda, 84% of Americans agreed that “when the police stop and search people solely based on their race or ethnicity they are violating their human rights.”
As many explained in subsequent focus groups, this treatment, when it occurs, is also a violation of American values. As a Caucasian participant in Columbus, OH, explained, “Life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. You’re restricting people’s ability to be happy in their life… that’s a violation of their human rights.”
Many also noted that unwarranted police stops are frequently accompanied by disrespectful treatment. As an African-American woman in Houston asserted, “the majority of the time they [police officers] mistreat them when they pull them over, they talk bad to them or hit them or disrespect them. They don’t just say, ‘May I see your driver’s license?’ They say, ‘Whatchya doing boy, why are you here? You don’t have any business over here, do you live here?’”
And we heard from many Latino participants that officers increasingly, and inappropriately, link their race and ethnicity to stereotypes about immigration status: “They should not pull you over just to ask for your papers because when you are getting pulled over they are supposed to have just cause. They need to have a reason for why they are pulling you over. They can’t just say, ‘Oh, he’s Mexican, let’s pull him over and find out if he is from here or not.’ I am Hispanic, but I was born here and that doesn’t give you the right to just pull me over for no reason at all and ask me if I am here legally. That is a violation of my rights.”
As Obama’s first 100 days draw to a close, new research shows that addressing today’s economic crisis will require reinvesting in a bedrock American principle: Opportunity. The State of Opportunity, released last week by The Opportunity Agenda, measures our nation’s progress in ensuring that all Americans, and our nation as a whole, have a fair chance to achieve their full potential. The results are sobering.
Drawing on a large body of government data, the report charts opportunity on a range of indicators—economic security and mobility, equal access, democratic voice, the chance to start over after missteps or misfortune, and a coherent sense of community—across a variety of sectors—from employment to education to housing to criminal justice and beyond. Because the most recent year for which most government data is available is 2007, the report provides a unique picture of opportunity just before today’s crisis took hold.
It shows that Opportunity was both highly uneven and highly unequal for millions of Americans before the recession that began in December of 2007. Over 37 million Americans—12.5% of our nation’s population—were living in poverty in 2007, while the rates for Latinos and African Americans were a staggering 21.5% and 24.5%, respectively. Almost 11% of full-time workers were already living in poverty that year.
Significant gender and racial wage gaps existed in 2007, with women making just 78.2% of men’s median wages, and women with a college degree earning just 65.2% of the wages made by equally-educated men. Latinos earned just 72.6% of the white median wage, and African Americans earned 75.2%. Latina women earned just 58.7% of all men. Overall, the richest 20% of Americans earned almost half (47.3%) of all income in the country, and the richest 5% earned 20.1%.
The Opportunity Agenda is pleased to announce the release of our 2009 State of Opportunity in America report. The report documents America’s progress in protecting opportunity for everyone who lives here, and finds that access to full and equal opportunity is still very much a mixed reality.
By analyzing government data across a range of indicators, this update of our 2006 and 2007 reports assesses our progress in attaining opportunity for our nation as a whole, as well as for different groups within our society. The report paints a vivid picture of opportunity at the dawn of the current economic crisis. But even before the downturn, different American communities experienced starkly different levels of opportunity. The nation has made great strides in increasing opportunity in some areas and for some communities, but many groups of Americans are being left behind in ways that hard work and personal achievement alone cannot address.
These past few years have seen an economy in turmoil, impaired financial mobility, marginal prospects for educational advancement, and a broken health care system. These conditions thwart the nation as a whole as it strives to be a land of opportunity for the 21st Century. At the same time, women, people of color, and moderate- and lower-income individuals and families are being hardest hit and left behind as they face multiple barriers to opportunity.
These barriers are a problem not only for individuals and families, but also for our economy and nation as a whole. They also present an opportunity. Addressing them now would translate to thousands more college graduates prepared for a 21st Century global economy, millions of healthier children in stronger communities, higher wages and greater productivity for American workers, far fewer mortgage defaults and bankruptcies, and far less strain on our social services and justice system. Conversely, the areas of improved opportunity revealed by our analysis represent a foundation and lessons on which to build as the nation works to restore the American dream for everyone who lives here.
In the days just before and after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s 80th birthday, I had the opportunity to visit two places that are integral to his modern day legacy: Washington, DC and the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans. As I witnessed the inauguration of Barack Obama as the nation's 44th president, I thought of Dr. King's admonition, in his 1963 I Have a Dream Speech, that "we cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote." Despite some continuing problems at the ballot box, this was an election about which Dr. King could be truly satisfied; African Americans turned out in record numbers to elect the nation's first African-American president.
In the same speech, Dr. King reminded the nation that "when the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the 'unalienable Rights' of 'Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.'"
For anyone who's visited the Gulf Coast recently, it is obvious that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as the people of the Lower Ninth Ward-overwhelmingly poor and African-American-are concerned. The world witnessed in 2005 how our government left the region's people to drown in their homes and suffer unspeakable conditions in the New Orleans Convention Center and Superdome. More than three years later, that abandonment continues.
The Opportunity Agenda is pleased to help announce, on behalf of the Progressive Ideas Network, the release of a new collection of essays outlining a new long-term vision for America.
"New Progressive Voices: Values and Policy for the 21st Century" brings together leaders from a wide array of organizations, of different backgrounds, to present a bold, progressive agenda for America's future. Integral to the project is a commitment, not to just presenting a new direction, but also realistic approaches to solving our collective problems.
In recent decades, progressivism has faltered. It was conservatives who developed and moved the big ideas, while progressives triangulated, tweaked, and tinkered. Since the 1960s, progressives have been running on the fumes of the New Deal and Great Society, confining themselves largely to narrow issue silos and poll-tested phrases and positions. Content to play defense in many of the major political battles of the day, they have all too often been cowed into submission by the vitality and confidence of the other side.
Now that is changing. Instead of obsessing about what we are against, progressives have begun to think about what we're for -- to prepare once again to play our role as agents of bold ideas and political and social transformation. Finding new confidence and imagination, we have begun to renew our intellectual capital. The essays in this volume draw on that new store of capital to sketch the outlines of a progressive agenda for 21st-century America.
Our own Executive Director, Alan Jenkins, contributed an essay to the collection. You can read "The Promise of Opportunity" here.
STATE BLOGS
