Institutional racism, also known as systemic racism, is a form of
racism
Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to inherited attributes and can be divided based on the superiority of one race over another. It may also mean prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism ...
that is embedded in the laws and regulations of a society or an organization. It manifests as
discrimination
Discrimination is the act of making unjustified distinctions between people based on the groups, classes, or other categories to which they belong or are perceived to belong. People may be discriminated on the basis of race, gender, age, relig ...
in areas such as
criminal justice
Criminal justice is the delivery of justice to those who have been accused of committing crimes. The criminal justice system is a series of government agencies and institutions. Goals include the Rehabilitation (penology), rehabilitation of o ...
, employment, housing, health care, education, and
political representation
Political representation is the activity of making citizens "present" in public policy-making processes when political actors act in the best interest of citizens. This definition of political representation is consistent with a wide variety of vi ...
.
The term ''institutional racism'' was first coined in 1967 by
Stokely Carmichael
Kwame Ture (; born Stokely Standiford Churchill Carmichael; June 29, 1941November 15, 1998) was a prominent organizer in the civil rights movement in the United States and the global pan-African movement. Born in Trinidad, he grew up in the Unite ...
and
Charles V. Hamilton
Charles Vernon Hamilton (born October 19, 1929) is a political scientist, civil rights leader, and the W. S. Sayre Professor Emeritus of Government and Political Science at Columbia University.
Biography
Hamilton was born in Muskogee, Oklahoma. ...
in '' Black Power: The Politics of Liberation''. Carmichael and Hamilton wrote in 1967 that while individual racism is often identifiable because of its overt nature, institutional racism is less perceptible because of its "less overt, far more subtle" nature. Institutional racism "originates in the operation of established and respected forces in the society, and thus receives far less public condemnation than ndividual racism.
Institutional racism was defined by Sir William Macpherson in the UK's Lawrence report (1999) as: "The collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture, or ethnic origin". It can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes and behaviour that amount to discrimination through prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness, and racist stereotyping which disadvantage minority ethnic people."
Classification
In the past, the term "racism" was often used interchangeably with "prejudice," forming an opinion of another person based on incomplete information. In the last quarter of the 20th Century, racism became associated with systems rather than individuals. In 1977, David Wellman in his book ''Portraits of White Racism'', defined racism as "a system of advantage based on race," illustrating this definition through countless examples of white people supporting racist institutions while denying that they are prejudiced. White people can be nice to people of color while continuing to uphold systemic racism that benefits them, such as lending practices, well-funded schools, and job opportunities. The concept of institutional racism re-emerged in political discourse in the mid and late 1990s, but has remained a contested concept. Institutional racism is where race causes a different level of access to the goods, services, and opportunities of society.
Professor James M. Jones theorised three major types of racism: personally mediated,
internalized
Internalization ( or internalisation) is the process of making something internal, with more specific meanings in various fields. It is the opposite of externalization.
Psychology and sociology
In psychology, internalization is the outcome of ...
, and institutionalized. Personally mediated racism includes the deliberate specific social attitudes to racially prejudiced action (
bigoted
Discrimination is the act of making unjustified distinctions between people based on the groups, classes, or other categories to which they belong or are perceived to belong. People may be discriminated on the basis of race, gender, age, rel ...
differential assumptions about abilities, motives, and the intentions of others according to their race), discrimination (the differential actions and behaviours towards others according to their race),
stereotyping
In social psychology, a stereotype is a generalized belief about a particular category of people. It is an expectation that people might have about every person of a particular group. The type of expectation can vary; it can be, for example ...
, commission, and omission (disrespect, suspicion, devaluation, and dehumanization).
Internalized racism
Internalized racism is a form of internalized oppression, defined by sociologist Karen D. Pyke as the "internalization of racial oppression by the racially subordinated." In her study ''The Psychology of Racism, '' Robin Nicole Johnson emphasizes ...
is the acceptance, by members of the racially
stigmatized
Social stigma is the disapproval of, or discrimination against, an individual or group based on perceived characteristics that serve to distinguish them from other members of a society. Social stigmas are commonly related to culture, gender, rac ...
people, of negative perceptions about their own abilities and intrinsic worth, characterized by low
self-esteem
Self-esteem is confidence in one's own worth or abilities. Self-esteem encompasses beliefs about oneself (for example, "I am loved", "I am worthy") as well as emotional states, such as triumph, despair, pride, and shame. Smith and Mackie (2007) d ...
, and low esteem of others like them. This racism can be manifested through embracing "whiteness" (e.g.
stratification
Stratification may refer to:
Mathematics
* Stratification (mathematics), any consistent assignment of numbers to predicate symbols
* Data stratification in statistics
Earth sciences
* Stable and unstable stratification
* Stratification, or str ...
by skin colour in non-white communities), self-devaluation (e.g., racial slurs, nicknames, rejection of ancestral culture, etc.), and resignation, helplessness, and hopelessness (e.g.,
dropping out
Dropping out refers to leaving high school, college, university or another group for practical reasons, necessities, inability, apathy, or disillusionment with the system from which the individual in question leaves.
Canada
In Canada, most ind ...
of school, failing to vote, engaging in health-risk practices, etc.).
Persistent negative
stereotype
In social psychology, a stereotype is a generalized belief about a particular category of people. It is an expectation that people might have about every person of a particular group. The type of expectation can vary; it can be, for example ...
s fuel institutional racism, and influence
interpersonal relations
The concept of interpersonal relationship involves social associations, connections, or affiliations between two or more people. Interpersonal relationships vary in their degree of intimacy or self-disclosure, but also in their duration, in t ...
redlining
In the United States, redlining is a discriminatory practice in which services (financial and otherwise) are withheld from potential customers who reside in neighborhoods classified as "hazardous" to investment; these neighborhoods have signif ...
, and shapes views about crime, crime policy, and welfare policy, especially if the contextual information is stereotype-consistent.
Institutional racism is distinguished from racial bigotry by the existence of systemic, institutionalized policies, practices and economic and political structures that place minority racial and ethnic groups at a disadvantage in relation to an institution's racial or ethnic majority. One example of the difference is public school budgets in the U.S. (including local levies and bonds) and the quality of teachers, which are often correlated with property values: rich neighborhoods are more likely to be more "white" and to have better teachers and more money for education, even in public schools. Restrictive housing contracts and bank lending policies have also been listed as forms of institutional racism.
Other examples sometimes described as institutional racism are
racial profiling
Racial profiling or ethnic profiling is the act of suspecting, targeting or discriminating against a person on the basis of their ethnicity, religion or nationality, rather than on individual suspicion or available evidence. Racial profiling involv ...
by security guards and police, use of stereotyped racial caricatures, the under- and misrepresentation of certain racial groups in the mass media, and race-based barriers to gainful employment and professional advancement. Additionally, differential access to goods, services, and opportunities of society can be included within the term "institutional racism", such as unpaved streets and roads, inherited socio-economic disadvantage, and
standardized test
A standardized test is a test that is administered and scored in a consistent, or "standard", manner. Standardized tests are designed in such a way that the questions and interpretations are consistent and are administered and scored in a predete ...
s (each ethnic group prepared for it differently; many are poorly prepared).
Some
sociological
Sociology is a social science that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. It uses various methods of empirical investigation and ...
investigators distinguish between institutional racism and "
structural racism
A structure is an arrangement and organization of interrelated elements in a material object or system, or the object or system so organized. Material structures include man-made objects such as buildings and machines and natural objects such as ...
" (sometimes referred to as "structured
racialization
In sociology, racialization or ethnicization is a political process of ascribing Ethnic group, ethnic or Race (human classification), racial identities to a relationship, social practice, or group that did not identify itself as such. Racializati ...
"). The former focuses upon the norms and practices within an institution, the latter upon the ''interactions'' among institutions, interactions that produce racialized outcomes against non-white people. An important feature of structural racism is that it cannot be reduced to individual
prejudice
Prejudice can be an affective feeling towards a person based on their perceived group membership. The word is often used to refer to a preconceived (usually unfavourable) evaluation or classification of another person based on that person's per ...
or to the single function of an institution.
Algeria
The French political thinker
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis Charles Henri Clérel, comte de Tocqueville (; 29 July 180516 April 1859), colloquially known as Tocqueville (), was a French aristocrat, diplomat, political scientist, political philosopher and historian. He is best known for his works ...
(1805–1859) supported colonization in general, particularly the colonization of Algeria. In several speeches on France's foreign affairs and in two official reports presented to the National Assembly in March 1847 on behalf of an ''ad hoc'' commission, he also repeatedly commented on and analyzed the issue in his voluminous correspondence. In short, Tocqueville developed a theoretical basis for French expansion in North Africa. He even studied the
Koran
The Quran (, ; Standard Arabic: , Quranic Arabic: , , 'the recitation'), also romanized Qur'an or Koran, is the central religious text of Islam, believed by Muslims to be a revelation from God. It is organized in 114 chapters (pl.: , sing.: ...
, sharply concluding that
Islam
Islam (; ar, ۘالِإسلَام, , ) is an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic Monotheism#Islam, monotheistic religion centred primarily around the Quran, a religious text considered by Muslims to be the direct word of God in Islam, God (or ...
was "the main cause of the decadence... of the Muslim world". His opinions are also instructive about the early years of the French conquest and how the colonial state was first set up and organized. Tocqueville emerged as an early advocate of "total domination" in Algeria and subsequent "devastation of the country".
On 31 January 1830,
Charles X
Charles X (born Charles Philippe, Count of Artois; 9 October 1757 – 6 November 1836) was King of France from 16 September 1824 until 2 August 1830. An uncle of the uncrowned Louis XVII and younger brother to reigning kings Louis XVI and Loui ...
capturing Algiers made the French state thus begin what became institutional racism directed at the Kabyle, or Berbers, of Arab descent in north Africa. The
Dey of Algiers
Dey (Arabic: داي), from the Turkish honorific title ''dayı'', literally meaning uncle, was the title given to the rulers of the Regency of Algiers (Algeria), Tripoli,Bertarelli (1929), p. 203. and Tunis under the Ottoman Empire from 1671 on ...
had insulted the monarchy by slapping the French ambassador with a fly whisk, and the French used that pretext to invade and to put an end to
piracy
Piracy is an act of robbery or criminal violence by ship or boat-borne attackers upon another ship or a coastal area, typically with the goal of stealing cargo and other valuable goods. Those who conduct acts of piracy are called pirates, v ...
in the vicinity. The unofficial objective was to restore the prestige of the French crown and gain a foothold in North Africa, thereby preventing the British gaining advantage over France in the Mediterranean. The
July Monarchy
The July Monarchy (french: Monarchie de Juillet), officially the Kingdom of France (french: Royaume de France), was a liberal constitutional monarchy in France under , starting on 26 July 1830, with the July Revolution of 1830, and ending 23 F ...
, which came to power in 1830, inherited that burden. The next ten years saw the indigenous population subjected to the might of the French army. By 1840, more conservative elements gained control of the government and dispatched General
Thomas Bugeaud
Thomas Robert Bugeaud, marquis de la Piconnerie, duc d'Isly (15 October 178410 June 1849) was a Marshal of France and Governor-General of Algeria.
Early life
He was born at Limoges, a member of a noble family of Périgord (Occitania), the y ...
, which marked the real start of the country's conquest. The methods employed were atrocious; the army deported villagers ''en masse'', massacred the men and raped the women, took the children hostage, stole livestock and harvests and destroyed orchards. Tocqueville wrote, "I believe the laws of war entitle us to ravage the country and that we must do this, either by destroying crops at harvest time, or all the time by making rapid incursions, known as raids, the aim of which is to carry off men and flocks."
Tocqueville added: "In France I have often heard people I respect, but do not approve, deplore
he army
He or HE may refer to:
Language
* He (pronoun), an English pronoun
* He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ
* He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets
* He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' in ...
burning harvests, emptying granaries and seizing unarmed men, women and children. As I see it, these are unfortunate necessities that any people wishing to make war on the Arabs must accept." He also advocated that "all political freedoms must be suspended in Algeria".
Marshal Bugeaud
Thomas Robert Bugeaud, marquis de la Piconnerie, duc d'Isly (15 October 178410 June 1849) was a Marshal of France and Governor-General of Algeria.
Early life
He was born at Limoges, a member of a noble family of Périgord (Occitania), the y ...
, who was the first governor-general and also headed the civil government, was rewarded by the King for the conquest and having instituted the
systemic
Systemic fundamental to a predominant social, economic, or political practice. This refers to:
In medicine
In medicine, ''systemic'' means affecting the whole body, or at least multiple organ systems. It is in contrast with ''topical'' or ''loc ...
use of torture, and following a "
scorched earth
A scorched-earth policy is a military strategy that aims to destroy anything that might be useful to the enemy. Any assets that could be used by the enemy may be targeted, which usually includes obvious weapons, transport vehicles, communi ...
" policy against the Arab population.
Land grab
Once the conquest of Algiers was accomplished soldier-politician
Bertrand Clauzel
Bertrand, comte Clauzel (12 December 177221 April 1842) was a Marshal of France. When asked on Saint Helena which of his Generals was the most skillful Napoleon named Clauzel along with Louis-Gabriel Suchet and Étienne Maurice GérardOjala, Jean ...
and others formed a company to acquire agricultural land and, despite official discouragement, to subsidise its settlement by European farmers, which triggered a
land rush
A land run or land rush was an event in which previously restricted land of the United States was opened to Homestead Act, homestead on a first-arrival basis. Lands were opened and sold first-come or by bid, or won by lottery, or by means other th ...
. He became governor general in 1835 and used his office to make private investments in land by encouraging bureaucrats and army officers in his administration to do the same. The development created a vested interest in government officials for greater French involvement in Algeria. Merchants with influence in the government also saw profit in land speculation, which resulted in expanding the French occupation. Large agricultural tracts were carved out, and factories and businesses began exploiting cheap local labour and also benefited from laws and edicts that gave control to the French. The policy of limited occupation was formally abandoned in 1840 and replaced by one of complete control. By 1843, Tocqueville intended to protect and extend expropriation by the
rule of law
The rule of law is the political philosophy that all citizens and institutions within a country, state, or community are accountable to the same laws, including lawmakers and leaders. The rule of law is defined in the ''Encyclopedia Britannica ...
and so advocated setting up special courts, which were based on what he called "summary" procedure, to carry out a massive expropriation for the benefit of French and other European settlers, who could thus purchase land at attractive prices and live in villages, which the colonial government had equipped with fortifications, churches, schools and even fountains. His belief, which framed his writings and influenced state actions, was that the local people, who had been driven out by the army and robbed of their land by the judges, would gradually die out.Alexis De Tocqueville, ''Writings on Empire and Slavery'', ed. Jennifer Pitts, Johns Hopkins (Baltimore), 2001, pp. 57–64.
The French colonial state, as he conceived it and as it took shape in Algeria, was a two-tiered organization, quite unlike the regime in
Mainland France
Metropolitan France (french: France métropolitaine or ''la Métropole''), also known as European France (french: Territoire européen de la France) is the area of France which is geographically in Europe. This collective name for the European ...
. It introduced two different political and legal systems that were based on racial, cultural and religious distinctions. According to Tocqueville, the system that should apply to the Colons would enable them alone to hold property and travel freely but would deprive them of any form of political freedom, which should be suspended in Algeria. "There should therefore be two quite distinct legislations in Africa, for there are two very separate communities. There is absolutely nothing to prevent us treating Europeans as if they were on their own, as the rules established for them will only ever apply to them".
Following the defeats of the resistance in the 1840s, colonisation continued apace. By 1848, Algeria was populated by 109,400 Europeans, only 42,274 of whom were French. The leader of the Colons delegation,
Auguste Warnier
Auguste Hubert Warnier (8 January 1810 – 15 March 1875) was a French medical doctor, journalist and politician who spent most of his career in Algeria.
At first he was a Saint-Simonian and was sympathetic to the local population.
He thought the ...
(1810–1875), succeeded in the 1870s in modifying or introducing legislation to facilitate the private transfer of land to settlers and continue Algeria's appropriation of land from the local population and distribution to settlers. Europeans held about 30% of the total arable land, including the bulk of the most fertile land and most of the areas under irrigation. In 1881, the ''
Code de l'Indigénat
In communications and information processing, code is a system of rules to convert information—such as a letter, word, sound, image, or gesture—into another form, sometimes shortened or secret, for communication through a communication c ...
'' made the discrimination official by creating specific penalties for indigenes and by organising the seizure or appropriation of their lands. By 1900, Europeans produced more than two-thirds of the value of output in agriculture and practically all of the agricultural exports. The colonial government imposed more and higher taxes on
Muslims
Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abraha ...
than on
Europeans
Europeans are the focus of European ethnology, the field of anthropology related to the various ethnic groups that reside in the states of Europe. Groups may be defined by common genetic ancestry, common language, or both. Pan and Pfeil (2004) ...
. The Muslims, in addition to paying traditional taxes dating from before the French conquest, also paid new taxes from which the Colons were normally exempted. In 1909, for instance, Muslims, who made up almost 90% of the population but produced 20% of Algeria's income, paid 70% of direct taxes and 45% of the total taxes collected. Also, Colons controlled how the revenues would be spent and so their towns had handsome municipal buildings, paved streets lined with trees, fountains and statues, but Algerian villages and rural areas benefited little, if at all, from tax revenues.
In education
The colonial regime proved severely detrimental to overall education for Muslims, who had previously relied on religious schools to learn reading, writing, and religion. The state appropriated the habus lands, the religious foundations that constituted the main source of income for religious institutions, including schools, in 1843, but colonial officials refused to allocate enough money to maintain schools and mosques properly and to provide for enough teachers and religious leaders for the growing population. In 1892, more than five times as much was spent for the education of Europeans as for Muslims, who had five times as many children of school age. Because few Muslim teachers were trained, Muslim schools were largely staffed by French teachers. Even a state-operated
madrasa
Madrasa (, also , ; Arabic: مدرسة , pl. , ) is the Arabic word for any type of educational institution, secular or religious (of any religion), whether for elementary instruction or higher learning. The word is variously transliterated '' ...
often had French faculty members. Attempts to institute
bilingual
Multilingualism is the use of more than one language, either by an individual speaker or by a group of speakers. It is believed that multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population. More than half of all E ...
,
bicultural
Biculturalism in sociology describes the co-existence, to varying degrees, of two originally distinct cultures.
Official policy recognizing, fostering, or encouraging biculturalism typically emerges in countries that have emerged from a histo ...
schools, intended to bring Muslim and European children together in the classroom, were a conspicuous failure, which were rejected by both communities and phased out after 1870. According to one estimate, fewer than 5% of Algerian children attended any kind of school in 1870. As late as 1954, only one Muslim boy in five and one girl in sixteen received formal schooling. Efforts were begun by 1890 to educate a small number of Muslims along with European students in the French school system as part of France's "civilising mission" in Algeria. The curriculum was entirely French and allowed no place for Arabic studies, which were deliberately downgraded even in Muslim schools. Within a generation, a class of well-educated, gallicized Muslims, the '' évolués'' (literally "evolved ones"), had been created.
Enfranchisement
Following its conquest of
Ottoman Algeria
The Regency of Algiers ( ar, دولة الجزائر, translit=Dawlat al-Jaza'ir) was a state in North Africa lasting from 1516 to 1830, until it was French conquest of Algeria, conquered by the French. Situated between the Ottoman Tunisia, re ...
in 1830, France maintained for well over a century its
colonial rule
Colonialism is a practice or policy of control by one people or power over other people or areas, often by establishing colonies and generally with the aim of economic dominance. In the process of colonisation, colonisers may impose their relig ...
in the territory that has been described as "quasi-
apartheid
Apartheid (, especially South African English: , ; , "aparthood") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was ...
". The colonial law of 1865 allowed Arab and Berber Algerians to apply for French citizenship only if they abandoned their Muslim identity; Azzedine Haddour argues that it established "the formal structures of a political apartheid". Camille Bonora-Waisman writes, "In contrast with the Moroccan and Tunisian protectorates", the "colonial
apartheid
Apartheid (, especially South African English: , ; , "aparthood") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was ...
society" was unique to Algeria.
Under the
French Fourth Republic
The French Fourth Republic (french: Quatrième république française) was the Republicanism, republican government of France from 27 October 1946 to 4 October 1958, governed by the fourth republican constitution. It was in many ways a revival of ...
, Muslim Algerians were accorded the rights of
citizenship
Citizenship is a "relationship between an individual and a state to which the individual owes allegiance and in turn is entitled to its protection".
Each state determines the conditions under which it will recognize persons as its citizens, and ...
, but the system of discrimination was maintained in more informal ways. Frederick Cooper writes that Muslim Algerians "were still marginalized in their own territory, notably the separate voter roles of 'French' civil status and of 'Muslim' civil status, to keep their hands on power." The "internal system of apartheid" was met with considerable resistance by the
Algerian Muslims
Algerian may refer to:
* Something of, or related to Algeria
* Algerian people, a person or people from Algeria, or of Algerian descent
* Algerian cuisine
* Algerian culture
* Algerian Islamic reference
* Algerian Mus'haf
* Algerian (solitaire)
* A ...
affected by it, and it is cited as one of the causes of the 1954 insurrection.
There was clearly nothing exceptional about the crimes committed by the French army and state in Algeria in 1955 to 1962. On the contrary, they were part of history repeating itself.
State racism
Following the views of
Michel Foucault
Paul-Michel Foucault (, ; ; 15 October 192625 June 1984) was a French philosopher, historian of ideas, writer, political activist, and literary critic. Foucault's theories primarily address the relationship between power and knowledge, and how ...
, the French historian
Olivier Le Cour Grandmaison
Olivier Le Cour Grandmaison (born 19 September 1960), is a French political scientist and author whose work chiefly centres on colonialism. He is best known for his book ''Coloniser, Exterminer - Sur la guerre et l'Etat colonial''.
Le Cour Grandm ...
spoke of a "state racism" under the
French Third Republic
The French Third Republic (french: Troisième République, sometimes written as ) was the system of government adopted in France from 4 September 1870, when the Second French Empire collapsed during the Franco-Prussian War, until 10 July 1940 ...
, a notable example being the 1881 Indigenous Code applied in Algeria. Replying to the question "Isn't it excessive to talk about a state racism under the Third Republic?", he replied:
"No, if we can recognize 'state racism' as the vote and implementation of discriminatory measures, grounded on a combination of racial, religious and cultural criteria, in those territories. The 1881 Indigenous Code is a monument of this genre! Considered by contemporary prestigious jurists as a 'juridical monstruosity', this code planned special offenses and penalties for 'Arabs'. It was then extended to other territories of the empire. On one hand, a state of rule of law for a minority of French and Europeans located in the colonies. On the other hand, a permanent state of exception for the "indigenous" people. This situation lasted until 1945".
During a reform effort in 1947, the French created a bicameral legislature with one house for French citizens and another for Muslims, but it made a European's vote worth seven times a Muslim's vote. Even the events of 1961 show that France had not changed its treatment of the Algerians over the years, as the
police
The police are a constituted body of persons empowered by a state, with the aim to enforce the law, to ensure the safety, health and possessions of citizens, and to prevent crime and civil disorder. Their lawful powers include arrest and t ...
took up the institutional racism that the French state had made law in its treatment of Arabs who, as Frenchmen, had moved to Mainland France.
-->
Further reading
* Original text: Library of Congress Country Study of Algeria''
* Aussaresses, Paul. ''The Battle of the Casbah: Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism in Algeria, 1955–1957''. (New York: Enigma Books, 2010) .
* Bennoune, Mahfoud. ''The Making of Contemporary Algeria, 1830–1987'' (Cambridge University Press, 2002)
* Gallois, William. ''A History of Violence in the Early Algerian Colony'' (2013), On French violence 1830–184 online review * Horne, Alistair. ''A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954–1962'', (Viking Adult, 1978)
*
Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina
Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina ( ar, محمد الأخضر حمينة; born in M'Sila, Algeria, M'sila in 1934) is an Algerian film director and screenwriter. He is best known for his 1975 film ''Chronicle of the Years of Fire''. He is one of the most p ...
*
The Battle of Algiers
ar, Maʿrakat al-Jazāʾir
, director = Gillo Pontecorvo
, producer = Antonio MusuSaadi Yacef
, writer = Franco Solinas
, story = Franco SolinasGillo Pontecorvo
, starring = Jean MartinSaadi Yacef Brahim Ha ...
* The 1961 massacre was referenced in '' Caché,'' a 2005 film by
Michael Haneke
Michael Haneke (; born 23 March 1942) is an Austrian film director and screenwriter. His work often examines social issues and depicts the feelings of estrangement experienced by individuals in modern society. Haneke has made films in French, G ...
.
* The 2005 French television drama-documentary ''Nuit noire, 17 octobre 1961'' explores in detail the events of the massacre. It follows the lives of several people and also shows some of the divisions within the Paris police, with some openly arguing for more violence while others tried to uphold the
rule of law
The rule of law is the political philosophy that all citizens and institutions within a country, state, or community are accountable to the same laws, including lawmakers and leaders. The rule of law is defined in the ''Encyclopedia Britannica ...
.
* ''Drowning by Bullets'', a television documentary in the British ''
Secret History
A secret history (or shadow history) is a revisionist interpretation of either fictional or real history which is claimed to have been deliberately suppressed, forgotten, or ignored by established scholars. "Secret history" is also used to desc ...
'' series, first shown on 13 July 1992.
Australia
It is estimated that the population of
Aboriginal peoples
Indigenous peoples are culturally distinct ethnic groups whose members are directly descended from the earliest known inhabitants of a particular geographic region and, to some extent, maintain the language and culture of those original people ...
prior to the European colonisation of Australia (starting in 1788) was about 314,000. It has also been estimated by ecologists that the land could have supported a population of a million people. By 1901 they had been reduced by two-thirds to 93,000. In 2011 First Nations Australians (comprising both Aboriginal Australians and
Torres Strait Islander
Torres Strait Islanders () are the Indigenous Melanesian people of the Torres Strait Islands, which are part of the state of Queensland, Australia. Ethnically distinct from the Aboriginal people of the rest of Australia, they are often grouped ...
people) comprised about 3% of the total population, at 661,000. When
Captain Cook
James Cook (7 November 1728 Old Style date: 27 October – 14 February 1779) was a British explorer, navigator, cartographer, and captain in the British Royal Navy, famous for his three voyages between 1768 and 1779 in the Pacific Ocean an ...
landed in
Botany Bay
Botany Bay (Dharawal: ''Kamay''), an open oceanic embayment, is located in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, south of the Sydney central business district. Its source is the confluence of the Georges River at Taren Point and the Cook ...
in 1770, he was under orders not to plant the British flag and to defer to any native population, which was largely ignored.
Land rights, stolen generations, and ''terra nullius''
Torres Strait Islander people are indigenous to the
Torres Strait Islands
The Torres Strait Islands are a group of at least 274 small islands in the Torres Strait, a waterway separating far northern continental Australia's Cape York Peninsula and the island of New Guinea. They span an area of , but their total land ...
, which are in the
Torres Strait
The Torres Strait (), also known as Zenadh Kes, is a strait between Australia and the Melanesian island of New Guinea. It is wide at its narrowest extent. To the south is Cape York Peninsula, the northernmost extremity of the Australian mai ...
between the northernmost tip of
Queensland
)
, nickname = Sunshine State
, image_map = Queensland in Australia.svg
, map_caption = Location of Queensland in Australia
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name = Australia
, established_title = Before federation
, established_ ...
and
Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea (abbreviated PNG; , ; tpi, Papua Niugini; ho, Papua Niu Gini), officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea ( tpi, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niugini; ho, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niu Gini), is a country i ...
. Institutional racism had its early roots here due to interactions between these islanders, who had
Melanesia
Melanesia (, ) is a subregion of Oceania in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It extends from Indonesia's New Guinea in the west to Fiji in the east, and includes the Arafura Sea.
The region includes the four independent countries of Fiji, Va ...
n origins and depended on the sea for sustenance and whose land rights were abrogated, and later the Australian Aboriginal peoples, whose children were removed from their families by Australian Federal and State government agencies and church missions, under acts of their respective parliaments. The removals occurred in the period between approximately 1909 and 1969, resulting in what later became known as the
Stolen Generations
The Stolen Generations (also known as Stolen Children) were the children of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander descent who were removed from their families by the Australian federal and state government agencies and church miss ...
. An example of the abandonment of mixed-race ("
half-caste
Half-caste (an offensive term for the offspring of parents of different racial groups or cultures) is a term used for individuals of multiracial descent. It is derived from the term ''caste'', which comes from the Latin ''castus'', meaning pu ...
") children in the 1920s is given in a report by
Walter Baldwin Spencer
Sir Walter Baldwin Spencer (23 June 1860 – 14 July 1929), commonly referred to as Baldwin Spencer, was a British-Australian evolutionary biologist, anthropologist and ethnologist.
He is known for his fieldwork with Aboriginal peoples in ...
that many mixed-descent children born during construction of
The Ghan
''The Ghan'' is an experiential tourism oriented passenger train service that operates between the northern and southern coasts of Australia, through the cities of Adelaide, Alice Springs and Darwin on the Adelaide–Darwin rail corridor. O ...
railway were abandoned at early ages with no one to provide for them. This incident and others spurred the need for state action to provide for and protect such children. Both were official policy and were coded into law by various acts. They have both been rescinded and restitution for past wrongs addressed at the highest levels of government.
The treatment of the First people by the colonisers has been termed
cultural genocide
Cultural genocide or cultural cleansing is a concept which was proposed by lawyer Raphael Lemkin in 1944 as a component of genocide. Though the precise definition of ''cultural genocide'' remains contested, the Armenian Genocide Museum defines ...
. The earliest introduction of child removal to legislation is recorded in the Victorian ''
Aboriginal Protection Act 1869
The ''Aboriginal Protection Act 1869'' was an Act of the colony of Victoria, Australia that established the Victorian Central Board for the Protection of Aborigines, to replace the Central Board Appointed to Watch Over the Interests of the Abor ...
''. The
Central Board for the Protection of Aborigines
Aboriginal Protection Board, also known as Aborigines Protection Board, Board for the Protection of Aborigines, Aborigines Welfare Board (and in later sources, incorrectly as Aboriginal Welfare Board), and similar names, refers to a number of hi ...
had been advocating such powers since 1860, and the passage of the Act gave the colony of Victoria a wide suite of powers over Aboriginal and "
half-caste
Half-caste (an offensive term for the offspring of parents of different racial groups or cultures) is a term used for individuals of multiracial descent. It is derived from the term ''caste'', which comes from the Latin ''castus'', meaning pu ...
" persons, including the forcible removal of children, especially "at risk" girls. By 1950, similar policies and legislation had been adopted by other states and territories, such as the ''
Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act 1897
The ''Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act 1897'', long name ''A Bill to make Provision for the better Protection and Care of the Aboriginal and Half-caste Inhabitants of the Colony, and to make more effectual Provision ...
'' (Qld), the ''
Aborigines Ordinance 1918
The ''Northern Territory Aboriginals Act 1910'' was an Act of the South Australian parliament (Act no. 1024/1910), assented to on 7 December 1910. The Act established the Northern Territory Aboriginals Department, to be responsible for the contro ...
''(NT), the ''Aborigines Act 1934'' (SA) and the '' 1936 Native Administration Act'' (WA).
The child removal legislation resulted in widespread removal of children from their parents and exercise of sundry guardianship powers by
Protectors of Aborigines
The role of Protector of Aborigines was first established in South Australia in 1836.
The role became established in other parts of Australia pursuant to a recommendation contained in the ''Report of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Abori ...
up to the age of 16 or 21. Policemen or other agents of the state were given the power to locate and transfer babies and children of mixed descent from their mothers or families or communities into institutions. In these
Australian states and territories
The states and territories are federated administrative divisions in Australia, ruled by regional governments that constitute the second level of governance between the federal government and local governments. States are self-governing pol ...
, half-caste institutions (both government
Aboriginal reserve
An Aboriginal reserve, also called simply reserve, was a government-sanctioned settlement for Aboriginal Australians, created under various state and federal legislation. Along with missions and other institutions, they were used from the 19th c ...
s and church-run
mission station
A Christian mission is an organized effort for the propagation of the Christian faith. Missions involve sending individuals and groups across boundaries, most commonly geographical boundaries, to carry on evangelism or other activities, such as ...
s) were established in the early decades of the 20th century for the reception of these separated children. Examples of such institutions include
Moore River Native Settlement
The Moore River Native Settlement was the name of the now defunct Aboriginal Australians, Aboriginal settlement and internment camp located north of Perth and west of Mogumber, Western Australia, Mogumber in Western Australia, near the Source ...
Ebenezer Mission
Ebenezer Mission, also known as Wimmera mission, Hindmarsh mission and Dimboola mission, was a mission station for Aboriginal people established near Lake Hindmarsh in Victoria, Australia (near Jeparit) in 1859 by the Moravian Church on the land ...
in Victoria and
Wellington Valley Mission
Wellington Valley Mission was a Church Missionary Society (CMS) mission near to Wellington, New South Wales and one of the earliest to "Civilize and Christianize" Aboriginal people in Australia. It was founded in 1830 and closed 12 years later in ...
in New South Wales.
In 1911, the Chief Protector of Aborigines in South Australia,
William Garnet South
William Garnet South (8 August 1855 – 27 May 1923) was a police officer in Alice Springs and Chief Protector of Aborigines. He was also, for a short period, proprietor of the Stuart Arms Hotel in Alice Springs.
Early life
South was born ...
, reportedly "lobbied for the power to remove Aboriginal children without a court hearing because the courts sometimes refused to accept that the children were neglected or destitute". South argued that "all children of mixed descent should be treated as neglected". His lobbying reportedly played a part in the enactment of the ''Aborigines Act 1911''; this made him the legal guardian of every Aboriginal child in South Australia, including so-called "half-castes". ''
Bringing Them Home
''Bringing Them Home'' is the 1997 Australian ''Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families''. The report marked a pivotal moment in the controversy that has come to ...
'', a report on the status of the mixed race stated "... the physical infrastructure of missions, government institutions and children's homes was often very poor and resources were insufficient to improve them or to keep the children adequately clothed, fed, and sheltered".
In reality, during this period removal of the mixed-race children was related to the fact that most were offspring of domestic servants working on pastoral farms, and their removal allowed the mothers to continue working as help on the farm while at the same time removing the whites from responsibility for fathering them and from social stigma for having mixed-race children visible in the home. Also, when they were left alone on the farm they became targets of the men who contributed to the rise in the population of mixed-race children. The institutional racism was government policy gone awry, one that allowed babies to be taken from their mothers at birth, and this continued for most of the 20th century. That it was policy and kept secret for over 60 years is a mystery that no agency has solved to date.
In the 1930s, the Northern Territory Protector of Natives, Cecil Cook, perceived the continuing rise in numbers of "half-caste" children as a problem. His proposed solution was:
"Generally by the fifth and invariably by the sixth generation, all native characteristics of the Australian Aborigine are eradicated. The problem of our half-castes will quickly be eliminated by the complete disappearance of the black race, and the swift submergence of their progeny in the white". He did suggest at one point that they be all sterilised.
Similarly, the Chief Protector of Aborigines in Western Australia,
A. O. Neville
Auber Octavius Neville (20 November 1875 – 18 April 1954) was a British-Australian public servant, notably Chief Protector of Aborigines, in Western Australia.
Early life
Born in Northumberland, England, Neville emigrated to Victoria, ...
, wrote in an article for ''The West Australian'' in 1930: "Eliminate in future the full-blood and the white and one common blend will remain. Eliminate the full-blood and permit the white admixture and eventually, the race will become white".
Official policy then concentrated on removing all Black people from the population, to the extent that the full-blooded Aboriginal people were hunted to extinguish them from society, and those of mixed race would be assimilated with the white race so that in a few generations they too would become white.
By 1900 the recorded First Nations Australian population had declined to approximately 93,000.
Western Australia
Western Australia (commonly abbreviated as WA) is a state of Australia occupying the western percent of the land area of Australia excluding external territories. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to th ...
and Queensland specifically excluded Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people from the electoral rolls. The ''
Commonwealth Franchise Act 1902
The ''Commonwealth Franchise Act 1902'' was an Act of the Parliament of Australia which defined a uniform national criteria of who was entitled to vote in Australian federal elections. The Act established, in time for the 1903 Australian feder ...
'' excluded "Aboriginal natives of Australia, Asia, Africa and Pacific Islands except for New Zealand" from voting unless they were on the roll before 1901.
Land rights returned
In 1981 a land rights conference was held at
James Cook University
James Cook University (JCU) is a public university in North Queensland, Australia. The second oldest university in Queensland, JCU is a teaching and research institution. The university's main campuses are located in the tropical cities of Cairn ...
, where
Eddie Mabo
Edward Koiki Mabo (''né'' Sambo; 29 June 1936 – 21 January 1992) was an Indigenous Australian man from the Torres Strait Islands known for his role in campaigning for Indigenous land rights in Australia, in particular the landmark decision o ...
, a Torres Strait Islander, made a speech to the audience in which he explained the land inheritance system on Murray Island. The significance of this in terms of Australian common law doctrine was taken note of by one of the attendees, a lawyer, who suggested there should be a test case to claim land rights through the court system. Ten years later, five months after Eddie Mabo died, on 3 June 1992, the High Court announced its historic decision, namely overturning the legal doctrine of ''
terra nullius
''Terra nullius'' (, plural ''terrae nullius'') is a Latin expression meaning " nobody's land".
It was a principle sometimes used in international law to justify claims that territory may be acquired by a state's occupation of it.
:
:
...
'', which was the term applied by the British relating to the continent of Australia – "empty land".
Public interest in the Mabo case had the side effect of throwing the media spotlight on all issues related to Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders in Australia, and most notably the Stolen Generations. The social impacts of forced removal have been measured and found to be quite severe. Although the stated aim of the "resocialisation" program was to improve the integration of Aboriginal people into modern society, a study conducted in Melbourne and cited in the official report found that there was no tangible improvement in the social position of "removed" Aboriginal people as compared to "non-removed", particularly in the areas of employment and
post-secondary education
Tertiary education, also referred to as third-level, third-stage or post-secondary education, is the educational level following the completion of secondary education. The World Bank, for example, defines tertiary education as including univers ...
.
Most notably, the study indicated that removed Aboriginal people were actually less likely to have completed a secondary education, three times as likely to have acquired a police record and were twice as likely to use
illicit drug
The prohibition of drugs through sumptuary legislation or religious law is a common means of attempting to prevent the recreational use of certain intoxicating substances.
While some drugs are illegal to possess, many governments regulate the ...
s. The only notable advantage "removed" Aboriginal people possessed was a higher average income, which the report noted was most likely due to the increased urbanisation of removed individuals, and hence greater access to welfare payments than for Aboriginal people living in remote communities.
Kevin Rudd
Kevin Michael Rudd (born 21 September 1957) is an Australian former politician and diplomat who served as the 26th prime minister of Australia from 2007 to 2010 and again from June 2013 to September 2013, holding office as the leader of the ...
made a plea to the health services regarding the disparate treatment in health services. He noted the widening gap between the treatment of First Nations and non-Indigenous Australians, and committed the government to a strategy called "
Closing the Gap
The Closing the Gap framework is an Australian government strategy that aims to reduce disadvantage among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, based on seven targets. From adoption in 2008, after meetings with the Close the Gap social ...
", admitting to past institutional racism in health services that shortened the life expectancy of the Aboriginal people. Committees that followed up on this outlined broad categories to redress the inequities in
life expectancy
Life expectancy is a statistical measure of the average time an organism is expected to live, based on the year of its birth, current age, and other demographic factors like sex. The most commonly used measure is life expectancy at birth ...
, educational opportunities and employment. The Australian government also allocated funding to redress the past discrimination. First Nations Australians visit their general practitioners (GPs) and are hospitalised for
diabetes
Diabetes, also known as diabetes mellitus, is a group of metabolic disorders characterized by a high blood sugar level ( hyperglycemia) over a prolonged period of time. Symptoms often include frequent urination, increased thirst and increased ap ...
, circulatory disease, musculoskeletal conditions, respiratory and
kidney disease
Kidney disease, or renal disease, technically referred to as nephropathy, is damage to or disease of a kidney. Nephritis is an inflammatory kidney disease and has several types according to the location of the inflammation. Inflammation can ...
, mental, ear and eye problems and behavioural problems yet are less likely than non-Indigenous Australians to visit the GP, use a private doctor, or apply for residence in an old age facility. Childhood mortality rates, the gap in educational achievement and lack of employment opportunities were made goals that in a generation should halve the gap. A national "
Close the Gap
Close the Gap (CTG) is a social justice campaign focused on Indigenous Australians' health, in which peak Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and non-Indigenous health bodies, NGOs and human rights organisations work together to achieve heal ...
" day was announced for March of each year by the
Human Rights Commission
A human rights commission, also known as a human relations commission, is a body set up to investigate, promote or protect human rights.
The term may refer to international, national or subnational bodies set up for this purpose, such as nationa ...
.
In 2011, the
Australian Institute of Health and Welfare
The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) is Australia's national agency for information and statistics on Australia's health and welfare. Statistics and data developed by the AIHW are used extensively to inform discussion and polic ...
reported that life expectancy had increased since 2008 by 11.5 years for women and 9.7 years for men along with a significant decrease in infant mortality, but it was still 2.5 times higher than for the non-indigenous population. Much of the health woes of the First people could be traced to the availability of transport. In remote communities, the report cited 71% of the population in those remote Fist Nations communities lacked access to public transport, and 78% of the communities were more than from the nearest hospital. Although English was the official language of Australia, many First Australians did not speak it as a primary language, and the lack of printed materials that were translated into the
Australian Aboriginal languages
The Indigenous languages of Australia number in the hundreds, the precise number being quite uncertain, although there is a range of estimates from a minimum of around 250 (using the technical definition of 'language' as non-mutually intellig ...
and the non-availability of translators formed a barrier to adequate health care for Aboriginal people. By 2015, most of the funding promised to achieve the goals of "Closing the Gap" had been cut, and the national group monitoring the conditions of the First Nations population was not optimistic that the promises of 2008 will be kept. In 2012, the group complained that institutional racism and overt discrimination continued to be issues, and that, in some sectors of government, the
UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
The Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP or DOTROIP) is a legally non-binding resolution passed by the United Nations in 2007. It delineates and defines the individual and collective rights of Indigenous peoples, including th ...
was being treated as an aspirational rather that a binding document.
Canada
Indigenous Canadians
The living standard of
indigenous peoples in Canada
In Canada, Indigenous groups comprise the First Nations, Inuit and Métis. Although ''Indian'' is a term still commonly used in legal documents, the descriptors ''Indian'' and ''Eskimo'' have fallen into disuse in Canada, and most consider them ...
falls far short of those of the non-indigenous, and they, along with other 'visible minorities' remain, as a group, the poorest in Canada. There continue to be barriers to gaining equality with other Canadians of European ancestry. The life expectancy of First Nations people is lower; they have fewer high school graduates, much higher unemployment rates, nearly double the number of infant deaths and significantly greater contact with law enforcement. Their incomes are lower, they enjoy fewer promotions in the workplace and as a group, the younger members are more likely to work reduced hours or weeks each year.
Many in Europe during the 19th century (as reflected in the Imperial Report of the Select Committee on Aborigines), supported the goal put forth by colonial imperialists of 'civilizing' the Native populations. This led to an emphasis on the acquisition of Aboriginal lands in exchange for the putative benefits of European society and their associated Christian religions. British control of Canada (the
Crown
A crown is a traditional form of head adornment, or hat, worn by monarchs as a symbol of their power and dignity. A crown is often, by extension, a symbol of the monarch's government or items endorsed by it. The word itself is used, partic ...
) began when they exercised jurisdiction over the first nations and it was by Royal Proclamation that the first piece of legislation the British government passed over First Nations citizens assumed control of their lives. It gave recognition to the Indians tribes as First Nations living under Crown protection.
It was after the treaty of Paris in 1763, whereby France ceded all claims in present-day Canada to Britain, that
King George III of Great Britain
George III (George William Frederick; 4 June 173829 January 1820) was King of Great Britain and of Ireland from 25 October 1760 until the union of the two kingdoms on 1 January 1801, after which he was King of the United Kingdom of Great Br ...
issued a
Royal Proclamation
A proclamation (Lat. ''proclamare'', to make public by announcement) is an official declaration issued by a person of authority to make certain announcements known. Proclamations are currently used within the governing framework of some nations ...
specifying how the Indigenous in the crown colony were to be treated. It is the most significant pieces of legislation regarding the Crown's relationship with Aboriginal people. This Royal Proclamation recognized Indian owned lands and reserved to them all use as their hunting grounds. It also established the process by which the Crown could purchase their lands, and also laid out basic principles to guide the Crown when making treaties with the First Nations. The Proclamation made Indian lands transferred by treaty to be Crown property, and stated that indigenous title is a collective or communal rather than a private right so that individuals have no claim to lands where they lived and hunted long prior to European colonization.
Indian Acts
In 1867, the
British North America Act
The British North America Acts 1867–1975 are a series of Acts of Parliament that were at the core of the constitution of Canada. Most were enacted by the Parliament of the United Kingdom and some by the Parliament of Canada. In Canada, some ...
made land reserved for Indians a Crown responsibility. In 1876 the first of many Indian Acts passed, each successive one leeched more from the rights of the indigenous as was stated in the first.
The sundry revised Indian Acts (22 times by 2002) solidified the position of Natives as wards of the state, and Indian agents were given discretionary power to control almost every aspect of the lives of the indigenous. It then became necessary to have permission from an Indian agent if Native people wanted to sell crops they had grown and harvested, or wear traditional clothes off the reserves. The Indian Act was also used to deny Indians the right to vote until 1960, and they could not sit on juries.
In 1885, General Middleton after defeating the Metis rebellion introduced the Pass System in western Canada, under which Natives could not leave their reserves without first obtaining a pass from their farming instructors permitting them to do so. While the Indian Act did not give him such powers, and no other legislation allowed the Department of Indian Affairs to institute such a system, and it was known by crown lawyers to be illegal as early as 1892, the Pass System remained in place and was enforced until the early 1930s. As Natives were not permitted at that time to become lawyers, they could not fight it in the courts. Thus was institutional racism externalized as official policy.
When Aboriginals began to press for recognition of their rights and to complain of corruption and abuses of power within the Indian department, the Act was amended to make it an offence for an Aboriginal person to retain a lawyer for the purpose of advancing any claims against the crown.
Métis
Unlike the effect of those Indian treaties in the North-West, which established the reserves for the Indigenous, the protection of
Métis
The Métis ( ; Canadian ) are Indigenous peoples who inhabit Canada's three Prairie Provinces, as well as parts of British Columbia, the Northwest Territories, and the Northern United States. They have a shared history and culture which derives ...
lands was not secured by the scrip policy instituted in the 1870s, whereby the crown exchanged a scrip in exchange for a fixed (160–240 acres) grant of land to those of mixed heritage.
Although Section 3 of the 1883 Dominion Lands Act set out this limitation, this was the first mention in the orders-in-council confining the jurisdiction of scrip commissions to ceded Indian territory. However, a reference was first made in 1886 in a draft letter of instructions to Goulet from Burgess. In most cases, the scrip policy did not consider Métis ways of life, did not guarantee their land rights, and did not facilitate any economic or lifestyle transition.
Most Métis were illiterate and did not know the value of the scrip, and in most cases sold them for instant gratification due to economic need to speculators who undervalued the paper. Needless to say, the process by which they applied for their land was made deliberately arduous.
There was no legislation binding scrip land to the
Métis
The Métis ( ; Canadian ) are Indigenous peoples who inhabit Canada's three Prairie Provinces, as well as parts of British Columbia, the Northwest Territories, and the Northern United States. They have a shared history and culture which derives ...
who applied for them, Instead, Métis scrip lands could be sold to anyone, hence alienating any Aboriginal title that may have been vested in those lands. Despite the evident detriment to the Métis, speculation was rampant and done in collusion with the distribution of scrip. While this does not necessarily preclude a malicious intent by the federal government to consciously 'cheat' the Métis, it illustrates their apathy towards the welfare of the Métis, their long-term interests, and the recognition of their Aboriginal title. But the point of the policy was to settle land in the North-West with agriculturalists, not keep a land reserve for the Métis. Scrip, then, was a major undertaking in Canadian history, and its importance as both an Aboriginal policy and a land policy should not be overlooked as it was an institutional 'policy' that discriminated against ethnic indigenous to their continued detriment.
Enfranchisement
Until 1951, the various Indian Acts defined a 'person' as "an individual other than an Indian", and all indigenous peoples were considered wards of the state. Legally, the Crown devised a system of
enfranchisement
Suffrage, political franchise, or simply franchise, is the right to vote in public, political elections and referendums (although the term is sometimes used for any right to vote). In some languages, and occasionally in English, the right to v ...
whereby an indigenous person could become a "person" in Canadian law. Indigenous people could gain the right to vote and become Canadian citizens, "persons" under the law, by voluntarily assimilating into European/Canadian society.
It was hoped that indigenous peoples would renounce their native heritage and culture and embrace the 'benefits' of civilized society. Indeed, from the 1920s to the 1940s some Natives did give up their status to receive the right to go to school, vote, or drink. However, voluntary enfranchisement proved a failure when few natives took advantage.
In 1920, a law was passed to authorize enfranchisement without consent, and many Aboriginal peoples were involuntarily enfranchised. Natives automatically lost their Indian status under this policy and also if they became professionals such as doctors or ministers, or even if they obtained university degrees, and with it, their right to reside on the reserves.
The enfranchisement requirements particularly discriminated against Native women, specifying in Section 12 (1)(b) of the Indian Act that an Indian status woman marrying a non-Indian man would lose her status as an Indian, as would her children. In contrast non-Indian women marrying Indian men would gain Indian status.
Duncan Campbell Scott
Duncan Campbell Scott (August 2, 1862 – December 19, 1947) was a Canadian civil servant and poet and prose writer. With Charles G.D. Roberts, Bliss Carman, and Archibald Lampman, he is classed as one of Canada's Confederation Poets.
A care ...
, the Deputy Superintendent of Indian Affairs, neatly expressed the sentiment of the day in 1920:
"Our object is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic, and there is no Indian question and no Indian Department"
This aspect of enfranchisement was addressed by passage of Bill C-31 in 1985, where the discriminatory clause of the Indian Act was removed, and Canada officially gave up the goal of enfranchising Natives.
Residential schools
In the 19th and 20th centuries, the Canadian federal government's Indian Affairs Department officially encouraged the growth of the Indian residential school system as an agent in a wider policy of assimilating Native Canadians into European-Canadian society. This policy was enforced with the support of various Christian churches, who ran many of the schools. Over the course of the system's existence, approximately 30% of native children, roughly some 150,000, were placed in residential schools nationally, with the last school closing in 1996. There has long been controversy about the conditions experienced by students in the residential schools. While day schools for First Nations, Metis, and Inuit children always far outnumbered residential schools, a new consensus emerged in the early 21st century that the latter schools did significant harm to Aboriginal children who attended them by removing them from their families, depriving them of their ancestral languages, undergoing forced sterilization for some students, and by exposing many of them to physical and sexual abuse by staff members, and other students, and dis-enfranchising them forcibly.
With the goal of civilizing and Christianizing Aboriginal populations, a system of 'industrial schools' was developed in the 19th century that combined academic studies with "more practical matters" and schools for Natives began to appear in the 1840s. From 1879 on these schools were modelled after the
Carlisle Indian School
The United States Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, generally known as Carlisle Indian Industrial School, was the flagship Indian boarding school in the United States from 1879 through 1918. It took over the historic Carlisle ...
in Pennsylvania, whose motto was " Kill the Indian in him and save the man". It was felt that the most effective weapon for "killing the Indian" in them, was to remove children from their Native supports and so Native children were taken away from their homes, their parent, their families, friends and communities.
The 1876 Indian Act gave the federal government responsibility for Native education and by 1910 residential schools dominated the Native education policy. The government provided funding to religious groups such as the Catholic, Anglican, United Church and Presbyterian churches to undertake Native education. By 1920, attendance by natives was made compulsory and there were 74 residential schools operating nationwide. Following the ideas of Sifton and others like him, the academic goals of these schools were "dumbed down". As Duncan Campbell Scott stated at the time, they did not want students that were "made too smart for the Indian villages":
"To this end the curriculum in residential schools has been simplified and the practical instruction given is such as may be immediately of use to the pupil when he returns to the reserve after leaving school."
The funding the government provided was generally insufficient and often the schools ran themselves as "self-sufficient businesses", where 'student workers' were removed from class to do the laundry, heat the building, or perform farm work. Dormitories were often poorly heated and overcrowded, and the food was less than adequately nutritious. A 1907 report, commissioned by
Indian Affairs
The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), also known as Indian Affairs (IA), is a United States federal agency within the Department of the Interior. It is responsible for implementing federal laws and policies related to American Indians and Al ...
, found that in 15 prairie schools there was a death rate of 24%. Indeed, a deputy superintendent general of Indian Affairs at the time commented:
"It is quite within the mark to say that fifty percent of the children who passed through these schools did not benefit from the education which they had received therein."
While the death rate did decline in later years, death would remain a part of the residential school tradition. The author of that report to the BNA, Dr. P.H. Bryce, was later removed and in 1922 published a pamphlet that came close to calling the governments indifference to the conditions of the Indians in the schools 'manslaughter'.
Anthropologists Steckley and Cummins note that the endemic abuses – emotional, physical, and sexual – for which the system is now well known for "might readily qualify as the single-worst thing that Europeans did to Natives in Canada". Punishments were often brutal and cruel, sometimes even life-threatening or life-ending. Pins were sometimes stuck in children's tongues for speaking their Native languages, sick children were made to eat their vomit, and semi-formal inspections of children's genitalia were carried out. The term
Sixties Scoop
The Sixties Scoop was a period in which a series of policies were enacted in Canada that enabled child welfare authorities to take, or "scoop up," Indigenous children from their families and communities for placement in foster homes, from which th ...
(or Canada Scoops) refers to the Canadian practice, beginning in the 1960s and continuing until the late 1980s, of taking ("scooping up") children of Aboriginal peoples in Canada from their families for placing in foster homes or adoption.
Most residential schools closed in the 1970s, with the last one closing in 1996. Criminal and civil suits against the government and the churches began in the late 1980s and shortly thereafter the last residential school closed. By 2002 the number of lawsuits had passed 10,000. In the 1990s, beginning with the United Church, the churches that ran the residential schools began to issue formal apologies. And in 1998 the Canadian government issued the Statement of
Reconciliation
Reconciliation or reconcile may refer to:
Accounting
* Reconciliation (accounting)
Arts, entertainment, and media Sculpture
* ''Reconciliation'' (Josefina de Vasconcellos sculpture), a sculpture by Josefina de Vasconcellos in Coventry Cathedra ...
, and committed $350 million in support of a community-based healing strategy to address the healing needs of individuals, families and communities arising from the legacy of physical and sexual abuse at residential schools. The money was used to launch the Aboriginal Healing Foundation.
Starting in the 1990s, the government started a number of initiatives to address the effects of the Indian residential school. In March 1998, the government made a Statement of Reconciliation and established the Aboriginal Healing Foundation. In the fall of 2003, the Alternative Dispute Resolution process was launched, which was a process outside of court providing compensation and psychological support for former students of residential schools who were physically or sexually abused or were in situations of wrongful confinement. On 11 June 2008, Prime Minister Stephen Harper issued a formal apology on behalf of the sitting Cabinet and in front of an audience of Aboriginal delegates. A
Truth and Reconciliation Commission
A truth commission, also known as a truth and reconciliation commission or truth and justice commission, is an official body tasked with discovering and revealing past wrongdoing by a government (or, depending on the circumstances, non-state act ...
ran from 2008 through to 2015 to document past wrongdoing in the hope of resolving conflict left over from the past. The final report concluded that the school system amounted to
cultural genocide
Cultural genocide or cultural cleansing is a concept which was proposed by lawyer Raphael Lemkin in 1944 as a component of genocide. Though the precise definition of ''cultural genocide'' remains contested, the Armenian Genocide Museum defines ...
.
Contemporary situation
The overt institutional racism of the past has clearly had a profoundly devastating and lasting effect on visible minorities and Aboriginal communities throughout Canada. European cultural norms have imposed themselves on Native populations in Canada, and Aboriginal communities continue to struggle with
foreign
Foreign may refer to:
Government
* Foreign policy, how a country interacts with other countries
* Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in many countries
** Foreign Office, a department of the UK government
** Foreign office and foreign minister
* Unit ...
systems of governance, justice, education, and livelihood. Visible Minorities struggle with education, employment and negative contact with the legal system across Canada.
Perhaps most palpable is the dysfunction and familial devastation caused by residential schools. Hutchins states; "Many of those who attended residential schools have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, suffering from such symptoms as panic attacks, insomnia, and uncontrollable or unexplainable anger. Many also suffer from alcohol or drug abuse, sexual inadequacy or addiction, the inability to form intimate relationships, and eating disorders. Three generations of Native parents lost out on learning important parenting skills usually passed on from parent to child in caring and nurturing home environments, and the abuse suffered by students of residential schools has begun a distressing cycle of abuse within many Native communities." The lasting legacy of residential schools is but only one facet of the problem.
The Hutchins report continues: "Aboriginal children continue to struggle with mainstream education in Canada. For some Indian students, English remains a second language, and many lack parents with sufficient education themselves to support them. Moreover, schooling in Canada is based on an English written tradition, which is different from the oral traditions of the Native communities. For others, it is simply that they are ostracised for their 'otherness'; their manners, their attitudes, their speech, or a hundred other things which mark them out as different.
"Aboriginal populations continue to suffer from poor health. They have seven years less life expectancy than the overall Canadian population and almost twice as many infant deaths. While Canada as a nation routinely ranks in the top three on the United Nations Human Development Index, its on-reserve Aboriginal population, if scored as a nation, would rank a distant and shocking sixty-third."
As
Perry Bellegarde
Perry Bellegarde (born August 29, 1962; Little Black Bear First Nation) is a Canadian First Nations advocate and politician who served as National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations from December 10, 2014, to July 8, 2021.
National Chief, Assembly of First Nations, points out, racism in Canada today is for the most part, a covert operation. Its central and most distinguishing tenet is the vigour with which it is consistently denied. There are many who argue that Canada's endeavors in the field of human rights and its stance against racism have only resulted in a "more politically correct population who have learnt to better conceal their prejudices". In effect, the argument is that racism in Canada is not being eliminated, but rather is becoming more covert, more rational, and perhaps more deeply imbedded in our institutions.
That racism is alive is evidenced by the recent referendum in British Columbia by which the provincial government is asking the white majority to decide on a mandate for negotiating treaties with the Indian minority. The results of the referendum will be binding, the government having legislatively committed itself to act on these principles if more than 50% of those voting reply in the same way. Moreover, although it has been revised many times, "the Indian Act remains legislation which singles out a segment of society based on race". Under it, the civil rights of First Nations peoples are "dealt with in a different manner than the civil rights of the rest of Canadian citizens".
The Aboriginal Justice Inquiry in Manitoba, the Donald Marshall Inquiry in Nova Scotia, the Cawsey Report in Alberta and the Royal Commission of Aboriginal People all agree, as far as Aboriginal people are concerned, racism in Canadian society continues institutionally, systematically, and individually.
In 2020, after the death of Joyce Echaquan, the Prime Minister of Canada,
Justin Trudeau
Justin Pierre James Trudeau ( , ; born December 25, 1971) is a Canadian politician who is the 23rd and current prime minister of Canada. He has served as the prime minister of Canada since 2015 and as the leader of the Liberal Party since 2 ...
, had recognized a case of systemic racism.
In 2022,
Pope Francis
Pope Francis ( la, Franciscus; it, Francesco; es, link=, Francisco; born Jorge Mario Bergoglio, 17 December 1936) is the head of the Catholic Church. He has been the bishop of Rome and sovereign of the Vatican City State since 13 March 2013. ...
visited Canada for a week-long tour called a “pilgrimage of penance.” Vatican officials called the trip a “penitential pilgrimage”. The Pope was welcomed in Edmonton where he apologized for Indigenous abuse which took place in the 20th century at Catholic run residential schools which have since closed. During his stay he met with Indigenous groups to address the scandal of the residential schools. “I am sorry,” The Pope said, and asked forgiveness for the church and church members in “projects of cultural destruction and forced assimilation” and the systematic abuse and erasure of indigenous culture in the country’s residential schools.
Anti-Chinese immigration laws
The Canadian government passed the
Chinese Immigration Act of 1885
The ''Chinese Immigration Act, 1885'' was a Canadian Act of Parliament that placed a head tax of $50 () on all Chinese immigrants entering Canada. It was based on the recommendations published in the Royal Commission on Chinese Immigration in 1 ...
levying a $50
head tax
A poll tax, also known as head tax or capitation, is a tax levied as a fixed sum on every liable individual (typically every adult), without reference to income or resources.
Head taxes were important sources of revenue for many governments fr ...
upon all Chinese people immigrating to Canada. When the 1885 act failed to deter Chinese immigration, the Canadian government then passed the Chinese Immigration Act, 1900, increasing the head tax to $100, and, upon that act failing, passed the Chinese Immigration Act, 1904 increasing the head tax (landing fee) to $500, equivalent to $8000 in 2003 – when compared to the head tax – Right of Landing Fee and Right of Permanent Residence Fee – of $975 per person, paid by new immigrants in 1995–2005 decade, which then was reduced to $490 in 2006.
The
Chinese Immigration Act, 1923
The Chinese Immigration Act, 1923, known today as the Chinese Exclusion Act (the duration of which has been dubbed the Exclusion Era), was an act passed by the government of Liberal Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, banning most forms o ...
, better known as the "Chinese Exclusion Act", replaced prohibitive fees with a
ban
Ban, or BAN, may refer to:
Law
* Ban (law), a decree that prohibits something, sometimes a form of censorship, being denied from entering or using the place/item
** Imperial ban (''Reichsacht''), a form of outlawry in the medieval Holy Roman ...
on ethnic Chinese immigrating to Canada – excepting merchants, diplomats, students, and "special circumstance" cases. The Chinese who entered Canada before 1923 had to register with the local authorities, and could leave Canada only for two years or less. Since the Exclusion Act went into effect on 1 July 1923, Chinese-Canadians referred to
Canada Day
Canada Day (french: Fête du Canada), formerly known as Dominion Day (french: Fête du Dominion), is the national day of Canada. A federal statutory holiday, it celebrates the anniversary of Canadian Confederation which occurred on July 1, 18 ...
(Dominion Day) as "Humiliation Day", refusing to celebrate it until the Act's repeal in 1947.
Black Canadians
China
Institutional racism exists in many domains in the People's Republic of China, though certain scholars have noted the Chinese government's portrayal of racism as a Western problem, while intentionally ignoring or downplaying the existence of widespread systemic racism in China.
The United Nations
Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination
The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) is a United Nations convention. A third -generation human rights instrument, the Convention commits its members to the elimination of racial discri ...
reported in 2018 that Chinese law does not define
racial discrimination
Racial discrimination is any discrimination against any individual on the basis of their skin color, race or ethnic origin.Individuals can discriminate by refusing to do business with, socialize with, or share resources with people of a certain g ...
.
Local ethnic minorities
Uyghurs
Under the
leadership
Leadership, both as a research area and as a practical skill, encompasses the ability of an individual, group or organization to "lead", influence or guide other individuals, teams, or entire organizations. The word "leadership" often gets view ...
of China's
Paramount Leader
Paramount leader () is an informal term for the most important political figure in the People's Republic of China (PRC). The paramount leader typically controls the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the People's Liberation Army (PLA), often hol ...
and
Communist Party
A communist party is a political party that seeks to realize the socio-economic goals of communism. The term ''communist party'' was popularized by the title of ''The Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. A ...
general secretary
Secretary is a title often used in organizations to indicate a person having a certain amount of authority, power, or importance in the organization. Secretaries announce important events and communicate to the organization. The term is derived ...
Xi Jinping
Xi Jinping ( ; ; ; born 15 June 1953) is a Chinese politician who has served as the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), and thus as the paramount leader of China, s ...
, the
Uyghurs
The Uyghurs; ; ; ; zh, s=, t=, p=Wéiwú'ěr, IPA: ( ), alternatively spelled Uighurs, Uygurs or Uigurs, are a Turkic ethnic group originating from and culturally affiliated with the general region of Central and East Asia. The Uyghur ...
– a mostly
Muslim
Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abrah ...
ethnic minority
The term 'minority group' has different usages depending on the context. According to its common usage, a minority group can simply be understood in terms of demographic sizes within a population: i.e. a group in society with the least number o ...
group living in the Chinese
Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region
Xinjiang, SASM/GNC: ''Xinjang''; zh, c=, p=Xīnjiāng; formerly romanized as Sinkiang (, ), officially the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR), is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China (PRC), located in the northwest ...
– have faced widespread persecution from authorities and mass detentions. Since 2017, it has been reported that least 1 million Uyghur Muslims have been detained in " re-education camps" commonly described as
concentration camps
Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simply ...
, where they have been subject to
torture
Torture is the deliberate infliction of severe pain or suffering on a person for reasons such as punishment, extracting a confession, interrogation for information, or intimidating third parties. Some definitions are restricted to acts c ...
,
forced labor
Forced labour, or unfree labour, is any work relation, especially in modern or early modern history, in which people are employed against their will with the threat of destitution, detention, violence including death, or other forms of ex ...
,
religious discrimination
Religious discrimination is treating a person or group differently because of the particular beliefs which they hold about a religion. This includes instances when adherents of different religions, denominations or non-religions are treated u ...
, political
indoctrination
Indoctrination is the process of inculcating a person with ideas, attitudes, cognitive strategies or professional methodologies (see doctrine).
Humans are a social animal species inescapably shaped by cultural context, and thus some degree o ...
and other human rights abuses. Testimonials from escaped inmates have indicated inmates are subject to
forced sterilization
Compulsory sterilization, also known as forced or coerced sterilization, is a government-mandated program to Involuntary treatment, involuntarily Sterilization (medicine), sterilize a specific group of people. Sterilization removes a person's ca ...
.
Birth rates
The birth rate for a given period is the total number of live human births per 1,000 population divided by the length of the period in years. The number of live births is normally taken from a universal registration system for births; populati ...
in two Xinjiang regions have dropped by more than 60% between 2015 and 2018, a result of measures by the Chinese government to lower the Uyghur population artificially. The situation has been described as an ongoing
genocide
Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people—usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group—in whole or in part. Raphael Lemkin coined the term in 1944, combining the Greek word (, "race, people") with the Latin ...
by numerous sources, and others have argued that it is likely the "largest mass detention of a religious minority group" since
the Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...
according to the ''
New Statesman
The ''New Statesman'' is a British political and cultural magazine published in London. Founded as a weekly review of politics and literature on 12 April 1913, it was at first connected with Sidney and Beatrice Webb and other leading members ...
''. A study from 2013 found local government officials in China "were 33 percent less likely to provide assistance to citizens with ethnic Muslim names than to ethnically-unmarked peers."
Tibetans
Since the People's Republic of China gained control of Tibet in 1951, there has been institutional racism in the form of an elaborate propaganda system designed by the
Chinese Communist Party
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), officially the Communist Party of China (CPC), is the founding and One-party state, sole ruling party of the China, People's Republic of China (PRC). Under the leadership of Mao Zedong, the CCP emerged victoriou ...
to portray
Tibetans
The Tibetan people (; ) are an East Asian ethnic group native to Tibet. Their current population is estimated to be around 6.7 million. In addition to the majority living in Tibet Autonomous Region of China, significant numbers of Tibetans live ...
as being liberated from
serfdom
Serfdom was the status of many peasants under feudalism, specifically relating to manorialism, and similar systems. It was a condition of debt bondage and indentured servitude with similarities to and differences from slavery, which develop ...
through China and
Han Chinese
The Han Chinese () or Han people (), are an East Asian ethnic group native to China. They constitute the world's largest ethnic group, making up about 18% of the global population and consisting of various subgroups speaking distinctive va ...
culture. A state-organized historical opera performed in 2016 in China portrayed Tibet as being unsophisticated prior to
Princess Wencheng
Princess Wencheng (; ) was a member of a minor branch of the royal clan of the Tang Dynasty who married King Songtsen Gampo of the Tibetan Empire in 641. She is also known by the name Gyasa or "Chinese wife" in Tibet. Some Tibetan historians cons ...
's marriage to
Songtsen Gampo
Songtsen Gampo (; 569–649? 650), also Songzan Ganbu (), was the 33rd Tibetan king and founder of the Tibetan Empire, and is traditionally credited with the introduction of Buddhism to Tibet, influenced by his Nepali consort Bhrikuti, of Nepal ...
, a Tibetan emperor, in the year 641. This propaganda is described by Tibetan activist
Tsering Woeser
Tsering Woeser (also written Öser; ; , Han name Chéng Wénsà 程文萨; born 1966) is a Tibetan writer, activist, blogger, poet and essayist.
Biography
Woeser, a quarter Han Chinese and three quarters Tibetan, was born in Lhasa. Her grandfathe ...
as being a "...vast project that rewrites history and 'wipes out' the memory and culture of an entire people."
A 1991 journal article identified how forced abortion, sterilization, and
infanticide
Infanticide (or infant homicide) is the intentional killing of infants or offspring. Infanticide was a widespread practice throughout human history that was mainly used to dispose of unwanted children, its main purpose is the prevention of reso ...
in Tibet were all part of a severe CCP birth control program in the region, designed specifically to target Tibetans.
A paper submitted to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination by the
Tibetan government in exile
The Central Tibetan Administration (, , ), often referred to as the Tibetan Government-in-Exile, is a non-profit political organization based in Dharamshala, India. Its organization is modeled after an elective parliamentary government, compo ...
stipulates about how Tibetans face an education system which is inequitable compared with the education for Han Chinese. According to the paper, only about nine percent of Chinese adults are illiterate, compared with about sixty percent of Tibetans in the Tibetan Autonomous Region. Furthermore, Tibetan children are prevented from learning about their own history and culture, and forbidden to learn their own language. Schools in the region often have
racial segregation
Racial segregation is the systematic separation of people into race (human classification), racial or other Ethnicity, ethnic groups in daily life. Racial segregation can amount to the international crime of apartheid and a crimes against hum ...
based on ethnic characteristics, with Tibetan students receiving worse education in poorly-maintained classrooms.
During the
2008 Tibet protests
8 (eight) is the natural number following 7 and preceding 9.
In mathematics
8 is:
* a composite number, its proper divisors being , , and . It is twice 4 or four times 2.
* a power of two, being 2 (two cubed), and is the first number of the ...
, a local eyewitness claimed Chinese military police "were grabbing monks, kicking and beating them" after riots around the closure of the
Sera monastery
Sera Monastery ( "Wild Roses Monastery"; ) is one of the "great three" Gelug university monasteries of Tibet, located north of Lhasa and about north of the Jokhang. The other two are Ganden Monastery and Drepung Monastery. The origin of its n ...
near
Lhasa
Lhasa (; Lhasa dialect: ; bo, text=ལྷ་ས, translation=Place of Gods) is the urban center of the prefecture-level city, prefecture-level Lhasa (prefecture-level city), Lhasa City and the administrative capital of Tibet Autonomous Regio ...
.
Anti-African sentiment
Racism against
African people
The population of Africa has grown rapidly over the past century and consequently shows a large youth bulge, further reinforced by a low life expectancy of below 50 years in some African countries. Total population as of 2020 is estimated at ...
or people perceived to be of African descent has long been documented in China.
Published in 1963, African student Emmanuel Hevi's ''An African Student in China'' details "the arrests of Chinese girls for their friendships with Africans, and particularly, Chinese feelings of racial superiority over black Africans." One notable instance was the
Nanjing anti-African protests
The Nanjing Anti-African protests were mass demonstrations and riots against African students in Nanjing, China, which lasted from December 1988 to the following January.
Background
Animosity towards African students began in the 1960s, when scho ...
of 1988, in which African university students were the subject of racist beatings and other attacks. In some cases, Chinese university students shouted racist slogans such as Down with the black devils!' and 'Blood for blood! Despite these obvious instances of racism against Africans, the Chinese state media portrayed the attacks as being instigated by the African students.
In modern China, racism remains an issue in certain universities, such as the state-funded
Zhejiang Normal University
Zhejiang Normal University (ZJNU) is a comprehensive public university in Jinhua city, Zhejiang province, China. Its main campus is next to the Shuanglong Cave national park and covers an area of more than 220 hectares with a total floor space ...
. A black graduate student described how "African students would hear Professors and classmates make xenophobic comments, such as 'Africans are draining our scholarship funds and how African students, despite having higher grades, were receiving lower level scholarship funds through the ZJNU's three-tiered scholarship system than their classmates.
One study noted how Africans were being portrayed as "waste" and "triple illegals" through racial profiling by police in
Guangzhou
Guangzhou (, ; ; or ; ), also known as Canton () and alternatively romanized as Kwongchow or Kwangchow, is the capital and largest city of Guangdong province in southern China. Located on the Pearl River about north-northwest of Hong Kon ...
. In 2007, African nationals were targeted in Beijing's
Sanlitun
Sanlitun () is an area of the Chaoyang District, Beijing containing many bars, restaurants, and stores. It is a popular destination for shopping, dining, and entertainment.
The area has been under almost constant regeneration since the la ...
district by police during an anti-drug raid. They were the victims of
police brutality
Police brutality is the excessive and unwarranted use of force by law enforcement against an individual or a group. It is an extreme form of police misconduct and is a civil rights violation. Police brutality includes, but is not limited to, ...
and targeted on the basis of their skin color, something which the police later denied.
State media reports from 2008 referred to Africans in a racist manner, as Cheng explains: "... helanguage often remained demeaning regarding Africans as much less civilized people. Chinese words such as 部落 (buluo, "tribes") or 聚居地/ 群居/群落 (jujudi/qunju/qunluo, habitats), instead of 社区 (shequ, community) were often used to refer to Africans.""Cheng, Y. (2011). From Campus Racism to Cyber Racism: Discourse of Race and Chinese Nationalism. The China Quarterly, 207, 561–579. doi:10.1017/S0305741011000658
Yinghong Cheng asserts in a 2011 journal article that "
Cyber racism Racist rhetoric is distributed through computer-mediated means and includes some or all of the following characteristics: ideas of racial uniqueness, racist attitudes towards specific social categories, racist stereotypes, hate-speech, nationalism ...
against Africans is certainly not the only racial thinking but it is perhaps the most explicit and blatant one." He details the ubiquity of "manifestations of racial stereotypes, hierarchy perception and insensitivity", in addition to how "systematic discourse of race has developed in much more articulate, sophisticated and explicit ways in education and pop culture to accommodate contemporary Chinese nationalism." The adoption of a more
state capitalist
State capitalism is an economic system in which the state undertakes business and commercial (i.e. for-profit) economic activity and where the means of production are nationalized as state-owned enterprises (including the processes of capital ac ...
form of government in the PRC has led to the widespread internet popularity of commercialized Chinese singers and songwriters, some of whose material is racial in subject matter. As Cheng notes: The Yellow Race' (Huangzhongren 黄种人) and 'Yellow' (Huang 黄), erecreated in 2006 and 2007 respectively and dedicated to China's hosting of the Olympics. The racist language in these songs, such as 'the Yellow Race is now marching on the world,' combined with nationalist claims such as 'After 5,000 years, finally it is the time for us to show up on the stage,' coloured Xie's popularity among his young Chinese fans."
In 2018,
CCTV New Year's Gala
The ''CCTV New Year's Gala'', also known as the ''Spring Festival Gala'', and commonly abbreviated in Chinese as ''Chunwan'', is a Chinese New Year special produced by China Media Group (CMG). It is broadcast annually on the eve of Chinese N ...
, a state media television programme which has in the past been viewed by up to 800 million people included a racist
neocolonial
Neocolonialism is the continuation or reimposition of imperialist rule by a state (usually, a former colonial power) over another nominally independent state (usually, a former colony). Neocolonialism takes the form of economic imperialism, gl ...
skit featuring a Chinese actress who wore
blackface
Blackface is a form of theatrical makeup used predominantly by non-Black people to portray a caricature of a Black person.
In the United States, the practice became common during the 19th century and contributed to the spread of racial stereo ...
makeup. The skit "praises Chinese-African cooperation, showing how much Africans benefit from Chinese investment and how grateful they are to Beijing." Later the same year, the ''
Daily Monitor
The ''Daily Monitor'' is a Ugandan independent daily newspaper. Its name is shared by the ''Saturday Monitor'' and ''Sunday Monitor'', which are also published by Monitor Publications Limited. ''Daily Monitor'' averaged a daily circulation of 24,2 ...
'' reported that citizens of
Uganda
}), is a landlocked country in East Africa
East Africa, Eastern Africa, or East of Africa, is the eastern subregion of the African continent. In the United Nations Statistics Division scheme of geographic regions, 10-11-(16*) territor ...
and
Nigeria
Nigeria ( ), , ig, Naìjíríyà, yo, Nàìjíríà, pcm, Naijá , ff, Naajeeriya, kcg, Naijeriya officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf o ...
were discriminated against in Guangzhou by the Chinese government, through incidents such as taxis being halted and passports from African countries being confiscated, as well as hotels and restaurants being ordered to erect notices banning service to Africans. In addition, some African-owned stores were forcibly shut down.
During the
COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...
, multiple instances of systemic racism against African people were documented, including misinformation and racist stereotyping which portrayed Africans as carriers of the virus. According to ''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'', Africans were "refused entry by hospitals, hotels, supermarkets, shops and food outlets. At one hospital, even a pregnant woman was denied access. In a McDonald's restaurant, a notice was put up saying 'black people cannot come in. The local government in Guangzhou implemented
mass surveillance
Mass surveillance is the intricate surveillance of an entire or a substantial fraction of a population in order to monitor that group of citizens. The surveillance is often carried out by local and federal governments or governmental organizati ...
, compulsory testing, and enforced a 14-day quarantine for all African nationals, regardless of whether they had traveled outside of China in the past two weeks.
Anti-Japanese sentiment
Anti-Japanese sentiment exists as a modern issue in China, largely due to historical grievances. There have been reports of restaurants and public institutions refusing service or entry to
Japanese people
The are an East Asian ethnic group native to the Japanese archipelago."人類学上は,旧石器時代あるいは縄文時代以来,現在の北海道〜沖縄諸島(南西諸島)に住んだ集団を祖先にもつ人々。" () Jap ...
, which stems especially due to the
Second Sino-Japanese War
The Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) or War of Resistance (Chinese term) was a military conflict that was primarily waged between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan. The war made up the Chinese theater of the wider Pacific Th ...
which had included
Japanese war crimes
The Empire of Japan committed war crimes in many Asian-Pacific countries during the period of Japanese militarism, Japanese imperialism, primarily during the Second Sino-Japanese War, Second Sino-Japanese and Pacific Wars. These incidents have b ...
such as the
Nanjing massacre
The Nanjing Massacre (, ja, 南京大虐殺, Nankin Daigyakusatsu) or the Rape of Nanjing (formerly romanized as ''Nanking'') was the mass murder of Chinese civilians in Nanjing, the capital of the Republic of China, immediately after the Ba ...
and
Unit 731
, short for Manshu Detachment 731 and also known as the Kamo Detachment and Ishii Unit, was a covert biological and chemical warfare research and development unit of the Imperial Japanese Army that engaged in lethal human experimentatio ...
.
In recent years, there has been joint communiqués between the leaders of these two countries to try and mend as well as improve relations with each other.
Malaysia
Malaysians of
Chinese
Chinese can refer to:
* Something related to China
* Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity
**''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation
** List of ethnic groups in China, people of va ...
and
Indian
Indian or Indians may refer to:
Peoples South Asia
* Indian people, people of Indian nationality, or people who have an Indian ancestor
** Non-resident Indian, a citizen of India who has temporarily emigrated to another country
* South Asia ...
descent – who make up a significant portion of ethnic minorities in Malaysia, with them making up around 23.2% and 7.0% of the population respectively – were granted citizenship by the
Malaysian Constitution
The Federal Constitution of Malaysia ( ms, Perlembagaan
Persekutuan Malaysia) which was promulgated on 16 September 1963, is the supreme law of Malaysia and contains a total of 183 articles. It is a written legal document which was preceded ...
but this implied a
social contract
In moral and political philosophy
Political philosophy or political theory is the philosophical study of government, addressing questions about the nature, scope, and legitimacy of public agents and institutions and the relationships betw ...
that left them at a disadvantage and discriminated in other ways, as
Article 153 of the Constitution of Malaysia
Article often refers to:
* Article (grammar), a grammatical element used to indicate definiteness or indefiniteness
* Article (publishing), a piece of nonfictional prose that is an independent part of a publication
Article may also refer to:
G ...
refers to the special "position" and "privileges" of the Muslim
Malay people
Malays ( ms, Orang Melayu, Jawi: أورڠ ملايو) are an Austronesian ethnic group native to eastern Sumatra, the Malay Peninsula and coastal Borneo, as well as the smaller islands that lie between these locations — areas that are ...
as supposed initial dwellers of the land.
Malay supremacy
However, due to the concept of ''
Ketuanan Melayu
''Ketuanan Melayu'' (Jawi script: كتوانن ملايو; "Malay Overlordship") is a political concept that emphasises Malay preeminence in present-day Malaysia. The Malays of Malaysia have claimed a special position and exceptional rights ...
'' (lit. Malay supremacy), a citizen that is not considered to be of
Bumiputera Bumiputera or Bumiputra, which is a Malay word, comes from the Sanskrit word ''Bhumiputra'' which may be transliterated as "son of earth" or "son of the soil" (Bhūmi; भूमि = earth; putra = son). It has different definitions in Brunei and Ma ...
status face many roadblocks and discrimination in matters such as
economic freedom
Economic freedom, or economic liberty, is the ability of people of a society to take economic actions. This is a term used in economic and policy debates as well as in the philosophy of economics. One approach to economic freedom comes from the l ...
,
education
Education is a purposeful activity directed at achieving certain aims, such as transmitting knowledge or fostering skills and character traits. These aims may include the development of understanding, rationality, kindness, and honesty. Va ...
,
healthcare
Health care or healthcare is the improvement of health via the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, amelioration or cure of disease, illness, injury, and other physical and mental impairments in people. Health care is delivered by health profe ...
and
housing
Housing, or more generally, living spaces, refers to the construction and assigned usage of houses or buildings individually or collectively, for the purpose of shelter. Housing ensures that members of society have a place to live, whether it ...
. Opposition groups, government critics and
human rights
Human rights are Morality, moral principles or Social norm, normsJames Nickel, with assistance from Thomas Pogge, M.B.E. Smith, and Leif Wenar, 13 December 2013, Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyHuman Rights Retrieved 14 August 2014 for ce ...
observers has labeled the Malaysian situation as being highly similar to
apartheid
Apartheid (, especially South African English: , ; , "aparthood") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was ...
policies due to their status as ''de facto''
second-class citizen
A second-class citizen is a person who is systematically and actively discriminated against within a state or other political jurisdiction, despite their nominal status as a citizen or a legal resident there. While not necessarily slaves, ...
s. Such policies has also led to a significant brain drain from the country.
In 1970, the
Malaysian New Economic Policy
The New Economic Policy (NEP) ( ms, Dasar Ekonomi Baru (DEB)) was a social re-engineering and affirmative action program formulated by the National Operations Council (NOC) in the aftermath of 13 May Incident in Malaysia. This policy was adop ...
a program of affirmative action aimed at increasing the share of the economy held by the Malay population, introduced quotas for Malays in areas such as public education, access to housing, vehicle imports, government contracts and share ownership. Initially meant as a measure to curb the poor economic participation of the Malays, aimed to reduce the number of hardcore poor Malays, it is now perceived by most conservative Malays as a form of entitlement or 'birthright'. In post-modern Malaysia, this entitlement in political, legislative, monarchy, religious, education, social, and economic areas has led to lower productivity and lower competitiveness among the Malays.
As for the elite Malays, this 'privilege' has been abused to the point where the poor Malays remain poor, while the rich Malays becomes richer; which is the result of Malay cronyism, non-competitive and non-transparent government project tender processes favouring Bumiputera candidates – causing deeper intra-ethnic inequality. However, the actual indigenous people or better known as
Orang Asli
Orang Asli (''lit''. "first people", "native people", "original people", "aborigines people" or "aboriginal people" in Malay) are a heterogeneous indigenous population forming a national minority in Malaysia. They are the oldest inhabitants of ...
remain marginalised and have their rights ignored by the Malaysian government. Since Article 160 defines a Malay as "professing the religion of Islam", those eligible to benefit from laws assisting ''bumiputra'' are, in theory, subject to religious law enforced by the parallel
Syariah Court
Syariah (the Malay spelling of "Sharia") refers to Sharia law in Islamic religious law and deals with exclusively Islamic laws, having jurisdiction upon every Muslim in Malaysia. The Syariah Court system is one of the two separate court systems ...
system.
While 179 countries around the world have ratified the
International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination
The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) is a United Nations convention. A third -generation human rights instrument, the Convention commits its members to the elimination of racial discri ...
(ICERD), Malaysia is also not one of them. The
Pakatan Harapan
The Alliance of Hope ( ms, Pakatan Harapan; abbrev: PH; stylized as HARAPAN) is a Malaysian political coalition consisting of centre-left political parties which was formed in 2015 to succeed the Pakatan Rakyat coalition. It has been the r ...
(PH) government that replaced
Barisan Nasional
The National Front ( ms, Barisan Nasional; abbrev: BN) is a political coalition of Malaysia that was founded in 1973 as a coalition of centre-right and right-wing political parties. It is also the third largest political coalition with 30 se ...
(BN) from 2018 to 2020 had indicated a readiness to ratify ICERD, but has yet to do so due to the convention's conflict with the
Malaysian constitution
The Federal Constitution of Malaysia ( ms, Perlembagaan
Persekutuan Malaysia) which was promulgated on 16 September 1963, is the supreme law of Malaysia and contains a total of 183 articles. It is a written legal document which was preceded ...
and the race and religious norms in Malaysia established since its independence. Furthermore, a mass rally was held in 2018 by Malay supremacists at the country's capital to prevent such ratification, threatening racial conflicts if they do so. The PH government would eventually lose power amid the
2020–2022 Malaysian political crisis
The 2020–2022 Malaysian political crisis (also known as Sheraton Move) was a political crisis in Malaysia. It was caused by several members of the 14th parliament (MPs) changing party support, leading to the loss of a parliamentary majorit ...
to BN.
Nigeria
Indigeneity
Nigeria
Nigeria ( ), , ig, Naìjíríyà, yo, Nàìjíríà, pcm, Naijá , ff, Naajeeriya, kcg, Naijeriya officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf o ...
contains over 250 ethnic groups, but the country is politically dominated by three major ethnic groups – the Hausa-Fulani of the north, the
Igbo
Igbo may refer to:
* Igbo people, an ethnic group of Nigeria
* Igbo language, their language
* anything related to Igboland, a cultural region in Nigeria
See also
* Ibo (disambiguation)
* Igbo mythology
* Igbo music
* Igbo art
*
* Igbo-Ukwu, a t ...
of the southeast, and the
Yoruba
The Yoruba people (, , ) are a West African ethnic group that mainly inhabit parts of Nigeria, Benin, and Togo. The areas of these countries primarily inhabited by Yoruba are often collectively referred to as Yorubaland. The Yoruba constitute ...
of the southwest. National politics in Nigeria have largely revolved around competition between the three dominant ethnic groups, with the minority ethnic groups having less political representation.
The Nigerian constitution promises equality among all ethnic groups, but in actuality, the concept of "indigeneity" is widespread across local and state governments (and to a lesser extent, the federal government), which has been criticized by
Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch (HRW) is an international non-governmental organization, headquartered in New York City, that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. The group pressures governments, policy makers, companies, and individual human r ...
as a form of discrimination and a violation of international human rights law. Citizens are recognized as "indigenes" of a particular locality if they belong to an ethnic group that is considered to be indigenous to that locality. Citizens from other ethnic groups, regardless of how long they or their families have been living in a locality, are legally recognized as non-indigenes and they face discrimination from government laws that limit their socioeconomic mobility.
Public universities in Nigeria favour indigenes during the admissions process, and non-indigenes are subject to discriminatory admissions policies that attempt to limit the number of non-indigene students. Non-indigene students are required to pay higher tuition and they are denied academic scholarships. Non-indigenes are often unable to participate in local politics and they are also excluded from government jobs. In some cases, non-indigenes have faced mass purges from government jobs in order to create more jobs for indigenes.
Human Rights Watch has claimed the indigeneity policies relegate "millions of Nigerians to the status of second-class citizens". Nigerian Vice President
Yemi Osinbajo
Oluyemi Oluleke Osinbajo (born 8 March 1957) is a Nigerian lawyer, professor, and politician who is the 14th and current Vice President of Nigeria since 2015. A member of the All Progressives Congress (APC), he previously served as Attorney Ge ...
compared indigeneity policies to
apartheid
Apartheid (, especially South African English: , ; , "aparthood") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was ...
.
Niger Delta ethnic minorities
Nigeria is an oil-rich country where much of its oil resources can be found in the
Niger Delta
The Niger Delta is the delta of the Niger River sitting directly on the Gulf of Guinea on the Atlantic Ocean in Nigeria. It is located within nine coastal southern Nigerian states, which include: all six states from the South South geopolitical ...
region, which is inhabited by ethnic minorities such as the
Ogoni
The Ogonis are a people in the Rivers South East senatorial district of Rivers State, in the Niger Delta region of southern Nigeria. They number just over 2 million and live in a homeland which they also refer to as Ogoniland. They share common ...
and
Ijaw Ijaw may refer to:
*Ijaw people
*Ijaw languages
The Izon languages (), otherwise known as the Ịjọ languages, are the languages spoken by the Izon people in southern Nigeria.
Classification
The Ijo languages were traditionally considered a ...
. The native inhabitants of the Niger Delta do not receive much of the wealth generated by Nigeria's vast oil industry, and it is paradoxically one of Nigeria's poorest regions. Oil wealth has been used to develop other parts of Nigeria while the Niger Delta region itself remains underdeveloped. The Niger Delta is constantly polluted and destroyed by the activities of both the Nigerian government and oil companies such as
Shell Nigeria
Shell Nigeria is the common name for Shell plc's Nigerian operations carried out through four subsidiaries—primarily Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Limited (SPDC). Royal Dutch Shell's joint ventures account for more than 21% of ...
and
Chevron Nigeria Chevron Nigeria Limited is a subsidiary of Chevron Corporation and it is one of the largest oil producers in Nigeria. It was previously operating in Nigeria under the business name of Gulf Oil Company until merger activities changed its name to Chev ...
. Struggle for oil wealth has fueled violence in the Niger Delta, causing the militarization of nearly the entire region by ethnic militia groups and Nigerian military and police forces.
The Ijaw and Ogoni people have been subject to human rights violations in the form of environmental destruction and pollution. A 1979 amendment to the Nigerian constitution gave the federal government the authority to seize and distribute Ogoni territory to oil companies without any compensation.The Price of Oil: Corporate Responsibility and Human Rights Violations in Nigeria's Oil Producing Communities (Human Rights Watch, 1999) In 1990, the
Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People
The Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), is a social movement organization representing the indigenous Ogoni people of Rivers State, Nigeria. The Ogoni contend that Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC), along with othe ...
was founded by Ogoni activist
Ken Saro-Wiwa
Kenule Beeson "Ken" Saro-Wiwa (10 October 1941 – 10 November 1995) was a Nigerian writer, television producer, and environmental activist. Ken Saro-Wiwa was a member of the Ogoni people, an ethnic minority in Nigeria whose homeland, Ogonilan ...
to seek self-determination for the Ogoni people, compensation for environmental destruction, and payment of royalties from oil production. In 1995, he was arrested and executed, along with nine other Ogoni activists, by the regime of the Nigerian military dictator
Sani Abacha
Sani Abacha (20 September 1943 – 8 June 1998) was a Nigerian military officer and politician who ruled as the military head of state of Nigeria from 1993 until his death in 1998. He seized power on 17 November 1993 in the last successful c ...
, which was internationally condemned as a violation of human rights.
While the Nigerian government has become more democratic ever since the death of Sani Abacha, the ethnic groups in the Niger Delta still lack representation and remain excluded from the mainstream of Nigerian politics, economy and society. Government security forces in the Delta region regularly engage in torture, killings and confiscation of property as a result of the
Conflict in the Niger Delta
The current conflict in the Niger Delta first arose in the early 1990s over tensions between foreign oil corporations and a number of the Niger Delta's minority ethnic groups who feel they are being exploited, particularly the Ogoni and the Ijaw ...
. The
Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization
The Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization, or simply UNPO is an international organization established to facilitate the voices of unrepresented and marginalised nations and peoples worldwide. It was formed on 11 February 1991 in The Ha ...
condemned the Nigerian government for its discrimination against the Ogoni people and failure to clean environmental pollution from the Niger Delta region.
Osu
The
Igbo people
The Igbo people ( , ; also spelled Ibo" and formerly also ''Iboe'', ''Ebo'', ''Eboe'',
*
*
* ''Eboans'', ''Heebo'';
natively ) are an ethnic group in Nigeria. They are primarily found in Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu, and Imo States. A ...
traditionally maintain a system of discrimination from the
Odinani
Ọdinani (), also ''Omenala'', ''Omenana'', ''Odinana'' or ''Ọmenani'', are the traditional cultural beliefs and practices of the Igbo people of south east Nigeria.Afulezy, Uj"On Odinani, the Igbo Religion", ''Niger Delta Congress'', Nigeri ...
religion that discriminates against a class of people known as ''Osu'' (
Igbo
Igbo may refer to:
* Igbo people, an ethnic group of Nigeria
* Igbo language, their language
* anything related to Igboland, a cultural region in Nigeria
See also
* Ibo (disambiguation)
* Igbo mythology
* Igbo music
* Igbo art
*
* Igbo-Ukwu, a t ...
: outcast). Osu are regarded to be spiritually inferior beings, and they are distinguished from ''Nwadiala'' or ''diala'' (
Igbo
Igbo may refer to:
* Igbo people, an ethnic group of Nigeria
* Igbo language, their language
* anything related to Igboland, a cultural region in Nigeria
See also
* Ibo (disambiguation)
* Igbo mythology
* Igbo music
* Igbo art
*
* Igbo-Ukwu, a t ...
: real born). They are ostracized from wider society and Igbo are discouraged from marrying them. They were historically either sold into slavery or were delivered to be enslaved to certain deities who were believed to ask for human sacrifice during festivals in order to clean the land from abomination, thus leading to the purchase of a slave by the people.
The status of ''Osu'' is permanent and inherited at birth. Despite influence from colonialism and Christianity, discrimination against Osu still persists in the modern day. In modern times, Osu are often barred from marriage, traditional leadership positions, and running from political office.
According to some human rights groups who are calling for its abolishment, some of the punishments meted out against the ''Osu'' include: parents administering poison to their children, disinheritance,
ostracism
Ostracism ( el, ὀστρακισμός, ''ostrakismos'') was an Athenian democratic procedure in which any citizen could be expelled from the city-state of Athens for ten years. While some instances clearly expressed popular anger at the cit ...
, denial of membership in social clubs, violent disruption of marriage ceremonies, denial of chieftaincy titles, deprivation of property and expulsion of wives.
South Africa
In South Africa, during
apartheid
Apartheid (, especially South African English: , ; , "aparthood") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was ...
, institutional racism has been a powerful means of excluding from resources and power any person not categorized or marked as a white. Those marked as black were further discriminated against differentially, with Africans facing more extreme forms of exclusion and exploitation than those marked as Coloured or Indian. One such example of institutional racism in South Africa is
Natives Land Act, 1913
The Natives Land Act, 1913 (subsequently renamed Bantu Land Act, 1913 and Black Land Act, 1913; Act No. 27 of 1913) was an Act of the Parliament of South Africa that was aimed at regulating the acquisition of land.
According to the ''Encyclopæd ...
, which reserved 90% of land for white use and the Native Urban Areas Act of 1923 controlled access to urban areas, which suited commercial farmers who were keen to hold labour on their land. Africans, who formed the majority of the population, were relegated to (often barren) rural reserves, which later became homelands.
More modern forms of institutional
racism in South Africa
Racism in South Africa can be traced back to the earliest historical accounts of European interactions with indigenous African peoples along the coast of Southern Africa. It has existed throughout several centuries in the history of South Africa ...
are centered around interracial relationships and official government policy. Opposition to interracial intimate relationships may be indicative of underlying racism, and that conversely acceptance and support of these relationships may be indicative of a stance against racism. Even though the prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act was repealed in 1985, the term "mixed" continued to exists, thus carrying forth the inherent stigmatization of "mixed" relationships and race. Consequently, discourse is a framework that realizes that language can produce institutional structures and relations. However, language constitutes who we are, how we interact with others and how we understand ourselves. Therefore, discourse is said to be inextricably linked to power and more than just a medium used to transmit information.
Furthermore, post-apartheid racism is still rife in South Africa, both black-on-white and white-on-black, with white-on-black racism being more advertised in the news. In 2015, black staff at a restaurant near Stellenbosch allegedly were verbally attacked and degraded by a group of white students. In response, a black student declared that everyone who did not speak Afrikaans in the area was an alien in the area. "They were whistling at them as they were whistling at dogs," he claimed. He further claimed that the white students even leapt over the counter and patted them as if they were dogs. Three white men and four other young white men allegedly followed him outside after he left the restaurant and assaulted him. The University of Stellenbosch did not continue with disciplinary action which shows the racism in academic institutions.
The South African government has done things to combat racial economic disparity in South Africa for example, BEE (Black Economic Empowerment) is a South African government programme aimed at facilitating black people's fuller participation in the economy, particularly to address imbalances established by apartheid. It offers incentives to businesses that contribute to black economic empowerment through a variety of measurable criteria, such as partial or majority black ownership, hiring black employees, and contracting with black-owned suppliers, as well as preferential treatment in government procurement processes. BEE's preferential procurement feature has been hailed as a model for a long-term procurement strategy in which government procurement is used to accomplish social policy goals.
United Kingdom
In the Metropolitan Police Service
In the United Kingdom, the inquiry about the murder of the Black Briton Stephen Lawrence concluded that the investigating
police force
The police are a constituted body of persons empowered by a state, with the aim to enforce the law, to ensure the safety, health and possessions of citizens, and to prevent crime and civil disorder. Their lawful powers include arrest and th ...
was institutionally racist. Sir William Macpherson used the term as a description of "the collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture, or ethnic origin", which "can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes, and behaviour, which amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness, and racist stereotyping, which disadvantages minority ethnic people". Sir William's definition is almost identical to Stokely Carmichael's original definition some forty years earlier. Stokely Carmichael and Charles Hamilton were Black Power activists and first used the term 'institutional racism' in 1967 to describe the consequences of a societal structure that was stratified into a racial hierarchy that resulted in layers of discrimination and inequality for minority ethnic people in housing, income, employment, education and health (Garner 2004:22).
The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry Report, and the public's response to it, were among the major factors that forced the
Metropolitan Police
The Metropolitan Police Service (MPS), formerly and still commonly known as the Metropolitan Police (and informally as the Met Police, the Met, Scotland Yard, or the Yard), is the territorial police force responsible for law enforcement and ...
to address its treatment of ethnic minorities. More recently, the former
Metropolitan Police Commissioner
The Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis is the head of London's Metropolitan Police Service. Sir Mark Rowley was appointed to the post on 8 July 2022 after Dame Cressida Dick announced her resignation in February.
The rank of Commissione ...
,
Sir Ian Blair
Ian Warwick Blair, Baron Blair of Boughton, (born 19 March 1953) is a law enforcement in the United Kingdom, British retired police officer, policeman who held the position of Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis from 2005 to 2008 and was t ...
said that the British news media are institutionally racist, a comment that offended journalists, provoking angry responses from the media, despite the National Black Police Association welcoming Blair's assessment.
The report also found that the Metropolitan Police was institutionally racist. A total of 70 recommendations for reform were made. These proposals included abolishing the double jeopardy rule and criminalising racist statements made in private. Macpherson also called for reform in the British Civil Service, local governments, the National Health Service, schools, and the judicial system, to address issues of institutional racism.
In June 2015, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner,
Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe
Bernard Hogan-Howe, Baron Hogan-Howe, (born 25 October 1957) is an English former police officer and was the head of London's Metropolitan Police as Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis from 2011 until 2017.
Born in Sheffield, Hogan-Howe ...
, said there was some justification in claims that the Metropolitan Police Service is institutionally racist.
In criminal convictions
In the English and Welsh prison system, government data which was compiled in 2020 showed that youths of color are dis-proportionally subject to punishment the UN regards as violating the Mandela Rules on the treatment of prisoners. The
COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...
had caused some minors being held in
pre-trial detention
Remand, also known as pre-trial detention, preventive detention, or provisional detention, is the process of detaining a person until their trial after they have been arrested and charged with an offence. A person who is on remand is held i ...
to be placed in solitary confinement indefinitely. Minorities under 18 comprised 50% of the youth inmates held and 27% of the overall prison population. Ethnic minorities made up 14% of the overall population.
In healthcare
Institutional racism exists in various aspects of healthcare, from maternity to psychiatric. Black women are four times more likely to die in pregnancy, labour and up to a year postpartum than whites.
Asian women are twice as likely as whites to die in pregnancy. Black women are twice as likely to have a stillborn baby than whites.
According to the
Institute for the Study of Academic Racism
The Institute for the Study of Academic Racism (ISAR) is an organization that monitors "changing intellectual trends in academic racism, biological determinism, and eugenics." ISAR states that in this capacity it "acts as a resource service for stu ...
, scholars have drawn on a 1979 work by
social psychologist
Social psychology is the scientific study of how thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people or by social norms. Social psychologists typically explain human behavior as a result of the re ...
Michael Billig
Michael Billig (born 1947) is a British academic. He is Emeritus Professor of Social Sciences at Loughborough University, working principally in contemporary social psychology although much of his work crosses disciplinary boundaries in the social ...
– "Psychology, Racism, and Fascism" – that identified links between the
Institute of Psychiatry
The Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience (IoPPN) is a research institution dedicated to discovering what causes mental illness and diseases of the brain. In addition, its aim is to help identify new treatments for them and ways ...
and racist/
eugenic
Eugenics ( ; ) is a fringe set of beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population. Historically, eugenicists have attempted to alter human gene pools by excluding people and groups judged to be inferior or ...
theories, notably in regard to
race and intelligence
Discussions of race and intelligence – specifically, claims of differences in intelligence along racial lines – have appeared in both popular science and academic research since the modern concept of Race (human categorization), race was fi ...
, as for example promoted by IOP psychologist
Hans Eysenck
Hans Jürgen Eysenck (; 4 March 1916 – 4 September 1997) was a German-born British psychologist who spent his professional career in Great Britain. He is best remembered for his work on intelligence and personality, although he worked on other ...
and in a highly publicised talk in August 1970 at the IOP by American psychologist
Arthur Jensen
Arthur Robert Jensen (August 24, 1923 – October 22, 2012) was an American psychologist and writer. He was a professor of educational psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. Jensen was known for his work in psychometrics an ...
. Billig concluded that "racialist presuppositions" intruded into research at the Institute both unintentionally and intentionally. In 2007, the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
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reported that a "race row" had broken out in the wake of an official inquiry that identified institutional racism in British psychiatry, with psychiatrists, including from the IOP/Maudsley, arguing against the claim, while the heads of the
Mental Health Act Commission
The Mental Health Act Commission was an NHS special health authority that provided a safeguard for people detained in hospital under the powers of the Mental Health Act 1983 in England and Wales. Mental health care is the only part of health care ...
accused them of misunderstanding the concept of institutional racism and dismissing the legitimate concerns of the black community in Britain. Campaigns by voluntary groups seek to address the higher rates of sectioning, overmedication, misdiagnosis and forcible restraint on members of
minority groups
The term 'minority group' has different usages depending on the context. According to its common usage, a minority group can simply be understood in terms of demographic sizes within a population: i.e. a group in society with the least number o ...
. According to 2014 statistics, Black adults had the lowest treatment rate of any ethnic group, at 5.2%. The treatment rate for whites is 17.3%. Figures from March 2019 show that Black people were more than four times as likely as white people to be detained under the Mental Health Act in the previous year.
Black men were 4.2 times more likely, and Black women were 4.3 times more likely, to die from
COVID-19
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was COVID-19 pandemic in Hubei, identified in Wuhan, China, in December ...
than whites during the initial wave of the
pandemic
A pandemic () is an epidemic of an infectious disease that has spread across a large region, for instance multiple continents or worldwide, affecting a substantial number of individuals. A widespread endemic (epidemiology), endemic disease wi ...
.
In education
In a 2009 report by the Department for Innovations and Business Skills, it was found that Black students were the most likely to receive under-predicted grades by their teachers. It was found that 8.1% of Black students received higher actual grades compared to 4.6% of white students, 6.5% of Asian students and 6.1% of mixed-race students.
Critics contend that part of the institutional racism in education in the UK is in the curriculum. Arguments for and against decolonizing the curriculum are outlined on the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
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's ''Moral Maze'' podcast.
In employment
The equality and human rights commission reported that black workers with degrees earned 27.1% less income on average than whites. This gives some light for the reasons behind the stark inequalities that black people and to a lesser extent, other ethnic minorities face in the UK. For example, 56% of families with a black household head were living in poverty compared to 13% of families led by a white person.
Standards of employment in the UK, as well as in the United States and other Western European countries, often disregard how certain standards, such as eye contact, have different meanings around the world. Asian, Latin American and African cultures can consider eye contact as disrespect or as challenging authority, often resulting in them maintaining an on-and-off eye contact to show respect in interviews and employment processes. Opposingly, most people in countries in North America and Western Europe see eye contact as expressing enthusiasm and trust.
United States
In housing and lending
Institutional racism in the housing sector could be seen as early as the 1930s with the
Home Owners' Loan Corporation
The Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC) was a government-sponsored corporation created as part of the New Deal. The corporation was established in 1933 by the Home Owners' Loan Corporation Act under the leadership of President Franklin D. Roo ...
. Banks would determine a neighborhood's risk for loan default and
redline
Redline refers to the maximum engine speed at which an internal combustion engine or traction motor and its components are designed to operate without causing damage to the components themselves or other parts of the engine. The redline of an en ...
neighborhoods that were at high risk of crime. These neighborhoods tended to be African-American neighborhoods, whereas whites were able to receive housing loans. Over several decades, as whites left the city to move to nicer houses in the suburbs, predominantly African-American neighborhoods fell apart. Retail stores also started moving to the suburbs to be closer to the customers and to avoid being robbed. Commencing with President
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (; ; January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), often referred to by his initials FDR, was an American politician and attorney who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. As the ...
's
New Deal
The New Deal was a series of programs, public work projects, financial reforms, and regulations enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States between 1933 and 1939. Major federal programs agencies included the Civilian Cons ...
in the 1930s and through the 1960s, the FHA contributed to the economic growth of the white population by providing loan guarantees to banks, which in turn financed white homeownership and enabled
white flight
White flight or white exodus is the sudden or gradual large-scale migration of white people from areas becoming more racially or ethnoculturally diverse. Starting in the 1950s and 1960s, the terms became popular in the United States. They refer ...
, and it did not make loans available to Black people. As minorities were not able to get financing and aid from banks, whites pulled ahead in equity gains. Moreover, many college students were then, in turn, financed with the equity in homeownership that was gained by having gotten the earlier government handout, which was not the same accorded to Black and other minority families. The institutional racism of the FHA's 1943 model has been tempered after the
Great Recession
The Great Recession was a period of marked general decline, i.e. a recession, observed in national economies globally that occurred from late 2007 into 2009. The scale and timing of the recession varied from country to country (see map). At ...
by President
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the U ...
's efforts to stabilize the housing losses of 2008 with his Fair Housing Finance ( GSE) reform.
These changes, which were brought on by government-funded programs and projects, have led to a significant change in inner-city markets. Due to robberies, black neighborhoods have been left with fewer food stores, but more liquor stores. The low-income neighborhoods are left with independently owned smaller grocery stores that tend to have higher prices. Poor consumers are left with the option of traveling to middle-income neighborhoods, or spending more for less.
The
racial segregation
Racial segregation is the systematic separation of people into race (human classification), racial or other Ethnicity, ethnic groups in daily life. Racial segregation can amount to the international crime of apartheid and a crimes against hum ...
and disparities in wealth between European Americans and African-American people include legacies of historical policies. In the
Social Security Act of 1935
The Social Security Act of 1935 is a law enacted by the 74th United States Congress and signed into law by US President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The law created the Social Security program as well as insurance against unemployment. The law was pa ...
, agricultural workers and servants, who disproportionately were Black, were excluded because key whites did not want governmental assistance to change the agrarian system. In the
Wagner Act of 1935
The National Labor Relations Act of 1935, also known as the Wagner Act, is a foundational statute of United States labor law that guarantees the right of private sector employees to organize into trade unions, engage in collective bargaining, and ...
, "blacks were blocked by law from challenging the barriers to entry into the newly protected labor unions and securing the right to collective bargaining." In the National Housing Act of 1939, the property appraisal system tied property value and eligibility for government loans to race."Where Race Lives" '' Race: The Power of an Illusion'',
PBS
The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcasting, public broadcaster and Non-commercial activity, non-commercial, Terrestrial television, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly fu ...
, 2003 The 1936 Underwriting Manual used by the Federal Housing Administration to guide residential mortgages gave 20% weight to a neighborhood's protection, for example, zoning ordinances, deed restrictions, high speed traffic arteries, from adverse influences, such as infiltration of inharmonious racial groups. Thus, white-majority neighborhoods received the government's highest property value ratings, and whites were eligible for government loans and aid. Richard Rothstein, in his book "The Color of Law," tells of a history of residential segregation in America. He noted that government institutions in all branches and at all levels and were complicit in excluding African Americans from home-ownership. "We have created a caste system in this country, with African Americans kept exploited and geographically separate by racially explicit government policies," he wrote. In covering topics like racial covenants – where loans to developers were contingent on contracts that spelled out specific exclusion of black people, he showed that it was a policy spelled out by the
Federal Housing Administration
The Federal Housing Administration (FHA), also known as the Office of Housing within the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), is a United States government agency founded by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, created in part ...
's underwriting manual, which denied any guarantees for a federal bank loan to a developer if they were to sell properties to African Americans in white communities. Homeowners in one such subdivision, Levittown, Long Island, New York, were forbidden to rent or sell to persons "other than members of the Caucasian race". Between 1934 and 1962, less than two percent of government-subsidized housing went to non-white people.
In 1968, the
Fair Housing Act
The Civil Rights Act of 1968 () is a landmark law in the United States signed into law by United States President Lyndon B. Johnson during the King assassination riots.
Titles II through VII comprise the Indian Civil Rights Act, which applie ...
(FHA) was signed into law to eliminate the effects of state-sanctioned racial segregation. But it failed to change the status quo as the United States remained nearly segregated as in the 1960s. A newer discriminating lending practice was the
subprime lending
In finance, subprime lending (also referred to as near-prime, subpar, non-prime, and second-chance lending) is the provision of loans to people in the United States who may have difficulty maintaining the repayment schedule. Historically, subpri ...
in the 1990s. Lenders targeted high-interest subprime loans to low-income and minority neighborhoods who might be eligible for fair-interest prime loans. Securitization, mortgage brokers and other non-deposit lenders, and legislative deregulation of the mortgage lending industry all played a role in promoting the subprime lending market.
Numerous
audit studies
An audit is an "independent examination of financial information of any entity, whether profit oriented or not, irrespective of its size or legal form when such an examination is conducted with a view to express an opinion thereon.” Auditing ...
conducted in the 1980s in the United States found consistent evidence of discrimination against African Americans and Hispanics in metropolitan housing markets.
The long-outlawed practice of redlining (in which banks choke off lending to minority communities) recently re-emerged as a concern for federal bank regulators in New York and Connecticut. A settlement with the
Justice Department
A justice ministry, ministry of justice, or department of justice is a ministry or other government agency in charge of the administration of justice. The ministry or department is often headed by a minister of justice (minister for justice in a ...
and the
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is an agency of the United States government responsible for consumer protection in the financial sector. CFPB's jurisdiction includes banks, credit unions, securities firms, payday lenders, mortg ...
was the largest in the history of both agencies, topping $33 million in restitution for the practice from New Jersey's largest savings bank. The bank had been accused of steering clear of higher crime neighborhoods and favoring whites in granting loans and mortgages, finding that, of the approximately 1,900 mortgages made in 2014, only 25 went to black applicants. The banks' executives denied bias, and the settlement came with adjustments to the banks' business practices. This followed other successful efforts by the federal, state and city officials in 2014 to expand lending programs directed at minorities, and in some cases to force banks to pay penalties for patterns of redlining in Providence, Rhode Island; St. Louis, Missouri; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; and Buffalo and Rochester, New York. The Justice Department also has more active redlining investigations underway, and officials have stated to reporters that "redlining is not a thing of the past". It has evolved, they explained, into a more politically correct version, where bankers do not talk openly about denying loans to black people. The Justice Department officials noted that some banks quietly had institutionalized bias in their operations. They have moved their operations out of minority communities entirely, while others have moved in to fill the void and compete for clients. Such management decisions are not the stated intent, it is left unspoken so that even the bank's other customers are unaware that it is occurring. The effect on minority communities can be profound as home ownership, a prime source of neighborhood stability and economic mobility can affect its vulnerability to blight and disrepair. In the 1960s and 1970s, laws were passed banning the practice; its return is far less overt, and while the vast majority of banks operate legally, the practice appears to be more widespread as the investigation revealed a vast disparity in loans approved for black people as compared to whites in similar situations.
Studies in major cities, such as Los Angeles and Baltimore, show that communities of color have lower levels of access to parks and green space. Parks are considered an environmental amenity and have social, economic, and health benefits. The public spaces allow for social interactions, increase the likelihood of daily exercise in the community and improve mental health. They can also reduce the
urban heat island
An urban heat island (UHI) is an urban or metropolitan area that is significantly warmer than its surrounding rural areas due to human activities. The temperature difference is usually larger at night than during the day, and is most apparen ...
effect, provide wildlife habitat, control floods, and reduce certain air pollutants. Minority groups have less access to decision-making processes that determine the distribution of parks. A recent study published by Suffolk University found that black renters face discrimination when renting compared to similarly situated white renters.
Racism in health care and environmental racism
Institutional racism impacts health care accessibility within non-white minority communities by creating
health disparities
Health equity arises from access to the social determinants of health, specifically from wealth, power and prestige. Individuals who have consistently been deprived of these three determinants are significantly disadvantaged from health inequiti ...
among racial groups. For example, from 1865 to 1906, many black veterans were unfairly denied disability pension by the Union Army disability pension system. Racism may also account for disproportionate rates of diseases, such as AIDS, among ethnic minorities. In a 1992 article, Janis Hutchinson argues that the federal government has responded slowly to the AIDS epidemic in minority communities and that their attempts have been insensitive to ethnic diversity in preventive medicine, community health maintenance, and AIDS treatment services. In addition, the mass incarceration of black males along, with vectors for addiction in co-relation to the higher number of minority females found infected with the HIV virus after 2000, has been the subject of study, and findings have shown that previous analyses of the rise incorrectly attributed it to male-on-male sex habits, rather than the causal effects found in current studies. Public health studies found incarcerated men, when returned to their communities, raise the risk of infection by passing the virus on to heterosexual partners, having acquired it in prison due to higher than average rates of sexual assault and rape, no access to condoms, injectable drugs and lack of clean needles, along with tattooing, and inadequate access to health care and treatment after being released due to poverty and unemployment. The studies also found that the high rates of incarceration reduced the number of available men in black communities and rupture social relationships, leading each man to have an increase in the number of concurrent sexual partners.
Institutional racism can affect minority health directly through health-related policies, as well as through other factors indirectly. For example, racial segregation disproportionately exposed black communities to chemical substances such as lead paint, respiratory irritants such as diesel fumes, crowding, litter, and noise. Members of racial minority groups that have a disadvantaged status in education and employment are more likely to be uninsured, which significantly impedes them from accessing preventive, diagnostic, or therapeutic health services.
Racial minorities in the United States are exposed to greater health and environmental risks than the general population. In 1982, there was a proposed
polychlorinated biphenyl
Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are highly carcinogenic chemical compounds, formerly used in industrial and consumer products, whose production was banned in the United States by the Toxic Substances Control Act in 1979 and internationally by t ...
landfill in an African-American community in Warren County, NC. PCBs are toxic chemicals that can leach into the groundwater and contaminate the drinking water supply. The community resisted and said this was an act of
environmental racism
Environmental racism or ecological apartheid is a form of institutional racism leading to landfills, incinerators, and hazardous waste disposal being disproportionally placed in communities of colour. Internationally, it is also associated with ...
. This incident is considered to be the beginning of the
environmental justice
Environmental justice is a social movement to address the unfair exposure of poor and marginalized communities to harms from hazardous waste, resource extraction, and other land uses.Schlosberg, David. (2007) ''Defining Environmental Justic ...
movement: a movement to address the injustice that communities of color face. Research shows that there is racial discrimination in the enforcement of environmental laws and regulations. People of color and the poor are more likely to live, work and play in America's most polluted environments. Communities of color tend to be disproportionately exposed to lead, pesticides, and petrochemical plants. Unfortunately, race and class is a reliable indicator of where industrial plants and waste facilities are located. Institutional environmental racism encompasses these land use decisions that contribute to health issues such as asthma, obesity and diabetes.
The
opioid epidemic in the United States
In the United States, the opioid epidemic (also known as the opioid crisis) is an extensive ongoing overuse of opioid medications, both from medical prescriptions and from illegal sources. The epidemic began in the United States in the late ...
is overwhelmingly white, sparing African-American and Latino communities because doctors unconsciously prescribe narcotics more cautiously to their non-white patients. "Racial stereotyping is having a protective effect on non-white populations," according to Dr. Andrew Kolodny, the co-director of the Opioid Policy Research Collaborative at Brandeis.
The
COVID-19
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was COVID-19 pandemic in Hubei, identified in Wuhan, China, in December ...
pandemic disproportionately affected African Americans, with more dying of the disease during its initial wave than other racial groups. In testifying before Congress, the leading epidemiologist on the U.S. Coronavirus task force, Dr.
Anthony Fauci
Anthony Stephen Fauci (; born December 24, 1940) is an American physician-scientist and immunologist serving as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and the chief medical advisor to the president. ...
, testified that a combination of factors affect the disproportionate numbers of minorities infected. In responding as to whether institutional racism has played a part in the data gleaned by the
CDC
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is the National public health institutes, national public health agency of the United States. It is a Federal agencies of the United States, United States federal agency, under the United S ...
, he pointed out the risk of infection along with underlying conditions in certain demographics was a factor, but affirmed his opinion that this was the case. A
Queen's University Belfast
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, top_free_label =
, top_free =
, top_free_label1 =
, top_free1 =
, top_free_label2 =
, top_free2 =
, established =
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, type = Public research university
, parent = ...
study found that there is insufficient evidence to attribute the greater susceptibility of black, Middle-Eastern and Asian individuals to the virus.
Black women are two and one-half times more likely to die from maternal causes than are white women. The infant-mortality rate for African Americans is 11 per 1,000 births, which is higher than the 2018 U.S. average of 5.7. There exists a persistent racial gap between black and white Americans in life expectancy; on average this life-expectancy gap is around 4 years. However, this greatly varies depending on both the state and city level. For example, in
Wisconsin
Wisconsin () is a state in the upper Midwestern United States. Wisconsin is the 25th-largest state by total area and the 20th-most populous. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake M ...
, the black-white life expectancy gap is about 6 years for females and 7 years for males, and in Washington D.C this gap is about 12 years for females and greater than 17 years among males.
In criminal conviction
Although approximately two-thirds of crack cocaine users are white or Hispanic people (reported past-year use in 2013 of 0.8%, 0.3% and 0.1% for blacks, whites and Hispanics, respectively), a large percentage of people convicted of possession of crack cocaine in federal courts in 1994 were black people. In 1994, 86.3% of the defendants convicted of crack cocaine possession were black people, while 10.3% were whites and 5.2% were Hispanics. Possession of powder cocaine was more racially mixed, with 52% of the offenders being whites, 29.7% blacks, and 17% Hispanics. Within the federal judicial system, a person convicted of possession with intent to distribute powder cocaine carries a five-year sentence for quantities of 500 grams or more, while a person convicted of possession with intent to distribute crack cocaine faces a five-year sentence for quantities of 5 grams or more. With the combination of severe and unbalanced drug-possession laws, along with the rates of conviction in terms of race, the judicial system has created a racial disparity. In 2015, sitting President
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the U ...
visited a federal prison (a presidential first) to discuss how disparate sentencing affected prisoners and highlight how, in the United States, excessive sentencing was a detrimental outcome of harsh sentencing laws, as well as to discuss the need to change the approach. In the Senate, top Republican and Democratic senators, in a rare bi-partisan effort, negotiated for months to produce concrete fixes to these laws. The law was changed in 2010 to reduce disparity; it affected only new cases. The need, according to Senate, was for a retroactive fix to reduce the thousands serving long sentences after four decades of extreme sentencing policies. Studies have shown it is possible to reduce both prison populations and crime at the same time. The
U.S. Sentencing commission
The United States Sentencing Commission is an independent agency of the judicial branch of the U.S. federal government. It is responsible for articulating the U.S. Federal Sentencing Guidelines for the federal courts. The Commission promulgates ...
announced a retroactive reduction in drug sentences following a year-long review, which will result in a mass release of 6,000 prisoners, all of whom have already served substantial time in prison. This action was done in an effort to reduce overcrowding and provide comfort to wrongfully accused drug offenders who were sent to jail over the past couple of decades. Some of those to be released will be deported, and all will be subject to further judicial review.
The issue of policies that target minority populations in large cities, also known as
stop and frisk
A ''Terry'' stop in the United States allows the police to briefly detain a person based on reasonable suspicion of involvement in criminal activity. ("In ''Terry v. Ohio'', 392 U. S. 1, 30 (1968), we held that the police can stop and briefly de ...
and arrest
quotas
Quota may refer to:
Economics
* Import quota, a trade restriction on the quantity of goods imported into a country
* Market Sharing Quota, an economic system used in Canadian agriculture
* Milk quota, a quota on milk production in Europe
* Indi ...
, as practiced by the NYPD, have receded from media coverage due to lawsuits that have altered the practice. In ''Floyd vs City of New York'', a ruling that created an independent Inspector General's office to oversee the NYPD, the federal judge called a whistle-blower's recordings of superiors' use of "
quotas
Quota may refer to:
Economics
* Import quota, a trade restriction on the quantity of goods imported into a country
* Market Sharing Quota, an economic system used in Canadian agriculture
* Milk quota, a quota on milk production in Europe
* Indi ...
" the 'smoking gun evidence' that police were racially profiling and violating civilians' civil rights. The
police officer
A police officer (also called a policeman and, less commonly, a policewoman) is a warranted law employee of a police force. In most countries, "police officer" is a generic term not specifying a particular rank. In some, the use of the ...
at the center of the case settled with the city for $1.1 million and in a separate case won an additional settlement against the hospital where he was involuntarily confined after cops retaliated and unlawfully placed him in a psych ward for reporting fudged stats in his precinct. After taking office in 2014, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio declined to continue litigating stop-and-frisk practices, and the number of minorities stopped under the practice dropped dramatically. The use of quotas to pad arrest figures also has fallen after lawsuits exposed the practice as carried on by drug enforcement officers.
A
Stanford University
Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...
study that analyzed 93 million traffic stops in the United States revealed that African Americans are twenty percent more likely to be stopped despite being less likely to be in possession of contraband compared to white people. In the state of California, 38% of people halted by police officers in Los Angeles were black people, despite accounting for only 9% of the population. In Washington, D.C., black people make up 46% of the population but composed 72% of the people stopped even though the difference in contraband hit rates between blacks and whites are not statistically significant. In Boston, blacks made up 64% of those stopped despite making up only 24% of the population; even after controlling for alleged gang involvement and prior arrest records, blacks were more likely to experience repeat police encounters and to be frisked or searched during an encounter. In Illinois, minority drivers are stopped 1.5 more times than white drivers, and Latino drivers are nearly 2 times more likely to be subjected to dog-sniff searches than are non-Hispanic whites but are found with contraband 1.6 times less often.
A
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
study found that in Massachusetts's criminal justice system minorities face greater risk to be represented across all parts of the criminal justice system in excess of their proportion of the population in that state. The likelihood that they will get arrested and convicted due to drug or weapons charges is eight times greater than for whites. Black people were found to receive average sentences that were 238 days longer, and Latino people 178 days longer, for the same offences. The study concluded that regarding '
stop and frisk
A ''Terry'' stop in the United States allows the police to briefly detain a person based on reasonable suspicion of involvement in criminal activity. ("In ''Terry v. Ohio'', 392 U. S. 1, 30 (1968), we held that the police can stop and briefly de ...
' "The disparity in searches was more consistent with racial bias than with differences in criminal conduct,". The 24 percent of the city of
Boston
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
's population that was black made up 83 percent of those interrogated or frisked by police.
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has found that, since 2008, after Barack Obama's election into office, racist hate groups have increased above 400%. The SPLC asserts that racism at the institutional level dies hard, and is still prevalent in many U.S. institutions, including law enforcement and the criminal justice system. Frequently these institutions use racial profiling along with greater police brutality. Another major disparity between race and capital punishment in the United States is that murder cases with white victims were more likely than those with black victims to result in a death sentence.
A recent report by former Homeland Security secretary
Jeh Johnson
Jeh Charles Johnson ( "Jay"; born September 11, 1957) is an American lawyer and former government official. He was United States Secretary of Homeland Security from 2013 to 2017.
From 2009 to 2012, Johnson was the general counsel of the Departm ...
found both overt and institutional racism to be a pervasive problem in the NYS court system. Citing a "Second class system of justice for people of color in NYS", Johnson's report set out recommendations to combat bias and systematic racism in interactions between the court system and people of color, particularly in New York City. Chief administrative Judge Lawrence K. Marks found the reports findings troubling and said the state would attempt to implement all the report's solutions. The report also highlighted intolerant racism among court officers. The team conducted interviews of over 300 court personnel, including lawyers whom reported instances of discrimination from court officers and Judges. Judges who were interviewed said that the lack of resources in the busiest courts had a disparate impact on minority clients making up the bulk of cases, and judicial diversity failed to mitigate the effect as few black candidates could pass muster in Upstate New York, where connections mattered in their appointment as judges. One judge said the reluctance to provide funding to New York city courts was "the very definition of institutional bias".
Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986
The disparity between the sentences given to black people and white offenders has been most highlighted by that of crack- and powdered-cocaine offenses, which received disparate sentencing pursuant to federal law. Between 1986 and 1997,
the number of federal drug prisoners quintupled, with 74% of those minorities
convicted of low-level drug offenses and sentenced under mandatory minimum laws
and later added conspiracy amendments to the law.
Members of Congress and state legislators believed these harsh, inflexible sentences would catch those at the top of the drug trade and deter others from entering it. Instead, this broad response to the drug problem brought in more low-level offenders, which resulted in overcapacity prison populations and increased burdens for taxpayers. Mandatory sentencing laws disproportionately affected minorities and, because of their severity, families were destroyed. As a result, many states are
experiencing efforts to roll back these laws and there are efforts in Congress
to end mandatory minimums. (''See
Mandatory sentencing
Mandatory sentencing requires that offenders serve a predefined term for certain crimes, commonly serious and violent offenses. Judges are bound by law; these sentences are produced through the legislature, not the judicial system. They are inst ...
''.)
Juvenile court
A federal investigation initiated before the 2014 Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, found faults with the treatment given youths in the juvenile justice system in St. Louis County, Missouri. The Justice Department, following a 20-month investigation based on 33,000 cases over three years, reported that black youths were treated more harshly than were whites and that all low-income youths, regardless of race, were deprived of their basic constitutional rights. Youths who encountered law enforcement got little or no chance to challenge detention or get any help from lawyers. With only one public defender assigned to juveniles in a county of one million, and that Legal Aid handled 394 cases in 2014. The investigation was unrelated to the notorious case that roiled St. Louis, beginning before the police shooting of the unarmed black youth. The failure to grant access to counsel brought to light the practice of an informal process that could let offenders off with a warning or having them enter into diversion programs in lieu of being charged in court. But to be accepted into the informal process, offenders had to admit to guilt, which runs afoul of the right not to incriminate oneself in criminal proceedings. The investigation following Michael Brown's shooting found an enormous disparity in the way juvenile cases were handled, with black youths being 67% more likely than whites to be put through the formal criminal proceedings. It also found them more likely to be held in detention, and also subsequently sentenced to incarceration once the case was finished. They were also more likely to be detained for violating parole from a previous case.
The county did not cooperate fully with the Justice Department, and the St. Louis Family Court declined to comment, as did the state court system, of which it is a part. A Justice Department official faulted "the role of implicit bias when there are discretionary decisions to be made". They also reported that the court rarely considers the evidence for probable cause and juveniles are illegally denied the opportunity to challenge that evidence or a transfer of the case out of the juvenile justice system to adult court. In most state courts, the public defender's office decides who is poor enough to merit representation; in St. Louis Family Court the judge or court commissioner, sometimes based on different standards, decides who gets access to counsel. Most troubling to the justice official was the continuing use of court officials to recite complicated statutory language about the alleged crimes, then leading the defendants through "formulaic 'do you understand' and yes/no questions." Judges made no effort to find out if the pleas were coerced, whether the child had any criminal intent or especially, did they fully understand the consequences of pleading guilty to the charges. Their competency to take part in their own defense was never established and the legal aide in the cases examined never challenged a probable cause finding, hired an expert witness or challenged hearsay evidence or leading questions and most cases ended with the child pleading guilty. The Civil Rights Division (of the Justice Department) began four investigations beginning in 2013 delving into juvenile justice systems in Mississippi, Tennessee, Texas, and Missouri, and, while settlements were reached, it has had to file suit to overcome the disparities in criminal convictions.
Coupled with
zero-tolerance
A zero tolerance policy is one which imposes a punishment for every infraction of a stated rule.zero tolerance, n.' (under ''zero, n.''). The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd Ed. 1989. Retrieved 10 November 2009. Italy, Japan, Singapore China, Indi ...
discipline in schools, a "one-size-fits-all solution" decried by the
American Bar Association
The American Bar Association (ABA) is a voluntary bar association of lawyers and law students, which is not specific to any jurisdiction in the United States. Founded in 1878, the ABA's most important stated activities are the setting of acad ...
, black and Latino youths are more likely to encounter negative contact with law enforcement and accrue violations, which leads to fines and failure to pay, which in turn leads to warrants and/or probation violations. This cycle has been shown to put children, particularly low-income minorities, in the
school-to-prison pipeline
In the United States, the school-to-prison pipeline (SPP), also known as the school-to-prison link, school–prison nexus, or schoolhouse-to-jailhouse track, is the disproportionate tendency of minors and young adults from disadvantaged backgroun ...
.
Judicial misconduct
In 2010, two Washington state supreme court justices,
Richard B. Sanders
Richard B. Sanders is a former justice of the Washington Supreme Court.
Early life and education
Richard Sanders attended Highline High School. In school, he played horn in the band and was a member of the debate team. He graduated from the Unive ...
and James M. Johnson, were baffled at a court meeting to determine the fate of $25,000 in funding for various boards and commissions. They stated that there was too much African-American representation in the prison population because African Americans are known to commit a number of crimes and not because of their race. A black lawyer said that she was shocked to hear these two justices refer to a former Legal Aid lawyer's assertions in a report using the phrase ''poverty pimp''. Shirley Bondon, a state Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC) manager who oversaw court programs critical of the legal system, told the justices that she believed that there was racial "bias in the criminal-justice system, from the bottom up." The response from Justice Saunders was critical of black people, stating that he did not believe that the barriers existed, except for poverty because it might restrict the ability to afford an attorney. James M. Johnson, who was noted as the most conservative judge on the court, agreed, noting that African Americans commit crimes against their own communities, to which Bondon objected, requesting a closed-door meeting with the court. Within, Justice Debra Stephens said that she heard Sanders and Johnson make the comments, including Johnson using the words "you all" or "you people" when he stated that African Americans commit crimes in their own communities. Others who attended the meeting stated that they were offended by the justices' remarks, saying that the comments showed a lack of knowledge and sensitivity. A Kitsap County District Court judge, James Riehl, concurred, as he was "acutely aware" of barriers to equal treatment in the legal system. In 2010, African Americans represented 4 percent of Washington State's population but 20 percent of the prison population. Nationwide, similar disparities have been attributed by researchers to sentencing practices, inadequate legal representation, drug-enforcement policies and criminal-enforcement procedures that unfairly affect African Americans.
In 2020, an investigation revealed that Oklahoma Judges who violated their judicial oaths and failed to comply with laws faced no sanctions as none had been imposed since 2004. Across the United States, thousands more were privately sanctioned in chambers by Supreme Court Justices and had their cases closed without the public ever being notified of what they were charged with. Some of the cases alleged racist statements, failure to notify defendants in jail of their right to a lawyer and lying to state officials investigating misconduct. The report identified 3,600 cases from 2008 to 2018 where judges were disciplined but had their identities hidden, along with the nature of the offences- from public scrutiny. Many of the justices whom resigned under threat of penalty did not face any sanctions and kept practicing law, as they did not admit to wrongdoing and confidential justice was doled out by other judges. The report found that 9 out of 10 judges sanctioned for misconduct were allowed to return to their duties, revealing a lax oversight and lenient disciplinary system in place for significant transgressions.
Bisbee Deportation
In 1918, the
U.S. Department of Justice
The United States Department of Justice (DOJ), also known as the Justice Department, is a federal executive department of the United States government tasked with the enforcement of federal law and administration of justice in the United State ...
pursued charges against 21 officers and executives of the Phelps Dodge Mining Company for the kidnapping of 1,200 workers across state lines from
Bisbee, Arizona
Bisbee is a city in and the county seat of Cochise County in southeastern Arizona, United States. It is southeast of Tucson and north of the Mexican border. According to the 2020 census, the population of the town was 4,923, down from 5,575 i ...
. The men were subsequently released based on a pre-trial motion from the defense, claiming that the federal government had no basis for charging them, as no federal law was broken. Arizona officials never initiated criminal proceedings in state court against those responsible for the deportation of workers and their lost wages and other losses. The Justice Department appealed, but in ''United States v. Wheeler'', 254 U.S. 281 (1920), Chief Justice
Edward Douglass White
Edward Douglass White Jr. (November 3, 1844 – May 19, 1921) was an American politician and jurist from Louisiana. White was a U.S. Supreme Court justice for 27 years, first as an associate justice from 1894 to 1910, then as the ninth chief ju ...
wrote for an 8-to-1 majority that the U.S. Constitution did not empower the federal government to enforce the rights of the deportees. Rather it "necessarily assumed the continued possession by the states of the reserved power to deal with free residence, ingress, and egress." Only in a case of "state discriminatory action" would the federal government have a role to play. By this calculated reasoning, the officials situated at the Supreme Court erred in not taking the side that in today's legal lexicon had every right to seek justice and redress, not only for the stolen wages, union busting, false imprisonment and other crimes, but for the inherent right not to be forcibly removed from your home by men with guns and shipped in cattle cars across state lines as many homeowners were. That 8 of the 9 Supreme Court justices concurred and, based on anti-radical speech sentiment at the time (post WWI anti-union and IWW), leads to the conclusion that the government gave the company cover to remove the workers, many of whom were Mexicans advocating for better pay and working condition, to a place in the next state closer to the border with the admonition ''never to return''. That few deportees returned and those that contested the deportations lost their cases to have their homes returned to
necessity
Necessary or necessity may refer to:
* Need
** An action somebody may feel they must do
** An important task or essential thing to do at a particular time or by a particular moment
* Necessary and sufficient condition, in logic, something that is ...
, and that in 1966 Finally, in ''
United States v. Guest
''United States v. Guest'', 383 U.S. 745 (1966), was a List of landmark court decisions in the United States, landmark decision of the US Supreme Court authored by Justice Potter Stewart, in which the court extended the protection of the Fourteent ...
'', 383 U.S. 745 (1966), the Supreme Court overruled Chief Justice White's conclusion that the federal government could protect the right to travel only against state infringement.
At the end of the conflict, Attorney General
A. Mitchell Palmer
Alexander Mitchell Palmer (May 4, 1872 – May 11, 1936), was an American attorney and politician who served as the 50th United States attorney general from 1919 to 1921. He is best known for overseeing the Palmer Raids during the Red Scare ...
and others advocated for a peacetime equivalent of the Sedition Act, using the Bisbee events as a justification. They stated that the only reason the company representatives and local law enforcement had taken the law into their own hands was that the government lacked the power to suppress radical sentiment directly. If the government was armed with appropriate legislation and the threat of long prison terms, private citizens would not feel the need to act. Writing in 1920, Harvard Professor
Zechariah Chafee
Zechariah Chafee Jr. (December 7, 1885 – February 8, 1957) was an American judicial philosopher and civil rights advocate, described as "possibly the most important First Amendment scholar of the first half of the twentieth century" by Richar ...
mocked that view: "Doubtless some governmental action was required to protect pacifists and extreme radicals from mob violence, but incarceration for a period of twenty years seems a very queer kind of protection." That this was considered
vigilante
Vigilantism () is the act of preventing, investigating and punishing perceived offenses and crimes without Right, legal authority.
A vigilante (from Spanish, Italian and Portuguese “vigilante”, which means "sentinel" or "watcher") is a pers ...
actions by private citizens duly deputized by the local sheriff gives no weight to the racist component directed towards those of Mexican descent in Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, who were being systematically forced from their homes in the United States beginning in 1910.
Lynching of people of Mexican descent
Vigilante actions and other acts of violence against Mexicans in the Southwest were documented from the 1850s to the 1930s. At least hundreds perhaps thousands of Mexicans were killed by white Anglo Americans and government forces, many of the victims were American citizens. Some of them were killed by people who wanted to drive them off their land and others were killed because they were suspected of being bandits or rebels. Many of them were
lynched
Lynching is an extrajudicial killing by a group. It is most often used to characterize informal public executions by a mob in order to punish an alleged transgressor, punish a convicted transgressor, or intimidate people. It can also be an ex ...
, including some who were taken from jail cells and killed in front of hundreds of people. 571 Mexicans were lynched between 1848 and 1928. Some Mexicans were killed in response to bandit raids, others were killed after they were accused of committing murders, others were killed after they were accused of stealing cattle, others were killed after they were accused of cheating at cards, and others were killed after they protested against injustice. For example, a month after the
Brite Ranch raid
The Brite Ranch raid was an incident that occurred on Christmas Day 1917, in which Mexican raiders crossed the Rio Grande River border and attacked a ranch in Presidio County, Texas. At the time the raiders were thought to be Villistas, as they ...
in Texas,
Rangers
A Ranger is typically someone in a military/paramilitary or law enforcement role specializing in patrolling a given territory, called “ranging”. The term most often refers to:
* Park ranger or forest ranger, a person charged with protecting and ...
committed the Porvenir massacre near the Mexican border where 15 men and boys were executed and falsely accused of being involved in the raid. Efforts to increase awareness of the Porvenir massacre were initially stalled by the state commission on historic places, with the chairwoman of the local historical commission opposing the construction of a marker, claiming that it was being used by 'militant Hispanics' who wanted to receive reparations. She was later over-ruled by the head of the State Historical Commission, who brokered a deal by promising to erect a marker at the site of the Porvenir massacre in addition to promising to erect markers at Anglo ranches that were attacked by suspected Mexican
agent provocateurs who infiltrated meetings of "communist labor" and anti-war activists. After the Bisbee deportations became exposed in the press, Americans were divided about the treatment of illegal aliens, who were purported communists. Former President
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt Jr. ( ; October 27, 1858 – January 6, 1919), often referred to as Teddy or by his initials, T. R., was an American politician, statesman, soldier, conservationist, naturalist, historian, and writer who served as the 26t ...
opined in the press that the Bisbee miners "had it coming, as they were hell-bent on havoc!" The Department of Justice went from advocating for persons deprived of rights and liberty by state actors to detaining them under dubious warrants and suspicion of radicalism. The
Red Scare
A Red Scare is the promotion of a widespread fear of a potential rise of communism, anarchism or other leftist ideologies by a society or state. The term is most often used to refer to two periods in the history of the United States which ar ...
that fueled institutional racism in the 1920s against Russian Jews and other Eastern European immigrants was a backlash to the 1917 Bolshevik revolution in Russia and a
bombing campaign
A bomb is an explosive weapon that uses the exothermic reaction of an explosive material to provide an extremely sudden and violent release of energy. Detonations inflict damage principally through ground- and atmosphere-transmitted mechanic ...
early in 1919 by Italian anarchists advocating the overthrow of the government. The result was the infamous
Palmer raids
The Palmer Raids were a series of raids conducted in November 1919 and January 1920 by the United States Department of Justice under the administration of President Woodrow Wilson to capture and arrest suspected socialists, especially anarchists ...
, ostensibly a deportation measure to remove dangerous aliens. In 1919 Attorney General
A. Mitchell Palmer
Alexander Mitchell Palmer (May 4, 1872 – May 11, 1936), was an American attorney and politician who served as the 50th United States attorney general from 1919 to 1921. He is best known for overseeing the Palmer Raids during the Red Scare ...
began a series of raids cooked up to remove radicals and anarchists from the United States. Warrants were requested from compliant officials in the
Labor Department
The Ministry of Labour ('' UK''), or Labor ('' US''), also known as the Department of Labour, or Labor, is a government department responsible for setting labour standards, labour dispute mechanisms, employment, workforce participation, training, a ...
, and a number of foreign nationals caught up in the sweeping raids were eventually deported. As only the department of labor had the legal right to deport aliens, they did object to the methods; nevertheless, under
color of law
Color (American English) or colour (British English) is the visual perceptual property deriving from the spectrum of light interacting with the photoreceptor cells of the eyes. Color categories and physical specifications of color are associ ...
, the raids began on 7 November 1919. It was led by a 24-year-old
J. Edgar Hoover
John Edgar Hoover (January 1, 1895 – May 2, 1972) was an American law enforcement administrator who served as the first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). He was appointed director of the Bureau of Investigation ...
heading a new division of the Justice Department's
Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, t ...
, called the General Intelligence Division. Armed with responsibility for investigating the programs of radical groups and identifying their members, the raids began with agents of the Bureau of Investigation, together with local police, executing a series of well-publicized and violent raids against the
Union of Russian Workers
The Union of Russian Workers in the United States and Canada, commonly known as the "Union of Russian Workers" (Союз Русских Рабочих, ''Soiuz Russkikh Rabochikh)'' was an anarchist political association of Russian emigrants in t ...
in 12 cities.
Newspaper accounts reported some were "badly beaten" during the arrests. Many later swore they were threatened and beaten during questioning. Government agents cast a wide net, bringing in some American citizens, passers-by who admitted being Russian, some not members of the Russian Workers. Others were teachers conducting night school classes in space shared with the targeted radical groups. Arrests far exceeded the number of warrants. Of 650 arrested in New York City, the government managed to deport just 43. Hoover organized the next raids. He successfully persuaded the Department of Labor to ease its insistence on promptly informing those arrested that they had the right to an attorney. Instead, Labor issued instructions that its representatives could wait until after the case against the defendant was established, "in order to protect government interests". Less openly, Hoover decided to interpret Labor's agreement to act against the Communist Party to include a different organization, the Communist Labor Party. Finally, despite the fact that Secretary of Labor
William B. Wilson
William Bauchop Wilson (April 2, 1862 – May 25, 1934) was an American labor leader and progressive politician, who immigrated as a child with his family from Lanarkshire, Scotland. After having worked as a child and adult in the coal mines of ...
insisted that more than membership in an organization was required for a warrant, Hoover worked with more compliant Labor officials and overwhelmed Labor staff to get the warrants he wanted. Justice Department officials, including Palmer and Hoover, later claimed ignorance of such details.
The Justice Department launched a series of raids on 2 January 1920, with follow-up operations over the next few days. Smaller raids extended over the next six weeks. At least 3,000 were arrested, and many others were held for various lengths of time. The entire enterprise replicated the November action on a larger scale, including arrests and seizures without search warrants, as well as detention in overcrowded and unsanitary holding facilities. Hoover later admitted "clear cases of brutality". Some cases in Boston included torture, where detainees were placed in a 'hot box' above a furnace and given one glass of water and a slice of bread a day and kept there for 50 hours. The raids covered more than 30 cities and towns in 23 states, but those west of the Mississippi and south of Ohio were "publicity gestures" designed to make the effort appear nationwide in scope. Because the raids targeted entire organizations, agents arrested everyone found in organization meeting halls, not only arresting non-radical organization members but also visitors who did not belong to a target organization, and sometimes American citizens not eligible for arrest and deportation. In a few weeks, after changes in personnel at the Department of Labor, Palmer faced a new and very independent-minded Acting Secretary of Labor in Assistant Secretary of Labor
Louis Freeland Post
Louis Freeland Post (November 15, 1849 – January 11, 1928) was a prominent georgism, Georgist and the Assistant United States Secretary of Labor during the closing year of the Woodrow Wilson, Wilson administration, the period of the Palmer Raid ...
, who canceled more than 2,000 warrants as being illegal. Of the 10,000 arrested, 3,500 were held by authorities in detention; 556 resident aliens were eventually deported under the
Immigration Act of 1918
The United States Immigration Act of 1918 (ch. 186, ) was enacted on October 16, 1918.''New York Times'' accessed July 13, 2010 It is also known as the Dillingham-Hardwick Act. It was intended to correct what President Woodrow Wilson's administra ...
.
Other events
On 28 May 1920, the
ACLU
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1920 "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States". T ...
published its "Report Upon the Illegal Practices of the United States Department of Justice", which carefully documented the Justice Department's unlawful arrest of suspected radicals, illegal entrapment by
agents provocateurs
An agent provocateur () is a person who commits, or who acts to entice another person to commit, an illegal or rash act or falsely implicate them in partaking in an illegal act, so as to ruin the reputation of, or entice legal action against, the ...
, and unlawful incommunicado detention. Such prominent lawyers and law professors as
Felix Frankfurter
Felix Frankfurter (November 15, 1882 – February 22, 1965) was an Austrian-American jurist who served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1939 until 1962, during which period he was a noted advocate of judicia ...
,
Roscoe Pound
Nathan Roscoe Pound (October 27, 1870 – June 30, 1964) was an American legal scholar and educator. He served as Dean of the University of Nebraska College of Law from 1903 to 1911 and Dean of Harvard Law School from 1916 to 1936. He was a membe ...
and
Ernst Freund
Ernst Freund (born January 30, 1864 in New York City – died October 20, 1932 in Chicago, Illinois) was a noted American legal scholar. He received a Dr. Jur. from the University of Heidelberg (1884) and a Ph.D. in political science from Columbia ...
signed it. Harvard Professor
Zechariah Chafee
Zechariah Chafee Jr. (December 7, 1885 – February 8, 1957) was an American judicial philosopher and civil rights advocate, described as "possibly the most important First Amendment scholar of the first half of the twentieth century" by Richar ...
criticized the raids and attempts at deportations and the lack of legal process in his 1920 volume ''
Freedom of speech
Freedom of speech is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or legal sanction. The right to freedom of expression has been recogni ...
''. He wrote: "That a
Quaker
Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of Christian denomination, denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belie ...
should employ prison and exile to counteract evil-thinking is one of the saddest ironies of our time." The Rules Committee gave Palmer a hearing in June, where he attacked Post and other critics whose "tender solicitude for social revolution and perverted sympathy for the criminal anarchists...set at large among the people the very public enemies whom it was the desire and intention of the Congress to be rid of." The press saw the dispute as evidence of the Wilson administration's ineffectiveness and division as it approached its final months.
In June 1920, a decision by Massachusetts District Court Judge George W. Anderson ordered the discharge of 17 arrested aliens and denounced the Department of Justice's actions. He wrote that "a mob is a mob, whether made up of Government officials acting under instructions from the Department of Justice or of criminals and loafers and the vicious classes." His decision effectively prevented any renewal of the raids.
In Montana, copper miners were dissatisfied with the Western Federation of Miners and thus clashes between the miners were formed leading to the detainment of many workers in the field. The U.S. District Court Judge George M. Bourquin, wrote in a decision granting a writ releasing them on 12 February 1920, "The
Declaration of Independence
A declaration of independence or declaration of statehood or proclamation of independence is an assertion by a polity in a defined territory that it is independent and constitutes a state. Such places are usually declared from part or all of the ...
, the writings of the Fathers of our Country, the
Revolution
In political science, a revolution (Latin: ''revolutio'', "a turn around") is a fundamental and relatively sudden change in political power and political organization which occurs when the population revolts against the government, typically due ...
, the
Constitution
A constitution is the aggregate of fundamental principles or established precedents that constitute the legal basis of a polity, organisation or other type of Legal entity, entity and commonly determine how that entity is to be governed.
When ...
and the Union, all were inspired to overthrow the like governmental tyranny. They are yet living, vital, potential forces to safeguard all domiciled in the country, aliens as well as citizens. If evidence of the alien's evil advocacy and teaching is so wanting that it exists in only that herein, and as secured herein, he is a far less danger to this country that are the parties who in violation of law and order, of humanity and justice, have brought him to deportation. They are the spirit of intolerance incarnate, and the most alarming manifestation in America today." In so saying, he placed the blame for the actions taken squarely on those creating a hysteria against a primarily Russian ethnic minority, and who managed to sidestep all blame by continuing to call such actions lawful. Hoover went on to head the
FBI
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic Intelligence agency, intelligence and Security agency, security service of the United States and its principal Federal law enforcement in the United States, federal law enforcement age ...
, which over its history also came to be known for the institutional racism of the
COINTELPRO
COINTELPRO ( syllabic abbreviation derived from Counter Intelligence Program; 1956–1971) was a series of covert and illegal projects actively conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at surveilling, infiltrati ...
,
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr. (born Michael King Jr.; January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Baptist minister and activist, one of the most prominent leaders in the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968 ...
and
Malcolm X
Malcolm X (born Malcolm Little, later Malik el-Shabazz; May 19, 1925 – February 21, 1965) was an American Muslim minister and human rights activist who was a prominent figure during the civil rights movement. A spokesman for the Nation of Is ...
operations and Palmer lost all support for his bid seeking the Democratic presidential nomination to replace Wilson. The judge summed it up neatly;
"Thoughtful men who love this country and its institutions see more danger in them and in their practices and the government by hysteria they stimulate, than in the miserable, hated "Reds" that are the ostensible occasion of them all. Those people may confidently assume that even as the "Reds", they too in due time will pass, and the nation still lives. It is for the courts to deal with both, to hold both in check when brought within the jurisdiction."
Zechariah Chafee went on to write many significant works about
civil liberties
Civil liberties are guarantees and freedoms that governments commit not to abridge, either by constitution, legislation, or judicial interpretation, without due process. Though the scope of the term differs between countries, civil liberties may ...
. His first book, ''Freedom of Speech'', established modern
First Amendment
First or 1st is the ordinal form of the number one (#1).
First or 1st may also refer to:
*World record, specifically the first instance of a particular achievement
Arts and media Music
* 1$T, American rapper, singer-songwriter, DJ, and rec ...
theory
A theory is a rational type of abstract thinking about a phenomenon, or the results of such thinking. The process of contemplative and rational thinking is often associated with such processes as observational study or research. Theories may be s ...
.
In immigration
Many other minority groups were also victims of institutional racism. For example, immigration bans were imposed on Chinese people. On the West Coast during the 1870s, the intensifying competition for jobs between Chinese workers and whites motivated some whites to launch an anti-Chinese movement. The first Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was passed to prohibit Chinese from immigrating to the United States, as a result, only ten Chinese immigrants entered the United States in 1887. The 1917 Asiatic Barred Zone Act, sought to block immigration from Turkey to Indonesia and China, eliminating virtually all new arrivals from the South Asian subcontinent and Southeast Asia. There were other anti-immigration policies throughout U.S. history against France and Ireland in the late 1700s, and Southern Europeans, Eastern Europeans, Jews, Africans, Arabs, East Asians and Indians with the
Immigration Act of 1924
The Immigration Act of 1924, or Johnson–Reed Act, including the Asian Exclusion Act and National Origins Act (), was a United States federal law that prevented immigration from Asia and set quotas on the number of immigrants from the Eastern ...
. Anti-immigration sentiment can also affect minorities who have been U.S. citizens for many generations, such as the
internment of Japanese Americans
Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simply ...
during the
World War 2
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
and
Mexican Repatriation
The Mexican Repatriation ( es, link=no, Repatriación mexicana) was the repatriation and deportation of Mexicans and Mexican Americans to Mexico from the United States during the Great Depression between 1929 and 1939. Estimates of how many were ...
of the 1930s. The
1965 Immigration Act
The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, also known as the Hart–Celler Act and more recently as the 1965 Immigration Act, is a federal law passed by the 89th United States Congress and signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson. The la ...
reversed the national-origins quota system that had been in place since the 1920s, which had discriminated against certain ethnic minorities, particularly those originating in the
Eastern Hemisphere
The Eastern Hemisphere is the half of the planet Earth which is east of the prime meridian (which crosses Greenwich, London, United Kingdom) and west of the antimeridian (which crosses the Pacific Ocean and relatively little land from pole to pol ...
.
Between 1929 and 1939, during the
Great Depression
The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...
, 355,000 to one million Mexicans and Mexican Americans were repatriated or deported to Mexico, 40 to 60% of whom were U.S. citizens, overwhelmingly children. Voluntary repatriation was more common than formal deportation. The government formally deported at least 82,000 people to Mexico between 1929 and 1935. According to the
INS INS or Ins or ''variant'', may refer to:
Places
* Ins, Switzerland, a municipality
* Creech Air Force Base (IATA airport code INS)
* Indonesia, ITF and UNDP code INS
Biology
*'' Ins'', a New World genus of bee flies
* INS, the gene for the insul ...
, around 400,000 to 1 million Mexicans and Mexican-Americans moved to Mexico during the 1930s. Few were formally deported, with most going to Mexico from their own towns where officials using threats of deportation coerced them; or were repatriated through voluntary – though often coercive – repatriation programs directed by state and local governments, and charitable aid agencies.
The repatriation campaign was a response to migration west by the Oakies and housing and wage labor shortages in the United States during the Great Depression. Until the Great Depression, many American citizens had seen the value of the Mexicans as cheap labor. With increased poverty and fewer jobs, many Americans and officials scapegoated Mexicans. The Secretary of Labor in the Hoover administration,
William N. Doak
William Nuckles Doak (December 12, 1882October 23, 1933) was an American labor leader. He was the Vice-President of the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen and served as Secretary of Labor. He died of cardiovascular disease in McLean, Virginia si ...
(
Hoovervilles A "Hooverville" was a shanty town built during the Great Depression by the homeless in the United States. They were named after Herbert Hoover, who was President of the United States during the onset of the Depression and was widely blamed for it. ...
) scapegoated "illegal immigrants" (
migrant workers
A migrant worker is a person who migrates within a home country or outside it to pursue work. Migrant workers usually do not have the intention to stay permanently in the country or region in which they work.
Migrant workers who work outsi ...
) as taking jobs from Americans. While not specifying Mexicans, repatriation campaigns overwhelmingly targeted Mexicans. In 1931, the National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement, the
Wickersham Commission
The National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement (also known unofficially as the Wickersham Commission) was a committee established by the U.S. President, Herbert Hoover, on May 20, 1929. Former attorney general George W. Wickersham (1858 ...
found the methods employed by Doak's subordinates to be unconstitutional. The policy continued into the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt.
According to Abraham Hoffman, "from 1931 on, cities and counties across the country intensified and embarked upon repatriation programs, conducted under the auspices of either local welfare bureaus or private charitable agencies". The Los Angeles chairman of the board of supervisors' charities and public welfare committee (and later Los Angeles mayor),
Frank L. Shaw
Frank L. Shaw (February 1, 1877 – January 24, 1958) was the first mayor of a major American city to be recalled from office, in 1938. He was also a member of the Los Angeles City Council and then the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. His ...
had researched the legality of deportation but was advised by that only the federal government was legally allowed to
deport
Deportation is the expulsion of a person or group of people from a place or country. The term ''expulsion'' is often used as a synonym for deportation, though expulsion is more often used in the context of international law, while deportation ...
people. As a result, the L.A. County supervisors called their campaign "
repatriation
Repatriation is the process of returning a thing or a person to its country of origin or citizenship. The term may refer to non-human entities, such as converting a foreign currency into the currency of one's own country, as well as to the pro ...
", which Balderrama asserts was a euphemism for deportation.
C.P. Visel, the spokesman for Los Angeles Citizens Committee for Coordination of Unemployment Relief began his "unemployment relief measure" that would create a "psychological gesture" intended to "scarehead" Mexicans out of Los Angeles, through a series of "publicity releases announcing the deportation campaign, a few arrests would be made 'with all publicity possible and pictures', and both police and deputy sheriffs would assist". The Bureau of Immigration was responsible for many mass raids and deportations, and the local government was responsible for the media attention given to these raids to "scarehead" immigrants, specifically Mexicans, provoking many complaints and criticisms from the Mexican Consulate and the Spanish-language magazine ''La Opinión''.
Numerous books have been written about the repatriations including 'Decade of Betrayal', by social history professor Raymond Rodriguez and Francisco Balderrama.
In 1995, they wrote a book, which sparked legislative hearings and formal apologies from the state of California and Los Angeles County officials. In 2006, the House of Representatives congresspersons
Hilda Solis
Hilda Lucia Solis (; born October 20, 1957) is an American politician and a member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors for the 1st district. Solis previously served as the 25th United States Secretary of Labor from 2009 to 2013, as par ...
and
Luis Gutierrez
Luis is a given name. It is the Spanish form of the originally Germanic name or . Other Iberian Romance languages have comparable forms: (with an accent mark on the i) in Portuguese and Galician, in Aragonese and Catalan, while is archaic ...
called for an apology from the U.S. Government for the Repatriation. The Mexican repatriation campaign is not widely discussed in U.S. textbooks. In a 2006 survey of the nine most commonly used American history textbooks in the United States, four did not mention the topic, and only one devoted more than half a page to the topic. In total, they devoted four pages to the repatriation.
The Mexican labor that supplied U.S.
agribusiness
Agribusiness is the industry, enterprises, and the field of study of value chains in agriculture and in the bio-economy,
in which case it is also called bio-business or bio-enterprise.
The primary goal of agribusiness is to maximize profit w ...
has cycled between needing workers and calls to repatriate them. Some calls were by Mexican farmers, because from time to time there were acute labor shortages in Mexico. With the growing diplomatic and security issues surrounding illegal border crossings, the INS increased its raids and apprehensions beginning in the early 1950s leading up to
Operation Wetback
Operation Wetback was an immigration law enforcement initiative created by Joseph Swing, the Director of the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), in cooperation with the Mexican government. The program was implemented in ...
in 1954 in cooperation with the Mexican government. While the Bracero program was in force, the
INS INS or Ins or ''variant'', may refer to:
Places
* Ins, Switzerland, a municipality
* Creech Air Force Base (IATA airport code INS)
* Indonesia, ITF and UNDP code INS
Biology
*'' Ins'', a New World genus of bee flies
* INS, the gene for the insul ...
deported one million Mexicans starting in 1954. Those apprehended were often deported without recovering property or contacting family and were often stranded without food or employment when they entered Mexico. Deported Mexicans often faced extreme conditions, and some were left in the desert; 88 deported workers died in 112-degree heat in July 1955. Most deported were sent by ship to
Veracruz
Veracruz (), formally Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave (), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave), is one of the 31 states which, along with Me ...
or transported by land to southern Mexican cities. During the Operation, recruitment of illegal workers by American growers continued due to the inexpensiveness of illegal labor and desire to avoid the bureaucratic obstacles of the Bracero program.
In the civil service
Merit-based hiring to civil service titles are race-blind in terms of hiring preferences; in practice, however, there are titles that have resisted integration to the present day. Institutions that resist even past the civil right fights of the 1950s and 1960s resulted in court interventions in the 1970s and even up to the last decade. Many of the Consent Decrees that resulted from court intervention came about as a result of the federal government intervening due to EEOC complaints in hiring or attempts to litigate discrimination that was overt. Until 2007, when the
Vulcan Society
The Vulcan Society, founded in 1940, is a fraternal organization of black firefighters in New York City, United States.
History Early black recruits to the fire department
Following the 1896 ''Plessy v. Ferguson'' ("separate but equal") Supreme ...
of the FDNY prevailed in court using the legal theory of disparate impact, many lawsuits resulted in
racial quota
Racial quotas in employment and education are numerical requirements for hiring, promoting, admitting and/or graduating members of a particular Race (classification of human beings), racial group. Racial quotas are often established as means of ...
s being imposed in hiring. Police and Fire Departments across the country have been slow to change the insular culture that kept them lacking in diversity and open to challenges.
Civil Service, as an institution, was traditionally used to prevent nepotism and the influence of politics in appointments to the position. Authorized at the federal level in 1871, it came about due to reforms of the
spoils system
In politics and government, a spoils system (also known as a patronage system) is a practice in which a political party, after winning an election, gives government jobs to its supporters, friends (cronyism), and relatives (nepotism) as a reward ...
in place since the 1830s, and abuses of the post-Civil War era, when Congress authorized the president to appoint a Civil Service Commission and prescribe regulations for admission to public service. A dissatisfied office-seeker assassinated President Garfield in 1881, and Congress was motivated to pass the
Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act
The Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act is a United States federal law passed by the 47th United States Congress and signed into law by President Chester A. Arthur on January 16, 1883. The act mandates that most positions within the federal governm ...
in 1883, which firmly established the Civil Service. During Reconstruction, this enabled the federal government to provide jobs for newly freed black people in the South (primarily the Postal Service) where no other employment opportunities existed for them. Since the inception of the merit system in 1881, the numbers of black people in federal Civil Service positions rose from 0.057 to 5.6% by 1910. Since 1883, the majority of federal employees are placed in positions that are classified by Civil Service designations. (see Also:
U.S. Civil Service Reform
Civil service reform in the United States was a major issue in the late 19th century at the national level, and in the early 20th century at the state level. Proponents denounced the distribution of government offices—the "spoils"—by the winner ...
)
In 1913, with segregation the law of the land,
Southern Democrats
Southern Democrats, historically sometimes known colloquially as Dixiecrats, are members of the U.S. History of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party who reside in the Southern United States. Southern Democrats were generally mu ...
in Congress under the administration of President
Woodrow Wilson
Thomas Woodrow Wilson (December 28, 1856February 3, 1924) was an American politician and academic who served as the 28th president of the United States from 1913 to 1921. A member of the Democratic Party, Wilson served as the president of ...
had attempted to remove as many minorities as possible from their established position in the federal Civil Service, especially at the Postal Service. This was accomplished by requiring the race of each applicant to a position be shown by a photograph.
This enabled the administration to demote and eliminate black civil servants from positions held in Civil Service and further prevented any new appointments, thus purposefully exacerbating black exclusion from the federal Civil Service. Wilson had campaigned promising to elevate blacks in his administration by matching the patronage offered them by past Republican administrations. Many black newspapers, based on his inaugural speech, supported him, but those Southern Democrats in Congress opposed to integration actively rendered him moot, and patronage appointments fell even lower. Claiming 'friction' among blacks and whites at the post office, they proposed segregating them. This was taken up by the Postmaster General and the Secretary of the Treasury, and when the cabinet and the president did not oppose the measure,
Jim Crow
The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. Other areas of the United States were affected by formal and informal policies of segregation as well, but many states outside the Sout ...
practices in some departments was taken up with a vengeance. By 1921, those black postal workers not demoted or fired were behind a wall at the '
Dead Letter Office
Dead letter mail or undeliverable mail is mail that cannot be delivered to the addressee or returned to the sender. This is usually due to lack of compliance with postal regulations, an incomplete address and return address, or the inability to ...
' in Washington, D.C., or placed behind screens where the other workers did not have to see them. Without any basis in fact or accumulation of complaints to justify segregation, it became unofficial policy. Signs appeared restricting toilets and lunchrooms, whole offices were segregated by room and workers were paired off by race. A virtual flood of proposed discriminatory laws were proposed in Congress ranging from 'Jim Crow' streetcars to excluding blacks from military commissions to officer in the Army or Navy and anti-miscegenation bills. There were also bills to restrict black immigration. This spread to the states where more bills passed restricting black people. Federal Civil Service did not fare well under Wilson, as he held that "it was to their advantage" and "likely to remove many of the difficulties which have surrounded the appointment and advancement of colored men and women", espousing the segregation taking place under his administration.
The next chapter was the
Hatch Act of 1939
The Hatch Act of 1939, An Act to Prevent Pernicious Political Activities, is a United States federal law. Its main provision prohibits civil service employees in the executive branch of the federal government, except the president and vice presi ...
, which prevented state and local civil servants from taking part in political activities or running for office. It was a response to conservative forces in Congress who wanted to prevent administration appointments to certain agencies aligned with the
WPA
WPA may refer to:
Computing
*Wi-Fi Protected Access, a wireless encryption standard
*Windows Product Activation, in Microsoft software licensing
* Wireless Public Alerting (Alert Ready), emergency alerts over LTE in Canada
* Windows Performance An ...
and FDR presidential confidante
Harry Hopkins
Harry Lloyd Hopkins (August 17, 1890 – January 29, 1946) was an American statesman, public administrator, and presidential advisor. A trusted deputy to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Hopkins directed New Deal relief programs before servi ...
, whom they felt were giving jobs to the 'wrong people'. Until the ''
Brown vs. Board of Education
''Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka'', 347 U.S. 483 (1954), was a landmark decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools are unconstitutional, even if the segrega ...
''
Supreme Court
A supreme court is the highest court within the hierarchy of courts in most legal jurisdictions. Other descriptions for such courts include court of last resort, apex court, and high (or final) court of appeal. Broadly speaking, the decisions of ...
decision and the related cases that ushered in the Civil Rights era, institutional segregation was upheld at the federal level by the ''
Plessy v. Ferguson
''Plessy v. Ferguson'', 163 U.S. 537 (1896), was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in which the Court ruled that racial segregation laws did not violate the U.S. Constitution as long as the facilities for each race were equal in quality ...
'' U.S. Supreme Court case decision, which the court overturned in 1954. Following this, cities consulted with their attorneys and as a result,
integration
Integration may refer to:
Biology
*Multisensory integration
*Path integration
* Pre-integration complex, viral genetic material used to insert a viral genome into a host genome
*DNA integration, by means of site-specific recombinase technology, ...
began. This was replaced in turn by institutional racism, the practice of upholding the letter of the law, but not the spirit, in an effort to prevent minority hires from gaining ground in titles where they were disproportionately underrepresented, such as police and fire departments, and in management positions.
Post-integration period
Around the country in the 1950s, black people found common cause in challenging
employment discrimination
Employment discrimination is a form of illegal discrimination in the workplace based on legally protected characteristics. In the U.S., federal anti-discrimination law prohibits discrimination by employers against employees based on age, race, g ...
, and the colored newspapers took up the cause. Economically, jobs were becoming scarce for minorities during the post-war years as returning servicemen reclaimed the manufacturing and factory base. Civil Service looked to be a reasonable alternative to black people returning from World War II service overseas and black officers leaving the newly desegregated armed services. In Los Angeles in the 1950s, the
NAACP
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is a civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E.&nb ...
fueled an integration campaign in the
California Eagle
The ''California Eagle'' (1879–1964) was an African-American newspaper in Los Angeles, California. It was founded as ''The Owl'' in 1879 by John J. Neimore.
Charlotta Bass became owner of the paper after Neimore's death in 1912. She owned and ...
and petitioned the fire commission to provide more jobs in the LAFD. When the Fire Chief Engineer John Alderson attempted to integrate the department, the resistance to integration created so-called 'Hate Houses' and resulted in the formation of
The Stentorians
The Stentorians are a fraternal organization of African American firefighters, based in Los Angeles, California, and founded in 1954.
Background
The Central-Alameda neighborhood of South Los Angeles was an area of sprawling American Craftsmen s ...
as a protective force of guardians to protect minority firefighters. New York had previously experienced its own revelations when the Vulcan Society appeared before the city council and demanded the elimination of 'the black bed' in firehouses for black firemen. At that hearing in 1944, the NYC council chambers filled with FDNY brass on one side and black firefighters protesting the lack of promotional opportunities and racial harassment on the other.
With that as the backdrop, integration began and segregation was replaced by institutional racism, which took the form much the same way it did when black people first got hired before and during World War II. Black people once appointed to a Civil Service position were subjected to isolation, ostracism, outright hostility and separate quarters. After 1956, the first black hires to the LAFD after integration unfairly failed to finish academy training. The Vulcan Society in New York mentored many blacks, but progress was slow, with hiring not reflected in mirroring the population of the cities served until the passage of the
Civil Rights Act of 1964
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 () is a landmark civil rights and United States labor law, labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on Race (human categorization), race, Person of color, color, religion, sex, and nationa ...
, when the number of minority hirings increased. The
U.S. Department of Labor
The United States Department of Labor (DOL) is one of the executive departments of the U.S. federal government. It is responsible for the administration of federal laws governing occupational safety and health, wage and hour standards, unemploym ...
in the 1970s began enforcing racial quotas during the Nixon administration that mandated black hiring, but it was the lawsuits of the 1970s that exploded the imposition of consent decrees across the country forcing the diversity of the hard to integrate titles. In 1971, the
Vulcan Blazers
The Vulcan Blazers, headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland, is an African-American fraternal organization representing more than 300 full-time professional fire fighters and paramedics. They are an advocacy organization which has been assisting Afr ...
of the Baltimore, Maryland fire department filed a groundbreaking lawsuit that resulted in the appointment of blacks to positions of officers up to assistant chief when the court ruled there had been discrimination in promotions. Other minority groups followed their lead and also took to the courts. In 2009, the City of Baltimore paid $4.6 million to settle a case filed by minority policemen alleging racial discrimination. As other recent lawsuits have proved, civil departments have held their heads responsible for cases of institutional racism, an example of which is the case in 2007 of the LAFD Chief,
William Bamattre
William is a male given name of Germanic origin.Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dictionary of First Names'', Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, , p. 276. It became very popular in the English language after the Norman conquest of Eng ...
, who was retired by the mayor of Los Angeles after being perceived of kowtowing to racial pandering in responding to lawsuits affecting his department. Payouts to blacks and women had topped $7.5 million for cases alleging racism and harassment, and also the failure to diversify.
Affirmative action
Affirmative action, while originally meant to refer to a set of policies and practices preventing discrimination based on race, creed, color, and ethnicity, now often refers to policies positively supporting members of disadvantaged or underrepresented groups that have in the past suffered discrimination in areas such as education, employment, and housing. Historically and internationally, support for affirmative action has sought to achieve goals such as bridging inequalities in employment and pay, increasing access to education, promoting diversity, and redressing apparent past wrongs, harms, or hindrances.
In the 1990s President
George H. W. Bush
George Herbert Walker BushSince around 2000, he has been usually called George H. W. Bush, Bush Senior, Bush 41 or Bush the Elder to distinguish him from his eldest son, George W. Bush, who served as the 43rd president from 2001 to 2009; pr ...
attempted to eliminate affirmative action during his term of office. Filing a brief against quotas in college admissions, he also stood against the use of
quotas
Quota may refer to:
Economics
* Import quota, a trade restriction on the quantity of goods imported into a country
* Market Sharing Quota, an economic system used in Canadian agriculture
* Milk quota, a quota on milk production in Europe
* Indi ...
, preferences, and set-asides on the basis of race, sex, religion, or national origin, and abolished their use in hiring. Congress responded with the
Civil Rights Act of 1991
The Civil Rights Act of 1991 is a United States labor law, passed in response to United States Supreme Court decisions that limited the rights of employees who had sued their employers for discrimination. The Act represented the first effort since ...
, which only covered the terms for settling cases where discrimination had previously been confirmed. It had been near impossible to prove a case of
institutional discrimination
Institutional discrimination is discriminatory
Discrimination is the act of making unjustified distinctions between people based on the groups, classes, or other categories to which they belong or are perceived to belong. People may be discri ...
in the courts, and many other cases were terminated upon imposition of a consent decree. While President George H. W. Bush's attempt failed, it did give rise to the 1997
California Proposition 209
Proposition 209 (also known as the California Civil Rights Initiative or CCRI) is a California ballot proposition which, upon approval in November 1996, amended the state constitution to prohibit state governmental institutions from considering r ...
, a ballot initiative abolishing affirmative action in California universities. This closed down the avenues affirmative action initiatives had opened for minorities, as legislation no longer required California universities to actively facilitate the development of ethnically diverse campus populations. Consequently, employment discrimination lawsuits seeking compensation for discriminatory hiring declined, as arguments for redress on account of past wrongs under the 'catchup provisions' no longer worked in favor of claimants. Proposition 209 has withstood challenges such as the 2013 Amendment No. 5, which would have reversed 209 had it not been retracted by its main Senate sponsor prior to passage. In 2014 the UCLA Board of Regents publicly renounced 209 on account of the decline in minority admissions to California universities after 209 was implemented. The regents re-affirmed this in 2020.
Similar ballot initiatives to California 209 spread around the country, primarily in
red states
Starting with the 2000 United States presidential election, the terms "red state" and "blue state" have referred to U.S. states whose voters vote predominantly for one party — the Republican Party in red states and the Democratic Party Dem ...
. In the 2003 case of ''
Gratz v. Bollinger
''Gratz v. Bollinger'', 539 U.S. 244 (2003), was a United States Supreme Court of the United States, Supreme Court List of United States Supreme Court cases, case regarding the University of Michigan undergraduate affirmative action University and ...
'', the Supreme Court ruled that the University of Michigan's mis-implementation of affirmative action in its point-allocation-based admittance process had resulted in a homogenized statistical advantage for minority applicants and unconstitutionally rendered the university incapable of differentiating between the distinct diversity contributions of each individual. On the same day and concerning another University of Michigan (Law School) applicant, the supreme court ruled in the case of ''
Grutter v. Bollinger
''Grutter v. Bollinger'', 539 U.S. 306 (2003), was a landmark case of the Supreme Court of the United States concerning affirmative action in student admissions. The Court held that a student admissions process that favors "underrepresented minor ...
'' that while failing to recognize the distinct contributions of minority groups was unconstitutional, the overall initiative of affirmative action – creating an inclusive, racially diverse demographic – was not.
Efforts to abolish affirmative action were not limited to California and Michigan. In 2008
American Civil Rights Institute
The American Civil Rights Institute is an American American conservatism, conservative non-profit organization that opposes Affirmative action in the United States, affirmative action. It was founded by Ward Connerly and Thomas L. Rhodes, Thomas L. ...
chairman
Ward Connerly
Wardell Anthony "Ward" Connerly (born June 15, 1939) is an American political and anti-affirmative action activist, businessman, and former University of California Regent (1993–2005). He is also the founder and the chairman of the American Civi ...
successfully campaigned for the passage of legislation banning affirmative action in Nebraska. Three of the five states that
ACRI
Acri (Northern Calabrian, Calabrian: ) is a town of 19.949 inhabitants in the northern part of Calabria region in southern Italy. Since 17 September 2001 Acri has had the "status" of city.
Acri's coat of arms is represented by three mountains s ...
pushed anti-affirmative action ballots in rejected them and it failed to make the ballot in another. Connerly stated, "I think that in some quarters, many parts of the country, a white male is really disadvantaged... Because we have developed this notion of women and minorities being so disadvantaged and we have to help them, that we have, in many cases, twisted the thing so that it's no longer a case of equal opportunity. It's a case of putting a fist on the scale."
Conservative objections to affirmative action include that although aimed at rectifying discriminatory practices, affirmative action is inherently discriminatory against the majority and the fulfillment of '
racial quotas
Racial quotas in employment and education are numerical requirements for hiring, promoting, admitting and/or graduating members of a particular racial group. Racial quotas are often established as means of diminishing racial discrimination, addr ...
' precludes employers from hiring the most qualified candidate available for a position. Supporters of affirmative action cite the extent to which past institutionalized racism adversely affected minorities. Their endorsement of measures to aid in the restitution of agency to marginalized and disenfranchised communities has resulted in push back in the form of claims of reverse racism.
In 2020, a study concluded that proposition 209 had caused harm to black and Hispanic students without any tangible gains for white or Asian students replacing them in the University of California system. With repeal of the controversial measure on the California ballot in 2020, the eleven other states that passed similar anti-affirmative action laws are also reviewing its effects on their minority admissions. Conservatives are still at the supreme court challenging race based admissions, with the DOJ under the Trump administration suing Yale university over alleged discrimination.
In education
Standardized testing
A standardized test is a test that is administered and scored in a consistent, or "standard", manner. Standardized tests are designed in such a way that the questions and interpretations are consistent and are administered and scored in a predete ...
has also been considered a form of institutional racism, because it is believed to be biased in favor of people from particular socio-cultural backgrounds. Some minorities have consistently tested worse than whites on virtually all standardized tests, even after controlling for socioeconomic status, while others have tested consistently better. The cause of the achievement gaps between black, Hispanic, white and Asian students has yet to be fully elucidated.
Three cases before the
SCOTUS
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. Federal tribunals in the United States, federal court cases, and over Stat ...
have determined whether there is institutional racism in education. Bakke (1978) allowed minorities to gain an edge in university admissions and hiring. Justice Connors swing vote in Grutter (2003) was a rebuke of
Proposition 209
Proposition 209 (also known as the California Civil Rights Initiative or CCRI) is a California ballot proposition which, upon approval in November 1996, amended the state constitution to prohibit state governmental institutions from considering r ...
and similar initiatives, giving a 25-year timeline where such interventions would no longer be necessary. Schuette (2013) banned the use of race in public university admissions. Through the use of discriminatory ballot initiatives (1997–2008) to bypass the law, gaining public acceptance of anti-affirmative action endeavors, the process of placing undue burdens on minorities seeking advancement has, in this century, become entrenched. In her dissent to Schutte, Associate Justice
Sonia Sotomayor
Sonia Maria Sotomayor (, ; born June 25, 1954) is an American lawyer and jurist who serves as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. She was nominated by President Barack Obama on May 26, 2009, and has served since ...
wrote that the voters of Michigan had "changed the basic rules of the political process in that State in a manner that uniquely disadvantaged racial minorities." Citing reverse-racism after the effects have been proven deleterious to minority admissions is repeating failed policy and furthers this bias. This offends portions of the
Civil Rights Act of 1964
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 () is a landmark civil rights and United States labor law, labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on Race (human categorization), race, Person of color, color, religion, sex, and nationa ...
, where discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin was prohibited.
In higher education
In the 1960s, students of color started attending colleges and universities in record numbers after the passage of the Civil Rights and Higher Education Acts. However, the obstacles of integration in predominantly white institutions of higher education led to unforeseen obstacles for faculty and students of color working and studying in such environments. According to a review of educational research, tension and violence followed, one reason being the lack of preparedness of many colleges and universities to teach a diversity of students. Initially, it was also difficult for many black students to attend college due to the poor quality of education in segregated schools.
The 1954 ''
Brown vs. Board of Education
''Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka'', 347 U.S. 483 (1954), was a landmark decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools are unconstitutional, even if the segrega ...
'' decision was the beginning of the process of desegregation and the elimination of de jure discrimination. However, it was hard to determine the challenges that the process would present and the obstacles that would continue to exist. While the concept of "separate but equal" had been overturned by the
U.S. Supreme Court
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...
, it was clear that the racial divide had not yet been resolved. As the years since ''Brown v. Board of Education'' passed, both verbal and physical abuse continued. After ''Brown v. Board of Education'', the desegregated environment proved to be strenuous and was going to require some work. The increase of racial tension and racial incidents in institutes of higher education is said to be due to the "lack of knowledge, experience, and contact with diverse peers; peer-group influence; increased competition and stress; the influence of off-campus groups and the media; alcohol use; changing values; fear of diversity; and the perception of unfair treatment". Although ''Brown v. Board of Education'' was ruled in 1954, actual integration did not completely occur until many years later; the U.S. Supreme Court held multiple hearings on the desegregation of schools, continuously they maintained that ''Brown v. Board of Education'' must be followed by schools, colleges, and universities. The manner in which ''Brown v. Board of Education'' was drawn out years after the decision helped instill racism in education by illustrating the extraordinary lengths some educational institutions would go to avoid integration.
While unfair treatment remains, other lasting effects have yet to be resolved. The underlying issue of minority presence of college campuses occurs. In 2008, the
National Center for Education Statistics
The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) is the part of the United States Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences (IES) that collects, analyzes, and publishes statistics on education and public school district finance ...
reported that while enrollment of minorities and students of color had risen, white enrollment still held the majority on average, accounting for 63 percent of undergraduate college and university students. While this varies based on the region, state, and elite status, in general the majority of colleges and universities in the United States are predominantly white. According to the
U.S. Department of Education,
The United States Department of Education is a United States Cabinet, Cabinet-level department of the federal government of the United States, United States government. It began operating on May 4, 1980, having been created after the Department ...
there has also been a rise in hate crimes on college campuses, with 1250 hate crimes in 2016, up 25 percent from 2015.
Access to post-secondary education seems to be an issue as well. According to the U.S. Department of Education, being prepared for college is integral to whether or not a student is successful. While the government offers college preparation programs for minority and low-income students, programs such as
GEAR UP
Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs ("GEAR UP") is a federal grant program administered by the United States Department of Education. It was established in Chapter 2 of the 1998 amendments to the Higher Education Act ...
and
Federal TRIO Programs
The Federal TRIO Programs (TRIO, also stylized as TRiO) are federal outreach and student services programs in the United States designed to identify and provide services for individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds. They are administered, funded ...
help prepare students for college to better ensure their success and retention, the access to these programs is relatively limited. While programs such as Federal TRIO Programs have grown since conception, there is still work that needs to be done if more minority students are expected to attend and succeed in a post-secondary institution. Due to availability of Federal TRIO Programs being subjective based on where geographically a student may be, the benefits are not completely being felt be the targeted communities. However, the positive effects of Federal TRIO Programs have been pretty bolstering – more minorities and low-income individuals are prepared when going to post-secondary institutions.
Institutionalized racism in higher education has received little national attention, even though it is a relevant issue affecting many colleges and universities. Despite efforts to improve the situation on college and university campuses, such as implementing affirmative action plans, anti-black racism and violence continue to occur. The effects of this violence extend beyond the incident itself. According to a U.S. study in Baltimore, racism has a correlation with health complications, such as high systolic blood pressure. Likewise, a study held from 1997 to 2003 found that racism led to higher rates of breast cancer. While this extends beyond education, it could illustrate why many minorities and students of color would feel uneasy putting themselves into an environment that could potentially garner more racism. While illustrations of institutional racism on college campuses can be found in newspapers and blogs, there are other places to learn more about these incidents. Aside from the media, one source that can be used to keep up to date on institutional racism in higher education is ''
The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education
''The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education'' is a former academic journal, now an online magazine, for African Americans working in academia in the United States.
The journal was established as a quarterly in 1993 by Theodore Cross, a "champi ...
'' (JBHE). This journal aims to provide as much information as possible about anti-black institutional racism. JBHE publishes resources, statistics, and current reports of race-related actions on college and university campuses. For example, JBHE reported on the
2015 University of Oklahoma Sigma Alpha Epsilon racism incident
The University of Oklahoma Sigma Alpha Epsilon racist incident, known as SAE-OU racist chant incident, occurred on March 7, 2015, when members of the University of Oklahoma (OU) chapter of Sigma Alpha Epsilon (SAE) were filmed performing a racist ...
. Other media resources where reports on racial incidents on college campuses can be found is
Inside Higher Ed
''Inside Higher Ed'' is a media company and online publication that provides news, opinion, resources, events and jobs focused on college and university topics. In 2022, Quad Partners, a private equity firm, sold Inside Higher Education to Time ...
and
the Southern Poverty Law Center
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit legal advocacy organization specializing in civil rights and public interest litigation. Based in Montgomery, Alabama, it is known for its legal cases against white sup ...
In 2016, the
U.S. Department of Education
The United States Department of Education is a Cabinet-level department of the United States government. It began operating on May 4, 1980, having been created after the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare was split into the Department ...
released a report on crime in schools. Of the racial
hate crime
A hate crime (also known as a bias-motivated crime or bias crime) is a prejudice-motivated crime which occurs when a perpetrator targets a victim because of their membership (or perceived membership) of a certain social group or racial demograph ...
s reported on college campuses in 2013, 41% were vandalisms, 37% were intimidations, and 38% were simple assaults. According to the U.S. Department of Education, there were 146 reported cases of racial harassment on college and university campuses in 2015. However, this number by no means is a true portrayal of the actual amount of racial harassment that occurs. Research conducted by the
Higher Education Research Institute
The Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) serves as an interdisciplinary center for research, evaluation, information, policy studies, and research training in post-secondary education. HERI is housed in the UCLA Graduate School of Educatio ...
claims that only 13% of these incidents get reported. According to the Center for College Health and Safety, one reason that so few incidents get reported is that there is a lack of awareness about what consists of a hate crime, as well as where one must report such a crime. Although data is limited to what has been reported, the FBI allows public access to numerous tables and statistics about hate crimes reported in 2015. There were 4,029 hate crimes motivated by race/ethnicity/ancestry, 52.7% of which the FBI reports were motivated by anti-black bias. Out of 3,310 racial bias hate crimes, 7.9% occurred at schools/colleges. As of May 2017,
the Anti-Defamation League
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), formerly known as the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, is an international Jewish non-governmental organization based in the United States specializing in civil rights law. It was founded in late Septe ...
has reported that 107 incidents of white-supremacist posters being posted on American campuses since the beginning of the 2016 school year have been verified. 65 of these reported incidents have occurred since January 2017.
Fakehatecrimes.org provides a database with links to news sources that report hate crimes that have been falsely reported. For example, a student at Capital University claimed to have found a race-related note on his door, and his story was shared on the university newspaper. Later, in another article, the newspaper shared how the student confessed after investigation that he made the story up.
Complex
Complex commonly refers to:
* Complexity, the behaviour of a system whose components interact in multiple ways so possible interactions are difficult to describe
** Complex system, a system composed of many components which may interact with each ...
, a news source, published an article naming the "most hate-filled colleges in America" based on data from College Stats.
Numerous news sources, including
Inside Higher Ed
''Inside Higher Ed'' is a media company and online publication that provides news, opinion, resources, events and jobs focused on college and university topics. In 2022, Quad Partners, a private equity firm, sold Inside Higher Education to Time ...
and
Southern Poverty Law Center
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit legal advocacy organization specializing in civil rights and public interest litigation. Based in Montgomery, Alabama, it is known for its legal cases against white su ...
, and the
Brookings Institution
The Brookings Institution, often stylized as simply Brookings, is an American research group founded in 1916. Located on Think Tank Row in Washington, D.C., the organization conducts research and education in the social sciences, primarily in ec ...
, reported that there was a spike in racial hate crimes and harassment following the election of
Donald Trump
Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021.
Trump graduated from the Wharton School of the University of Pe ...
as President of the United States. Although each case has not been verified, the SPLC claimed to have counted 201 racial incidents in less than a week. The largest number of incidents are labeled as "anti-black" and account for over 50 of the occurrences, nearly 40 of which took place on college campuses. Kimberly Griffin, a professor at the University of Maryland who studies and has authored numerous publications on campus racial climate, states the following in an Inside Higher Ed article: Under Title VI, all higher education institutions that receive federal funding must take certain actions against incidents of racial discrimination that are deemed "sufficiently serious" or that negatively impact a student's education. These actions include investigating the incident, making efforts to stop the current and possible future occurrence, and fixing the issues that have come about due to the incident. Similar to Title VI, the
Clery Act
The Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act or Clery Act, signed in 1990, is a federal statute codified at , with implementing regulations in the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations at .
The Clery Act requir ...
is another act that requires higher education institutions that receive federal funding to have certain obligations regarding campus crime. The main requirement is that these institutions must create an annual report that details the crime that has taken place in the past three years on campuses and the efforts made to stop it. These reports must be made available to all students and staff, which allows for greater transparency about the existing crime on campuses.
Students across the nation have worked to end racial discrimination on campuses by organizing and participating in protests. One of the most notable examples is that of the 2015–16 University of Missouri protests, which led to protests at 50 universities. Lists of demands made by students at 80 American universities detailing what should be done to combat racism on campuses have been collected by WeTheProtesters, an advocacy group.
= Impact on faculty
=
Faculty of color face racism within institutions of higher education as they challenge widely held beliefs regarding race relations in America. Structural inequality may be ignored under the assumption that racism will disappear within its own time. Racism is manifest in a variety of ways, including but not limited to, undervaluation of research, unwritten rules and policies regarding the Tenure (academic), tenure process, and a lack of mentorship for faculty of color. Women of color faculty are often found doubly worse off as they face discrimination based on both race and gender. According to 2005 data, faculty members at institutions of higher education were predominantly white, with faculty of color constituting roughly 17% of total faculty, with 7.5% Asian, 5.5% black, 3.5% Latino and 0.5% American Indian (see chart). Failure to fully implement affirmative action is identified as another contributing factor to low numbers of representation.
Faculty members of color often engage in research regarding issues of diversity, which many whites deemed "risky". Widespread beliefs founded on the concept of meritocracy, where success is based solely on individual effort, put into question research revealing structural issues that contribute to success. Political undertones of research within the social sciences are used to put the validity and scientific nature of the findings into question, despite the fact that research in these fields is conducted in the same manner as research in less politically contentious areas of interest. Research methodologies long accepted in other disciplines are called into question depending on the implications of findings, particularly when these findings may reveal racial inequities in the general population and/or the institution itself. "Thus, research appearing to be neutral and scholarly, has important political manifestations, including the justification for racial inequalities that are replicated within the student and alumni bodies of institutions that formally state that they value diversity even as all of their internal mechanisms reproduce exclusionary dominance for some racial groups".
This concern is especially glaring in private institutions, where concerns regarding the reception of said research by alumni, corporatocracy, corporate interests, and other potential donors play into acceptance of research by faculty. In one case study, race- and diversity-related research deemed valid by the highest level of national disciplinary associations was rejected by faculty and administrators, alluding to the existence and enforcement of unwritten rules regarding research acceptance. The rejection of research by faculty of color is a contributing factor to difficulty attaining tenure, with a higher performance bar set for those whose findings may contradict widely accepted beliefs regarding race relations.
Faculty members of color also face barriers as they work to include topics of diversity in their courses, as whites often resist the inclusion of multicultural perspectives. Challenges in the classroom appear to be connected to issues of gender and age as well as race. For example, African-American women faculty aged 35 and younger are challenged more by whites in their 20s, while those 40 and older face more challenges from students in nontraditional age groups.
= Impact on students
=
The racial demographics of institutions of higher education in the United States are quickly changing. Institutions of higher education were often traditionally known as "predominantly white institutions" (PWIs). These institutions are now challenged to improve their diversity efforts and create policies that address the root cause of negative racial climates on PWI campuses. It is estimated that by 2010, 40% of high school graduates would be non-white. While racial homogeneity in high schools increased, institutions of higher education were becoming more racially diverse. Due to racial homogeneity in high schools, some college students occasionally find themselves having their first interracial contact in college. Universities and colleges that have identified diversity as one of their priorities should plan how to strategically and in a sensitive manner create a campus climate in which all students, in particular students of color in a PWI, do not have to risk feeling unsafe, discriminated against, marginalized, or tokenized to obtain a post-secondary degree.
Data have shown that students of color and whites have different perceptions of campus racial climates. In a survey of 433 undergraduate students at one institution found that, in comparison to whites, students of color felt differently about campus policies. Whites were more often to describe their campus racial climate as positive, while students of African descent rated it as negative. Findings indicate that students of color experience harassment that is, "offensive, hostile, or intimidating" at higher rates than whites, which interferes with their learning. Further, "students of color perceived the climate as more racist and less accepting than did whites, even though whites recognized racial harassment at similar rates as students of color". In addition, many African-American students have a hard time to fit in at predominantly white colleges because of the fear of "becoming white."
Whites also felt more positive about their classroom experience and the way professors presented various viewpoints in the curriculum, about institutional policies as well as recruitment and retention of Student of Color. Students of African descent and other students of color felt the campus environment was not friendly and that they had been targets of racism. In another study of 5,000 first year students at 93 institutions, whites were more likely to agree with the statement that "racial discrimination is no longer a problem" than students of color. whites were also more likely to feel that the campus climate is improving in comparison to students of color. Whites felt the campus climate was non-racist, friendly, and respectful while students of color felt that it was racist, hostile, and disrespectful. Research has shown that racial diversification in colleges and universities, without intentional education about systemic racism and the history of race in the United States, can lead to creating a racial campus climate that is oppressive towards students of color. History textbooks in the United States generally gloss over the unpleasant portions of history, resulting in many students being unaware of the Indian Removal Act, Trail of Tears, the Labor history of the United States, workers struggles of the 20th century and the Long Walk of the Navajo, removal in the west of the indigenous. There needs to be, "intentional education interventions related to the changing racial composition of college students [which] would likely influence how the climate of an environment changes".
If institutional racism is to be addressed in institutes of higher education, different types of interventions need to be created, in particular, interventions created specifically for the academy. Rankin and Reason's research concluded that for intervention to be effective, faculty would need to be used as socializing agents on campus, in particular, because intellectual and behavioral norms on most campuses are set by faculty and, these norms have a heavy impact on campus climate. An example of students trying to change racial campus climate is the Being Black at the University of Michigan #BBUM moment. The Black Student Union is organizing and collaborating with organizations to bring attention to the racial climate at the University of Michigan and how it is affecting all students. To create interventions that lead to sustainable learning about race, institutions of higher education need to equally value the histories and experiences of students of color and whites. One example of this is required coursework through the departments of African/African-American Studies, Chicano studies, Asian-American studies, Arab-American studies, and Native American studies alongside the History department. Research has shown that curricular diversity is positively associated with intergroup attitudes, decreased racial prejudice and intergroup understanding, and attitudes toward campus diversity.
In politics
Reconstruction
After slavery was abolished, the government went through a series of changes that reflected the presence of new (black) citizens in the United States. Newly acquired freedom founded a growth in African-American participation in politics. This period of increased African-American participation, from 1867 to 1877, is known as Reconstruction Era, Reconstruction. Despite the increase in African-American participation in politics, Reconstruction is not mentioned as an example of how black politics strive to be. There are very distinct viewpoints concerning this time period. Some believed that corruption had run rampant in the South with the introduction of newly freed slaves into legislatures, and a great deal of attention was given to the negativity that surrounded the introduction of black individuals into government. Reconstruction in South Carolina particularly was under scrutiny as the legislators were predominantly black. The happenings in the South Carolina legislature were described negatively and seen as pro-black and significantly focused on issues that only pertained to black people. Attention was solely focused on the misgivings occurring within the legislature, such as "unethical appropriation of state funds by members of the legislature" and other unethical or illegal acts committed by both black and white legislators in South Carolina. Another set of issues brought up was the multitude of expensive decorative items and embellishments that were purchased for the refurbishment of the State House. Whites were generally left out of the criticisms, despite their own contributions, and were referred to as victims of corruption due to the influence of black people.
Others believed that Reconstruction was not to blame for all corruption in legislation. This faction of people saw the constructive debates and conversations that flowed within the Southern legislatures. They were also more receptive to the positive aspects and characteristics of black legislators that were displayed during their time in office.
Despite the amount of eager participants, this period eventually led to a decline in black participation in politics. The backlash of those against increase of black participation in politics effectively began to cause the number of participants to stop and then decline. In the mid-20th century, despite past involvement, black participation in politics was low. Black participation was not a common occurrence in comparison to overall participation, and it was often celebrated when black candidates or politicians did particularly well in their political endeavors. This decline was attributed to a white counterattack of the Reconstruction movement. Many methods were used to dissuade black people from taking office. One of the most prominent was violence. An example of that would be the Ku Klux Klan, a secretive group whose members believed in white supremacy. The lynching, beatings, and intimidation of black people helped to hasten the decline of black participation in politics. Coercion was also another method used to dissuade black participation in politics, particularly voting. Threats of loss jobs and refusal of medical care are some of the coercion methods employed. Coercion did not play as big of a role as direct physical violence however it did serve to further hinder the growth of black participation in politics. These methods helped to forge a political system that has a scarce amount of minorities in office.
Representation
Black representation in Congress had been scarce, with fewer than eight blacks in Congress per Congressional periods since the 41st Congress, end of the Civil War up until the 91st Congress, Nixon era, when there were 11 black members of Congress (ten in the House and one in the Senate). After the 91st Congress, black representation began to increase, particularly among black Democrats.
In technology
Institutional racism's connections to technology have been an area that has not been sufficiently addressed. In her article "Race and Racism in Internet Studies", Jessie Daniels writes "the role of race in the development of Internet infrastructure and design has largely been obscured. As Sinclair observes, 'The history of race in America has been written as if technologies scarcely existed, and the history of technology as if it were utterly innocent of racial significance. Sociologist Ruha Benjamin writes further in her book Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code that researchers "tend to concentrate on how the Internet perpetuates or mediates racial prejudice at the individual level rather than analyze how racism shapes infrastructure and design." Benjamin makes connections between institutional racism and racism in technology and notes the importance of future research on institutionalized racism in technology as well as the "technology of structural racism."
In the military
The U.S. Army in June 2020 instituted changes to its promotion policy to counteract institutional racism, as part of its efforts to counter unconscious bias that caused black officer candidates to be passed over more often than were similarly qualified whites. For instance, photographs of candidates will no longer be part of their promotional packages, which had been found to hinder advancement opportunities for black soldiers.
See also
*Critical race theory
*Environmental racism
*First world privilege
*Institutional abuse
*Institutionalized discrimination
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Ketuanan Melayu
''Ketuanan Melayu'' (Jawi script: كتوانن ملايو; "Malay Overlordship") is a political concept that emphasises Malay preeminence in present-day Malaysia. The Malays of Malaysia have claimed a special position and exceptional rights ...
*Legacy preferences
*National Origins Formula
*Race and crime
*Structural violence
*Teaching for social justice
*''Weaver v NATFHE''
*White privilege
References
Bibliographies
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* Stokes, DaShanne. (In Press) ''Legalized Segregation and the Denial of Religious Freedom''
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Further reading
Institutional Racism and the Police Institutional Racism and the Police: Fact or Fiction?, Civitas thinktank pamphlet about the Macpherson Report On causes and effects of institutional racism in the Canadian criminal justice system
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*Canada Consolidation Indian Act R.S.C., 1985, c. I-5 Current to 9 June 2015. Last amended on 2 April 2015 and published by the Minister of Justice at the following address "Justice Laws Website" / "Site Web de la législation (Justice)", Government of Canada *John Komlos ” ''FinanzArchiv/Public Finance Analysis'', 77 (2021) 1: 83-115. “Intolerable Conditions”: Teaching About Northern Racism Through Rosa Parks’s Detroit Lesson by Say Burgin, Jeanne Theoharis, and Ursula Wolfe-Rocca.
{{Racism topics, state=collapsed
Racism
Definition of racism controversy
Institutional abuse
Political science terminology
Sociological terminology
Articles containing video clips