News and Notes

Legacies of Lynching

An interview with civil rights lawyer and author Sherrilyn Ifill

Sherrilyn Ifill is a civil rights lawyer who came to see linkages between the discrimination cases she was trying and the history and memories of lynchings fifty or more years in the past. Public Eye editorial board member Tarso Luis Ramos interviewed Ifill, a Professor of Law at the University of Maryland Law School, about her new book on the subject, On the Courthouse Lawn: Confronting the Legacy of Lynching in the 21st Century (New York: Beacon Press, 2007).

Vote Caging

In 2004, political operatives associated with the Republican party targeted more than half a million voters in “voter caging” campaigns in nine states, according to a report released today by Project Vote, a non-partisan organization that promotes voter participation. At least 77,000 voters had their eligibility challenged between 2004 and 2006. “The efforts in 2004 and since have been systematic in targeting precincts with a large number of African American voters in competitive states, using direct mail and sophisticated database matching to generate lists of voters to attempt to disqualify,” said Teresa James, the report’s author and election law attorney for Project Vote.

View report from Project Vote, non-partisan voting rights organization

Genetic Drift

By Ziba Kashef

Ever since scientists discovered “the secret of life” embedded in our DNA a half century ago, the study of human genes has sparked debate about the nature of race. The question seemed to be settled in the early 1970s when biologist Richard Lewontin compared variations in genes within and among different population groups. His conclusion, that most human genetic variation did not fall along racial lines, was widely accepted. At the molecular level, human beings are more alike than different. Repeat experiments confirmed this finding, and many experts embraced the knowledge that the racial categories that have long divided people and justified racist oppression represented social and political beliefs rather than biological truths. But the notion that race is real as a biological fact did not die. Even after research teams who identified and sequenced all 20,000-25,000 genes as part of the historic Human Genome Project declared in 2000 that race was not a valid scientific concept, the counterclaim resurfaced.

View Article from Colorlines magazine

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The Center for New Racial Studies (CNRS) at UCSB is a developing "think tank" that focuses on the dynamics of race and racism in the 21st century. We are committed to revitalizing racial studies on our campus and beyond. We are an affiliated group of faculty from the social sciences and humanities who work on racial issues from a wide range of disciplines: we have among us historians, literary critics, musicologists, sociologists, political scientists, and specialists in education. We study race from very different vantage points: global, national, local, and experiential.

CNRS grew out of a series of informal meetings and sporadic campus events held over 2002-2004 to discuss our ongoing work on such subjects as: the massive rates of imprisonment affecting communities of color, the meaning of white identity, the rise of a new American empire, the phenomenon of "Islamophobia," and the links between racism, sexism, and homophobia, to name just a few (!) issues. We are located in the UCSB Institute for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Research (ISBER), and maintain ties as well with the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center (IHC).

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NEW RACIAL STUDIES ISSUES: UPDATES AND ACTIVIST ALERTS

Subprime Mortgage Crisis Causing African-Americans to Experience Greatest Loss of Wealth in Modern US History

Racial Bias of Subprime Mortgage Lenders Accounts for Nearly Double the Wealth Losses For People of Color Compared to Whites

Boston—A new report says the subprime mortgage crisis will cause African-Americans to experience wealth losses of between $72 billion and $93 billion over its duration. For people of color in general, the racial bias of subprime mortgage lenders accounts for nearly double the wealth losses for people of color as for whites.

Foreclosed: The State of the Dream 2008 is available online at http://www.faireconomy.org/dream. This will mark the fifth year that United for a Fair Economy (UFE) has published its State of the Dream report.

"As we approach the 79th anniversary of the birth of Martin Luther King, Jr., it's important to realize how much ground middle- and working-class Americans have lost in the subprime crisis," said Amaad Rivera, Program Leader for the Racial Wealth Divide team at UFE and a report co-author. "Our estimates indicate that it will cause the greatest loss of wealth for African-Americans in modern US history."

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END RACIAL PROFILING ACT OF 2007

The Center for New Racial Studies would like to draw your attention to the "End Racial Profiling Act of 2007" (H.R. 4611, S. 2481). This bill is critical to protecting fundamental rights guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution and international human rights laws and treaties.

Every person has the fundamental right to equal protection under the law regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, or national origin. Racial profiling is an insidious violation of human rights that can affect people in both public and private places - in their homes or at work, or while driving, flying or walking. Racial profiling by law enforcement instills fear and distrust among members of targeted communities, making them less likely to cooperate with criminal investigations or to seek police protection when victimized. Multiple studies have shown that when police focus on race, even as one of several predictive factors, they tend to pay less attention to actual criminal behavior. This is a dangerous trend that can inhibit effective law enforcement and ultimately can endanger the lives of all persons who depends on law enforcement for protection.

Historically, racial profiling in the United States has been viewed as an issue that primarily affects African-American, Native American and Hispanic communities. However, since September 11, 2001, some aspects of law enforcement have led to much more wide spread racial profiling, affecting individuals of Arab or South Asian descent or Muslim faith, and persons appearing to be from those communities.

Targeting people for investigation based on arbitrary factors such as their race, religion, ethnicity or national origin is not only an ineffective investigation tactic, it is profoundly unjust.

The End Racial Profiling Act would:

Prohibit the use of racial profiling based on race, religion, ethnicity or national origin;
Institute programs to eliminate racial profiling in federal, state, local and tribal Indian law enforcement by general prohibition, monitoring tactics, establishing procedures for receiving, investigating and responding to complaints and create procedures to discipline agents who engage in racial profiling;
Allow the Attorney General to withhold grants from law enforcement agencies not complying with the Act and to provide grants to agencies to encourage compliance with the Act;
Mandate that the Attorney General submit an annual report to Congress on racial profiling by law enforcement.

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL USA RECOMMENDATIONS:

Congress should pass the End Racial Profiling Act.
Congress should urge law enforcement agencies to protect fundamental civil and human rights enumerated in the US Constitution and in international laws and treaties, especially when investigating crimes.
Congress should urge law enforcement agencies to hold accountable officers who deny equal protection under the law to individuals by engaging in racial profiling.

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