Defining Racial Justice in the 21st Century: Competing Perspectives and Shared Goals
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- Опубліковано 24 лют 2021
- Join the discourse: go.unc.edu/JoinTheDiscourse
In the wake of a summer of protests against police brutality, the midst of an ongoing pandemic, and the aftermath of a contentious election, the UNC Program for Public Discourse and Department of African, African American, and Diaspora Studies brought together a panel of Black academic, journalistic, religious, and political leaders to discuss and debate their different definitions of what racial justice looks like - and how it might be achieved - in the twenty-first century.
This event occurred on February 23rd, 2021, at 5:30 pm.
Moderator:
Jamelle Bouie is a columnist for the New York Times and a political analyst for CBS News covering campaigns, elections, national affairs, and culture. Before joining the Times, Bouie was chief political correspondent for Slate magazine. He has also served as a staff writer for The Daily Beast and held fellowships at The American Prospect and The Nation.
Panelists:
Senator Valerie Foushee chairs the North Carolina Black Alliance, a network of Black legislators that advocates for communities of color on a variety of issues. After graduating from UNC, she worked for the Chapel Hill Police Department and served on the Chapel Hill Carrboro City Schools School Board and the Orange County Board of Commissions. She currently represents Orange and Chatham Counties in the State Legislature.
Touré Reed, Ph.D. is a Professor of History at Illinois State University whose research and writings focus on the impact of race and class ideologies on African American civil rights politics and US public policy from the Progressive Era through the presidency of Barack Obama. Dr. Reed’s most recent book, Toward Freedom: The Case Against Race Reductionism (2020), challenges the idea that current racial disparities in wealth, employment, and incarceration are largely the result of liberal policymakers’ failure to acknowledge and account for the impact of racism on Black Americans.
Jacqueline C. Rivers, Ph.D., a lecturer at Harvard University, is Executive Director of the Seymour Institute for Black Church and Policy Studies. She was previously a doctoral fellow in the Multidisciplinary Program in Inequality & Social Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Dr. Rivers founded and served as executive director of MathPower, a community-based nonprofit in Boston focused on reforming mathematics education in urban schools.
Touree Reed laying down the truth!
Reed is brilliant as always - the others couldn't quite keep up.
I get so frustrated with the obsession of otherwise intelligent people, with proportions, without taking into consideration the fact that those proportions are either vacated or much more minor, when you consider class. This idea that poor whitebpeople are treated significantly better and with more concern is absolutely absurd. From a poor white dude who has been kidnapped by the local sheriff, harassed by police constantly as a kid, has 2 friends who were murdered by police and who spent 2 years incarcerated as a child, where I was assaulted and abused by those who were meant to look after me. And what is the solution when you obsess on proportions? Where do those solutions leave thebpoor black people? They will still suffer those injustices because they will still be poor in a system that is inherently classist.
Wonderful panel all around, thank you. I found Toure's remarks to be particularly eye-opening.
Great discussion learned a lot thanks to everyone involved
Detecting heavy doses of “smelling my own farts” from the bottom left of the screen.
coming from a working/lower class predominately white part for the country...while I agree w/ the more racially equitable side of the argument, I can't help but think the more class essentialist is the most realistic move forward for the left...
Feelings are not a reliable index of social structure.
1:00:05 did Touré roll his eyes or did something in the room distract him?
I believe he did roll his eyes, and when you listen to what was said just before that, I think I know why.
Consider what the other guest had started talking about. Then consider that Both Touré & Adolf (his dad, who is also a great proletarian scholar & labor organizer) have said repeatedly that they consider bringing up reparations as the argument of last resort for race reductionist/essentialist taking heads.
When was the last time a banker was shot to death by the police?
The Harvard professor is typical with her race-is-primary attitude and her 'yea, but...' responses to Toure's well thought out assertions that class warfare is most fundamental in creating all disparities
Great discussion. Toure tries to be polite but he loves to talk lol. Im not hopeful for anything positive in todays political climate but I hope to be proven wrong.
Id like to mention on the side that we do not like being called “Latinx”. 95% or more Latinos and Hispanics do not identify with that strange word.
At 1:17 forward: Reed criticizes racial justice arguments that a) explain New Deal legislation's unequal racial outcomes as solely due to racism, and b) fail to acknowledge non-racist economic and political reasons for that legislation. Note: Reed is specifically referencing Heather McGhee.
Thank you for this discussion
Re: Chetty
I often hear Chetty's work trotted out as a critique of class reductionism. It is important to consider his study more broadly and apply well-defined measures of unacceptable differences. Chetty's data, IRS tax returns, are about as close as we'll get to an objective an objective measure. For example, Dr. Rivers states one interesting statistic: black men born into the upper quintile only maintain their position in the upper quintile at ~20% while those of whites maintain their position in the upper quintile at a rate approximating ~40%. This is an interesting disparity and it is important to know the difference, but how would a more just world be reflected in the statistical frame? One version of a more just world would have black men in the top quintile rate at the same rate as white men. This would be justice of sorts: black men in the upper quintile would have the same probability of remaining in the upper quintile as white men. This, however, belies the fact that in order for more black men in the upper quintile to remain in the upper quintile means less people, of any race, will not be allowed to rise to the upper quintile. To me, this does not reflect the creed "your race, gender, class, etc. should not determine your outcome"? Statistically, this would be reflected in the fact that you position in any quintile does not bias you towards another quintile outcome. More concretely, this means the probability you remain in a specific percentile is equal to that percentile, the probability you move up to a high percentile is equal to the total percentiles above your current position, and, conversely, the probability you move down to a lower a percentile is equal to the total percentiles below your current position. To take the specific example being discussed as example, if you are born into the top quintile - whether black, white, asian, etc. - the probability you should remain in it should be 20%, the probability you move below it 80% and, just for the sack of being complete, the probability you should move above it should be 0%. So, by this interpretation of a more just world, we should not expect more black people to remain in the upper quintile, as the current probability of remaining in the upper quintile is in line with a certain 'just' probability. Rather, we should expect more rich white men to fall to a lower quintile.
I would also argue this focus on rising and falling creates a very anxious, unhealthy society, and it would better if we taxed higher such that the difference between the top quintile and bottom quintiles means less. That's a separate point, though.
All politics is class politics in a capitalist society, including black politics. Consider the black PMC's/commentariat's overwhelmingly negative regard for Bernie Sanders and his social democratic platform of policies that would've disproportionately benefited the black working class - as well as the black PMC's/commentariat's misrepresentation of the wide support Sanders enjoyed from working class black people as proof of concept. The truth is that if black working class voters, or white working class voters, for that matter, think politics is something - anything - but class politics, it's because they've been lied to by their class enemies, white and black, who profit at their expense. The "black political agenda" for black workers, at least, was, is, and will always be, the working class agenda of achieving material security through increased control of the conditions of their labor. The misrepresentation of that material interest shared by both black and white workers, is the capitalist class war.
RACIAL JUSTICE
To not allow those with more education, wealth or whiteness of skin
to enslave by poverty the 50% working poor.