Civil Rights Movements & the Law

For the redrawing of voting maps, some states are making a little-known change to their census numbers that is expected to shift political power away from rural, predominantly white prison towns.

"In several cases addressing the constitutionality of affirmative action admissions policies the Supreme Court has recognized a compelling state interest in schools with diverse student populations. According to the Court and affirmative action proponents the pursuit of diversity does not only benefit minority students who gain expanded access to elite institutions through affirmative action. Rather diversity also benefits white students who grow through encounters with minority students it contributes to social and intellectual life on campus and it serves society at large by aiding the development of citizens equipped for employment and citizen-ship in an increasingly diverse country."

Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors says the demand to defund law enforcement and reinvest the money in black communities is what can achieve justice for black Americans.

No one is born racist or antiracist; these result from the choices we make. Being antiracist results from a conscious decision to make frequent, consistent, equitable choices daily. These choices require ongoing self-awareness and self-reflection as we move through life. In the absence of making antiracist choices, we (un)consciously uphold aspects of white supremacy, white-dominant culture, and unequal institutions and society. Being racist or antiracist is not about who you are; it is about what you do.

Five years after Black Lives Matter coalesced into a national movement for social and racial justice, co-founder Patrisse Cullors reflects on the group's progress and impact.

Administrators offer advice on dealing with controversial speakers -- white nationalist Richard Spencer, conservative rabble-rousers like Milo Yiannopoulos and others.

In an exclusive interview with NPR, Nextdoor CEO Sarah Friar outlines new measures the popular neighborhood app is taking to address reports of racial profiling and censorship on the platform.

Conservatives must reckon with their policies’ discriminatory effects. That would be more likely if liberals stopped carelessly crying bigot.

NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with Kimberlé Crenshaw, co-founder of the Say Her Name campaign, about how the Black Lives Matter movement can be more inclusive of Black women.

Krishni Metivier provides a checklist of key actions that colleges and universities should take.

Paul Austin and Tenisha Tate-Austin alleged that an appraiser undervalued their home by nearly $500,000. They got a higher appraisal after they removed evidence that a Black family lived in the home.

Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt provides a checklist.

The annual report says instances of harassment, assault and propaganda are all on the rise. It warns public officials and social media stars have helped normalize longstanding antisemitic tropes.

We must understand our own racial positioning in this country and deconstruct our desire to assimilate into whiteness.

"Chief justices identify ways to implement reforms as part of modernization efforts"

Compilation of theses on civility.

When I was a high school student in the mid-1960s, I used to trek up to the West Wing of UCLA’s Powell Library on Sunday nights.  This was the place to see and be seen in the social scene of …

Anti-Racism Statement

An Arizona organization working to investigate and litigate cases of wrongful conviction in Arizona will receive funding from the Department of Justice to continue that work.The University of Arizona Innocence Project started as a small clinic in 2014 and today it's one of two such initiatives in Arizona.

To effectively address racial domination, we argue, one must have not only an idea of the means with which to struggle on behalf of a reconstructed racial order, but also an idea of the ends for which one is struggling.

Nakala Murry says her son doesn't understand what happened to him. "His words to me were: 'Why did he shoot me? What did I do?' "

The Center for Antiracist Research is dedicated to solving seemingly intractable problems of racial inequity and injustice.

The Supreme Court has ruled against Alabama's defense of an electoral map drawn by the state's Republican-dominated legislature. Black voters had challenged the law as racially discriminatory.

Ibram X. Kendi is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities and the director of the Boston University Center for Antiracist Research. He is the author of several books, including the National Book Award–winning Stamped From the Beginning: The Definiti

The Minneapolis City Council on Monday approved an agreement with the federal government to overhaul the city's police training and use-of-force policies in the wake of the murder of George Floyd.

Drawing on a range of critical race and anti-colonial writing, and focusing chiefly on Anglo-Western contexts of librarianship, this paper offers a broad critique of diversity as the dominant mode of anti-racism in LIS. After outlining diversity's core tenets, I examine the ways in which the paradigm's centering of inclusion as a core anti-racist strategy has tended to inhibit meaningful treatment of racism as a structural phenomenon. Situating LIS diversity as a liberal anti-racism, I then turn to diversity's tendency to privilege individualist narratives of (anti-)racism, particularly narratives of cultural competence, and the intersection of such individualism with broader structures of political-economic domination. Diversity's preoccupation with demographic inclusion and individual behavioural competence has, I contend, left little room in the field for substantive engagement with race as a historically contingent phenomenon: race is ultimately reified through LIS diversity discourse, effectively precluding exploration of the ways in which racial formations are differentially produced in the contextually-specific exercise of power itself. I argue that an LIS foregrounding of race as a historical construct - the assumption of its contingency - would enable deeper inquiry into the complex ways in which our field - and indeed the diversity paradigm specifically - aligns with the operations of contemporary regimes of racial subordination in the first place. I conclude with a reflection on the importance of the Journal of Critical Information and Library Studies as a potential site of critical exchange from which to articulate a sustained critique of race in and through our field.

The passage of Prop 36 marks a return to harsher punishments for some drug and theft crimes. Advocates worry it will also lead to a surge in prison populations.

The year 2020 will be known not only for the coronavirus pandemic that swept across the globe but also for the antiracist protests that focused attention on cascades of killings of Black people by police with impunity, a racial hoax that potentially placed a Black man in mortal danger because a white dog owner did...

The already large racial wealth gap between white and black American households grew even wider after the Great Recession. Targeted policies are necessary to reverse this deepening divide.

This is a list of characteristics of white supremacy culture that show up in our organizations. Culture is powerful precisely because it is so present and at the same time so very difficult to name or identify. The characteristics listed below are damaging because they are used as norms and standards without being pro- actively named or chosen by the group. They are damaging because they promote white supremacy thinking. Because we all live in a white supremacy culture, these characteristics show up in the attitudes and behaviors of all of us – people of color and white people. Therefore, these attitudes and behaviors can show up in any group or organization, whether it is white-led or predominantly white or people of color-led or predominantly people of color.