Research & Academic Scholarship

"And too many of us have never heard of him. Thanks to a new website now we have."

"This page outlines various key court cases that deal with racial issues from a legal standpoint. These sites offer an introduction and information about historic precedents and other data that also impact on viewpoints found in relation to decisions made within wider society."

"On a windy Thursday morning in mid-February the Rev. Michelle Thomas walked up a winding gravel path surrounded by dirt broken tree branches and mostly brown grass."

"A lawyer's cultural competence goes beyond avoiding bias. To serve diverse clients lawyers should have special communication and interpersonal skills. Those skills can be taught and learned."

"American jurisprudence and law have profoundly shaped defined and constrained the lives of Black people for over 400 years. Racial inequality has extremely deep roots in American society and our Constitution statutes court cases and regulations not only bear witness to this but are often the source of it. This timeline provides an overview of some of these laws beginning with the first known case marking the legal difference between Africans and Europeans in 1640 in Virginia and continuing with laws recently introduced in the wake of the killing of George Floyd and other Black Americans. While not exhaustive the timeline focuses on a number of key legal events and actions that have structured and systematized racism in America."

"Solutions to fix algorithmic bias could collide with law. Two scholars propose a solution."

This is a study of black employment in the private sector as reported by those employers who are required to and did file EEO-l Employer Information Reports to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.* A major purpose of this study is to measure the penetration and occupational position of blacks in the EEO-l universe since 1969 and determine how the relative status of blacks has changed over the past five years. A second purpose is to estimate black employment gaps that exist when black experiences in the workforce are measured against black expectations based upon fair-share employment levels. A third purpose is to calculate the economic loss to black workers which is associated with employment discrimination. A fourth purpose is to project the time when employment gaps will close.

Examines the life of Callie House, a woman who was born into slavery in 1861 and later became a laundress in Nashville, focusing on her demand that the U.S. government pay pensions to ex-slaves for centuries of unpaid labor, and discussing the efforts of the Justice Department to stop House and her followers.

Racism and discrimination have choked economic opportunity for African Americans at nearly every turn. At several historic moments, the trajectory of racial inequality could have been altered dramatically. Perhaps no moment was more opportune than the early days of Reconstruction, when the U.S. government temporarily implemented a major redistribution of land from former slaveholders to the newly emancipated enslaved. But neither Reconstruction nor the New Deal nor the civil rights struggle led to an economically just and fair nation. Today, systematic inequality persists in the form of housing discrimination, unequal education, police brutality, mass incarceration, employment discrimination, and massive wealth and opportunity gaps. Economic data indicates that for every dollar the average white household has in wealth the average black household possesses a mere ten cents. In From Here to Equality, William Darity Jr. and A. Kirsten Mullen confront these injustices head-on and make the most comprehensive case to date for economic reparations for U.S. descendants of slavery. After opening the book with a stark assessment of the intergenerational effects of white supremacy on black economic well-being, Darity and Mullen look to both the past and the present to measure the inequalities borne of slavery. Using innovative methods that link monetary values to historical wrongs, they next assess the literal and figurative costs of justice denied in the 155 years since the end of the Civil War. Finally, they offer a detailed roadmap for an effective reparations program, including a substantial payment to each documented U.S. black descendant of slavery. Taken individually, any one of the three eras of injustice outlined by Darity and Mullen - slavery, Jim Crow, and modern-day discrimination - makes a powerful case for black reparations. Taken collectively, they are impossible to ignore. --

Central to the idea of the American Dream lies an assumption that we all have an equal opportunity to generate the kind of wealth that brings meaning to the words “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” boldly penned in the Declaration of Independence. The American Dream portends that with hard work, a person can own a home, start a business, and grow a nest egg for generations to draw upon. This belief, however, has been defied repeatedly by the United States government’s own decrees that denied wealth-building opportunities to Black Americans. Today, the average white family has roughly 10 times the amount of wealth as the average Black family. White college graduates have over seven times more wealth than Black college graduates. Making the American Dream an equitable reality demands the same U.S. government that denied wealth to Blacks restore that deferred wealth through reparations to their descendants in the form of individual cash payments in the amount that will close the Black-white racial wealth divide. Additionally, reparations should come in the form of wealth-building opportunities that address racial disparities in education, housing, and business ownership

This research guide brings together a variety of resources for researching issues related to policing and racial injustice. General research databases and reference resources for researching criminal justice topics generally are also listed. The databases in the General Research section, can be particularly helpful in locating periodical articles, working papers and other publications. Other sections of this guide focus on more specific issues such as police tactics and use of force; police/community relations, community policing and community activism; police oversight/accountability, and efforts/proposals to reform, defund and abolish police departments. Note: some of the resources (primarily books) listed under a particular topic (e.g. police tactics) may also contain content that address other topics such as police oversight. The guide has a separate section devoted to law enforcement and racial justice issues in Minnesota. It also includes a section with useful links to federal government publications and resources for researching law enforcement and racial justice issues in other states. This guide was compiled in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd in May 2020 and the global outrage and protest that followed. Links related to the response of the University of Minnesota Law School, (official statements, a panel discussion webinar, and the George Floyd Memorial Scholarship in Law) can be found below.

Becoming an Anti-Racist Educator M Gabriela Torres, Professor of Anthropology and Associate Provost for Academic Administration and Faculty Affairs, Past Co-Director, CCTL Anti-racism is the “active process of identifying and […]

Longstanding inequalities have led to the current wave of protests.

Research has extensively documented the differences between the Black and white experience in the US, from wealth and education to incarceration.

Article from "Liberal Education," Fall 2017.

This article reflects on an exercise I developed to enable students to identify the ways in which white privilege is embedded in archival institutions and to collectively strategize concrete steps to dismantle white supremacy in their own archival practice. It argues that, in the face of disastrous political events—such as the election of an explicitly racist protofascist as US president—LIS faculty must intervene pedagogically to meet the needs of their most vulnerable students and to model behaviors of critique and resistance if we aim to train students who will disrupt the status quo of oppression as LIS professionals. The article includes printable graphics designed by Gracen Brilmyer and generated by the class exercise to serve as a visual reminder of our obligation to dismantle white supremacy in archival studies and archives more broadly.

The inclusion of race-related content in college courses often generates emotional responses in students that range from guilt and shame to anger and despair. The discomfort associated with these emotions can lead students to resist the learning process. Based on her experience teaching a course on the psychology of racism and an application of racial identity development theory, Beverly Daniel Tatum identifies three major sources of student resistance to talking about race and learning about racism, as well as some strategies for overcoming this resistance.

Speech by Dr. Kristopher Burrell, January 16, 2017, St. Paul’s Church — National Historic Site, Mount Vernon, NY Good afternoon,...Read More

The story of Black History Month begins in Chicago during the summer of 1915. An alumnus of the University of Chicago with many friends in the city, Carter G. Woodson traveled from Washington, D.C. to participate in a national celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of emancipation sponsored by the state of Illinois. Thousands of African Americans travelled from across the country to see exhibits highlighting the progress their people had made since the destruction of slavery. Awarded a doctorate in Harvard three years earlier, Woodson joined the other exhibitors with a black history display. Despite being held at the Coliseum, the site of the 1912 Republican convention, an overflow crowd of six to twelve thousand waited outside for their turn to view the exhibits. Inspired by the three-week celebration, Woodson decided to form an organization to promote the scientific study of black life and history before leaving town. On September 9th, Woodson met at the Wabash YMCA with A. L. Jackson and three others and formed the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (ASNLH).

Explore or reconstruct the lives of individuals who were enslaved, owned slaves, or participated in the historical trade.

The study of African American Reconstruction leadership has presented a variety of unique challenges for modern historians who struggle to piece together the lives of men, who prior to the Civil War, had little political identity.

Freedom Stories is a two-year initiative between a coalition of organizations and agencies in Prince George’s County to provide antiracist and social justice programs. We invite you to watch the introductory video below and join us in a series of programs and events via our specially curated Calendar.

I initially set out to assemble this booklet in an attempt to form something of a comprehensive history of Asian American civil rights, but soon realized that our history cannot be smartly categorized by ethnicity and then chronologically listed and detailed. Our history is full of overlaps and parallel struggles. Our history is not neat. And to so many Asian Americans coming of age today, it is unfamiliar.

Durban, South Africa, from 31 August to 8 September 2001

Creating a just and inclusive society where all have the opportunity to succeed

How racial barriers play in the experiences of Mexican Americans has been hotly debated. Some consider Mexican Americans similar to European Americans of a century ago that arrived in the United States with modest backgrounds but were eventually able ...

null

Redlining in New Deal America

The Journal of Hate Studies is an annual peer-reviewed publication of the Gonzaga University Institute for Hate Studies.The Journal of Hate Studies is an international scholarly journal promoting the sharing of interdisciplinary ideas and research relating to the study of what hate is, where it comes from, and how to combat it.  It presents cutting-edge essays, theory, and research that deepen the understanding of the development and expression of hate.View the complete list of issues by theme.