With their history of forced immigration to the United States (US), African Americans were de-cultured and dehumanized, their misery treated as ‘natural’ and benign. Today, they are an important minority in a nation with a singular degree of world influence. Much of the country’s vitality, especially its contemporary cultural life, can be credited to African Americans, but racism remains a definitive and stark reality.
A critical aspect of the racism that African Americans face is a continuing geographic segregation in many parts of the US, a legacy of ‘Jim Crow’ laws enacted in the South after the Civil War, as well as discriminatory attitudes right across the country including the so-called ‘white flight’ from urban areas to suburbs after the Second World War.
Much of the African American population is urban and they make up the majority of the population in cities such as Detroit, New Orleans and Washington DC. While many major US cities have had black mayors and African Americans are well represented on most large city councils, politics and funding have limited their attempts to make significant changes in the conditions of urban African Americans. This is reflected in the persistence of profound inequalities in a range of areas, from education and health care to housing and access to justice.
In the area of education, for example, while black educational levels are on the rise, inequalities and discrimination persist. While poverty and a broader backdrop of exclusion play a part to poor educational outcomes – almost a quarter (24.1 per cent) of the black population were living in poverty in 2015, compared to 9.1 per cent of non-Hispanic whites.
African Americans are at high risk for mental illness, heart disease, cancer, HIV infection and other major diseases, due to a cluster of factors, including levels of education, poverty, stress, poor health care, pollution and family instability. The wide socio-economic gaps between African Americans and whites remains high. In 2018, the annual National Urban League report, The State of Black America, found that nationwide black households earn an average income of US$38,555 compared to white an average of US$63,155 among white households.
Introduced in House January 3, 2019, HR 40 is a bill that would establish a Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans. The commission would examine slavery and discrimination in the colonies and the United States from 1619 to the present and recommend appropriate remedies. Among other requirements, the commission shall identify (1) the role of federal and state governments in supporting the institution of slavery, (2) forms of discrimination in the public and private sectors against freed slaves and their descendants, and (3) lingering negative effects of slavery on living African Americans and society.
This episode seeks to explore some of the aforementioned, egregious social, political and economic challenges faced by African American men and women. How do we effectively influence public policy to correct systemic injustice? What will it take to get traction behind this bill? What will coalitions of support need to look like to bring about success for this and similar important initiatives?
Profound Conversations Executive Producers are the Muslim Life Planning Institute, a national community building organization whose mission is to establish pathways to lifelong learning and healthy communities at the local, national and global level. MLPN.life
The Profound Conversations podcast is produced by Erika Christie www.ErikaChristie.com
