‘The power of the Black community: Systemic racism talk held at Charlotte fraternity event
A panel made up of Hollywood celebrities, a national civil rights attorney, and leader of the largest anti-discrimination organization in the country discussed ways Black Americans can fight institutional racism.
Actor Anthony Anderson hosted a discussion on institutional racism at the Omega Psi Phi Grand Conclave in Charlotte on Friday that featured civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump, comedian D.L. Hughley, and NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson.
Cheri Beasley, the former chief justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court and current U.S. Senate candidate, was also in attendance.
Racism in the judicial system
At the beginning of the discussion, Crump talked about a controversial policy that has been discussed after Black people fall victim to police brutality.
Crump, who has represented many families of Black people killed by police, including George Floyd, Jacob Blake and Daunte Wright, said qualified immunity essentially allows members of law enforcement to get away with murder.
Qualified immunity “protects a government official from lawsuits alleging that the official violated a plaintiff’s rights,” according to Cornell Law School’s Legal Information Institute.
“If a Black person had done something wrong, you’d see it on the 6 o’clock news,” Crump said. “But when the police do something wrong, we have to fight for months to get the body camera video so we can see it.”
Crump also used the example of Jamal Sutherland, who was forcibly removed from his cell, tased and pepper-sprayed by two Charleston County, South Carolina, detention officers before he died in custody in January of last year, CNN reported. Six months later, a court ruled that no criminal charges would be filed against the officers.
Black people are also more likely to be charged with felonies than white people, which can negatively affect their job prospects and overall quality of life, Crump said.
According to The Sentencing Project, an organization that advocates for humane responses to crime, one-third of Black men in the U.S. have felony convictions. Black children are also five times more likely to be incarcerated than white youth, according to the Equal Justice Initiative.
“We have to tell our people who have been written off as insignificant that they matter,” Crump said. “We cannot let this racist criminal justice system define our children.”
Inequities in schools determined by ZIP code
Johnson, who was born in Detroit, said institutional racism plays a role in how officials decide which communities receive funding for basic necessities such as roads and schools.
“The ZIP code we live in defines what health care we receive, whether the roads are paved and the infrastructure is developed, and whether or not the schools we attend actually have equity compared to white schools,” said Johnson. “The fact that there’s a distinction between a white and Black student is structural racism.”
More than a half-century after Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark Supreme Court case that ruled segregation of schools was unconstitutional, data show Black students still lack many of the advantages white students have.
According the Economic Policy Institute, Black children are more than twice as likely as white children to attend high-poverty schools, and underperform on math and reading assessments.
This achievement gap has led to a lower graduation rate among Black students. In the 2017-18 school year, the graduate rate for public high school students was 85%, but the rate for Black students was 79%, according to the National School Boards Association.
Black homeownership devalued by race
Hughley called attention to disparity between Black and white homeownership, referencing a study from the Brookings Institute that outlined homes of similar quality are worth 23% less in Black neighborhoods, compared to those with few or no Black residents.
That study also found that, in the average U.S. metropolitan area, homes in neighborhoods where Black people make up more than half of the population are valued at around half the price as homes in neighborhoods with no Black residents.
“The very homes you live in are devalued just because you’re Black and you live there,” Hughley said. “It’s the same structure and on the same street as other homes, but just because Black people live there, it has less value.”
Because racism is so ingrained in American culture, Hughley said the best thing Black people can do is to “keep existing” and push for change.
“The most dangerous place for us to live is in the imagination of white people because in their imagination we are less than,” Hughley said. “Convincing people that we are human and that we are no less than anybody else shouldn’t be this hard…. I think the way that we overcome racism is to keep existing and keep being quintessentially human.”
The importance of civic duties
All of the panelists agreed that serving on juries and voting are the best ways to address the inequities Black people face.
Crump described an important lesson he learned in law school: that most court cases are decided by precedents or previous decisions in similar cases. He also said that one Black person serving on a jury can influence the outcome of a case and set a new precedent.
“If you haven’t been called for jury service in two or three years, you have to ask yourself why not,” Crump said. “If you get that one Black person in the jury room, the whole conversation changes.”
To further Crump’s point, Johnson referenced a lawsuit filed against American Home Products Corp., the maker of the diet drug fen-phen — which was prevalent in Black communities — in 2000. More than 9,000 lawsuits were filed against the company after people who used the drug suffered heart and lung damage, The Associated Press reported.
An all-Black jury was selected for the trial in Jackson County, Mississippi, and the plaintiffs in the case won a $200 million settlement from the company.
“That all-Black jury was the result of advocates who ensured that Black people were registered to vote,” Johnson said, noting that only those who are registered to vote are eligible to serve on juries. “That case was special because it held corporations accountable for distributing poison in our communities.”
Although lawmakers have tried to “devise ways to keep Black people in their place” by gerrymandering congressional districts, Crump said, voting is the only way to have a say in what policies are implemented to protect and serve the Black community.
Anderson also emphasized the importance of voting, especially at the local level.
“We have to get out and vote, and not just on the national level every four years,” Anderson said. “Get out and vote for your city council, your local mayor, your school boards and educate yourselves and educate yourselves on the issues that are on the ballot, because those are things that affect us that we absolutely can control if we just go out and punch the ticket.”
This story was originally published July 23, 2022 at 9:59 AM.
