You say Black Lives Matter? Show me the receipts
Recently, we’ve seen many elegant statements from corporations and organizations stating that Black Lives Matter and that they stand against systemic racism. In addressing systemic racism (racism embedded in institutions like education, housing, employment, banking, healthcare, environment, criminal justice, etc. that no longer has to say “colored”), virtue signaling alone is insufficient.
As someone who has stated that Confederate statues are the equivalent of erecting Osama Bin Laden monuments around the country to commemorate 9/11, I’m glad we’re taking terroristic statues down. Dismantling systemic racism, however, means addressing unjust statutes.
What does this look like in practice?
On the Charlotte City Council, for example, it means not allowing a developer to dictate to you that a deal in affluent Ballantyne with the potential for a $42.5 million tax subsidy excludes people in the 30% AMI range, our greatest shortage. You know who fits there? Most childcare employees, predominantly Black women. These women are essential enough to care for Ballantyne’s children so parents can earn income during a pandemic, but not worthy of having the chance to live near their jobs that they drive across town to get to everyday? Council members saying things like, “We can’t build that kind of housing in South Charlotte” is economic redlining. It’s unacceptable.
It’s not just Charlotte. For local governments across the state, addressing injustice also means allocating more than a tiny fraction of your budget - just 3.8% in Charlotte - to housing and economic development, areas that have disproportionately impacted Black folks for generations. It means eliminating Source of Income discrimination in housing. It means no longer blindly allotting 40 percent of your budget to police departments to subsequently under-protect and over-police the recipients of underinvestment. Instead, it means addressing root causes the way you do with illegal drug use for white citizens in our suburbs, where you say we “can’t arrest our way out of it.”
For counties, it means restoring collaboration with school boards versus playing old politics that will feed educational shortfalls, disproportionately impacting the students who constantly lose the most. The problem isn’t pursuing $15/hour for custodians but recognizing you yourself are outsourcing. Instead of infighting, it means working together to put forth united energy towards a state that steadily underfunds public education, burdening you both.
For school boards, it means doing deep work and budgeting to fix the broken equity link while implementing an honest curriculum to prevent our youth from being miseducated like many of our adults. Teach about the Homestead Act, where government gave Europeans land, usually freezing out Black folks. Teach that the 13th Amendment that still allows slavery in the case of a crime. Teach the 1898 Wilmington Massacre and the many contributions Africans made to civilization prior to enslavement.
For state lawmakers, it means expanding Medicaid. How are we still one of the worst insured states in the country during a global pandemic? It’s savagery at worst and economic malpractice at best. It also means funding our malnourished public education budget outlined by the Leandro decision. Continually, stripping our kids of healthcare and education while relining the pockets of the elite is tyranny.
For our business communities, it means addressing internal hiring, promotion, and decision making while not using philanthropy as a shield for structural change. Continuing to lobby the state to defund education for CEO salaries is not solved by donating a fraction of “tax breaks” back to those it was initially stolen from.
Denouncing systemic racism isn’t a catchphrase to stop protests. It’s a workout routine. It’s time to grab a dumbbell versus continuing to filter our Instagram photos.