Affirmative Action: Part 2

Hi Friends,
Welcome to Issue 57 of this newsletter. This week’s topic is: Affirmative Action, following up after our first newsletter on the topic. If you haven’t read that newsletter yet, I highly recommend it. In that newsletter we discussed the history and background of affirmative action. Today, we’ll discuss the impact and implications of affirmative action and the most recent Supreme Court decision. Personally, I benefited from affirmative action as an undergrad at NYU. As a Black, Hispanic, first-generation women, I am part of several underrepresented and marginalized communities. Socio-economically, I grew up understanding I would need a scholarship to be able to pursue higher education. My high school was ranked among the bottom 50% of public schools in New Jersey with only 43% of students achieving reading proficiency. As an adult, I am blown away when my peers talk about internships, fellowships, summer programs and organizations that they participated in while in high school because I never had the opportunity to participate in any of them. I thought being drama club president and on every single club (multicultural club, key club, national honor society) meant that I was doing the absolute maximum in school participation. The issue was — I didn’t know what I didn’t know. I did not understand that there were so many opportunities I was missing out on because I had never heard of them. Because of the systemic disadvantage that I faced having immigrant parents and attending a low ranking public school, I am so grateful that NYU took a holistic approach to my application, understanding the levels of disadvantages I had while also appreciating the ways in which I succeeded with the opportunities I was given. I had a great essay. I scored a perfect score on the language and writing sections of the SATs. I was in the top 5% of my graduating class. I took and passed 4 AP exams. I was the National Honor Society vice president. I worked hard. I just didn’t see all of the ways that my particular corner of the world lacked the access to a lot of things that could have made me even better. This is a conversation close to my heart. Let’s get into it.

Lets Get Into It

Successes of Affirmative Action

• Affirmative action reduces discrimination in education and employment settings

• Students who benefit from affirmative action are more likely to graduate college and to earn professional degrees, and have higher incomes. So affirmative action acts as an engine for social mobility for its direct beneficiaries. This in turn leads to a more diverse leadership, which you can see steadily growing in the United States

• Affirmative action has helped increase the percentage of Black Americans in medical school by a factor of four

• Affirmative action can improve police-community relations. Police departments throughout many states used affirmative action planning to determine any problem areas with respect to minority representation among their workforce. Subsequently, those departments have increased their complement of officers from racial minority groups. A study of the fifty largest cities in the United States had shown that from 1983 to 1992, police departments, using AAP, “made progress in the employment of African-American and Hispanic officers.”

• Affirmative action forbids employers to discriminate against individuals because of their race, color, religion, sex, or national origin

The Supreme Court Ruling

Ultimately, the most recent Supreme Court ruling was against the use of affirmative action — saying in the majority opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts that the systems in place "lack sufficiently focused and measurable objectives warranting the use of race, unavoidably employ race in a negative manner, involve racial stereotyping, and lack meaningful end points, those admissions programs cannot be reconciled with the guarantees of the Equal Protection Clause.” But the court did not rule out race entirely in admission programs, adding, "nothing prohibits universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected the applicant’s life, so long as that discussion is concretely tied to a quality of character or unique ability that the particular applicant can contribute to the university."

Some important points to note are:

• While the ruling focuses specifically on barring race as a factor in admissions, it doesn't limit institutions' outreach, engagement, retention or completion strategies aimed at enrolling diverse student bodies. Higher education scholars and counselors say the onus is on colleges and universities to ensure that their applicant pools include students of color — many of whom come from segregated school districts with fewer resources (like me!)

• Higher education institutions will be able to continue to “promote diversity based on background, based on socioeconomic experiences,” among other experiences. A wide array of experiences can still define what it means to have a diverse student body — including students' experiences, where they grew up and their areas of interest.

• Banning affirmative action on a state-level is not new. It is staggering, however, to be experiencing this on a national level. State-level bans on using race-based affirmative action in Arizona, California, Florida, Idaho, Michigan, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oklahoma and Washington have already given the country a glimpse of the consequences of prohibiting such a practice. Research shows that in those nine states, the enrollment of students from underrepresented communities declined, even if other factors, such as class, were weighed more heavily.

• What's important to note, experts say, is that race was just one factor used to determine admissions at some selective colleges and universities — along with students' academic records, extracurricular activities, essays, recommendations and standardized test scores for some schools. No university has ever used race alone to admit a student.

• The new ruling says a college or university can’t use race as a factor in determining whether a student should be admitted. But students can still convey their racial or ethnic backgrounds through extracurricular activities and other application materials, such as essays and personal statements. HOWEVER, it’s possible that some colleges and universities may, on their own, in response to the Supreme Court decision, forbid candidates from using their race so it can be said that they’re making their decisions without regard to race.

  • Here’s what the Supreme Court opinion stated: “Nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise."That essentially means that if students talk about their race or ethnic backgrounds in their essays or mission statements, "then the university can consider it, to the extent of the relevance," Ben-Dan said. However, "the court gave no guidance whatsoever as to how this consideration is supposed to happen."

Some negative repercussions to this decision may be:

• This ruling minimizes the significant achievement of marginalized students by suggesting they’ve been given unfair advantages

• The racial gap in higher education may get worse without institutions making an effort to diversify their application pool. In many states, Black students make up between 20% to 50% of public high school graduates. In those same states only 5% or 8% of freshman are Black at those same states flagship schools. 49% of Mississippi’s public school graduates in 2020 were Black and only 8% of freshman at the University of Mississippi were Black. For Latino students who make up between 20% and over 50% of public high school graduates, only 9% to 30% of freshman are Latino in those state’s flagship schools. In California, 53% of students who graduated in 2020 were Latino and only 22% of the freshman class at University of California-Berkeley were Latino.

• Underrepresented students may choose not to apply to higher education in the wake of affirmative action programs being deemed unconstitutional. This decision tells students of color that their idenities and the ways in which their race impacts their experiences does not matter. It does matter. Color-blindness is not the goal of equality. Equality is contingent on being seen for and respected because of who we are as individuals, as Americans, as human beings, in a world that is tarnished by racism, chattle slavery, implicit bias and inequality. Against that background, it’s important to pay special attention to first-generation students, as well as to those who identify as Black or Latino, because they are more likely to “self-select out of going to a selective school,” said Eva Garza-Nyer, a counselor and the CEO of Texas College Advisor. “They’ll just assume ‘I have no chance.’”

Legacy Preference & Historical Disadvantages

• Legacy preference means that a candidate whose family members attended the same college gets preferential treatment for their application. The history of legacy preference is explicitly racist and anti semitic. According to the ACLU, it is estimated that legacy applicants are five times as likely to be admitted to Harvard as other applicants — why is this allowed, but affirmative action is not?

• Legacy admissions reinforce privilege. Harvard was founded in 1636 and was the first institution of higher education in the English colonies. In 1835, Oberlin College in Ohio became the first American college to accept Black students, men, and women. In 1869, Mary Ann Shadd Carey became the first Black woman to enroll at Howard University's Law Department.

  • This means that a white person today could have family legacy dating back 387 years at Harvard compared to a Black person today who could have family legacy dating back 188 years to Oberlin and no more than 154 years at Harvard. A white American could have family attending an American university for more than double the length that a Black American ever could.

• Legacy preference in and of itself reduces opportunities for students from underrepresented or disadvantaged backgrounds by prioritizing applicants with family connections. This perpetuates the lack of diversity in educational institutions and may hinder efforts to create a more inclusive learning environment.

• Legacy preferences can impede social mobility by making it harder for talented and motivated students from lower-income families to access top-tier institutions. This contributes to the cycle of inequality, where wealth and privilege remain concentrated among certain groups.

Let’s be clear, white teens applying to universities and colleges who have parents and grandparents that have also attended those institutions have been multiple layers of privilege and advantage over students from underrepresented and marginalized groups. Let’s name a few. First of all, that applicant is more than likely to come from a wealthier household. According to 2021 Bureau of Labor Statistics data, someone with a college degree will earn $524 more per week, $27,000 more per year, and $1 million more over a lifetime than someone with only a high school diploma or less. If one or both parents have a college degree and one or both sets of grandparents have a college degree, the family has significant opportunities to accumulate generational wealth. Having money means a lot. They might have been able to accept unpaid internships, mentorships and participated in more after-school activities because they did not have to work. Having parents in a professional industry might open doors for them to work at their family business, make connections with family friends in other industries and grain firsthand experience about their parents career path. They will also enter into higher education with knowledge from their parents on how to navigate school, what organizations to belong to, what courses to take, specific jargon and language used on campus, professors to network with, and more. Being the first in your family to attend higher education can be daunting, shocking, confusing, lonely and incredibly inimidating and white students who benefit from legacy preference do not encounter those challenges. Ultimately, white students also do not have to exist under the crushing weight of racism in a country that constantly tries to harm them.

Teaching at Metropolitan Detention Center: Part 2

Hi Friends!
Welcome to Issue 56 of this newsletter. This week I share some of my final thoughts after finishing one course at the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC). If you haven’t read my first newsletter on this topic where I recount my initial experience in detail and share some background of Just Ideas, the program I am working with to teach these classes, please check it out. Honestly friends, this experience has been full of far more joy than I could have ever imagined. Merely engaging with these men, witnessing them, hearing them, validating their experiences, I believe, is the true work. Human Rights begins with seeing the humanity in those who are most vulnerable, most marginalized, most forgotten. I believe mass incarceration is an unnecessary evil and it has been proven that locking human being away does not reduce crime and absolutely does not rehabilitate those who have committed crimes. These are some of my big takeaways after the course. Let’s get into it!

Lets Get Into It

On May 31, I started a mini-course at MDC Brooklyn with a group of 15 men, led by Professor Christia Mercer. After finishing the course this week, there are a few key takeaways that I know will stay with me throughout my career in Human Rights and in mass incarceration research and reform.

1. It’s not important why someone is incarcerated

I’m not a lawyer. My job isn’t to defend anyone, place judgement on their actions or analyze their decisions. Whatever reason someone is incarcerated is none of my business. Statistically, there could very well be someone that is innocent or was coerced into a false confession in one of my classes—and even that is none of my business. There are a few reasons why this is true. The most important, in my opinion, is because acting on any information that might be shared with me would jeopardize my ability to ever work or volunteer in a federal prison again. Following the rules means not discussing someone’s specific case or becoming overly involved and it’s vital that I do so in order to continue this work. Above all, I believe in restorative justice. I believe that our current prison system has no place in a society. If I believe that truly, I must do the work I wish existed. I must treat each of the people I come in contact with with grace, kindness and respect, or else, what am I really doing? I’ve actually found it easy not to care about why someone might be in my class, but engage with them as they are and hope my small impact on their experience while incarcerated will be a positive one.

2. It’s not my job to save anyone

One of my acting teachers growing up said I had a “soft heart”. I always loved the picture that painted in my mind. Going inside, I think having a soft heart allows me to operate from a place of kindness. It allows me the ability to understand how dire the circumstances are for a human being who is locked in a cage and largely forgotten by our society. While this softness helps me to connect with people, I also understand it cannot become my entire personality when I’m inside. These men are in class to learn, many of them wanting to receive college credit and eventually go on to receiving advanced degrees. My time inside isn’t a pity party for them or for me. My job is to be a decent human being and help these men learn the material, nothing more.

3. The relationship formed between myself and the students is a reciprocal one, not a hierarchical one

I learned so much while being a part of this class. The men in the program come from so many diverse backgrounds, educations and experiences and I quickly realized how limited the perspectives have been in the rooms I have learned in throughout my life. Hearing them share their thoughts on the play, on philosophy, on how something in the text from 2,500 years ago might connect to our lives today, taught me so much. “Diversity” is always championed in the workplace and in schools as a meaningful tool to enrich the education process. I was able to experience how true that can be when surrounded by people who had lived through some very different circumstances than I have. The class isn’t about me looking down at them from my ivory tower of academia, but looking eye to eye as much as we can (while understanding the simple inequality that I get to leave at the end of class and they do not).

4. The experience is not scary

I was actually most nervous about just getting inside of the prison. The dress codes, regulations and the thought of contact with corrections officers were all really intimidating. To my suprise, the officers I engaged with shook my hand or even gave me a hug. They were glad to have us. They valued the program and the impact is has had. It was confusing. I still don’t know how to fully make sense of the way in which I chatted with prison staff while walking through heavy doors and metal detectors. Once inside, I felt truly and oddly safe. The men were warm and eager to learn. They were complex and unique and brough different things to each and every class. They were incredibly funny and willing to participate in icebreakers and games without much hesitation. They were engaging and serious. They were thoughtful and patient with one another, with themselves, with me. These men broke my heart wide open. I felt immense sadness knowing these few weeks were the extent of my contact with them, but immense joy in having known them. I was never afraid.

5. Prisons should not exist

My biggest takeaway is that prisons should not exist. Prisons only further perpetuate racism, inequality and injustice. Human beings do not belong in cages and every single person innately deserves dignity. According to the US Department of Justice, “Prisons are good for punishing criminals and keeping them off the street, but prison sentences (particularly long sentences) are unlikely to deter future crime. Prisons actually may have the opposite effect.” They go on to say the severity of punishment, including implementing the death penalty, does little to deter crime. Prisons do not rehabilitate those who have committed crimes. Prisons do not keep everyday Americans safer because they do not deter criminal activity. What prisons are successful at is both spending millions and making millions, punishing people, perpetuating high rates of recidivism, impacting Black Americans as disproportionately high levels and creating a free labor force of enslaved workers.

Friends, in the coming weeks I look forward to sharing more with you about Just Ideas as I continue with the program as well as opening up a conversation on abolition. Be well, see ya next time!

“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for, we are the change we seek” — With love and light, Taylor Rae

Affirmative Action: Part 1

Hi Friends,
Welcome to Issue 55 of this newsletter. Today, June 29, the Supreme Court struck down college affirmative action programs. This week’s topic: Affirmative Action . A conservative supermajority in the Supreme Court upending decades of jurisprudence when they decided that race-conscious admissions programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina are unconstitutional. This decision has many implications, including the potential to change the way that college admission processes are handled, and the potential to have a ripple effect that impacts the business world and corporate sector. The two cases were brought by Students for Fair Admissions, a group founded by Edward Blum. Blum is not a lawyer. According to a New York Times profile, “he is a one-man legal factory with a growing record of finding plaintiffs who match his causes, winning big victories and trying above all to erase racial preferences from American life”. He has orchestrated more than two dozen lawsuits challenging affirmative action practices and voting rights laws across the country. Rachel Kleinman, senior counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said that Mr. Blum’s opposition to affirmative action was related to “this fear of white people that their privilege is being taken away from them and given to somebody else who they see as less deserving.” At its core, affirmative action is not the practice of giving Black and Latinx students priority during college admission. While people like Edward Blum ignore the historical backdrop of the American experience and reduce establish policies to feelings over facts, today we will learn the truth about what affirmative action really is, how it came to be, and why it has been an important—albeit imperfect—part of the admissions process.

After beginning to research the history and impact of affirmative action, I’ve decided to divide this newsletter into two. Today, we will discuss the history and background of affirmative action. Next time, we will discuss the impact and implications of affirmative action and the most recent Supreme Court decision. Let’s get into it.

Key Words

“Strict Scrutiny” : The Court calls for "strict scrutiny" in determining whether discrimination existed before implementing a federal affirmative action program. "Strict scrutiny" meant that affirmative action programs fulfilled a "compelling governmental interest," and were "narrowly tailored" to fit the particular situation. To pass the strict scrutiny test, a law must be narrowly tailored to serve a compelling government interest. The same test applies whether the racial classification aims to benefit or harm a racial group. Strict scrutiny also applies whether or not race is the only criteria used to classify.

“Race Neutral”: “Race neutral” does not appear in the opinion of the court, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, which states that colleges and universities have “concluded, wrongly, that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned but the color of their skin.” But when Roberts clarifies that students can still refer to their race in admissions essays, explaining challenges they’ve overcome, he and the majority are buying into the idea of race neutrality. Justice Clarence Thomas, who wrote his own concurring opinion, uses the term “race neutral” repeatedly, offering it as an antidote to affirmative action.

Supreme Court Opinion: The term “opinions” refers to several types of writing by the Justices. The most well-known opinions are those released or announced in cases in which the Court has heard oral argument. Each opinion sets out the Court’s judgment and its reasoning and may include the majority or principal opinion as well as any concurring or dissenting opinions.

Executive Order: An executive order is a signed, written, and published directive from the President of the United States that manages operations of the federal government. They are numbered consecutively, so executive orders may be referenced by their assigned number, or their topic.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964: The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin. Provisions of this civil rights act forbade discrimination on the basis of sex, as well as, race in hiring, promoting, and firing. The Act prohibited discrimination in public accommodations and federally funded programs. It also strengthened the enforcement of voting rights and the desegregation of schools.

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act: As amended, Title VII protects employees and job applicants from employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin.

Equal Employment Opportunity Commission: The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is responsible for enforcing federal laws that make it illegal to discriminate against a job applicant or an employee because of the person's race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy and related conditions, gender identity, and sexual orientation), national origin, age (40 or older), disability or genetic information. Most employers with at least 15 employees are covered by EEOC laws (20 employees in age discrimination cases). Most labor unions and employment agencies are also covered. The laws apply to all types of work situations, including hiring, firing, promotions, harassment, training, wages, and benefits.

Equal Protection Clause: The Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment ensures that all Americans receive equal protection under the Constitution. Both the majority and the minority opinions in Thursday’s ruling cited the clause, using different interpretations. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote that race-based admissions programs “cannot be reconciled with the guarantees of the Equal Protection Clause,” while Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a dissent that the decision “subverts the constitutional guarantee of equal protection by further entrenching racial inequality in education.”

Lets Get Into It

Affirmative action, as a term, came to the fore in 1935 with the Wagner Act, a federal law that gave workers the right to form and join unions. But John F. Kennedy was the first president to link the term specifically with a policy meant to advance racial equality, according to Smithsonian Magazine.

On March 6, 1961 President John F. Kennedy issued Executive Order 10925, which included a provision that government contractors "take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin." The intent of this executive order was to affirm the government's commitment to equal opportunity for all qualified persons, and to take positive action to strengthen efforts to realize true equal opportunity for all. This executive order was superseded by Executive Order 11246 in 1965.

So, where exactly are we in history in 1961 when it comes to the rights of Black Americans?

• The 13th Amendment abolished slavery in 1865, 96 years prior

  • To put this in context, if a Black American lived to be around 100, they would have lived through being a slave and also been alive when President John F. Kennedy issued Executive Order 10925. Most Black Americans at this time would have parents and grandparents who were slaves when President John F. Kennedy issued Executive Order 10925.

• The first “Jim Crow Law” is passed in Tennessee mandating the separation of African Americans from whites on trains in 1870, 91 years prior

• Plessy v. Ferguson established the “separate but equal” doctrine that allows segregation, discrimination and racism to flourish in 1896, 65 years prior

• Jackie Robinson became the first Black American in the twentieth century to play baseball in the major leagues in 1947, 14 years prior

• Brown v. Board of education which desegregated public schools was in 1954, 7 years prior

• Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott took place in 1955, 6 years prior

• The Civil Rights Act, which extended civil, political, and legal rights and protections to Black Americans, including former slaves and their descendants, and put an end segregation in public and private facilities was in 1964, 3 years after

• The Voting Rights Act, which allowed all Americans access to the polls was in 1965, 4 years after

• Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated in 1968, 7 years after

The History of Affirmative Action

• 1961: The first use of the term “affirmative action” specifically with a policy meant to advance racial equality is in Executive Order 10925, as discussed above.

• 1961: The “Plan for Progress” is signed by Vice President Johnson and Courtlandt Gross, the president of Lockheed

  • NAACP labor secretary Herbert Hill filed complaints against the hiring and promoting practices of Lockheed Aircraft Corporation. Lockheed was doing business with the Defense Department on the first billion-dollar contract. Due to taxpayer-funding being 90% of Lockheed's business, along with disproportionate hiring practices, Black workers charged Lockheed with "overt discrimination." Lockheed signed an agreement with Vice President Johnson that pledged an "aggressive seeking out for more qualified minority candidates for technical and skill positions.” Soon, other defense contractors signed similar voluntary agreements. However, most corporations in the south, still ruled by Jim Crow Laws, ignored the recommendations.

• 1964: The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin.

  • Note that this same act was used to continue discrimination. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 had limited the type of remedies possible by forbidding any form of discrimination. This was interpreted to include preferential hiring, which was seen as compensatory discrimination. To put it plainly — folks found a way to reason that giving Black workers preferential treatment by hiring them with an emphasis on their race could be considered discriminatory in and of itself.

• 1964: The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) was created by Congress in 1964 to enforce Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, as amended, protects employees and job applicants from employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin.

• 1965: President Lyndon B. Johnson issued Executive Order 11246, prohibiting employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, and national origin by those organizations receiving federal contracts and subcontracts. This executive order requires federal contractors to take affirmative action to promote the full realization of equal opportunity for women and minorities. The Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP), under the Department of Labor, monitors this requirement for all federal contractors, including all UC campuses. Compliance with these regulations (for ederal contractors employing more than 50 people and having federal contracts totaling more than $50,000) includes disseminating and enforcing a nondiscrimination policy, establishing a written affirmative action plan and placement goals for women and minorities, and implementing action-oriented programs for accomplishing these goals.

• 1967: President Johnson amended Executive Order 11246 to also include sex.

“The contractor will not discriminate against any employee or applicant for employment because of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. The contractor will take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, color, religion, sex or national origin. Such action shall include, but not be limited to the following: employment, upgrading, demotion, or transfer; recruitment or recruitment advertising; layoff or termination; rates of pay or other forms of compensation; and selection for training, including apprenticeship.”

• 1969: The Philadelphia Plan was implemented by Richard Nixon. For the first time, a specific industry was required to articulate a plan for hiring minority workers. The Nixon administration created specific hiring goals in the highly segregated construction industry. The Philadelphia Plan required Philadelphia government contractors in six construction trades to set goals and timetables for the hiring of minority workers or risk losing the valuable contracts. No quotas were set. This left businesses a fair amount of autonomy in determining how to meet the goals. As a result, the Philadelphia Plan withstood a court challenge and growing public hostility to affirmative action.

• 1969: Colleges voluntarily adopted similar policies to combat racial discrimination. In 1969, many elite universities admitted more than twice as many Black students as they had the year before. This change was directly linked to the civil rights movement. With civil rights activists urging schools to admit more Black applicants, colleges responded. Higher education had been almost exclusively white for most of its history, but a growing number of universities were now crafting affirmative action policies in an effort to expand access to higher education.

• 1974: Marco DeFunis Jr. v. Odegaard — Marco DeFunis, a white man, argued that he was denied admission to the University of Washington Law School because the school had prioritized admitting minority students who were less qualified, saying that this violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause. By the time the United States Supreme Court considered the case, DeFunis was already in his last year of law school and the court ruled that the case was moot. Though the court chose not to address the issues within the case, it was the first case heard on affirmative action since the policy was established in the 1960s.

• 1978: Regents of the University of California v. Bakke — Alan Bakke was rejected twice from the medical school at the University of California, Davis. Mr. Bakke, who is white, argued that the school’s affirmative action policy to reserve 16 out of 100 spots for qualified minority students violated the equal protection clause as well as the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Supreme Court ruled that the racial quota system used by the university did violate the Civil Rights Act and that Mr. Bakke should be admitted. Justice Lewis F. Powell acknowledged in his opinion that a state had legitimate interests in considering the race of applicants, and that a diverse student body could provide compelling educational benefits. The case established the court’s position on affirmative action for decades. A state university had to meet a standard of judicial review known as strict scrutiny: Race could be a narrowly tailored factor in admissions policies. Racial quotas, however, went too far.

• 1980: Fullilove v. Klutznick —While Bakke struck down strict quotas, in Fullilove the Supreme Court ruled that some modest quotas were perfectly constitutional. The Court upheld a federal law requiring that 15% of funds for public works be set aside for qualified minority contractors. The "narrowed focus and limited extent" of the affirmative action program did not violate the equal rights of non-minority contractors, according to the Court—there was no "allocation of federal funds according to inflexible percentages solely based on race or ethnicity."

• 1983: Reagan signed Executive Order 12432. The executive order requires that each federal agency with grant making capabilities establish an Annual Minority Business Development Plan with the stated goal to increase minority business participation. Agencies are expected to establish programs that assist minority business enterprises to procure contracts and manage those contracts awarded. As a stipulation of the executive order, the progress toward these goals is to be annually reported to the Secretary of Commerce. While the Reagan administration opposed discriminatory practices, it did not support the implementation of quotas and goals and did not support Executive Order 11246. Bi-partisan opposition in Congress and other government officials blocked the repeal of Executive Order 11246 but he reduced funding for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, arguing that "reverse discrimination" resulted from these policies.

• 1997: Proposition 209 was enacted in California, which is a state ban on all forms of affirmative action: "The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting." Proposed in 1996, the controversial ban had been delayed in the courts for almost a year before it went into effect. Over the past three decades, 10 states have banned affirmative action in college admissions. And in many cases, voters approved those bans.

• 1998: Washington becomes the second state to abolish state affirmative action measures when it passed "I 200," which is similar to California's Proposition 209.

• 2000: Florida legislature approves education component of Gov. Jeb Bush's "One Florida" initiative, aimed at ending affirmative action in the state.

• 2003: Grutter v. Bollinger — Barbara Grutter, a white woman who was denied admission to the University of Michigan Law School, said that the school had used race as a predominant factor for admitting students. When the case reached the Supreme Court, a 5-4 opinion led by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor upheld the Bakke decision. The Court ruled that each admissions decision is based on multiple factors, and that the school could fairly use race as one of them. The case reaffirmed the court’s position that diversity on campus is a compelling state interest.

• 2003: Gratz v. Bollinger — Though decided on the same day and focused on the same university, the Gratz case and Grutter case had different outcomes. Jennifer Gratz and Patrick Hamacher, both white, were denied admission to the University of Michigan. They argued that a point system in use by the admissions office beginning in 1998 was unconstitutional. Students who were part of an underrepresented minority group automatically received 20 points in a system that required 100 points for admittance, which meant that nearly every applicant of an underrepresented minority group was admitted. In a 6-3 opinion led by Justice William H. Rehnquist, the Supreme Court ruled that the point system did not meet the standards of strict scrutiny established in previous cases. The Grutter and Gratz cases provided a blueprint for how schools could use race as a factor in admissions policies. The Court held that the OUA’s policies were not sufficiently narrowly tailored to meet the strict scrutiny standard. Because the policy did not provide individual consideration, but rather resulted in the admission of nearly every applicant of “underrepresented minority” status, it was not narrowly tailored in the manner required by previous jurisprudence on the issue.

• 2006: Meredith v. Jefferson — Jefferson County Public Schools (JCPS) were integrated by court order until 2000. After its release from the order, JCPS implemented an enrollment plan to maintain substantial racial integration. Students were given a choice of schools, but not all schools could accommodate all applicants. In those cases, student enrollment was decided on the basis of several factors, including place of residence, school capacity, and random chance, as well as race. However, no school was allowed to have an enrollment of black students less than 15% or greater than 50% of its student population. The District Court ruled that the plan was constitutional because the school had a compelling interest in maintaining racial diversity.

• 2006: Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 — The Seattle School District allowed students to apply to any high school in the District. Since certain schools often became oversubscribed when too many students chose them as their first choice, the District used a system of tiebreakers to decide which students would be admitted to the popular schools. The second most important tiebreaker was a racial factor intended to maintain racial diversity. At a particular school either whites or non-whites could be favored for admission depending on which race would bring the racial balance closer to the goal. A non-profit group, Parents Involved in Community Schools (Parents), sued the District, arguing that the racial tiebreaker violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as well as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Washington state law. A federal District Court dismissed the suit, upholding the tiebreaker. On appeal, a three-judge panel the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed. By a 5-4 vote, the Court applied a "strict scrutiny" framework and found the District's racial tiebreaker plan unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. This was a major setback for affirmative action.

• 2016: Fisher v. University of Texas (Two Cases) — Abigail Fisher, a white woman who was rejected from the University of Texas, said that the school’s two-part admissions system, which takes race into consideration, is unconstitutional. The university first admits roughly the top 10 percent of every in-state graduating high school class, a policy known as the Top Ten Percent Plan, and then reviews several factors, including race, to fill the remaining spots. Upon a second review of the case by the Supreme Court, a 4-3 opinion led by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy ruled that the university’s policy met the standard of strict scrutiny, meaning this was okay for the school to do.

Affirmative Action in Colleges and Universities

If you’re like me, you’re reading through this timeline and thinking that a lot of these policies seem directly aimed at businesses, while there’s no clear law that might ask a college or university to do something specific in regards to affirmative action. Affirmative action in colleges and universities was not enacted through a specific federal law, but rather through a series of executive orders and court rulings. Executive Order 10925 in 1961 and Executive Order 11246 in 1965 are cited when discussing affrimative action in schooling. The Supreme Court case of Regents of the University of California v. Bakke in 1978 upheld the constitutionality of affirmative action in a university setting. Since then, there have been ongoing debates and legal challenges regarding the implementation of affirmative action in college admissions. The policies and specific requirements for affirmative action have varied across states and institutions, with some implementing more extensive programs than others. However, affirmative action as a concept has been recognized and practiced by many colleges and universities throughout the country. Personally, I’m always surprised by the ways laws work in the United States. From what we hear and see on the news, you would imagine schools were being forced to meet quotas (which is actually unconstitutional) or do something really specific and widespread, but thats completely not the case.

So, what positive impact has affirmative action had on colleges and universities?

Affirmative action has played a crucial role in fostering diversity on college campuses. By considering race or ethnicity as one factor among many in the admissions process, universities have been able to create more inclusive environments that reflect the broader society. It also seeks to address historical and ongoing inequalities by providing equal opportunities for underrepresented groups, such as Black Americans, Latinx Americans, and Indigenous peoples. It acknowledges that systemic barriers and discrimination have limited access to education for certain communities, and aims to level the playing field by considering the broader context in which applicants' achievements and qualifications are evaluated. Affirmative action has also helped mitigate the impact of unconscious biases that can influence the admissions process. Unconscious biases, often shaped by societal stereotypes, can unintentionally favor certain groups while disadvantaging others. By explicitly considering race or ethnicity, universities can counteract these biases and ensure fairer evaluations. Affirmative action also contributes to breaking down stereotypes and reducing isolation on college campuses. It helps create environments where students can engage with diverse peers, challenge stereotypes, and build relationships based on shared experiences and understanding. Affirmative action has been essential tool for advancing diversity and equal opportunity in higher education. Reports have shown that schools that once implemented affirmative action policies experience a massive drop in Black and Latinx students when those policies are changed. Without affirmative action, schools will surely become more white and less diverse.

The most noteworthy and compelling piece of the affirmative action conversation, in my opinion is the concept that affirmative action is an inherently unequal policy alongside the inescapable fact that historic inequalities exist in America. The truth is, there are so many ways in which everyday Americans are afforded certain privileges in education, business, housing, funding, and nearly every facet of life. It is noteworthy that affirmative action is often attacked when these other areas are not. The next newsletter will discuss some of these concepts along with more reactions to the most recent Supreme Court decision. See ya then.

“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for, we are the change we seek” — With love and light, Taylor Rae

Teaching at Metropolitan Detention Center

Hi Friends!
Welcome to Issue 54 of this newsletter. This week I’ll be opening up about my experience teaching at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. Yesterday, I went into the prison for the first time through Columbia University’s Just Ideas internship. Today, I’m reflecting on the experience, preparing for upcoming classes, and trying to find the language to discuss this next phase of my work. Let’s get into it.

Lets Get Into It

Just Ideas is a program within the Center for New Narratives in Philosophy at Columbia University. Founded by Christia Mercer, Gustav Berne Professor of Philosophy, the program brings together professors and interns to engage with people in New York prisons. By discussing some of the most challenging literature there is, we reflect on profound philosophical questions like the role of love and suffering in life and the nature of justice and wisdom. We encourage each other to become more reflective agents in the world. In fall 2014, Geraldine Downey, Director of Columbia's Center for Justice, asked Christia to be the first senior professor to teach in Columbia's new Justice-in-Education Initiative — this is how Just Ideas was born. In 2015, Professor Mercer wrote this op-ed for the Washington Post. I’ll pull some information from that piece throughout this newsletter, but want to offer an insight that she shares:

“The pleasures I’ve found teaching in prison are among the richest I’ve ever had. But the pleasure I find in this pedagogical delight is matched by the pain of recognition that my students’ intellectual exploration will cease without volunteers like me. We must not allow so many members of our community to languish in prison without the chance for intellectual development. We must find it in ourselves to educate all Americans.”

My experience at MDC or Metropolitan Detention Center in the Sunnyside neighborhood of Brooklyn is absolutely one of the richest experience I have had. I was lucky enough to teach alongside Professor Mercer this Wednesday and will be teaching alongside her for the rest of this course, which is truly an experience that I know will impact me for the rest of my life. Before diving deeper into my personal experience at MDC, here’s a little more backround on the prison system and it’s intersection with eduction from that 2015 op-ed:

“There are roughly 2.2 million people in a correctional facility in the United States, which incarcerates more individuals than any other country in the world. According to a 2012 study, 58.5 percent of incarcerated people are black or Latino. According to the Sentencing Project, one in three black men will be incarcerated.

Although more than 50 percent of people in these facilities have high school diplomas or a GED, most prisons offer little if any post-secondary education.

Things have not always been this bad. In the 1980’s, when the prison population sat below 400,000, our  incarcerated citizens were educated through state and federal funding. But the 1990’s brought an abrupt end to government support. When President Clinton signed into law the Crime Bill in 1994, he eliminated incarcerated people’s eligibility for federal Pell grants and sentenced a generation of incarcerated Americans to educational deprivation. Nationwide, over 350 college programs in prisons were shut down that year. Many states jumped on the tough-on-crime bandwagon and slashed state funded prison educational programs. In New York State, for example, no state funds can be used to support secondary-education in prison. Before 1994, there were 70 publicly funded post-secondary prison programs in the state. Now there are none. In many states across the country, college instruction has fallen primarily to volunteers.”

“There are hundreds of thousands of students just like mine scattered across the country eager to be educated and keen to join the ranks of active participants in our democracy.

As a society, we owe them (and ourselves) that chance. A National Institute of Justice study has found that 76.6 percent of formerly incarcerated people return to prison within five years of release.

According to research by the Rand Institute, recidivism goes down by 43 percent when people are offered education.

Those who leave prison with a college degree are much more likely to gain employment, be role models for their own children (50 percent of incarcerated adults have children), and become active members of their communities. Some of my students are quite clear about the desire to motivate their children: “the conversation changes when you’re educating yourself.””

May 31, 2023

Upon entering MDC, I exchanged my license for a key to a small silver locker. I put my belongings inside and made my way to be screened and scanned. I wore my husband’s jeans, since tight clothing isn’t allowed, and a plain purple T-shirt. Many clothing items are restricted, and I wanted to ensure I had no issues. I took off my sneakers and put them in a bin with my copy of Sophocles’s Antigone and my key. I walked into a hallway with many elevators. We piled in with a few other workers and officers, everyone seeming to be in good spirits. If I’m honest, it wasn’t what I expected, not that I knew what to expect. I tried really hard to have no expectations. I pushed out all of the articles I’ve read and honestly barely thought about what it would be like to enter MDC the entire week leading up to it.

We walked out of the elevator into the Chapel, where chairs sat in a semicircle. We set down our stack of folders and waited. Fifteen men entered in brown jumpsuits, copies of Antigone in hand. I was nervous, and I couldn’t really articulate why. Many people asked me if I felt scared or hesitant to go to prison, and the truth is that I never did, and I still didn’t at that moment. I have known and trusted and loved people who have been incarcerated—but even if I hadn’t, these men deserve an opportunity to learn from someone who sees them without judgment or fear. I felt capable of doing that. 

Professor Mercer introduced herself; she wanted them to know that we weren’t the “B Team”; we were qualified, smart, top-tier instructors from a competitive Ivy League University. She wanted them to know they were worth learning from someone like her. Someone like me (even though Professor Mercer is like 100000 times more qualified). We started out with a game. “Say your name and something you love. I want you to dig deep and be honest. When you shake someone’s hand, you suddenly become them, you take on their name and what they love, and then you introduce yourself like that to the next person.” I gave the class the instructions and told them to stand up and start walking around the room. (Coming from a theatre background, I have done this hundreds of times in my life. “Walk around the space,” my acting teachers used to say at the start of almost every class.) Everyone started laughing, trying to remember who they were embodying and what that person loved. Some people said things like “cars” or “food”. Others said things like “my daughter” or “justice” or “freedom.” Eventually, the game ended, and we all sat down, feeling a little lighter.

Soon, we dove into the book. The big questions about justice and law and rules and love. We talked about moral universalism and moral relativism. We read the text out loud. I did a dramatic reading of a few of the big monologues at the start of the play, and I felt like my entire body was being filled up with light. We divided the class into small groups, some defending Ismene and some defending Antigone, and I walked around and gave advice and support to each group. The class debated, and folks who seemed sleepy and disinterested for the first half of class started becoming impassioned and immersed in the conversation. We gave them an assignment for the next class: turning this debate into a short essay and writing a Haiku that connected to the text. I fist-bumped a few of the men and wrote down recommendations they gave me on books to read. I told them we would talk about them next week. 

Three hours later, an officer came in the room to escort us out and bring the men back—I don’t even know where?—but back. They packed into the elevator, and I waved. I smiled. I said, “Don’t forget to write your Haikus guys!” and they laughed and either nodded or said some version of, “We will, we will.” The officer remarked, “That’s definitely the first time anyone’s ever yelled that in a prison”. I said, “And I hope it’s not the last!” 

I write this all down because I don’t want to forget a thing. The way these men, whom I had only met three hours before, lingered in the room, stacking chairs, jotting down notes from the board, remarking that class flew by…I don’t want to forget those moments. I feel a responsibility to remember. 

I’m trying to find the right words to describe this experience’s impact on me. I wonder if it’s okay for me to even be thinking about “me” right now. I want to bring as much respect and humanity, and dignity to these men as I possibly can.

When I interviewed Professor Joy James a few months ago, she described her work as an activist and an academic, stating the ways in which we must not look down from the ivory tower of academia on those we fight for and with, but on as equal terms as we can. Eye to eye, we ask them, “so what do we do?”. My hope in joining this program was to ask myself if I could do this work as an activist, an academic, an abolitionist. I know now, with certainty, that I can. I know now that I will.

“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for, we are the change we seek” — With love and light, Taylor Rae

Stop and Frisk

Hi Friends!
Welcome to Issue 53 of this newsletter. This week’s topic is: Stop and Frisk. I was inspired to write on this topic from some of my reading for a class I’m taking at Columbia called “Human Rights in the United States”. Stop and frisk was up for debate at the 1968 Terry v. Ohio supreme court case which found it to be legal, and set this precedent: “Under the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, a police officer may stop a suspect on the street and frisk him or her without probable cause to arrest, if the police officer has a reasonable suspicion that the person has committed, is committing, or is about to commit a crime and has a reasonable belief that the person ‘may be armed and presently dangerous.’" Outside of New York, this practice is known as a Terry Stop, based on the name of the case. However, in 2013, in Floyd v. City of New York, US District Court Judge Shira Scheindlin ruled that stop-and-frisk had been used in an unconstitutional manner due to racial profiling and directed the police to adopt a written policy to specify where such stops are authorized. Stop and frisk was a signature policy of the Bloomberg administration beginning in 2002 and reaching its peak in 2011 with over 600,000 incidents that year alone. A . According to a highly researched study by the NYCLU, “over 97 percent of all stops that occurred from 2003-2021 took place during [Bloomberg’s] time in office.” Stop and frisk never reduced crime, but always took a toll of Black and Latinx communities. Let’s get into it!

Key Terms

Stop and frisk: The controversial policy allowed police officers to stop, interrogate and search New York City citizens on the sole basis of “reasonable suspicion.”

Terry v. Ohio: A Cleveland detective (McFadden), on a downtown beat which he had been patrolling for many years, observed two strangers (petitioner and another man, Chilton) on a street corner. Suspecting the two men of "casing a job, a stick-up," the officer followed them and saw them rejoin the third man a couple of blocks away in front of a store. The officer approached the three, identified himself as a policeman, spun petitioner around, patted down his outside clothing, and found in his overcoat pocket, but was unable to remove, a pistol. . The court distinguished between an investigatory "stop" and an arrest, and between a "frisk" of the outer clothing for weapons and a full-blown search for evidence of crime. Under the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, a police officer may stop a suspect on the street and frisk him or her without probable cause to arrest, if the police officer has a reasonable suspicion that the person has committed, is committing, or is about to commit a crime and has a reasonable belief that the person "may be armed and presently dangerous."

Floyd v. City of New York: The Center for Constitutional Rights filed the federal class action lawsuit Floyd, et al. v. City of New York, et al. against the City of New York to challenge the New York Police Department’s practices of racial profiling and unconstitutional stop and frisks of New York City residents. The named plaintiffs in the case – David Floyd, David Ourlicht, Lalit Clarkson, and Deon Dennis – represent the thousands of primarily Black and Latino New Yorkers who have been stopped without any cause on the way to work or home from school, in front of their house, or just walking down the street. In a historic ruling on August 12, 2013, following a nine-week trial, a federal judge found the New York City Police Department liable for a pattern and practice of racial profiling and unconstitutional stops. Floyd focuses not only on the lack of any reasonable suspicion to make these stops, in violation of the Fourth Amendment, but also on the obvious racial disparities in who is stopped and searched by the NYPD.

Broken Windows Theory: Kelling and Wilson suggested that a broken window or other visible signs of disorder or decay — think loitering, graffiti, prostitution or drug use — can send the signal that a neighborhood is uncared for. So, they thought, if police departments addressed those problems, maybe the bigger crimes wouldn't happen. Stop and frisk was seen as a way of managing this. Kelling and Wilson proposed that police departments change their focus. Instead of channeling most resources into solving major crimes, they should instead try to clean up the streets and maintain order — such as keeping people from smoking pot in public and cracking down on subway fare beaters. If broken windows meant arresting people for misdemeanors in hopes of preventing more serious crimes, "stop and frisk" said, why even wait for the misdemeanor? Why not go ahead and stop, question and search anyone who looked suspicious? In Chicago, the researchers Robert Sampson and Stephen Raudenbush analyzed what makes people perceive social disorder. They found that if two neighborhoods had exactly the same amount of graffiti and litter and loitering, people saw more disorder, more broken windows, in neighborhoods with more African-Americans.

Let’s Get Into It

A 2019 report by NYCLU on Stop and Frisk encapsulated so much relevant information to how this system has operated in New York City, so all of the info below will be pulled from there.

The New York City Police Department’s aggressive stop-and-frisk program exploded into a national controversy during the mayoral administration of Michael Bloomberg, as the number of NYPD stops each year grew to hundreds of thousands. Most of the people stopped were black and Latino, and nearly all were innocent. Stop-and-frisk peaked in 2011, when NYPD officers made nearly 700,000 stops.

It is notable that “actions of engaging in a violent crime” was a reason listed in only seven percent of reported stops between 2014 and 2016. During the height of stop-and-frisk, the NYPD routinely argued that the disproportionate number of stops of Black people was justified because, according to the department, Black people are disproportionately involved in violent crimes. Given that over 90 percent of stops had nothing to do with a suspected violent crime, the race of those convicted of violent crimes generally cannot explain the disproportionate number of Black people stopped every year

Stops of Males Age 14-24

• 24.9% (22,998) Young Black Males but only 1.9% (158,406) of NYC’s population

• 12.8% (11,193) Young Latino Males but only 2.8% (226,677) of NYC’s population

In 2011, 685,724 NYPD stops were recorded — this is at the peak of Stop and Frisk under Bloomberg

• 605,328 were innocent (88 percent).

• 350,743 were Black (53 percent).

• 223,740 were Latinx (34 percent).

• 61,805 were white (9 percent).

In 2021, 8,947 stops were recorded.

• 5,422 were innocent (61 percent).

• 5,404 were Black (60 percent).

• 2,457 were Latinx (27 percent).

• 732 were white (8 percent).

• 192 were Asian / Pacific Islander (2 percent)

• 71 were Middle Eastern/Southwest Asian (1 percent)

“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for, we are the change we seek” — With love and light, Taylor Rae

2019 Bail Reform Law

Hello Friends!

Happy New Year and welcome back, this is Issue 52!

I’m so excited to share that I finished my first semester at Columbia with a 4.0! For my final paper, I wrote about the 2019 bail reform law in New York. In short, this law virtually eliminated bail for the most common, non-violent crimes, and reduced our jail populations by over 30%. By April of 2020, however, due to fearmongering and unsubstantiated claims made by groups like the NYPD, 12 crimes had their new bail policies rolled back, rendering the original law virtually useless.

Remember — bail criminalizes poverty.

This is how the jail system works: you are accused of a crime or potentially found in a position that seems suspicious, you’re taking to jail, you brought before a judge for arraignment, the judge decides if you are allowed to post bail before your trial or not and sets an amount, the bail is due immediately. If you are unable to pay bail, you stay in jail to await trial. (Jail is a temporary space for shorter sentences and those that cannot pay bail, prison is for longer sentences after your trial has occurred). Take note that you are in jail while you await trial, meaning, you are still not sentenced at this time. In Rikers Island, one of New York’s most notorious jails, only 10% are released within 24 hours, while 25% stay locked up awaiting trial for two months or longer. If these individuals could afford to pay bail, many would be home with their families, continuing to work and live their lives during these months.

Kalief Browder was held at Rikers for three years from 2010-2013, spending over two of those years in solitary confinement — after being accused of stealing a backpack, a crime which he plead “not-guilty” to. His trial was delayed by a backlog of work at the Bronx County District Attorney's office. Eventually the case was dismissed after Browder experienced irreparable mental, emotional and physical abuse. He eventually died by suicide in 2015 after suffering from his trauma. He said while being in jail “I feel like I was robbed of my happiness.”

The money-driven bail system in America is inhuman, unjust and blatantly criminalizes poverty — which is inextricably tied to race in America. If you want to learn more about the 2019 bail reform in New York through a human rights lens, check out my final paper below.

“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for, we are the change we seek” — With love and light, Taylor Rae

Cash Bail

Hi Friends!
Welcome to Issue 51 newsletter. This week’s topic is: The Cash Bail System in America. First and foremost, we should establish what bail is and how it’s used. The terms “jail” and “prison” are often used interchangeably, but they actually are two separate institutions. A jail is for short-term sentences, or where someone waits for trial. A prison is for a long-term sentence, including a life sentence. There are other differences between jails and prisons in terms of who oversees them, what the incarcerated person can access, potential resources and more. In 2019, there were “1,566 state prisons, 102 federal prisons, 2,850 local jails, 1,510 juvenile correctional facilities, 186 immigration detention facilities, and 82 Indian country jails, as well as in military prisons, civil commitment centers, state psychiatric hospitals, and prisons in the U.S. territories.” When someone is accused of a crime, a judge decides if they are 1) held without bail, 2) released, 3) held with bail. If someone cannot pay bail, they go to jail. This is before they have a trial. Every day, nearly half a million individuals sit in local jails who have not been convicted of any crime. Why are most of them there? Because they cannot afford cash bail. In 2014, only 14% of New Yorkers could afford to pay their bail, meaning 86% of those accused of a crime were sitting in jails for days, weeks, or even years. To avoid this, many people plead guilty and take a plea deal instead of waiting for a trail. Only about 5% of cases go to trial at all. This has lasting consequences. Bail criminalizes poverty. Let’s get into it.

Key Terms

Bail: Cash bail is a refundable, court-determined fee that a defendant pays—regardless of guilt or innocence—to await trial at home instead of in jail. While “innocent until proven guilty” is ingrained in the American psyche, the use of bail means that if you can’t pay you serve jail time.

Bond: The words “bail” and “bond” are often used almost interchangeably when discussing jail release, and while they are closely related to each other, they are not the same thing. Bail is the money a defendant must pay in order to get out of jail. A bond is posted on a defendant’s behalf, usually by a bail bond company, to secure his or her release.

Bail Schedule: A bail schedule is a list of bail amount recommendations for different charges. Some states allow defendants to post bail with the police before they go to their first court appearance. The required amount of bail will depend on the crime that the defendant allegedly committed. A key difference between police bail schedules and bail determinations by judges is that a judge has discretion to alter the amount. They can consider many different factors, such as a defendant’s criminal history, employment status, and ties to the community. These intangible factors do not affect the bail schedule in a jail. If you are unwilling to pay the amount required by the bail schedule, you likely will need to go to court and present your case to a judge.

Plea Deal: Plea deals—which are entirely within the discretion of a prosecutor to offer (or accept)—typically include one or more of the following: 1) the dismissal of one or more charges, and/or agreement to a conviction to a lesser offense, 2) an agreement to a more lenient sentence and length, 3) an agreement to stipulate to a version of events that omits certain facts that would statutorily expose a person to harsher penalties.

Criminal Conviction: Besides direct consequences that can include jail time, fines, and treatment, a criminal conviction can trigger many consequences outside of the criminal court system. These consequences can affect your current job, future job opportunities, housing choices, immigration status. You may have to disclose your criminal record to employers. You may find it difficult to obtain a mortgage, auto loan, business loan, or other loan due to your criminal conviction. While a conviction does not automatically eliminate your eligibility for financial aid for college, it could impact on your ability to qualify. Landlords often conduct background checks before approving a prospective tenant and may not approve you for housing. In some states, you could lose your right to vote, serve on a jury, or hold a public office if you are convicted of a felony. Your conviction could have serious implications for your immigration status. Even a misdemeanor conviction can limit your ability to travel to other countries. You may lose custody of your children.

Risk Assessments: Developed and implemented by a mix of jurisdictions, states, private companies, nonprofit organizations and academic institutions, these special algorithms use factors such as age, education level, arrest record and home address to assign scores to defendants. Risk assessment tools are marketed as a way to automate a resource-strapped system and remove human bias. But critics say that they can amplify existing inequities, especially against young Black and Latino men and people experiencing mental illness. More than 60 percent of Americans live in a jurisdiction where the risk assessment tools are in use, according to Mapping Pretrial Injustice, a nonprofit data campaign critical of the tools.

The 8th Amendment: Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

Let’s Get Into It

Fast Facts About Bail

• COVID-19 has exacerbated bail issues and led to longer stays in jail for people who have yet to have a trial. In New York, for example, for people who do not make bail, average jail stays have become longer. The average number of days people were in custody in New York City jails rose from 198.4 in January 2020, or roughly six and a half months, to 286.5 days, or more than nine months, in August 2021 – a 44% increase.

• The average length of pretrial incarceration in the US is 26 days

• At any given time an estimated half a million Americans, or about two-thirds of the overall jail population, are incarcerated because they can’t afford their bail or a bond.

• The median bail amount for felonies is about $10,000.

• About 94% of felony convictions at the state level and about 97% at the federal level are the result of plea bargains. That means only 3%-6% of all cases actually go to trial.

Why Does Bail Exist And How Does It Work?

• From The Marshall Project:

  • You’ve been arrested, taken to jail, fingerprinted and processed. Within 24 to 48 hours, you’ll go to an initial hearing known as an arraignment.

  • There, a judge will formally present the charges against you, and you will plead innocent or guilty. Then the judge either grants bail and sets the amount; releases you on your own recognizance without a fee; or denies you bail.

  • Bail is usually denied if a defendant is deemed a flight risk or a danger to the community because of the nature of the alleged crime.

  • If you get bail, you have three choices:

    • Pay the amount in full and get out of jail. You’ll get the money back when the trial is over, no matter the outcome.

    • Pay nothing. You’ll return to jail and await trial.

    • Secure a bail bond and get out of jail. In this case, you’ll pay a private agent known as a bondsman a portion of the amount, usually 10 percent and collateral such as a home or jewelry to cover the balance. (In turn, bail bond companies guarantee the full amount to the court.) The fee you pay for a bail bond is not refundable, even if your charges are dropped.

Resources

• Listen to “The Criminalization of Poverty: Bail”

• Support: The Bail Project

Friends, the bail system is absolutely horrific, and this is just scratching the surface.

I plan on discussing bail a lot more in this newsletter since it’s something I’m focusing a lot of thought on in school. This newsletter is just the start so I wanted to cover the basics. My final paper for one of my classes will center around bail, specifically as it impacts New Yorkers. Bail is absolutely heinous and destroys people’s lives. Let’s keep talking about it. See ya next week!

“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for, we are the change we seek” — With love and light, Taylor Rae

Human Rights

Hi Friends!
Welcome to Issue 50 of our newsletter. This week’s topic is: What Are Human Rights? You probably know by now that I’m pursuing a masters degree from Columbia University in Human Rights Studies from the Institute for the Study of Human Rights. You might be wondering what that means. For a lot of us, we think of human rights as an umbrella term, a vague topic that covers a lot of different things. Racism, discrimination, homophobia, poverty, addiction, mental illness, refugee status — these might be some topics that pop into our heads when we think of human rights. But what exactly are capital H, capital R, Human Rights? It’s actually a very specific area of study, let’s get into it!

Key Terms

Human Rights: Human rights are rights we have simply because we exist as human beings - they are not granted by any state. These universal rights are inherent to us all, regardless of nationality, sex, national or ethnic origin, color, religion, language, or any other status. They range from the most fundamental - the right to life - to those that make life worth living, such as the rights to food, education, work, health, and liberty.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR): Adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1948, was the first legal document to set out the fundamental human rights to be universally protected. The UDHR, which turned 74 in 2022, continues to be the foundation of all international human rights law. Its 30 articles provide the principles and building blocks of current and future human rights conventions, treaties and other legal instruments. The UDHR, together with the 2 covenants - the International Covenant for Civil and Political Rights, and the International Covenant for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights - make up the International Bill of Rights.

Respect, Protect and Fulfill: All countries in the world should seek to respect, protect and fulfill the rights of its citizens. The obligation to respect means that States must refrain from interfering with or curtailing the enjoyment of human rights. The obligation to protect requires States to protect individuals and groups against human rights abuses. The obligation to fulfill means that States must take positive action to facilitate the enjoyment of basic human rights.

United Nations: The United Nations is an international organization founded in 1945. Currently made up of 193 Member States, the UN and its work are guided by the purposes and principles contained in its founding Charter. The UN has evolved over the years to keep pace with a rapidly changing world.

Let’s Get Into It

Universal Declaration Of Human Rights (UDHR)

The UDHR codified the meaning of human rights. It’s comprised of 30 articles and these articles tell the world — these are your rights, no one has to give them to you, you get them just for being a human being, and when we talk about Human Rights, these are the exact things we are talking about! Some of the most important rights included in this document are:

• Article 1: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.

• Article 2: Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, etc.

• Article 3: Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security.

• Article 4: No one shall be held in slavery or servitude.

• Article 4: No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

• Article 7: All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law.

• Article 11: Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty.

• Article 13: Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state. Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.

• Article 16: Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family.

• Article 18: Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion.

• Article 19: Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression.

• Article 23: Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.

• Article 24: Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.

• Article 25: Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family.

• Article 26: Everyone has the right to education.

Now, if you’re anything like me, you read this and feel a little confused. How can the whole world be entitled to these things? How can the intent of this document be to impact every human being, when so many are clearly, openly and actively being denied these human rights? I am especially struck by Article 4 and it’s direct contradiction to the United States prison system. I am struck by Article 24 and the ways in which so many Americans live paycheck to paycheck without any sort of safetynet or compassion, without any true access to rest or leisure and absolutely without “reasonable limitation of working hours.” Let’s continue to discuss the ways in which America falls short when discussing Human Rights.

Human Rights In The United States

The United Nations’ Universal Human Rights Index is “a repository of recommendations and observations issued by bodies of the United Nations human rights monitoring system” — meaning, various countries will share recommendations for one another and this is where all of those recommendations are logged. When we look at the United States, we see the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has made the most recommendations, with 187 recommendations listed. There are even recommendations around these topics under the general Human Rights Committee, with 105 recommendations, many including discrimination and concerns around the prison system. This is no surprise. The rest of the world looks at the United States and sees racism and discrimination as one of — if not THE — key concern. According to Pew Research: “Between 82% and 95% in every public outside of the U.S. believe this kind of discrimination is at least a somewhat serious problem, and more than four-in-ten call it very serious..”

Other top concerns in the United States around human rights violations are: child prostitution, the carceral system, gender discrimination, adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living, the human rights of migrant and safe drinking water.

While there is so much more to share around Human Rights and the issues that impact the lives of Americans, I felt like this was a helpful introduction. Something I took away from some of my early discussions at school is that the UDHR clearly spells out what the basis for human rights violations are. In this way, while some things might feel bad, they may not truly be a violation of our human rights. Crimes and human rights violations can intersect, but they can also be different. As I continue to learn more about human rights through my school and eventual research and thesis, I’ll be sure to bring you along. See ya next time!

“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for, we are the change we seek” — With love and light, Taylor Rae

War On Drugs

Hi Friends!
Welcome to Issue 49 of this newsletter. This week’s topic is The War On Drugs. “The War on Drugs is a phrase used to refer to a government-led initiative that aims to stop illegal drug use, distribution and trade by dramatically increasing prison sentences for both drug dealers and users. The movement started in the 1970s and is still evolving today.” The War on Drugs was popularized by Richard Nixon who said, "If we cannot destroy the drug menace in America, then it will surely in time destroy us," Nixon told Congress in 1971. "I am not prepared to accept this alternative." This drug war has led to consequences that have proliferated violence around the world and contributed to mass incarceration in the US. Let’s get into it!

Key Terms

The War On Drugs: The War on Drugs is a phrase used to refer to a government-led initiative that aims to stop illegal drug use, distribution and trade by dramatically increasing prison sentences for both drug dealers and users. The movement started in the 1970s and is still evolving today.

The Drug Scheduling System: Under the Controlled Substances Act, the federal government — which has largely relegated the regulation of drugs to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) — puts each drug into a classification, known as a schedule, based on its medical value and potential for abuse. You can view the current Drug Schedules here.

Let’s Get Into It

Drug Use In America Before The “War On Drugs”

• According to historian Peter Knight, opium largely came over to America with Chinese immigrants on the West Coast. Americans, already skeptical of the drug, quickly latched on to xenophobic beliefs that opium somehow made Chinese immigrants dangerous.

• Cocaine was similarly attached in fear to Black communities, neuroscientist Carl Hart wrote for the Nation. The belief was so widespread that the New York Times even felt comfortable writing headlines in 1914 that claimed "Negro cocaine 'fiends' are a new southern menace."

• Drug use for medicinal and recreational purposes has been happening in the United States since the country’s inception. In the 1890s, the popular Sears and Roebuck catalogue included an offer for a syringe and small amount of cocaine for $1.50.

• In some states, laws to ban or regulate drugs were passed in the 1800s, and the first congressional act to levy taxes on morphine and opium took place in 1890.

• The Smoking Opium Exclusion Act in 1909 banned the possession, importation and use of opium for smoking.

• In 1914, Congress passed the Harrison Act, which regulated and taxed the production, importation, and distribution of opiates and cocaine.

• In 1919, the 18th Amendment was ratified, banning the manufacture, transportation or sale of intoxicating liquors, ushering in the Prohibition Era. The same year, Congress passed the National Prohibition Act (also known as the Volstead Act), which provided guidelines on how to federally enforce Prohibition.

• In 1937, the “Marihuana Tax Act” was passed. This federal law placed a tax on the sale of cannabis, hemp, or marijuana. While the law didn’t criminalize the possession or use of marijuana, it included hefty penalties if taxes weren’t paid, including a fine of up to $2000 and five years in prison.

The War On Drugs

• President Richard M. Nixon signed the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) into law in 1970.

• In June 1971, Nixon officially declared a “War on Drugs,” stating that drug abuse was “public enemy number one.”

• Nixon went on to create the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in 1973.

• In the mid-1970s, the War on Drugs took a slight hiatus. Between 1973 and 1977, eleven states decriminalized marijuana possession.

• Jimmy Carter became president in 1977 after running on a political campaign to decriminalize marijuana.

• In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan reinforced and expanded many of Nixon’s War on Drugs policies. In 1984, his wife Nancy Reagan launched the “Just Say No” campaign, which was intended to highlight the dangers of drug use.

• In 1986, Congress passed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act, which established mandatory minimum prison sentences for certain drug offenses.

• On September 5, 1989, in his first televised national address as president, George H.W. Bush called drugs "the greatest domestic threat facing our nation today," held up a bag of seized crack cocaine, and vowed to escalate funding for the war on drugs. He later approved, among other drug-related policies, the 1033 program (then known as the 1208 program) that equipped local and state police with military-grade equipment for anti-drug operations.

It’s Impact On Incarceration And Racist History

• The escalation of the criminal justice system's reach over the past few decades, ranging from more incarceration to seizures of private property and militarization, can be traced back to the war on drugs. After the US stepped up the drug war throughout the 1970s and '80s, harsher sentences for drug offenses played a role in turning the country into the world's leader in incarceration.

• During a 1994 interview, President Nixon’s domestic policy chief, John Ehrlichman, provided inside information suggesting that the War on Drugs campaign had ulterior motives, he was quoted saying:

“We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course, we did.”

• When the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act was passed, it was heavily criticized as having racist ramifications because it allocated longer prison sentences for offenses involving the same amount of crack cocaine (used more often by Black Americans) as powder cocaine (used more often by white Americans). 5 grams of crack triggered an automatic 5 year sentence, while it took 500 grams of powder cocaine to merit the same sentence.

• Critics pointed to data showing that people of color were targeted and arrested on suspicion of drug use at higher rates than whites.

• Overall, the policies led to a rapid rise in incarcerations for nonviolent drug offenses, from 50,000 in 1980 to 400,000 in 1997. In 2014, nearly half of the 186,000 people serving time in federal prisons in the United States had been incarcerated on drug-related charges, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

• The number of Black men in prison (792,000) has already equaled the number of men enslaved in 1820. With the current momentum of the drug war fueling an ever expanding prison-industrial complex, if current trends continue, only 15 years remain before the United States incarcerates as many African-American men as were forced into chattel bondage at slavery's peak, in 1860.

The War On Drugs Today

• Today, the US still continues to have the largest prison population on the planet. Learn more about it in my newsletters on Prison Reform.

• Between 2009 and 2013, some 40 states took steps to soften their drug laws, lowering penalties and shortening mandatory minimum sentences, according to the Pew Research Center.

• In 2010, Congress passed the Fair Sentencing Act (FSA), which reduced the discrepancy between crack and powder cocaine offenses from 100:1 to 18:1.

• The recent legalization of marijuana in several states and the District of Columbia has also led to a more tolerant political view on recreational drug use. However, estimated 40,000 people today are incarcerated for marijuana offenses even as the overall legal cannabis industry is booming; one state after another is legalizing; and cannabis companies are making healthy profits.

• Although Black communities aren't more likely to use or sell drugs, they are much more likely to be arrested and incarcerated for drug offenses.

• A 2014 study from Peter Reuter at the University of Maryland and Harold Pollack at the University of Chicago found there's no good evidence that tougher punishments or harsher supply-elimination efforts do a better job of pushing down access to drugs and substance abuse than lighter penalties.

• Most of the reduction in accessibility from the drug war appears to be a result of the simple fact that drugs are illegal, which by itself makes drugs more expensive and less accessible by eliminating avenues toward mass production and distribution.

• Enforcing the war on drugs costs the US more than $51 billion each year, according to the Drug Policy Alliance. As of 2012, the US had spent $1 trillion on anti-drug efforts.

“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for, we are the change we seek” — With love and light, Taylor Rae

Bystander Intervention

Hi Friends!
Welcome to Issue 49 of this newsletter. This week’s topic is Bystander Intervention. An engaged bystander is someone who lives up to that responsibility by intervening before, during, or after a situation when they see or hear behaviors that threaten, harass, or otherwise encourage violence. Bystander Intervention is a social science model that predicts the likelihood of individuals (or groups) willing to actively address a situation they deem problematic. I remember my parents telling me about the Kitty Genovese Case, where a woman was attacked and killed on the street in Queens and 37 people saw it happen, but no one helped her. As a child, my parents always encouraged me to step up and say something. I live my life operating from a place of, “If I don’t say something, who will?” Bystander Intervention does not mean jeopardizing your wellbeing or confronting violence with violence. Let’s get into it!

Key Terms

Bystander: A bystander is anyone who observes a situation. We all observe numerous incidents and interactions daily, but usually do not acknowledge the situation as needing our response. An active bystander is someone who acknowledges a problematic situation and chooses how to respond.

Bystander Intervention: Bystander Intervention is a social science model that predicts the likelihood of individuals (or groups) willing to actively address a situation they deem problematic.

The Bystander Effect: The Bystander effect is a phenomenon in which people are less likely to help someone in an emergency due to the presence of the people (bystanders) around them. The phenomenon of the bystander effect was first explained by two psychologists named John Darley and Bibb Latané in 1968. Darley and Latané proposed that with the increase in the number of people around the person in the emergency, the people become less likely to help the one in need.

The Virtual Bystander Effect: With the rise in the impact of social media on people’s lives, the influence of the bystander effect has also evolved on the digital platform. The social media platforms allow us to get aware of the injustice happening in the nearby or the faraway places. The impact of the bystander effect on social platforms is even more than the real world as one can not see that how other people are physically reacting to the given situation. Examples include the 2017 sexual assault of a teenage girl by a group of five men was Live broadcast on Facebook and a Facebook Live broadcast of a man with a mental disability being tortured by a group of people. In both cases no one alerted the authorities.

Let’s Get Into It

Before diving into how to be a better bystander and what steps to take to safely intervene, we first must understand the Bystander Effect and the overall concept that—odds are— you probably won’t help someone in need if you think it’s someone else’s responsibility to do so. While it’s not always safe to personally intervene, it’s always possible to alert the proper authorities, take to social media to amplify a message, or seek help in some other manner.

The Bystander Effect

• The Bystander Effect does not only affect everyday people. One example is an incident of a 53-year-old resident of Alameda, California named Raymond Zack. Raymond went into the water and when his foster mother called authorities, alerting them that Raymond might be trying to harm himself, both police and fire fighters stood on the beach and did nothing. The police thought the fire department would act. The fire department thought the police would act. After hours, a random civilian went into the water and dragged Raymond out.

• There are various factors that are responsible for the bystander effect:

  • Diffusion of Responsibility: Diffusion of responsibility occurs when a duty or task is shared between a group of people instead of only one person. The moral obligation to help does not fall only on one person, but the whole group that is witnessing the emergency. The blame for not helping can be shared instead of resting on only one person. The belief that another bystander in the group will offer help means you may not feel you have to engage.

  • Evaluation Apprehension: This refers to the fear of being judged by others when acting publicly. Individuals may feel afraid of being superseded by a superior helper, offering unwanted assistance, or facing the legal consequences of offering inferior and possibly dangerous assistance.

  • Pluralistic Ignorance: Due to pluralistic ignorance, people are less likely to help others as almost every person is looking for the other person to act first. Pluralistic ignorance basically means when you look around and see no one else is intervening, you think, “Hmm, I must be wrong to think this is an emergency or I must be getting the wrong social cues here because if no one else is reacting then I too should not react.”

  • Confusion of Responsibility: This occurs when a bystander fears that helping could lead others’ to believing that they are the perpetrator. This fear can cause people to not act in dire situations.

Latané and Darley (1970) proposed a five-step decision model of helping, during each of which bystanders can decide to do nothing:

1. Notice the event (or in a hurry and not notice).

2. Interpret the situation as an emergency (or assume that as others are not acting, it is not an emergency).

3. Assume responsibility (or assume that others will do this).

4. Know what to do (or not have the skills necessary to help).

5. Decide to help (or worry about danger, legislation, embarrassment, etc.).

Real Life Examples Of The Bystander Effect

• Honestly, these examples were deeply disturbing. These examples are extremely useful because we like to think, “I would never do that, I would definitely step up and say something” — but studies show, the larger the group, the slower you will be to respond and the less responsible you will feel to act. These examples deal with everything from sexual assault to murder and how these victims were attacked with many bystanders around including teachers, principles, law enforcement, friends and classmates, without receiving any help.

How To Safely Intervene

When I was a little kid my mom would tell me over and over that if I was in danger I needed to drop all of my belongings (my backpack, my books, my toys) and run for safety. Practicing this prepared me to understand that if I was being chased or abducted or trying to flee an unsafe environment, the weight of my heavy backpack might slow me down. In the same way, we must prime ourselves to understand that if we see someone in danger, we are expectant and prepared to take action.

Before stepping in, try the ABC approach:

• Assess for safety: If you see someone in trouble, ask yourself if you can help safely in any way. Remember, your personal safety is a priority – never put yourself at risk.

• Be in a group: It’s safer to call out behaviour or intervene in a group. If this is not an option, report it to others who can act.

• Care for the victim:Talk to the person who you think may need help. Ask them if they are OK.

When it comes to intervening safely, remember the four Ds – direct, distract, delegate, delay. These don’t have to be done in any specific order so consider what might be best in the situation!

Watch this three minute video on the four Ds

• Direct action: This is the most direct and risky interaction. Call out negative behaviour, tell the person to stop or ask the victim if they are OK. Do this as a group if you can. Be polite. Don’t aggravate the situation - remain calm and state why something has offended you. Stick to exactly what has happened, don’t exaggerate.

• Distract: Interrupt, start a conversation with the perpetrator to allow their potential target to move away or have friends intervene. Or come up with an idea to get the victim out of the situation – tell them they need to take a call, or you need to speak to them; any excuse to get them away to safety. Alternatively, try distracting, or redirecting the situation.

• Delegate: If you are too embarrassed or shy to speak out, or you don’t feel safe to do so, get someone else to step in. Any decent venue has a zero tolerance policy on harassment, so the staff there will act. Remember, calling the authorities might not be the best option. Marginalized communities like communities of color and trans communities might not feel safer with law enforcement present.

• Delay: If the situation is too dangerous to challenge then and there (such as there is the threat of violence or you are outnumbered) just walk away. Wait for the situation to pass then ask the victim later if they are OK. Or report it when it’s safe to do so – it’s never too late to act.

Intervening in a potential life or death situation can be terrifying. It can also be disturbingly calm, imagining nothing is wrong because everyone else is acting like nothing is wrong. Prepare yourself mentally and emotionally to intervene in a way that is safe, non violent, and thoughtful. Don’t follow the crowd. Be the one that wakes up the group and urges them that there is danger. As always, live life with purpose. “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for, we are the change we seek.” See ya next time!

“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for, we are the change we seek” — With love and light, Taylor Rae

Reperations

Hi Friends!
Welcome to Issue 47 of this newsletter. This week’s topic is Reparations. The word “reparations” out of context simply means “the making of amends for a wrong one has done, by paying money to or otherwise helping those who have been wronged.” In the context of American slavery, most people hear the word “reparations” and understand it to be a reference to all of the free labor enslaved people endured (not to mention the emotional, physical and mental trauma and abuse). You’ve probably heard “40 acres and a mule” referred to in your history class as a promise to former slaves, but do you know how that really went down? “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.” Let’s get into it!

Key Terms

Jim Crow: Jim Crow was the name of the racial caste system which operated primarily, but not exclusively in southern and border states, between 1877 and the mid-1960s. Under Jim Crow, African Americans were relegated to the status of second class citizens.

Reparations: A system of redress for egregious injustices.

40 Acres and a Mule: After the Civil War, Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman issued Field Order, No. 15, confiscating Confederate land along the rice coast. Sherman would later order “40 acres and a mule” to thousands of Black families, which historians would later refer to as the first act of reparations to enslaved Black people. After Lincoln’s assassination on April 14, 1865, the order would be reversed and the land given to Black families would be rescinded and returned to White Confederate landowners.

The Marshall Plan: The Marshall Plan, also known as the European Recovery Program, was a U.S. program providing aid to Western Europe following the devastation of World War II. It was enacted in 1948 and provided more than $15 billion to help finance rebuilding efforts on the continent.

Field Order 15: On January 16, 1865, during the Civil War (1861-65), Union Gen. William T. Sherman issued his Special Field Order No. 15, which confiscated as Union property a strip of coastline stretching from Charleston, South Carolina, to the St. John’s River in Florida, including Georgia’s Sea Islands and the mainland thirty miles in from the coast. The order redistributed the roughly 400,000 acres of land to newly freed Black families in forty-acre segments. Additionally, some families were to receive mules left over from the war, hence 40 acres and a mule.

Let’s Get Into It

The case for reparations is complex, but one of the main focuses is the reality that while white Americans had the opportunity to build wealth Black Americans (and many other marginalized groups) were not afforded the same opportunities to build generational wealth, security and societal advancement. Read my newsletter on redlining for more on this as well.

In this article from Brookings, Rashawn Ray and Andre M. Perry share some important stats:

• 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.

• In 1860, over $3 billion was the value assigned to the physical bodies of enslaved Black Americans to be used as free labor and production.

• In 1861, the value placed on cotton produced by enslaved Blacks was $250 million.

• Economists William “Sandy” Darity and Darrick Hamilton point out in their 2018 report, What We Get Wrong About Closing the Wealth Gap, “Blacks cannot close the racial wealth gap by changing their individual behavior –i.e. by assuming more ‘personal responsibility’ or acquiring the portfolio management insights associated with ‘[financial] literacy.’” In fact, white high school dropouts have more wealth than Black college graduates.

• The racial wealth gap did not result from a lack of labor, it came from a lack of financial capital.

• In 2016, white families had the highest median family wealth at $171,000, compared to Black and Hispanic families, which had $17,600 and $20,700, respectively

The United States has yet to compensate descendants of enslaved Black Americans for their labor. Nor has the federal government atoned for the lost equity from anti-Black housing, transportation, and business policy. Not only do racial wealth disparities reveal fallacies in the American Dream, the financial and social consequences are significant and wide-ranging. Wealth is positively correlated with better health, educational, and economic outcomes.

The History Of Reparations

The United States government is familiar with reparations:

• Native Americans have received land and billions of dollars for various benefits and programs for being forcibly exiled from their native lands — though obviously we are well aware of the constant horrors that the Native community has and continues to face.

• $1.5 billion was paid to Japanese Americans who were interned during World War II.

• Via the Marshall Plan, the United States helped to ensure that Jews received reparations for the Holocaust

• Black Americans are the only group that has not received reparations for state-sanctioned racial discrimination, while slavery afforded some white families the ability to accrue tremendous wealth.

  • About 15 percent of the enslaved shipped from Western Africa died during transport.

  • One in three marriages between enslaved people were split up and one in five children were separated from their parents.

40 Acres and a Mule:

• The first major opportunity that the United States had and where it should have atoned for slavery was right after the Civil War.

• Union leaders including General William Sherman concluded that each Black family should receive 40 acres. Sherman signed Field Order 15 and allocated 400,000 acres of confiscated Confederate land to Black families.

• Additionally, some families were to receive mules left over from the war, hence 40 acres and a mule.

• After President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, President Andrew Johnson reversed Field Order 15 and returned land back to former slave owners.

• In Washington D.C., slave owners were actually paid reparations for lost property—the formerly enslaved. This practice was also common in nearby states.

Proposed Methods For Reparations

• Individual payments for descendants of enslaved Black Americans: The U.S. government owes lost wages as well as damages to the people it helped enslave. The cumulative amount of restitution for individuals should eliminate the racial wealth gap that currently exists. According to the Federal Reserve’s most recent numbers in 2016, based on the Survey of Consumer Finances, white families had the highest median family wealth at $171,000, compared to Black and Hispanic families, which had $17,600 and $20,700, respectively.

• College tuition to 4-year or 2-year colleges and universities for descendants of enslaved Black Americans

• Student loan forgiveness for descendants of enslaved Black Americans

• Down payment grants and housing revitalization grants for descendants of enslaved Black Americans

• Business grants for business starting up, business expansion to hire more employees, or purchasing property for descendants of enslaved Black Americans\

Who Should Receive Reparations

One key question after deciding what a reparations package should include is who should qualify. In short, a Black person who can trace their heritage to people enslaved in U.S. states and territories should be eligible for financial compensation for slavery. Meanwhile, Black people who can show how they were excluded from various policies after emancipation should seek separate damages.

• For instance, a person like Senator Cory Booker whose parents are descendants of slaves would qualify for slavery reparations

• Senator Kamala Harris (Jamaican immigrant father and Indian immigrant mother) and President Barack Obama (Kenyan immigrant father and white mother) may seek redress for housing and/or education segregation

• Sasha and Malia Obama (whose mother is Michelle Robinson Obama, a descendant of enslaved Africans) would qualify

Will reparations really happen in The United States? Right now, it seems impossible on a nation level. However, at the local level, activists have made some impact. In 2015, Chicago enacted a reparations ordinance covering hundreds of African Americans tortured by police from the 1970s to the 1990s. Last spring, students at Georgetown University voted to create a fund that would raise $400,000 annually to benefit the descendants of almost 300 enslaved people sold by the college in the 1830s. Ultimately, these aren’t the reparations that Black Americans deserve, but they’re the only example we have. See ya next time!

“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for, we are the change we seek” — With love and light, Taylor Rae

Equity v. Equality

Hi Friends!
Welcome to Issue 46 of this newsletter. This newsletter isn’t going to be super long because we are focusing on a very specific topic, Equity vs. Equality. The term “equity” refers to fairness and justice. While equality means providing the same to all, equity means recognizing that we do not all start from the same place and that we must acknowledge and make adjustments to imbalances. The process is ongoing, requiring us to identify and overcome intentional and unintentional barriers arising from bias or systemic structures (NACE). Let’s get into it!

Let’s Get Into It

The terms “equity” and “equality” are constantly used interchangeably, but they do not mean the same thing.

Equi­ty involves try­ing to under­stand and give peo­ple what they need to enjoy full, healthy lives.

Equal­i­ty, in con­trast, aims to ensure that every­one gets the same things in order to enjoy full, healthy lives.

Like equi­ty, equal­i­ty aims to pro­mote fair­ness and jus­tice, but it can only work if every­one starts from the same place and needs the same things. (AECF)

We all start from different places based on a variety of factors such as race, socioeconomic status, class, gender identity and more. Equity takes these factors into consideration and levels the playing field so we can all reach our goals. Equality does not take these factors into consideration. Check out the video above for a deeper explanation, but honestly, it’s that simple friends.

Equity really means everyone gets the best chance for a good life. Equality only feels good to those who start from a position of privilege. That’s all for today, see ya next week!

Black History Month 2022

Hi Friends!
This is Issue 42 of our weekly newsletter and it is Black History Month!

In 1926, Carter G. Woodson established Negro History week, which eventually became Black History Month. February was chosen to coincide with the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln, because he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, and Frederick Douglas, a Black orator, social reformer, writer and abolitionist. In 1976, under President Gerald Ford, Black History Month was officially recognised in the country. Currently, the White House defines BHM as “both a celebration and a powerful reminder that Black History is American history”.

The United States, Canada and Germany observe February as Black History Month. Other countries, including the Netherlands, Ireland and the United Kingdom, celebrate Black History Month in October.

The theme for Black History Month 2022 is Black Health and Wellness (I didn’t even know there were themes until today!).

According to The Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) — established on September 9, 1915 by Dr. Carter G. Woodson himself:

“The theme for 2022 focuses on the importance of Black Health and Wellness. This theme acknowledges the legacy of not only Black scholars and medical practitioners in Western medicine, but also other ways of knowing (e.g., birthworkers, doulas, midwives, naturopaths, herbalists, etc.) throughout the African Diaspora. The 2022 theme considers activities, rituals and initiatives that Black communities have done to be well…The rise of fields, such as Public and Community Health and Health Informatics have led to a rise in preventive care and a focus on body positivity, physical exercise, nutrition, exploring other dietary options such as veganism and vegetarianism, and gardening. Black Health and Wellness not only includes one’s physical body, but also emotional and mental health…More of us understand the need to hold down, lift up, center, and fight fiercely for our beloved trans siblings and family. Black girls are doing breathwork, and there are whole yoga studios dedicated to people of color…We are determined to create a platform that shines a light on the multiple facets of Black health and wellness through education and activism. There is much to uncover, amplify, question, and correct.”

The ASALH also share a link to a wealth of resources on Black health and wellness which you can visit here.

The Racist History of BMI

Hi Friends!
Welcome to Issue 44 of this newsletter. This week’s topic is The Racist History of the Body Mass Index (BMI). Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet was a statistician (not a medical professional) who sought the specifications for the “average man” or l’homme moyen by predominantly measuring white men—and no women—to find a bell curve of data where the peak was considered “normal” and “everything differing from his proportion or condition, would constitute deformity or disease…or monstrosity.” This was during a boom of scientific racism and Quetelet is credited with co-founding the school of positivist criminology which laid the groundwork for criminologists like Cesare Lombroso, who believed that people of color were a separate species. The Quetelet Index took into account Quetelet’s ideal man based on body type, but was never supposed to be a measure of health. Remember, he was a statistician, and this index was designed to learn more about the average body size of the general male population.

Read more to learn how this index quickly became the BMI after insurance companies needed a way to determine a person’s coverage and refuse the “overweight”. When this system was designed with white men in mind (literally like everything else), it’s no wonder marginalized groups are misdiagnosed, discriminated against and shamed for their BMI, when the index was never created with their bodies in mind. Black women are especially demonized by the BMI scale, being the largest at-risk group based on the index—no shock there. Let’s get into it!

Key Terms

BMI (Body Mass Index): BMI is defined by the CDC as “a person’s weight in kilograms divided by the square of height in meters. BMI is an inexpensive and easy screening method for weight category—underweight, healthy weight, overweight, and obesity…BMI can be a screening tool, but it does not diagnose the body fatness or health of an individual. To determine if BMI is a health risk, a healthcare provider performs further assessments.”

Quetelet Index: Quetelet’s cross-sectional studies of human growth led him to conclude that other than the spurts of growth after birth and during puberty, 'the weight increases as the square of the height', known as the Quetelet Index until it was termed the Body Mass Index in 1972 by Ancel Keys (1904-2004).

Weight Bias: Negative attitudes, beliefs, judgments, stereotypes, and discriminatory acts aimed at individuals simply because of their weight. It can be overt or subtle and occur in any setting, including employment, healthcare, education, mass media and relationships with family and friends.

Obesity Stigma: Obesity stigma involves actions against people with obesity that can cause exclusion and marginalization, and lead to inequities – for example, when people with obesity do not receive adequate health care or when they are discriminated against in the workplace or in educational settings.

Obesity: The CDC describes obesity as " a serious chronic disease, and the prevalence of obesity continues to increase in the United States. Obesity is common, serious, and costly. This epidemic is putting a strain on American families, affecting overall health, health care costs, productivity, and military readiness.” They continue with, “Obesity impacts our nation’s health, economy, and military readiness…About 1 in 5 children and more than 1 in 3 adults struggle with obesity…Nearly 1 in 4 young adults are too heavy to serve in our military.” It also states on the CDC website, “weight that is higher than what is considered healthy for a given height is described as overweight or obesity. Body Mass Index (BMI) is a screening tool for overweight and obesity.”

Let’s Get Into It

The Origin Of BMI

• Lambert Adolphe Jacques (22 February 1796 – 17 February 1874) was a mathematician, astrologer and statistician in Belgium during the mid-19th century.

• He wanted to categorize the average man” (l’homme moyen, in French) and define what he looked like, an idea that already hinted that some people were inherently below average and, therefore, inferior to others.

• Quetelet is credited with co-founding the school of positivist criminology, “which asserted the dangerousness of the criminal to be the only measure of the extent to which he was punishable.” That positivist school laid the groundwork for criminologists like Cesare Lombroso, who believed that people of color were a separate species. Homo Criminalis, Lombroso argued, were “savages” by birth, identified by physical characteristics that he claimed linked them to primates. This was the booming era of scientific racism — read my newsletter on that here.

• “If the average man were completely determined, we might consider him as the type of perfection,” he wrote in his book A Treatise on Man and the Development of His Faculties. “And everything differing from his proportion or condition, would constitute deformity or disease ... or monstrosity.”

• Quetelet believed that the mathematical mean of a population was its ideal, and his desire to prove it resulted in the invention of the Index, a way of quantifying l’homme moyen’s weight.

• He created the Quetelet Index by using a calculation involving a weight-to-height ratio and set out to determine "the ideal."

• He started with human physical features, like the chests of Scottish Highland regiment soldiers, and moved on to moral and intellectual qualities including suicide, crime, madness, and even poetic ability.

• The features measured primarily were those of caucasian men. (I can’t find any research that mentions ANY non-white men whatsoever, but also haven’t found anything that definitively says it was ONLY white men.)

• Instead of labelling the peak of the bell-curve as merely normal, he labelled it ‘ideal’, with those deviating either ‘overweight’ or ‘underweight’ instead of heavier than average or lighter than average. He envisioned the normal (i.e., typical) as the ideal or something desirable.

• Quetelet never intended that this index be used to measure a person’s health or wellness. “Initially it was used to categorize people and look at the distribution of a population,” says Diana Thomas, Ph.D., a professor of mathematics at West Point.

• “By the turn of the next century, Quetelet’s l’homme moyen would be used as a measurement of fitness to parent, and as a scientific justification for eugenics — the systemic sterilization of disabled people, autistic people, immigrants, poor people, and people of color.”

How Did BMI Become The Standard In Medicine?

• In the late 20th century, health and life insurance companies adopted the Quetelet Index to replace their own height-weight tables (which were already based on stats drawn from mostly white men and some white women).

• At the time, it seemed “simplest and most informative to express the weight of the individual as a percentage of the average weight of persons of the same height, age and sex in the population to which he belongs. That was the reasoning that led to publication of standard height-weight tables by the life insurance industry, beginning with the Medico-Actuarial Mortality Investigations of 1912.”

• Insurers could use this information to determine a person’s coverage and could refuse to cover the “overweight” while many doctors saw these “medico-actuarial tables” as a quick tool to decide who they’d take on as a patient.

• In 1972, Ancel Keys, a physiologist who studied diet, claimed he had a tool that was more accurate then the previously mentioned height-weight tables.

• Keys and his colleagues did a large study on fatness, looking at predominantly white European and American men and concluded that the Quetelet Index, or the “body mass index,” was the most useful tool.

• The researchers’ subjects were drawn from predominantly white nations (the United States, Finland, Italy), along with Japan and South Africa, though their study notes that findings in South Africa “could not be suggested to be a representative sample of Bantu men.” Most of their findings, the authors note, apply to “all but the Bantu men.” That is, Keys’ findings weren’t representative of, or applicable to, non white men. Today, there is a push for Asian populations to have a different scale for BMI, proving that even the Japanese subjects used in this study were not the intended demographic.

Problems With Using BMI As A Measure Of Health

• When white men are the standard for “normal” and “ideal” bodies and their dimensions are seen as the most healthy, it’s no wonder other racial groups and genders are viewed as abnormal.

• The standards for BMI, based on the bodies of white men, have been applies globally, “like in Central Africa where white people are the minority.”

• According to an article from NPR, the formula for BMI itself is nonsensical. “There is no physiological reason to square a person's height. Moreover, it ignores waist size, which is a clear indicator of obesity level.”

• It is physiologically incorrect because “it makes no allowance for the relative proportions of bone, muscle and fat in the body.”

• Global acceptance of BMI doesn’t take into account that higher or lower BMI might be more appropriate for certain groups. “A large 2003 study published in The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), for example, has shown that higher BMIs tend to be more optimal for Black people, and that Black women don’t necessarily show a significant rise mortality risk until a BMI of 37.”

• Many people with “high” BMIs are healthy. 47% of people categorized as having overweight BMI are metabolically healthy. Using BMI perpetuates weight bias. Claiming “obesity is bad” without considering other “genetic, social and environmental factors harms more than it heals.”

• Maria Monge, M.D., director of Adolescent Medicine at Dell Children’s Medical Center, says: “Many of my [larger-bodied] patients have been told that they’re not healthy, but when I checked their labs and vital signs, everything was pristine,” says Dr. Monge. “The only thing that was out of the range considered 'normal' was their BMI.”

BMI And Its Negative Impact On Marginalized Groups

• BMI doesn’t take into account important social factors related to health. "One of the greatest predictors of health outcomes is socioeconomic status,” says to Kim Gould, MS, LMFT, a therapist, a Health at Every Size personal trainer, and the owner of Autonomy Movement. “Socioeconomic status tells us whether we can afford health care, have access to medical treatment, nutritious foods, and opportunities to move our bodies. It also determines our quality of sleep and how high our anxiety levels are. If our bodies are in a state of fight or flight and there’s cortisol pumping through our systems long-term, that’s destructive."

• BMI is especially problematic for Black women. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Minority Health (OHM), Black women have the highest rates of "obesity" and being “overweight.” These health assessments often fail to consider how chronic stress, economic inequality and institutionalized racism affect Black women in America, never mind the fact that these index was designed with white men in mind.

• Studies show that “racial discrimination is associated with increased body mass index (BMI) and obesity among [ethnic minorities]…[and] this association strengthens with increasing time in the United States.”

I know many friends, coworkers and fitness professionals read my newsletter. Friends, let’s do better for our communities, clients and for ourselves. While we have all become accustomed to hopping on the scale for our yearly physicals, it’s not even necessary for patients to be weighed unless their prescription dosage is based on body mass or for specific medical tests. We need to break the cycle of fat stigma, discrimination and sexism that the Body Mass Index perpetuates. See ya next time!

“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for, we are the change we seek” — With love and light, Taylor Rae

Food Insecurity

Hi Friends!
Welcome to Issue 43 of this newsletter. This week’s topic is Food Insecurity. In 2020, an estimated 1 in 8 Americans were food insecure, equating to over 38 million Americans, including almost 12 million children. Feeding America states, “food insecurity does not exist in isolation, as low-income families are affected by multiple, overlapping issues like lack of affordable housing, social isolation, economic/social disadvantage resulting from structural racism, chronic or acute health problems, high medical costs, and low wages.” Food deserts, food swamps and food mirages are prevalent across America, with the COVID-19 pandemic further highlighting these communities. Let’s dive in by talking about some key terms, learning some stats, and taking on some action steps to create real-world change. Let’s get into it!

Key Terms

Food Insecurity: The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) defines food insecurity as a lack of consistent access to enough food for an active, healthy life.

Social Determinants of Health: The conditions in the environments in which people are born, live, learn, work, play, worship and age that affect a wide range of health, functioning and quality-of-life outcomes and risks

Food Desert: Food deserts are regions where people have limited access to healthful and affordable food. This may be due to having a low income or having to travel farther to find healthful food options. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) define a food desert as an area that has either a poverty rate greater than or equal to 20% or a median family income not exceeding 80% of the median family income in urban areas, or 80% of the statewide median family income in nonurban areas. In order to qualify as a food desert, an area must also meet certain other criteria. In urban areas, at least 500 people or 33% of the population must live more than 1 mile from the nearest large grocery store. In rural areas, at least 500 people or 33% of the population must live more than 10 miles from the nearest large grocery store.

Food Swamp: A food swamp is a region that provides adequate access to healthful and affordable food, as well as an overabundance of less healthful food options. In Canadian urban areas, food swamps are more common than food deserts.

Food Mirage: A food mirage describes an area where people live close to grocery stores offering a variety of healthful foods but cannot afford those foods. Because of this, people must travel farther to find healthful foods that are within budget.

Food Justice: The right to grow, sell and eat healthy food.

Food Apartheid: A term growing in popularity to “Food Desert” because it highlights the political reality of food insecurity. Food and agriculture is deliberately not made available to specific communities (Black, brown, low-income and Indigenous).

Food Sovereignty: The right of people, especially farmers, to define their own agricultural and food systems. Food sovereignty demands that the policies and mechanisms involved in production, distribution and consumption of food focus on creating ecologically sustainable systems and healthy lives for people, rather than profits for corporations.

SNAP: SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), formerly called food stamps, is a government program that helps people buy the food they need for healthy lives. Across the United States, there are 9.5 million families and children using SNAP to buy food. It is the largest program working to fight hunger in America.

Let’s Get Into It

Though food insecurity is closely related to poverty, not all people living below the poverty line experience food insecurity and people living above the poverty line can experience food insecurity. Studies have found that wealthy districts have three times as many supermarkets as poor ones do, that white neighborhoods contain an average of four times as many supermarkets as predominantly Black ones do, and that grocery stores in Black communities are usually smaller with less selection.

“Part of the problem is how the US government’s North American Industry Classification System (NAICS is the standard used by the federal statistical agencies in classifying business establishments) categorizes retail outlets that sell food. According to the NAICS code, small corner grocery stores are statistically lumped together with supermarkets, such as Safeway, Whole Foods Market, etc. In other words, a community with no supermarket and two corner grocery stores that offer liquor and food would be counted as having two retail food outlets even though the food offered may be extremely limited and consist mainly of junk food.” Many of the convenience stores that had items such as a bunch of bananas or a few apples would sell the fruits individually. Because these items are not priced, the customers are often at the mercy of the person behind the counter who determines the cost then and there. Customers who don’t have a good understanding of English might never ask the price of the item.

Those living in food deserts may also find it difficult to locate foods that are culturally appropriate for them, and dietary restrictions, such as lactose intolerance, gluten allergies, etc., also limit the food choices of those who do not have access to larger chain stores that have more selection. Additionally, studies have found that urban residents who purchase groceries at small neighborhood stores pay between 3 and 37 percent more than suburbanites buying the same products at supermarkets.

Some of the health effects of living in a food desert include:

• a higher incidence of obesity

• increased prevalence of diabetes

• other weight-related conditions, especially in children

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Levels Of Food Security

According to Feeding America, households are often described as either food secure or food insecure, four levels of food security describe the range of households’ experiences in accessing enough food.

Food Insecurity And Chronic Disease

The cycle of food insecurity and chronic disease begins when an individual or family cannot afford enough nutritious food, illustrated by the image below. The combination of stress and poor nutrition can make disease management even more challenging. Further, the time and money needed to respond to these health conditions strains the household budget, leaving little money for essential nutrition and medical care. This causes the cycle to continue, increasing the risk of worsening existing conditions.

Food Insecurity In The Black Community

• The Black community consistently faces hunger at higher rates than whites due to social, economic, and environmental challenges. In 2020, 24% of Black individuals experienced food insecurity - more than three times the rate of white households.

• Discriminatory policies and practices have led Black people to be more likely to live in poverty, more likely to face unemployment, and have fewer financial resources like savings or property than their white counterparts. All of these factors increase someone's likelihood to experience hunger.

• The median income for Black households is roughly $46,000 per year while non-Hispanic, white households earned a median income of roughly $71,000 per year.

• While the United States has an overall poverty rate of 11.4%, within the Black community, the poverty rate is 19.5%. Meanwhile, poverty in the non-Hispanic, white community is 10.1%.

Food Insecurity In The Latinx Community

• Latinx communities experience unique challenges and are more likely to face hunger than non-Hispanic white communities. In 2020, more than 19% of all Latinxs in the United States was food insecure.

• Racial prejudice and language, education, and cultural barriers create inequalities that make Latinx communities more vulnerable to food insecurity.

• Latinxs were 2.5 times more likely to experience food insecurity than white individuals. Latinx children were more than twice as likely to live in food-insecure households as white children.

• According to the Census, 1 in 6 Latinos live in poverty compared to 1 in 16 white people.

Food Insecurity In The LGBTQ+ Community

• Transgender and gender nonconforming (TGNC) people experience high rates of poverty, joblessness, and homelessness, which drive risk for food insecurity.

• More than 25% of LGBTQ+ adults (about 2.2 million people) did not have enough money for food for themselves or their families, at some point in the last year. This is compared to 17% of non-LGBTQ+ adults

• More than 25% LGBT adults aged 18-44 participated in SNAP, compared to 20% of non-LGBT adults in the same age group.

• In North Carolina, the disparity is even greater, with 47% of transgender respondents saying they faced food insecurity, compared to 12% of others; according to Feeding America, a nonprofit organization, about 14% of North Carolinians, including 20% of children in the state, faced hunger.

• Within the transgender community, ethnic minorities face even greater disparities when it comes to food insecurity.

Resources

Effective responses to food insecurity must address the overlapping challenges posed by the social determinants of health (defined above). Click the links below to learn more about how to make and impact:

• Work with Feeding America.

• Find Mutual Aid networks.

• Contact your representatives.

• Stock a community fridge.

• Volunteer at a food bank.

“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for, we are the change we seek” — With love and light, Taylor Rae

The Treatment of Black Men & Boys in Court

Hi Friends,
Welcome to Issue 42 of this newsletter. This week, I was initially going to focus on the Kyle Rittenhouse trial, but really, what’s more important is understanding how shockingly different this white young man is being treated compared to Black men and boys, even when there is significantly less evidence of them committing a crime. Rittenhouse absolutely shot people with his gun, there’s no doubt there. But when Black men and boys are even accused of crimes with no or little evidence, the response is wildly different. Today, I’ll highlight two of the most heart wrenching modern cases, The Central Park Five and Kalief Browder. Let’s get into it.

Let’s Get Into It

The Central Park Five

• Five Black and Latino teens were arrested in response to the murder and rape of a jogger named Trisha Meili in Central Park on April 20, 1989.

• Antron McCray, 15, Kevin Richardson, 15, Yusef Salaam, 15, Raymond Santana, 14, and Korey Wise, 16 came to be known as The Central Park Five.

• All of the boys were coerced into giving confessions on videotape without their parents present.

• “When we were arrested, the police deprived us of food, drink or sleep for more than 24 hours,” Salaam wrote in the Washington Post in 2016. “Under duress, we falsely confessed. Though we were innocent, we spent our formative years in prison, branded as rapists.”

• None of their supposed “confessions” were consistent, there were no eyewitnesses or DNA evidence, yet all 5 were convicted.

• The teens were depicted in the media as “bloodthirsty,” “animals,” “savages” and “human mutations”.

• The New York Post’s Pete Hamill wrote that the teens hailed “from a world of crack, welfare, guns, knives, indifference and ignorance…a land with no fathers…to smash, hurt, rob, stomp, rape. The enemies were rich. The enemies were white.”

• Donald Trump took out full-page ads in The New York Times, the New York Daily News, the New York Post and New York Newsday with the headline, "Bring Back The Death Penalty. Bring Back Our Police!" He said ''They should be forced to suffer and, when they kill, they should be executed for their crimes.''

• In 2002, after serving sentences that ranged from six to 13 years for new DNA evidence and a confession proved convicted rapist Matias Reyes was the true, lone culprit.

• The charges against the five men were vacated and they eventually received at $41 million settlement.

Kalief Browder

• Kalief Browder, spent three years on Rikers Island without being convicted of a crime.

• He was arrested in the Spring of 2010, at age 16, accused of robbing Roberto Bautista and stealing his backpack.

• When the police responded to Bautista’s 911 call, Browder was searched and the backpack wasn’t found. Bautista’s recollection was also inconsistent.

• The next day, Browder was charged with robbery, grand larceny, and assault. Because he was on probation, Browder was not released.

• His bail was sat at $3,000, with $900 needed with a bail bondsmen. His family raised the money, but they were told that, since he was on probation from his prior felony conviction, (joyriding and crashing a car) his probation officer had placed a probation violation hold on him so posting bail would not get him released from jail anyway.

• He spent more than one thousand days on Rikers waiting for a trial that never happened.

• He was abused in prison, with one surveillance video showing an officer assaulting him and of a large group of inmates pummeling and kicking him.

• He was offered a plea bargain of 3.5 years in prison if he pleaded guilty and another of 2.5 years if he plead guilty. Browder declined the offer.

• Roberto Bautista eventually returned to Mexico and the DA realized they could not prove their case, but it is unknown exactly how long Kalief was still imprisoned.

• On June 6, 2015, Kalief Browder committed suicide, tormented from his abuse and imprisonment.

Kyle Rittenhouse

• I August 2020, Rittenhouse and his friend Dominick David Black "armed themselves with rifles" and drover about 15 miles to Kenosha to help defend a car dealership business from protestors who were protesting the shooting of an unarmed Black man by police, Jacob Blake.

• In the hours leading up to the shooting, Rittenhouse appeared in multiple videos taken by protesters and bystanders and was interviewed twice: first by a livestreamer at the car dealership where he and a number of other armed men had stationed themselves, second by McGinniss. Rittenhouse was also seen talking with police officers.

• Kyle Rittenhouse, 17, shot three men, killing two of them and wounding the third, during a protest against police brutality in Kenosha, Wisconsin. All of these attacks are well documented with cell phone camera footage.

• Despite Rittenhouse crossing state lines into Wisconsin with a deadly weapon and damning video coverage and witness accounts that point to him as the aggressor, his defense maintains that he acted solely in self-defense.

• Rittenhouse’s was generously characterized by the New York Times as someone “who has idolized law enforcement since he was young” and went to Kenosha “with at least one mission: to play the role of police officer and medic.” — Do you remember The Central Park Five being called “bloodthirsty,” “animals,” “savages” and “human mutations”?

• Judge Bruce Schroeder decided last month that prosecutors may not refer to Rosenbaum, Huber, and Grosskreutz (the men who were shot and murdered) as “victims,” and that defense attorneys could call them “looters” or “arsonists.”

• At the direction of Circuit Judge Bruce Schroder, Rittenhouse’s attorney placed slips of paper into a raffle drum with the numbers of each of the 18 jurors on it who sat through the two-week trial and Rittenhouse chose the papers. This has never been seen before, with a defendant drawing the names, and it’s incredible strange.

Trayvon Martin was accused of looking like a thug by the media in his hoodie, though he was just a Black child, murdered in the street. Tamir Rice was accused of appearing to have a weapon by the media, though he was just a Black child with a toy. The Central Park Five and Kalief Browder were truly innocent of their crimes, coerced and imprisoned anyway. Yet Kyle Rittenhouse, captured on video with a dangerous weapon, receives preferential treatment, support from police, and polite news coverage. This is the difference between how Black and white boys are treated in America.

“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for, we are the change we seek” — With love and light, Taylor Rae

Ahmaud Arbery

Hi Friends!
Welcome to Issue 41 of this newsletter! This week I’m covering the Ahmaud Arbery case and the trials of his murderers, Gregory McMichael, his son Travis McMichael and William "Roddie" Bryan Jr. Right. Currently, we are at day 5 of the trial so I will continue to share more in my weekly newsletters as the case develops. At first, the killing of Ahmaud Arbery in February 2020 went largely unnoticed outside the South Georgia community where the 25-year-old lived and died. It wasn't until a video of the shooting surfaced on May 5, 2020, that the Black man's death drew nationwide attention. Three white men have all pleaded not guilty to Arbery’s murder. I was shocked while researching this case that four prosecutors have already been appointed to this case and recused themselves because they either are connected to or agree with the murderers. I was shocked that Judge Timothy Walmsley said the court "found that there appears to be intentional discrimination" on the part of the defense after they chose only one single Black juror and twelve white ones—yet still has allowed the case to go forward. How can Black Americans ever have justice when white supremacy continues to infiltrate and dominate our systems of supposed law and order? Let’s get into it.

Let’s Get Into It

The Timeline

February 23, 2020: Ahmaud Arbery is fatally shot

• Ahmaud was out for a jog in mostly white Satilla Shores neighborhood near Brunswick.

• Gregory McMichael and his son Travis McMichael pursed Arbery in a truck, both armed with guns.

• Gregory McMichael is former police officer and investigator in the local District Attorney's Office.

• Gregory McMichael told police he and his son had pursued Arbery because they suspected he was responsible for a string of recent purported burglaries in the neighborhood. There had only been one burglary, reported more than seven weeks prior to the shooting.

• A third man, William "Roddie" Bryan, also joined the pursuit and recorded the shooting on his cellphone.

• During the struggle, Arbery is shot three times, twice in the chest, after which he slumps to the ground.

• It took 74 days after Arbery’s death for the men to be arrested and charged.

February 27, 2020: AG's office learns Brunswick Judicial Circuit district attorney recusing herself

• Brunswick Judicial Circuit District Attorney Jackie Johnson recused herself from the case, citing Gregory McMichael's position as a former investigator in her office.

April 7, 2020: Second prosecutor recuses himself, lays out a defense of the McMichaels

• The case was then taken over by District Attorney of the Waycross Judicial Circuit, George Barnhill.

• Barnhill’s son worked in Johnson's office and had previously worked with Gregory McMichael on a previous prosecution of Arbery.

• He only asked to relinquish the case in early April at the request of Arbery's mother, though he knew about the personal conflict sooner.

• Barnhill said he believed the McMichaels' actions were "perfectly legal."

• Finally, Atlantic Judicial Circuit District Attorney Tom Durden is appointed to the case.

May 5, 2020: Video of the shooting surfaces

May 7, 2020: The McMichaels are arrested 

May 11, 2020: A fourth prosecutor takes over

• AG Carr announced a fourth prosecutor, Cobb County District Attorney Joyette Holmes, would lead the case after Durden had asked to step down due to a lack of sufficient resources.

May 21, 2020: Bryan is arrested 

June 4, 2020: Travis McMichael used racial slur after shooting Arbery, GBI agent testifies 

• Bryan tells investigators he heard Travis McMichael use the n-word after shooting Arbery dead.

• GBI Assistant Special Agent in Charge Richard Dial said there were "numerous times" Travis McMichael used racial slurs on social media and in messaging services.

• Bryan also had several messages on his phone that included "racial" terms, Dial said.

June 24, 2020: All three suspects indicted on murder charges

• Glynn County Grand Jury indicted Gregory and Travis McMichael and Roddie Bryan on malice and felony murder charges.

• McMichaels face several other charges, including aggravated assault, false imprisonment and criminal attempt to commit false imprisonment.

• Bryan also faces a charge of criminal attempt to commit false imprisonment.

July 17, 2020: Suspects plead not guilty

November 13, 2020: Bond denied for the McMichaels

April 28, 2021: Suspects are indicted on federal hate crime charges

• Federal prosecutors announced a grand jury had indicted the McMichaels and Bryan on hate crime and kidnapping charges.

• Each were charged with one count of interference with rights and one count of attempted kidnapping.

• Gregory and Travis McMichael were also charged with using a firearm in relation to a crime of violence.

May 11, 2021: Suspects plead not guilty in federal court

October 18, 2021: Jury selection begins

November 3, 2021: A jury is seated

• It took 2 1/2 weeks for the jury selection process to be completed.

• A panel of 12 people -- 11 white jurors and one Black juror -- was seated on Wednesday, November 3.

• Prosecutors for the state accused defense attorneys of disproportionately striking qualified Black jurors and basing some of their strikes on race.

• Judge Timothy Walmsley said the court "found that there appears to be intentional discrimination" on the part of the defense — yet still has allowed the case to go forward.

What’s a Citizen’s Arrest?

• Defense attorneys will likely argue that the men’s actions were protected by Georgia’s citizen’s arrest law, which at the time allowed a person to detain someone whom they believe just committed a crime.

• The attorneys may claim the men acted in self-defense while attempting to carry out a legitimate citizen’s arrest of Arbery, whom they suspected of burglary.

• Georgia’s outdated and dangerous citizen’s arrest law — one that was created in an era of slavery and emboldened citizens to act on their worst biases — has since been repealed.

• Georgia’s citizen’s arrest statute had its origins in the Civil War era. Passed in 1863, when slavery was still considered legal by Southerners despite the Emancipation Proclamation, the law stated that a private person could “arrest an offender if the offense is committed in his presence or within his immediate knowledge.”

• Also factoring into the Arbery trial are Georgia’s open carry law (which makes it legal to openly carry firearms in the state with the proper permits) and “stand your ground” law (which allows for the use of deadly force if a person reasonably believes it is necessary to prevent death or severe bodily injury).

I am absolutely heartbroken for Ahmaud Arbery and his family. His parents who had to sit in a courtroom with their son’s murders and watch footage of their child’s death—lynched in the street, called a nigger by an ex-police officer in broad daylight in America. As always, I am devastated, disappointed, exhausted, but never defeated, in my fight for racial justice.

“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for, we are the change we seek” — With love and light, Taylor Rae

One Year Later, Allyship Fades

Hi Friends!
Welcome to Issue 40 of this newsletter! This week’s topic is One Year Later, Allyship Fades. George Floyds murder in May of 2020 sparked a reemergence of the Black Lives Matter movement and amplified the call for allyship. Almost a year and a half later, allyship has significantly faded from both private citizens and public companies. Over $50 billion was pledged by companies and corporations to fight for racial justice, and today 0.05% has actually been donated or committed. ZERO POINT ZERO FIVE PERCENT. A recent study found that 20% of all of the protestors last year weren’t even in alignment with the demands of this movement or the fight for racial equality, but using them as an outlet for grievances about the pandemic and dissatisfaction with the government in general. It’s no wonder that the largest and most diverse civil rights movement in history has quietly and quickly faded into the background for many — but never for those of us who live or lives in marginalized bodies, unable to pretend. Let’s get into it.

Key Terms

Allyship: An active, consistent, and arduous practice of unlearning and re-evaluating, in which a person in a position of privilege and power seeks to operate in solidarity with a marginalized group.

Virtue Signaling: An attempt to show other people that you are a good person, for example by expressing opinions that will be acceptable to them, especially on social media.

Slacktivism: activity that uses the internet to support political or social causes in a way that does not need much effort, for example creating or signing online petitions.

Performative Allyship: Performative allyship is where those with privilege, profess solidarity with a cause. This assumed solidarity is usually vocalized, disingenuous and potentially harmful to marginalized groups. Often, the performative ally professes allegiance in order to distance themselves from potential scrutiny

Fair-Weather Supporters : Martin Luther King Jr wrote that fair weather supporters were nearly as bad as segregationists. "Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will," King wrote. "Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection."

Let’s Get Into It

Allyship

• In May and August of 2020, polls estimate between 15 million and 26 million Americans protested in cities, suburbs and small towns in all 50 states. The protests were the largest and broadest in U.S. history.

• A combination of factors – from fatigue and frustration at the relatively slow pace of change to a growing backlash on the right against efforts to call out systemic racism and white privilege – has led to a decline in white support for the Black Lives Matter movement since last spring, when white support for social justice was at its peak.

• About 20% of those who protested never supported the movement — and were, instead, expressing grievances related to the coronavirus pandemic and dissatisfaction with the government and inequality. When asked in this study, this group said their attendance was motivated by concerns like “justice for all,” “equal rights for all” or “all lives matter.” Some also mentioned a general discontent with the federal government or a desire to “protest against the government.”

• These findings shared above, combined with rapid decreases in support for the movement during the past year, make it clear that there is a disconnect between participating in the movement through attending a protest or posting positively about it on social media, and actual support for the goals of the Black Lives Matter movement.

• In June 2020, support for the Black Lives Matter movement was at 67%, including 6 in 10 whites overall and nearly 40% of Republicans, according to the Pew Research Center. Among Democrats, support for the movement soared to 92%, while Black support for the movement reached 88%. In September, support had dipped to 55% of adults.

• Police violence is a “serious problem” in the U.S., 69% of respondents said, down from 79% reported right after the death of Floyd last year.

Companies & Corporations

• In 2020, 60% of American respondents said brands needed to use their marketing dollars to advocate for racial equality. The same percentage also said they would buy or boycott a brand based on its response to the ongoing protests.

• American companies pledged $50 billion toward racial equity following Floyd’s murder, according to a study by Creative Investment Research.

• Only $250 million has actually been spent or committed to a specific initiative, according to an analysis by the consulting firm. That is 0.5%.

• Some organizations always had a long term multi-year plan, while others have backpedaled and said they would reach that pledge eventually.

• You can learn more about how individual companies have followed through here.

The overall decline of support for racial justice is devastating. Black Lives Matter is an organization, a cause, a slogan, a movement — but beneath it all is a timeless cry for equality, plea for humanity, demand for equity in a country built on the backs of marginalized humans in a world dominated by white supremacy. I see the interest in racial justice dwindling each and every day as companies offer to pay me less or refuse my questions on their commitment to equality. I see it across social media. I notice friends don’t ask me about the most recent case of police brutality and I wonder if they’ve even heard. I wonder if they care. I feel sad, but never defeated. We are the change we seek.

“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for, we are the change we seek” — With love and light, Taylor Rae

How to Become an Activist

Hi Friends!
Welcome to Issue 39 of this newsletter! This week’s topic is How to Become an Activist. The last time I sent out a poll for upcoming newsletters, this was one of the most requested topic and I’m excited to jump into it today. Activism is defined as a political ideology. Activism consists of efforts to promote, impede, direct, or intervene in social, political, economic, or environmental reform with the desire to make changes in society toward a perceived greater good. An activist is someone who advocates for or practices activism. Sometimes we have a perception that one can only be an activist if they are raising a lot of money for a cause, or giving a speech at a rally, or (in today’s world) have hundreds of thousands of instagram followers who re-share their infographics. The truth is, anyone can be an activist in their daily life but it takes more than being a slacktavist on social media, it takes time, patience, and mental and emotional strength to stand up for justice. Let’s get into it!

Key Terms

Activist: an activist is someone who works to support a cause. One who is politically active in the role of a citizen; especially, one who campaigns for change. A proponent or practitioner of activism.

Activism: activism is the use of direct action to achieve an end, either for or against an issue. The use of direct, often confrontational action, such as a demonstration or strike, in opposition to or support of a cause. The doctrine or policy of taking positive, direct action to achieve an end, esp. a political or social end.

Social Justice: Social justice examines the distribution of wealth, privileges, and opportunity within a society and involves fighting oppression such as ableism, ageism, classism, racism, sexism and oppression of those who are members of the LGBTQIA+ community, are from different countries, or are religious.

Racial Justice: Racial justice is the systematic fair treatment of people of all races, resulting in equitable opportunities and outcomes for all. Racial justice initiatives address structural and systemic changes to ensure equal access to opportunities, eliminate disparities, and advance racial equity—thus ensuring that all people, regardless of their race, can prosper and reach their full potential. Racial justice and equity is not achieved by the mere absence of racial discrimination or the perceived absence of harmful racial bias, but rather through deliberate action to dismantle problematic and build positively transformational systems – action must be carried through with the conviction, commitment and dedication of advocates.

Climate Justice: “Climate justice” is a term, and more than that a movement, that acknowledges climate change can have differing social, economic, public health, and other adverse impacts on underprivileged populations. Climate justice begins with recognizing key groups are differently affected by climate change. Climate impacts can exacerbate inequitable social conditions.

Keyboard Warrior: A person who posts highly opinionated text and images online in an aggressive or abusive manner, often without revealing his or her own identity.

Slacktivism: The United Nations has defined slacktivism as when people “support a cause by performing simple measures” but “are not truly engaged or devoted to making a change.” Slacktivism typically means taking to social media. It encompasses things like retweeting words of hope after a national disaster or liking a charity’s Facebook page—as the study implies. However, it can also include non-digital actions like wearing a ribbon on your shirt to bring awareness.

Let’s Get Into It

There’s no one path to becoming more active in your community, whether it’s politics, climate change, gender inequality, LGBTQ+ rights, prison reform, racial justice or any other area. In my own personal experience, I was hesitant to call myself an activist as I sat on my sofa re-posting infographics, then as I researched and wrote my own, and still as I started becoming an anti-racism educator. In hindsight, I realize I didn’t need to do something specific to finally earn the title activist, nor is it crucial to my identity or my work to have a title. Below are some ways I have gotten more active, uncomfortable, effective and impactful in my work over the last two years:

Take A Look Inside

Before we can go out and change the world, we have to take a peek inside of those dark, dusty corners of our hearts and minds and figure out what is important to us and why, while also asking ourselves a few questions. What are my implicit biases? How have I perpetuated systemic racism, homophobias, sexism, gentrification and more? Who am I and who do I want to be? You definitely don’t have to be perfect (who is?) but having those honest inward conversations will only make you more relatable, honest and empathetic as you start trying to reach others.

Do The Work

It means what it sounds like. Work. Don’t just read one book, read many and read them consistently. Talk to people who are close to you and talk to strangers at book clubs and workshops and seminars. Learn about what you are passionate about. Why do you think I write this newsletter every single week? I have taught myself so many anti-racism related topics week in and week out because I can’t expect to motivate and educate without continuing to learn myself in a consistent and disciplined way.

Use Your Voice

Whether you’re introverted or extroverted, a strong public speaker or a great writer, the host of a podcast or the curator of an Instagram account followed by 200 friends, use whatever platform you have and use your voice. The first time you challenge the status quo or proudly claim your truth, it will be scary. It will not be glamorous and it will not always feel triumphant. Sometimes it feels like an anxious uncertainty or a whisper of regret, because being comfortable is always easier. But it is not about being comfortable, it is about being a changemaker in your community.

Start Today

It will start out messy. My first newsletter was a hot mess. My first IG live conversation I was so quiet and monotone, trying to hide the quiver in my voice. My first podcast I was shivering with nerves. But start. Start and be afraid. Start and be uncertain. Start and make mistakes. But start and do it now. When Kira West and I started ACTIV-ISM, our anti-racism wellness company, we had a text thread, a zoom call, and a blurry vision, and yet 60 people followed us through that first month long program and all 60 found community, understanding and a sense of purpose simply because we were present, vulnerable, and ready to make mistakes. Start today, you won’t regret it.

When we are behind our phone screens sharing infographics that we barely skim, tapping auto-populated information into digital petitions, and arguing in the comments section of a Facebook post, it definitely feels like we are doing something. It feels stressful, and chaotic and oddly satisfying, but does it make for real change? How much more work would it take for you to find a local non profit and start volunteering? How much more challenging would it be to call a family meeting and dive into a conversation with your parents and siblings? Virtual movements filled with hashtags and petitions are absolutely useful and there will always be folks ready to take up that mantle, but there aren’t many willing to do the work in real life. Are you?

“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for, we are the change we seek” — With love and light, Taylor Rae

Slavery & the White House

Hi Friends!
Welcome to Issue 38 of this newsletter! This week’s topic is Slavery & the White House. Construction for the White House began in 1792. Apparently, the commissioners for the District of Columbia, charged by Congress to build the new city under the direction of President George Washington, initially planned to import workers from Europe to meet their labor needs, but soon decided relying on enslaved people for labor was a better (and surely cheaper) solution. After the White House was burned down in 1814 during a British invasion that was part of the War of 1812, slaves were once again used during reconstruction. The White House’s history is further complicated by the fact that 12 US presidents owned slaves during their lifetime, while 41 of the 56 founding fathers owned slaves upon signing the Declaration of Independence. The history of this country is marked and marred with the suffering and exploitation of human beings. Let’s get into it.

Let’s Get Into It

The Founding Father’s & Slavery

• In his 1775 treatise, Taxation No Tyranny, British author Dr. Samuel Johnson rhetorically asked, “How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?” — He candidly pointed out the fact that many of the founding fathers who so avidly opposed British control continued to exploit, rape, murder and traffic human beings.

• The institution of slavery had been a part of American society for more than 150 years when the Revolutionary War began in 1775.

• It is estimated that nearly 10% of the Continental Army was African American at one point. This would be the only integrated American Army until the Korean War almost two hundred years later.

• Slavery existed, and was protected by law, in all 13 American colonies when they declared their independence from Great Britain in 1776.

• It’s estimated that 41 of the 56 founding fathers who signed the Declaration of Independence were slave owners.

• Four of the first 5 presidents of the United States were slave owners. 7 presidents in total owned slaves while living there. (Plus George Washington though he didn’t bring his slaves to the White House). 12 presidents owned slaves at some point in their lives.

• When Washington died, he made a statement to the nation and freed the slaves he owned in his will, the only founding father to do so. George Washington owned between 250 and 300 slaves during his presidency, according to the Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies

• Thomas Jefferson is one of the most criticized slave owner — as he should be. The man who wrote the very words, “All men are created equal,” constantly raped his slaves, impregnating Sally Hemings when she was only a child. Jefferson was the first to bring his slaves — a dozen of his household servants from Monticello — to 1600 Pennsylvania.

• Ultimately, these contradictions and discrepancies lead to the Civil War in 1861.

The White House & Slavery

• Construction on the President’s House began in 1792. The Capitol and other iconic buildings in Washington, D.C were also constructed by slaves.

• The Commissioners of the Federal District paid regional plantation owners for use of their enslaved workforce; the owners pocketed the wages, while the commissioners provided housing, some medical care, and rations for slaves.

• As of now, we can link 307 enslaved men, women and children to the building and staffing of the White House.

• Wage rolls for May 1795 list five enslaved people, Tom, Peter, Ben, Harry and Daniel, four of whom were owned by White House architect James Hoban. Daniel was owned by Hoban’s assistant, Pierce Purcell.

• Slaves were likely involved in all aspects of construction, including carpentry, masonry, carting, rafting, plastering, glazing and painting and slaves appear to have shouldered alone the grueling work of sawing logs and stones.

• In addition to constructing the buildings, slaves also worked the quarries where the stones for the government buildings came from.

• Enslaved individuals worked in a variety of positions in the president’s household, including as chefs, gardeners, stable hands, maids, butlers, lady’s maids, valets, and more.

• Enslaved individuals working in the White House often slept in the attic or in the Ground Floor rooms which were damp and rodent infested.

• Ironically, the Statue of Freedom that sits atop the Capitol dome was made with the help of Philip Reid, a man enslaved by sculptor Thomas Crawford, who was commissioned to build the statue. According to the Architect of the Capitol, Reid was paid $1.25 a day by the federal government for his contributions.

• According to surviving documentation, at least nine presidents either brought with them or hired out enslaved individuals to work at the White House: Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, John Tyler, James K. Polk, and Zachary Taylor.

• The White House Historical Association’s website says the president’s salary at this time was $25,000 a year and “it was not enough to maintain the house properly, so there was no realistic way an individual president could afford to keep up the house without either enslaved staff or extensive personal wealth.” — I feel like this could have definitely been worded in a better way, this feels gross and like a justification for slavery (in my opinion).

• The first child born at the White House was born into slavery. In November 1801, Ursula Granger Hughes, a fourteen-year-old enslaved cook, arrived at the White House from Monticello (Jefferson’s estate) to work in Thomas Jefferson’s presidential household. She gave birth to a child who soon died, likely named Asnet Hughes, in March 1802.

• Abolitionists have juxtaposed the Capitol, the symbolic heart of American democracy and liberty, with the hypocrisy of slavery, writing: “Scenes have taken place in Washington this summer that would make the devil blush through the darkness of the pit, if he had been caught in them. SIXTY HUMAN BEINGS, were carried right by the Capitol yard to the slave ship!” Here, we are specifically talking about the Yellow House, an infamous slave prison owned by William H. Williams. The Yellow House was located just south of the National Mall. A flag waved atop this prision holding Black bodies waiting to be sold down the river in the nation’s very capital.

Learn More About The Capital’s Construction Here

The history of the United States of America is far from the simple fairytale we were taught in elementary school. It is vile, exploitative and shameful in many ways. When Michelle Obama said, "I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves,” the magnitude of that statement was not lost on me and even listening to it now bring tears to my eyes. I waiver between moments of hope and moments of sobering outrage when I think of this country. How do you feel about your America?

“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for, we are the change we seek” — With love and light, Taylor Rae