Anti-racist actions and accountability: not more empty promises (original) (raw)
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Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, 2020
We are outraged at the police brutality that allows the state-sanctioned murder of Black people in the United States. Time and again we have seen Black lives cut short by the police. In addition to the actions of the police, we have repeatedly seen innocent Black people harassed or killed by their White neighbors simply because they were suspicious, were nervous, or gave in to their collective paranoia. This violence and the systemic anti-Black racism that fuels it must be dismantled. George Floyd's slow, drawn-out murder under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin, while other officers looked on, is a national disgrace. The fact that his murder was precipitated by a store owner following standard procedure to report counterfeit money, which does not require arrest or physical abuse to get answers about where the counterfeit currency comes from, illustrates that even seemingly innocent "standard procedure" can result in Black people's deaths. The fact that he survived the coronavirus only to be murdered a month later illustrates the many intersections of vulnerability Black people experience. This disgrace is repeated over and over. Like Eric Garner, Black people are murdered in police custody on suspicion of minor infractions, using tactics that have already been banned. Like Breonna Taylor, Atatiana Jefferson, and Botham Jean, Black people are murdered by police in their homes. Like Tony McDade and Kayla Moore, Black transgender people are murdered, misgendered by police and the media, and even blamed for their own deaths. Like Tamir Rice, they are murdered for appearing to be "adults." Like Rekia Boyd, they are murdered even when police are "off duty." And police are not the only ones who view Black lives as expendable. Like Ahmaud Arbery, Black people are murdered by their White neighbors for jogging. Like Trayvon Martin, they are murdered by selfappointed neighborhood watches for simply walking around. Like Renisha McBride, they are murdered for seeking help after a car accident. These patterns continue because anti-Black racism is systemic in the United States, a society whose founding and economic success was based on the institution of Black slavery. Developing a view of Black people as less than human helped 941019S REXXX10.
Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal, 2020
PurposeThe purpose of this essay is to highlight the urgent need for antiracism resource generation in organizations today.Design/methodology/approachThis essay weaves together popular press articles, academic writings and the authors' lived experiences to summarize, clarify and extend the work needed inside of organizations and academia to dismantle systemic racism.FindingsWe define antiracist resources as personal and material assets that counteract systemic racism through informing and equipping antiracist actions, and identify three resources—adopting a long-term view for learning the history of racism, embracing discomfort to acknowledge racist mistakes and systematically assess how organizational structures maintain white supremacy—for organizations to address systemic racism.Research limitations/implicationsWhile there is a critical need for more antiracism research, there are standards and guidelines that should be followed to conduct that research responsibly with antir...
Rise of The Guardians: Challenging Racism in a New World Order
America is irreparably tainted by the original sin of slavery. While it yearns to be recognised as a post-racial society, racism consumes every aspect of a person of colour's existence, and yet is so amorphous in its omnipresence that it is notoriously difficult to address. Against the politicisation of the Black body, this essay considers whether disavowing of the system and critiquing its perpetrators can legitimately realign its values in favour of racial equality. It evaluates the consequences of racial disparities in the criminal law, the role of Critical Race Theory in highlighting covert racism, and the rise of #BlackLivesMatter as instrumental in challenging police brutality, to determine the ideal mechanisms and proposals for instituting concrete reform.
Social Science Quarterly, 2021
Past police reforms have tended to be small fixes to big systemic problems. As opposed to the changes advocated for in the wake of the killing of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and others just five years ago-which included mandatory body-worn cameras and officer bias training-protesters in 2020 push for systemic change, not just policy change. We argue that a starting point to evaluate the potential outcomes of calls for systemic change is to better situate racism in the study of policy implementation. This is important for understanding why past incremental changes to policing-many well-resourced and nominally supported by police leadership-have not ultimately changed police officer behavior. If racism is to be taken seriously by public administration scholars, then a new conceptual understanding is called for along with better efforts to operationalize the crippling impact racism has on public organizations.
Keeping an Eye on Power in Maintaining Racial Oppression and Race-Based Violence
The American Journal of Bioethics, 2016
In their article “Bioethicists Can and Should Contribute to Addressing Racism,” Danis, Wilson, and White (2016) call for the field of bioethics to end its relative silence on issues of race and racism and to engage issues of police violence toward blacks with the urgency they require. We applaud their call, including their suggested interventions in the realms of scholarship, teaching, ethics consultation, and more. Our enthusiastic support of the article’s main themes also prompts our desire to expand and shift the view of the “problem” to focus more centrally on operations of power and the ways in which bioethics as a field is implicated in this operation, not only by its scant attention, but also by its institutionalization and practices. Without such understandings, any call to action regarding the injustices to which the authors so skillfully draw our attention loses its urgency and weight.