New ACLU Report Details Pervasive Racial Discrimination in America

Group Calls U.S. Report to U.N. a Whitewash
For Immediate Release: December 10, 2007

SAN FRANCISCO -- The American Civil Liberties Union today released a comprehensive analysis of the pervasive systemic and structural racism in America. The report, Race & Ethnicity in America: Turning a Blind Eye to Injustice, is a response to the U.S. report to the United Nations’ Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) released earlier this year. The U.S. report, which the ACLU called a “whitewash,” swept under the rug the dramatic effects of widespread racial and ethnic discrimination in this country.
 
“The time is right to jumpstart a more constructive, more courageous conversation about race in America,” said Maya Harris, executive director of the ACLU of Northern California. “That conversation begins with recognition of the fact that racial bias remains perhaps the most pervasive barrier to opportunity among people of color, particularly African Americans and Latinos.” 

The ACLU report finds that discrimination in America permeates education, employment, the treatment of migrants and immigrants, law enforcement, access to justice for juveniles and adults, court proceedings, detention and incarceration, the death penalty, and the many collateral consequences of incarceration including the loss of political rights.
 
In California, the report presents research about the persistence of racial inequity and evidence of institutionalized discrimination in California’s educational and criminal justice systems, and in the treatment of immigrants.   Among the examples cited in the report: 

• Compared to schools attended mostly by white students, schools with a high concentration of African-American and Latino students are 74% more likely to lack textbooks for students to use for homework; 73% more likely to have evidence of cockroaches, rats or mice; and three times more likely to report that teacher turnover is a serious problem. (p.142)
  

• In California, African Americans are given third-strike, 25-to-life prison sentences at a rate nearly 13 times the rate of whites. African Americans are 6.5% of the population, but they make up 45% of third strikers. (p.86-87)
  

• New technologies used by police are causing harm to people of color at disproportionate rates, as is the case with taser-related injuries and deaths and the use of tasers on unarmed individuals.  In San Diego, African Americans and Latinos are twice as likely to be tasered as whites. (p.120)
  

• While the emergency response system was reportedly successful in alerting Californians to the dangers of the recent October firestorms and getting them to safety, hundreds of reports have emerged that undocumented immigrants were denied emergency services and shelter because they did not provide proper identity documents. (p. 114)

The ACLU’s report points to a number of other significant shortcomings in the government’s report, including little mention of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina (and only in the housing discrimination context) and a total omission of the “school to prison pipeline” phenomenon - the overzealous funneling of students of color out of classrooms and into the criminal justice system. The report also suffers from a complete lack of information on the dramatic increase in hate crimes and the escalating problem of police brutality.  Race & Ethnicity in America: Turning a Blind Eye to Injustice contains detailed statistics intended to help fill these gaps.
 
The ACLU’s report also details the government’s back-tracking on the promotion of racial and ethnic equality, including the government’s attack on affirmative action and the courts’ curtailment of civil rights and remedies for discrimination.

Background

The U.S. government submitted its report in April to the CERD committee, an independent group of internationally recognized human rights experts that oversees compliance with the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, a treaty signed and ratified by the U.S. in 1994. All levels of the U.S. government are required to comply with the treaty’s provisions, which require countries to review national, state and local policies and to amend or repeal laws and regulations that create or perpetuate racial discrimination. The treaty also encourages countries to take positive measures, including affirmative action, to redress racial inequalities.
 
In its “shadow report” to the U.N., compiled jointly by the ACLU’s Human Rights and Racial Justice Programs, the ACLU documents the U.S. government’s failure to fully comply with CERD in numerous substantive areas affecting racial and ethnic minorities. The report closely examines policies and practices at the federal, state and local levels which place a disproportionate burden on those most vulnerable in our society – including women, children, incarcerated persons and immigrants and non-citizens. 
 
Since its ratification, U.S. reporting on compliance has been inadequate, and this most recent report is no exception – it is a combination of two overdue reports spanning the years 2000-2006.
 
“The America we believe in is one where people are treated fairly regardless of their race and ethnicity. But unfortunately, the U.S. government is not living up to our ideals,” said Dennis Parker, Director of the ACLU’s Racial Justice Program. “We will continue to press this administration to pursue wide-ranging and rigorous measures to enforce this treaty and to end racial discrimination.”
 
In addition, the report highlights the government’s failure to protect immigrants and non-citizens, and particularly low-wage workers, from racially discriminatory policies and acts like governmental crackdowns and workplace raids.
 
Despite the treaty’s clear requirement to provide state-level information, the U.S. government’s report comprehensively reports on only four states – Oregon, South Carolina, New Mexico and Illinois – and fails to provide adequate information on some of the most racially diverse states such as California, Texas, New York and  Florida, or on the Gulf Coast states devastated by Hurricane Katrina.
 
December 10th is celebrated worldwide as International Human Rights Day. Today the ACLU and many of its affiliates across the country will hold events as part of the ACLU’s National Day of Action Against Racial Discrimination. 
 
A copy of the ACLU’s report on the U.S. government’s report to CERD can be found online at: www.aclunc.org/docs/Racial_Justice/CERD_Report_2007.pdf
 
More information on the ACLU’s Human Rights Program can be found online at: www.aclu.org/intlhumanrights