The racial justice reckoning currently happening in our nation highlights the deep-rooted historic and institutional racism that is and has always been present at our country’s core, and the need to renew and strengthen our efforts to combat it and strive toward racial justice. OADC is proud to stand in solidarity and support all communities and individuals impacted by ongoing historic and systemic racism.
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OADC Statement, June 2020
The recent brutal murder of George Floyd and other countless acts of police brutality against African/Black Americans, and resultant protests and discussion of racism in America has caused the OADC to face the uncomfortable reality of our complicity in perpetuating white supremacy. We vow to self-reflect and take responsibility, to never stop seeking guidance and information from those affected by racism, and to do whatever we can to oppose racism and put our intentions into action for meaningful change within our own organization and society at large. We found the following, How to Be a Good Ally to Marginalized Populations, to be enlightening, and hope you do, too. In addition, a list of helpful resources is at the end.
How to Be a Good Ally to Marginalized Populations:
1. Be prepared to put in work to understand issues faced by marginalized populations. If you are not part of this population, you may not understand what issues they face and how these issues impact them – both historically and today. It is important to understand that this gives you privilege over people in these marginalized populations because you have not had to face these issues. Don’t ask or expect people in the marginalized population to do work to educate you on these issues – make the effort to educate yourself. Once you have educated yourself, educate your own communities around these issues… and continue to educate yourself.
2. Amplify voices from the marginalized communities. While issues may be new to you, understand that they are likely not new to the communities that have been experiencing them. People from these communities are likely already organizing around and speaking out about these issues and have been for years. Promote these efforts that are already underway. Follow and share posts by people from marginalized communities on social media, read books/articles written by them, consume art/pop culture produced by them, and research organizations that already exist in these areas.
3. Listen, listen, listen. Listen actively. Don’t feel the need to contribute to conversations. Don’t dismiss lived experiences just because they are unfamiliar to you. Ask how you can support these communities.
4. Watch your language. Be careful not to use dismissive, degrading, or discriminatory language, even in a joking manner. Call out other people who use language like this around you.
5. Acknowledge and examine your internal biases.
6. Do not center yourself in the narrative. Don’t insert your own personal experiences into a narrative that isn’t about you. Instead, center voices from the marginalized communities.
7. Start a long-term strategy of supporting and affecting change in ways that feel good to you. Consider offering time as a volunteer, donating to organizations working on issues that speak to you, supporting businesses owned by people from these communities, or getting involved with local ballot initiatives or local political races that you find meaningful.
8. Be gracious with yourself on your journey. You will make mistakes and that’s okay, we are all learning. Acknowledge your mistakes, apologize, learn, and commit to doing better moving forward. Understand that this will be a lifelong process and that you will need to keep learning, listening, and educating yourself and others.
Useful Quotes From Other State and Federal Cases Regarding Racial Disparities
§ Estate of Jones v. City of Martinsburg, 961 F.3d 661 (4th Cir. 2020) “Although we recognize that our police officers are often asked to make split-second decisions, we expect them to do so with respect for the dignity and worth of black lives.”
§ State v. Ivey, 360 N.C. 562, 564, 633 S.E.2d 459, 461 (2006).“[T]his Court will not tolerate discriminatory application of the law based upon a citizen's race.”
§ Commonwealth v. Warren, 475 Mass. 530 (Mass. 2016) (holding that defendant did not behave in an inherently suspicious manner by attempting to evade police interaction when approached for a report of a break-in.) This case cited Boston Police Department data and a 2014 ACLU of Massachusetts report on racially discriminatory department practices that disproportionately targeted Black and Latino communities.
§ US. v. Smith, 794 F.2d 681 (7thCir. 2015)(finding that a black male defendant was seized and not free to leave). The court’s opinion highlighted fact that Mr. Smith was black male in urban areas; that police relations were strained and that Mr. Smith knew any wrong move could result in death. The Federal Public Defender’s brief cited police misconduct studies.
§ Everett Miles v. United States, DCCA, No. 13-CF-1523, March 29, 2018 (finding that flight by black male was not per se incriminating and referencing the “proliferation of visually documented police shootings of African Americans…and the Black Lives Matter protests.” At 17)
§ State of Washington v. Kevin J. Boot, Racism as Trauma Brief.
Litigation and Sentencing
Racial Justice Toolkit, There are additional motions, interview scripts, and legal materials available for defenders by signing up at defendracialjustice.org
NJDC-NCJFCJ bench cards (e.g., Bail, Fines, and Fees and Adolescent Development) are here.
Offer of Proof of Additional Evidence regarding racial inequality brief by Tara Jorfald, Noble Law is here.
Juvenile Defense/Children and Race
Racial Justice for Youth has created a Case Advocacy Toolkit, Community Education Resources, and more. See the resources here.
Racial Justice Toolkit, There are additional motions, interview scripts, and legal materials available for defenders by signing up at defendracialjustice.org
American Academy of Pediatrics, Traumatic Impact of Racism on Young People
Ambassadors For Racial Justice at Georgetown Law
Who We Are by Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth.
Kristen Henning, The Reasonable Black Child: Race, Adolescence, and the Fourth Amendment, 67 Amer. U. L. Rev, 2018
National Juvenile Defender Center issued a Racial Justice Statement and an Equity Statement.
Partner Statements, Data, and Scientific Reports
NLADA’s Racial Justice Action Plan released in 2018 commits NLADA and its members to: (1) speak with clarity about poverty and racial equity; (2) improve our internal governance to reflect the racial equity we seek to secure in our communities; and (3) support a purpose-driven practice that employs strategic advocacy to advance racial justice in our communities.
NLADA’s Fight Against Implicit Bias and Racial Inequality (FAIR) Pledge, developed by our Client Policy Group. The FAIR Pledge calls upon every equal justice advocate and organization to confront implicit bias, improve capacity to effectively serve clients, and positively advance racial justice.
NLADA’s Diversity & Inclusion Sections: Click for information on the Latino Advocates (Civil and Defender), Native American Law (Civil and Defender), and Black Public Defender Association.
NLADA Resources for Public Defenders on Racial Justice.
Othering & Belonging Institute, The 2020 uprisings, and the Kerner report: Measures to address racial inequality (June 9, 2020).
NAACP LDF BLOG, Structural Racism Is A Public Health Crisis (May 2020).
NAACP LDF, Thurgood Marshall Institute, Addressing Racial Disparities in COVID-19 (May 2020).
Quattrone Center for the Fair Administration of Justice, Examining Racial Disparities in Criminal Case Outcomes among Indigent Defendants in San Francisco (May 2017)
The Sentencing Project, Reducing Racial Disparity in the Criminal Justice System A Manual for Practitioners and Policymakers (2008).
NACDL, Racial Disparity and Public Defense Webpage
NACDL, The Champion, Nazgol Ghandnoosh, How Defense Attorneys Can Eliminate Racial Disparities in the Criminal Justice (2018).
NACDL, The Champion: Reducing Racial Disparities (June 2013).
Federal Defender Fact Sheet, U.S. Sentencing Commission Report Suggesting that Increased Judicial Discretion Leads to Greater Racial Disparity is Based on a Flawed Analysis and is Being Misused to Support Calls for a Mandatory Sentencing System that Would Increase Racial Injustice (Jan. 2018).
APA, Brennan Center, Foundation for Criminal Justice, NACDL, Center for Leadership on Urban Solutions, NY County Lawyers Association, Criminal Justice in the 21st Century: Eliminating Racial and Ethnic Disparities in the Criminal Justice System (2013).
NAACP Ten Equity Considerations of the Coronavirus COVID-19 Outbreak in the United States.
National Juvenile Defender Center issued a Racial Justice Statement and an Equity Statement.
Citizens For Racial Equity in Washtenaw (CREW) Race to Justice Report.
Books and Additional Reading
Are Prisons Obsolete (Davis, Angela Y., 2003)
Chokehold: A Renegade Prosecutor’s Radical Thoughts on How to Disrupt the System [Policing Black Men] (Butler, Paul, 2017)
The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America (Rothstein, Richard, 2017)
The Condemnation of Blackness (Muhammad, Khalil Gibran, 2019)
The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism (Baptist, Edward, 2014)
How to Be an Antiracist (Kendi, Ibram X., 2019)
Just Mercy (Stevenson, Bryan, 2014)
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (Alexander, Michelle, 2010)
A People’s History of the United States (Zinn, Howard 2005)
Policing Black Bodies: How Black Lives Are Surveilled and How to Work for Change (Hattery and Smith, 2017)
Policing the Black Man: Arrest, Prosecution, and Imprisonment (Davis, Angela J., 2017)
Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome (Dr. Degruy, Joy, 2011)
Privilege and Punishment: How Race and Class Matter in Criminal Court (Clair, Matthew, 2020)
The Process is the Punishment: Handling Cases in a Lower Criminal Court (Feeley, Malcolm M., 1979)
The Racial Contract. (Mills, Charles W., 1997)
Red Record New Special Edition (Wells, Ida B., 2020)
Sister Outsider (Lorde, Audre, 1984)
Stamped from the Beginning. (Kendi, Ibram X, 2016)
The Souls of Black Folks (DuBois, W.E.B., 1994)
We Were Eight Years in Power (Coates, Ta-Nehisi, 2017)
White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk about Racism (Diangelo, Robin 2018)
Ella Wilks-Harper, Nikhita Chulani, Jamie Macwhirter, Neelam Tailor and Katie Lamborn. "How 'white fragility' Reinforces Racism", The Guardian, 26 June 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2020/jun/26/how-white-fragility-obstructs-the-fight-against-racism-video-explainer
Community Justice Exchange, A Social Media Toolkit for Organizing and Advocacy to End Mass Criminalization and Incarceration
W.K. Kellogg Foundation’s Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation Summit has a series of guides that you can develop for your office and work on different topics, including the law, changing the narrative, racial healing, and separation. Register for free on the website to download and develop guides: http://www.racialequityresourceguide.org/TRHTSummit
John T. Edge & Tunde Wey, "Who Owns Southern Food", 3 June 2020, https://www.oxfordamerican.org/magazine/item/870-who-owns-southern-food
Marc Mauer, Racial Impact Statements as a Means of Reducing Unwarranted Sentencing Disparities, 5 OHIO STATE J. CRM L. 19 (2007).
Center for Social Inclusion Website Nadia Owusu and Micah Gilmer,
Moving Racial Equity and Inclusion from the Periphery to the Center: Lessons from an Incomplete Project," Nonprofit Quarterly, 31 May 2017
Laurin Mayeno Consulting, "Seeing and Naming Racism in Nonprofit and Public Organizations," Mayeno Consulting Website, 22 June 2015
Alvin Schexnider, “Operationalizing Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion in your Nonprofit,” Medium.com, 30 August 2017
Jasmine Burnett, "Navigating a 'Crooked Room': Reflections From Black Women on Their Experience in Progressive Spaces," Rewire.News, 25 February 2015
Frances Kunreuther and Sean Thomas-Breitfeld, "Opinion: It's Bias That Hobbles People of Color, Not Lack of a Leadership Pipeline," The Chronicle of Philanthropy, 6 June, 2017
Frances Kunreuther and Sean Thomas-Breitfeld, "Race to Lead: Confronting the Nonprofit Racial Leadership Gap," Race to Lead, Building Movement Project, 2017 2020
Implicit bias test from Harvard
Reggie Rivers; "I am a Rottweiler"
Kristen Henning, The Reasonable Black Child: Race, Adolescence, and the Fourth Amendment, 67 Amer. U. L. Rev, 2018
Audio and Video Resources
(2020) Seeing White [Podcast], Available at https://www.sceneonradio.org/seeing-white/
(2020) 1619 [Podcast] Available at https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/23/podcasts/1619-slavery-anniversary.html
Note: these resources are provided for reference and are not implicitly endorsed by the OADC by inclusion in this list.