Ally Action Project Week 3: Examining Racist Policies
This week was spent taking a look at strengthening and leveraging the economics of minority groups, living while black, and the effects of the covid-19 pandemic on minorities.
We started by examining “Blackout Day”, which was a day intended to not spend any money outside of black and minority communities. This was intended to be a moratorium on the spending power of the black community, which is about $10B spent per day. Typically this spending is largely done outside of black communities, which has caused a lack of financial growth in minority businesses. Calvin Martyr uploaded a video to YouTube, which went viral, after the murder of George Floyd to call for solidarity by not spending any money.
https://theblackoutcoalition.com
We followed the topic into the spending of black consumers and found the annual spending power is $1.4 trillion. We discovered that, on average, a dollar circulates 6 hours in black communities versus 17 days in white communities. We encouraged people to use several organizations to find black owned businesses to spend money at, including ‘we buy black’, ‘Official Black Wall Street’, ‘Chez Nous Guide’, and ‘Eat Okra’. Additional spending in the black community would increase the average time a dollar is allowed to circulate, which would help build black owned businesses, and can help alleviate effects of redlining discussed in the previous week.
https://officialblackwallstreet.com
Our focus shifted from here to the concept of “living while black”, or the recent trend of racism-driven 911 calls to the police, for situations that would typically be deescalated quickly. We researched several examples of 911 calls from the last few years where a white person had called 911 to report a black person conducting innocuous actions including sitting in Starbucks, BBQ-ing, and standing on a sidewalk. This has happened throughout history, even with Emmitt Till who in 1955 was brutalized and murdered for allegedly flirting with a white woman who later admitted she had lied about the interaction. These reports themselves are crimes are already punishable with measures including up to a $5000 fine and one to three years in prison. The failure to enforce these rules when investigating situations. Our action is to be more aware and to incentivize people to not make false reports. We can contact our local District Attorneys directly by using the Justice Department website to report these crimes and end the issue of false reporting.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/bbq-becky-golfcart-gail-list-unnecessary-911-calls/story?id=58584961
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-death-of-emmett-till
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2292
https://www.justice.gov/usao/find-your-united-states-attorney
Because of the continuing impact of the covid-19 pandemic, we started to explore the different related impacts minorities have been struggling with. We highlighted an upcoming crisis in minority communities when the CARES Act that currently protects 28% of renters in the US from eviction ends on 7/25/20. Minority renters comprise 47% of all renters, and have an unemployment rate 50% higher than whites. Tenants may potentially be forced to pay months of past rent and about 19 million tenants risk eviction by September. We should all be immediately contacting our senators and advocate for the bill: H.R.7301 - “Emergency Housing Protections and Relief Act of 2020”, which would extend protections like moratoriums on collecting rent for people without a job because of covid-19.
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf
https://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/7301/text
While access to a safe home is paramount to improving black communities, access to food is another impact of the covid-19 pandemic. Urban food deserts, areas that have no grocery stores within less than a mile, are seeing deeper impact during this pandemic. As a result of redlining, 26.1% of black and 22.4% of hispanic households are more likely to be in food deserts than white family households. The pandemic has also disrupted access to food and caused higher prices on staples like eggs, dairy, and meat. We can contact our House representatives directly using the House of Representatives website to show support for the "Healthy Food Access for All Americans Act”. Food pantries are desperately in need of donations to help serve these impacted communities.
https://digitalcommons.library.tmc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1278&context=childrenatrisk
https://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative
https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/1717
Continuing our research on covid-19’s effect on black and minority communities, we saw that minorities have higher mortality rates with covid-19. Black Americans specifically have the highest mortality rates, about 2.3 times higher than whites. Further research by the CDC identified an implicit bias in healthcare that treats minorities differently, with minorities being stereotyped as less able to stick to treatments, not accepting personal ownership of their care, and to have higher rates for risky behavior. We can help during the pandemic by volunteering locally in at-risk communities or even perform volunteering from home.
https://www.apmresearchlab.org/covid/deaths-by-race
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/need-extra-precautions/racial-ethnic-minorities.html
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4638275
https://www.nationalservice.gov/serve
Minorities are the majority of essential workers in food and agriculture, industrial, commercial, residential facilities, and service industries, and at the same time, essential workers have quietly been infected with and dying of covid-19. In the UFCW labor union alone, there have been over 29,000 essential workers exposed to people with positive covid-19 cases. We can directly help to protect these essential workers by wearing a mask at all times when leaving the house and following the ‘ShopSmart’ guidelines. ShopSmart was a campaign we found that provides guidelines about where to shop, how to make sure you are supporting a union that enforces protections for workers, and how to buy products responsibly.
http://www.ufcw.org/coronavirus/shopsmart
Upon completing week 3 of our education, we are inspired to continually strive to bring current and important issues to the attention of our growing audience. We hope that you participate with us to create action that accelerates bringing equality to our society.