In the current Jan.-Feb. 2010 issue of the Clearinghouse Review, you’ll find a new article written by LSNC managing attorney Bill Kennedy, staff attorney Colin Bailey, and former staff attorney Emily Fisher about communications framing, entitled “Framing in Race-Conscious, Antipoverty Advocacy: A Science-Based Guide to Delivering Your Most Persuasive Message”.  It is a comprehensive article that provides both the scientific background of communications framing, as well as how legal advocates can harness it to the benefit of their clients.  I encourage all REP blog readers to read the piece and give us feedback about your efforts to implement communications framing in your practice.

I attended a conference last week hosted by Healthy City, to discuss their new Healthy City 3.0 website, which will be launched to the public on March 3, 2010.  They revealed the beta version of the website to the conference attendees and I have to say the website is impressive and user-friendly.

For those unfamiliar with Healthy City, according to its website, it “provides unprecedented access to the largest database of community resources and localized demographic and health data on a cutting-edge GIS mapping platform” for California.  Originally, Healthy City’s website served only Los Angeles County, but has recently expanded state-wide.

The new website will allow users to find services in their communities, create their own maps (without needing any technical expertise in mapping), and chart and analyze data from their communities.  The website will also allow users to upload their own data, pictures, and maps.

Stay tuned for more information about Healthy City 3.0 after the public launch on March 3, 2010.

Disney’s The Princess and the Frog depicts the long awaited first African American princess in Disney’s mainstream filmmaking.  Many other racial groups have been represented thus far, there have been princesses of native american, asian, and even middle eastern descent throughout Disney’s history.   Reception of Princess and the Frog has been mixed, and the ongoing struggle with representing African Americans in mainstream media is obvious.  NPR explored this phenomenon and a controversial review written by Scott Foundas, entitled “Disney’s ‘Princess and the Frog’ Can’t Escape Ghetto.” Foundas says that “It seemed puzzling to me that after all of this pressure over many years from various groups to create an African-American princess, that when they finally got around to doing it they decided to put her in Jim Crow-era Louisiana, hardly a shining moment in the history of African-Americans in the U.S. in terms of their standing in society.”  Other comments reflect the disappointment in that Tiana is not actually a princess in the typical Disney manner, that her “prince” is very light-skinned, and that she seems to have straight hair.  But others, particularly African-American filmgoers, were delighted by this development and felt that it was the result of a long fought battle for representation in mainstream media for children.   A Disney store manager in Culver City teared up when the live version of “Princess Tiana” came to meet people and shake hands, saying “”I have worked for the Disney company for 16 years, and this is something that this community — and I can include myself — has been waiting on.”

There is no question that Disney and other mainstream film studios who market to children play a large role in the formation of our next generation’s ideals and values when it comes to race.    The Princess and the Frog is an important step toward broadening racial representation in children’s media, but still poses an important question about the manner in which African-Americans are depicted.

In an odd commercial, some try to link health care reform to racism. According to the commercial, some on the Left claim it is racist to oppose health care reform. In the commercial a series of actors, who pretend to oppose health care reform, pose the question, “So, I Guess I’m a Racist?” 

So what is the point of this commercial and who is behind it? Does the ad advance mature discussions of race and health care reform? Or does the ad simply trivialize both issues?

MSNBC news show host Rachel Maddow discusses the commercial with Princeton University Professor Melissa Harris-Lacewell.

Missouri State Representative Robert Schaff, Republican - Makes guest appearance in anti-health care commercial stating, "I guess I'm racist."

A few years ago, a three – part PBS series entitled  “RACE – The Power of an Illusion” examined the history of institutional bias in the United States.  The third part in the series, “The House We Live In,” specifically looked at racial bias in housing and property rights. The film hit our radar again because the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center is screening it in conjunction with a training on April 20.

Who is ‘white,’ and who gets to enjoy the benefits that come from ‘whiteness?’  The film explores the history of this question beginning with  1790 Naturalization Act had limiting naturalized citizenship to “free, white persons,” and looks at the shockingly biased, contradictory standards of ‘whiteness’ imposed by the U.S. Supreme court in the 1922 – 1923 Ozawa and Thind cases:

Many new arrivals petitioned the courts to be legally designated white in order to gain citizenship. Armenians, known as “Asiatic Turks,” succeeded with the help of anthropologist Franz Boas, who testified on their behalf as an expert scientific witness.

In 1922, Takao Ozawa, a Japanese immigrant who had attended the University of California, also appealed the rejection of his citizenship application. He argued that his skin was physically white and that race shouldn’t matter for citizenship. The Supreme Court, however, decided that the Japanese were not legally white based on science, which classified them as Mongoloid rather than Caucasian. Less than a year later, in the case of United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind, the court contradicted itself by concluding that Asian Indians were not legally white, even though science classified them as Caucasian. Refuting its own reasoning in Ozawa, the justices declared that whiteness should be based not on science, but on “the common understanding of the white man.”

The film explores bias in post-WWII  segregated housing programs and how these programs and the racially discriminatory policies behind them have led to present-day disparities in net worth between average Black families and white families, largely due to the value of the family’s residence.  Dalton Conley, a sociologist and commenter in the film, discusses the peril created by policies that fail to take account of race: “[Until] we recognize that there is really no way to talk about equality of opportunity without talking about equality of condition then we are stuck with this paradoxical idea of a colorblind society in a society that is totally unequal by color.”

A full transcript of the 2003 series can be viewed here.

We may like to think that some of the older, uglier rationalizations for various forms of racial inequity  and injustice have died and gone away (to wherever one might imagine such things go after death).  That the old “nature frame,” used to justify slavery and oppression on grounds that black people were somehow less than human, has practically disappeared in America. Unfortunately, it keeps popping up.  This New York Times editorial highlights the long history in the U.S. of attempting to ‘dehumanize’ black people by depicting them as primates, from writings of Thomas Jefferson, to rampant “ape propaganda” in the 1950s, to the spread of tee shirts during the last presidential campaign depicting Barack Obama as a monkey.  A Vogue cover last year featuring basketball star LeBron James snarling and clutching a Fay Wray-esque supermodel was criticized for its obvious “King Kong” reference.

A recent New York Post cartoon satirized the story of a chimpanzee shot to death by the police after attacking a friend of its owner, implying that the dead chimp had written the federal stimulus package that President Obama had just signed into law. 

Post Chairman Rupert Murdoch issued a statement of apology for the cartoon.

The Equal Justice Society recently honored the San Francisco Latino ? Black Union Carpenters and La Raza Centro Legal at its Annual Gala, held on December 5th in San Francisco.

According to the Socialist Worker’s article, “Divide and conquer in San Francisco“, the racist practices of the construction company, Rubecon, included:

• Job-site supervisors taking $100 to 400 per week from Latino workers, either through withholding the money or forcing workers to give kickbacks.
• Black carpenters being told there was no work available, even though contractors continued to hire Latino workers.
• Blacks and Latinos working on separate crews.
• Management hiding non-union workers to avoid detection by union officials.
• Black workers being accused of being slow and producing shoddy work.
• Black workers often working fewer than 40 hours per week, while Latino workers usually work overtime and sometimes weekends.
• Latino workers being forced to do fast and shoddy work; one job-site supervisor said it was because only Black people would live in those units.

After 150 workers walked off work to protest the conditions and practices, the Construction Workers News Service reports that Rubecon went after the workers in court. At a hearing in which Rubecon sought a restraining order against the Halls, the article continues:

“Rubecon … charged [union organizers] with organizing an anti-Latino “riot” on October 2 and 3 and asked for a restraining order that would bar the two from the area near the construction site.”

The organizers refuted the charge, which had attempted to drive a racial wedge between two allied groups. The judge found the evidence inadequate and did not grant the restraining order sought.

At a 2008 May Day Rally rally, The Militant reports, Gerardo Sánchez, a meatpacking worker said of the Black and Latino Union Carpenters:

“The struggle of these brothers is inspiring other workers… It is touching something that workers know is important—overcoming the divide-and-rule tactics that bosses use in every workplace. It is through such fights that the unions will be strengthened. That will lay the basis for a labor party based on the unions, a party to represent the interests of workers.”

Truly, the Black and Latino Union Carpenters solidarity overcame the centuries-old practice of using race to turn workers on each other. Congratulations to the Union Carpenters for their much-deserved award and their victory over both external and internal racism.

Other articles:

• http://www.hispanictips.com/2008/03/26/building-racism-segregation-racism-used-black-latino-carpenters-against-each-other-low-income-housing-site-francisco/
• http://www.sfweekly.com/2008-03-26/news/building-racism
• http://graypantherssf.igc.org/08-02-28-Support_anti-racist_carpenters.htm
• http://kathmanduk2.wordpress.com/2008/03/26/black-and-latino-construction-workers-build-alliance/

* * *

In other news of solidarity working across racial lines, The American Prospect reports Black and Brown (Working) Together in Mississippi. Organized by The Mississippi Project, shipyard workers organized to, as one periodical stated it, “stop 21st Century slavery.” The article states:

The shipyard workers – who are from India – have filed a class action suit against Signal International, a marine fabrication company; recruiters in India and the United States; and a New Orleans immigration lawyer, Malvern Burnett; accusing them of forced labor, human trafficking, fraud and civil rights violations.

The suit charges that in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, more than 500 Indian men “were trafficked into the United States through the federal government’s H-2B guestworker program to provide labor and services . . . Plaintiffs were subjected to forced labor as welders, pipefitters, shipfitters, and other marine fabrication workers at Signal operations in Pascagoula, Mississippi and Orange, Texas.”

Mississippi Project Founder, Jaribu Hill, provides insights into the development of this campaign and how it fights worker exploitation and racism in a YouTube interview.

In a courageous piece of advocacy, the Alameda County Homeless Action Center, argued that proposed cuts in the general assistance program would have a disparate impact upon African Americans in Alameda County. In support of their contention staff attorney, John Engstrom, crafted a Racial Impact Statement clearly demonstrating how the cuts would fall most heavily upon those in the African American community. He also challenged the “exemption process” that classified most unemployed African Americans as employable by describing the societal structures that prevented these recipients from accessing job opportunities. Kudos to Pattie Wall, John Engstrom and the clients of the Homeless Action Center for so effectively putting race on the table in their advocacy.

The Frameworks Institute recently completed a five year survey of default frames used by the public to understand matters of race in America. These dominant frames rise from deeply held American values but they are also reinforced/primed by the limited analytical framework used by the media. The FrameWorks staff thoughtfully suggest ways in which our advocacy can apply reframing principles to move the public towards more equitable policies on race in America. The FrameWorks message brief, Framing Race, summarizes their research on framing and provides practical pointers for facilitating transformative discussions of race in our communities. The full report, The Architecture of a New Racial Discourse, is also worth reading as it provides fascinating insight into the reactions of focus groups held throughout the United States on which frames work and which don’t.

On March 27, 2008 at 10:00 p.m. (after “Lost“) the Public Broadcasting Company will launch a four week series on racial/ethnic inequities in America’s health care system. The series, entitled Unnatural Causes: is Inequality Making us Sick, will unfold in four one hour presentations.

The makers of this documentary series ask some provocative questions. Why does the United States, one of the richest countries on the planet rank 29th in life expectancy, even worse than very poor countries like Costa Rica and Chile? How does lack of neighborhood infrastructure spread disease just as surely as germs and viruses? Why, at every level are communities of color worse off than their white counterparts?

The first installment, In Sickness and in Wealth, examines how socioeconomic status affects health.

In week two, When the Bough Breaks looks at the infant mortality rate among African-Americans, while Becoming American reveals asks why the health of poor Mexican American immigrants erodes when they come to America.

The third week presents Bad Sugar and Place Matters that asks how your surrounding built environment can get inside your body just like smog and toxic waste.

The series ends with two segments. Collateral Damage and Not Just a Paycheck demonstrate how a legacy of poverty affects health and the very direct impact that factory closures have on an individuals and community’s health.

On Sunday, the Associated Press reported on the current declining trend in African-American lawyers appearing before the Supreme Court. The article suggests several factors that may account for the growing paucity of minority lawyers at the nation’s highest court:

• continuing problems in recruiting and retaining blacks and other minorities at the top law firms;
• the rise of a small group of lawyers who focus on Supreme Court cases;
• the decline in civil rights cases that make it to the high court; and
• the court’s dwindling caseload.

No doubt, the loss of effective affirmative action policies at many law schools will exacerbate this trend.

The New York Times reports in Race Gap: Crime vs. Punishment on the arguments made before the Supreme Court last week which examined the legitimacy and mandatory nature of sentencing guidelines that result in racially disparate impact among those convicted of powder vs. crack cocaine offenses. In the 1987 McClesky decision, the Supreme Court took up a similar issue in the context of the administration of the death penalty. Some (most notably Brian Stevenson) have compared the Supreme Court’s decision in McClesky (dismissing demonstrated racial bias in death penalty sentencing) to the Dred Scott and Plessy v. Ferguson cases, which established and upheld the “separate but equal” doctrine. Without answering, the article asks to what degree the criminal justice system might be overtly racist and suggests that stereotypes and unconscious/unintentional discrimination may be at work.

The Harvard Project on Law and Mind Sciences recently examined the effect of stereotyping in the criminal justice system with reports on visual processing of African-American criminal suspects and defendants who look “deathworthy”.

A big thank you to Brian Lawlor who brought this article to our attention.

The Equal Justice Society today issued a report, “Framing Race and Class in the Wake of Hurricane Katrina: A Natural and Unnatural Disaster,” an examination of coverage by different kinds of media of this unique natural and unnatural disaster in an effort to understand how the story of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath were being presented to American audiences.

On the heels of the Supreme Court’s school integration decision, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund has released “A Girl Like Me” a documentary by New York City high school student Kiri Davis. Davis replicates and captures on film Kenneth and Mamie Clark’s doll experiment (the study that undergirded Brown v. Board of Education) with what can only be described as heartbreaking results with respect to how deeply ingrained self-directed racial bias still is even among the youngest of African-American children. The silver lining: A reaffirmation that there are smart, passionate, dedicated young people like Davis to take on the mantle of a new civil rights movement.

Looking for the Media’s take on the Court’s recent school integration decision? We’ve put together a smattering of some of the best articles we’ve read today.

Justices limit use of race in placement of student (The New York Times)

Synopsis: The Supreme Court rejected two public school integration plans (one in Seattle and the other in Louisville, Kentucky). The Majority, however, left open the possibility of using race-based means to achieve diversity in public schools. As Justice Kennedy stated, “a district may consider it a compelling interest to achieve a diverse student population
[and] race may be one component of that diversity.” Despite this allowance, the Court’s holding may halt similar plans in hundreds of districts nationwide that use race to achieve diversity. The Mayor of Louisville’s expressed disappointment with the decision citing the Louisville plan’s success in breaking down racial barriers for over the last 30years.

Court limits schools on race (The San Francisco Chronicle – Associated Press)

Synopsis: Roberts, in the Majority opinion, stated, “the way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” The Majority concluded that the two school plans violated the Equal Protection clause. Justice Breyer, in his dissent, stated Roberts’ opinion undermined the promise of integrated schools as provided in Brown v. Board of Education. Roberts countered that the courts decision was consistent with the Brown decision, to which dissenting Justice Stevens commented that Roberts’ reliance on Brown’s ruling against integration was “a cruel irony.”

Parsing the high court’s ruling on race and schools (National Public Radio)

Synopsis: This article both evaluates the Court’s ruling and the likely impacts of its holding. In addition, the article provides an insightful comparison of the decisions with other recent Supreme Court decisions regarding diversity and education.

The Supreme Court strikes down school integration policies (The Los Angeles Times)

Synopsis: This article explores the far-reaching implications of the Court’s decision and pays special attention to Justice Kennedy’s concurring opinion. The piece also notes that the Court’s decision does not implicate affirmative action programs in public colleges & universities as it explicitly recognizes “the unique context of higher education.”

A big “thank you” to Gemma, a LSNC law clerk, for compiling this list.