Harvard's Endowment Is Profiting From Puerto Rico's Debt As The Island's Schools Face Crippling Cuts
Harvard's Endowment Is Profiting From Puerto Rico's Debt As The Island's Schools Face Crippling Cuts
Bearing a large banner reading “Harvard Divest from Baupost,” hundreds of activists marched at Harvard Yard on...
Bearing a large banner reading “Harvard Divest from Baupost,” hundreds of activists marched at Harvard Yard on Wednesday. Members of the Harvard Student Labor Action Movement participated in the protest, along with union groups, community organizers affiliated with the Center for Popular Democracy, and anti-hedge fund activists with the coalition Hedge Clippers.
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Why Black Lives Matter wants Hillary Clinton to reinstate Glass-Steagall
Why Black Lives Matter wants Hillary Clinton to reinstate Glass-Steagall
Hillary Clinton's support from financial institutions has always been her Achilles heel but running counter to this...
Hillary Clinton's support from financial institutions has always been her Achilles heel but running counter to this criticism is her pledge to end systemic racism. The two are actually closely related and if she is to make good on her promises on racial justice, she will have to test those close connections to Wall Street by directly pushing for a reinstatement of Glass-Steagall and closing the carried interest tax loophole.
The Movement for Black Lives' policy platform calls for a reinstatement of Glass-Steagall, the 1933 law that separated commercial and investment banking. The law has lately become a core focus of economic progressives.
Groups involved with the Movement for Black Lives see it as a key way to advance economic racial justice. Hillary Clinton has hesitated to publicly talk about the policy – in no small part because Bill Clinton was the one who repealed the law under his administration. The absence of an impermeable boundary between commercial and investing functions both instigated and then accelerated the 2008 financial crisis, forcing millions to lose their homes and jobs.
Communities of color were hit hard and recovered more slowly. Mortgage lenders like Wells Fargo systemically targeted black and brown borrowers for subprime loans, putting many at risk of foreclosure. In the years after the recession, many of these lenders settled multi-billion-dollar discrimination lawsuits years after the damage had been done.
Also, a 2015 American Civil Liberties Union study showed that black families continued to lose wealth years after the recession – even as white families began to climb out. The average black household lost 40 percent of its non-home equity wealth.
"Hillary Clinton has hesitated to publicly talk about Glass Steagall – in no small part because Bill Clinton was the one who repealed the law under his administration."
Home ownership is one of the most stable and reliable ways to acquire wealth in America, and the massive loss of homes among black and brown communities during the 2008 crisis will take decades to recover from. A new Glass-Steagall would help prevent banks from getting bigger and riskier, stopping them from coming back to black and brown neighborhoods and destroying even more wealth.
The carried interest tax loophole is another example. Eliminating this loophole, which lets private equity firms and hedge funds avoid taxes on part of their income, could raise $180 billion. It might sound like a drop in the bucket in the context of a national budget, but when you look closer, it is money that could make a huge difference.
It is also money that could have drastic implications for cities and states around the country that claim they don't have enough funding. The City of Chicago is facing a massive school funding crisis of more than a billion dollars. The hedge fund-cozy Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Governor Bruce Rauner routinely go to the school district for more concessions to make up the gap.
In the meantime, billionaire hedge-funders use the carried interest loophole to get out of paying taxes that translates into much needed revenue. The details of closing the loophole should be worked out by economists, but one thing is clear: if we keep a loophole that costs us billions of dollars while closing schools in black and brown neighborhoods, we are making a strong statement about the level of racial injustice we are willing to accept.
If Hillary Clinton wins the election, she will enter office at one of the most racially charged moments in American history. It is also a moment of some of the greatest income inequality in history – a reality even starker for black and brown communities. If we truly want to achieve racial justice, we should look at policies that prevent a repeat of the 2008 crisis. Closing the carried interest loophole and reinstating a modern Glass-Steagall are the tip of the iceberg. It is up to us to push Clinton for more.
Commentary by Maurice Weeks, who leads the housing & Wall Street accountability campaign at Center for Popular Democracy. Follow him on Twitter @mo87mo87.
By Maurice Weeks
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BREAKING: Maryland Legislature Restores Voting Rights To 40,000 Ex-Offenders
Source: ...
Source: ThinkProgress
Maryland’s legislature voted on Tuesday to override Gov. Larry Hogan (R)’s veto of a bill to give more than 40,000 ex-offenders in the state the right to vote while still on parole or probation.
Maryland joins 13 other states and the District of Columbia where citizens are permitted to vote immediately after serving their sentences. Hogan vetoed the legislation in May of last year after the legislature passed it with large majorities.
In response to the override, Hogan’s office issued a statement saying that he was disappointed with the decision and that “our citizens deserve better.”
“Today, twenty-nine people in the Maryland Senate decided to ignore reason and common sense and support an action that the vast majority of Marylanders vehemently oppose,” a spokesperson for the governor said. “For too long, voters have been completely ignored by their elected representatives in Annapolis.”
But there’s no evidence that a “vast majority” of Maryland voters opposed the bill, and national polls show that strong majorities of Amercians support restoring voting rights to non-violent offenders who have served their sentences. Emma Greenman, director of voting rights and democracy at the Center for Popular Democracy, told ThinkProgress that the legislature’s override is crucial for ensuring full political participation in Maryland.
“A lot of those voters are in Baltimore,” she said. “When we talk about political participation, it’s really important. This is a disenfranchised by law community. It’s so important to restore the rights for these 40,000 folks who are paying taxes, raising families, and want to have a political voice in the decisions that are affecting their lives.”
Ex-offenders and their allies unsuccessfully demonstrated in favor of the legislation in Baltimore last year to pressure the governor to sign the bill. Those in favor of the bill also wrote letters and phone banked to emphasize the importance of voting in helping people reintegrate into society after jail or prison.
The bill’s author, freshman Delegate Cory McCray (D-Baltimore), told ThinkProgress last May that it was crucial that people demonstrated to keep elected officials like Hogan accountable.
“When you can’t vote, you don’t have a seat at the table,” said McCray, whose Baltimore district has one of the highest ex-offender populations in the state. “Obviously, they’ve made mistakes, but these are our family members, our friends, our neighbors. These folks pay taxes. You can’t leave 40,000 people out of the conversation on subject matters that directly and indirectly impact them, like criminal justice reform, housing, access to fresh foods, employment, and transportation.”
Greenman, who was involved in the campaign to introduce the legislation, also said its passage will make it much easier to administer elections in the state because anyone not serving time in prison at the time of an election will be given the right to vote.
“It’s incredibly pragmatic for election administration,” she said. “It’s easy for folks on the ground, easy for folks coming out of prison to understand, and easy for election administration officials. Its a clear line.”
Greenman said she hopes the move creates momentum across the country to restore voting rights for ex-offenders. Currently, Minnesota lawmakers are considering a similar change. And more pressure is being put on Florida and the few states that permanently disenfranchise their former felons.
Room for Debate: The Public Pension Problem
Bring Financial Managers in House The New York Times - December 5, 2013, by Connie Razza - This past year, investment...
The New York Times - December 5, 2013, by Connie Razza - This past year, investment management fees on New York City pensions increased 28 percent. Over the past seven years, they have more than doubled to $472.5 million annually. The city pays very high fees even in years when the funds lose value.
Internal control of pension fund assets for public workers will help rebalance a city's relationship with Wall Street.
These fees unduly burden the funds and add to the uncertainty with which our city's retired and current employees face the future. The rapid rise in pension fund fees is just one of many symptoms of our badly broken financial system, which fails to serve the broader economy and promote general prosperity. Instead, it promotes and exacerbates inequality. As part of the New Day New York Coalition, the Center for Popular Democracy has proposed a sweeping solution. New York should create a highly skilled in-house financial management team for pension fund assets. Even with salaries high enough to attract top quality managers, the city would not pay the typical "2 percent of assets under management, plus 20 percent of profits" that hedge funds, private-equity firms and real-estate firms typically charge. The profit motive of in-house managers will be fully aligned with city employees and they will be better situated to ensure that investments are financially responsible, contributing to our broader economy and to the funds' bottom line. The creation of the in-house financial team would save the pension funds hundreds of millions of dollars a year. As significant a change as this would be, it is an idea that the city's former chief investment officer has advocated, and that incoming city comptroller Scott Stringer has expressed interest in. Also, pension funds in Alaska, California, Wisconsin and Ontario, Canada, already do this, to varying degrees. All of these funds also rely on outside managers for some of their investments, but insourcing much of the pension investment management would give the city funds meaningful leverage when working with outside management firms. Building an internal capacity to manage the pension fund assets of city workers is an important step toward rebalancing the city's relationship with Wall Street.
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Activists in Jackson Hole Pressure Fed on Inflation, Endorse Yellen
Activists in Jackson Hole Pressure Fed on Inflation, Endorse Yellen
JACKSON HOLE, Wyo.—The liberal Center for Popular Democracy’s Fed Up campaign has criticized Janet Yellen’s Federal...
JACKSON HOLE, Wyo.—The liberal Center for Popular Democracy’s Fed Up campaign has criticized Janet Yellen’s Federal Reserve in recent years for raising interest rates, lacking diversity in its senior ranks and retaining a quasi-private legal structure for its regional reserve banks.
Green-shirted Fed Up activists again have set up shop outside the central bank’s annual retreat in Grand Teton National Park. But this year, their critique of the Fed is paired with praise for Ms. Yellen and a demand that she remain the central bank’s chairwoman for another four-year term.
Read the full article here.
New York State Exposed Education: We're Watching What Charter Schools do with your hard earned money
New York State Exposed Education: We're Watching What Charter Schools do with your hard earned money
NBC News - February 25, 2015, by Berkeley Brean - You know that hard earned money you pay the state and your local...
NBC News - February 25, 2015, by Berkeley Brean - You know that hard earned money you pay the state and your local school district in taxes? Every year more of it goes to charter schools. $1.5 billion this year alone. So who's keeping an eye on that money to make sure it's not getting wasted? That's what we're digging into in our exclusive New York State Exposed Education report. The report outlining fraud and mismanagement by charter schools in New York is titled "Risking Public Money: New York Charter School Fraud." Click here to read the report
What would the reaction be if the superintendent or principal in your school district signed deals with their friends and contacts? We're going to lay out the facts and circumstances and you decide whether the charter school did something wrong or was being efficient.
Eugenio Maria de Hostos parent Jeremaine Curry says, "We want to give our kids the best foundation."
Jeremaine Curry made a choice. He wanted his son Jayden to be in a school he trusted, so he chose Eugenio Maria de Hostos -- the oldest charter school in the city. He says, "It gives our kids the best competitive advantage."
Eugenio is listed in the report that analyzed audits by the state comptroller's office. At Eugenio, the audit showed the school gave contracts to organizations either run by board members or friends of board members. For example, their first building? Owned by the Ibero Action League, the sponsor of the school and the rent was "set a bit higher."
The school pays $200,000 for Phys Ed at the downtown YMCA run by board member George Romell, $57,000 for music instruction from the Hochstein School of Music where board member Margaret Quackenbush teaches and $100,000 contract for cleaning services where the company's manager is a board member's brother.
Berkeley Brean: "Everybody who got hired or got that job either had a connection to the board or was a friend of yours."
Julio Vasquez, Chair of Eugenio Maria de Hostos Charter School: "Ah, not really. Here's what happened."
Vasquez says the non-profits they contract with were partners of the charter from day one.
Brean: "So you don't think you could have saved public money at all by putting out bids?"
Vasquez: "Not at all. Who in the community would...?”
Brean: "How would you know unless you did it?"
Vasquez: "I would not know."
The report says because of a general lack of oversight of charter schools, the state could lose $54 million in possible charter school fraud and mismanagement in one year. Regular district schools get audited at least once every five years. Charter schools can be audited, but only at the state comptroller's discretion. We tracked down Kyle Serrette -- the author of the report and we pressed him on the criticism of Eugenio.
Brean: "Is what they did all that bad?"
Kyle Serrette: "When they rented a facility without figuring out the fair market value was then that potentially wasted money."
Brean: "I mean, to me, it sounds like they were using the efficiencies that were at their fingertips."
Serrette: "They may have been doing the best they know how to do."
Serrette continues, "If you're going to enter into an agreement, you should see if there's a better deal elsewhere."
"Absolutely, I mean, that we didn't follow the procurement process in certain instances? I admit that and going forward, we will," says Vasquez. "But I have to also say that there are times when you have an emergency that you have to act and get it done. That's what we're all about."
Now, Eugenio Maria de Hostos has the second highest test scores of the 11 charters in Monroe County. Its charter just got re-approved by the state, so the state thinks it's doing a good job for children.
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Sawant Effort to Bypass Voters on Hotel Workers Initiative Fails
Sawant Effort to Bypass Voters on Hotel Workers Initiative Fails
1. City council member Kshama Sawant tried to pass a last-minute motion at yesterday’s full council meeting to “release...
1. City council member Kshama Sawant tried to pass a last-minute motion at yesterday’s full council meeting to “release the clerk file” on the hotel workers’ union initiative I-124, an initiative that mandates protections against sexual harassment of hotel housekeepers, workers who are predominantly women. (The initiative also seeks to improve workers’ health care coverage and protect unionized workers when their hotel changes ownership.)
Unite HERE Local 8, the hotel workers’ union that collected signatures for the measure, turned in more than 32,000 signatures last week, giving them more than enough to qualify for the ballot.
The council has until early August to send the initiative to the November ballot, and they planned to vote on it on next Monday July 25. By law, the council has three options when considering an initiative: they can send it to the voters, they can send it to the voters with an alternative, or they can simply approve the law themselves. However, they only have the option of approving a citizens’ initiative as law themselves one week after its introduced. In other words, they don’t have that option on July 25 when the the measure will be formally introduced. They could, however, approve it in its own right at the following full council meeting on Monday, August 2.
Sawant’s procedural move would have created the one week window, allowing the council to simply adopt the measure as an ordinance in its own right at the July 25 vote—something that would have saved the union an expensive fight at the ballot box fight.
Sawant said the law “was straight forward” and since “hotel workers have a hard life in general…I don’t think they need to spend the next several months” on a ballot fight.
Council members clearly weren’t comfortable approving a ballot measure in its own right without a comprehensive vetting and public process, something they don’t believe they can do in one or two weeks, and so, are likely, next week, to simply send the measure to the ballot next Monday.
Sawant’s motion failed 6-2 (Sally Bagshaw, Tim Burgess, Bruce Harrell, Lisa Herbold, Rob Johnson, and Mike O’Brien voted no) and Debora Juarez voted with Sawant.
Juarez made it clear that she simply seconded Sawant’s resolution to make it possible to vote on the law itself on next week and not necessarily to indicate that she supported bypassing voters. Sawant said the law “was straight forward” and since “hotel workers have a hard life in general…I don’t think they need to spend the next several months” on a ballot fight.
2. A new study on unpredictable work schedules called “Scheduling Away our Health” found that:
Hourly workers who received one week or less notice of their schedules are more likely to report their health as poor or fair (rather than good or excellent) than workers with more advance notice. About 20 percent of those receiving one week or less of schedule notice reported poor or fair health, compared to about 12 percent-13 percent for workers with more notice.
The study was done by a health care group called Human Impact Partners in conjunction with lefty group The Center for Popular Democracy.
Local group Working Washington is pushing the city council to pass a “secured scheduling” ordinance that would make employers give workers two weeks notice on schedules.
By JOSH FEIT
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Secrecy Surrounds Half Billion Handout to Charters
The U.S. Department of Education is poised to spend half a billion dollars to help create new charter schools, while...
The U.S. Department of Education is poised to spend half a billion dollars to help create new charter schools, while the public is being kept in the dark about which states have applied for the lucrative grants, and what their actual track records are when it comes to preventing fraud and misuse.
Already the federal government has spent $3.3 billion in American tax dollars under the Charter Schools Program (CSP), as tallied by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD).
But the government has done so without requiring any accountability from the states and schools that receive the money, as CMD revealed earlier this year.
Throwing good money after bad, Education Secretary Arne Duncan called for a 48 percent increase in federal charter funding earlier this year, and the House and Senate budget proposals also call for an increase—albeit a more modest one—while at the same time slashing education programs for immigrants and language learners.
The clamor for charter expansion comes despite the fact that there are federal probes underway into suspected waste and mismanagement within the program, not to mention ongoing and recently completed state audits of fraud perpetrated by charter school operators.
Earlier this year, the Center for Popular Democracy documented more than $200 million in fraud, waste, and mismanagement in the charter school industry in 15 states alone, a number that is likely to be just the tip of the iceberg.
Is now really the right time to plow more tax money into charters?
Insiders Deliberate Far from the Public Eye
The Department of Education is currently deciding what states to award $116 million this year, and more than half a billion during the five-year grant cycle.
So who is in the running and what are their track records?
Which states have applied for a grant designed to eviscerate the public school system in the name of “flexibility?” (CMD's review of state applications and reviewers' comments from the previous grant cycle exposed “flexibility” as a term of art used by the industry for state laws that allow charter schools to: operate independently from locally elected school boards, employ people to teach without adequate training or certification, and avoid collective bargaining that helps ensure that teacher-student ratios are good so that each kid gets the attention he or she deserves.)
There is no way of knowing.
The U.S Department of Education has repeatedly refused to honor a CMD request under the Freedom of Information Act for the grant applications, even though public information about which states have applied would not chill deliberation and might even help better assess which applicants should receive federal money.
The agency has even declined to provide a list with states that have applied:
“We cannot release a list of states that have applied while it is in the midst of competition."
The upshot of this reticence is that states will land grants—possibly to the tune of a hundred million dollars or more in some cases—all at the discretion of charter school interests contracted to evaluate the applications, but without any input from ordinary citizens and advocates concerned about public schools and troubled by charter school secrecy and fraud.
But, if people in a state know that a state is applying they can weigh in so that the agency is not just hearing from an applicant who wants the money, regardless of the history of fraud and waste in that state.
Charter Millions by Hook or by Crook: The Case of Ohio
Despite ED’s unwillingness to put all the cards on the table, state reports tell us that Ohio has once again applied for a grant under the program.
The state, whose lax-to-non-existing charter school laws are an embarrassment even to the industry, has previously been awarded at least $49 million in CSP money—money that went to schools overseen by a rightwing think-tank, and, more worryingly, to schools overseen by an authorizer that had its performance rating boosted this year by top education officials who removed the failing virtual schools from the statistics so as not to stop the flow of state and federal funds.
As The Plain Dealer put it in an exposé: “It turns out that Ohio’s grand plan to stop the national ridicule of its charter school system is giving overseers of many of the lowest-performing schools a pass from taking heat for some of their worst problems.”
Another component of this plan, it turns out, was to apply for more federal millions to the failing schools that—by a miraculous sleight of hand—are no longer failing.
The director of Ohio’s Office of Quality School Choice, David Hansen, fell on the sword and announced his resignation in June. But Democratic lawmakers suspect that this goes higher up in the chain of command, and have called on State Superintendent Richard Ross to resign.
Did the scrubbed statistics touting the success of Ohio’s charters find its way into the state application for federal millions, signed by Superintendent Ross?
What about other states, such as Indiana, with a similar history of doctoring data to turn failing charter schools into resounding success stories?
After Abysmal Results, States Re-apply for More Money
While the known unknowns are troubling, the known knowns—to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld—are also equally disturbing.
For example, Colorado applied for grant renewal this year.
But, the last time around, in 2010, the state landed a $46 million CSP grant thanks in no small part to the lax “hiring and firing” rules and the lack of certification requirements for charter school teachers--a reviewer contracted by the U.S. Department of Education to score the application noted.
Look at California.
Through meeting minutes from the California State Board of Education we also know that the Golden State submitted an application this year. In 2010, California was awarded $254 million over five years in CSP money, but as the Inspector General discovered in a 2012 audit, the state department of education did not adequately monitor any of the schools that received sub-grants. Some schools even received federal money “without ever opening to students.” A review by CMD revealed that a staggering 9 out of the 41 schools that shuttered in the 2014-'15 school year were created by federal money under CSP.
How about Wisconsin?
Wisconsin received $69.6 million between 2010 and 2015, but out of the charter schools awarded sub-grants during the first two years of the cycle, one-fifth (16 out of 85) have closed since, as CMD discovered.
Then there’s Indiana.
Indiana was awarded $31.3 million over the same period, partly because of the fact that charter schools in the state are exempt from democratic oversight by elected school boards. “[C]harter schools are accountable solely to authorizers under Indiana law,” one reviewer enthused, awarding the application 30/30 under the rubric “flexibility offered by state law.”
This “flexibility” has been a recipe for disaster in the Hoosier state with countless examples of schools pocketing the grant money and then converting to private schools, as CMD discovered by taking a closer look at grantees under the previous cycle:
The Indiana Cyber Charter School opened in 2012 with $420,000 in seed money from the federal program. Dogged by financial scandals and plummeting student results the charter was revoked in 2015 and the school last month leaving 1,100 students in the lurch.
Padua Academy lost its charter in 2014 and converted to a private religious school, but not before receiving $702,000 in federal seed money.
Have They Learned Anything?
Secretary Duncan has previously called for “absolute transparency” when it comes to school performance, but that’s just a talking point unless he releases the applications, or even a list of the states that are in the running, before they are given the final stamp of approval.
As it stands, there is no way of knowing if the state departments of education seeking millions in tax dollars:
Have supplied actual performance data that reflect the reality for students enrolled in charter schools rather than “scrubbed” or doctored numbers;
Try to outbid each other in “flexibility” by explaining, say, how charter schools in X can hire teachers without a license and fire them without cause. In its 2010 application, the Colorado Department of Education, for example, boasted of how charter school teachers are “employed at will by the school”;
Have corrective action plans so as to avoid repeating the costly waste and mistakes from the previous grant cycle (such as schools created by federal seed money closing within a few years or never even opening).
Because the federal charter schools program is designed to foster charter school growth, which in turn means that money will be diverted from traditional public schools to an industry that resists government enforcement of basic standards for financial controls, accountability, and democratic oversight, the public has a big stake in this and a right to know more, before their money disappears down black holes.
Source: PR Watch
Report on Paladino's Ties to Charter Schools
The Buffalo News - October 22, 2014, by Sandra Tan - As noted in...
The Buffalo News - October 22, 2014, by Sandra Tan - As noted in today's story, Carl Paladino has financial investments in six Buffalo charter schools, leading some to question whether he has a conflict of interest as a board member on votes he makes regarding charter schools. He has arranged the financing and leased the buildings that charter schools need to get off the ground and expand. Some charter school founders say they might not exist without his help. Today, Alliance for Quality Education -- a statewide coalition that supports resources and support for traditional public schools and opposes charter schools -- has released a report that refers to Paladino's charter school holdings.
The anti-Paladino report "Good for Kids or Good for Carl?" was released by Alliance for Quality Education and Citizen Action, with research assistance from The Center for Popular Democracy. The report, below, focuses on the lease payments and tax breaks Paladino's company, Ellicott Development, receives for its investments in charter schools. It culls much of its information from news stories and public information from the Erie County Industrial Development Agency, the Erie County Clerk's Office and other public records. The report, however, does not include any information regarding the debt service and front-end investments made by Paladino into these schools, which would relate directly to the company's profit margin.
More detailed information about Paladino's investments into each of his charter school holdings will be posted to the School Zone Blog separately, based on additional information Paladino provided Tuesday. (Some of that information is available as part of the graphic that ran with the main story. A print version of the graphic erroneously states that Paladino anticipates a 1 percent return on investment for the Charter School of Inquiry. That should read 11 percent.) We will also live blog tonight's Buffalo School Board meeting at 5:30 p.m. Prior to the meeting will be an anti-Paladino rally by AQE and Citizen Action.
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A New and Ugly form of Racial Bias
A New and Ugly form of Racial Bias
Take a moment and imagine that you are on a train — let’s say a train serving wine as you traverse through picturesque...
Take a moment and imagine that you are on a train — let’s say a train serving wine as you traverse through picturesque Napa Valley. You are with a group of your peers. You are adults and enjoying your time of fellowship. But because of a perceived notion that you are not fit for that environment you are unceremoniously removed from the train. Can you imagine the indignity of this encounter? Think about the anxiety this situation may cause. Think about the disrespect that you would feel.
Believe it or not, this is the reality for a large portion of the African American community. According to a 2015 Gallup poll, more African American adults feel discriminated against while shopping than doing anything. This sentiment includes encounters with the police.
A report released by the Center for Popular Democracy confirms these perceptions felt by African Americans. The report found that African American consumers are seven times more likely to be targeted as potential thieves as are white customers.
However, research on shoplifting trends in retail stores found no differences by race or ethnicity. Some research even suggests that African Americans are less likely to engage in shoplifting than are other groups. That means African Americans are being overly targeted by retailers while the real criminals get away.
This form of discrimination is not new. It is an adaptation of previous forms of discrimination transformed anew due to significant gains in civil rights protections. This form of discrimination has a name: consumer racial profiling.
Consumer racial profiling is particularly troublesome because it disproportionately affects African American women, a consumer group who engages in the retail sector at significantly higher rates than men.
The image that I asked you to conjure was not of my own making. It actually happened to a group of Black women. Notwithstanding the fact these train riders reached a final settlement just last month, California and other states can do a great deal more to end the consumer racial profiling that plagues retail environments.
Specifically in California, a piece of legislation I have authored (AB 2707—the Stop Consumer Racial Profiling Act of 2016) will amend our state’s civil rights statute to include the definition of this demeaning practice and require the state’s civil rights watchdog to investigate reported incidences of the practice. It is my hope that this legislation would pass a vote of my colleagues and be signed by the Governor. But more important than the passage of a bill is the transformation of behaviors by retailers that violate the civil and human rights of African American consumers.
Corporate loss prevention schemes must be reformed, executives, managers and rank-and-file employees must be awakened, and people of goodwill must demand that the targeting of consumers by racial characteristic is factually and morally wrong. It must end.
A new civil rights consciousness has gripped a great deal of the country. Maybe we can address some of the challenges that still occur on the basis of race by turning the tide against consumer racial profiling and letting it be a thing of the past.
By Sebastian Ridley-Thomas
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