Housing Discrimination Quotes

In friendship...we think we have chosen our peers. In reality a few years' difference in the dates of our births, a few more miles between certain houses, the choice of one university instead of another...the accident of a topic being raised or not raised at a first meeting--any of these chances might have kept us apart. But, for a Christian, there are, strictly speaking no chances. A secret master of ceremonies has been at work. Christ, who said to the disciples, "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you," can truly say to every group of Christian friends, "Ye have not chosen one another but I have chosen you for one another." The friendship is not a reward for our discriminating and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each of us the beauties of others.

For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us to temporarily beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. Racism and homophobia are real conditions of all our lives in this place and time. I urge each one of us here to reach down into that deep place of knowledge inside herself and touch that terror and loathing of any difference that lives here. See whose face it wears. Then the personal as the political can begin to illuminate all our choices.

If we are to fight discrimination and injustice against women we must start from the home for if a woman cannot be safe in her own house then she cannot be expected to feel safe anywhere.

In the era of colorblindness, it is no longer socially permissible to use race, explicitly, as a justification for discrimination, exclusion, and social contempt. So we don’t. Rather than rely on race, we use our criminal justice system to label people of color “criminals” and then engage in all the practices we supposedly left behind. Today it is perfectly legal to discriminate against criminals in nearly all the ways that it was once legal to discriminate against African Americans. Once you’re labeled a felon, the old forms of discrimination—employment discrimination, housing discrimination, denial of the right to vote, denial of educational opportunity, denial of food stamps and other public benefits, and exclusion from jury service—are suddenly legal. As a criminal, you have scarcely more rights, and arguably less respect, than a black man living in Alabama at the height of Jim Crow. We have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it.

But equal treatment in an unequal society could still foster inequality. Because black men were disproportionately incarcerated and black women disproportionately evicted, uniformly denying housing to applicants with recent criminal or eviction records still had an incommensurate impact on African Americans.

But in Friendship, being free of all that, we think we have chosen our peers. In reality, a few years' difference in the dates of our births, a few more miles between certain houses, the choice of one university instead of another, posting to different regiments, the accident of a topic being raised or not raised at a first meeting—any of these chances might have kept us apart. But, for a Christian, there are, strictly speaking, no chances. A secret Master of the Ceremonies has been at work. Christ, who said to the disciples "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you," can truly say to every group of Christian friends "You have not chosen one another but I have chosen you for one another." The Friendship is not a reward for our discrimination and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each the beauties of all the others. They are no greater than the beauties of a thousand other men; by Friendship God opens our eyes to them. They are, like all beauties, derived from Him, and then, in a good Friendship, increased by Him through the Friendship itself, so that it is His instrument for creating as well as for revealing.

rest of my teachers maybe did the best they could, but they just needed a lot of help making their best better. There were so many things we needed in those classrooms, in our city, in our state, in our country that our teachers could have provided if they would have gone home and really done their homework. They never once said the words: “economic inequality,” “housing discrimination,” “sexual violence,” “mass incarceration,” “homophobia,” “empire,” “mass eviction,” “post traumatic stress disorder,” “white supremacy,” “patriarchy,” “neo-confederacy,” “mental health,” or “parental abuse,” yet every student and teacher at that school lived in a world shaped by those words.

I must remind you that starving a child is violence. Neglecting school children is violence. Punishing a mother and her family is violence. Discrimination against a working man is violence. Ghetto housing is violence. Ignoring medical need is violence. Contempt for poverty is violence.

So, you see, you're not the only ones who have lost someone. War doesn't discriminate, Petra. We'll all have to deal with the scars. It's easier to handle when you know you're not alone and that your sins are forgiven.

Black behavior—not the wrenching housing and economic discrimination—was blamed for these impoverished Black enclaves.

What white middle America loathes these days are poor and poorish people, especially the kind who look and sound like they just might live in a house trailer. They will swear on a stack of Lands' End catalogs that they are not bigots, but, human nature being what it is, we are all kicking someone else's dog around, whether we admit it or not.

People should be treated the same and, if black or brown, they should neither be penalized nor rewarded. Positive discrimination is counterproductive.

This is why I go so willingly into the house of dreams: I admire them for their aptitude for non-discrimination. It is in their house that the equal light from before the guilty feeling reigns. Neither pride, nor shame.

If shackling former prisoners with a lifetime of debt and authorizing discrimination against them in employment, housing, education, and public benefits is not enough to send the message that they are not wanted and not even considered full citizens, then stripping voting rights from those labeled criminals surely gets the point across.

We have the money. We’ve just made choices about how to spend it. Over the years, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have restricted housing aid to the poor but expanded it to the affluent in the form of tax benefits for homeowners. 57 Today, housing-related tax expenditures far outpace those for housing assistance. In 2008, the year Arleen was evicted from Thirteenth Street, federal expenditures for direct housing assistance totaled less than $40.2 billion, but homeowner tax benefits exceeded $171 billion. That number, $171 billion, was equivalent to the 2008 budgets for the Department of Education, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Agriculture combined. 58 Each year, we spend three times what a universal housing voucher program is estimated to cost (in total ) on homeowner benefits, like the mortgage-interest deduction and the capital-gains exclusion. Most federal housing subsidies benefit families with six-figure incomes. 59 If we are going to spend the bulk of our public dollars on the affluent—at least when it comes to housing—we should own up to that decision and stop repeating the politicians’ canard about one of the richest countries on the planet being unable to afford doing more. If poverty persists in America, it is not for lack of resources.

You are also now branded a drug felon. You are no longer eligible for food stamps; you may be discriminated against in employment; you cannot vote for at least twelve years; and you are about to be evicted from public housing. Once homeless, your children will be taken from you and put in foster care.

Many supporters believe--or want to believe--that Obama will be a transformative political leader in a transformative time. They eagerly await the flowering of peace and social justice policies that will open a new chapter in the abatement of "the structural inequalities that our nation's legacy of discrimination has left behind." Whether Obama, carrying the weight of race on his shoulders in a manner no other United States president ever has, will provide leadership and initiative on these issues is yet to be seen. At every opportunity, we should remind him to try.

The people of the town have little need. They do not hanker after progress and have never changed their essential way of life. Their invaders were a long time in conquering them; and now, after four centuries of Christianity, they still pray in Tanoan to the old deities of the earth and sky and make their living from the things that are and have always been within their reach; while in the discrimination of pride they acquire from their conquerors only the luxury of example. They have assumed the names and gestures of their enemies, but have held on to their own, secret souls; and in this there is a resistance and an overcoming; a long outwaiting.

To pay attention to the American political process, and what the candidates for this nation’s highest office have to say and not say about the issues that are of importance to them and thus we are to presume importance to the Nation, you would get the impression that the issue of race, that the issue of racism, that the issue of discrimination, and certainly that the issue of white racial privilege were non existent issues; that they were of really no importance, or that of very little importance, because you will not hear and have not heard any of the candidates for the presidency of the United States, in either party, of whatever political ideology, make this an issue. Yes,they talk about poverty and occasionally they talk about schooling and education. They talk about healthcare. They talk about all of those things, but not once have any of those candidates tried to directly connect the role that racism, the role that racial discrimination, the role that institutional racial oppression and white privilege play in regard to health care, in regard to housing, in regard to schooling. It is as if those issues exist in a vacuum and have no relationship to color, have no relationship to race, have no relationship to a history of racial subordination.

The rest of my teachers maybe did the best they could, but they just needed a lot of help making their best better. There were so many things we needed in those classrooms, in our city, in our state, in our country that our teachers could have provided if they would have gone home and really done their homework. They never once said the words: “economic inequality,” “housing discrimination,” “sexual violence,” “mass incarceration,” “homophobia,” “empire,” “mass eviction,” “post traumatic stress disorder,” “white supremacy,” “patriarchy,” “neo-confederacy,” “mental health,” or “parental abuse,” yet every student and teacher at that school lived in a world shaped by those words.

Including the differential mortgage loan approval rates between Asian Americans and whites shows that the same methods to conclude that that blacks are discriminated against in mortgage lending would also lead to the conclusion that whites are discriminated against in favor of Asian Americans, reducing this whole procedure to absurdity, since no one believes that banks are discriminating against whites..."[W]hen loan approval rates are not cited, but loan denial rates are, that creates a larger statistical disparity, since most loans are approved. Even if 98 percent of blacks had their mortgage loan applications approved, if 99 percent of whites were approved than by quoting denial rates alone it could be said that blacks were rejected twice as often as whites.

I asked Hillary why she had chosen Yale Law School over Harvard. She laughed and said, "Harvard didn't want me." I said I was sorry that Harvard turned her down. She replied, "No, I received letters of acceptance from both schools." She explained that a boyfriend had then invited her to the Harvard Law School Christmas Dance, at which several Harvard Law School professors were in attendance. She asked one for advice about which law school to attend. The professor looked at her and said, "We have about as many woen as we need here. You should go to Yale. The teaching there is more suited to women." I asked who the professor was, and she told me she couldn't remember his name but that she thought it started with a B. A few days later, we met the Clintons at a party. I came prepared with yearbook photos of all the professors from that year whose name began with B. She immediately identified the culprit. He was the same professor who had given my A student a D, because she didn't "think like a lawyer." It turned out, of course, that it was this professor -- and not the two (and no doubt more) brilliant women he was prejudiced against - who didn't think like a lawyer. Lawyers are supposed to act on the evidence, rather than on their prejudgments. The sexist professor ultimately became a judge on the International Court of Justice. I told Hillary that it was too bad I wasn't at that Christmas dance, because I would have urged her to come to Harvard. She laughed, turned to her husband, and said, "But then I wouldn't have met him... and he wouldn't have become President.

King learned to put the emotionalism of the church in context. “All week long,” he said, “at his job, traveling, shopping, eating, in almost everything he does, the Negro represses his emotions; puts up with discrimination; sees himself segregated and shunted into inferior housing, schools, jobs; closes his ears to the names he is called. On Sunday, when he goes to church, all these emotions burst forth. He shouts ‘Amen.’ He sings and stamps his feet, partly from joy at his freedom in his own church, partly from the sorrow of his experiences. For many Negroes, religion has probably provided a safety valve against insanity or rebellion. But there’s a danger in this emotionalism, too. It can become as empty a form as any other.

Once you’re labeled a felon, the old forms of discrimination—employment discrimination, housing discrimination, denial of the right to vote, denial of educational opportunity, denial of food stamps and other public benefits, and exclusion from jury service—are suddenly legal. As a criminal, you are afforded scarcely more rights, and arguably less respect, than a black man living in Alabama at the height of Jim Crow. We have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it.

Sure I know you! You're a White Man. I'm a Negro. You take all the best jobs And leave us the garbage cans to empty and The halls to clean. You have a good time in a big house at Palm Beach And rent us the back alleys And the dirty slums.

Below is a short (and non-exhaustive) list of laws, situations, attitudes, and issues that can and do specifically target and negatively affect asexual people, followed by discussion of each: 1.   Consummation laws 2.   Adoption denial 3.   Employment discrimination and housing discrimination 4.   Discrimination by mental health professionals 5.   Lack of marriage equivalent for non-romantic relationships 6.   Religious pressure/discrimination 7.   “Corrective” rape 8.   Lack of representation in media and sex education 9.   Internalized oppression/self-hate

There were so many things we needed in those classrooms, in our city, in our state, in our country that our teachers could have provided if they would have gone home and really done their homework. They never once said the words: “economic inequality,” “housing discrimination,” “sexual violence,” “mass incarceration,” “homophobia,” “empire,” “mass eviction,” “post traumatic stress disorder,” “white supremacy,” “patriarchy,” “neo-confederacy,” “mental health,” or “parental abuse,” yet every student and teacher at that school lived in a world shaped by those words.

A 1967 New York Times editorial declared Milwaukee “America’s most segregated city.” A supermajority in both houses had helped President Johnson pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, but legislators backed by real estate lobbies refused to get behind his open housing law, which would have criminalized housing discrimination. It took Martin Luther King Jr. being murdered on a Memphis balcony, and the riots that ensued, for Congress to include a real open housing measure later that year in the 1968 Civil Rights Act, commonly called the Fair Housing Act.

But know this: whether you actively engage in the violent culture of hate or merely step out of the way to give it permission to persist and room to grow, you are complicit. And white people, you give permission to this culture every day you do nothing more than have “conversations on race.” You don’t get to just have conversations anymore. You don’t get to just wear a safety pin and call yourself an ally. You don’t get to just talk while the rest of us fear for our lives because discrimination, rape culture, and xenophobia just won the White House. Too often oppressed people are told to exhibit an inordinate amount of grace and patience while white people are “on their journey.” And it’s true: No one is born woke. We all have work to do and we should respect where people are. But as Dr. King reminds us, too often “wait means never,” and your journey may cost someone their citizenship, their religious freedom, or their life.

When a beast invades your house and starts abusing your loved ones, would you sit back waiting for the authorities to intervene - you may, but I can't - I won't - for me family and society are one, and when wild animals run rampant abusing that family of mine, I would die defending my family, not sit back like a spineless coward.

For almost a century after the Slaughter-House Cases, the Court followed this narrow reading of the Equal Protection Clause and refused to use it to stop other types of discrimination. For example, in 1875, two years after the Slaughter-House Cases, the Supreme Court held that it was constitutional to deny women the right to vote.

seems that I can hear a voice saying to America: “You started out right. You wrote in your Declaration of Independence that ‘all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. Among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’ But, America, you strayed away from that sublime principle. You left the house of your great heritage and strayed away into a far country of segregation and discrimination. You have trampled over sixteen million of your brothers. You have deprived them of the basic goods of life. You have taken from them their self-respect and their sense of dignity. You have treated them as if they were things rather than persons.

No, the problem isn’t just that a white person may think black people are lazy and that hurts people’s feelings, it’s that the belief that black people are lazy reinforces and is reinforced by a general dialogue that believes the same, and uses that belief to justify not hiring black people for jobs, denying black people housing, and discriminating against black people in schools.

them? • Don’t fight the Trail. You have to flow with it. Be cooperative with the Trail, neither competitive nor combative. • Don’t expect the Trail to respect or to be sensitive to your comfort level and desire to control your environment. In your avoidance of discomfort, you may become more uncomfortable. Fear is weight. • Time, distance, terrain, weather, and the Trail itself cannot be changed. You have to change. Don’t waste any of your energy complaining about things you have no control over. Instead, look at yourself and adapt you mind, heart, body, and soul to the Trail. Remember, you will be a guest in someone else’s house the entire journey. • The Trail knows neither prejudice nor discrimination. Don’t expect any favors from the Trail. The Trail is inherently hard

And expose war. And the old My-Country-'Tis-of' Thee lie. And the colored American Legion posts strutting around talking about the privilege of dying for the noble Red, White, and Blue, when they aren't even permitted the privilege of living for it. Or voting for it in Texas. Or working for it in the diplomatic service. Or even rising, like every other good little boy, from the log cabin to the White House. White House is right.

If the U.S. government and nonprofit organizations, private corporations and university laboratories are going to dedicate money and time to the future, they also need to do so for the present. They need to fund accessible buses, schools, classrooms, movie theaters, restrooms, housing, and workplaces. They should support campaigns to end bullying, employment discrimination, social isolation, and the ongoing institutionalizing of disabled people with the same enthusiasm with which they implement cure research. I want money for accessible playgrounds, tree houses, and sandboxes so that wheelchair-using kids aren't left twiddling their thumbs in the present while they dream of running in the future. If we choose to wait for those always-just-around-the-corner cures, lavishing them with resources, energy, and media attention, we risk suspending our present-day lives.

Freedom is not some new or esoteric concept. It is a concept widely understood and deeply felt for centuries—especially deeply felt by those who did not have freedom, such as slaves, serfs, prisoners and people living under totalitarian dictatorships. Many such people have made desperate attempts to escape to freedom, even at the risk of their lives. This was not done to get government benefits. Spartacus was not fighting to get farm subsidies or housing vouchers.

It was an old tradition: landlords barring children from their properties. In the competitive postwar housing market of the late 1940s, landlords regularly turned away families with children and evicted tenants who got pregnant.3 This was evident in letters mothers wrote when applying for public housing. “At present,” one wrote, “I am living in an unheated attic room with a one-year-old baby….Everywhere I go the landlords don’t want children. I also have a ten-year-old boy….I can’t keep him with me because the landlady objects to children. Is there any way that you can help me to get an unfurnished room, apartment, or even an old barn?…I can’t go on living like this because I am on the verge of doing something desperate.” Another mother wrote, “My children are now sick and losing weight….I have tried, begged, and pleaded for a place but [it’s] always ‘too late’ or ‘sorry, no children.’ ” Another wrote, “The lady where I am rooming put two of my children out about three weeks ago and don’t want me to let them come back….If I could get a garage I would take it.”4 When Congress passed the Fair Housing Act in 1968, it did not consider families with children a protected class, allowing landlords to continue openly turning them away or evicting them. Some placed costly restrictions on large families, charging “children-damage deposits” in addition to standard rental fees. One Washington, DC, development required tenants with no children to put down a $150 security deposit but charged families with children a $450 deposit plus a monthly surcharge of $50 per child.5 In 1980, HUD commissioned a nationwide study to assess the magnitude of the problem and found that only 1 in 4 rental units was available to families without restrictions.6 Eight years later, Congress finally outlawed housing discrimination against children and families, but as Pam found out, the practice remained widespread.7 Families with children were turned away in as many as 7 in 10 housing searches.8

Having been historically dispossessed and discriminated against, African American and Indigenous communities, continue to face higher rates of poverty and crime, and struggle disproportionately for access to quality education, healthy food, secure housing and affordable healthcare. The United States has the highest incarceration rates in the world. And even though five times as many white people use drugs as African Americans, African Americans are sent to prison for drug offenses at 10 times the rate of whites.

The "whites only" signs may be gone, but new signs have gone up - notices placed in job applications, rental agreements, loan applications, forms for welfare benefits, school applications, and petitions for licenses, informing the general public that "felons" are not wanted here. A criminal record today authorizes precisely the forms of discrimination we supposedly left behind - discrimination in employment, housing, education, public benefits, and jury service. Those labeled criminals are even denied the right to vote.

When the system of mass incarceration collapses (and if history is any guide, it will), historians will undoubtedly look back and marvel that such an extraordinarily comprehensive system of racialized social control existed in the United States. How fascinating, they will likely say, that a drug war was waged almost exclusively against poor people of color—people already trapped in ghettos that lacked jobs and decent schools. They were rounded up by the millions, packed away in prisons, and when released, they were stigmatized for life, denied the right to vote, and ushered into a world of discrimination. Legally barred from employment, housing, and welfare benefits—and saddled with thousands of dollars of debt—these people were shamed and condemned for failing to hold together their families. They were chastised for succumbing to depression and anger, and blamed for landing back in prison. Historians will likely wonder how we could describe the new caste system as a system of crime control, when it is difficult to imagine a system better designed to create—rather than prevent—crime.

But when we acknowledge racism as a part of a system, instead of being limited to our ability to win over racists, we can instead focus on how our actions interact with systemic racism. No, the problem isn’t just that a white person may think black people are lazy and that hurts people’s feelings, it’s that the belief that black people are lazy reinforces and is reinforced by a general dialogue that believes the same, and uses that belief to justify not hiring black people for jobs, denying black people housing, and discriminating against black people in schools.

In the twenty-first century, the visions of J.C. Nichols and Walt Disney have come full circle and joined. “Neighborhoods” are increasingly “developments,” corporate theme parks. But corporations aren’t interested in the messy ebb and flow of humanity. They want stability and predictable rates of return. And although racial discrimination is no longer a stated policy for real estate brokers and developers, racial and social homogeneity are still firmly embedded in America’s collective idea of stability; that’s what our new landlords are thinking even if they are not saying it.

These efforts curtailed the ability of black people to buy better housing, to move to better neighborhoods, and to build wealth. Also, by confining black people to the same neighborhoods, these efforts ensured that people who were discriminated against, and hence had little, tended to be neighbors only with others who also had little. Thus while an individual in that community might be high-achieving, even high-earning, his or her ability to increase that achievement and wealth and social capital, through friendship, marriage, or neighborhood organizations, would always be limited.

The Indian government spent millions of rupees annually developing housing and job opportunities in villages heavily inhabited by untouchables. Moreover, the prime minister said, if two applicants compete for entrance into a college or university, one of the applicants being an untouchable and the other of high caste, the school is required to accept the untouchable. Professor Lawrence Reddick, who was with me during the interview, asked: “But isn’t that discrimination?” “Well, it may be,” the prime minister answered. “But this is our way of atoning for the centuries of injustices we have inflicted upon these people.

The people of the town have little need. They do not hanker after progress and have never changed their essential way of life. Their invaders were a long time in conquering them; and now, after four centuries of Christianity, they still pray in Tanoan to the old deities of the earth and sky and make their living from the things that are and have always been within their reach; while in the discrimination of pride they acquire from their conquerors only the luxury of example. They have assumed the names and gestures of their enemies, but have held on to their own, secret souls; and in this there is a resistance and an overcoming, a long outwaiting.

when the riot controls had been put into effect, and a nervous white population was waiting, it took little to set it off. In Wichita, a few white youths drove down into the black area and simply fired off guns. This brought black people out of their houses; in rage at seeing the harassment, they hurled stones or sticks at a passing car, and the battle was on. In that particular instance the police arrested the five whites who were armed and twelve young black men who had only rocks and sticks. All were jailed. The next morning, all were released on bail, but the bail set for the five armed whites was only one-fifth the amount set for the twelve unarmed black students.

We have won the battle of making the White House human again, but the war has just begun - the war against systemic racism, against misogyny, against homophobia, against islamophobia, against gun violence, and against post-pandemic health and economic crisis. So, though we may celebrate the victory for a short while, we mustn't lose sight of the issues - we must now actually start working as one people - as the American people to heal the wounds on the soul of our land of liberty. It's time to once again start dreaming and working towards the impossible dream - the dream of freedom not oppression, the dream of assimilation not discrimination, and above all, the dream of ascension not descension.

Public stigma Stereotype Negative belief about a group (e.g., dangerousness, incompetence, character weakness) Prejudice Agreement with belief and/or negative emotional reaction (e.g., anger, fear) Discrimination Behavior response to prejudice (e.g., avoidance, withhold employment and housing opportunities, withhold help) Self-stigma Stereotype Negative belief about the self (e.g., character weakness, incompetence) Prejudice Agreement with belief, negative emotional reaction (e.g., low self-esteem, low self-efficacy) Discrimination Behavior response to prejudice (e.g., fails to pursue work and housing opportunities) Understanding the impact of stigma on people with mental illness. World Psychiatry. Feb 2002; 1(1): 16–20. PMCID: PMC1489832

People love to say, everybody is entitled to their opinions. It is one of the greatest fallacies of human habit. Everybody is not entitled to their opinion, not when their opinion advocates for segregation and discrimination. Freedom of speech doesn't mean saying whatever one wants, it means saying what's non-discriminatory, non-prejudicial and nonbarbarian. Bigots may have the right to say that all Mexicans are drug smugglers, all black and brown people are inferior humans, or all nonmuslims are infidels, inside the narrow bounds of their own house, but they are not entitled to express such opinion, when amidst people, amidst a civilized society. Remember, acceptance of bigotry and discrimination is the same as advocating for bigotry and discrimination.

More than 2 million people found themselves behind bars at the turn of the twenty-first century, and millions more were relegated to the margins of mainstream society, banished to a political and social space not unlike Jim Crow, where discrimination in employment, housing, and access to education was perfectly legal, and where they could be denied the right to vote. The system functioned relatively automatically, and the prevailing system of racial meanings, identities, and ideologies already seemed natural. Ninety percent of those admitted to prison for drug offenses in many states were black or Latino, yet the mass incarceration of communities of color was explained in race-neutral terms, an adaptation to the needs and demands of the current political climate. The New Jim Crow was born.

If government had declined to build racially separate public housing in cities where segregation hadn’t previously taken root, and instead had scattered integrated developments throughout the community, those cities might have developed in a less racially toxic fashion, with fewer desperate ghettos and more diverse suburbs. If the federal government had not urged suburbs to adopt exclusionary zoning laws, white flight would have been minimized because there would have been fewer racially exclusive suburbs to which frightened homeowners could flee. If the government had told developers that they could have FHA guarantees only if the homes they built were open to all, integrated working-class suburbs would likely have matured with both African Americans and whites sharing the benefits. If state courts had not blessed private discrimination by ordering the eviction of African American homeowners in neighborhoods where association rules and restrictive covenants barred their residence, middle-class African Americans would have been able gradually to integrate previously white communities as they developed the financial means to do so. If churches, universities, and hospitals had faced loss of tax-exempt status for their promotion of restrictive covenants, they most likely would have refrained from such activity. If police had arrested, rather than encouraged, leaders of mob violence when African Americans moved into previously white neighborhoods, racial transitions would have been smoother. If state real estate commissions had denied licenses to brokers who claimed an “ethical” obligation to impose segregation, those brokers might have guided the evolution of interracial neighborhoods. If school boards had not placed schools and drawn attendance boundaries to ensure the separation of black and white pupils, families might not have had to relocate to have access to education for their children. If federal and state highway planners had not used urban interstates to demolish African American neighborhoods and force their residents deeper into urban ghettos, black impoverishment would have lessened, and some displaced families might have accumulated the resources to improve their housing and its location. If government had given African Americans the same labor-market rights that other citizens enjoyed, African American working-class families would not have been trapped in lower-income minority communities, from lack of funds to live elsewhere. If the federal government had not exploited the racial boundaries it had created in metropolitan areas, by spending billions on tax breaks for single-family suburban homeowners, while failing to spend adequate funds on transportation networks that could bring African Americans to job opportunities, the inequality on which segregation feeds would have diminished. If federal programs were not, even to this day, reinforcing racial isolation by disproportionately directing low-income African Americans who receive housing assistance into the segregated neighborhoods that government had previously established, we might see many more inclusive communities. Undoing the effects of de jure segregation will be incomparably difficult. To make a start, we will first have to contemplate what we have collectively done and, on behalf of our government, accept responsibility.

They have planned a life for you – from the cradle to the grave and beyond – which it would be easy, fatally easy, to accept. The least wandering of the attention, the least relaxation of your awareness, and already the eyelids begin to droop, the eyes grow vacant, the body starts to move in obedience to the hypnotist’s command. Wake up, wake up – before you sign that seven-year contract, buy that house you don’t really want, marry that girl you secretly despise. Don’t reach for the whisky, that won’t help you. You’ve got to think, to discriminate, to exercise your own free will and judgment. And you must do this, I repeat, without tension, quite rationally and calmly. For if you give way to fury against the hypnotists, if you smash the radio and tear the newspapers to shreds, you will only rush to the other extreme and fossilize into defiant eccentricity.

I had started climbing trees about three years earlier, or rather, re-started; for I had been at a school that had a wood for its playground. We had climbed and christened the different trees (Scorpio, The Major Oak, Pegagsus), and fought for their control in territorial conflicts with elaborate rules and fealties. My father built my brother and me a tree house in our garden, which we had defended successfully against years of pirate attack. In my late twenties, I had begun to climb trees again. Just for the fun of it: no ropes, and no danger either. In the course of my climbing, I learned to discriminate between tree species. I liked the lithe springiness of silver birch, the alder and the young cherry. I avoided pines -- brittle branches, callous bark -- and planes. And I found that the horse chestnut, with its limbless lower trunk and prickly fruit, but also its tremendous canopy, offered the tree-climber both a difficulty and an incentive.

By 1980 the bipartisan consensus on women—that the laws should not discriminate on grounds of sex and that qualified women should be allowed to compete for jobs at every level—had seriously unraveled. There was no more room for good-government Republicans to agree to disagree on matters such as the Equal Rights Amendment while well-heeled women such as Anne Armstrong and Pat Lindh “nagged” long-suffering men in the White House for a token appointment here and there. At its 1980 convention, the Republican Party, firmly in the hands of the conservative wing, and about to nominate Ronald Reagan, repudiated its support for the Equal Rights Amendment and allied itself publicly with the opponents of women’s abortion rights. Polling revealed that women were starting to peel off from the Grand Old Party. Four years later, the gender gap, wherein women disproportionately support the Democratic candidate and men the Republican, would emerge as a constant in American politics.

Once again, in response to a major disruption in the prevailing racial order—this time the civil rights gains of the 1960s—a new system of racialized social control was created by exploiting the vulnerabilities and racial resentments of poor and working-class whites. More than 2 million people found themselves behind bars at the turn of the twenty-first century, and millions more were relegated to the margins of mainstream society, banished to a political and social space not unlike Jim Crow, where discrimination in employment, housing, and access to education was perfectly legal, and where they could be denied the right to vote. The system functioned relatively automatically, and the prevailing system of racial meanings, identities, and ideologies already seemed natural. Ninety percent of those admitted to prison for drug offenses in many states were black or Latino, yet the mass incarceration of communities of color was explained in race-neutral terms, an adaptation to the needs and demands of the current political climate. The New Jim Crow was born.

In their ongoing war against evil capitalists, some vengeful Democrats have their eyes on banks, which they blame for making millions of loans that resulted in foreclosures and the 2008 financial crisis. Never mind that it was progressives who forced the government to make these loans to low-income borrowers with poor credit ratings through the Community Reinvestment Act and anti-discrimination laws. They promoted minority home ownership without regard to the owners’ ability to repay, and the result was catastrophic. But being a leftist means never having to say you’re sorry—just pass a misguided policy and blame everyone else when it predictably fails. Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters, emboldened by Democrats recapturing control of the House, issued a stern warning to bankers before the 2019 session began. “I have not forgotten” that “you foreclosed on our houses,” she said, and “had us sign on the line for junk and for mess that we could not afford. I’m going to do to you what you did to us.”62 How’s that for good governance—using her newfound power as incoming chairwoman of the House Financial Services Committee to punish bank executives for the disaster she and her fellow Democrats caused? Waters is also targeting corporations for allegedly excluding minorities and women from executive positions. Forming a new subcommittee on diversity and inclusion, she immediately held a hearing to discuss the importance of examining the systematic exclusion of women, people of color, persons with disabilities, gays, veterans, and other disadvantaged groups.63 Why concentrate on policies to stimulate economic growth and improve people’s standards of living when you can employ identity politics to demonize your opponents?

As I see it, the War on Drugs—more than any other government program or political initiative—gave rise to mass incarceration as defined above. Although the political dynamics that gave birth to the system date back to slavery, the drug war marked an important turning point in American history, one that cannot be measured simply by counting heads in prisons and jails. The declaration and escalation of the War on Drugs marked a moment in our past when a group of people defined by race and class was viewed and treated as the “enemy.” A literal war was declared on a highly vulnerable population, leading to a wave of punitiveness that permeated every aspect of our criminal justice system and redefined the scope of fundamental constitutional rights. The war mentality resulted in the militarization of local police departments and billions invested in drug law enforcement at the state and local levels. It also contributed to astronomical expenditures for prison building for people convicted of all crimes and the slashing of billions from education, public housing and welfare programs, as well as a slew of legislation authorizing legal discrimination against millions of people accused of drug offenses, denying them access to housing, food stamps, credit, basic public benefits, and financial aid for schooling. This war did not merely increase the number of people in prisons and jails. It radically altered the life course of millions, especially black men who were the primary targets in the early decades of the war. Their lives and families were destroyed for drug crimes that were largely ignored on the other side of town. Those who define “mass incarceration” narrowly, to include only individuals currently locked in prisons or jails, erase from public view the overwhelming majority of

Between 1970 and 1971, the feminist movement made significant strides. In 1970, the Equal Rights Amendment was forced out of the House Judiciary Committee, where it had been stuck since 1948; the following year, it passed in the House of Representatives. In response to a sit-in led by Susan Brownmiller, Ladies' Home Journal published a feminist supplement on issues of concern to women. Time featured Sexual Politics author Kate Millett on its cover, and Ms., a feminist monthly, debuted as an insert in New York magazine. Even twelve members of a group with which Barbie had much in common—Transworld Airlines stewardesses—rose up, filing a multimillion-dollar sex discrimination suit against the airline. Surprisingly, Barbie didn't ignore these events as she had the Vietnam War; she responded. Her 1970 "Living" incarnation had jointed ankles, permitting her feet to flatten out. If one views the doll as a stylized fertility icon, Barbie's arched feet are a source of strength; but if one views her as a literal representation of a modern woman—an equally valid interpretation— her arched feet are a hindrance. Historically, men have hobbled women to prevent them from running away. Women of Old China had their feet bound in childhood; Arab women wore sandals on stilts; Palestinian women were secured at the ankles with chains to which bells were attached; Japanese women were wound up in heavy kimonos; and Western women were hampered by long, restrictive skirts and precarious heels. Given this precedent, Barbie's flattened feet were revolutionary. Mattel did not, however, promote them that way. Her feet were just one more "poseable" element of her "poseable" body. It was almost poignant. Barbie was at last able to march with her sisters; but her sisters misunderstood her and pushed her away.

According to Bartholomew, an important goal of St. Louis zoning was to prevent movement into 'finer residential districts . . . by colored people.' He noted that without a previous zoning law, such neighborhoods have become run-down, 'where values have depreciated, homes are either vacant or occupied by color people.' The survey Bartholomew supervised before drafting the zoning ordinance listed the race of each building's occupants. Bartholomew attempted to estimate where African Americans might encroach so the commission could respond with restrictions to control their spread. The St. Louis zoning ordinance was eventually adopted in 1919, two years after the Supreme Court's Buchanan ruling banned racial assignments; with no reference to race, the ordinance pretended to be in compliance. Guided by Bartholomew's survey, it designated land for future industrial development if it was in or adjacent to neighborhoods with substantial African American populations. Once such rules were in force, plan commission meetings were consumed with requests for variances. Race was frequently a factor. For example, on meeting in 1919 debated a proposal to reclassify a single-family property from first-residential to commercial because the area to the south had been 'invaded by negroes.' Bartholomew persuaded the commission members to deny the variance because, he said, keeping the first-residential designation would preserve homes in the area as unaffordable to African Americans and thus stop the encroachment. On other occasions, the commission changed an area's zoning from residential to industrial if African American families had begun to move into it. In 1927, violating its normal policy, the commission authorized a park and playground in an industrial, not residential, area in hopes that this would draw African American families to seek housing nearby. Similar decision making continued through the middle of the twentieth century. In a 1942 meeting, commissioners explained they were zoning an area in a commercial strip as multifamily because it could then 'develop into a favorable dwelling district for Colored people. In 1948, commissioners explained they were designating a U-shaped industrial zone to create a buffer between African Americans inside the U and whites outside. In addition to promoting segregation, zoning decisions contributed to degrading St. Louis's African American neighborhoods into slums. Not only were these neighborhoods zoned to permit industry, even polluting industry, but the plan commission permitted taverns, liquor stores, nightclubs, and houses of prostitution to open in African American neighborhoods but prohibited these as zoning violations in neighborhoods where whites lived. Residences in single-family districts could not legally be subdivided, but those in industrial districts could be, and with African Americans restricted from all but a few neighborhoods, rooming houses sprang up to accommodate the overcrowded population. Later in the twentieth century, when the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) developed the insure amortized mortgage as a way to promote homeownership nationwide, these zoning practices rendered African Americans ineligible for such mortgages because banks and the FHA considered the existence of nearby rooming houses, commercial development, or industry to create risk to the property value of single-family areas. Without such mortgages, the effective cost of African American housing was greater than that of similar housing in white neighborhoods, leaving owners with fewer resources for upkeep. African American homes were then more likely to deteriorate, reinforcing their neighborhoods' slum conditions.

By the time he came around to shake hands at the conclusion of his speech, I’d been reduced to a twelve-year-old girl at a One Direction concert. I was shaking and nervous and sweating and seriously crushing. If it had been socially acceptable, I would’ve started screaming at the top of my lungs like the fangirl that I am. I tried to hold on to my politics. But Jacob, you have to remain critical. He still hasn’t issued an executive order banning workplace discrimination against LGBTQ Americans. Statistically, he hasn’t slowed deportations. You still disagree with some of this man’s foreign policy decisions. And you don’t like drone warfare. You must remain critical, my brain said. It is important. NAH FUCK THAT! screamed my heart and girlish libido, gossiping back and forth like stylists at a hair salon. Can you even believe how handsome he is? He is sooooo cute! Oh my God, is he looking at you right now? OH MY GOD JACOB HE’S LOOKING AT YOU! And he was. Before I knew what was happening, it was my turn to shake his hand and say hello. And in my panic, in my giddy schoolgirl glee, all I could muster, all I could manage to say at a gay party at the White House, was: “We’re from Duke, Mr. President! You like Duke Basketball don’t you?” “The Blue Devils are a great team!” he said back, smiling and shaking my hand before moving on. WHAT. Jacob. jacob jacob jacob. JACOB. You had ONE CHANCE to say something to the leader of the free world and all you could talk about was Duke Basketball, something you don’t even really like? I mean, you’ve barely gone to one basketball game, and even then it was only to sing the national anthem with your a cappella group. Why couldn’t you think of something better? How about, “Do you like my shoes, Mr. President?” Or maybe “Tell Michelle I’m her number one fan!” Literally anything would’ve been better than that.

In any case the slave is nobler than his modern masters—the bourgeoisie. It is a sign of the inferiority of nineteenth century culture that the man of money should be the object of so much worship and envy. But these business men too are slaves, puppets of routine, victims of busy-ness; they have no time for new ideas; thinking is taboo among them, and the joys of the intellect are beyond their reach. Hence their restless and perpetual search for “happiness,” their great houses which are never homes, their vulgar luxury without taste, their picture-galleries of “originals,” with cost attached, their sensual amusements that dull rather than refresh or stimulate the mind. “Look at these superfluous! They acquire riches and become poorer thereby”; they accept all the restraints of aristocracy without its compensating access to the kingdom of the mind. “See how they climb, these swift apes! They climb over one another, and thus drag themselves into the mud and depths... The stench of shop-keepers, the wriggling of ambition, the evil breath.” There is no use in such men having wealth, for they cannot give it dignity by noble use, by the discriminating patronage of letters or the arts. “Only a man of intellect should hold property”; others think of property as an end in itself, and pursue it more and more recklessly,—look at “the present madness of nations, which desire above all to produce as much as possible, and to be as rich as possible.” At last man becomes a bird of prey: “they live in ambush for one another; they obtain things from each other by lying in wait. That is called by them good neighborliness... They seek the smallest profits out of every sort of rubbish.” “Today, mercantile morality is really nothing but a refinement on piratical morality—buying in the cheapest market and selling in the dearest.” And these men cry out for laissez-faire, to be let alone,—these very men who most need supervision and control.

In seeking to establish the causes of poverty and other social problems among black Americans, for example, sociologist William Julius Wilson pointed to factors such as “the enduring effects of slavery, Jim Crow segregation, public school segregation, legalized discrimination, residential segregation, the FHA’s redlining of black neighborhoods in the 1940s and ’50s, the construction of public housing projects in poor black neighborhoods, employer discrimination, and other racial acts and processes.”1 These various facts might be summarized as examples of racism, so the causal question is whether racism is either the cause, or one of the major causes, of poverty and other social problems among black Americans today. Many might consider the obvious answer to be “yes.” Yet some incontrovertible facts undermine that conclusion. For example, despite the high poverty rate among black Americans in general, the poverty rate among black married couples has been less than 10 percent every year since 1994.2 The poverty rate of married blacks is not only lower than that of blacks as a whole, but in some years has also been lower than that of whites as a whole.3 In 2016, for example, the poverty rate for blacks was 22 percent, for whites was 11 percent, and for black married couples was 7.5 percent.4 Do racists care whether someone black is married or unmarried? If not, then why do married blacks escape poverty so much more often than other blacks, if racism is the main reason for black poverty? If the continuing effects of past evils such as slavery play a major causal role today, were the ancestors of today’s black married couples exempt from slavery and other injustices? As far back as 1969, young black males whose homes included newspapers, magazines, and library cards, and who also had the same education as young white males, had similar incomes as their white counterparts.5 Do racists care whether blacks have reading material and library cards?

Imagine you are Emma Faye Stewart, a thirty-year-old, single African American mother of two who was arrested as part of a drug sweep in Hearne, Texas.1 All but one of the people arrested were African American. You are innocent. After a week in jail, you have no one to care for your two small children and are eager to get home. Your court-appointed attorney urges you to plead guilty to a drug distribution charge, saying the prosecutor has offered probation. You refuse, steadfastly proclaiming your innocence. Finally, after almost a month in jail, you decide to plead guilty so you can return home to your children. Unwilling to risk a trial and years of imprisonment, you are sentenced to ten years probation and ordered to pay $1,000 in fines, as well as court and probation costs. You are also now branded a drug felon. You are no longer eligible for food stamps; you may be discriminated against in employment; you cannot vote for at least twelve years; and you are about to be evicted from public housing. Once homeless, your children will be taken from you and put in foster care. A judge eventually dismisses all cases against the defendants who did not plead guilty. At trial, the judge finds that the entire sweep was based on the testimony of a single informant who lied to the prosecution. You, however, are still a drug felon, homeless, and desperate to regain custody of your children. Now place yourself in the shoes of Clifford Runoalds, another African American victim of the Hearne drug bust.2 You returned home to Bryan, Texas, to attend the funeral of your eighteen-month-old daughter. Before the funeral services begin, the police show up and handcuff you. You beg the officers to let you take one last look at your daughter before she is buried. The police refuse. You are told by prosecutors that you are needed to testify against one of the defendants in a recent drug bust. You deny witnessing any drug transaction; you don’t know what they are talking about. Because of your refusal to cooperate, you are indicted on felony charges. After a month of being held in jail, the charges against you are dropped. You are technically free, but as a result of your arrest and period of incarceration, you lose your job, your apartment, your furniture, and your car. Not to mention the chance to say good-bye to your baby girl. This is the War on Drugs. The brutal stories described above are not isolated incidents, nor are the racial identities of Emma Faye Stewart and Clifford Runoalds random or accidental. In every state across our nation, African Americans—particularly in the poorest neighborhoods—are subjected to tactics and practices that would result in public outrage and scandal if committed in middle-class white neighborhoods.

You are claiming that the Soviet authorities began and influenced the existence of the Democratic Party [in Iran]. That is the basis of all your statements. The simplest way to discredit your absurd claim si to tell you about Iran, of which you are apparently ignorant. The people of Iran are oppressed, poverty-stricken, and miserable with hunger and disease. Their death rate is among the highest in the world, and their infant mortality rate threatens Iran with complete extinction. They are ruled without choice by feudalistic landowners, ruthless Khans, and venal industrialists. The peasants are slaves and the workers are paid a few pennies for a twelve hour day--not enough to keep their families in food. I can quote you all the figures you like to support these statements, quote them if necessary from British sources. I can also quote you the figures of wealth which is taken out of Iran yearly by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, of which the British Governemtn is the largest shareholder. 200 million pounds sterling have been taken out of Iran by your Oil company: a hundred times the total amount of Iran's national income and ten thousand times the total national income of the working people of Iran. By such natural resources as oil, Iran is by nature one of the wealthiest countries on earth. That wealth goes to Britain, while Iran remains poverty-ridden and without economic stability at all. It has no wage policies, no real trade unions, few hospitals, no sanitation and drainage, no irrigation, no proper housing, and no adequate road system. Its people have no rights before the law; their franchise in non-existent, and their parliamentary rights are destroyed by the corrupt method of election and political choice. The Iranian people suffer the terrors of a police regime, and they are prey to the manipulations of the grain speculators and the money operators. The racial minorities suffer discrimination and intolerance, and religious minorities are persecuted for political ends. Banditry threatens the mountain districts, and British arms have been used to support one tribe against another. I could go on indefinitely, painting you a picture of misery and starvation and imprisonment and subjection which must shame any human being capable of hearing it. Yet you say that the existence of a Democratic Party in Iran has been created by the Soviet authorities. You underestimate the Iranian people, Lord Essex! The Democratic Party has arisen out of all this misery and subjection as a force against corruption and oppression. Until now the Iranian people have been unable to create a political party because the police system prevented by terror and assassination. Any attempt to organize the workers and peasants was quickly halted by the execution of party leaders and the vast imprisonment of its followers. The Iranian people, however, have a long record of struggle and persistence, and they do not have to be told by the Soviet Union where their interests lie. They are not stupid and they are not utterly destroyed. They still posses the will to organize a democratic body and follow it into paths of Government. The Soviet Union has simply made sure that the police assassins did not interfere.... To talk of our part in 'creating' the democratic movement is an insult to the people and a sign of ignorance. We do not underestimate the Iranian people, and as far as we are concerned the Democratic Party...belongs to the people. It is their creation and their right, and it cannot be broken by wild charges which accuse the Soviet Union of its birth. We did not create it, and we have not interfered in the affairs of Iran. On the contrary, it is the British Government which has interfered continuously and viciously in Iran's affairs.

In the early 1830s, the new urban penny press turned away from the “good” news and printed more eye-catching “bad” news, sensationalizing and connecting crime and Blackness and poverty. Free Blacks had been forced into the shacks, cellars, and alleys of segregated “Nigger Hill” in Boston, “Little Africa” in Cincinnati, or “Five Points” in New York—“the worst hell of America,” wrote a visitor. Black behavior—not the wrenching housing and economic discrimination—was blamed for these impoverished Black enclaves.

Access to decent housing and employment and the ongoing problems of polarized income structures and racial discrimination in housing must be dealt with systemically. Raising the minimum wage, restoring transit links, and cracking down on housing discrimination are big problems that operate largely outside these poor neighborhoods. If we want to make real headway in reducing the concentrated pockets of crime in this country, we need to create real avenues out of poverty and social isolation.

As much as the Christian right of the twenty-first century is now fixated on abortion and sexual politics, the backlash against the efforts of the federal government to desegregate tax-exempt private schools is embedded in the movement’s DNA. The white evangelical attraction to Trump was not in spite of his extended birther crusade against Barack Obama, his racist outbursts in tweets and rallies, and his administration’s plans to eviscerate federal protection of racial minorities from discrimination in housing and education by eliminating their ability to show discrimination based on the disparate impact of a policy, as opposed to having to prove discriminatory intent. The Christian right movement was born out of grievance against civil rights gains for blacks, and a backlash against the government’s efforts to ensure those gains could endure. When Trump offers paeans to “religious freedom”—the very clarion call of the Bob Jones University defenders—or sloganeers “Make America Great Again,” he is sending a message that rings true for a movement driven by the rhetoric and organizing pioneered by Weyrich and Billings. Trump’s white evangelical admirers do not just see a leader who is making it safe to say Merry Christmas again, or holding the IRS back from penalizing pastors who endorse him from the pulpit. In Trump’s words and deeds, they see an idealized white Christian America before civil rights for people of color—and a meddling government—ruined it.

Quoting page 56-57: Most important for the content of immigration reform, the driving force at the core of this movement, reaching back to the 1920s, were Jewish organizations long active in opposing racial and ethnic quotas. These included the American Jewish Congress, the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, and the American Federation of Jews from Eastern Europe. Jewish members of Congress, particularly representatives from New York and Chicago, had maintained steady but largely ineffective pressure against the national origins quotas since the 1920s. But the war against Hitler and the postwar movement against colonialism sharply changed the ideological and moral environment, putting defenders of racial, caste, and ethnic hierarchies on the defensive. Jewish political leaders in New York, most prominently Governor Herbert Lehman, had pioneered in the 1940s in passing state antidiscrimination legislation. Importantly, these statutes and executive orders added “national origin” to race, color, and religion as impermissible grounds for discrimination. Following the shock of the Holocaust, Jewish leaders had been especially active in Washington in furthering immigration reform. To the public, the most visible evidence of the immigration reform drive was played by Jewish legislative leaders, such as Representative Celler and Senator Jacob Javits of New York. Less visible, but equally important, were the efforts of key advisers on presidential and agency staffs. These included senior policy advisers such as Julius Edelson and Harry Rosenfield in the Truman administration, Maxwell Rabb in the Eisenhower White House, and presidential aide Myer Feldman, assistant secretary of state Abba Schwartz, and deputy attorney general Norbert Schlei in the Kennedy-Johnson administration.

The first step of good democracy is to choose a good leader, or more importantly, to not choose an animal as a leader - yet we made that ghastly mistake in 2016 by electing the most non-presidential creature on earth as the leader of our United States of America. There are good presidents, there are not so good presidents, but the unique problem with the president that we chose in the previous election was that it was not even a civilized human to begin with - it was an "it" not a he or she or they, and even after being handed over the very lives of the people that savage beast showed no sign of accountability whatsoever. Thus, we broke our democracy in 2016, but with sheer determination and conscientious persistence we have succeeded in fixing that mistake. Yes, I am filled with joy unspeakable to say out loud, that we have corrected our mistake and fixed the democracy into its usual imperfect but functional state. I say imperfect because democracy by nature is not perfect, but the problem we created last time was that we took things too far, and in the process turned a somewhat functional democracy into an absolutely dysfunctional one - in short, we broke it. And had the leader we chose been a smart one, that is, if that idiot had been not an idiot, but an actual cunning dictator, we wouldn't be celebrating our victory as a civilized people today, instead we would be mourning the burial of democracy. Fortunately, the insane ravings of a brainless, spineless and heartless maniac will no longer have to be considered as the statements originating from the sacred office of the President of the United States of America. We have fixed the broken democracy - yes - but the problems that existed before the maniac came to power still exist today. Therefore, we may cherish the restoration of our democracy as much as we want, the real work begins now. Choosing a proper human as a President doesn't magically make the problems of our nation disappear - those problems still exist - and they'll continue to give us chills time and again, unless we as a people stand accountable, both the government and the citizenry alike, and start working on those problems. Remember, the United States of America is not the responsibility of merely the President, the Vice President and their administration, it is the responsibility of each and every one of us whose veins carry the spirit of liberty and whose nerves carry the torrents of bravery. We have won the battle of making the White House human again, but the war has just begun - the war against systemic racism, against misogyny, against homophobia, against islamophobia, against gun violence, and against post-pandemic health and economic crisis. So, though we may celebrate the victory for a short while, we mustn't lose sight of the issues - we must now actually start working as one people - as the American people to heal the wounds on the soul of our land of liberty. It's time to once again start dreaming and working towards the impossible dream - the dream of freedom not oppression, the dream of assimilation not discrimination, and above all, the dream of ascension not descension. Never forget my friend, AMERICA means Affectionate, Merciful, Egalitarian, Responsible, Inclusive, Conscientious and Accepting.

While we often think of where we live as a matter of personal preference, there is actually a massive amount of policy and legislation behind where we reside. As historian Richard Rothstein shows in The Color of Law, because racial discrimination was official federal policy through the middle of the twentieth century, black citizens were excluded from federally insured mortgages. 17 Not only that, housing developers were only eligible for government insurance if they maintained a strict policy of banning African Americans from inhabiting the homes they built. The racial divide we see today between many affluent suburbs and nearby urban neighborhoods is not an accident of history nor the amalgamation of countless individual choices; it is de jure (according to law) segregation, constructed and sustained by federal and, in many cases, state and local government policies. This means that the majority of us live where we do not simply as a matter of preference or convenience. How we decide where to live is shaped by what we might call a housing practice.

Over the next few years, the number of African Americans seeking jobs and homes in and near Palo Alto grew, but no developer who depended on federal government loan insurance would sell to them, and no California state-licensed real estate agent would show them houses. But then, in 1954, one resident of a whites-only area in East Palo Alto, across a highway from the Stanford campus, sold his house to a black family. Almost immediately Floyd Lowe, president of the California Real Estate Association, set up an office in East Palo Alto to panic white families into listing their homes for sale, a practice known as blockbusting. He and other agents warned that a 'Negro invasion' was imminent and that it would result in collapsing property values. Soon, growing numbers of white owners succumbed to the scaremongering and sold at discounted prices to the agents and their speculators. The agents, including Lowe himself, then designed display ads with banner headlines-"Colored Buyers!"-which they ran in San Francisco newspapers. African Americans desperate for housing, purchased the homes at inflated prices. Within a three-month period, one agent alone sold sixty previously white-owned properties to African Americans. The California real estate commissioner refused to take any action, asserting that while regulations prohibited licensed agents from engaging in 'unethical practices,' the exploitation of racial fear was not within the real estate commission's jurisdiction. Although the local real estate board would ordinarily 'blackball' any agent who sold to a nonwhite buyer in the city's white neighborhoods (thereby denying the agent access to the multiple listing service upon which his or her business depended), once wholesale blockbusting began, the board was unconcerned, even supportive.

During an interview with Diversity Inc.’s director of research and product development, she walked me through a typical presentation used to pitch the value of the company’s software to prospective clients. I learned that their products are especially valuable to those industries not allowed to collect ethno-racial data directly from individuals because of civil rights legislation that attempts to curb how these data are used to discriminate. But now those who work in finance, housing, and healthcare can use predictive software programs to ascertain information that they cannot request directly. The US Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) privacy rule, for example, strictly monitors the collection, storage, and communication of individuals’ “protected health information,” among other features of the law. This means that pharmaceutical companies, which market to different groups, need indirect methods to create customer profiles, because they cannot collect racial-ethnic data directly. This is where Diversity Inc. comes in. Its software programs target customers not only on the basis of race and ethnicity, but also on the basis of socioeconomic status, gender, and a growing list of other attributes. However, the company does not refer to “race” anywhere in their product descriptions. Everything is based on individuals’ names, we are told. “A person’s name is data,” according to the director of research and product development. She explains that her clients typically supply Diversity Inc. with a database of client names and her team builds knowledge around it. The process, she says, has a 96 percent accuracy rate, because so many last names are not shared across racial–ethnic groups – a phenomenon sociologists call “cultural segregation.”18

In the future they're going to look back on us as barbarians for living in houses that didn't have virus scrubbers. Everything we're doing now will be completely barbaric in 100 years. So I try to put things in perspective and realize that no lives matter, when it comes down to it. None. It doesn't make any difference. When the hand of doom touches you, it does not discriminate... I tend to be a pessimist. And then if I'm wrong, I can be pleasantly surprised.

MURRAY CONTINUED TO RAISE the issue of sex discrimination in her writings and presentations to academic and civic groups. On June 19, 1970, at a hearing held by the U.S. House Committee on Education and Labor, she described the multilayered discrimination black women faced, using an impressive array of charts to compare salary and unemployment rates by race, sex, and age to supplement her testimony. From her days as a restaurant worker in college to her career as an attorney and educa-tor, she had been paid less than, and denied the respect accorded to, her male peers. She had spent the first half of her life fighting for equal rights as an African American, only to discover that she would have to spend the second half fighting for equal rights as a woman. 'If anyone should ask a Negro woman what is her greatest achievement, her honest answer would be,' Murray told the committee, her voice laden with emotion, 'I survived.' Three months later, she would testify before the New York City Commission on Human Rights, headed by fellow Yale Law School alumna Eleanor Holmes Norton. Unable to hold back the tears, Murray openly wept as she recounted the opportunities she had been denied.

This area of the country was supposed to be more enlightened, better educated. But it was socially backwards, the type of backwards one thinks of when they hear “backwater Alabama,” but with money, which, in many ways, made it worse. People here still often married their high school sweethearts, which Bob found horrifying, and assuredly explained the divorce rate. He imagined Sarah had married her high school sweetheart, or someone she knew from high school. They projected Leave It to Beaver lives, but were off banging the neighbor. The 1950s never left here, which immediately explained Sarah. It was “small town”-minded America in expensive houses and it did a job on people’s psyches.

But the foremost concerns of the Democrats’ most reliable voting bloc—affordable housing, clean water, police brutality, the racial wealth gap, and reparations for state-sanctioned discrimination (as has been accorded other groups discriminated against in the United States)—have remained on the back burner, or have even been considered radioactive issues for the party that African-Americans help to sustain. To those who say that this would be impractical, it would be the duty of the party representing and dependent on the subordinate caste to open the eyes of their fellow Americans and make the case for a more egalitarian country.

Autism and ADHD and all the other neuropsychiatric functional impairments are not handicaps per se. In many cases, they can be a superpower, that out-of-the-box thinking you so often hear performers, artists and celebrities talk about. Performers like me, for instance. But the complications that can arise because of a diagnosis can definitely be compared to a handicap; a handicap that is created by ignorance, incorrect treatment, discrimination or an inability to provide much-needed societal adaptation.

Does it really hurt the cause of Christianity if gay people are protected from discrimination when it comes to housing and public accommodations? Seriously, if you fight against LGBTQ rights across the board, it’s hard to believe you care about us. You would be wise to find ways to stand with the queer community, for the sake of your own credibility and the integrity of your message, if nothing else.

The declaration and escalation of the War on Drugs marked a moment in our past when a group of people defined by race and class was viewed and treated as the 'enemy.' A literal war was declared on a highly vulnerable population, leading to a wave of punitiveness that permeated every aspect of our criminal justice system and redefined the scope of fundamental constitutional rights. The war mentality resulted in the militarization of local police departments and billions invested in drug law enforcement at the state and local levels. It also contributed to astronomical expenditures for prison building for people convicted of all crimes and the slashing of billions from education, public housing and welfare programs, as well as a slew of legislation authorizing legal discrimination against millions of people accused of drug offenses, denying them access to housing, food stamps, credit, basic public benefits, and financial aid for schooling. This war did not merely increase the number of people in prisons and jails. It radically altered the life course of millions, especially black men who were the primary targets in the early decades of the war. Their lives and families were destroyed for drug crimes that were largely ignored on the other side of town. Those who define 'mass incarceration' narrowly, to include only individuals currently locked in prisons or jails, erase from public view the overwhelming majority of people ensnared by the system. Twice as many people are on probation or parole in this country as are locked in literal cages. The United States has a staggering 2.3 million people in prison-a higher rate of incarceration than any country in the world-but it also has another 4.5 million people under state control outside of prisons, on probation or parole. More than 70 million Americans-over 20 percent of the entire U.S. population, overwhelming poor and disproportionately people of color-now have criminal records that authorize legal discrimination for life. The New Jim Crow was intended to help people see that it is a serious mistake to think of mass incarceration as simply a problem of too many people in prisons and jails. It is that, but it is also much, much more. Prison statistics barely begin to capture the enormity of this crisis. And yet for too many, the discussion begins and ends there.

how racism becomes institutionalized in the ideas and routine practices of our social organizations: our families, our laws and policies, our educational system and decisions and structures shaping the representation of race we absorb from the media. From mass incarceration to sentencing laws to racial discrimination in housing and home loans, the invisibility of institutional racism is maintained by the fact that it is literally hard to see.

Once a person is labeled a felon, he or she is ushered into a parallel universe in which discrimination, stigma, and exclusion are perfectly legal, and privileges of citizenship such as voting and jury service are off-limits. It does not matter whether you have actually spent time in prison; your second-class citizenship begins the moment you are branded a felon. Most people branded felons, in fact, are not sentenced to prison. As of 2008, there were approximately 2.3 million people in prisons and jails and a staggering 5.1 million people under “community correctional supervision”—i.e., on probation or parole.89 Merely reducing prison terms does not have a major impact on the majority of people in the system. It is the badge of inferiority—the felony record—that relegates people for their entire lives to second-class status. As described in chapter 4, for people convicted of drug crimes, there is little hope of escape. Barred from public housing by law, discriminated against by private landlords, ineligible for food stamps, forced to “check the box” indicating a felony conviction on employment applications for nearly every job, and denied licenses for a wide range of professions, people whose only crime is drug addiction or possession of a small amount of drugs for recreational use find themselves locked out of the mainstream society and economy—permanently.

Housing owner associations need to put aside long-held discriminatory attitudes and concentrate on ensuring that persons with disabilities have equal opportunities to engage in all aspects of community life.

as if the prehistoric civilization had gone out among the hills for a little while and would return; and then everything would be restored to an older age, and time would have returned upon itself and a bad dream of invasion and change would have been dissolved in an hour before the dawn. For man, too, has tenure in the land; he dwelt upon the land twenty-five thousand years ago, and his gods before him. The people of the town have little need. They do not hanker after progress and have never changed their essential way of life. Their invaders were a long time in conquering them; and now, after four centuries of Christianity, they still pray in Tanoan to the old deities of the earth and sky and make their living from the things that are and have always been within their reach; while in the discrimination of pride they acquire from their conquerors only the luxury of example. They have assumed the names and gestures of their enemies, but have held on to their own, secret souls; and in this there is a resistance and an overcoming, a long outwaiting.

The United Arab Emirates reportedly had its contract with NSO cancelled in 2021 when it became clear that Dubai’s ruler had used it to hack his ex-wife’s phone and those of her associates. The New York Times journalist Ben Hubbard, Beirut chief for the paper, had his phone compromised while reporting on Saudi Arabia and its leader Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, a man who has invested huge amounts of money in commercial spyware.45 Palestinian human rights activists and diplomats in Palestine have also been targeted by Pegasus, including officials who were preparing complaints against Israel to the International Criminal Court. NSO technology was used by the Israeli police to covertly gather information from Israelis’ smartphones. Pegasus had become a key asset for Israel’s domestic and international activities.46 Saudi Arabia is perhaps the crown jewel of NSO’s exploits, one of the Arab world’s most powerful nations and a close ally of the US with no formal relations with the Jewish state. It is a repressive, Sunni Muslim ethnostate that imprisons and tortures dissidents and actively discriminates against its Shia minority.47 Unlike previous generations of Saudi leaders, bin Salman thought that the Israel/Palestine conflict was “an annoying irritant—a problem to be overcome rather than a conflict to be fairly resolved,” according to Rob Malley, a senior White House official in the Obama and Biden administrations.48

I’m learning that when marginalized communities face racism or classism, high standards for cleanliness can be a way for a family to reassert their own dignity in the face of dehumanizing stereotypes about being lazy, unintelligent, or dirty. Loving families might insist that their home sparkle or their children’s clothes be spotless, not out of a perceived superiority, but as a way of protecting against discrimination.

Black people don’t just face death at the barrel of a policeman’s gun or within our medical system. Life is taken from us on a daily basis, through housing discrimination; through the inability to get or maintain a job that allows us to pay rent, have health insurance, and buy food; and through under-compensation.

When you deny an applicant, it is important that you clearly document your reasons for why you are denying them to avoid discrimination complaints.

As we discussed briefly in Chapter 4, federal law currently prohibits landlords from discriminating against prospective tenants who have had a felony conviction for drug use (as drug abuse is seen as a disability and is therefore covered under Fair Housing Laws), but not drug sales or manufacturing.

A black man from St. Louis, noting the city's poor housing conditions for some black residents, observed, "a flashy car becomes their living room." An African American businessman told Time Magazine: "Negroes are driven to spend their earnings in showy ways because they still cannot get the more ordinary things a white man with a similar income would buy." An article in Ebony pointed out that many black people lacked access to housing, leisure pursuits, and the other good things that a white American might buy with discretionary income: "Long ago they found out that they could not live in the best neighborhoods, eat in the best restaurants, go to the best resorts because of racial discrimination.

If you want to avoid fines and possible jail time, don’t discriminate against any of the protected classes (race, color, religion, sex, national origin, familial status, disability, and other locally protected classes). Be careful in the language you use in your advertising, on the phone, in person, in your documents, and anywhere else in your business. And maintain good records in case someone ever wants to bring a case against you for violating the Fair Housing Laws.

In the years to come, what matters most is that we see ourselves in one another’s struggles. Whether we are fighting for transgender rights or for an end to racial bias, whether we are fighting against housing discrimination or insidious immigration laws, no matter who we are or how we look or how little it may seem we have in common, the truth is, in the battle for civil rights and economic justice, we are all the same.

I will accept that black children will not recover from economic inequality, housing discrimination, sexual violence, heteropatriarchy, mass incarceration, mass evictions, and parental abuse. I will accept that black children are all worthy of the most abundant, patient, responsible kind of love and liberation this world has ever created.

Obama declined to hold public services in the White House commemorating the National Day of Prayer, which had been the practice of his predecessors. • In September 2011, his Department of Health and Human Services terminated funding to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops for its extensive program to assist victims of human trafficking and modern-day slavery. The reason? Objections to Catholic teaching on abortion and contraception.7 • In 2013 Obama’s inaugural committee forced pastor Louie Giglio, whose Atlanta church was nationally known for its efforts to combat sex trafficking, to withdraw from delivering a prayer at the inaugural ceremony after an audio recording surfaced of a sermon Giglio delivered in the mid-1990s referencing biblical teaching on homosexuality. When it came to praying at Obama’s second inaugural, no pastor holding to an orthodox view of Scripture had need to apply. • His Justice Department canceled a 30,000 grant to a program for at-risk youth because it allowed voluntary, student-led prayer, and the oath recited by its young charges mentioned God.8 • He advocated passage of a version of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act prohibiting private employers from declining to hire gays and lesbians that granted no exemption for religious ministries and charities. • The Defense Department canceled an appearance by Franklin Graham of Samaritan’s Purse at a National Day of Prayer observance because of Graham’s alleged anti-Muslim bigotry. • Obama’s campaign removed a reference to God from the Democratic Party platform and only moved to reinsert it after news outlets reported the exclusion and controversy erupted. In rushed proceedings at the party convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, the name of God was reinserted to boos from the delegates.

The American real-estate industry believed segregation to be a moral principle. As late as 1950, the National Association of Real Estate Boards' code of ethics warned that "a Realtor should never be instrumental in introducing into a neighborhood ... any race or nationality, or any individuals whose presence will clearly be detrimental to property values." A 1943 brochure specified that such potential undesireables might include madams, bootleggers, gangsters - and "a colored man of means who was giving his children a college education and thought they were entitled to live among whites." The federal government concurred. It was the How Owners' Loan Corporation, not a private trade association, that pioneered the practice of redlining, selectively granting loans and insisting that any property it insured be covered by a restrictive covenant - a clause in the deed forbidding the sale of the property to anyone other than whites. Millions of dollars flowed from tax coffers into segregated white neighborhoods. "For perhaps the first time, the federal government embraced the discriminatory attitudes of the marketplace," the historian Kenneth R. Jackson wrote in his 1985 book, Crabgrass Frontier, a history of suburbanization. "Previously, prejudices were personalized and individualized; FHA exhorted segregation and enshrined it as public policy. Whole areas of cities were declared ineligible for loan guarantees." Redlining was not officially outlawed until 1968, by the Fair Housing Act. By then the damage was done - and reports of redlining by banks have continued.

A government offering such bounty to builders and lenders could have required compliance with a nondiscrimination policy. Instead, the FHA adopted a racial policy that could well have been culled from the Nuremberg laws.

In Chicago and across the country, whites looking to achieve the American dream could rely on a legitimate credit system backed by the government. Blacks were herded into the sights of unscrupulous lenders who took them for money and for sport.

Government studies show that there are still more than two million race-based housing discrimination crimes every year.8

Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess. And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner. I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted. Luke 18:10-14 Now an interesting note to all of this is that these religious teachers, or professors, didn’t realize they would be held to a stricter judgment. They knew the Scriptures. They should have been convicted over their sins, rather than judge others and discriminate against them. The arrogance and pride of these religious leaders had taken over, and they didn’t understand the heart of God. That is a very bad place to be in life. The Pharisees murmured because Jesus held His arms wide open for the downtrodden, and they did not. They looked down on them, and Jesus did not. The people with leprosy and “AIDS” were just as important to Jesus as the kings and leaders. There is no caste system with Jesus, and there shouldn’t be one with you either.

Tom had automatically picked up the oily rag that lived on the corner of Grey’s desk and, with a dexterous flick, snapped a fat fly out of the air and into oblivion. “Dead whale garnished with mint? That should cause my blood to be especially attractive to the more discriminating biting insects in Charles Town—to say nothing of Canada.” Jamaican flies were a nuisance but seldom carnivorous, and the sea breeze and muslin window screening kept most mosquitoes at bay. The swamps of coastal America, though…and the deep Canadian woods, his ultimate destination… “No,” Grey said reluctantly, scratching his neck at the mere thought of Canadian deer flies. “I can’t attend Mr. Mullryne’s celebration of his new plantation house basted in whale oil. Perhaps we can get bear grease in South Carolina. Meanwhile…sweet oil, perhaps?