Racial Injustice

The Covid-19 epidemic disproportionately affected racial and ethnic minorities, particularly Black, Latinx, and Native communities, who faced an increased risk of infection, major sickness, and death from the disease, as well as severe economic consequences. These gaps are associated with long-standing imbalances in health outcomes and access to care, education, employment, and economic position.

Racial discrimination and bias have been ingrained in the criminal legal and law enforcement system from its earliest days and continues to pervade every level of the system today.

More than half of death row exonerees are Black.  Nearly half the people currently on death row are Black.  Innocent Black people are seven times more likely to be wrongfully convicted of murder than innocent white people.  It takes longer to exonerate an innocent Black person.  Police misconduct occurred in more than half of all wrongful murder conviction cases involving innocent Black people.  Black people are more likely to be stopped and searched.

Deep-seated systemic racism and inequities that disadvantaged communities of color are still woven into the fabric of our institutions today— from education and housing to our criminal legal system.  Systemic racism permeates the starkly segregated world of housing. In our public schools, students of color are too often confined to racially isolated, underfunded, and inferior programs. Our criminal justice system disproportionately targets and subjects people of color to police brutality, incarcerates them and imposes numerous collateral consequences,  and criminalizes poverty. The dream of equal justice remains an elusive one.