It's hard to believe that it's been 46 years since August 11, 1965, the day the Watts uprising began. I'll never forget the fear that I felt watching the chaos unfold. I was shocked but not surprised: you could feel the anger and frustration building up during that hot summer. The booming California economy was providing little opportunity for people of color. Public policy was benefiting the already fortunate and was leaving behind those who were already disadvantaged. In California, as in the rest of the country, African American and Latino families were reaching a boiling point that could not be contained any longer. Over the following two years there were a number of additional riots in Chicago, Newark, Detroit and elsewhere.
Today in Watts and across California people are feeling that familiar angry bubbling stirring up as the gap between rich and poor grows ever wider. During this time it is important that we recall the lessons from that turbulent period in our nation's past.
Two years after the riots broke out, President Lyndon Johnson established The Kerner Commission to try to understand what happened and what could be done to prevent further occurrences.
The resulting document, known as the Kerner Report, recommended that people from all walks of life have more equal access in four major areas: jobs, education, housing and services. Unfortunately, the inequality of 46 years ago is all too familiar today.
To be sure, there have been areas of progress. The Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 outlawed discriminatory banking practices and redlining. This helped give millions of minority families like mine the opportunity to fulfill the American Dream through homeownership.
I knew something was wrong a decade ago when my mailbox began to get filled on a daily basis with offers that seemed too good to be true. The pamphlets were from realtors, brokers and lenders that were selling predatory loans. These subprime loans were designed to be more expensive products for high risk borrowers, but turned out to be a chance for loan sharks to make a buck by pushing them on my elderly and minority neighbors, whether they needed them or not. One Wells Fargo loan officer recently testified publicly to the widespread practice of steering subprime loans, cynically referred to as "ghetto loans," to borrowers with good credit.
Wall Street securitized these loans and packaged them as good investments until the market's inevitable collapse. According to a recent report, "Homewreckers," the loss to homeowners, the property tax base, and local governments amounts to at least $650 billion. Meanwhile, bank CEOs continue to be absurdly compensated, with Chase's Jamie Dimon earning $20.7 million and Wells Fargo's John Stumpf earning $17.5 million in 2010.
Of course, African American and Latino families have not fared nearly as well. A new report from the Pew Research Center finds that median household wealth in African American households declined 53% between 2005 and 2009 from $12,124 to $5,677. Wealth among Latinos fell even more dramatically during the period, from $18,359 to $6,325, a 66% decline.[4]
Many of us feel as frustrated today as we did in 1965. Yet, as was the case 46 years ago, there is an opportunity for elected officials and Wall Street to address the problems. Key among them is the growing number of mortgage holders who now owe more than their houses are worth. Today, 23% of homeowners are underwater, including as many as 35% of African American homeowners and 41% of Hispanic homeowners.
It is a problem we can solve if we have the will to do so. We can actually fix the foreclosure crisis in California by writing down all underwater mortgages (2.1 million in the state) to market value. This would pump an annual $19.9 billion into the state economy and create 295,000 new jobs annually for 30 years. It would save Californians an average of $790 a month on mortgage payments and would dramatically reverse the loss of wealth in minority communities.
I still believe in the American Dream. That's why Bank CEOs and elected officials owe a solution to devastated black and Latino families in Watts and everywhere who believe we all deserve a fair chance to pursue our dreams.
Lyneva Mottley grew up in Watts and has lived there for over 50 years. A homeowner, she is retired from a career in factory work and home health care. She is the acting chair of the Watts chapter of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE). For more information about ACCE, visit www.calorganize.org
California voters came out in droves to support Proposition 19 this November. More than 4.1 million people voted for Prop. 19, which would have allowed adults 21 and older to possess and grow small amounts of marijuana for personal use and allow cities and counties to tax and regulate commercial sales. That's more votes than Meg Whitman or Carly Fiorina garnered. Though the measure didn't pass, the degree of support marks an undeniable leap forward in the movement to end marijuana prohibition. In the end, Prop. 19 achieved a higher percentage of "yes" votes (46%) than any state-level legalization measure on the ballot over the past decade.
This is clearly only the beginning of a new, more rational public discussion about marijuana. It's no longer a question of whether marijuana prohibition should end, but rather when and how. Post-election polling data shows that many voters who rejected Prop. 19 nonetheless believe that marijuana should be made legal. Even the leaders of the opposition to Prop. 19 publicly stated that they are not opposed to marijuana legalization, "if it's done the right way."
By Diana Tate Vermeire, Racial Justice Project Director, ACLU of Northern California
The state's criminal justice system is quickly becoming the only social service California is willing to fund. Our prison system is bursting at the seams, while school funding is drying up at the well. In the midst of a fiscal crisis -- one that only seems to be getting worse -- California continues to prioritize criminal justice spending instead of investing in the future of our state. Public education and crucial social service programs like welfare-to-work continue to experience drastic cuts, but California is loath to cut criminal justice spending.
Rather than choosing to prioritize basic necessities like a quality education, a job, and a place to live, our state's leaders are instead forcing social service agencies to close their doors, deny services, or turn certain individuals away altogether. Meanwhile, our jails and prisons remain open to anyone brought to their doors, no matter the cost. That choice-pouring scarce financial resources into the criminal justice system rather than much-needed social services-has resulted in the disproportionate incarceration of people of color, and an alarming uptick in the number of women - both women of color and white women - who are behind bars.
Today, in recognition of International Human Rights Day, the American Civil Liberties Union released a comprehensive analysis of the pervasive systemic and structural racism in America. The report, Race & Ethnicity in America: Turning a Blind Eye to Injustice, is a response to the U.S. report to the United Nations’ Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) released earlier this year. The U.S. report was a whitewash, sweeping under the rug the dramatic effects of widespread racial and ethnic discrimination in this country.
It’s time to begin an honest conversation about the fact that racial bias remains perhaps the most significant barrier to opportunity for people of color, particularly African Americans and Latinos. The ACLU report finds that discrimination in America permeates education, employment, the treatment of migrants and immigrants, law enforcement, and access to justice for juveniles and adults.
The results for California are particularly disturbing. The report documents the persistence of racial inequity and institutionalized discrimination in California’s educational and criminal justice systems, and in the treatment of immigrants. Among the examples cited in the report:
•Compared to schools attended mostly by white students, schools with a high concentration of African-American and Latino students are 74% more likely to lack textbooks for students to use for homework; 73% more likely to have evidence of cockroaches, rats or mice; and three times more likely to report that teacher turnover is a serious problem.
•In California, African Americans are given third-strike, 25-to-life prison sentences at a rate nearly 13 times the rate of whites. African Americans are 6.5% of the population, but they make up 45% of third strikers.
•Children of color are 20 times more likely to be sentenced to life without parole than white children in California, the worst racial disparities in the country. The California Supreme Court is currently considering the case of a 14 year old boy who is the youngest person in the United States to be sentenced to life without parole for a crime involving no physical injury to the victim.
Other reports echo these findings. Just last week, the Justice Policy Institute released a study of racial disparities in prison sentences for drug offenses in the 198 most populated counties in the nation. Four California counties made it into the top ten for sending the most African Americans to prison for drug offenses: Alameda, Kern, San Francisco, and San Mateo Counties. According to the report, Alameda and San Mateo Counties each send 35 times more African Americans than whites to prison for drug offenses, even though research shows almost no racial difference in drug use or sales.
The conclusion is inescapable: One of the most diverse states in the country, California has a two-tiered, separate and unequal educational and criminal justice system. In those institutions where we need justice the most, systemic racial bias is among the worst in the nation.
While the evidence of systemic human rights violations continues to pile up, California lawmakers continue to turn a blind eye. Despite overwhelming public support for limiting the three strikes law to violent felonies, the legislature has failed to act. As a result, judges continue to send people to prison for life for petty theft and other non-violent offenses. And despite overwhelming public support for alternatives to juvenile incarceration and judicial condemnation of the youth prisons, our state government has failed to shut them down.
The three simple criminal justice reforms that did pass the legislature this year—all intended to prevent wrongful convictions and ensure that only the guilty go to prison—were vetoed by the Governor, despite widespread support in newspaper editorials. The California criminal justice system sends more people to prison, in raw numbers and per capita, than almost any other criminal justice system in the world—and the overwhelming majority of these people are African American and Latino.
California officials should be leading the conversation about how we can all work together to steer the state in a more promising direction. To turn this equation around, we need to have the courage to begin a more constructive—and productive—conversation about the relationship between race, justice and opportunity in this state.
Today, in recognition of International Human Rights Day, the American Civil Liberties Union released a comprehensive analysis of the pervasive systemic and structural racism in America. The report,