Racial Equity ✍️
President Joe Biden has been busy signing executive orders, memos, and proclamations like they are checks.
Because Biden signed executive orders related to “racial equity,” which is all the way in my lane, racial equity is the focus of this newsletter.
While the media has focused on five executive actions as being related to racial equity, every policy will impact race and racism. But I can’t review them all. So, for paying subscribers, I reviewed and annotated nine of Biden’s executive actions. Yes, nine! And no, it was not divine.
This newsletter also includes news, quotes, and an essay on racial equity. I appreciate everyone’s support for this newsletter. 🙏🏾
✍️Executive Actions on Racial Equity, Underserved Groups, Prison Reform, and Housing Practices:
✍️Executive Actions on Immigration, Immigration Enforcement, and the Census:
✍️Executive Actions on Tribal Consultation, Condemning Racism, Xenophobia and Intolerance Against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders:
Disclaimer and Other Sources
Those executive actions aren’t lengthy or difficult reads. That said, I’m guessing executive actions aren’t reads many people enjoy. But I found it useful to see for myself what this man is saying and signing.
Disclaimer: Although, I was born in DC, and I worked for the federal government, I am not a policy wonk.
But I can spot a thing or two. So, in the links above you have my comments and references for each of those executive orders. I cross-referenced Biden’s executive orders with The Breathe Act because I want to know what activists, scholars, and organizers want. Another good reference is The THRIVE Act .
You have above what I wanted to see done with Biden’s executive orders. If you’ve seen something similar elsewhere, with comments and references in the same document as the executive orders, let me know. I’d love to see it.
What’s Wrong with “Racial Equity”? 🧐
I have issues with the term “racial equity.” So, I went looking for definitions.
One part of how the site Racial Equity Tools defines racial equity is: “the condition that would be achieved if one's racial identity no longer predicted, in a statistical sense, how one fares.”
The City of Portland’s Office of Equity and Human Rights defines it similarly: “when race does not determine or predict the distribution of resources, opportunities, and burdens for group members in society.”
Although it sounds good, none of that works for me, and I don’t think it will work. I swear I’m not trying to be a fusspot. Everyone can check out my latest essay to find out, “What’s Wrong with “Racial Equity.”
📰 Newsy
I feel like my newsletter needs more news, so here you go:
📚🎬Books and Movies
Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619 -2019, edited by Keisha N. Blain and Ibram X Kendi. Blain and Kendi have a new book out featuring 90 writers who tell the story of the 400-year journey.
Judas and the Black Messiah, Feb 12, on HBO Max and theaters. This movie tells the story of Chairman Fred Hampton. I hope it doesn't disappoint because I am eager to see it. Some of you may recall a piece I wrote about Chairman Fred Hampton, “We Don’t Fight Racism with Racism.” I continue to think about what Hampton would've said and accomplished if he had lived longer.
😢Cicely Tyson
The great Cicely Tyson died on January 28. She was 96. Her memoir, “Just as I Am,” went on sale January 26. Prime Video, in the Amplify Black Voices category, has a selection of movies in the Honoring Cicely Tyson section.
🏆Award Shows
The NAACP Image Awards, March 27, 8 pm ET, on BET. The nominee list is beyond amazing. It is a complete feast of goodness. I see the book, “A Black Women’s History of the United States” on the list and the book is now on my reading list.
See the nominee list and vote by March 5 at 9 pm ET. Also, Prime Video has a selection of Golden Globe and NAACP Image Award nominees in the Amplify Black Voices category.
🎵Music
James Baldwin on Spotify. Did you know a user on Spotify, Ikechúkwú Casmir Onyewuenyi, created a playlist on Spotify with 484 songs, 32 hrs., representing the vinyl records in Baldwin’s house? I’m loving it.
🇳🇴The Nobel Peace Prize
Norwegian MP Petter Eide nominated The Black Lives Matter Movement for a Nobel Peace Prize. Read the reflection by the Movement for Black Lives and an article in The Guardian.
Norwegian MP Lars Haltbrekken nominated Stacey Abrams for a Nobel Peace Prize.
🫁The Breathe Act and Pepper Spray
Among other prohibitions, The Breathe Act, prohibits law enforcement from using pepper spray.
Read: Rochester Mayor Suspends Police Officers Who Pepper-Sprayed 9-Year-Old Girl 🤬
🚨Defund the Police
🎓Education
Justice Department Drops Race Discrimination Lawsuit Against Yale University Trump’s DOJ sued Yale for discrimination against whites and Asians in admissions. 🙄 But the DOJ has dropped the suit.
African American History: From Emancipation to the Present. This Open Yale Course was recorded in 2010, but it looks great.
🇬🇧International
Boris and Biden didn't talk racism On January 23, President Biden spoke with Prime Minister Boris Johnson. The White House provided a short readout of the call, part of which says, “President Biden also noted the importance of cooperation, including through multilateral organizations, on shared challenges such as combatting climate change, containing COVID-19, and ensuring global health security.”
Apparently, Biden does not think white racism is a shared challenge between the United States and the UK. 👎🏾 Think about the difference between Trump and Biden on this point. Trump passed around his players and his playbook. Trump treated white racism as a shared opportunity with the UK.
📢Quotes that say what I’m saying:
The point is that mass incarceration, police violence, the disproportionate impact of the COVID pandemic on communities of color, segregated and substandard housing - all of those are related. And they’re all symptoms of the disease. And the disease is white supremacy.
Paul Butler, Unpacking Biden’s Executive Orders Advancing Racial Equity and Tribal Sovereignty
Liberalism’s objectifying focus on the effects of racial oppression leaves the structure of whiteness intact; that is, its attempt to separate whiteness from white supremacy is empty. One cannot contest these structures without transmuting one’s identity, in order to void one’s dependence on them. One cannot identify as white and be anti-racist at the same time.
Steve Martinot, White Skin, White Affect: Redundancy, Obsession, and Gratuitous Violence
The expressions “racially tinged” and “racially charged” emerged during the modern civil rights movement. Something similar is at work in the use of euphemisms which suggest that race is a fact—something that can be highlighted in a neutral way—rather than an ideology, a tool of oppression…language that uses “race” as a neutral concept, whether or not intensified by “tinged” or “charged,” suggests that race can possess both positive and negative valences.
Lawrence B. Glickman, The Racist Politics of the English Language
📍Where to Find Me and Why
Medium: for occasional, short, and IDGAF blog posts
Substack: for longer substance by email, free and paid, browse and click through
⏭The Next Newsletter
I need to pick up my pace with these newsletters, so I plan to send the next one on Friday, February 12. 🤞🏾🤞🏾
I still plan to share my thoughts on the Biden-Harris administration, white democracy, and mixed identity, but all that may not come in the next newsletter. I feel like I need to deal with the term “multiracial whiteness.”🧐