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racial bias
To Thwart Trump Killing Spree, Biden Urged to Commute Death Penalty Cases
The former president, warned a broad rights coalition, "executed more people than the previous ten administrations combined."
Dec 09, 2024
A large and diverse coalition of broad coalition of rights organizations on Monday sent a letter to U.S. President Biden Monday, urging him to commute the sentences of all 40 individuals who are on federal death row.
The letter adds to a chorus of voices—including prosecutors and law enforcement officials—advocating for Biden to use his clemency powers to issue such commutations before he departs office.
The calls for Biden to issue pardons and commutations have only grown since the president issued a pardon for his son, clearing Hunter Biden of wrongdoing in any federal crimes he committed or may have committed in the last 11 years.
The joint letter to Biden was backed by over 130 organizations, including the ACLU, Brennan Center for Justice, and The Sentencing Project, commends his administration's "actions to repudiate capital punishment, including imposing a moratorium on executions for those sentenced to death, and for publicly calling for an end to the use of the death penalty during your 2020 campaign. In the face of a second Trump administration, more is necessary."
"President Trump executed more people than the previous ten administrations combined. Of those he executed, over half were people of color: six Black men and one Native American. The only irreversible action you can take to prevent President-elect Trump from renewing his execution spree, as he has vowed to do, is commuting the death sentences of those on federal death row now," the letter states.
The letter cites additional reasons that Biden ought to commute the sentences, including that the death penalty "has been rooted in slavery, lynchings, and white vigilantism."
A separate letter to Biden—sent in November by group of attorneys general, law enforcement officials, and others—argues that "condemning people to death by the state does not advance public safety. The death penalty fails as an effective deterrent and does not reduce crime. As an outdated, error-riddled, and racially-biased practice, its continued use—and the potential for its abuse—erodes public trust in the criminal legal system and undermines the legitimacy of the entire criminal legal system."
Matt Bruenig, president of the People's Policy Project think tank, directly tied Biden's inaction on this issue to the pardon he issued for his son in a blog post last week, writing that "if Biden does not act, there is little doubt that Trump will aggressively schedule executions in his next term. Their blood will primarily be on Trump's hands, but, if Biden does not act to prevent it, his hands will be bloody too."
The call for commutations for death row prisoners aligns with a wider push for the President to use his clemency powers before he leaves office.
Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), who has been particularly vocal on this issue, said Sunday on social media that President Biden "must use his clemency power to change lives for the better. And we have some ideas on who he can target: Folks in custody with unjustified sentencing disparities, the elderly and chronically ill, people on death row, women punished for crimes of their abusers, and more."
Pressley was one of over 60 members of Congress who sent a letter to Biden last month, encouraging Biden to intervene to help these groups.
Several lawmakers have specific pardons or commutations in mind, according to Axios. For example, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) has urged Biden to pardon Julian Assange of WikiLeaks, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) has called for a pardon of Indigenous activist Leonard Peltier, per Axios.
So far, Biden has granted far fewer clemency petitions (161 total) than former President Barrack Obama, according to the Department of Justice's Office of the Pardon Attorney, and a few dozen less than President-elect Trump did during his entire first presidency. However, in 2022, Biden did grant full and unconditional pardons to all U.S. citizens convicted of simple federal marijuana possession—a move that was cheered by advocates.
According to The New York Times, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said last week that Biden was expected to make more clemency announcements "at the end of his term."
"He's thinking through that process very thoroughly," she said.
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What the Academy Awards Tell Us About the Value of Black Work
Feb 28, 2016
What's the value of an Academy Award?
It's a question I've been mulling over ever since the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences--the revered gatekeepers of America's film industry--announced the nominees for their 88th Academy Awards ceremony, also known as the Oscars. In a bold feat of tone-deafness (read: overt racism), the Academy chose not to nominate a single Black actor in any of their four acting categories--again.
I wasn't surprised by the Academy's casual racism in refusing to recognize Black performers at this year's ceremony. Hollywood's diversity problems aren't new. The fact that there are still people who blithely question whether Black performances are even worthy of recognition speaks to the existence of pervasive bigotry within the institution. It's why Black people (along with other historically marginalized communities) have banded together to create our own institutions to recognize our work: without celebrations like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Image Awards--and yes, even the BET Awards--daring to uplift Black performers in Hollywood, where else could we go to applaud and honor our stars?
What did surprise me was how some high-profile individuals like Helen Mirren, instead of grappling with the issue of the Academy's accountability to Black actors, blamed this year's lack of Black nominees on broader race and power dynamics within the industry. The Academy's lack of racial sensitivity, she argued, is a symptom of a deeply engrained culture of racial bias that disadvantages Black professionals; as a result, one should not read racist intent into the Academy's nomination decisions.
It isn't entirely wrong to deflect blame onto the wider industry. As many have rightly pointed out, industry diversity starts in the boardrooms, where casting and business decisions get made. But in our hurry to write off the Oscars' diversity problems as the logical byproduct of Hollywood's ubiquitous racism, we shouldn't dismiss the Academy's distinct responsibility to recognize Black artists. More than mere pageantry, the Oscars award ceremony represents an issue of economic justice because of its role as a public evaluation of people in the film industry. Neither the Academy nor the Oscars operate in a vacuum; the Oscars are where Hollywood ascribes value to the artistic and cultural experiences that move and define us and, by proxy, the performers who embody these stories.
Moreover, the awards aren't just a competition for cultural value: they double as an assessment tool that helps pick the industry's economic winners and losers--in full view of the adoring public. While mainstream recognition from an institution like the Academy is not necessary to validate the contributions and experiences of Black performers, it still carries significant implications for the economic realities of the movie industry. Because the vast majority of Black artists don't receive the same opportunities for exposure as their white counterparts, they aren't given access to the same springboard that launches other workers in the industry. For the working actor, the value of an Academy Award is concrete: increased exposure to the best directors, casting agents, and managers, combined with greater leverage for higher pay and more favorable working conditions. Even receiving a nomination can make booking the next job and sustaining a career easier.
And as resilient as Black people are--Black entertainers especially--it is not enough for us to create spaces where we validate our work if those spaces do not wield the same access to economic opportunities. Dismantling systemic racism goes hand-in-hand with ending economic inequality, and it's imperative to the liberation of Black people that we tackle them in tandem. And so, we must fight for inclusion in mainstream spaces where our economic futures are at stake and create spaces for Black achievement to be validated in a way that honors and respects us.
The whitewashing of the Academy Awards presents a unique economic challenge to Black performers and other Black workers in the industry. In addition to shaking our fists at the intersecting systems of oppression that permeate Hollywood, we must call equal attention to the Academy's actions--precisely because they speak to a larger ethos for how Black work and Blackness go unrecognized and devalued within the film and more significant entertainment industry.
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How The Assault at Spring Valley High Brutally Demonstrates the 'School-to-Prison Pipeline'
The assault at Spring Valley High is representative of the U.S.'s disturbing habit of criminalizing black and Latino children.
Oct 29, 2015
Officer Ben Fields had not a moment's hesitation in putting a black girl in a chokehold to yank her from her desk chair, slam her to the ground, and throw her across her classroom. The video of this assault has gone viral and has rightly prompted outrage from white people.
Here's the thing: The suspension, expulsions, beating, and arresting of black students in the U.S. is closer to the rule than the exception when childish behaviors occur at school. The national statistics on how often school discipline involves authorities physically attacking students isn't available. But we do have data on the disproportionately high rates of out-of-school suspensions, expulsions, and referrals to the criminal justice system that black children experience in our schools daily.
Here are some recent stories illustrating the data:
Honor student Kiera Wilmot, a black high school sophomore, was arrested for conducting a science experiment that had been going viral on the internet by putting household cleaner and a piece of aluminum foil in a bottle and making smoke. She was charged with two felonies.
A 14-year-old black student from Texas was choked by a school police officer "for his own safety," during a lunch-room tussle with another student.
A 12-year-old black boy was arrested for engaging in a staring contest with a white student, who while giggling, told the teacher that she felt "intimidated" though she had started the game.
Dontradrian Bruce, a black high school student who earned all A's and B's, held up three fingers-the number of his football jersey- in a photo taken by his science teacher as he completed a successful science project. Dontradrian was suspended for 21 days, accused of making a gang sign.
Kyle Thompson's school principal said that Kyle was such a great kid, he wished his school was full of Kyle Thompson's. Yet when this 14-year-old black student declined to show his teacher a note he had written, the child was led from school in handcuffs, barred from all public schools in the state for a year and is spending a year under house arrest.
The criminalization of black children starts almost the moment that the child leaves her mother's door. According to a recent report from the National Education Association, black children represent only 18% of pre-schoolers, but they make up nearly half of all pre-school suspensions. Anecdotal evidence is sometimes even more horrifying than the data itself:
Joah was 3 years old and his mother received a call from the school that he hit a staff member on the arm, was deemed "a danger to the staff," and suspended. He was suspended 5 times that year.
A little 5-year-old black child in Mississippi was required to wear black shoes as part of the school's dress code. The family didn't have black shoes for him and his mother colored in some white and red sneakers with black magic marker. He was nabbed by the cops at school and sent home in the back of a police vehicle.
Due to a spike in crime by juveniles in the 1990s, social scientist John Delulio propagated a myth of the rise of "superpredators." These superpredators were to be "radically impulsive, brutally remorseless elementary school youngsters who pack guns instead of lunches" and "have absolutely no respect for human life." This false panic paved the way for Zero Tolerance policies that over-criminalized childish behaviors in schools. Consequently, we've seen expulsions and suspensions almost double since then. The Vera Institute reports that about 2 million secondary school students are now suspended annually. Compare that to just 3 million students graduating high school that same year.
Black and Latino students are suspended and expelled at much higher rates than white students. Black students in middle school are suspended at a rate almost four times more often than white youth and three times more likely than white youth for the same infractions overall. Particularly alarming is that over 70% of all students receiving school-related arrests and referrals to law enforcement are black or Latino.
The consequences of both this excessive criminalizing of children and the racial bias in harsh punishments are extreme. The Kirwan Institute cites studies showing that a single suspension in the first year of high school doubles the dropout chance for that child. Children who experience expulsions are three times more likely to end up in the juvenile justice system. Once caught within the juvenile system, the psychological and economic consequences can have a lasting and burdensome impact on children while simultaneously decreasing their educational and financial opportunities and increasing the chances of re-incarceration. People incarcerated as youth are nearly 70% more likely to be in jail again by age 25 than youth who were not referred to juvenile detention.
The current discipline policies in our schools undoubtedly criminalize our children and criminalize them with a bias, especially against black youth. When officers like Ben Fields react to a child who won't relinquish her cell phone with excessive violence and arrest, he is potentially condemning her before she has even had the chance to grow up. Right now, our school policies assume black kids are criminals, and we should beat 'em up, kick 'em out, and lock 'em up.
Are you outraged yet?
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