Press Release: New ACLU Report Reveals Pervasive Racial Discrimination

Group Calls U.S. Report to United Nations a Whitewash

BOSTON -- The American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts is holding a press conference today at 10:30AM in Room B1 of the State House to coincide with the release of a comprehensive analysis by the national ACLU of the pervasive institutionalized, 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. It contains information about the ongoing impact of racism in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and across the country. The U.S. report, which the ACLU called a “whitewash,” swept under the rug the dramatic effects of widespread racial and ethnic discrimination in this country.

“The America we believe in is one where people are treated fairly regardless of their race and ethnicity. But unfortunately, as this report makes clear, the country and the Commonwealth are not living up to our ideals,” said Nancy Murray, Director of Education at the ACLU of Massachusetts.

Addressing the State House press conference will be Steven Watt, one of the report's authors and a senior staff attorney at the ACLU's Human Rights Program; state representative Byron Rushing who is an ACLU of Massachusetts board member; Boston City Councilor Chuck Turner, and representatives from local organizations that are in the forefront of the fight against racism and racial discrimination in Massachusetts.

The U.S. government submitted its report in April to the CERD committee, an independent group of internationally recognized human rights experts that oversees compliance with the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, a treaty signed and ratified by the U.S. in 1994. All levels of the U.S. government are required to comply with the treaty’s provisions, which require countries to review national, state, and local policies and to amend or repeal laws and regulations that create or perpetuate racial discrimination. The treaty also encourages countries to take positive measures, including affirmative action, to redress racial inequalities.

In its “shadow report” to the U.N., compiled jointly by the ACLU’s Human Rights and Racial Justice Programs and based on information provided by the ACLU affiliates in more than 20 states, the ACLU documents the U.S. government’s failure to fully comply with CERD in numerous substantive areas affecting racial and ethnic minorities. The report closely examines policies and practices at the federal, state and local levels which place a disproportionate burden on those most vulnerable in society -- including women, children, incarcerated persons, immigrants, and non-citizens.

Since its ratification, U.S. reporting on compliance has been inadequate, and this most recent report is no exception -- it is a combination of two overdue reports spanning the years 2000-2006. The government’s report is riddled with misrepresentations and inaccuracies and fails to honestly assess the ways in which racial and ethnic discrimination and inequality persist.

The ACLU’s report details the setbacks in the promotion of racial and ethnic equality, including the government’s attack on affirmative action and the courts’ curtailment of civil rights and remedies for discrimination. The ACLU report finds that discrimination in America permeates education, employment, the treatment of migrants and immigrants, law enforcement, access to justice for juveniles and adults, court proceedings, detention and incarceration, the death penalty, and the many collateral consequences of incarceration including the loss of political rights. 

The ACLU report also criticizes major shortcomings in the U.S. government’s report including: a minor mention of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina (and only in the housing discrimination context) and a total omission of the “school to prison pipeline” phenomenon, which involves the overzealous funneling of students of color out of classrooms and into the criminal justice system. The government's report also suffers from a complete lack of information on the dramatic increase in hate crimes and the escalating problem of police brutality.

The ACLU report examines human rights violations that took place before, during and after Hurricane Katrina, a crisis that exposed to the world the persistence of racial and economic inequalities in America, and their impact on African-American and other minority communities. It also documents the epidemic of minorities being subjected to racial profiling, a practice most often associated with African-Americans and Latinos, but one which also affects other minority communities. Since 9/11, racial profiling has increasingly been directed at Arabs, Muslims, and South Asians.

In addition, the report highlights the government’s failure to protect immigrants and non-citizens, and particularly low-wage workers, from racially discriminatory policies and acts such as governmental crackdowns and workplace raids.

December 10th is celebrated worldwide as International Human Rights Day. Today the ACLU and many of its affiliates across the country will hold events as part of the ACLU’s National Day of Action Against Racial Discrimination.

A copy of the ACLU’s report on the U.S. government’s report to CERD can be found online at: http://www.aclum.org/pdf/ACLU_CERD_report.pdf