Rich Thanks to Racism

Jim Freeman

Description

More than fifty years after the civil rights movement, there are still glaring racial inequities all across the United States. In Rich Thanks to Racism, Jim Freeman, one of the country's leading civil rights lawyers, explains why as he reveals the hidden strategy behind systemic racism. He details how the driving force behind the public policies that continue to devastate communities of color across the United States is a small group of ultra-wealthy individuals who profit mightily from racial inequality.In this groundbreaking examination of "strategic racism," Freeman carefully dissects the cruel and deeply harmful policies within the education, criminal justice, and immigration systems to discover their origins and why they persist. He uncovers billions of dollars in aligned investments by Bill Gates, Charles Koch, Mark Zuckerberg, and a handful of other billionaires that are dismantling public school systems across the United States. He exposes how the greed of prominent US corporations and Wall Street banks was instrumental in creating the world's largest prison population and our most extreme anti-immigrant policies. Freeman also demonstrates how these "racism profiteers" prevent flagrant injustices from being addressed by pitting white communities against communities of color, obscuring the fact that the struggles faced by white people are deeply connected with those faced by people of color.Rich Thanks to Racism is an invaluable road map for all those who recognize that the key to unlocking the United States' full potential is for more people of all races and ethnicities to prioritize racial justice.

Sujets

• Sociologie, société et politique
• History of education

Informations

• Publié par: Cornell University Press
• Date de parution: 15 avril 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781501755156
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

RICH THANKS TO RACISM

RICHTHANKS TO RACISM How the Ultra-Wealthy Profit from Racial Injustice

Jim Freeman

ILR PRESS AN IMPRINT OF CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS ITHACA AND LONDON

Copyright © 2021 by Cornell University

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. Visit our website at cornellpress.cornell.edu.

First published 2021 by Cornell University Press Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Freeman, Jim, 1976– author. Title: Rich thanks to racism : how the ultra-wealthy profit from racial injustice / Jim Freeman. Description: Ithaca, [New York] : ILR Press, an imprint of Cornell University Press, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020033574 (print) | LCCN 2020033575 (ebook) | ISBN 9781501755132 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781501755156 (pdf) | ISBN 9781501755149 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Race discrimination—Economic aspects—United States. | Racism—Economic aspects—United States. | Minorities—United States— Economic conditions. | United States—Race relations—Economic aspects. Classification: LCC E184.A1 F7347 2021 (print) | LCC E184.A1 (ebook) | DDC 330.9730089—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020033574 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020033575

To all those who are willing to fight for a better and more just world

Contents

Preface

Introduction: Strategic Racism 1. The Racism Profiteers 2. The Squandered Brilliance of Our Disposable Youth 3. Tough-on-Crime for You, Serve-and-Protect for Me 4. From Jim Crow to Juan Crow 5. Defeating Goliath Conclusion: A Declaration of Interdependence

Acknowledgments Notes Index

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Preface

In the summer of 2020, there were two significant developments in US race rela- tions, the first of which was unprecedented and the second of which has been repeated countless times across our history. First, following the killing of George Floyd on May 25th, for the first time ever in the United States, there was widespread public recognition of the exis- tence of systemic racism. Proclaiming one’s support for ending racial injustice became so trendy that seemingly every corporation and policy maker in the United States issued a public statement in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. Second, by July, as has happened over and over again, our collective atten- tion to systemic racism had quickly and substantially waned. The mainstream media had largely moved on from covering this issue. Most of those newly “woke” corporations were back to business as usual once the protests were over and the process of actually eliminating the racist policies and practices being protested had begun. And the vast majority of policy makers were doing what they nearly always do in the face of protest: figuring out the bare mini- mum amount of change needed to quell the uprising and get things back to “normal.” When faced with such widespread loyalty to a profoundly unjust status quo, it is unclear how much progress those who remain committed to racial justice will be able to make in the coming months and years. As of the time of this writing (August 2020), I am optimistic that the uprising being led by the communities most impacted by systemic racism will be able to create the waves of transfor- mative change that are so obviously necessary and overdue. I am, however, also realistic about the need for many more people—of all races and ethnicities—to become active members and supporters of the racial justice movement before we will truly be able to eradicate systemic racism from US society. This book is for all those who think they might want to become part of that effort. Make no mistake: in the coming years, we have a chance to institute the most significant social change in US history. Of all the things we could accom- plish as a country, of all the milestones we could achieve, of all the injustices we could remedy, none would be more significant than dismantling the centuries- old systemic racism that continues to devastate and marginalize tens of millions

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