Interview with Founder of Black Lives Matter

Aug 05

Alicia Garza, founder of the Black Lives Matter movement, was recently interviewed by Bloomberg.  Too many people still understand racism from the narrow lens of morality, and accordingly, only recognize intentional, conscious racism as noxious. They are, however, blind to the structures that de jure racism has bequeathed us.  As she puts it, “[R]acism is a set of interlocking dynamics: One in three black men can expect to spend some time incarcerated; women are the fastest-growing population in prisons and jails—and 30 percent are black; black folks are on the low-earning end of the economy. Lots of people who are great people are implementing and ­protecting systems, practices, structures that fundamentally exclude, disenfranchise, marginalize black people.”  Undoing these structures is the great challenge facing the US today.  I am hoping that with a Hillary win in the fall, the necessary changes in the Supreme Court can be made to allow us to adopt the broad remedies necessary to undo the legacy of Jim Crow in the US.

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