As Donald Trump continues to poll poorly among minority voters, many within the Republican Party are getting nervous as the electorate becomes more diverse each year. On Monday morning, the hashtag #BlackVotesMatter started trending on Twitter, as the general election gets closer and Trump still hasn’t done much to win over black voters.

The fact is, very few black Americans support Donald Trump. According to a FiveThirtyEight analysis, Trump is actually polling in fourth place among black voters, behind Hillary Clinton, Gary Johnson, and Jill Stein. In an average of several recent polls, Trump’s support among black voters sits at about 2 percent.

Trump’s numbers are worse than almost every Republican presidential nominee since 1948, in surveys that are taken after the party conventions and before Election Day. The only Republican nominee to poll worse than Trump was Barry Goldwater in 1964, who voted against the Civil Rights Act in the same year as the election. For a closer look at the parallels between Trump and Goldwater you should check out Sean Simon’s analysis.

With black voters expected to make up between 10 to 15 percent of the electorate in November, the GOP is urging Trump to change his tactics and appeal to a broader group of Americans. But as the New York Times reports, Trump has done very little to reach out to black voters, preferring to campaign with a mix of large rallies and media interviews.

In a recent visit to Detroit–the city with the 10th largest black population in the country–to talk economics last week, he went straight from his private plane to the Detroit Economic Club, where he talked to a mainly white audience. So far, Trump has decided against traditional community stops along the campaign trail and as the New York Times points out, he has yet to hold an event geared toward important black constituencies.

His director of African-American outreach, Omarosa Manigault, told the New York Times that she was “extremely concerned” about Trump’s standing among black voters. Manigault also said she is researching opportunities for him to meet key figures in the African-American community to improve his perception. “He’s alienated a number of minority voters, and that’s reflected in his low numbers,” said Tara Wall, a communications consultant who has helped with black outreach on previous Republican presidential campaigns.

But the question posed by many on social media is how black votes can matter to the Republicans when their nominee has openly criticized the Black Lives Matter movement as a threat to police officers. Trump also has a questionable record on race himself.

Yo, say, GOP, if Black votes matter, drop your racist Presidential candidate and the KKK vibe at his rallies & your convention. Start there.

— Jeffrey Wright (@jfreewright) August 15, 2016

However, many were also unhappy with both parties’ records on race.

Black ppl should not fall for the “Black Votes Matter” crap. When both parties are dominated by white supremacy

— Cliff Po (@Pharaoh_Po) August 15, 2016

Emma Von Zeipel

Emma Von Zeipel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. She is originally from one of the islands of Stockholm, Sweden. After working for Democratic Voice of Burma in Thailand, she ended up in New York City. She has a BA in journalism from Stockholm University and is passionate about human rights, good books, horses, and European chocolate. Contact Emma at EVonZeipel@LawStreetMedia.com.

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Baltimore police officers routinely engage in unconstitutional searches and arrests, excessive force, and profiling of black people, says a report from the Department of Justice presented on Wednesday morning.

The 163-page report says this pattern exists because of “systemic deficiencies in BPD’s policies, training, supervision, and accountability structures that fail to equip officers with the tools they need to police effectively and within the bounds of the federal law.”

Unconstitutional stops and arrests

The report is not a pleasant read. While people living in the wealthy, predominantly white areas of Baltimore describe the police as responsive and respectful, individuals in the poor, mainly black neighborhoods, on the other hand, describe the police as disrespectful and not responsive to their calls. They are also often targeted for unjustified stops and searches.

The DOJ’s report presents numbers on how many black people were stopped, often without reasonable suspicion. In fact, many were stopped when simply standing or walking on the city’s sidewalks. In the report, an image of a police department permeated with racial bias emerges.

Black people accounted for 95 percent of the 410 people who were stopped 10 times or more in the five and a half year period of data collection. One man, in particular, was stopped 30 times in less than 4 years, without ever being charged with a crime.

.@TheJusticeDept: ‘BPD’s Enforcement Activities Disproportionately Impact African Americans’ https://t.co/c0KeX8WF4X pic.twitter.com/f2Q1I3wXUN

— DOJ Civil Rights (@CivilRights) August 10, 2016

The frequent disregard for the Constitution through mass stops, searches, and arrests seem to be due to the  “zero tolerance” policy from the 1990s, which rewarded officers who make a lot of arrests.

The Baltimore Police also may have been biased against women when handling sexual assault cases. Officers failed to properly and meaningfully investigate cases of sexual assault and also to collect and corroborate evidence supporting the women’s accounts. While the DOJ did not find sufficient evidence to conclude that policing in Baltimore amounted to gender-bias in violation of federal law, some bias appears to have affected officers’ handling of sexual assault cases.

What’s next?

The Department of Justice launched the investigation in the spring of 2015, after the death of Freddie Gray. Reforms to make necessary changes will probably cost tens of millions of dollars and may take several years. The next step in the process is for city and federal officials to negotiate a settlement and present it to a federal judge. The settlement will include a list of requirements that the Baltimore Police Department will need to meet in the coming years.

A positive note is that everyone the DOJ investigators talked to during the investigation agreed that the BPD needs major reforms, even current police officers and city leaders. The DOJ said it will talk to local residents to take their opinions into account during the later stages of negotiation.

“There’s going to be a lot of folks with a lot of ideas about what needs to happen now in the community and in law enforcement, and it’s been really important to us to be able to hear directly from community members,” Vanita Gupta, head of the DOJ Civil Rights Division, said to the Baltimore Sun.

Emma Von Zeipel

Emma Von Zeipel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. She is originally from one of the islands of Stockholm, Sweden. After working for Democratic Voice of Burma in Thailand, she ended up in New York City. She has a BA in journalism from Stockholm University and is passionate about human rights, good books, horses, and European chocolate. Contact Emma at EVonZeipel@LawStreetMedia.com.

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Earlier this week, “Empire” star Terrance Howard confessed that he hit his first ex-wife, describing that he “lost his mind” and “slapped her in front of the kids.” This confession isn’t exactly coming out of left field. Over the last couple of years in his various marriages, Howard has been accused of slapping, punching, and strangling his partners, living up the dark nature of his character on “Empire,” Lucious Lyon. Howard attempted to justify his deplorable, violent behavior with his first wife Lori McCommas by saying that she was talking to him “real strong.” With his second wife, Michelle Ghent, Howard claims that she tried to “mace him” and that he didn’t mean to hurt her, he was just trying to get her away. Howard’s relationship with his most recent wife, Mira Pak, appeared to be healthy and strong, until she mysteriously filed for divorce earlier this year.

Although Howard’s relationships have all been multi-cultural, this situation still brings up important issues of black love and the relationship between black men and women. The media’s coverage of black celebrity figures’ violence against women opens up different conversations about dynamics within relationships, but black relationships are the least discussed.

But they shouldn’t be. Black women have notoriously been at the forefront of movements standing up for issues that plague black men. Black women have historically fiercely defended the rights and desires of black men. During the civil rights movement it was women–wives, daughters, sisters, cousins, mothers, and grandmothers–who stood up for not only their own issues but those of their brothers, friends, fathers, and husbands. During the 1992 Rodney King riots, we saw black women weeping for black men, and accepting the harsh reality that the police were their enemy. Even now with the Black Lives Matter movement, we see black women leading the charge to remedy this social issue that directly attacks black men. Black women have taken on the social issues that have plagued black men for the last couple of decades.

However, this support is not reciprocated. Hardly ever do you see black men standing up for issues regarding and experienced by black women. Black men often do not speak up for issues of beauty, professional advancement, abuse, assault, and general vulnerabilities that are unique to the black female community.

Thankfully, we are starting to see a shift in a lack of misrepresentation of black women in the media. Viola Davis, star of the thrilling ABC television series “How to Get Away with Murder,” just won an Emmy for her incredible portrayal of her character, Annalise Keating, giving a spectacular speech on the difficulties and lack of opportunities black women face. Taraji P. Henson, Kerry Washington, and Megan Good are also changing the game, proving that black women are leading women too. This positive representation directly affects black relationships and love. The more it is widely understood that black women are real, strong people who are overcoming yet still dealing with issues that are a part of their identity, the quality of these relationships and communication within them will be transformed. The media plays such a pivotal role in this transformation, and it is so exciting seeing the growth of positive representation of black women in television and film, regardless of the actions of some of Hollywood’s leading men like Terrence Howard.

Hopefully this growth will motivate black men to act proactively in supporting the advance of black women in society. It is going to take more than black women speaking up to start to change the nature of not only black relationships, but society in general. Silence and inaction is the equivalent of destruction. Support can only lead to success for all.

Kui Mwai

Kui Mwai is a junior at American University, studying Law and Literature. She is from Nairobi, Kenya. Contact Kui at Staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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The civil rights movement in America attempted to end segregation and racial discrimination of black Americans and secure federal protections of their rights. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 seemingly sealed the deal, prohibiting discrimination based on race. In spite of that, there is an argument to be made that racial discrimination is still a persistent problem in the United States. One important facet of the discussion is centered around the “war on drugs” and the so-called “tough on crime” policy approach that the United States has adopted since the 1970s. Racially disproportionate drug arrests have resulted in mass incarceration and prompted civil rights concerns. Read on to learn more about current drug policy and its implications in relation to civil rights.

History of Inequality in U.S. Drug Policy

Throughout history there have been many instances in which unequal treatment of various minority groups was evident in American drug laws. The first anti-drug law dates back to 1875, when smoking opium was penalized in San Francisco, primarily, it is believed, to stigmatize Chinese immigrants. In 1914 the Harrison Narcotics Act expanded the powers of the federal government, and concurrently the media portrayed black Americans as the primary users of cocaine, one such narcotic. Later, multiple reports by the media tied Mexican immigrants, who were entering the country for agricultural jobs, to marijuana-related violence. The result of that particular stereotype was the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937.

Congress created its first mandatory minimum sentencing law in 1952, the Boggs Act, which required a minimum sentence of two to ten years for first-time marijuana possession. But the most notorious mandatory minimum drug laws were enacted in New York under Nelson Rockefeller, who was the governor at the time. That mandatory sentence threshold was raised to a minimum of 15 years and a maximum of life in prison. The “Rockefeller Drug Laws” were enacted in 1973, signifying the beginning of a long-standing “tough on crime” policy in the United States.

The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 was the culmination of the “war on drugs,” requiring identical penalties (a five-year minimum sentence) for five grams of crack cocaine and 500 grams of powder cocaine. As crack cocaine was cheap, it dominated poor black communities, while more affluent, usually white communities, used the more expensive powder cocaine.

 Are the U.S. Drug Policies changing?

Under the Obama Administration, the ratio of crack to powder cocaine was significantly reduced when the Fair Sentencing Act was signed into law in August 2010. The current administration also acknowledged that the previous laws were discriminatory and disproportionately impacted communities of color.

State laws are also slowly changing, with California at the forefront of the movement. A new law, “Proposition 47,” enacted in 2014, reduces simple drug possession from a felony to a misdemeanor.

Politicians are also starting to speak up, calling for the end of “War on Drugs.” Outgoing Attorney General,Eric Holder is one of the most vociferous proponents of reducing mass incarceration and re-integrating formerly incarcerated individuals back into society.

In addition, legalization of marijuana is a hot topic everywhere in the United States. More and more states have legalized the drug for either recreational or medical use, prompting the idea of country-wide legalization and regulation in the future. The New York Times editorial board and President Barack Obama have spoken out in support of the legalization movement.

It’s plausible that American drug policy is undergoing a transition from prohibition and harsh sanctions toward regulation and rehabilitation practices. But it can still be characterized as a punitive system, highly centered on deterrence through long and harsh sentencing practices. There are also many concerns that the current drug policies are still racist in practice. People of color are disproportionally imprisoned for drug offenses, often creating vicious circles of poverty and crime.

What are the main concerns with the current U.S. Drug Policy?

Our drug policy enforcers are part of the judicial system, and there are many concerns that the judicial system treats members of minority populations more harshly than their counterparts. For example, black men are stopped and frisked at disproportionately higher rates than members of other communities. In 2011 the number of stops of young black men in New York City topped the city’s entire population of young black men: 168,126 stops compared to a population of just 158,406 young black men. In the same year, 52.9 percent of the people stopped and frisked were black, 33.7 percent were Latino, and only 9.3 percent were white. The stop and frisk racial landscape didn’t change much in 2014: 54 percent of those who were stopped and frisked were black, 27 percent were Latinos, and 12 percent were white. African Americans are also stopped more frequently when driving or entering the country.

Critics of the drug policy worry that black Americans are also more likely to be arrested. The rate of arrests for black Americans is 2.5 times higher than white Americans. At the same time, even though the black and white population use marijuana at roughly the same rates, black Americans are four times more likely to be arrested for drug offenses. Watch the video below to learn more about racial disparities in marijuana-related arrests.

Finally, black users are more often convicted and incarcerated for drug felonies. In 2009, 50.5 percent of the state prisoners convicted on drug offenses were African Americans, 17 percent were Latinos, and 30.1 percent were whites. Black men and women were also sent to prison on drug charges at 11.8 and 4.8 times the rate of their white counterparts, respectively.

Critics of our current polices point out that as a result of such discriminatory treatment, black Americans enter the prison system at a higher rate, stay there longer, and are more likely to go back there again. The harsh penal sanctions for drug offenses result in mass incarceration of individuals of color. Black Americans convicted of drug offenses constitute 53.3 percent of those admitted to state prisons. Watch the video below to learn more about mass incarceration in the United States.

Who thinks the current drug laws aren’t discriminatory?

There is another point of view that claims that the notion of differential treatment according to race is non-existent. Those who subscribe to that school of thought argue that African Americans simply commit more drug-related offenses. This argument posits that the police and criminal justice system are not biased toward minorities. It further asserts that the reason why disproportionately more black Americans end up in the criminal justice system has to do with relative crime rates, not racial bias. Some conservative voices hold the same view, citing that African Americans simply commit more crimes, especially those involving drugs. The video below shows Bill O’Reilly, a FOX News commentator, speaking in support of this point of view.

So, is U.S. Drug Policy a Civil Rights Issue?

What is a “Civil Rights Issue”?

Civil rights are centered on the notion of discrimination. A civil rights issue arises when an individual or group has been discriminated against on the basis of its race, sex, religion, age, physical limitation, or orientation. Civil rights issues are often discussed in the realm of employment or housing discrimination. Such spheres can be considered traditional civil rights battlegrounds.

The criminal justice system has been long overlooked when discussing civil rights violations. Only relatively recently did the ACLU and other civil and human rights groups begin to acknowledge that sentencing practices for drug offenses and the overall treatment of minorities in the criminal justice system is a civil rights issue.

How does the U.S. Drug Policy relate to Civil Rights?

Those who argue that the U.S. Drug Policy is a civil rights issue focus on the particular emphasis in drug laws that are not equal in their intent or enforcement. The majority of drug crimes are not committed by minorities, but the prison system is disproportionally filled with African Americans and Latinos.

The public has long associated poor communities of color with drugs and crime, a notion that was long perpetuated by the media. More minority arrests and convictions for drug offenses result in the belief that certain parts of the population use more drugs and commit more crime. It opens up a discussion on racial dynamics in American society and the impact of structural racism.

In this realm, many argue that the current drug policy can be considered a civil rights issue as it discriminates against communities of color in the criminal justice system by disproportionately targeting open drug markets in poor neighborhoods and failing to recognize the same dynamics in more affluent areas.

Conclusion

The current drug policy of the United States Government is centered on tough sanctions and long sentencing practices. It often ignores the fact that drug use is a public heath issue, locking up individuals for simple possession of certain drugs. At the same time, the enforcement of the current drug laws is disproportionately focused on communities of color, resulting in the mass incarceration of minorities. Thus, numerous civil and human rights groups consider U.S. drug policy a civil rights issue. But not everybody supports this point of view. The counter argument refuses a civil rights interpretation of the issue, claiming that minorities simply commit more drug-related offenses. No matter who is right or wrong, the current drug policy needs serious fixing.

Resources

Primary

The White House: Civil Rights

Additional

New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration at the Age of Colorblindness

Foreign Policy in Focus: U.S. Drug Policy

Huffington Post: More Nails in the Drug War Coffin: Top Stories of 2014

Sentencing Project: Incarcerated Parents and their Children

Human Rights Watch: Race, Drugs, and Law Enforcement in the United States Bureau of Justice Statistics: Special Report. Civil Rights Complaints in U.S. District Courts, 1990-2006.

NYCLU: Stop and Frisk Data

ACLU: Driving While Black: Racial Profiling On Our Nation’s Highways

ACLU: Border Patrol Stops

Anti-Defamation League: Privilege, Discrimination, and Racial Disparities in the Criminal Justice System

Sentencing Project: Drug Policy

Human Rights Watch: Race and Drugs

New Century Foundation: The Color of Crime. Race, Crime and Justice in America

Center For Constitutional Rights: Floyd, et al, v. City of New York, et al.

The New York Times: An Editorial Series on Marijuana Legalization

Huffington Post: Obama: Marijuana No More Dangerous Than Alcohol

Legal Information Institute: Equal Protection

Leadership Conference: Justice On Trial: Racial Disparities in the American Criminal Justice System

NYCLU Briefing 2011: Stop and Frisk

Valeriya Metla

Valeriya Metla is a young professional, passionate about international relations, immigration issues, and social and criminal justice. She holds two Bachelor Degrees in regional studies and international criminal justice. Contact Valeriya at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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Seattle Pacific University lost one student and three others were wounded last Thursday in a shooting on campus. The university has suffered a tragedy, and while I do not disapprove of the time that the media has invested in covering it, I would like to call another, more prevalent, issue to mind. Shootings occur more frequently and affect an even greater number of people in our cities than on college campuses, yet have largely been disregarded or overlooked as news.

Forgotten and Forlorn

Inner-cities in America suffer greatly and receive little national coverage. On Friday, June 6, a man named Andew Perez was shot to death in his car in Camden, NJ. On the same day in Newark, NJ, two men were shot and killed and one woman was wounded. Between Friday afternoon and Saturday morning, three people were killed and at least 19 others were wounded in Chicago shootings. On Saturday, a 15-year-old girl was shot and killed in Oakland, Calif. Mostly untouched by the news, there were at least seven gun-related deaths and even more injuries in American cities last weekend.

Events like the one at Seattle Pacific University and the recent mass shooting at UC Santa Barbara have revived fears about mass shootings in schools and colleges. The prevalence of these incidents is, while not inconsequential, a small part in the larger picture of American gun violence. Media attention for school shootings is always high. We become upset when a place that is created for improvement and learning face something as destructive as gun violence. Neglected, however, are the places that we do not assign such positive values.

As the FBI’s crime reports show, metropolitan areas are afflicted with high rates of violence. Violent crimes (robbery, rape, aggravated assault, and murder) have particularly high rates in cities. In 2012, each category of metropolitan counties had a higher violent crime rate than their non-metropolitan parallels.

Crimes occur much more frequently in metropolitan areas than they do in their non metropolitan counterparts.

Compared to urban areas, campuses are relatively safe, but the difference in the American mentality that surrounds college campuses and urban environments is significant. The poorest, most dilapidated parts of cities are forgotten and forlorn by the media. Shootings there are frequent, while shootings at schools are few and far between. This is not to say that people should care less about violence at schools like Seattle Pacific University, in fact, they should care more. People should care enough to advocate for and vote in favor of gun restrictions. Instead, people are shocked when shootings happen at schools but hear nothing about, or completely ignore, the recurring murders in America’s cities. While shootings and schools do not make sense together, we all-too-readily understand that gun violence and cities go hand-in-hand.

“Nearly Half of All Homicides”

A special report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), “Black Victims of Violent Crime,” shows how this violence is particularly prevalent among blacks.The report states that, “While blacks accounted for 13% of the U.S. population in 2005, they were victims in 15% of all nonfatal violent crimes and nearly half of all homicides”. The BJS used statistics from 1993 through 2005. The data comes from its National Crime Victimization Survey, which collects first-hand victim testimonies about incidents that have gone unreported to police, as well as the Supplementary Homicide Reports from the FBI. While staggering, this information is nothing new, nor are the 2005 numbers out of date. According to the FBI’s 2012 Uniform Crime Report, there were 3,128 white and 2,648 black victims of murder. These numbers, relative to the population proportions of whites and blacks, reveal an epidemic in the black community, and only reflect offenses reported to police. When taking into account crimes that go unreported and the instances of blacks being wrongfully shot by police officers, that murder rate would be even higher.

Uniquely, the disparity here is so great that the numbers are difficult to observe in a single graph. The difference is astounding. Although both have been decreasing recently, the homicide rate for blacks is dramatically larger than it has been for whites for over a decade.

In a Washington Post article last year, Dan Keating notes the difference between firearm deaths of whites and blacks,

“A white person is five times as likely to commit suicide with a gun as to be shot with a gun; for each African American who uses a gun to commit suicide, five are killed by other people with guns… Gun deaths in urban areas are much more likely to be homicides, while suicide is far and away the dominant form of gun death in rural areas”.

That’s one more statistic in a set of disturbing facts.

The Wall Street Journal compiled data sets from 2000 to 2010 in an article about blacks killing other blacks. Their charts show how no other group of people in the United States has been killed as frequently by firearms than blacks, not even when taking population proportions into account. Between 2000 and 2010 there were at least 60,028 black Americans were killed by firearms. A Slate.com article tracks the number of deaths as a result of school shootings from 1980 to 2012: the total is 297. Any shooting on a college campus deserves attention and a swift, appropriate reaction. But that number, 60,028, is the mass shooting we should be paying attention to.

Jake Ephros

Jake Ephros is a native of Montclair, New Jersey where he volunteered for political campaigns from a young age. He studies Political Science, Economics, and Philosophy at American University and looks forward to a career built around political activism, through journalism, organizing, or the government. Contact Jake at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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