Cincinnati Police Department

Since coming home for spring break there has been a lot of talk in the news about the Cincinnati Police Department. The Assistant Chief, Dave Bailey, was forced to retire last week after the city manager accused him of undermining the Police Chief. Since then the Head Chief has also been under a lot of scrutiny.

What makes this whole situation interesting is the fact that both Dave Bailey and the head Chief, Eliot Isaac, are both African American. Shortly after being forced to retire Bailey accused the department of trying to get rid of him and Isaac because they are black. This accusation has caused a lot of problems within the police department and with city leaders. This whole situation has shown that the Cincinnati Police department is corrupt but it still has yet to be proved if the Department and city leaders were trying to force the two men to retire because of their race.

I found this situation particularly interesting after some of the discussions we have had in class. Regardless of what happens, I feel this situation shines a light on the fact that America has an institutional racism problem. While they may ultimately decide that race did not play a factor in City leaders forcing Bailey to retire I found it hard to believe that Bailey would make up this accusation especially because the Mayor of Cincinnati is African American. With the mayor also being black it would not make sense for Bailey to make up this claim because without solid evidence it would be hard to prove. Because of this, I think there is definitely something going on with the City leaders and that them trying to force the two men out may ultimately have been because of race.

This whole situation highlights America’s institutional racism problem and will be really interesting to follow as new information comes out.

Race, Racism, and Southern Myths

“Race, Racism, and Southern Myths”

by William Sturkey

“In 2010, two historians edited a collection of thirteen essays written by white historians about “The Myth of Southern Exceptionalism.” Admittedly, I am not fully aware of the process of selecting the contributors to this volume, nor am I suggesting that this is an isolated intellectual exercise. In publications and conference rooms across the world—including those on my own campus—scholars of all racial and ethnic backgrounds have debated the notion of Southern distinctiveness. The most common device employed in such debates is the observation that racial segregation, oppression, and activism also existed outside the South.

For millions of African Americans, however, there has never been any question that the South is indeed exceptional. The South’s exceptionalism exists in Black memory and imagination because it is the only place in the United States where such high numbers and percentages of the Black population were enslaved. Further, it is the only place in the United States where the Southern system of racial apartheid known as Jim Crow pervaded Black life for nearly one hundred years after Emancipation.

When Mississippi migrant, Gus Courts, testified to a Senate Subcommittee in 1957, he called himself and other Black migrants, “American refugees from the terror in the South.” A voting rights activist, Courts fled Mississippi for Chicago soon after he was nearly killed in a drive-by shooting in retribution for his activism. One of Courts’ closest friends, Reverend George Lee, had been killed just six months prior. In Chicago, as in Mississippi, Gus Courts was not free to live anywhere he wanted because he was Black. Nonetheless, Courts saw the South as exceptional because of the pervasive state-supported and community organized anti-Black violence that undergirded Southern Jim Crow. In Chicago, unlike Mississippi, he could at least vote without being shot.1″

“I Live Paycheck to Paycheck”

“I Live Paycheck to Paycheck”

By Jess Bidgood

“Public schools in West Virginia were closed for a sixth day on Thursday, as teachers striking over health care costs and pay largely rebuffed a deal this week between Gov. James C. Justice and union leadership aimed at getting them back to school.

Mr. Justice has ordered a task force to examine health care costs and the State House passed a bill raising wages by 5 percent. But with the bill’s fate in doubt in the Senate and scant details on health care funding, many teachers remained angry, and they flooded back to the Capitol, wearing red and black, to protest on Wednesday and Thursday.

We spoke on Wednesday night with Katie Endicott, 31, a high school English teacher from Gilbert, W.Va., about why she and many other teachers are not yet prepared to return to school. The interview has been edited and condensed.”

What are the origins of the strike?

They told us that essentially if you weren’t a single person, if you had a family plan, your health insurance was going to rise substantially. As a West Virginia teacher — and I’ve been teaching 10 years — I only clear right under $1,300 every two weeks, and they’re wanting to take $300 more away for me. But they tell me it’s O.K., because we’re going to give you a 1 percent pay raise. That equals out to 88 cents every two days.”

Restrictive Covenants Stubbornly Stay on the Books

Restrictive Covenants Stubbornly Stay on the Books

“RICHMOND, Va. – NEALIE PITTS was shopping for a house for her son three years ago when she spotted a for-sale sign in front of a modest brick bungalow here. When she stopped to ask the owner about it, at first she thought she misheard his answer.

“This house is going to be sold to whites only,” said the owner, Rufus Matthews, according to court papers filed by Ms. Pitts, who is African-American. “It’s not for colored.”

Mr. Matthews later testified before the Virginia Fair Housing Board that he believed a clause in his deed prohibited him from selling to a black buyer. A 1944 deed on his property restricts owners from selling to “any person not of the Caucasian race.”

Such clauses have been unenforceable for nearly 60 years. But historians who track such things say that thousands of racist deed restrictions, as well as restrictive covenants governing homeowner associations, survive in communities across the country.”

Other articles:

Why Is America’s Housing so Segregated?

Interview with Richard Rothstein, author of The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America

How New York City became the capital of the Jim Crow North

“How New York City became the capital of the Jim Crow North” by Brian Purnell and Jeanne Theoharis

“Ninety years ago, Donald Trump’s father was arrested at a Klan parade — in Queens. Fifty-five years ago, more than 10,000 white mothers marched over the Brooklyn Bridge to protest a very modest school desegregation program. Fifty years ago, 16,000 people packed into Madison Square Garden to cheer George Wallace’s candidacy for president. And a mere three years ago, New York City settled a federal lawsuit that had branded the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk practices unconstitutional and a form of racial profiling.”