Inspiration
To Inspire Action
On the heels of Black History Month, Women’s History Month gives us an opportunity to celebrate the accomplishments of women in all facets of life. Part of this comes from caring for, supporting and celebrating one another.
Black Women continue to break barriers in the workplace, despite facing obstacles unique to them as they exist at the intersection of race and gender. I had the opportunity to contribute to the discussion on how our counterparts, white women, can step up effectively as allies to break barriers, resulting in change and reform.
I am excited to share this article with you and hope that it provides information and the words to use when others ask you “what they can do”.
Thoughts or Questions? Email me at hello@motherhoodinblack.com
We discussed “How to (Actually) Build a Recruiting Strategy Optimized For Diversity” and shared tangible, actionable insights, from our diverse perspectives, to help prioritize diversity in your hiring practices and create an equitable and inclusive work culture.
Let me know what you think! Email me at hello@motherhoodinblack.com
Stripping it down to research, science and facts.
Below is the intro and conclusion from UCLA School of Law research paper published in the Harvard Civil Rights / Civil Liberties Law Review titled “What Exposes African Americans to Police Violence?”
Read and share with others who still may not believe.
Intro
“The tragic deaths of African Americans at the hands of police officers have generated a public debate about race and policing. This is not the first time police violence against African Americans has been the predicate for a nation-wide conversation about race. Likely, it won’t be the last.
Yet, for all the discussions we have had about race and excessive force over the past decade, our understanding of the phenomenon has not much improved. In part, this is because we continue to frame excessive force as a problem that derives from rogue police officers who harbor racial animus against African Americans.
That some police officers employ excessive force as a means through which to express their racial animosity is undoubtedly true. But, to lump all or even most police officers in that basket obscures the structural dimensions of police violence and ignores significant findings from the field of social psychology suggesting that conscious racial animosity likely accounts for only a small percentage of racially-inflected police conduct. This Article broadens the analytical frame.”
Conclusion
“Broadly articulated, the goal of this Article was to challenge the framing of excessive force as a problem that derives from rogue police officers who harbor racial animus against African Americans.
We did so by presenting a theoretical model that articulates racialized police violence as a systemic and structural problem that cannot be solved simply by looking for and punishing “bad” cops. This is not to say that the model we have presented is a total account of race and police violence.
Undoubtedly, it leaves some things out. Still, our hope is that the model focuses attention on significant but under-examined dimensions of the problem, particularly the relationship between police contact and police violence and the various factors that mediate that relationship.”