Naacp of North Carolina

Legislative Racism, Classism and Regression

Download Legislative Racism, Classim and Regression_Final

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

November 28, 2011

 

For More Information:   Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II, President, 919-394-8137

                                     Amina J. Turner, Executive Director, 919-682-4700

                                     Jennifer Marsh, Legal Redress Coordinator, 919-682-4700

A Strange Spirit:

Legislative Racism, Classism and Regression Rather Than an Agenda of Legislative Progress and Prosperity for All North Carolinians

Statement by Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II

President, North Carolina NAACP

The General Assembly is required by law to follow the North Carolina Constitution which states in Article 1, Section 2 "all political power is vested in and derived from the people...and is instituted solely for the good of the whole." They should be upholding Article 1, Section 19 of the North Carolina Constitution, which ensures "no person shall be denied equal protection of the laws; nor shall any person be subjected to discrimination by the State because of race, color, religion, or national origin." The Constitution calls us to a higher place where a "divide and conquer" strategy has no place.

Despite the noble call of our Constitution there is a strange spirit in the halls of the North Carolina General Assembly. The NC General Assembly reconvened last night with two major agenda items: to repeal the Racial Justice Act and pass a Voter Photo ID law that, if accomplished, would have a disparate impact on African Americans, the elderly and other minorities.

These efforts point to an extremist agenda that can be called nothing less than Legislative Racism, Classism and Regression rather than an agenda of Legislative Progress and Prosperity for all North Carolinians.

To be clear, racism and classism are not only overt actions or even the personal feelings and intentions among individual legislators. But to place into public policy an agenda that you know will have a deep and disparate impact on minorities and the poor is Legislative Racism, Classism and Regression.

It is Legislative Racism, Classism and Regression when a southern Legislature chooses to fight against the Racial Justice Act, which gives the courts an opportunity to review more information to ensure race is not a factor in anyone's death sentence. We know from our bloody history that the only place where people are not concerned whether someone is being executed because of their race is the lynching tree. At the lynching tree, the mob doesn't want to know more information about the circumstances of the defendant's trial and crime.

It is Legislative Racism, Classism and Regression when a state wants fewer people to vote. A voter photo ID requirement could impact close to a million North Carolinians. Twelve percent of African American voters lack an ID, while only 6.7% of white voters lack an ID. African American voters make up 27% of the 555,000 North Carolina voters who have no ID at all. Nearly a third of our elderly, to whom we owe so much do not have an ID. Many of them can remember a time when people died so that African Americans and other minorities could vote.

It is Legislative Racism when our General Assembly uses high-paid, out-of-state consultants to create redistricting maps that pick apart black communities block-by-block, person-by-person to ensure their political prosperity at the expense of the power of the African American vote.

It is Legislative Regression and Racism when the General Assembly passes a budget making the largest cuts to education in the history of our state. $1.25 billion has been cut. We are now sadly 49^th in the nation for per pupil spending. The cuts will have a disparate impact on African Americans and other minorities who depend on public education as the primary way out of the indignity of poverty.

It is Legislative Regression when the General Assembly attempts to codify discrimination into the very heart and framework of our Constitution. Without any public comment, they placed a constitutional amendment on the ballot that is a direct attack on our LGBT sisters and brothers and their families, and set the stage for the first constitutional amendment in the history of North Carolina that would narrow protections rather than expand protections to all persons, and to remedy past injustices.

It is Legislative Racism and Classism when a General Assembly passes a budget that violates the constitutional rights of poor and minority four-year-old children in North Carolina. Our General Assembly severely cut pre-kindergarten programs this year--143 years after Blacks and Whites came together in Raleigh to create a constitution guaranteeing a sound, basic, public education for all North Carolinians.

It is Legislative Classism and Regression when the General Assembly tries to withhold federal unemployment benefits to over 45,000 North Carolinians, money that they had no right to deny from hard working families.

It is Legislative Racism, Classism and Regression when the General Assembly passes a budget that cuts 15.5% from the University of North Carolina system, which will have a devastating impact on minority, poor, and first generation college students. Across the UNC system, and in particular at HBCU's and other under-financed institutions, students are already desperately trying to figure out how to stay in school--if they haven't dropped out already.

It is Legislative Racism and Classism when the General Assembly slashes funding to the Indigent Defense Services and underpays public defenders, who are often the only hope for young black men and women to escape an often unequal and unfair criminal justice system.

What is tragic about the Racist, Classist and Regressive Legislative Agenda of the current leadership in the General Assembly is that, amidst their attempts to take us backwards, they ignore the crisis of unemployment and poverty in North Carolina, and in particular in the African American and Latino communities who have been in crisis long before the current recession hit other segments of the community.

We will not be discouraged, but will push forward. We will continue to fight until we study Regression, Classism and Racism no more.

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Founded in 1909, the NAACP is the nation's oldest and largest civil rights organization. Its members throughout the United States and the world are the premier advocates for civil rights in their communities, conducting voter mobilization and monitoring equal opportunity in the public and private sectors.

 

 

North Carolina NAACP Statement on NC Senate's Vote to Repeal the Racial Justice Act

Download 11.30.11_Final Statement on Senate's Vote to Repeal the RJA_PDF

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

November 29, 2011

 

For More Information:           Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II, President, 919-394-8137

 Amina J. Turner, Executive Director, 919-682-4700

 Jennifer Marsh, Legal Redress Coordinator, 919-682-4700

 

Shame Fills the People's House   

 

(DURHAM)- As expected, the North Carolina Senate voted yesterday to repeal the historic Racial Justice Act. The Act was passed only two years ago to begin the difficult task of eliminating race discrimination from N.C.'s criminal justice system.  The Racial Justice Act Repeal Bill now sits on the Governor's desk. The North Carolina NAACP and its 110+ partners in the Historic Thousands on Jones Street (HKonJ) People's Assembly are hopeful she will veto the Repeal the RJA Bill.  We believe the Racial Justice Act she signed and celebrated two years ago should be given a chance to begin its work.

 

The Conference of 44 Elected District Attorneys provided the impetus to destroy the RJA. First they wrote a letter "on behalf of 44 District Attorneys" (actually only 42, since the two Black D.A.'s distanced themselves from the Repeal the RJA agenda) that contained wild distortions of the truth. Yesterday they organized victims of horrendous murders to come to the Senate microphone to repeat the horror they had suffered.  Many of us in the NAACP could tell similar stories, and other victims' families spoke in favor of the RJA yesterday, as they have in the past.  This has nothing to do with the ethical duty of the District Attorneys to be "ministers of justice" and to uphold the Constitution, which bans race discrimination in State actions.

 

The NC NAACP asked the D.A.'s to disassociate themselves from the gross distortions written on their behalf two weeks ago.  And we have made a public records request for the documents of this state agency referring to the drafting and dissemination of the distorted letter.

 

Yesterday, the Senate leadership allowed the DA's shameful shepherding of the families of murder victims to the microphone to speak against a law that will bring closer the day of real justice.  The NAACP would never make light of the heartbreaking experiences of murder victims' families.  Our community has experienced more than its share of these experiences. However, when the leaders of the Conference of District Attorneys spend taxpayer's money to travel to Raleigh and manipulate the pain of victims' families for their agenda to take North Carolina backwards, the NC NAACP and all North Carolinians have a responsibility to say: Shame!  Shame!  

 

Ms. Susan Doyle, Mr. Ben David and Ms. Peg Dorer, the President, President-elect and Executive Director, respectively, of the NC Conference of District Attorneys, must open their files and e-mails, and explain to the taxpayers how the 42 White D.A's stooped to support shameful misrepresentations in their letter, and their shameful use of the families' sorrow to achieve the far right's objectives to take us back to the days of Jim Crow. North Carolina knows from its bloody history that the only place where people are not concerned whether someone is being executed because of their race is at the base of the lynching tree. At the lynching tree, the mob doesn't want to know more information about the circumstances of the defendant's trial and crime.

 

The Racial Justice Act is not a "fishing expedition" as Republican leader Paul "Skip" Stam called it.  The Act provides the courts with a tool to ensure race did not play a role in any death sentence. To deny the courts this tool to measure the impact of racial bias on a death penalty trial is akin to denying a doctor the ability to measure a patient's blood pressure to diagnose her patient's condition. Racial bias is a fact that we ignore at our own peril.

 

Defendants with White victims are 2.6 times more likely to receive the death penalty than if their victims are African-American.  Potential African-American jurors are dismissed from juries at over twice the rate of their White counterparts. Thirty-one defendants on death row were sentenced by all-White juries.  And 38 more defendants were sentenced to death by juries with only one person of color.   The Racial Justice Act provides access to these statewide facts, in addition to the facts of local and regional courts.  These patterns of racial bias are not coincidental. The Racial Justice Act includes the use of numerical facts to show the larger scope of how racism plagues the death penalty system.  This self-perpetuating system is intact and powerful.  It goes way beyond acts of overt racism, such as when a prosecutor refers to the defendant with the n-word, or wears a "noose" pin while giving his closing argument.  The use of these numerical facts, or statistics, is an unbiased way to show intentional or unintentional bias. 

 

The use of these numerical facts does not ensure a defendant who files an appeal under the Racial Justice Act will automatically have his or her sentence changed to life in prison without parole. Judges will review each case.  If the claims are without merit, the court will dismiss them.  Only if the claims prove that racial bias played a part in the defendant's receiving a death sentence will they receive relief of life in prison without parole under the Racial Justice Act. Not a single person will ever be released from prison under the Racial Justice Act. Neither does it nullify the application of the death penalty.

 

The Racial Justice Act revealed what the Racial Justice Movement argued all along: Racism hurts White people too. If a White person is more likely to be sentenced to death because he or she murdered a White person instead of a person of color, the Act gives the courts the opportunity to correct that disparity. Whether Black, Latino, White, Asian or Native American, all persons' right to an impartial jury of his or her peers requires a cross-section of our communities.  The Michigan State study shows that this right is being systematically violated by the disproportionate percentage of minorities ejected from jury service.  Make no mistake about it, the crowd that is upset because White men on death row are filing claims under the Act would be screaming reverse racism if they were not permitted to do so.

 

We know with seven men having been exonerated from death row in North Carolina, five African-Americans, one Latino and one European-American, we have living proof that the system is flawed. Two years ago, pro-death penalty and anti-death penalty proponents, victims' families and exonerees all came together to pass the Racial Justice Act because they wanted to see a fair justice system instead of a biased one.

 

We urge the Governor to protect the Racial Justice Act in its entirety and veto Senate Bill 9.  

 

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Founded in 1909, the NAACP is the nation's oldest and largest civil rights organization. Its members throughout the United States and the world are the premier advocates for civil rights in their communities, conducting voter mobilization and monitoring equal opportunity in the public and private sectors.

 

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Executive Summary of Complaint Filed by NC NAACP, Democracy NC, LWV and Randolph Institute Over Redistricting Maps

Download Complaint Exec Summary 11 4 2011   FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE November 2, 2011   More Information:   Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II, President, 919-394-8137 Mrs. Amina Turner, Executive Director, 919-682-4700 Atty. Jennifer Marsh, Legal Redress Coordinator, 919-682-4700 Atty. Irv Joyner, Legal Redress Chair, 919-530-6293 Atty. Al McSurely, Communications Chair, lawyers@mcsurely.com   DURHAM - Yesterday, after it spent 60 days looking at a cleverly designed scheme to resegregate voters in North Carolina, the U.S. Department of Justice informed us that the U.S. Attorney General did not "interpose any objection" to the scheme.  The next sentence in the letter said, "However, we note that Section 5 expressly provides that the failure of the Attorney General to object [to a redistricting scheme] does not bar subsequent litigation (our emphasis) to enjoin the enforcement of the changes."   That's exactly what we shall do this Friday morning at 10:00 a.m. in Wake County Superior Court.  We are honored to be co-plaintiffs with the League of Women Voters, the A. Philip Randolph Institute, and Democracy, NC -- organizations that have had their hands on the Plow of Democracy for a long time -- as we file a lawsuit asking our North Carolina courts to stop this cleverly disguised race-based scheme.    We shall sue the leaders of the NC House and Senate, Thom Tillis and Phil Berger.  They paid good taxpayer money to outside consultants to develop a scheme to resegregate minority voters and dilute our voting power.   These consultants know that blatant Jim Crow acts are illegal, so they came up with their James Crow schemes instead. Jim Crow used blunt tools. James Crow uses surgical tools to cut out the heart of black political power. James Crow uses high-tech, clever consultants to pick apart black communities block by block and increase the prosperity of a few Americans by trying to divide, segregate, and fool the rest of us.   We also name the State of North Carolina and the State Board of Elections as defendants in our lawsuit, since they are charged with carrying out this race-based plan.   We welcome the media to join us at the Wake County Courthouse at 10:00 a.m., Friday morning, November 4, 2011, where our attorneys from Southern Coalition for Social Justice will distribute copies of our filed complaint. A news conference will follow.   ###