Biden’s action to address racial equity welcomed by Southern California groups
A quartet of executive orders signed by President Joe Biden to promote racial equity in the U.S. were welcomed Tuesday, Jan. 26, by Southern California activists, academics and community leaders who see the orders as first steps toward Biden keeping a promise he made at the height of last summer’s protests over racial justice.
The new orders, signed on the seventh day of Biden’s presidency, direct the Department of Housing and Urban development to fight housing discrimination; denounce xenophobia and racism directed at Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders especially in the context of the coronavirus pandemic; reaffirm the federal government’s respect for tribal sovereignty; and end the Department of Justice’s use of private prisons.
An important shift
“This is well past overdue,” the Rev. Najuma Smith-Pollard, program director for the Cecil Murray Center for Community Engagement at University of Southern California, said of Biden’s actions Tuesday.
“One order doesn’t change everything. But it’s a step in the right direction,” she added. “For those of us on the ground doing this work, now that we have these proclamations from the federal government, we can push local governments to allocate more resources and to prioritize issues like equity in health, education, employment and housing.”
The orders signal an important shift in rhetoric coming from the White House, Smith-Pollard and others said.
Holding up racial equity as an ideal in any nation is the way “to help ensure that everyone, regardless of race or ethnicity, has an equal shot at living a life that is successful, meaningful and healthy,” said Karthick Ramakrishnan, director of the UC Riverside’s Center for Social Innovation.
“It’s tempting for people to say we need to stop thinking about race, and problems with race will go away,” he added. “Countries like France have tried this approach, but it doesn’t work. They’ve discovered that race is experienced in society regardless of whether you have labels or not. We are better off being conscious about race than being blind to it. Because ignoring it means we’re OK with the stark inequalities that have built up over time.”
Battling hate
Among the orders signed Tuesday, two target discrimination against and harassment of those in the Asian American community, which has witnessed an increase in hate incidents regionally.
One order calls for the Department of Health and Human Services to issue guidance on sensitivity with regard to the pandemic and discriminatory language. The second directs the Department of Justice to engage with Asian American and Pacific Islander communities on issues related to hate crimes, hate incidents and harassment.
“It’s difficult to solve these problems if you don’t identify them,” said Manjusha Kulkarni, executive director of Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council, the organization that co-founded of Stop AAPI Hate, which tracks acts of hate, violence, discrimination and harassment against community members.
“We are really glad that these executive actions move us in a new direction in terms of language,” Kulkarni said. “Words do matter. Using terms like ‘Kung flu’ and ‘China virus,’ former president Trump was signaling to Americans that it’s OK to scapegoat Chinese people. It’s important to boldly state that we won’t create group culpability for something that’s not the fault of any members of the group.”
Both Los Angeles and Orange counties have reported an increase in hate incidents relating to Asian Americans being targeted or harassed in the context of COVID-19.
Stop AAPI Hate reported 245 incidents of hate in Los Angeles County against Asian Americans between March 19 and Oct. 28, 2020. A majority of those incidents, about 76%, involved verbal harassment. Kulkarni said the center documented about 2,800 hate incidents against Asian Americans nationwide over nine months in 2020.
Investing in communities
In Orange County, a total of 70 coronavirus-related hate incidents were reported to OC Human Relations between March and September 2020, said Alison Edwards, the organization’s executive director. She expects that number to go up as more data comes in from police departments, schools, universities and other community partners.
“It’s really important that messages about racial equity fighting hate comes from all our national leaders,” Edwards said. “This is America. Who you are should never be a barrier to your success in America. It feels unacceptable to settle for anything less.”
Biden’s orders are a good start, but the federal government needs to go further to address deep-rooted social issues that stem from centuries-old racial inequities, said Robynn Cox, assistant professor at the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work. While Biden’s move to eliminate private prisons is a promising start, it does little to address the issue of racial disparity in incarceration, Cox said.
“Private prisons are more concerned with the bottom line, and so they are less inclined to focus on rehabilitation, which has benefits to society,” Cox said. “But the majority of prisons are not private.”
What officials need to explore is ways to prevent people from being incarcerated in the first place, she said.
“Why do we choose to handle issues of race and poverty in this manner?” Cox said. “When will we invest in communities to ensure real economic equity? How do we heal from the past? We have to get to the core of these issues to find solutions.”