Black Paper Series

concise analyses of important events that center relevant communities + confront the key issues of intersectional racial equity + racial justice.

Why are they arresting Black journalists and charging them with 1st Amendment violations?

In this (wholly domestic)  case the federal government’s infringement on the public’s First Amendment right (and the journalists’ First Amendment protection) leverages an alternative population’s right to the same class of protections (i.e., parishioners’ right to worship), in order to erase, delimit, or compromise the broad nature of the First Amendment right – apparently seeking to rank its operation by the class of rightsholder.

Why are Black women reeling over Breonna Taylor?

When you do all the right things and make all the right choices, how can the public servants charged with social protection defend your death and deny your humanity?

The Color of Denial: where was race in the trial of George Floyd’s murder?

Despite international marketing to the contrary, the proceedings at the trial of Derek Chauvin were more of a denial, than a counterbalance, of systemic racism in the US.  For many, the murder of George Floyd hit different. And yet, the trial felt like yet another variation on a theme of Black erasure.  Inappropriately and unnecessarily, in the trial examining his last moments of life, was George Floyd “all lives mattered”? Read more… or DOWNLOAD a printer-friendly PDF.

Why Isn’t Police Reform Working?

In 2020, the world has watched as police targeted Black and Latinx communities and peaceful protesters during COVID-19 – often in locations where the police had undergone years of supervised reform efforts for the very excessive force, racial profiling, and systematic misconduct we saw on tv and in the streets. Despite decades of effort, police routinely fail at reform mandates of community-based activism, judicial oversight, investigative commissions, and revised legislation and policy…. Read more… or DOWNLOAD a printer-friendly PDF.