Political Economy and Social Movements:


 



 

Race, Class & Gender





Class Exercise – October 30, 2001


 
 
 
 

Implementing Equality, Democracy and Justice:

Viable solutions to Key Social Problems in America

Objectives:

Process & Time:

·You have 45 minutes to outline your analysis and plan of action.

·At the end of this time, you will have up to 5 minutes to report to the large group

·To maximize your productivity, please choose a facilitator, note-taker and presenter.

Instructions:

You are a member of a citizens’ advisory committee, which was given a mandate to analyze the particular problem described below and offer a range of short and long-term solutions to address the problem and promote EQALITY, DEMOCRACY and JUSTICE.

  1. Read the description of the problem you were asked to examine and discuss the SYMPTOMS as well as the ROOT-CAUSES of the problem with your team members
  2. Please make sure you examine the impact of class, race and gender on the problem you were asked to focus on
  3. Come up with working definitions for Equality, Democracy and Justice
  4. Try to map the solutions you identify on a political spectrum (from conservative to radical) OR distinguish between short and long-term solution.
  5. What type of organizing and institution-building are needed to implement each of the solutions you outlined?
  6. Which texts and/or class materials were most useful to you during this exercise?

GROUP 1: UNEMPLOYMENT

Unemployment rates in Washington State are among the highest in the United States.The numbers for September 2001 show a 6.1% unemployment rate, which translates into 182, 685 documented unemployed people.These numbers have not changed much in the past decade.In 1991 the unemployment rate was 5.7% and the number of unemployed 142,995.

Group 2: HOMLESSNESS

750,000 Americans are homeless on any given night.  Over the course of a year, as many as 2 million people experience homelessness for some period of time.  These are the people who live on the street, in shelters, in cars, and in campgrounds.  Millions more live in precarious situations—over-crowded with family or friends, housed temporarily in institutions like prisons or mental hospitals, or paying too much of their income for rent.  The fastest growing group of homeless people consists of families with children.  Today, families make up about 36% of the people who become homeless

Group 3: PROSTITUTION

The commercial sex industry includes street prostitution, massage brothels, escort services, outcall services, strip clubs, lapdancing, phone sex, adult and child pornography, video and internet pornography, and prostitution tourism. Most women who are in prostitution for longer than a few months drift among these various permutations of the commercial sex industry. All prostitution causes harm to women. Whether it is being sold by one’s family to a brothel, or whether it is being sexually abused in one’s family, running away from home, and then being pimped by one’s boyfriend, or whether one is in college and needs to pay for next semester’s tuition and one works at a strip club behind glass where men never actually touch you – all these forms of prostitution hurt the women in it.

Group 4: PRISONS

There are more people behind bars in the United States today than ever before. Since 1In the past decade, inmate population has more than quadrupled to two million -- an unprecedented explosion that is incurring unprecedented costs to all Americans.Although our criminal justice system is predicated on a promise of equality, it often fails to deliver. In fact, now more than ever it appears structured to affirmatively exploit race and class inequality. If left unchecked, the American dream will no longer be within every person's reach.Sixty-five percent of all prisoners are high school dropouts, 70 percent are functionally illiterate, and 63 percent recidivate. We are often tempted to think of China as an oppressive country, but we incarcerate 500,000 more people in this country -- despite the fact that we have less than one-fourth the population of China. We lock up our poor, our uneducated, our unruly, our unstable and our addicted, where other countries provide treatment, mental hospitals and care. 

The financial costs of maintaining such a system are staggering. Operating prisons this year will cost about $46 billion. States spending on prisons has grown far faster than that on universities. We are increasingly becoming a nation of first-class jails and second-class schools. The United States is spending an average of $7,000 per year to educate a youth, and over $35,000 to lock up a youth. These costs come at the expense of minorities especially, and young African American men in particular. African Americans represent 15 percent of regular drug users, compared to 67 percent for whites and 13 percent for Hispanics. Yet African Americans make up 35 percent of those arrested for drug possession, 55 percent of drug convictions, and 74 percent of those sentenced to prison for drug possession.

Group 5: SEXSUAL HARASSMENT

A telephone poll conducted by Louis Harris and Associates and released March 28, 1994 found that of the 782 workers polled:
31% female workers claimed to have been harassed at work; 7% male workers claimed to have been harassed at work;62% of targets took no action

Of the women who had been harassed:

·43% harassed by supervisor ; 27% by an employee senior to them; 19% by a coworker at their level;8% by a junior employee

Of the women who claimed they had been harassed:

·100% of women = harasser was a man; 59% of men = harasser was a woman; 41% of men = harasser was another man

Harassment is prevalent in schools as well.1,632 polled in grades 8 through 11 

·85% of girls have been harassed 

·76% of boys have been targets
Girls were five times more likely to find the incidents disturbing and three times more likely to feel the harassment had affected their grades. African American girls were four times more likely to be harassed by adults at school than white or Latina girls.

Group 6: RACIAL PROFILING

According to a December 1999 Gallup Poll, the majority of white, as well as black, Americans say that racial profiling is widespread in the United States today. In a new Gallup Poll Social Audit on Black/White Relations in the U.S, 59% of a sample of national adults aged 18 and older say that racial profiling is widespread. Racial profiling is defined in the question as the practice by which "police officers stop motorists of certain racial or ethnic groups because the officers believe that these groups are more likely than others to commit certain types of crimes." This description of racial profiling definition, which is neutral in tone, leaves open the possibility that some might see racial profiling in positive terms. This, however, is not the case: 81% percent of the American public say they disapprove of the practice.More than four out of 10 black Americans say they have been the victims of racial profiling, including almost three-quarters of young black men

Group 7: CRIMINALIZATION OF DRUG USE

America spends at least $20 billion each year to fight the war on illegal drugs. Conservative pundit William F. Buckley Jr. estimates the total direct and indirect costs of the drug war annually at $200 billion. A number of laws and policies have been enacted by the government in its efforts to curb the usage of illegal drugs, but these have all been dismal failures. Before 1920, all narcotics were legal; cocaine could even be bought in a Sears Roebuck catalog. Despite the availability of all these drugs, the percentage of addicts in the United States steadily declined for two decades prior to prohibition. Now, by the government’s own calculations, under prohibition the amount has quadrupled. Drug-trade-related crime infects our streets, and we cannot even keep drugs out of the prisons in which we keep drug offenders. In much the same way that alcohol prohibition gave rise to higher alcohol consumption and organized crime associated with its trafficking, so it is with illegal drugs. The social costs of the drug war, including excessively harsh punishments, blatant constitutional violations and the flourishing of a criminal drug trade in our inner cities, are piling up.

Group 8: INEQUALITY IN THE LABOR MARKET 

 

Patterns of inequality in the labor market manifest themselves in hiring, pay differentials, promotion and layoffs. Although we don’t have statistics to illustrate this point, it seems that these trends of inequality are greater in the United States compared with other industrial countries.

Group 9: CENSORSHIP
Between 1990 and 1999, the Office of Intellectual Freedom of the ALA tracked 5,718 official challenges to materials in schools, school libraries, and public libraries, in America alone. This figure only includes cases brought before courts and school boards. As many as seven times this is estimated to be the 'unofficial' figure.

--The Harry Potter series, by J.K. Rowling were the most frequently challenged books of 1999. Others on the list were Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson.

--More than three-fourths of challenges to material occurred in schools, usually involving library material.