Maryland

New Maryland Attorney General to Emphasize Civil Rights Violation Enforcement

Maryland Attorney General-elect Anthony G. Brown wants more authority than his predecessors to go after civil rights violators and to investigate police departments for patterns of misconduct. Former Congressman Brown said he will ask the General Assembly to pass legislation that enables him to sue companies and individuals who violate federal or state civil rights laws, for example, in housing or employment. The only states that have this are the District, New York, and California.

He has been reimagining the 850-member office under his leadership, looking at what other attorneys general are doing, and considering what actions he will take. Maryland's new Governor, Comptroller, and Brown have said they will attack systemic problems to make the state fairer and more just.

Brown said the system in Maryland that allows a person to file a discrimination complaint with the Maryland Civil Rights Commission or Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is not sufficient to root out violators. “The Civil Rights Commission has been doing great work for 53 years, but what they don’t do is they don’t do class action. They don’t do multi-jurisdictional,” he said. He said while the commission may have the authority to bring “big-impact litigation,” it typically does not. Brown thinks that a company with a pattern of discriminating against employees or a landlord with multiple complexes in other states outside Maryland who engages in bias should be held accountable. “We’re going to the General Assembly this session both for the authority and the resources it’s going to take [for] attorneys and investigators to be able to stand up that type of unit,” he said.

As Brown assumes office, Maryland has become the most diverse state on the East Coast according to census figures. He said it is crucial to correct the generational and pervasive inequities that have disproportionately affected people of color, including in housing, employment, policing and contracting. Brown recently told a town hall of advocates who were urging him to weigh in on housing, policing and other issues that his “North Star will be equity.” During a recent interview, Brown said “The principles, the values of fairness and justice will be the lens through which we will see the world."

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Source: Read the January 2, 2023 Washington Post article.

 Did You Read This?

SEGREGATED, GENTRIFIED HOUSING REMAINS A PROBLEM IN 2022

Baltimore among top 20 "Extreme" Segregated Cities

ABC News has reported that "Despite 50 years of federal oversight under the Fair Housing Act of 1968, housing segregation continues in America’s largest cities and urban areas. A recent ABC News analysis of mortgage-lending data highlights a pattern of racial isolation that remains in place even after decades of failed initiatives."

ABC News’ top 20 “extreme” segregation list includes America’s largest metro areas, such as: Cleveland, Ohio; Buffalo, New York, Detroit, Michigan; St. Louis, Missouri; Memphis, Tennessee; Birmingham, Alabama; Jackson, Mississippi; Springfield, Massachusetts; New Orleans, Louisiana; Miami, Florida; Bridgeport, Connecticut; Baltimore, Maryland; Cincinnati, Ohio; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; and Providence, Rhode Island.

In addition to these cities, ABC News states, "unfair housing practices are ubiquitous across the States." In 2019, some 64.8% of the 347,000 white homebuyers who applied for mortgages in mostly non-white neighborhoods in the nation’s largest metro areas were approved for a loan. In contrast, only roughly 56% of the 715,000 non-white applicants got a loan in 2019 in those same majority non-white neighborhoods. 

In many cities, gentrification affects not only housing but the very communal spaces we associate with our home. Gentrification is forcing more non-white residents out of urban neighborhoods, along with the Black-owned businesses, churches, and cultural touchpoints that we’ve known and loved for years.

According to U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), chairperson of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs "We have never, as a nation, gone ‘all in’ on fair housing,” Brown told ABC News. “We’ve never, as a nation, tried to close that gap … that gap between black and white ownership.”

Read the February 9, 2022 Black Wall Street Times article.

Fair Housing History

The Racial History of Housing Discrimination and its Continued Effects in 2022

The following are excerpts from "The Racial History of Housing Discrimination and its Continued Effects in 2022" by Cree Long, who was the Fair Share Housing Center (New Jersey) Communications and Development Intern and former intern at the Center, and posted on the website of the Judge Alexander Williams Jr. Center for Education, Justice & Ethics at the University of Maryland, College Park. The Center can be contacted at the University of Maryland, Seneca Building, 4716 Pontiac Street, Suite 0104, College Park, MD 20740.

This article was written in April, 2022, marking the end of National Fair Housing Month. 

The Mount Laurel Doctrine, the series of Supreme Court decisions that prohibits economic discrimination by municipalities in exercising their land use powers, prioritizes space for affordable housing. The Doctrine fights against towns in New Jersey that used zoning as a tool to further exclude and oppress communities of color. Despite the extraordinary progress we’ve made in addressing exclusionary zoning in the nearly fifty years since we were founded, there is still much more work to do. Discriminatory policies of the past continue to perpetuate recurring, detrimental harms on communities of color, even today. Not only were these policies rooted in racism, but every level of government, especially in New Jersey, supported these mandates– making it impossible for Black and Brown families to generate wealth and live peacefully...

Perhaps the most notable of these is redlining. The practice of redlining was created through the Home Owners’ Loan Coalition’s residential security mapping system, which was used to monitor mortgage default between residents. Outlined in red on the map were Black communities representing “detrimental influences.” Though the idea of redlining began during slavery, its longevity has resulted in discrimination in housing and land ownership based on race throughout the country. Especially with New Jersey’s history of redlining and segregation, it was nearly impossible for Black and Brown residents to ask for financial assistance, buy property, and of course, refinance.

Amid the continued turmoil around housing discrimination for Black residents, the Fair Housing Act (FHA) of 1968 was passed by Congress and was intended to provide equal housing opportunities for residents of every race, background, religion, and ethnicity. Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. advocated for fair housing among Black people by eliminating discrimination and promoting Black homeownership. Martin Luther King was assassinated just a week after the Fair Housing Act was passed. And despite the law, discrimination in housing policies made it difficult for Black people to obtain wealth especially through homeownership, no matter their income. Still today, Black people are often rejected for loans, discouraged from buying homes, and are subjected to live in neighborhoods with poor schooling systems, food deserts, lack of public transportation, and environmental issues...

Due to our flawed policies and the vast racial wealth gap, Black and Brown people have struggled to achieve and generate wealth...

References:

New Jersey Institute for Social Justice. (2020). Erasing New Jersey’s Red Lines: Reducing the Racial Wealth Gap Through Homeownership and Investment in Communities of Color. https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/njisj/pages/689/attachments/original/1588…NewJersey’sRedLines_Final.pdf?1588358478

United States Department of Housing and Urban Development. (n.d.). History of Fair Housing. https://www.hud.gov/programoffices/fairhousingequalopp/aboutfheo/history

New Jersey Institute for Social Justice. (2020). Black and Brown in New Jersey: The Garden State’s Shameful Racial Wealth Gap. https://www.njisj.org/blackandbrowninnj

Book Review

The Third Reconstruction: America's Struggle for Racial Justice in the Twenty-First Century

by Peniel E. Joseph. Basic Books, 2022. 288 pages, hardcover. $27.00

In this book, distinguished race and democracy historian Peniel E. Joseph (professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs and the History Department, College of Liberal Arts, University of Texas at Austin) argues that that the period since 2008 has constituted the country's Third Reconstruction.

Joseph previously has published several books on the Black Power movement and a Stokely Carmichael biography. His Dark Days, Bright Nights: From Black Power to Barack Obama (2010) is utilized in 1,120 libraries according to WorldCat and Wikapedia.

Joseph, in The Third Reconstruction, thus gives a new interpretation of recent history. He submits that the racial conflicts in 2020 "marked the climax of a Third Reconstruction: a new struggle for citizenship and dignity for Black Americans, just as momentous as the movements that arose after the Civil War and during the civil rights era." The book traces this Third Reconstruction from the election of Barack Obama to the rise of Black Lives Matter to the 2021 failed assault on the Capitol.

Book Review

Racial Innocence: Unmasking Latino Anti-Black Bias and the Struggle for Equality

by Tanya Katerí Hernández. Beacon, 2022. 216 pages, hardcover. $23.95.

“Profound and revelatory, Racial Innocence tackles head-on the insidious grip of white supremacy on our communities and how we all might free ourselves from its predation. Tanya Katerí Hernández is fearless and brilliant . . . What fire!”—Junot Díaz, who received the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and received a MacArthur Fellowship "Genius Grant" in 2012.

According to the publisher, this is "The first comprehensive book about anti-Black bias in the Latino community that unpacks the misconception that Latinos are “exempt” from racism due to their ethnicity and multicultural background."

The book documents that it’s possible for a historically marginalized group to experience discrimination and also be discriminatory. Written by law professor and comparative race relations expert Tanya Katerí Hernández, this exposes “the Latino racial innocence cloak” that often veils Latino complicity in racism. Because Latinos are the second-largest ethnic group, this is important to tackle to dismantle systemic racism. The author uses interviews, discrimination case files, and civil rights law, to show Latino anti-Black bias in the workplace, the housing market, schools, places of recreation, the criminal justice system, and Latino families. In the process, she reveals that many Afro-Latino and African Americans are victims of anti-Blackness at the hands of other people of color.

 Book Review

Under the Skin: The Hidden Toll of Racism on American Lives and on the Health of Our Nation 

by Linda Villarosa. Doubleday: 2022. 288 pages. $30.00, hardcover.

From an award-winning writer at the New York Times Magazine and a contributor to the newspaper's 1619 Project*, this book discusses the extent of racial health disparities in the U.S., showing the toll racism takes on individuals and the nation's health. It is a New York Times Top 10 Book of the Year. Oprah Daily calls it: "A stunning exposé of why Black people in our society 'live sicker and die quicker'—an eye-opening game changer."

Linda Villarosa's 2018 New York Times Magazine article on the poor maternal and infant mortality of black mothers and babies was important because it showed that a Black woman with a college education is as likely to die or nearly die in childbirth as a white woman with an eighth grade education. Many studies had previously linked racial discrimination and  Black Americans' health, but this one revealed the extent of the problem. 

This book examines the forces in the American health-care system and in society that cause Black people to “live sicker and die quicker” compared to whites. For example, many of today's medical texts and instruments still assume that Black bodies are basically different from white bodies. 

This book personalizes and adds to the many studies that have documented that there is worse medical treatment and outcomes for Black patients. Because of housing discrimination and income, Blacks live in dirtier, more polluted communities - and contribute to the problems that need solution. 

* The 1619 Project is "an ongoing initiative from the New York Times Magazine that began in August 2019, the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. It aims to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative."

 Housing Discrimination

HUD CHARGES COLORADO LANDLORD WITH HARASSMENT AND RETALIATION

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has charged Vernon Morgan, the owner of a house in Greeley, Colorado, with discrimination for subjecting a female tenant to harassment and retaliation because of sex. Read HUD’s Charge.

HUD’s Charge alleges that Morgan harassed the tenant because of her sex. His harassing conduct allegedly included frequent unwelcome invitations to meals, trips, and other activities; sexual and/or gendered innuendos, comments, and gestures; derogatory and belittling comments; and peering into the tenant’s windows from outside the property. The Charge alleges further that after the tenant told Morgan that his conduct was unwelcome and was sexual harassment, she sought a protection order against him and reported the harassment to the police. Morgan then retaliated against the tenant and tried to evict her. The Charge also alleges that because of Morgan’s illegal actions, the tenant was forced to vacate her home.

A U. S. Administrative Law Judge will hear HUD’s charge unless any party to the charge elects to have the case heard in federal district court. If an administrative law judge finds, after a hearing, that discrimination has occurred, the judge may award damages to the tenant for her losses as a result of the discrimination. The judge may also order injunctive relief and other equitable relief, to deter further discrimination, as well as payment of attorney fees. In addition, the judge may impose civil penalties to vindicate the public interest. If the federal court hears the case, the judge may also award punitive damages to the complainant.

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Source: December 8, 2022 HUD Press Release.