Systemic Equality: Addressing America’s Legacy of Racism and Systemic Discrimination

The ACLU's Systemic Equality agenda seeks to address the United States’ legacy of racism and systemic discrimination. Racism and white supremacy are woven into the fabric of American society. This agenda tackles policies and institutions that have intentionally and systematically harmed Black and Indigenous people and other people of color.

The Systemic Equality agenda will significantly invest in building organizing, advocacy, and legal power in the South – a region where most Black Americans live. Our work in this region will strengthen voting rights and democracy, ensure reproductive justice in Black and Brown communities, and fight for reparations.

The pillars of the Systemic Equality Agenda are:

1) Fair Housing: Equal access to housing is a civil right. We must work to reduce mass evictions and barriers to housing opportunities that disproportionately impact Black women renters, and restore important housing protections to expand equal access to housing opportunities for everyone.

2) Voting Rights: The right to vote should be equally accessible to everyone. Redistricting plans should fairly reflect the political strength of communities of color. As data from the last Census confirms, nearly all of the country’s growth over the past decade is attributable to the growth in our nation’s communities of color. Fair maps and voting policies must adequately reflect that reality.

3) Criminal Justice: We have the power to choose and to invest in real solutions that increase equality, justice, and safety for all of us. Investing in punishment while undermining what we need for equal and thriving communities has resulted in overcriminalization and the unjust and unequal treatment of our communities — especially Black communities. We improve public safety by addressing root causes of crime, such as poverty and lack of opportunity, while also focusing on strengthening communities through investments in promising solutions. These include increasing access to affordable housing, jobs, education, health care, and mental health and substance use services in our communities.

4) Economic Justice: All people should have an equal opportunity to earn a living, find a home, and get an education. Systemic inequities and barriers keep people — particularly people of color — from accessing the mainstays of economic life; including education, employment, and homeownership; resulting in racial disparities in wealth and income. These disparities result from a combination of ongoing discrimination, structural inequality, and biases across our institutions, and emerge in new forms of technology, including through artificial intelligence, that influence nearly every facet of life. Through litigation and advocacy, we aim to remedy deeply entrenched sources of inequality and ensure that access to opportunity and the ability to build wealth is available to all.

5) Education Equity: All students have a right to an equal education, but students of color (particularly Black students), students with disabilities, and low-income youth have historically been marginalized, criminalized, and under-resourced by the public school system. We will challenge unconstitutional disciplinary policies that disparately target Black students and infringe on their right to a safe learning environment. We will also support race conscious admission policies to increase access to underrepresented groups who face systemic barriers to higher education.

If we genuinely want to create a more equitable, just, and more perfect union, this country must pursue all of this vital work. Thank you for supporting our Systemic Equality Agenda.

Learn more here: https://www.aclu.org/news/topic/systemic-equality-addressing-americas-le...