Racial Discrimination in San Francisco

Problem, Solution, and Barriers Paper

Shuo Tian

The Ohio State University

COMM 2367: Persuasive Communication

Kyla Brathwaite

Jul 19, 2021

The Problem

Segregation and racial discrimination remain amongst the biggest thorns in the flesh that is American society. What’s even more unfortunate is that despite decades of struggle and various changes to the law being enacted, the country remains a long way off being rid of systemic racism. For instance, the landmark ruling at the Supreme Court between Brown v. Board of Education effectively denounced racism in government-run primary and secondary schools. Yet, systemic racism has still found a way into the country’s education sector, as manifested in various incidences, such as imbalanced funding. In the same way, the passing of the Fair Housing Act in 1968 (The Justice Department, 2021) was meant to ensure more people of color receive opportunities to own decent housing. Yet, bottlenecks have persisted in ensuring the fulfilment of this need.

Racial Discrimination in San-Francisco

As Berkley (2021) explains, San Francisco Bay Area is a region having 39% of its people being white, 26% Asian, 24% Latino, and 6% Black. The remaining 6% of the population is classified as ‘other,’ representing the multi-racial Pacific Islanders and Native Americans. Given the demographics above, it is clear that the population within the bay area, and indeed San Francisco remains a diverse melting pot of race, culture, and traditions. Yet, while the region’s demographics remain richly diverse, only a few neighbourhoods and city suburbs reflect this diversity. Accordingly, the overwhelming majority of the region remains segregated, with different racial groups finding themselves occupying different parts of the region. As a consequence, such segregation often works to support policies that promote racial inequality and unfair access to government services. As Berkley (2021) explains, racial segregation and inequality are further complicated by the unavailability of accurate measures to quantify the problem. Most racisms quantifiers to date only measure segregation between two racial groups at a time.

Racial segregation is evident in each of the San Francisco counties, including urban and rural areas. The fact that the region’s demographics remain highly diverse seemingly provides a background for such segregation, with each community normally finding themselves occupying specific geographical areas all around San Francisco. As Berkley (2021) explains, there are two separate forms of segregation all through the region, namely intra-municipal and inter-municipal segregation. Historically, ‘segregated neighbourhoods’ have been promoted by successive governments, both at the local and state level, through the enactment of legislation (Wacquant, 2008). Accordingly, such legislation would see people of color being displaced from various residences, with white families taking their place in these regions. In promoting such cross-movement of communities, intra-municipal segregation grows, and in the process, segregation festers, even as cities and municipalities are diverse by aggregate.

However, as Berkley (2021) notes, most of the racial segregation observed in the Bay Area is seen between the various municipal boundaries. To this end, a municipality often finds itself having one majority of a particular race, while other races exist as minorities. What’s more, racial segregation seeping into municipal boundaries has also been a consequence of successive governments, both local and state, maintaining segregated historical lines. To this end, it becomes easy to continually push policies that foster racial inequality, as it is easy to target a community and offer or deny them the various social services. As Reece (2021) explains, such segregation has effectively ensured racism seeps into the county’s education system. The segregation sees the education boards in some school districts be persistently underfunded, giving students of affected schools unfair disadvantages against students across the region. Moreover, such racial segregation also effectively makes it easier for law enforcement to target specific ethnic-racial groups in the name of crime prevention and enforcement while other groups remain untouched.

The Solution

Many solutions have been proposed to solve racism over the years. As early as the 1960’s debate on the best way to tackle this evil part of our society festered. For example, Malcolm X was known to support violent action during the Civil Rights Movement, while Martin L King Junior preferred a more passive, non-violent approach (Parks et. al, 2021). While it is true that the various methods did bear varying amounts of fruits, it is also true that more work remains to be done. To help tackle racial segregation in San Francisco, I would initiate an online campaign and partner with school-going children between the ages of 12 – 17 years.

The targeted demographic comprises children in junior and senior high school, and they are known to spend most of their time browsing the internet. As most of their free time is spent on social media, my campaign would effectively ask them to volunteer part of that time to strike up an online conversation on racism. Additionally, today’s world lives on the inter-webs, with multiple social media platforms all having the functionality necessary to share content.

Accordingly, I would organize school-going children from the various school districts to join the conversation around the #RacistBay hashtag. Given that racial discrimination remains visible in providing education services within the region, the above hashtag would be appropriate to spark conversation about what is racist within the region. I want my audience to share their experiences with racism, from poor police treatment to lack of essential services such as clean water, lack of affordable housing, poor access to credit, and insufficient funding of schools. By sharing images and experiences, the conversation can be re-introduced within the community, with the greater population joining the conversation and proposing various solutions to the said problem. During the pandemic, Asian Americans used social media as the weapon to fight back all the racist remarks about the “Chinese Virus” by initiating hashtags such as #WashTheHate, #RacismIsAVirus, #IAmNotCOVID19 (Terry, 2020).

As part of the solution, I would also start a GoFundMe page favouring the National Lawyers Guild, San Francisco Bay Area Chapter. As seen in their website shows, the Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) works to promote social and economic justice within the Bay area by offering help to those that protest and organize against instances of injustice. To this end, the NGO helps to document and advocate for people arrested illegally while at the same time raising money to meet the legal fees and bail terms for victims of racial injustice. The National Lawyers Guild runs a hotline from where any member of the society can call and report an injustice. By simply detailing the arrestee’s full names and date of birth, the NGO can move into action and ensure the victim has appropriate representation to fight the injustice. I choose this non-profit as it was actively fighting instances of injustice in society. Furthermore, by being in the front line, I am certain that the NGO can also provide recent examples of injustice to drive the conversation further forward and further enlighten the masses. As such, many of the cases they have tackled would help prompt people to donate to their cause.

Working with the National Lawyers Guild, San Francisco Bay Area Chapter would also add legitimacy to the campaign. As an online campaign targeting children in junior and senior high, the non-profit would effectively add an educational aspect to the campaign. Working with lawyers would help educate the children who get involved in the various topics around civics and how the government operates. In addition, issues to do with freedom, individual human rights would be covered professionally, thus adding credibility to the venture. What’s more, the campaign would also profit from partnering with the Lawyers Guild through the imparting of relevant social skills to the campaign participants. For instance, the campaign can share information around the topics, ‘How to Respond When Pulled Over by Police Officers,’ ‘The Trial Process,’ ‘Taking the Fifth,’ to mention but just a few.

Barriers to Successful Implementation

The drive to have an online conversation on #RacistBay while having the potential to sensitize the community on an important issue might also run into problems due to various potential barriers. For starters, the internet has been known to have numerous trolls and cyberbullies. As A.P. News (2021) reports, racism has made its way to the online community, with one school board executive in San Francisco getting into trouble due to tweets that were supposedly racist. This might effectively see individuals be targeted for their views around racism.

What’s more, conversations about racism also tend to spark alternate discussions around reverse racism. While this is not necessarily a bad thing, it might come with unintended consequences in diluting the conversation and having the focus shift unnecessarily. Stollznow (2021) explains that a similar effect was seen with the #BlackLivesMatter protests and the resulting #AllLivesMatter counter protests. While it is a given fact that all lives matter, it is also true that racial inequality does not affect every race equally. As such, the #BlackLivesMatter protests can be said to have been justified to raise awareness and fight injustice. Likewise, the promotion of the #AllLivesMatter counter-protests to water down the movement can be said to have been in bad taste by people who did not see racism against people of color to be an issue worth discussing.

Given the above, it is safe to expect such obstacles, but they would be easy to solve. For starters, cyberbullying can be forbidden, and the individuals that promote the same be blocked and reported to different social media profiles.

Similarly, reverse racism can be tackled by encouraging the promoters to form their forums to discuss the issues they raise at length. More information about what’s racist and what’s not within the Bay area might be uncovered by encouraging such healthy debate. Equally, there might also be a lack of sufficient uptake within the different social media platforms to promote deep conversations on racism in the Bay area. To help resolve this issue, strategies such as page promotion and the use of influencers could come into good use to ensure messages reach a larger group of people at the same time.

References

A.P. News. (2021, March 25). San Francisco school board’s latest crisis: Racist tweets. AP NEWS. https://apnews.com/article/race-and-ethnicity-school-boards-san-francisco-0f13b0a16562f4e30bdc575a84285a6b

Berkley. (2021, May 10). Racial segregation in the San Francisco Bay Area. Othering & Belonging Institute. https://belonging.berkeley.edu/segregationinthebay

Parks, R., Gandhi, M., & Malcom, X. (2021). Martin Luther King Jr. In The Oxford Handbook of Reinhold Niebuhr (p. 217). Oxford University Press, USA.

Reece, J. (2021). Confronting the Legacy of “Separate but Equal”: Can the History of Race, Real Estate, and Discrimination Engage and Inform Contemporary Policy?. RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, 7(1), 110-133.

Stollznow, K. (2021, January 13). Why is it so offensive to say ‘all lives matter? The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/why-is-it-so-offensive-to-say-all-lives-matter-153188

Terry, T. (2020, April 4). Asian Americans use social media to mobilize against attacks. AP NEWS. https://apnews.com/article/us-news-ap-top-news-mi-state-wire-ca-state-wire-virus-outbreak-bf79b4f66e6a612d690abc546c84360f

The Justice Department. (2021, June 16). The Fair Housing Act. U.S. Department of Justice. https://www.justice.gov/crt/fair-housing-act-1

Wacquant, L. (2008). Urban outcasts: A comparative sociology of advanced marginality. Polity.

The post Racial Discrimination in San Francisco Problem, Solution, and Barriers Paper Shuo Tian appeared first on PapersSpot.