A diverse stream of lawmakers, activists and community leaders drew up a long list of proposals on racial justice on Monday, June 14th, initiating one of the legislature’s most daunting endeavors to date: grappling with centuries of structural racism, which affects almost every facet of the is rooted in public life.
The Committee on Racial Equality, Civil Rights and Inclusion, created by legislature in January, convened its first hearing to set the course for that meeting. Speakers outlined priorities they felt lawmakers should address – from enforcing a 2018 criminal justice reform law to providing driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants, from breaking down data collection to offering redress for slavery – in increments to achieve the long promised, but often not promised, equality for color communities.
Legislative leaders established the body in the wake of nationwide protests against racial justice and police reform last year, but the committee’s mission will be much broader. Senator Sonia Chang-Diaz, one of the group’s co-chairs, said the panel is aware that “structural racism and exclusion are marbled in the various institutions and policies of our community.”
“Last year the legislature focused on public security reform, but our work to end structural racism is not limited to the public security system and is not being carried out in our Commonwealth,” she said. “While we may not be able to do everything and end structural racism in this legislature, we need to start working on pressing priorities so that we can get this work done piece by piece.”
The influence of the COVID-19 pandemic was also evident in the testimony. Black and Latino communities have been disproportionately hit during the health crisis and often face higher infection rates, difficulty in accessing vaccines, and greater economic damage than white communities.
Prisoners ‘Legal Director Elizabeth Matos warned that “mass incarceration is perhaps the clearest example of structural racism in our society,” said Prisoners’ Legal Director Elizabeth Matos, urging lawmakers to set up an ombudsman oversee public health standards in correctional facilities and urged the state Department of Justice to review inmate populations for potential release as a precaution against the spread of the highly infectious virus.
“We don’t want to see another drastic increase in cases and deaths like last fall,” said Matos. “Oversight is essential to prevent adequate vigilance from continuing in these meetings.”
Brandy Fluker Oakley MP, a Mattapan Democrat, also cited mass incarceration as a pressing issue that lawmakers want to address alongside disproportionate eviction rates, maternal mortality rates and wage differentials.
About 10 percent of the state’s population are Latinos, but 24 percent of those incarcerated in Massachusetts are Latinos, Fluker Oakley said. Similarly, black residents represent 7 percent of the statewide population and 26 percent of the incarcerated population.
The pandemic brought with it a wave of increasing discrimination and violence directed against residents of the Asian-American and Pacific islands. From March 19, 2020 to February 28, 2021, the Stop AAPI Hate reporting center tracked nearly 3,800 cases of hatred of Asian Americans in the United States.
MP Tackey Chan, a member of the Asian Caucus, told his colleagues that Americans of Asian descent “face racism in a very different way” than other ethnic groups, including through the “role model minority myth” and often reduced to “invisibility” would. “
In 1871, Chan said, a mob killed 19 Chinese immigrants in Los Angeles. Filipino-Americans who fought for the United States in World War II did not receive veteran benefits until 2009.
“When I start talking about how systemic racism affects us and how we have been largely defamed in US history and politics – not just in the last four years, but 200 years ago – people are pretty shocked,” he said .
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Chan said the Asian Caucus of the House of Representatives wants to see action to achieve better representation on state commissions and boards and to update the way the state collects demographic data, an issue also discussed by Caucus Deputy Rep Maria Robinson, and Massachusetts Asia-American Commission Chairman Sam Hyun.
Deficiencies in the criminal justice system
As the panel began its work to show a path to racial justice, the Suffolk County’s chief prosecutor called on lawmakers to turn their attention three years into the past.
Suffolk County’s District Attorney Rachael Rollins told the committee that her office continues to grapple with a “staggering lack of standardized and transparent data” about the criminal justice system, even under a 2018 law that included numerous data reporting requirements.
Rollins said their team still receives paper copies of documents even though partner agencies store the information electronically, making it difficult to track changes in crime and recidivism rates that could result from policy changes.
Much of the data that the district attorneys have access to is kept in boxes in a warehouse, according to Rollins, which requires deputy district attorneys and administrative staff tens of thousands of hours a year – which is four to nine full hours, according to prosecutors. Temporary staff positions – exclusively based on transcription.
Legislators must step in and enforce data collection and disclosure requirements in the 2018 Act to redress injustices, Rollins said.
“The answers we need, the answers this committee needs are out there. They exist,” Rollins later told lawmakers: “We need support and we need you to wield the power that you definitely have.”
When asked why other agencies are not yet complying with the law, Rollins replied that the state’s criminal justice system was still operating under an “incredibly old, archaic data storage system.”
“It’s a system that would require significant sums of money to upgrade, but I honestly think it’s just excuses,” Rollins said. “I will leave these agencies to explain yourself to you, but I encourage you to call them before you and ask them why.”
The Mayor of Boston weighs the priorities
Boston Mayor Kim Janey highlighted several issues that state lawmakers should address in order to achieve racial justice, specifically targeting a huge imbalance in the use of public funds.
Janey pointed to a report that found that only 1.2 percent of the $ 2.1 billion the city spent on construction and professional goods and services between 2014 and 2019 went to black-owned businesses or Latinos left.
“The state could help with this,” Janey said, referring to the re-tabled laws (H 3167) that would place additional requirements on the participation of minority-owned companies and women in government procurement. “Moving forward on this front could be extremely helpful in the work we are already doing.”
Several speakers advocated bills that would allow undocumented immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses or restrict law enforcement interactions with federal immigration services, proposals that Democratic legislators were reluctant to adopt, even amid widespread support within their own factions.
Many of the lawmakers and racial justice advocates cited at Monday’s hearing intersect with some of the biggest problems the state is facing, such as a real estate market with limited inventory and rapidly rising prices.
When House Speaker Ronald Mariano and Senate President Karen Spilka announced the establishment of the Racial Equality Committee, they said they would ask the panel to investigate the implications of other proposed bills.
“Systemic racism has manifested itself throughout our history and is ingrained in our own laws and institutions,” Fluker told Oakley on Monday, expressing her support for the mission. “To overcome this ubiquitous problem, we must evaluate any law that is seriously considered by lawmakers to ensure that it does not perpetuate racial differences and actively address pre-existing differences and inequalities.”
The Monday hearing took place as Massachusetts prepared to recognize the Juneteenth, which commemorates June 19, 1865, when the last slaves in Texas learned of their freedom, as an official state holiday for the first time.
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Black and Latino MP Chynah Tyler announced on Monday that lawmakers will hoist a commemorative flag on Wednesday to be broadcast live on Facebook.
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