E-News for ACLU-AL Friends

National ACLU News

Race & Ethnicity in America: Turning a Blind Eye to Injustice

In 1994, the United States ratified the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD). As a result of the ratification, all levels of the U.S. government are required to comply with CERD’s provisions, which require countries to review national, statewide and local policies, and to amend or repeal laws and regulations that create or perpetuate racial discrimination.

In December 2007, the ACLU submitted a report to the U.N. Committee charged with monitoring compliance of CERD. Called Race & Ethnicity in America: Turning a Blind Eye to Injustice, the report finds that individual and institutional racial and ethnic discrimination continues to pervade American society, and policies at all levels of government place a disproportionate burden on those most vulnerable in society – racial and ethnic minorities, women, children, immigrants and non-citizens, and the accused.

To learn more about the ACLU’s fight for racial justice, please visit www.aclu.org/intlhumanrights/racialjustice/cerd.html. If you would like to receive a hard copy of the report, contact Nikki Cox, Development & Public Education Associate, at 334-265-2754 (ext. 205) or ncaclual@bellsouth.net.

ACLU of Alabama News

Racial Discrimination in Education

More than fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, many students of color throughout the United States continue to struggle in racially isolated, under-funded and inadequate schools. ACLU affiliates across the country, including the ACLU of Alabama, have a long history of working for racial integration of our schools, the equalization of educational programs and facilities, and other initiatives that help ensure high-quality education for all students. Here, at the state affiliate, we currently represent Pickens County students and their parents in Alabama’s forty-five year old school desegregation case, Lee v. Macon County Board of Education.

In 2006, we obtained a federal court order in this case that prevented the Pickens County Board of Education from following through with their plan to close the only school in Carrollton, the county seat. The needs of the students at the Carrollton school, who are predominantly African-American, had historically been neglected compared to the students in the predominantly white schools in the system. The court order required the school board to take the steps necessary to make the Carrollton school a success. Throughout 2007, we worked with community advocates to ensure that the school board complied with the orders of the court.

Much more work in this case is on the horizon. We expect the Justice Department will join with the Pickens County Board of Education soon to ask the federal court to declare the county’s education system “unitary,” meaning that the system has successfully made the transition from a segregated or racially dual system to a desegregated one. If the system is declared unitary, that might also mean the federal court would no longer have oversight. Our work in this important case in 2008 is truly cut out for us. Our immediate focus will be on evaluating the facilities and resources at each school to determine whether students throughout the system have equal access to educational resources and, if not, what changes will be necessary to bring about justice in education for all of Pickens County’s school children.

UPDATE: HIV-Positive Prisoners

As we reported in our most recent newsletter, we are making great progress in our long battle to end the discriminatory treatment of HIV-positive prisoners in the custody of the Alabama Department of Corrections.

Recently, we were given the rare opportunity to film interviews with HIV-positive prisoners at Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women and Limestone Correctional Facility. We also recorded interviews with former prisoners. Please visit www.aclu.org/prison/restrict/33120res20071211.html to watch the videos and hear their compelling stories in their own words.