OFFICE OF POLICY
When we change policy, we change the world. How does society create and perpetuate racism? We believe that racist policies uphold racial inequities and continue to give certain groups greater access to social goods such as education and healthcare, as well as economic and geographic mobility. We define a “racist policy” broadly as any measure that leads to, or maintains, racial inequity or injustice. We describe a policy as racist if it has a disparate racial impact. By contrast, we define an “antiracist policy” as any measure that leads to, or maintains, racial equity or justice. To address racial inequities and help enact antiracist policies, the Center’s Office of Policy transforms antiracist data and research insights into tangible policy products, including policy reports, legal briefs, policy convenings, and trainings.
The Office of Policy creates and implements antiracist policies, galvanizing the Center’s mission to dismantle systemic racism, through these initiatives: • We draft antiracist model legislation and partner with policymakers and legislators at the federal, state, and local levels to mitigate and eliminate racial inequities. • In our Amicus Brief Practice, we file amicus briefs to educate the US Supreme Court and state supreme courts in order to transform the law and enhance public understanding of critical legal issues that impact racial equity. • The Evidence Equity Project leverages the Center’s network of hundreds of affiliates to create a pool of pro bono expert witnesses who can testify about racism and the racialized experiences of people of color in a select number of high-impact, antiracist cases each year.
• Through our Policy Convenings, we bring together researchers, advocates, and policymakers to analyze racist policy problems and create antiracist policy solutions. • We provide continuing legal education to lawyers, judges, and advocates to incorporate antiracism into their practice.
> SUPPORTING BIPOC’S CIVIL RIGHTS: OUR FIRST AMICUS BRIEF
The Center for Antiracist Research filed an amicus brief in Thompson v. Clark. This case presents an opportunity for the US Supreme Court to close a procedural loophole that shields police officers from accountability under federal civil rights law for pursuing false criminal charges, which are often used to target Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color (BIPOC). In many parts of the country, BIPOC are disproportionately victims of false criminal charges. Those charges are sometimes rightfully dismissed, but not before they cause significant harm, including wrongful arrest and detention, as well as damaging repercussions in every aspect of a person’s life. In Thompson, the court will decide whether to affirm the “indications-of-innocence” standard, which some courts use to determine whether a person who claims to have been falsely charged may sue the police officers or prosecutors who pursued those charges. The indications-of-innocence standard requires claimants to show that the criminal proceeding against them, which they claim was unlawful, ended in a way that affirmatively demonstrates their innocence. This is nearly impossible to do when false criminal charges are dismissed. In our brief, we urge the court to reject the indications-of-innocence standard, which perpetuates racial inequity by preventing courts from hearing federal civil rights claims arising from police officers’ racially biased pursuit of false criminal charges, and by ignoring realities of the criminal legal system that make it especially difficult for BIPOC to prove their innocence.
By supporting the Center’s Office of Policy, you will help us develop and implement evidence-based policy solutions that address structural issues at the root of racial inequities across the country.
> BRINGING LIKE MINDS TOGETHER: THE ANTIBIGOTRY CONVENING
The mission of the Center’s Antibigotry Convening is to facilitate collaboration among advocates and scholars to: • Define bigotry in structural and systemic terms • Examine, through data and story collection, the ways that bigotry infringes upon the liberties, dignity, and opportunities of harmed communities and individuals • Develop a transformative narrative of antibigotry to become a galvanizing concept (like antiracism) • Prompt an antibigotry movement and an era of broad, intersectional equity, and • Generate an antibigotry policy report and resolution.