An Antiracism for the rest of us

You don't have to be a capital-A Antiracist to do your part to fight racism. You don't have to be an activist. You don't have to put out a personal statement or Instagram your new copy of White Fragility so everyone in your feed knows how woke you are. You don't have to put a Black Lives Matter sign in your front lawn.

You can do it your own way; you don't have to be bullied into following someone else's prescription. Some things you can do on your own, some you can start in your community, some you can petition your local representatives for their support.

As I see it, the two biggest injustices to African Americans are policing and housing discrimination. Poverty is the biggest problem but I believe it is mostly caused by housing issues. So here are some things you can do to help combat racism.

Things you can do on a personal level.

Donate to organizations like Campaign Zero. They have identified the eight policies that correlate with police brutality. If you live in a leafy, white, low-crime suburban neighborhood, you can try to defund your local police department. But if your cops aren't killing people, you're better off supporting organizations that address the cops who are.

Listen to black voices. More specifically, listen to black voices who think like you. If you're a Trump supporter, follow Candace Owens and Terrence Williams. If you're a traditional conservative, follow Lester Holt, Colin Powell, and Condeleeza Rice. If you're a libertarian, follow Kmele Foster and Thomas Sowell. If you're a traditional liberal, follow John McWhorter, Coleman Hughes, Chloe Valdary, or Ayishat Akanbi. If you're a progressive, well, you're probably already doing this.

Research shows that people have a stronger bias against political ideology than against race. The point here is to combat the availability heuristic. If the only prominent black people you see are constantly espousing viewpoints you disagree with, you will begin to see all black people as being in your outgroup. However, if you purposefully expose yourself to black people who think like you, you will begin to see them as being in your ingroup.

Things your local community can do:

Start a neighborhood support network. Mansa Keita notes the benefits of mentoring a young person of color.

"The biggest benefit? Networking. A lot of jobs aren’t found via applications or “merit”, a lot are about who you know and who recommends you."

You don't have to necessarily adopt a "little" as he suggest, but you could start a Facebook group for your community's black residents and let them know of upcoming job opportunities at your work. Or offer to be a reference for them.

Start an opportunity council. "Opportunity councils could be made up of a broad cross-section of leaders in the city, such as school superintendents, mayors, council members, local newspaper editors, and community members from high- and low-opportunity areas." The whole point is to improve opportunities for those with less opportunity, notably African Americans.

Things your local government can do.

Help societal reintegration. Two facts: one, black men are overreprented in the prison population (more on this later). Two, if you are born into poverty and raised by your married parents, you have an 80 percent chance of climbing out of it. If you are born into poverty and raised by an unmarried mother, you have a 50 percent chance of remaining stuck. You can create something like the Women in Recovery program and help connect the formerly incarcerated with their families and help reintegrate them into your community.

Build affordable housing. Apartments are a good start, but it could even be just building more starter homes. In short, increasing the supply of available housing decreases the cost of housing. If you're a leafy suburb dweller, your local government can work to change zoning laws that will make it easier for low income Americans, many of whom are minorities, to move into your community.

This isn't just about access to better schools, it's access to social capital, like the job networking I mentioned earlier. So much learning in school comes from a student's peers. There is so much benefit just to being around kids whose parents expect them to go to college.

Does your safe neighborhood employ cops who practice broken window policing? Probably not. Guess who would love to not be stopped and frisked by cops every day? The low income black residents who can't find housing in your town. BUILD MORE HOUSING!

Vote by mail. It's simple. It's a low risk for fraud. More importantly, it makes it easier for people who don't normally vote, people who are disproportionately black, to participate in democracy.

Things your state or national government can do.

Vote libertarian. Just kidding, sort of. But seriously, they are the most serious about ending the War on Drugs, which just puts a lot of black men in jail, and all the other policies that disproportionately affect black Americans, including:

End qualified immunity.
End civil asset forfeiture.
End the drug war.
End overcriminalization.
End no-knock warrants.
End militarization of police.
End mandatory minimums.

— Justin Amash (@justinamash) June 7, 2020

Start gun buyback programs. Why are certain cops more violent? Because they police violent neighborhoods. In a country with more guns than people, they are fearful that a citizen might be armed and shoot at them. Remove that fear by reducing the supply of guns and you can reduce the anxiety and false positives from cops who shoot unarmed citizens.

Things that will REALLY help but you'll never actually do.

Sell your house, at a loss, to a black family. Move to a poor black neighborhood. Buy a house at a markup. Send your children to the local public school. All their classmates will benefit from their presence. Don't worry about the quality of education; research shows that kids end up like their biological parents. They are going to be fine. The biggest change will be to the family who now lives in your old community.