Systemic Racism Built Mississippi. Gov. Reeves Says It Doesn't Exist.
On the penultimate day of the Confederate Heritage Month he proclaimed for the second year in a row, Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves made a bold declaration: “There is not systemic racism in America.”
The announcement, if it were true, could come as a relief to the 38% of Mississippians who are Black. But around 16% of those residents will not have the opportunity to express their gratitude to the governor in the next election because they are systematically disenfranchised due to an 1890 Jim Crow felony voting law.
The Cambridge Dictionary defines “systemic racism” as “policies and practices that exist throughout a whole society or organization, and that result in and support a continued unfair advantage to some people and unfair or harmful treatment of others based on race.”
Like most of America, such racist policies and practices persist in everything from housing and mortgages, to access to banks, to education, to higher education, to criminal justice, to policing, to running water, to health care, to environment hazards, to farming, to food security and more in Mississippi.
Read more: https://www.mississippifreepress.org/11705/systemic-racism-built-mississippi-gov-reeves-says-it-doesnt-exist/