Cyril Josh Barker, Amsterdam News
The National Urban League has released its 2020 State of Black America report. This year’s report focuses on how the COVID-19 pandemic is pulling back the curtain on racism in America. The report was released virtually on Aug. 13 with speakers including, Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, activist Tamika Mallory, Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee and author Michael Eric Dyson.
By Gabrielle Wanneh, US News
WHILE THE CORONAVIRUS pandemic has engulfed the nation in public health dangers and economic turmoil, Black Americans are facing particularly stark crises. In a sense, "Black America faces three pandemics" in the devastating health effects of COVID-19, significant economic distress, and issues related to policing and criminal justice, said Marc Morial, president and CEO of the National Urban League.
National Urban League uses its annual State of Black America report to decry Kremlin targeting of black voters.
Adding its voice to a crescendo of complaints about Russian interference in both the 2016 presidential and the 2018 midterm elections, one of the nation’s most prominent civil rights and urban advocacy organizations decried efforts by foreign agents to use social media outlets to suppress voting turnout among black Americans.
In its State of Black America 2019 report, released Monday morning at a news conference in Washington, D.C., the National Urban League (NUL) said that state-sponsored Russian activists fed into the nation’s simmering racial antagonism in an effort to tamp down black voters’ confidence and dissuade voting participation.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is making a pitch to voters of color with a policy agenda focused on lower-income Americans and communities that have faced discrimination.
In an essay for the National Urban League's State of Black America report, Warren touted her efforts to expand access to housing, implement a wealth tax and cut down on government corruption.
"The homeownership gap has led to a staggering [racial] wealth gap," Warren wrote. "I believe that the federal government has a central role to play in reversing this damage caused in large part by decades of government-sanctioned discrimination. That’s why I introduced legislation to produce more than three million affordable housing units and bring down rents."
"I’ve proposed dealing with federal redlining by providing down payment grants to people living in formerly redlined and currently lower-income areas," the senator continued. "It would be a significant start in acknowledging—and starting to reverse—a long history of housing discrimination."
One of the nation's oldest civil rights organizations is warning that Russian attempts to interfere in the U.S. political process deliberately targeted African Americans, drawing a link to domestic efforts to curtail voting rights and roll back landmark civil rights protections.
In its annual "State of Black America" report, the National Urban League found malicious foreign actors' use of social media to spread disinformation "aligns with racially-motivated efforts taking place in state legislatures across the nation" and recent Supreme Court decisions.
Unveiling the report at the start of a three-day conference at the National Press Club in Washington, Marc Morial, the group's president and CEO, highlighted Russia's use of race as a weapon to divide Americans and dissuade African Americans from voting, a dynamic he said has been overlooked in the public discussion of Russian interference.
Obstacles to voting access and rights at levels not seen since the civil rights-era are key sources of inequality and threaten democracy, according to the "State of Black America" report released Monday by the National Urban League.
"Attacks on voting rights and on democracy have escalated to a level not seen since the 1960s," Marc Morial, CEO of the National Urban League, said Monday at an event for the report's release.
African Americans' voting rights have been under assault over the past 10 years, he said and pointed to voting obstacles on the state and national levels and particularly highlighted the role of Russian online influence in inflaming divisions in social media.
Russian disinformation operations to exploit racial tensions during the 2016 presidential election in the United States found firm ground in a country where legislators have long sought to suppress the black vote, according to a report released Monday.
The report, “State of Black America,” was released by the National Urban League, a civil rights organization based in New York. It underlined the Russian interference in particular but said that black voting rights were under attack from a wide range of actors, including domestic politicians.
In about two dozen states, voting restrictions have gotten worse since 2010 because of changes including new voter identification laws and decisions to limit locations where voters can cast ballots, the report said.
2020 Equality Index 
2020 Authors/Essays 
2020 Executive Summary Report 