The State of Black America
Under Siege: The Plot to Destroy Democracy
The National Urban League (NUL) is a nonpartisan civil rights organization that advocates for economic and social justice for African Americans and against racial discrimination. During its more than hundred-year history, it has grown to ninety local affiliates across the country serving 2 million people with a variety of programs and services. The NUL recently released its 2022 State of Black America (SOBA) report, titled Under Siege: The Plot to Destroy America.
The Urban League has published its SOBA report annually since 1976, when the organization was under the leadership of the late civil rights activist Vernon Jordan. The U.S. president at the time, Gerald Ford, had failed in that year’s State of the Union address to make any mention of the plight of African Americans in the United States. Jordan therefore decided that the NUL would release its own report, to give voice to the disparities, injustices, and inhumane policies affecting Black Americans.
Until 2004, the SOBA report was always a compilation of various essays by noted authors on the economic and social ills plaguing Black communities. In 2005, however, Marc H. Morial—former mayor of New Orleans, former legislative litigator, and son of the first African American mayor of New Orleans, Ernest “Dutch” Morial—took the helm of the NUS. Under his leadership, the report was transformed into a tool for legislators, governments, activists, businesses, and organizations to statistically measure progress toward equality for Blacks in America as compared to whites. It’s important to note why whites are used as the benchmark: The history of race in America created advantages for whites that persist to this day. These data would be used to make policy recommendations and support policy changes.
The report includes a National Equality Index, which sounds the alarm of inequality in America via the use of pie charts that graphically show the economic status, health, education, social justice, and civic engagement gaps that stagnate or prevent greater progress. The National Equality Index in 2022 is 73.9 percent. This means that, rather than having a whole pie (100 percent), African Americans are missing about 26 percent of the pie based on the various indices of equality that are measured. To go deeper into this quality-of-life analysis, you can view the Equality Index here and review the data related to each of the five categories of well-being: economics, education, health, social justice, and civic engagement.
A segment new to the report this year goes further than measuring African Americans’ economic and social shares of the pie. “The Pulse of Black America Survey,” by the Benenson Strategy Group, illuminates the feelings and frustrations of Black people who never get that last slice of the pie. As someone who has been labeled as an “angry Black woman,” I found this survey particularly validating. Not only does this part of the report validate my anger; it supports and explains that anger by illuminating some of the reasons for it. You can view the Pulse of Black America survey here.
Today the battle for voting rights and racial justice is being led by the Legacy 8—those civil rights era organizations that, along with others, continue to fight for racial justice (see page 9 of the SOBA report). As Morial states in reference to the recent steady rise in disenfranchisement practices, “never before has the nation seen such an insidious and coordinated campaign to obliterate the very principle of ‘one person, one vote’ from the political process. It is in every sense of the term, a plot to destroy democracy.” The NUL and its partner, the Brennan Center for Justice, succinctly lay out how “unscrupulous state and federal lawmakers, devious political operatives, and violent extremists are working in concert to disenfranchise, dilute, manipulate, and intimidate American voters and establish one-party rule. “
The NUL and the LWV both amplify the need to “reclaim your vote” by making a plan to vote in every election—including the one coming up on June 7. I firmly believe that with the support of partnerships with other organizations in this space working together, we can push out all the fakery and dishonest intellectualism that plot to destroy our democracy.
—Pat Coulter, LWV-PA Past President; former CEO and president, Urban League of Philadelphia
