Equality Newsletter #3 (March 15, 2021)
Climate "racism" is real; France urged to ratify workplace sex harassment convention; UK proposes one-time wealth tax, and more...
“Climate Racism” is Real, Researchers Find
A series of new research studies have confirmed a long-suspected phenomenon: African-Americans and other minorities are more likely than Whites to live in neighborhoods that expose them to disease-related heat effects, which means over time they are also more likely
to suffer disproportionately from climate change.
In the past, anecdotal evidence from individual locales seemed to support this view but now a spate of scientific field studies based on large samples of counties and cities in the United States have attached hard numbers to the phenomenon known as “climate racism.”
The main factor at work is the so-called “urban heat island effect,” which shows that urban centers are typically hotter than suburban and rural ones.
The heat island effect is a combination of several factors: less vegetation and denser populations, with closely set buildings and lots of dark surfaces that help trap heat. The researchers decided to look at a cross-section of cities and towns with different population densities, then correlated these characteristics with average summer heat temperatures and the demographic characteristics of each locale.
In one study, it was found that ethnic minorities suffered heat levels at least two (Fahrenheit) degrees higher than those experienced by Whites. The researchers also controlled for income difference, and found that the ethnic and racial disparities persisted regardless of how much African-Americans and other minority groups typically earned.
Researchers say the disproportionate heat exposure of ethnic minorities also reflects long-standing patterns of residential segregation,including the deeply-entrenched practice of bank “redlining” that has limited the ability of ethnic households to receive mortgage financing to purchase new homes outside the inner-city.
These patterns haven't changed much since the 1980s, suggesting that the difference in these communities "has existed for decades and has locked in these disparities," according to lead study author Allison Grant, an undergraduate student at the University of Mary Washington.
Grant suggests that the heat exposure disparities and their health effects will only grow in the years ahead as extreme heat events due to climate change become more frequent and severe.
"Climate change is inevitable, and we are already seeing the impacts of it today," says Grant. "But what we need to do now is figure out where these communities are struggling and what needs to be done to make them more resilient to the impacts of extreme heat."
Effective short-term solutions are available, Grant and other researchers say. For example, “greening” inner-cities with more vegetation would likely help. Another potential solution would be to install reflective surfaces on rooftops or roads to help beam sunlight away.
Grant and the other study authors presented their research papers last week at the American Geophysical Union’s annual fall meeting. None of their research papers has been accepted for publication in peer-reviewed journals, which means they are still open to challenge and critique from more established scholars. But their arguments echo the findings of a study published last year that looked at neighborhood-level data in 25 cities around the world. In nearly three-quarters of the studied areas, lower-income neighborhoods were exposed to higher heat than wealthier neighborhoods.
GENDER
France Urged to Ratify Convention on Workplace Sexual Harassment
Last week, the international organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) launched a global campaign urging France to fight sexual harassment and violence at work by hastening its ratification of the 2019 International Labour Organization (ILO) Violence and Harassment Convention and by carrying out related domestic reforms.
“Ratifying the ILO Violence and Harassment Convention is a great way for President Macron to translate France’s commitment to be a global champion for gender equality into practice,” said Nisha Varia, women’s rights advocacy director at Human Rights Watch. “The French government should quickly open a dialogue with social partners, including workers’ groups and employers, to ensure that ratification is accompanied by concrete change in national law and practice.”
The 2019 ILO Convention is the first international labor standard to address violence and harassment in the world of work. It affirms that everyone has the right to a world of work free from violence and harassment. It also includes the first international definition of workplace violence and harassment and is the first instrument to draw specific attention to gender-based violence at work.
Currently, France prohibits sexual harassment in both its criminal code and its labor code. However, it remains unclear how France’s legal framework aligns with the ILO treaty’s minimum standards as well as emerging best practices. In recent months, France’s major union confederations and a constellation of civil society groups have been campaigning for speedy ratification of the ILO Convention.
In addition to promoting ratification of the ILO Convention, civic groups want the French government to require that multinational companies address workplace violence and harassment in their supply chains and that women exposed to domestic violence while working at home during the COVID pandemic have expanded access to shelters and other resources.
France has been in the forefront of European nations promoting ratification of the ILO Convention but momentum behind ratification appears to have stalled of late. .Last June, Uruguay and Fiji became the first countries in the world to ratify the new ILO Convention. With those two ratifications, the Convention will enter into force and become binding on all U.N. member states as of June 2021. However, more ratifications are needed to ensure stronger compliance with the new standards, HRW says.
WEALTH
UK Commission Proposes a One-Time “Wealth Tax”
A special UK commission is recommending that England impose a one-time “wealth tax” on the nation’s rich to offset budget deficits and to make possible more government spending, especially on programs for the poor. The commission’s much anticipated report was just presented to the British government which says it will study the plan carefully. The commission comprises prominent economists, tax professionals and other figures whose views carry substantial weight among the nation’s elites.
The commission recommends a one-time wealth tax as an alternative to raising the annual tax rate on the rich, While the liberal-left Labor party and its allies have pushed for higher taxes on the wealthy, the conservative Tory Party which currently dominates British politics steadfastly opposes such increases. But the Tories also want to hold on to power in the face of popular demands for a reduction in poverty and inequality. In the end, supporting the Commission’s recommendation could prove useful to Tories for building political unity and for warding off a fresh challenge from Labor.
The idea for a wealth tax in the UK has come up before. The first time was in the late 1940s when Britain was recovering from the devastation of war. In the 1970s the Harold Wilson’s Labor government also proposed a wealth tax plan against a backdrop of high inflation, rising unemployment and frequent large-scale strikes. But the policy was abandoned in the face of staunch opposition from the Treasury.
Britain’s new Wealth Commission recommends a flat tax of 5% on assets valued at £500,000 or more -- about $670,000 at the current foreign exchange rate. The Commission estimates that applied against an "all-inclusive" tax base, the flat tax could raise at least £260bn -- or roughly $351 billion. That’s the same amount the British government spends annually on welfare, which accounts for just over a third of the country’s national budget.
Somewhat cleverly, the Commission recommends that the government introduce the wealth tax without prior warning -- or even retroactively -- so that wealthy taxpayers would have no way to shelter their assets in offshore accounts or cease living in the UK altogether.
So far, opinion is mixed on whether Britain’s latest wealth tax plan will prove any more successful than its predecessors. Some argue that the tax rate is so low that it will merely offer a limited one-time wealth redistribution without affecting the country’s fiscal balance. Some economists also warn that the £500,000 threshold could mean that citizens that do not consider themselves wealthy, compared to the super-rich, could find their assets affected, especially if the flat tax is also applied to their inheritance incomes.
Like its predecessors, the latest UK wealth tax plan is an appealing idea -- on its surface. But by trying to side-step the most contentious and intractable issues in Britain regarding taxes and inequality, and without a clear constituency, critics fear it may well end up in the very same rubbish bin.
LGBTQ
More Religious Leaders Express Support for LGBTQ Rights
In a surprise development, more than 350 senior faith leaders from around the world have called upon their religious denominations to formally recognize the rights of LGBTQ people. The call, which includes prominent signatories such as Bishop DesmondTutu of South Africa and the former Catholic president of Ireland Mary McAleese, says that principles of universal love and religious tolerance demand that LGBTQ individuals be fully accepted into the fold, without judgment or condemnation.
In their statement, the religious leaders acknowledge that “certain religious teachings have often, throughout the ages, caused and continue to cause deep pain and offence” to LGBTQ people, and have “created, and continue to create, oppressive systems that fuel intolerance, perpetuate injustice and result in violence”.
As a remedy for past abuses, the leaders demand that the world’s governments formally “decriminalize” LGBTQ sexual practices and that all “conversion” therapies intended to forcibly revert LGBTQ individuals to the status of hetreosexuals be abandoned as inhumane.
The religious leaders made their call on the eve of a major interreligious conference funded by the British government on December 16. The government agreed to fund the conference despite having notoriously failed to act on its own pledge to outlaw conversion therapy. Observers hope the conference will spur UK leaders to finally act on that pledge.
The call also comes just weeks after Pope Francis dropped powerful hints of a shift in perspective within the Roman Catholic Church in favor of LGBTQ rights. The 350 figures signing the call hail from 35 countries representing 10 religions, including senior Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus and Buddhists and more than 60 rabbis.
Religious leaders say they expect continuing conflict within their denominations over LGBTQ issues. Bitter divisions still plague the Anglican Church for example. Church leaders in countries such as Nigeria, Uganda and Rwanda still uphold traditional biblical teaching on these issues.
However, Sarah Mullally, the bishop of London and number three in the Church of England, sent a message of “heartfelt encouragement” to the recent meeting. “When Christian teachings are distorted to incite violence, this is a dreadful abuse of the gospel message,” she said.
DID YOU KNOW
Interracial marriage in the United States was banned in 1664 and not overturned until 1967.
It took a landmark US Supreme Court decision, Loving v. Virginia, to overturn the ban, which reflected deep-seated prejudice against “race mixing” based on discredited theories about “miscegenation,” the alleged decline of the “White” gene pool that would result from the birth and propagation of mixed-race children. The case involved Mildred Loving, a woman of color, and her white husband Richard Loving, who in 1958 were sentenced to a year in prison for marrying each other.
Their marriage violated Virginia's Racial Integrity Act of 1924, which criminalized marriage between people classified as "white" and people classified as "colored". The couple appealed but the lower court decision was upheld. The couple then appealed to the US Supreme Court, which agreed to hear the case. In its historic and unanimous decision handed down on June 12, 1967, the High Court ruled that Vurginia’s law and other state laws like it violated the Equal Protection Clause in the 14th Amendment. After the decision, interracial marriages in the U.S. surged.
The Loving case has been the subject of numerous films, including most recently, Loving (2016), for which the actress playing Mildred Loving received the Academy Award for Best Actress. In 2017, the Virginia Department of Historic Resources dedicated a state historical marker, which tells the story of the Lovings, outside the Patrick Henry Building in Richmond – the former site of the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals.
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