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  • Blog
  • October 31, 2019

It's Been 400 Years: Berkeley Commemorates Slavery Anniversary

A granite figure representing a slave on display at the UN headquarters in New York evokes sadness, but invites visitors to heal. It’s been 400 Years since the first African people were forcibly brought as slaves to the English colonies in North...
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  • Blog
  • October 31, 2019

Making The Dream Reality: Talking School Integration With Rucker Johnson

Rucker Johnson, a Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy in the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley, is a member of three Haas Institute faculty research clusters: Diversity and Health Disparities; Race, Diversity, and Educational Policy...
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  • Blog
  • October 31, 2019

Message from Associate Director Denise Herd

The year 2019 is a momentous one in American history. Four hundred years ago marks the forced arrival of enslaved African people to the English colonies at Point Comfort, Virginia. In January of 2018, the “400 Years of African American History...
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  • Blog
  • October 31, 2019

Blog: Is Trump the most racist president we've had?

I have been asked lately, more than a few times, whether our current president is the most racist president in the history of this country. But this is the wrong question.
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  • Blog
  • October 31, 2019

Recent Writing on the Causes, Consequences, and Politics of Racial Segregation

Three new books tackle the problem of segregation with fresh solutions, deeper insights, and a firmer basis for understanding how this enduring problem polarizes our politics, just in time for the 2020 Presidential campaign. There has been a...
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  • Blog
  • October 22, 2019

Blog: Disparate Impact Liability is the Best Remedy for Structural Racism

In 1968, Congress enacted the Fair Housing Act, the nation’s first open housing law. This critical piece of legislation not only prohibited racial discrimination in housing, but sought to reverse decades of federal, state, and local policies that...
PROTESTERS outside the Trump tower in New York
  • Blog
  • October 11, 2019

Young Voters, Inequality, and Identity

Despite some recent progress, most mainstream civic engagement and political outreach efforts continue to marginalize young voters in choices about strategy and resource allocation. Depending on the aims or “side” of the outreach campaign, this can...
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  • Blog
  • September 24, 2019

Blog: Tools for Building Our Narrative Infrastructure: Curriculums for Training and Popular Education

Building a powerful progressive infrastructure in California involves aligning various types of organizations and networks around a common set of values, a shared analysis and vision, and a strategic narrative.
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  • Blog
  • September 3, 2019

Symposium marks 400th anniversary of slavery in the US

Last Friday, UC Berkeley initiated a year-long initiative commemorating the 400th anniversary of the forced arrival of enslaved Africans in the English colonies with a day-long symposium. It drew hundreds of attendees who heard from more than a dozen...
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  • Blog

Blog: Kashmir and Palestine share the struggle for self determination against colonial occupation

August 12, 2019 By Zainab Ramahi As a Kashmiri living in North America, I have been to Kashmir some twenty times. I have experienced the instability, power outages, curfews, and closures that are a cruel part of everyday life, and witnessed massive...
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  • Blog
  • August 7, 2019

Blog: The road not taken: Housing and criminal justice 50 years after the Kerner Commission report

Last year, on the 50th anniversary of the “Kerner Commission” report, the Economic Policy Institute, collaborating with the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society at the University of California, Berkeley, and Johns Hopkins University’s 21st...
Justice
  • Blog
  • August 7, 2019

On Gilroy, El Paso, and Dayton: A call to recognize our shared humanity

We are in national mourning after a horrific week in America of mass murder. We extend our deepest sympathy to the families of those who have been killed and our hearts go out to the communities forever transformed by these acts of violence. We, as a...
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  • Blog
  • July 30, 2019

Blog: Responding to Racial Demagoguery

President Donald Trump attacked four Congresswomen on July 14 in a Twitter tirade that culminated in a call for them to go back to countries they “originally came from” to “fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.” Three...
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  • Blog
  • July 25, 2019

Blog: Single-Family Zoning in the San Francisco Bay Area

Editor's note (August 17, 2020): The author's have completed and published the full set of zoning maps and the accompanying Part 5 segregation report referred to at the end of this article In mid-June, the New York Times published ten zoning maps of...
Historical photo showing kids inside an integrated school bus in Charlotte Carolina
  • Blog
  • July 9, 2019

Blog: Revived debate over school busing highlights deepening racial segregation

When Senator Kamala Harris told former Vice President Joe Biden “that little girl was me,” she evoked a mostly-forgotten era, a half-century distant, when federal courts mandated busing of black children to schools in white neighborhoods. The court...

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Jan
19
  • January 19, 2025, 11:00 am – 1:00 pm

Community Conversations at OMCA: Reclaiming Democracy, Building Belonging

Register here Add to your calendar: Google Calendar | iCalendar | Outlook 365 | Outlook Live OBI is excited to partner with the Oakland Museum of California's Spotlight Sundays to introduce “Community Conversations,” a new series of conversations will create...
2024 opportunity map
  • Press Release
  • December 12, 2024

California renews OBI opportunity map for 8th consecutive year

BERKELEY: The California Tax Credit Allocation Committee (CTCAC) has reapproved the use of an opportunity map developed by the Othering & Belonging Institute (OBI) and its partners, California Housing Partnership and the Terner Center for Housing...