Justice for all

Recently, the incredible Rosetta Thurman included me on her wonderful list of 32 Nonprofit & Philanthropy Blogs Written by People of Color - and I was incredibly honored and surprised by this gesture! Thanks again, Rosetta! But what was even more surprising to me was being clearly identified as a person of color!

In all honesty, my life experience has not shaped me to identify myself as a “person of color.” I moved to the U.S. at a young age from India, and since then have lived in safe suburban neighborhoods in a diverse region populated with immigrants and people of all different racial and ethnic backgrounds. In fact, although my parents worked extremely hard to rise up in this country, I have grown up in relative economic and political privilege. I grew up in the U.S. largely after the waves of hostility towards Indian-American immigrants had passed. Before my time, Indian immigrants were being called “dot heads” and other derogatory terms; by the time I got into middle school, I felt very integrated into my community and never experienced any hints of prejudice (or perhaps I was oblivious to it).

While I have a significant appreciation for the richness of Indian culture and the values my background imparted on me, I never felt fully Indian. I always loved American music, movies, television, history, politics, and books. I lived in a state and a town where I was literally surrounded by tons of other Indian Americans also growing up with a similar mix of Indian and American influences. I’ve always considered myself an American, and never felt singled out or ‘different’ because of my race throughout high school and my undergraduate years. I read about racism, and heard claims that “white people don’t know how lucky they are to be white,” but I never saw this in my own experience. Strange, but true. I was lucky. I never felt alone in forging my own unique racial and cultural identity.

Until now, that is. After graduation, I’ve chosen to enter the field of public interest, human rights, and civil rights law — a field with a conspicuous absence of Asian and Indian Americans. At a number of legal and civil rights non-profits I’ve worked at, I’ve been the only Indian American individual. Traditionally, South Asian Americans have leaned heavily towards the fields of science, medicine, technology, math, engineering, and finance. Of course, this is changing, and we are increasingly seeing more and more South Asians entering the fields of public interest law and politics as well. To name a few - Bobby Jindal, Nikki Haley, Fareed Zakaria, Kamala Harris, Mallika Dutt, Akhil Reed Amar, and many many more. Still, there is notably a lack of South Asian Americans in the non-profit sector; I see very few Indian Americans leading non-profit law firms or legal aid agencies. Most seem to be joining politics or academia.

Still, this is perhaps the first time in my life I have felt like a minority. My experience thus may be very different from the experiences of many others on Rosetta’s list, but I think she is absolutely right to encourage people of color to join the non-profit field. In particular, when it comes to the legal arena, we need more South Asians and Asian Americans to join the fight for human rights. After all, in many areas within public interest law - such as immigrant and refugee rights, fair housing, domestic violence, criminal justice, farmworker rights - our clients are poor people of color. It only makes sense for some of their attorneys to have a shared experience as a person of color. As the South Asian population grows in the U.S., we are going to need more lawyers who understand their language and the immigrant experience.

Ultimately, I hope that I can join a growing number of South Asian Americans who are venturing into the field of public interest law and politics despite the pressures to join the science, tech or business fields. While I have never before felt like a ‘person of color,’ Rosetta’s list reminded me that I am one after all — and that it’s becoming increasingly important to encourage South Asians to join the movement for social change. As we see the rise of more South American men and women to prominent public interest legal positions, I think we’ll see a broadening of perceptions within the South Asian community and an expansion of opportunities, passions, and ultimately - greater diversity within the non-profit legal field.

In a Legal Studies class I’m currently taking, I recently learned about an important problem relating to juvenile justice: the school-to-prison pipeline. While I was lucky enough to be living in an excellent school district, many other children in the U.S. simply don’t have that luxury. Today, the crisis of educational inequity in the U.S. has resulted in a school-to-prison pipeline that criminalizes, rather than educates, our kids. The school-to-prison pipeline consists of a set of harsh educational and school safety policies that push kids out of school and into the juvenile justice system.

Students are increasingly suspended and sanctioned for disciplinary reasons, and schools are involving the police in even relatively minor incidents that lead to juvenile detention, arrests, and even criminal charges. School rules are often strictly enforced through security measures like metal detectors, pat-downs, and referrals to the juvenile justice system. Students who commit minor infractions like smoking or skipping class are sometimes suspended, expelled, or even arrested. Students have even been expelled for bringing scissors to art class, giving Midol to classmates, or bringing in household items (including a knife) to be donated to Goodwill. Even children in elementary school have been arrested for acting out or displaying anger in class. One-size-fits-all solutions like these zero-tolerance policies completely ignore the individual circumstances of each case and criminalize students who don’t deserve it.

While many of these students could be easily disciplined through detention, warnings, or a visit to the principal’s office, they are unnecessarily ending up in the justice system. The pipeline also operates indirectly; some schools push low-performing students into GED programs and the juvenile justice system in order to artificially improve their graduation and testing numbers. Moreover, the school-to-prison pipeline disproportionately targets youth of color and those with disabilities. Black students with learning disabilities are four times more likely to be sent to correctional facilities than white students with learning disabilities. I find this statistic absolutely horrifying.

Once suspended or expelled, youth are more likely to get lower grades, repeat a grade, or drop out of high school. This increases their chance of joining gangs, committing crimes, or becoming incarcerated down the road. Disciplinary and criminal records make it very difficult for students to apply to colleges, scholarships, and jobs. In some cases, criminal records prevent students and their families from accessing public housing. Ultimately, harsh penalties for kids don’t deter crime; instead, they drive kids into becoming career criminals.

What are the solutions? We must invest in education rather than the correctional system. Schools are spending money on security measures when they should be paying for books, libraries, counselors, and well-trained teachers instead. We must also improve non-punitive options such as counseling, mentoring, mediation, and increased teacher and parental support for students. While the recent Supreme Court ruling that outlawed life without parole for minors convicted of non-murder crimes moves in the right direction, we need more than a change in the laws. We must look for rehabilitative solutions that address the roots of the problem – such as socioeconomic disparities and educational inequities. By providing a supportive school atmosphere for at-risk students, it is possible to dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline and prevent kids from entering the juvenile justice system in the first place.

Bayard Rustin: it’s a name that is not particularly well-known to most of us. His contribution to the United States civil rights movement usually receives only surface recognition: “Bayard Rustin was a civil rights activist best known for organizing the 1963 March on Washington where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I have a dream” speech.” Yet, it is probably accurate to say that without Bayard Rustin, Martin Luther King Jr. may not have become a fierce proponent of nonviolent tactics, and without Rustin, the civil rights movement - though certainly still a powerful force - would not have changed the course of American history as it did.

The example of Rustin - one of the most influential, but least-known civil rights leaders - begs the question: for those of us in this generation looking to ‘be the change’ where does our own commitment really lie? It seems that though we may commit ourselves to working in NGOs, as social entrepreneurs or in social businesses we are often more concerned with our personal experiences and advancement than building a more just world; we struggle between our own ambitions and the selfless objectivity needed to bring about meaningful change. Not everyone could play the role of Martin Luther King Jr., Ralph Abernathy, Rosa Parks or John Lewis in the civil rights movement. Many more had to be just as committed to the movement knowing that they may never receive the same positions of leadership or “personal success” that those individuals did. Yet, their contributions were as important (and in some instances, even more important) as those leaders to building a better world.

Bayard Rustin spent a good part of his younger years as a pacifist activist, and traveled to India to learn from Gandhian disciples. In 1956, following Rosa Parks courageous refusal to surrender her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, a series of boycotts erupted. Rustin traveled to Montgomery to help infuse the core ideals of non-violence into these efforts. A story from the book “Lost Prophet,” illustrates how essential Rustin’s presence was:

There were guns lying all about King’s house, and Rustin often recounted a humorous incident with himself and Bill Worthy. As Worthy…prepared to sit on one of the chairs in King’s living room, Rustin called out to him, “Bill wait, wait. Couple of guns in that chair. You don’t want to shoot yourself!”

The idea of Martin Luther King having guns around his house may seem to be an oxymoron, but it also highlights just how important Rustin’s guidance were in those early periods of civil rights efforts in building a nonviolent movement. Today, Rustin’s name may not be familiar, but his impact - from non-violent protest as a key tactic, to the formation of the SCLC, to the March on Washington, to the linkages of the civil rights efforts to broader economic and social justice efforts - reverberates throughout the United States and many parts of the world.

Martin Luther King Jr. has many well-known speeches and sermons. One that is slightly less known is his “Drum-Major Instinct” speech. The “Instinct” that he refers to is the “desire in all of us to be first.” It seems that our generation needs to be able reach beyond this “Drum-Major Instinct” to dedicate ourselves to a broader cause. Just as Bayard Rustin was able to bring about tremendous change in a selfless manner, what our generation needs is continual discernment of the motivations that drive our actions while maintaining a commitment to bringing about great change.

The Author

Ankur is a rising senior at Northwestern University majoring in biomedical engineering. He is currently taking a year off from school to work full-time for GlobeMed, a network of students advancing the movement for health equity. Working with communities in rural Panama on various engineering projects, and having a summer internship at Global Health Delivery Online has heavily influenced Ankur’s thoughts about issues of poverty, structural violence, and development. Ankur is originally from the small town of Menomonie in Wisconsin, believes that Taco Bell is infinitely more satisfying than Chipotle, and enjoys a competitive game of Super Smash Brothers anytime. He also blogs at Students for Global Health Equity.