2020 Summit for Civil Rights – Who’s Profiting?
Day 2 of the Summit began with a welcome from Dean William M. Treanor of the Georgetown University Law Center. Congressman Robert “Bobby” Scott then spoke about systemic racism and landmark legislation intended to close the gaps in our society. In the day’s first panel, “Who’s Profiting?”, Moderator Julian Vasquez Heilig, Dean of University of Kentucky’s College of Education, lead a discussion on the deep and embedded inequities in all facets of our society that underpin the Modern Jim Crow—healthcare, education, employment, housing, and public safety, all of which have been exacerbated by COVID-19 and protests following the murder of George Floyd. Discussing the conditions that give rise to these inequities, the panel dives into who profits off these inequities, how corporate profit and political power maintains them, and pragmatic actions people can take to tackle these issues. The panel features Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Associate Professor of African American Studies at Princeton, and includes panelists Mark Dimondstein, President of the American Postal Workers Union; Prentiss Dantzler, Assistant Professor at Georgia State University’s Urban Studies Institute; and Myron Orfield, Professor at the University of Minnesota Law School.