Sherrilyn Ifill, 54, is a lawyer living in Maryland and New York. She became the president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund just after President Obama was sworn in for his second term. Below, she discusses our current political situation, what gives her hope and more.
On the Justice Department under the Trump administration: “During the Obama administration I was trying to push [Obama] further than whatever the administration was already doing in the civil rights space, because that’s kind of my job. But there’s no question that the Obama administration really worked in many instances as a partner. That is not the case now. Attorney General [Jeff] Sessions has made clear that he has no intention of investigating police departments for patterns and practices of discrimination. The Justice Department has essentially all but abandoned civil rights as a priority, and so they are no longer working as a partner with us.
That means that our work has increased. We have had to function as a kind of private DOJ, trying to take up the slack. The DOJ and the attorney general should be the chief enforcer of the nation’s civil rights law. But what we see with Attorney General Sessions is no attempt to prioritize civil rights. In fact, to the contrary, working against us, working against civil rights implementation, working against the progress of civil rights that we’ve achieved.”
On what she would say to President Trump if he invited her to the White House: “I cannot imagine what the circumstance of that invitation would be, so it’s an impossible question to answer. I don’t do ceremonial visits. I’m interested in substance. So there would be a lot I would have to know in advance about what was going to happen. The president has been so explicitly hostile to civil rights and racial justice that I would have to have a very clear understanding of what reversals he was prepared to make to his policies. And in the absence of those, I can’t imagine a circumstance in which I would attend such a meeting.”
On Trump’s comments that black Americans are doing better economically than ever before: ”He does state that, and I think the figures that he uses are convenient in terms of job numbers. But look more closely at wage stagnation and, in fact, wage decreases. Look at the ways in which the failure to invest in infrastructure has left African American communities stranded in terms of transportation. Look at the voter suppression that disempowers African Americans from being able to even control their own destiny in the places where they live. Look at the assault on education and the ways in which the Department of Education is prepared to leave students who are victims of for-profit colleges stranded. Look at the ways which they are seeking to fight and undercut affirmative action. All of these are also part of economic opportunity. And the president conveniently leaves that out of the narrative. Those are things that are necessary to give African Americans a chance.”
On her book about the legacy of lynchings in America, and what the country needs to heal: “What America does not need, in my view, is one national conversation. The book really makes the case for the importance of local communities engaging in truth and reconciliatory processes. The recognition that racial discrimination, and particularly acts of racial pogroms, which essentially is what happened in the period in which lynching was so prevalent in this country, that those local communities need to deal with that, grapple themselves with that history and themselves take on the responsibility for how you stitch back together a community that has been broken for decades, how you confront a painful truth.”
On what gives her hope: “I’m excited to see the continuous mass mobilization that people have engaged in, beginning with the Women’s March and continuing since then, in which people understand the need to come out of their homes to see one another and to say what they believe in. I’ve also really been encouraged by the ways in which the rule of law, for the most part, has held despite President Trump’s excesses. The crisis of this administration’s governance has compelled people to reimagine what it means to be a real citizen in this country. And that gives me optimism, because I think the other way was not sustainable. The benign citizenship performance that most Americans were engaged in was simply not sustainable. Now people understand that they are needed. Their voice is needed, every vote is needed, their engagement is needed.”
*******************************************************
Undoubtedly, our Civil Rights Laws were passed to protect African-Americans and similarly situated individuals so that they could enjoy the same advantages and benefits once accorded only to Whites. But, Jeff Sessions believes that civil rights are just about protecting White Power & Privilege against African-Americans, Hispanics, immigrants, LGBTQ individuals and other “uppity” minorities.
Similarly, the Bill of Rights was adopted to protect individual rights against Government overreach. But, Jeff Sessions believes that the right of police to enforce the law using brutality and unnecessary and indiscriminate force is superior to the individual Constitutional rights of people of color.
The solution to restoring reason and the true rule of law (not the perverted “rule of Sessions”): regime change!
PWS
09-23-18