Many thought that the abolition of slavery, the end of Jim Crow, and the legislative progress of the Civil Rights Era, among other watershed moments, would have fundamentally done away with the racist structures that have long oppressed black people. However, we know that has been far from the case.
Some of us have held the hands of friends or brothers as they struggled with military and police academy recruiters, and though many of them never dreamed of being policemen, a lack of opportunities led them to those positions.
Implicit bias - our subconscious associations of race - permeates everything that we do. And we must pursue systemic accountability to fix it.
I just look back at my time in college and think about how much my community activism and my work in neighborhoods really informed my actual academic career and beyond... It can provide a way better learning than the traditional classroom setting.
To me and to a number of other activists from the U.S., we believe that the human rights movement has to evolve and understand the global implications of structural racism. This means engaging the United Nations and a variety of other human rights bodies.
The U.S. has long characterized Haitian immigrants as criminals. This tradition began in 1963 when the first boat of Haitians seeking political asylum was summarily rejected by U.S. immigration officials, while at the same time the U.S. admitted thousands of Cubans as refugees and political asylees.
Black Lives Matter is really an affirmation for our people. It's a love note for our people, but it's also a demand. We know that the system was not designed for justice for us.
Black immigrants and refugees have just as much at stake in the fight to make Black Lives Matter as African Americans do.
I am the executive director of the Black Alliance for Just Immigration, which is the country's only national immigrant rights organization for black immigrants and African Americans. Being the daughter of Nigerian immigrants really drove me to do this type of work.
Racism should be a core concern for all Americans in every area of our lives.
There are always groups on campus that are doing amazing things. I know when I was in college, I was a student at the University of Arizona, working on my bachelor's in history, and I got involved with a number of different groups that were connected to different social justice issues that I cared about.
The black immigrant experience in the U.S. must be understood not in contrast to the African American experience but as an integral part of it.
Without networks like the Black Immigration Network, organizations like Haitian Women for Haitian Refugees would not get the support and resources and amplification that their voices that they need and deserve.
I think about issues like climate change, and how six of the 10 worst impacted nations by climate change are actually on the continent of Africa. People are reeling from all sorts of unnatural disasters, displacing them from their ancestral homes and leaving them without a chance at making a decent living.
Due to broken windows policing, the following interactions can lead to tickets, arrests and summonses, warrants if tickets go unpaid and, in some cases, violence: jaywalking, sleeping on a park bench, spitting, putting your feet up on the subway, and more.
My mom, my aunts, and all the Nigerian women in my life have been so fierce and strong. I have only grown up around powerful women, so I have a strong sense of self and our power.
Trump's racism has clearly driven his policy decisions during his first year in office - from his Muslim ban and his despicable treatment of DREAMers to his ruthless ramp-up of immigration raids and the callous termination of protections for Haitians and Salvadorans who fled natural disaster and violence.
African-Americans and black immigrants share a resilience and a determination for a better life.
I think it's really important that we understand the ways in which blackness plays out, right, and discrimination against black people impacts different communities in different ways but ultimately leaves them undermined and really devalued in our society.
For the U.S., a nation that boasts of being the land of the free, it does not live up to its ideal.
