The Racial Equity Anchor Collaborative, a coalition of major civil rights groups, wants the Biden administration to make room for a few more staff members in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building—and change how the federal bureaucracy approaches racial equity.
While President Joe Biden signed numerous executive orders on racial equity last week, many in line with demands from the coalition—which includes the Advancement Project, Demos, the NAACP, National Urban League, UnidosUS and National Congress of American Indians, among others—the racial justice advocates want more. Specifically, they’re asking for a White House office on racial equity and inclusion, along with a handful of other administration-wide initiatives.
“For racial equity to be a truly whole-of-government approach, sufficient resources and strategy need to be dedicated to the task, and that is what a White House office would provide,” said Elana Needle, director of the Racial Equity Anchor Collaboration.
Asked what powers a racial equity office would get, Needle told Blue Tent that the office “should be afforded visibility, access and influence” with “direct reports to the heads of all federal agencies, and the power to convene an Inter-Agency Working Group on Racial Equity.”
The office could, Needle said, also include a national advisor to the president on racial equity, justice and advancement, an idea pitched by NAACP President Derrick Johnson.
Embedding a racial equity lens in government
Of the coalition’s asks, perhaps the most potentially impactful is its demand that federal agencies include racial equity as a factor in their future policy assessments. When agencies craft policy, rules or guidance, they undertake long periods of study and deliberation, including soliciting outside comments. Requiring these reviews to examine the action’s potential impact on racial equity would help what should already be common practice for any government program. The group also wants the administration to beef up its use of racially disaggregated data in evaluating racial equity within agencies and departments.
The coalition’s requests do not mention policy changes outside of creating and regulating task forces, studies or partnerships, and do not make quantifiable demands in terms of representation or diversity. But the group’s recommendations could be vital in implementing longer-term structural change to the federal bureaucracy, one that is “also less susceptible to leadership changes,” according to Needle.
As demonstrated by this summer’s protests, there is no shortage of specific policy demands upon which the federal government should take action— issues like segregation, qualified immunity for police, cash bail, bloated police budgets and family separation by ICE. Biden has pledged action in some of these areas and said he would bring the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division into the White House and expand its powers. He also promised civil rights leaders in a November call to establish a high-level commission on police reform.
As is so often the case, though, the devil lies in the details of implementation.
One example can even be found in the very executive orders Biden signed last week. In one of those executive orders, the president instructed his attorney general to end contracts with private prisons, which is an important step; but as many observers astutely pointed out, this does not apply to the Department of Homeland Security, meaning private companies may still profit from immigrant detention.
The Trump years brought attention to these and many other inexcusable policies. The good news is that some of those policies can be ended by a congressional majority, the stroke of the president’s pen, or even a phone call from the local district attorney’s office—if the pressure is there. And even as civil rights groups mobilize to apply that pressure on the new Biden administration and secure near-term wins, some also have their eye on the long game—zeroing in on the mechanics of governance and looking to embed a racial equity lens in federal agencies going forward.
