By: Theresa Wizemann, Kyle Cavagnini, Alex Helman, and Carolyn Shore

As stated in the 2022 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (National Academies) report Improving Representation in Clinical Trials and Research: Building Research Equity for Women and Underrepresented Groups, “An equitable clinical research enterprise would include trials and studies that match the demographics of the disease burden under study. However, we remain far from achieve this goal” (NASEM, 2022). Despite decades of work and ongoing efforts on the part of policy-makers, patient groups, nonprofits, and industry sponsors to improve racial and ethnic diversity in clinical trials, there has been little change over time (Dzau, 2022). Furthermore, inconsistencies in data collection and reporting makes it difficult to track progress of demographic group participation in the United States for clinical trials. Given the urgent need, there have been calls for collective action across sectors and organizations “to align on goals for system-wide sustainable change.”

On May 20, 2024, the National Academies Forum on Drug Discovery, Development, and Translation, in collaboration with the National Cancer Policy Forum, convened a public workshop to explore opportunities to improve racial and ethnic diversity with a focus on system-level change and collective efforts across organizations and sectors that no one entity can effectively take on alone (see Box 1-1). The workshop builds on meetings hosted by the Clinical Trials Transformation Initiative (CTTI) in June 2023, the Multi-Regional Clinical Trials (MRCT) Center of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard University in September 2023, and Faster- Cures of the Milken Institute in November 2023.

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2024.

By: B.L. Putnam Weale

Conflict of Colour: The book discusses the global racial tensions and the inevitable conflicts arising from them, focusing on the division between East and West. It highlights the impact of population growth on global politics, emphasizing that density of population will increasingly influence world movements..The author argues that Western powers often fail to understand the cultural and emotional needs of Asian populations, leading to ineffective governance.The document explores the strategic importance of regions like India and China, and the shifting power dynamics due to rising Asian powers.

New York: The Macmillan Company, 1910.

By EUGENE L. HOROWITZ

● Study Focus: The research investigates the development of attitudes toward African Americans in white children, aiming for objective, verifiable, and significant results.

● Historical Context: The study highlights the historical evolution of attitudes toward African Americans, noting legal and social discrimination dating back to the 17th century.

● Methodology: The research employs three tests involving pictorial materials to measure children's attitudes, focusing on ranking preferences and imagined social situations.

● Findings: The study finds that prejudice begins early in childhood and is influenced more by societal attitudes than direct contact with African Americans.

NY. ARCHIVES OF PSYCHOLOGY. R. S. WOODWORTH, EDITOR. No. 194. 1916. 48p.

By W.D. Weatherford,

Addresses the complex issue of racial adjustment and is introduced by James H. Dillard. It explores the history and progress of Black people from Africa to America, highlighting the struggles and achievements in the face of adversity. The author emphasizes the importance of mutual understanding and trust between races to overcome racial antipathy and achieve social justice. Historical Context: The book provides a detailed account of the African background, the impact of slavery, and the ongoing challenges faced by Black people in America.

NEGRO UNIVERSITIES PRESS. NEW YORK. 1924. 483p.

By Suvi Keskinen

This book provides an original approach to the connections of race, racism and neoliberalisation through a focus on ‘postethnic activism,’ in which mobilisation is based on racialisation as non-white or ‘other’ instead of ethnic group membership. Developing the theoretical understanding of political activism under the neoliberal turn in racial capitalism and the increasingly hostile political environment towards migrants and racialised minorities, the book investigates the conditions, forms and visions of postethnic activism in three Nordic countries (Denmark, Sweden and Finland). It connects the historical legacies of European colonialism to the current configurations of racial politics and global capitalism. The book compellingly argues that contrary to the tendencies of neoliberal postracialism to de-politicise social inequalities the activists are re-politicising questions of race, class and gender in new ways. The book is of interest to scholars and students in sociology, ethnic and racial studies, cultural studies, feminist studies and urban studies.

London; New York: Routledge, 2022. 164p.

By Mari McGilton and Sabrina Rizk

Pressure to identify and reduce disparities through policy has risen in recent years, but these priorities are neither new nor easily achieved. Most studies of these disparities are siloed from each other and are limited to a single outcome measure, comparison group, and/or comparison time point, meaning policymakers end up relying on incomplete information to make critical decisions. This is especially true for federal and state sentencing decision-makers, who are bound by policies made across multiple agencies. Federal sentencing decision-makers specifically are driven by US attorney general directives, legislative policies, Supreme Court rulings, and amendments to the US federal sentencing guidelines. These policies affect several decision-makers at different stages in the federal sentencing process (e.g., attorneys’ application of mandatory minimum statutes, federal probation officers’ determination of final offense level, federal judges’ sentencing decisions). Most studies on disparities at the federal sentencing stage of the criminal legal system investigate only racial disparities in sentencing decisions, such as in/out decisions (i.e., prison/no prison), and/or sentence lengths, and evaluate changes in these disparities based on predetermined points in time from predetermined policies assumed to have impacted those changes. Although these studies provide critical information on disparities in federal sentencing, we could expand our knowledge and the methods used. Funded by the National Institute of Justice, we sought to answer three key research questions: 1. Do racial disparities vary across three stages of federal sentencing and over time? If so, how? 2. During which years do the measured racial disparities have a statistically significant decrease? 3. Which policies likely impacted these decreases the most? What are the commonalities between them?

Washington DC: Urban Institute, 2023. 53p.

By Sanjiv Lingayah

A new report by Dr Sanjiv Lingayah and ROTA shines a light on systemic racism. It takes a system provides a clear definition of this slippery concept and outlines an agenda for dismantling systemic racism. This includes creative efforts to bring to life how systems function as well as the development, by advocates and activists, of blueprints to show what a system that centres racial and other justice looks like.

Finally, to move towards a system that advances racial justice, we need proper funding for both the ‘fast’ work to deal with the crises of racial injustice and the ‘slow’ work of addressing systemic causes.

London: Beyond Race/Race on the Agenda , 2021. 20p.

By National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

The history of the U.S. criminal justice system is marked by racial inequality and sustained by present day policy. Large racial and ethnic disparities exist across the several stages of criminal legal processing, including in arrests, pre-trial detention, and sentencing and incarceration, among others, with Black, Latino, and Native Americans experiencing worse outcomes. The historical legacy of racial exclusion and structural inequalities form the social context for racial inequalities in crime and criminal justice. Racial inequality can drive disparities in crime, victimization, and system involvement. Reducing Racial Inequality in Crime and Justice: Science, Practice, and Policy synthesizes the evidence on community-based solutions, noncriminal policy interventions, and criminal justice reforms, charting a path toward the reduction of racial inequalities by minimizing harm in ways that also improve community safety. Reversing the effects of structural racism and severing the close connections between racial inequality, criminal harms such as violence, and criminal justice involvement will involve fostering local innovation and evaluation, and coordinating local initiatives with state and federal leadership. This report also highlights the challenge of creating an accurate, national picture of racial inequality in crime and justice: there is a lack of consistent, reliable data, as well as data transparency and accountability. While the available data points toward trends that Black, Latino, and Native American individuals are overrepresented in the criminal justice system and given more severe punishments

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  compared to White individuals, opportunities for improving research should be explored to better inform decision-making.

Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2022. 343p.

By Scot Wortley, Akwasi Owusu-Bempah Huibin Lin and The Canadian Association of Black lawyers (CABL)

Despite the global COVID-19 pandemic and the various stay-at-home orders in countries around the world, millions of people took to the streets to protest this and other brutal killings of Black men and women by police officers in the United States. [...] Canada also has a well-documented history of police misconduct and to the extent that members of certain communities are more likely to have been stopped and searched by police - one of the findings of this report - then significant differences in perceptions of the police and courts seem inevitable. [...] Race and Criminal Injustice is an important examination of perceptions of the criminal justice system in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) and follows earlier research by the same authors that found that perceptions of the police and the courts differed significantly by racial group. [...] The results suggest that one-third of the Black respondents (34%) had been stopped by the police in the past two years, compared to 28% of White respondents and 22% of Chinese respondents. [...] Respondents were next asked: “If a man and a woman – with the same criminal history or record – committed the same crime, who would get the longer sentence in court: the man, the woman, or do you think they would get the same sentence?” A slight majority of White (51.3%) and Asian respondents (50.7%) respondents believe that a man and woman would get the same sentence, compared to only 33.3% of Bl.

Toronto: Ryerson University Faculty of Law, 2021. 90p.

By Samuel R. Gross, Maurice Possley, Ken Otterbourg, Klara Stephens, Jessica Paredes and Barbara O'Brien

Black people are 13.6% of the American population but 53% of the 3,200 exonerations listed in the National Registry of Exonerations as of August, 2022. Judging from exonerations, innocent Black Americans are seven times more likely than white Americans to be falsely convicted of serious crimes. We see this racial disparity, in varying degrees, for all major crime categories except white collar crime. This report examines racial disparities in the three types of crime that produce the largest numbers of exonerations: murder, sexual assault, and drug crimes. For both murder and sexual assault, there are preliminary investigative issues that increase the number of innocent Black suspects: for murder, the high homicide rate in the Black community; for rape, the difficulty of cross-racial eyewitness identification. For both crimes, misconduct, discrimination and racism amplify these initial racial discrepancies. For drug crimes, the preliminary sorting that increases the number of convictions of innocent Black suspects is racial profiling. In addition, the Registry lists 17 “Group Exonerations” including 2,975 additional wrongfully convicted defendants, many of whom were deliberately framed and convicted of fabricated drug crimes in large-scale police scandals. The overwhelming majority are Black.

Irvine, CA: National Registry of Exonerations , 2022. 55p.

By Constance Blackhouse.

A Legal History of Racism in Canada 1900 –1950. “Historically Canadians have considered themselves to be more or less free of racial prejudice…. In Colour-Coded, Constance Backhouse illustrates the tenacious hold that white supremacy had on our legal system in the first half of this century, and underscores the damaging legacy of inequality that continues today. Backhouse presents detailed narratives of six court cases, each giving evidence of blatant racism…The cases focus on Aboriginal, Inuit, Chinese-Canadian, and African-Canadian individuals, taking us from the criminal prosecution of traditional Aboriginal dance to the trial of members of the ‘Ku Klux Klan of Kanada.’

Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History (1999) 505 pages.