Racial Justice

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Welcome to the Racial Justice Practice Area! This practice area strives to strengthen civil legal aid’s capacity and skills to advance racial justice. In this section, you can access materials related to racial justice across multiple substantive areas. You will find articles, toolkits, webinars, slides, videos, and other resources to enhance your knowledge about racial justice and to provide guidance on how to apply a racial equity lens to your work. 

Join the Race Equity Coalition! The REC promotes racial justice advocacy in Massachusetts legal service programs by:

  • sharing ideas, tools and local initiatives
  • collaborating to recognize and eliminate systemic barriers to the advancement and inclusion of Black, Latino, Asian, and Native American people from low-income households
  • engaging in work that advances racial justice. 

The Race Equity Coalition meets approximately once a month and sends out a bimonthly newsletter. You can join the mailing group by logging into Mass Legal Services, clicking “Join Email Groups” and requesting group membership to the Race Equity Coalition. 

Latest Content

Race Class Narrative: A Toolkit for Opportunity to Purchase Campaigns

PolicyLink
Effective communications and messaging are a key collective challenge in advancing Opportunity to Purchase campaigns. Faced with monied opposition in communities across the nation, advocates need more tools to combat disinformation about what some see as a complex policy solution while also…

Systems Thinking & The Iceberg Model

Just Lead Washington and Washington Race Equity & Justice Initiative
The Iceberg Model is useful to unpack the underlying causes that lead to an acute event or issue. Events, trends, and patterns are above the waterline; what we see the most and are most familiar with. Structures are below the surface – they give shape to how everything is arranged, situated, and…

Latinx Awareness Has Doubled Among U.S. Hispanics Since 2019, but Only 4% Use It

Luis Noe-Bustamante , Gracie Martinez and Mark Hugo Lopez, The Pew Center
In the long-running debates about which terms to use to describe the U.S. population with roots in Latin America and Spain, “Latinx” has emerged as a gender-neutral alternative to Hispanic and Latino, the two most popular pan-ethnic terms used today. After years of public use…

Shades of Belonging

The Pew Center
When census takers, pollsters or bureaucrats with application forms ask people to identify their race, most have no problem checking a box that corresponds to one of the five, standard, government-defined racial categories. In the 2000 Census, for example, 90 percent of the U.S. population was…

DOJ fines mortgage lender Fairway for alleged racial discrimination

Reuters
 The U.S. Justice Department and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau penalized Fairway Independent Mortgage Corporation for alleged redlining in Black neighborhoods in Birmingham, Alabama, the agencies said on Tuesday, which the company denies. The mortgage lender will pay a $1.9…