Request for Notice of Inquiry into History of Systemic Racism in FCC Policy and Licensing

Since the murder of George Floyd in 2020, a racial reckoning has taken place in our country that has forced public and private institutions — including the media — to acknowledge their histories of racism. Reps. Jamaal Bowman, Yvette Clarke and Brenda Lawrence authored a letter to the Federal Communications Commission signed by 22 more of of their congressional colleagues that calls on the agency to conduct an equity audit to “address and redress the harm the agency’s policies and programs have caused Black and brown communities and identify the affirmative steps the agency commits to taking to break down barriers to just media and telecommunication practices.” We join these congressional leaders in calling on the FCC to investigate its own history of anti-Black racism in the policies it has adopted. We also call on the Commission to issue a Notice of Inquiry and identify reparative actions it will take to redress the structural racism that exists in our media system due to those FCC policies.

FCC policy decisions — and inaction — in regards to its internet policies have resulted in a digital divide where Black, Latinx and Indigenous households are far less likely to have adequate home-broadband services than white ones. 14 This means exacerbated harm for Black, Latinx and Indigenous families. As the pandemic has made plain — and as you have acknowledged on many occasions — this divide has dramatically worsened our nation’s racial inequities and has had particularly cruel impacts on our children.