by Jeff Gammage and Maddie Hanna | July 2020
James Logan was not just a colonial statesman and Philadelphia mayor. He was an architect of the infamous “Walking Purchase,” a scheme in which he and others swindled the original Lenape inhabitants out of perhaps a million acres of land in 1737. “You see these things every single day,” said Mach, 33, a University of Pennsylvania doctoral student who studies how Native Americans are represented in museums. “This stuff is just everywhere.”
Across the United States, the Black Lives Matter protests against racism and police violence have also ignited new discussions and demands over the use of Native images, symbols and mascots, and the future of monuments to men who harmed and killed indigenous people.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2020’s] [Myths] [Systemic Racism] [Indigenous] [Policing] [History] [Economics] [White Culture] [White Supremacy] [Confederate Monuments]
by Shanta Lee Gander | August 2020
Whitesplaining, or white people explaining things to Black people, is a phenomenon. Many of us Black folx swap stories with our friends or with family members as we deconstruct these situations and the assumptions. In this current moment of interrogating the culture, I’ve been re-visiting these moments of whitesplaining in my own life as an extension of an insidious kind of racism that often goes unnoticed. It is the other part of the conversation about race that America needs to have. I’ve lived in Vermont for 10 years. Here, the white progressive racism is partly due to the narrative that Vermont banned adult slavery in its constitution in 1777. With closer examination of the research conducted by Dr. Harvey Amani Whitfield, one learns that this “fact” is full of inconsistencies. Vermont at the time was still an environment that allowed slave owners to place ads for runaway slaves.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2020’s] [White Privilege] [White Blindness] [White Culture] [White Supremacy] [Definitions] [Individual Change] [History] [Slavery] [White Fragility/Tears] [Systemic Racism] [White Defensiveness] [Accountability]
by Dawn R. Wolfe | August 2020
“Grace,” the 15-year-old Black girl who garnered international attention after she was jailed for failing to complete schoolwork while on probation, has been released after spending 78 days in a facility where at least four staffers have reportedly tested positive for COVID-19. Grace, who has been identified only by her middle name because of her status as a minor, was originally incarcerated in May by Oakland County Circuit Judge Mary Ellen Brennan. On Friday, the Michigan Court of Appeals ordered her immediate release pending an appeal of Brennan’s initial ruling. Brennan herself refused a motion to send Grace home on July 20. Criminal justice advocates say they believe the overwhelming attention given to the case—along with pressure brought on by tomorrow’s state primary—played a role in Grace’s release.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2020’s] [-ing While Black] [Systemic Racism] [Accountability] [Prison System] [Black Lives Matter] [White Supremacy]
by Betty Lyons, Onondaga Nation | August 2020
It was no accident that Central New York was the birth of the American movement for women’s suffrage, but recent commemorations of the 100th anniversary of the formal U.S. adoption of women’s suffrage continues attempts to erase the role that Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) women played in inspiring the first convention in Seneca Falls.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2020’s] [Indigenous] [History] [Myths] [Role Model]
by Anna Swartwood House | July 2020
The historical Jesus likely had the brown eyes and skin of other first-century Jews from Galilee, a region in biblical Israel. But no one knows exactly what Jesus looked like. There are no known images of Jesus from his lifetime, and while the Old Testament Kings Saul and David are explicitly called tall and handsome in the Bible, there is little indication of Jesus’ appearance in the Old or New Testaments.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2020’s] [Faith-Based/Spiritual] [Myths] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [History]
by Charles Fain Lehman | July 2020
Dr. Robin DiAngelo, the bestselling author of White Fragility, claims to believe in accountability. DiAngelo used to list the “racial justice” organizations she donates to as part of her extensive “accountability statement,” including a monthly “land rent” paid to the Native American tribe that used to occupy Seattle. But when the Washington Free Beacon began contacting the organizations she listed as recipients of her largesse, DiAngelo scrubbed the site, removing their names and the dates of her giving from the public domain—a version of the page remains available through the Internet Archive after briefly being unavailable due to what the site said were technical issues. The page was edited again as recently as Friday, when DiAngelo wrote she would begin donating 15 percent of her after-tax income, “in cash and in-kind donations,” starting next month—suggesting she had not previously, as the page exhorts, given a percentage of her income large enough that she could “feel it.” This about-face is odd for a woman who has made her career demanding white people not respond defensively in hard conversations.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2020’s] [White Privilege] [White Fragility/Tears] [Accountability] [White Blindness] [Economics]
