For Our White Friends Desiring to be Allies

by Courtney Ariel | August 2017
1. Listen more; talk less. …
2. For one out of every three opinions/insights shared by a person of color in your life, try to resist the need to respond with a better or different insight about something that you read or listened to as it relates to their shared opinion. …
3. Being an ally is different than simply wanting not to be racist (thank you for that, by the way). Being an ally requires you to educate yourself about systemic racism in this country. …
4. Please try not to, “I can’t believe that something like this would happen in this day and age!” your way into being an ally when atrocities like the events in Charleston, S.C. …
5. Ask when you don’t know — but do the work first. This is nuanced. …
6. And finally, stop talking about colorblindness.
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2010’s] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [Anti-Racism] [Silencing POC] [White Supremacy] [White Privilege] [Systemic Racism] [Colorblindness] [Indigenous] [Slavery] [Black Lives Matter] [Intersectionality] [Denial] [Reparations]

8 Ways People of Color are Tokenized in Nonprofits

by Helen Kim Ho | September 2017
There’s a type of racism in the workplace many of us have personally witnessed, perpetrated or experienced: tokenism. Nowhere have I seen this play out more than in the nonprofit space. Tokenism is, simply, covert racism. Racism requires those in power to maintain their privilege by exercising social, economic and/or political muscle against people of color (POC). Tokenism achieves the same while giving those in power the appearance of being non-racist and even champions of diversity
TAGS: [Strategies] [2010’s] [White Privilege] [White Culture] [Systemic Racism] [Economics] [History] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [Social Justice] [Accountability] [White Supremacy] [White Blindness] [Black Lives Matter] [Asian] [Politics] [White Fragility/Tears] [Employment]

5 Phrases Your Black Friend Wishes You’d Stop Saying; If You Start Practicing Now, You Can Probably Eliminate These Words from Your Vocabulary by Black History Month

by Ajah Hales | January 2020 Statistically speaking, about 75% of White people don’t even have a Black friend, but on the off chance that you are one of the White people who do, I have a message for you from your (one) Black friend: Do better. In her New York Times...

Dear White Allies: Don’t Appropriate Our Anger

by Anoosh Jorjorian | June 2020
Note to white allies: When you beat up on your fellow white people for being ignorant about racism, you are NOT HELPING. Those naïve white people just waking up to racial justice? That want to do the right thing but are saying the wrong thing because they were just born to the struggle yesterday? They are YOUR JOB #1. YOU are supposed to empathize with their white fragility, get them past their self-centeredness.
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2020’s] [White Fragility/Tears] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [Indigenous] [Black Lives Matter] [Advocacy]

The Cost of Doing Nothing; Georgetown University Researchers Estimate in a New Report that the United States Loses Billions of Dollars Annually Because of Inequities in Higher Education

by Sara Weissman | May 2021
The United States loses out on hundreds of billions of dollars each year because of racial and socioeconomic inequities in higher education attainment, according to a new report by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce.
The report, conducted in partnership with the Postsecondary Value Commission, an initiative of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and managed by the Institute for Higher Education Policy, found that it would take $3.97 trillion to close racial and socioeconomic gaps in college degree completion in the country. But after that initial investment, the United States would gain $956 billion per year in increased in tax revenues and GDP and cost savings on social assistance programs.
TAGS: [Strategies] [Collective Action] [2020’s] [Economics] [Social Justice] [Black Lives Matter] [Latino/a] [Asian] [Systemic Racism] [History]

Private Museums Could Face NAGPRA Scrutiny; Museums and Other Institutions that Accept Stimulus Funds Could Be Required to Repatriate Indigenous Artifacts and Remains

by Nanette Kelley | May 2021
Small museums and private institutions that accept federal CARES Act money or other stimulus funds could be forced to relinquish thousands of Indigenous items and ancestral remains now in their collections.
Under the Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990, museums or other institutions that accept federal funding must compile an inventory of Indigenous cultural items and initiate repatriation of the collections and remains to tribes or family members. At least two museums are now facing possible scrutiny – the nonprofit Favell Museum of Native American Artifacts and Contemporary Western Art in Klamath Falls, Oregon, and the End of the Trail Museum, which is connected to the Trees of Mystery gift shop in the redwood forest in Klamath, California.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2020’s] [Indigenous] [Art & Culture] [Silencing POC] [History] [Politics] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [Economics] [Systemic Racism] [Advocacy] [Social Justice]