by Niara Savage | January 2021
Richmond police seized at least two firearms from a group of Black men present at a gun rights rally in Virginia on Monday, Jan. 18, while white gun rights activists were not confronted by authorities. During the annual “Lobby Day” demonstration in Richmond, Black protesters expressed frustration about law enforcement’s disparate treatment of Black and white activists. … Just an hour before the group of Black men was stopped, the white leader of the Boogaloo Boys shared via megaphone that his group of anti-government, far-right extremists was violating gun and ammunition laws. The group of all white men called themselves the “Last Sons of Liberty.” Leader Mike Dunn, 20, shared with reporters and police alike that his group was openly carrying semiautomatic rifles “in pure defiance” of local laws, and “rocking mags (ammunition magazines) with double the legal limit.” Dunn told Reuters that the group did not face any issues. “We are here openly defying these laws, these unconstitutional city ordinances,” he said.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [Policing] [Systemic Racism] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [Silencing POC] [-ing While Black] [Implicit Bias] [Justice System]
by Michael Harriot | January 2021
The most prominent member of White Twitter has been kicked off the internet. Parler (also known as Caucasian Clubhouse) has been dismantled. And, because the TSA put them on the no-fly list, our beloved Brads and Beckys are literally forced to sit on the back of the bus. Sure, they control 95 percent of the Fortune 500 corporations, legislatures, courts, media outlets, financial institutions and police departments in America. But white privilege also means that, when times get hard, they need someone to speak up for them. Our silence has to stop. For years, the Black community has ignored economic anxiety, racial resentment and white fragility. Very few African Americans attended the March on Wypipo-ing in Charlottesville or the Coup Klutz Klan cookout on the Capitol. We make excuses like: “There were too many Nazis there.” But, if we are being honest, it is because Black America loves to engage in this selfish practice called “minding our damn business.”
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2020’s] [Politics] [White Privilege] [White Supremacy] [Economics] [White Fragility/Tears] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [“Reverse Racism”] [Microaggressions] [White Culture] [Systemic Racism] [Accountability]
by John-John Williams IV | December 2020
A series of deadly events culminated with Karsonya “Kaye” Wise Whitehead helping create a place at Loyola University Maryland where she wants positive conversations about race to exist and flourish. … Whitehead wants to bring students, teachers, community members and academics into the institute to train, discuss and devise solutions to combat racism. That means offering a curriculum and diversity equity and inclusion training for K-12 teachers through the institute’s Center for Teaching and Learning, which will be offered starting summer 2022. Junior fellowships will be offered to college students around the country so they can participate in discussions and research focused on race through the institute’s Center for Research and Culture as soon as this spring.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [Advocacy] [Systemic Racism] [Teachers] [Policing] [Police Shootings] [Role Model] [Black Lives Matter] [-ing While Black] [Anti-Racism] [History] [Individual Change] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts]
by Dorothy Wickenden | January 2021
Two years into the cataclysmic war, Lincoln found a way to justify emancipation, as a “military necessity.” Frances greeted the proclamation with relief, but not euphoria. She was equally subdued when the Thirteenth Amendment eventually passed, on January 31, 1865, inscribing into the Constitution the eradication of slavery. Back in Auburn, she read the Herald Tribune’s report about the giddy scene in Washington. The visitors’ galleries were full, and senators and Supreme Court Justices squeezed onto the House floor. Finally, Speaker Schuyler Colfax stood and gavelled the room to order, announcing in a quavering voice that the ayes had a hundred and nineteen votes, the nays fifty-six. As Democrats looked on stonily, Republicans threw their hats in the air, cheering and roaring. Women in the gallery waved their handkerchiefs. Artillery at the Capitol fired a hundred-gun salute. The Tribune’s headline declared, “freedom triumphant. commencement of a new era. death of slavery.” It was a historic victory, but it had been won as much by political horse-trading as by deep principle. Henry and Lincoln, in a months-long backroom campaign, had lobbied wavering representatives with bribes and offers of jobs. And, Frances thought, it was too soon to celebrate. The amendment still had to be ratified by three-quarters of the states. Half a million men had died in the war, and it was not over. General William Tecumseh Sherman was moving through the Carolinas, and Ulysses S. Grant was eight months into his siege of Petersburg. There were rumors that rebels would attempt to assassinate the President. After reading about the joyous outpouring in the House, Frances wrote Henry a bracingly solemn note: “I congratulate you on the passage of the Constitutional amendment which I know you had much at heart. The prospect of abolishing slavery throughout the United States is indeed cheering.” The battle for equality had barely begun.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2020’s] [Slavery] [Justice System] [Civil War] [History] [Politics] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [Systemic Racism] [Racial Terrorism] [Prison System] [Faith-Based/Spiritual] [Quaker]
by Dave Roos | January 2021
In the long, dark history of the United States government’s mistreatment of Native Americans, most people are familiar with the Trail of Tears, in which approximately 15,000 Native American men, women and children died during forced relocation from their tribal homelands in the American Southeast to Indian Territory in modern-day Oklahoma. But the theft of Native American tribal land didn’t stop with the Indian Removal Act of 1830 that authorized the Trail of Tears. Over the next century, Congress passed a series of laws that systematically stripped tribes of their lands, selling them to white settlers and corporations.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2020’s] [Indigenous] [History] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [Slavery] [Systemic Racism] [Politics] [Economics] [Implicit Bias] [Justice System] [Assumptions]
by Cecily Hilleary | January 2021
In 1614, six years before the Mayflower crossing, English explorer John Smith led two ships to survey the New England coast. As he described in his “Historie of New England,” Smith left shipmaster Thomas Hunt behind to fish and trade with the Natives. But Hunt saw an opportunity in another kind of trade: He kidnapped 27 Wampanoags and sailed to Spain, where he sold “these poor innocent souls” into slavery. … Slavery in America is usually associated with Africa and the American South. But Ohio State University historian Margaret Ellen Newell told VOA that up until 1700, Native Americans comprised the majority of slaves in America. “The first documented case was in 1605, when an English expedition captured four Wabanakis in what’s now Maine and brought them back to London,” Newell said. “The expedition was run by a man named Ferdinando Gorges, who hoped to establish a colony in northern New England and was looking for captives to use as guides and interpreters.” Since the start of their settlement, Puritan colonists sought Indians as indentured servants as a solution to labor shortages, she said.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2020’s] [Indigenous] [Slavery] [History] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [Systemic Racism] [Justice System] [Prison System]
