by Beth Woolsey | June 2020
In 2016 I was super concerned about making sure I wasn’t in a social media “bubble.” I wanted to proactively avoid exclusively following, friending, and interacting with people who could provide me with a nice, comfy echo chamber and who would parrot back to me what I already think. I wanted to be open minded. I wanted to cultivate diverse perspectives. I wanted to be able to listen well and learn and grow. None of which was wrong in intention. Turns out, though, it was horrible in execution. …When people talk about “invisible privilege” this is what they mean. I genuinely DID NOT SEE that my feed wasn’t diverse, particularly because I’d taken such pains to cultivate diversity. I thought I was being diverse and open minded. I was actually being myopic and centering the white, cis, middle class experience and ensuring my demographic was the LOUDEST and received the most attention.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2020’s] [Systemic Racism] [White Blindness]
by Kelsey Borresen | June 2020
…white people typically move through life unaware of all the head starts, resources and access the color of their skin affords them. They dog’t recognize these unearned advantages until they’re pointed out – and even then, some white people will try to deny the existence of their privilege. It should be noted that merely acknowledging your white privilege isn’t enough – but it is one small and necessary step toward taking action and wielding that privilege to help dismantle the systems that oppress the Black Community and other people of color in this country. We talked to educators, activists, therapists and professors about the things white people often say that highlight their privilege without them realizing it.
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2020’s] [White Privilege] [Systemic Racism] [White Fragility/Tears] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [Colorblindness] [Policing] [White Culture] [White Defensiveness] [White Blindness] [Accountability]
by Wellesley College | June 2020
Historians are increasingly illuminating the nature, extent, and consistency of investments in Black people’s oppression, which accounts for why, in this nation, Black freedom and racial equality have always required hard-fought battles, sometimes in the most literal and bloodiest sense. Juneteenth reminds us that, in this nation’s history, Black people’s freedom has traditionally been a question of economics and politics, not morality.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [Economics] [Politics] [History] [Systemic Racism] [Slavery] [Civil War] [White Blindness] [White Supremacy] [Policing]
*Paywall Alert
by Ola Caracola | June 2020
Not all white people are bigots. But all white people consciously or unconsciously benefit from a system, which oppresses people of color. Our indoctrination with underlying racist ideals begins at birth and is so engrained in our culture that we may not even be aware of the biases we hold. Often our perception of people who look different than us is based on incomplete or all-together inaccurate stereotypes. We need to do better. This does not mean that as a white person, you don’t struggle with the realities of life, it simply means that your skin color is not one of the things making it harder.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2020’s] [Myths] [Systemic Racism] [Implicit Bias] [White Blindness] [White Privilege] [Accountability] [History] [Black Lives Matter]
by Ursula Wolfe-Rocca | Date Unknown
An 11th-grade student leaned back in his chair at Lincoln High School in Portland, Oregon, and said, “Absurd. That is the only way to describe those numbers. They are absurd.” He and his classmates had just read statistics about the racial wealth gap in their Political Economy class: White households are worth at least 10 times as much as Black households; only 15 percent of whites have zero or negative wealth while a third of Blacks do; Black families making $100,000 typically live in the kinds of neighborhoods inhabited by white families making $30,000. These numbers are absurd, and they are not accidental. The mixer role play is based on Richard Rothstein’s The Color of Law, which shows in exacting detail how government policies segregated every major city in the United States with dire consequences for African Americans.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [Teachers] [Economics] [History] [Politics] [Housing] [Racial Covenants] [Systemic Racism] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [Reparations]
by Michelle Alexander | January 2020
We are now living in an era not of post-racialism but of unabashed racialism, a time when many white Americans feel free to speak openly of their nostalgia for an age when their cultural, political and economic dominance could be taken for granted — no apologies required. Racial bigotry, fearmongering and scapegoating are no longer subterranean in our political discourse; the dog whistles have been replaced by bullhorns. White nationalist movements are operating openly online and in many of our communities; they’re celebrating mass killings and recruiting thousands into their ranks.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [Immigration] [Systemic Racism] [Politics] [Prison System] [Employment] [Housing] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [Colorblindness] [Slavery] [Police Shootings] [Advocacy]]
