Collective Action

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‘An Unbelievable Chain of Oppression’: America’s History of Racism was a Preexisting Condition for COVID-19

by Alan Gomez, Wyatte Grantham-Philips, Trevor Hughes, Rick Jervis, Rebecca Plevin, Kameel Stanley, Dennis Wagner, Marco della Cava, Deborah Barfield Berry, and Mark Nichols | October 2020
As the country cries out for a vaccine and a return to normal, lost in the policy debates is the reality that COVID-19 kills far more people of color than white Americans. This isn’t a matter of coincidence, poor choices or bad luck — it’s by design. A team of USA TODAY reporters explored how the policies of the past and present have made Black, Asian, Hispanic and Indigenous Americans prime targets for COVID-19. They found: America’s education and economic systems are still unequal, disproportionately leaving people of color out of higher-wage jobs. When COVID-19 struck, more people of color were serving as essential workers directly in the path of the virus.
TAGS: [Collective Action] [Health Disparities] [2020’s] [Black Lives Matter] [Indigenous] [Asian] [Latino/a] [Economics] [Employment] [Systemic Racism] [Denial] [History] [Social Justice] [Politics] [Justice System] [White Privilege] [White Culture] [White Blindness] [Housing] [Slavery] [Racial Covenants] [Environment] [Silencing POC]

How COVID-19 Hollowed Out a Generation of Young Black Men

by Akilah Johnson and Nina Martin | December 2020
They were pillars of their communities and families, and they are not replaceable. To understand why COVID-19 killed so many young Black men, you need to know the legend of John Henry. Bates was only 36, too young to be at risk for COVID-19, or so the conventional wisdom went. He attributed his malaise to allergies and pushed forward with his second full-time job, as head pastor of Forest Aid Baptist Church, working on his Sunday sermon between naps. Online church was a new concept to his parishioners, and during the next morning’s service, he had to keep reminding them to mute their phones. As he preached about Daniel in the lion’s den — we will be tested, but if we continue to have faith, we will come through — he grimaced from the effort. That night he was burning up with fever. Five days later he was on a ventilator; five days after that, he died.
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2020’s] [Health Disparities] [History] [Black Lives Matter] [Systemic Racism] [White Blindness] [Economics] [Denial] [Social Justice] [Slavery] [Housing] [Employment] [Intersectionality] [-ing While Black] [White Privilege] [White Culture]

After Attempted Coup, We Must Fight White Supremacy and Sow Revolutionary Love

by Adrienne Maree Brown | January 2021
The confederacy, whose flag was waved in the Capitol building on Wednesday, was a four-year alignment of 11 states committed, among other things, to the right to own slaves. It emerged toward the end of a centuries-long period during which it was easily assumed that the role of people of African descent was to provide free labor until death. The foundations of U.S. wealth and reach are heavy bricks sunken into the bloody soil of that labor. There are many flags that could be created and waved if the issue at hand were the right of states to self-determine their own destinies, but those who claim the U.S. confederacy are easily aligning with a very specific and racist right, a very specific white supremacy.
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2020’s] [White Supremacy] [Slavery] [History] [Economics] [Civil War] [Systemic Racism] [Black Lives Matter] [Myths] [Denial] [Politics]

Mortality Rate for Black Babies is Cut Dramatically When They’re Delivered by Black Doctors, Researchers Say

*Paywall Alert

*Great article if you have a subscription to the Washington Post
by Tonya Russell | January 2021
Rachel Hardeman has dedicated her career to fighting racism and the harm it has inflicted on the health of Black Americans. As a reproductive health equity researcher, she has been especially disturbed by the disproportionately high mortality rates for Black babies. In an effort to find some of the reasons behind the high death rates, Hardeman, an associate professor at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, and three other researchers combed through the records of 1.8 million Florida hospital births between 1992 and 2015 looking for clues. They found a tantalizing statistic. Although Black newborns are three times as likely to die as White newborns, when Black babies are delivered by Black doctors, their mortality rate is cut in half. “Strikingly, these effects appear to manifest more strongly in more complicated cases,” the researchers wrote, “and when hospitals deliver more Black newborns.” They found no similar relationship between White doctors and White births. Nor did they find a difference in maternal death rates when the doctor’s race was the same as the patient’s.
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2020’s] [Health Disparities] [Black Lives Matter] [History] [White Privilege] [White Culture]

Why Talk about Whiteness? We can’t Talk about Racism without it.

by Emily Chiariello | Summer Issue 2016
This fundamental disconnect between the racial self-perceptions of many white people and the realities of racism was part of what motivated documentary filmmaker, director and producer Whitney Dow to create The Whiteness Project. “Until you can recognize that you are living a racialized life and you’re having racialized experiences every moment of every day, you can’t actually engage people of other races around the idea of justice,” Dow explains. “Until you get to the thing that’s primary, you can’t really attack racism.” Dow’s work, among other activism and scholarship focused on whiteness, has the potential to stimulate meaningful conversations about whiteness and move white folks past emotions like defensiveness, denial, guilt and shame (emotions that do nothing to improve conditions for people of color) and toward a place of self-empowerment and social responsibility.
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2010’s] [Teachers] [Systemic Racism] [White Privilege] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Fragility/Tears] [Anti-Racism] [Social Justice] [Advocacy] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [Assumptions]

Martin Luther King Jr Was a Radical. We Must Not Sterilize His Legacy

by Cornel West | April 2018
In this brief celebratory moment of King’s life and death we should be highly suspicious of those who sing his praises yet refuse to pay the cost of embodying King’s strong indictment of the US empire, capitalism and racism in their own lives. We now expect the depressing spectacle every January of King’s “fans” giving us the sanitized versions of his life. We now come to the 50th anniversary of his assassination, and we once again are met with sterilized versions of his legacy. A radical man deeply hated and held in contempt is recast as if he was a universally loved moderate.
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2010’s] [Economics] [Systemic Racism] [History] [White Blindness] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [Social Justice] [Policing] [Politics] [Denial]

The Whiteness Within Me

by Ami Worthen | January 2021
Like you, I watched with horror as a violent mob stormed the Capitol building last Wednesday. Inflamed by white supremacy, misogyny, antisemitism, and homophobia, the rioters erupted like pus oozing from the infection that has been raging on this continent since Europeans arrived. Looking at the disturbing images of the hate-filled insurrectionists, who were almost all white, I forced myself to acknowledge that they are, figuratively and likely literally, my distant cousins. It was an urgent reminder that my commitment to collective liberation hinges on addressing the whiteness within me, the anti-Blackness in my blood. We anti-racist white folks can take note that, as Crystal Good (@cgoodwoman) put it, “This is a DANGEROUS moment because the illusion of a sliding scale of white supremacy — allows so many to point to whiteness over there not in the mirror.”
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2020’s] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [History] [Individual Change] [Policing] [Politics] [Accountability] [Systemic Racism] [Justice System] [Social Justice] [Black Lives Matter] [Indigenous] [White Privilege] [Economics]

PWB: Preaching While Black! Ten Indicators of Racism in Predominantly White Church Bodies and What You Can Do To Address Them; The Unholy Union of Racism and Christianity

by Rev. Dr. Jack Sullivan, Jr. | August 2015
Racism and Christianity are no strangers to each other. While no theologically and biblically alert and informed person of our day would dare to defend racism as a legitimate, holy expression of Christianity, it is important to note that United States church bodies were on both sides of the matter of the enslavement of Africans, with some “Christian” ministers and theologians taking the time to bend some biblical texts while remaining silent on others, in order to offer heretical justification of the evil practice of slavery while crafting the doctrine of White supremacy and Black inferiority to provide a perverse platform on which it was placed. Of course, segregation, discrimination, and White privilege as hallmarks of societal racism, were found in organized church bodies as well. Several predominantly White church bodies continue to struggle with racism in both society and their organizational bodies. Some have made defeating racism a priority, while other church organizations have gone so far as to call racism a sin and to issue apologies for their historic and contemporary silence and complicity with racist orientations, laws, and church practices. Still, a large number of church bodies choose to remain silent on the matter perhaps while not realizing that this option actually emboldens racist practices.
TAGS: [Collective Action] [Individual Change] [2010’s] [Systemic Racism] [Faith-Based/Spiritual] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [-ing While Black] [Employment] [Policing] [Slavery] [Latino/a] [Asian] [Indigenous] [Black Lives Matter] [Social Justice] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts]

Anti-Black Racism in Indian Country: Jim Crowfeather Lives

by Cedric Sunray | August 2020
Of 55 continuous, identifiable, cohesive Indian communities in the Eastern and Southern regions of the United States (of whom I have intimate knowledge of) were found that of the 29 federally-recognized entities, all but six have been listed in historical records as having mixed-white ancestry, as well as some of course being listed as of primarily Indian ancestry. In the remaining six (all of who battled the BIA more so than the other 23), as well as 26 more that were not federally recognized, it was found that all had some perceived or real association in historical accounts to have some measure of mixed-black ancestry. As the Bureau of Indian Affairs is run by whites, mixed-white Indians, and a smaller number of racially identifiable Indians, with few black employees or employees of mixed-black and Indian descent, it is clear that recognition is not about one’s racial proximity to Indian, but rather one’s racial distance from black. This is entrenched racism and the most obvious double standard one can imagine rearing its head in the Indian political spectrum. While tribes who are perceived or do have some black ancestry, as well as significant Indian ancestry, are being denied, tribes with large amounts of white ancestry and less significant Indian heritage have been acknowledged.
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2020’s] [Indigenous] [Systemic Racism] [History] [Denial] [Politics] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Blindness] [Assumptions] [Silencing POC]

Racial discrimination Ages Black Americans Faster, According to a 25-Year-Long Study of Families

by The Conversation | November 2020
I’m part of a research team that has been following more than 800 Black American families for almost 25 years. We found that people who had reported experiencing high levels of racial discrimination when they were young teenagers had significantly higher levels of depression in their 20s than those who hadn’t. This elevated depression, in turn, showed up in their blood samples, which revealed accelerated aging on a cellular level. Our research is not the first to show Black Americans live sicker lives and die younger than other racial or ethnic groups. The experience of constant and accumulating stress due to racism throughout an individual’s lifetime can wear and tear down the body – literally “getting under the skin” to affect health.
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2020’s] [Systemic Racism] [Health Disparities] [Black Lives Matter] [Economics] [Strategies]