Collective Action

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Supreme Court Upholds Law Banning Chinese Americans from White Schools

by Equal Justice Initative | Date Unknown
On November 21, 1927, in Gong Lum v. Rice, the United States Supreme Court ruled against the Chinese-American Lum family and upheld Mississippi’s power to force nine-year old Martha Lum to attend a “colored school: outside the district where she lived. …When the Mississippi Supreme Court held that Martha Lum could not insist on being educated with white students because she was of the “Mongolian or yellow race,” her father appealed to the United States Supreme Court. In its decision siding with the state of Mississippi, the U.S. Supreme Court reasoned that Mississippi’s decision to bar Martha from attending the local white high school did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment because she was entitled to attend a colored school. This decision extended the reach of segregation laws and policies in Mississippi and throughout the nation by classifying all non-white individuals as “colored.”
TAGS: [Collective Action] [Asian] [Systemic Racism] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [Justice System] [White Blindness]

“This is Where Our People Are”: Reflections on Plymouth 400

by Charles Thomas Lai FitzGibbon | November 2020
This month, in addition to being National Native American Heritage Month, marks 400 years since the Mayflower landed in Plymouth. Here in Massachusetts—a state named after the indigenous people of the “Great Blue Hill”—many of us are settlers on stolen land. I spoke with Cheryl Andrews-Maltais, Chairwoman of the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head Aquinnah based on Martha’s Vineyard, to hear her perspective on this moment, and what we can learn from reflecting on the anniversary. CF: This year marks 400 years since European settlers landed in Plymouth. How are your communities reflecting on and/or acting around this moment? …CAM: We wanted to really have our truth be told, not the whitewashed, watered down version [from] the history books that our children have to endure around fifth grade. Not the version to make the story sound good. As we say in Indian Country which is where we live and work: the truth is the truth is the truth.
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2020’s] [Indigenous] [History] [White Supremacy] [Racial Covenants] [White Culture] [White Blindness] [Systemic Racism] [Advocacy] [Justice System] [Politics] [White Privilege]

White America’s Age-Old, Misguided Obsession With Civility

by Thomas J. Sugrue | June 2018
But in fact, civil rights leaders, while they did believe in the power of nonviolence, knew that their success depended on disruption and coercion as much — sometimes more — than on dialogue and persuasion. They knew that the vast majority of whites who were indifferent or openly hostile to the demands of civil rights would not be moved by appeals to the American creed or to bromides about liberty and justice for all. Polite words would not change their behavior. … That history is a reminder that civility is in the eye of the beholder. And when the beholder wants to maintain an unequal status quo, it’s easy to accuse picketers, protesters, and preachers alike of incivility, as much because of their message as their methods. For those upset by disruptive protests, the history of civil rights offers an unsettling reminder that the path to change is seldom polite.
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2010’s] [History] [Systemic Racism] [Police Shootings] [Policing] [Politics] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [Social Justice] [Justice System]

Shinnecock Nation Asserts Sovereignty at Sunrise Highway Encampment

by Julia Press | December 2020
For 26 days, Shinnecock residents camped out along the Sunrise Highway — the only road in and out of the Hamptons. “We’ve had snow, we’ve had rain, we’ve had sleet, we’ve been under tornado watch,” said Tela Troge. She’s a member of Warriors of the Sunrise, the group of Shinnecock women who organized the occupation. Troge said that this “Sovereignty Camp” was spurred by a recent dispute with state and local government over a 61-foot tall electronic billboard. The Shinnecock Nation built this monument along the highway to generate advertising revenue. Troge, who’s a lawyer, spent years on the legal research to prove that it was on Shinnecock land.
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2020’s] [Indigenous] [Systemic Racism] [White Supremacy] [Justice System] [Accountability] [White Privilege]

How ‘Good White People’ Derail Racial Progress

by John Blake | August 2020
Angry White parents gripping picket signs. People making death threats and a piece of hate mail reading “Blacks destroy school systems. Community panic about school desegregation orders. But this wasn’t archival footage of White Southerners from the 1960s. This took place last year in Howard County, Maryland, a suburban community that prides itself on racial integration. It was there that progressive White parents mobilized with other groups to try to stop a school integration plan that would bus poor students, who were mostly Black and brown, to more affluent, whiter schools.
TAGS: [Collective Action] [Individual Change] [2020’s] [Systemic Racism] [Black Lives Matter] [White Supremacy] [White Privilege] [White Culture] [White Blindness] [History] [Economics] [Housing] [Cognitive Dissonance]

American Environmentalism’s Racist Roots Have Shaped Global Thinking about Conservation

by Prakash Kashwan | September 2020
American environmentalism’s racist roots have influenced global conservation practices. Most notably, they are embedded in longstanding prejudices against local communities and a focus on protecting pristine wildernesses. This dominant narrative pays little thought to indigenous and other poor people who rely on these lands – even when they are its most effective stewards.
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2020’s] [Indigenous] [Systemic Racism] [Myths] [Confederate Monuments] [Slavery] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [Economics] [History] [Environment]

When White Women Practice the Politics of Polite, the Violence of Nice We Must Admit That, When We’re Moderate, We’re Complicit.

by Real Talk: WOC & Allies | August 2019
It turns out, not so much. Our extreme discomfort with discord and our inability to sustain even the mildest of stress fractures when our tools fail us, is why we are not moving the needle on the meaningful dismantling of systems and institutions that intentionally uphold white supremacy. We recoil from the concepts of subversion and disruption like vampires from the hot sun. Because subversion is not polite and disruption is not nice. We need to embrace the discomfort, the edges and the messiness of overturning that which has kept us in the number two slot of the power and privilege pyramid for over 500 years.
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2010’s] [Politics] [White Privilege] [Systemic Racism] [White Fragility/Tears] [White Supremacy] [Bystander Intervention] [Policing] [Anti-Racism] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [Microaggressions] [Assumptions]

How the failure of multiculturalism led to the rise of Black Lives Matter

by Colins Imoh | September 2020
Since the killing of George Floyd, an African American man, during an arrest in May, 69% of people in the US report having discussed racial issues with others. Meanwhile, as the Pew research suggests, 82% say they will work with black people in their communities to resolve issues and 67% say they are supportive of the Black Lives Matter movement. This is to be welcomed, because people’s inability to discuss race issues in a civil manner has further contributed to minority inequality and conflict. Indeed, this failure to have forthright discussions about race has led to people of different ethnic groups living parallel lives in the same cities. This, along with the decreased life chances for non-white people in many western countries, is what the Black Lives Matter movement aims to eradicate. But it’s also important to recognise that one of the reasons Black Lives Matter came about in the first place is because the concept of multiculturalism has failed black people. …It’s crucial to appreciate that racism is so systemic that without people drawing attention to the deep-rooted and often invisible nature of the issue, it would be easy for many people to ignore. This is why the Black Lives Matter movement wants to confront and shake up the system and bring the plight of black people to the global consciousness.
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2020’s] [Black Lives Matter] [Policing] [Definitions] [Systemic Racism] [History] [Employment] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Blindness] [Teachers] [Assumptions]

How Prison Labor is the New American Slavery and Most of Us Unknowingly Support it

by Sara Burrows | June 2016
If you buy products or services from any of the 50 companies listed below (and you likely do), you are supporting modern American slavery. American slavery was technically abolished in 1865, but a loophole in the 13th Amendment has allowed it to continue “as a punishment for crimes” well into the 21st century. Not surprisingly, corporations have lobbied for a broader and broader definition of “crime” in the last 150 years. As a result, there are more (mostly dark-skinned) people performing mandatory, essentially unpaid, hard labor in America today than there were in 1830.
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2010’s] [Slavery] [Prison System] [Strategies] [Economics] [Systemic Racism] [Individual Change]

How the Long Fight for Slavery Reparations is Slowly Being Won

by Kris Manjapra | April 2020
In a suburb of Chicago, the world’s first government-funded slavery reparations programme is beginning. Robin Rue Simmons helped make it happen – but her victory has been more than 200 years in the making. It began with an email. On an especially cold day in Evanston, Illinois, in February 2019, Robin Rue Simmons, 43 years old and two years into her first term as alderman for the city’s historically Black 5th ward, sent an email whose effects would eventually make US history. The message to the nine-member equity and empowerment commission of the Evanston city council started with a disarmingly matter-of-fact heading: “Because ‘reparations’ makes people uncomfortable.”
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2020’s] [Slavery] [Reparations] [Advocacy] [History] [Racial Covenants] [Systemic Racism] [Politics] [Denial] [Accountability] [Economics] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege]