Strategies
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Racism and Health: Racism is a Serious Threat to the Public’s Health
CDC Website | Date Unknown
Racism is a system consisting of structures, policies, practices, and norms—that assigns value and determines opportunity based on the way people look or the color of their skin. This results in conditions that unfairly advantage some and disadvantage others throughout society. Racism — both interpersonal and structural – negatively affects the mental and physical health of millions of people preventing them from attaining their highest level of health, and consequently, affecting the health of our nation. A growing body of research shows that centuries of racism in this country has had a profound and negative impact on communities of color. The impact is pervasive and deeply embedded in our society—affecting where one lives, learns, works, worships and plays and creating inequities in access to a range of social and economic benefits—such as housing, education, wealth, and employment. These conditions—often referred to as social determinants of health—are key drivers of health inequities within communities of color, placing those within these populations at greater risk for poor health outcomes.
TAGS: [Strategies] [Health Disparities] [Economics] [Systemic Racism] [Housing] [Employment] [Social Justice] [Politics] [Black Lives Matter] [Indigenous] [Asian] [Latino/a]
The Racist Roots of American Policing: From Slave Patrols to Traffic Stops
by Connie Hassett-Walker | Updated June 2020
Outrage over racial profiling and the killing of African Americans by police officers and vigilantes in recent years helped give rise to the Black Lives Matter movement. But tensions between the police and black communities are nothing new. There are many precedents to the Ferguson, Missouri protests that ushered in the Black Lives Matter movement. Those protests erupted in 2014 after a police officer shot unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown; the officer was subsequently not indicted.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [Policing] [Slavery] [Black Lives Matter] [History] [Systemic Racism] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [-ing While Black] [Civil War] [Racial Covenants] [Politics] [Justice System] [Police Shootings] [Implicit Bias]
How Textbooks Taught White Supremacy; A Historian Steps Back to the 1700s and Shares What’s Changed and What Needs to Change
by Liz Mineo | September 2020
Yacovone, who co-authored “The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross” with Henry Louis Gates Jr. in 2013, is now writing “Teaching White Supremacy: The Textbook Battle Over Race in American History.”
The Gazette interviewed Yacovone about the origins of his research, his findings, and why he thinks it’s necessary to teach the difficult story of slavery and white supremacy and their legacies.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [History] [Slavery] [Denial] [White Supremacy] [Systemic Racism] [Social Justice] [Black Lives Matter] [Civil War] [CRT]
Thousands of pages documenting slavery found in attic of Eastern Shore House
by Anagha Srikanth | July 2021
Thousands of papers, some documenting the auction and sale of enslaved Black Americans, were headed for the auction block themselves before Black historians and community members stepped in to reclaim ownership over their past. “It was important to the community because this will connect the dots for people and the younger generation, to let them know how things were. To move forward, you have to see what the past was like,” said Carolyn Brooks, a community historian with the Chesapeake Heartland Project. About 2,000 pages dating from the late 1600s to early 1800s were found in a plastic trash bag in the attic of a 200-year-old house near Chestertown, Maryland, as the owner, Nancy Bordely Lane, was cleaning it out this spring. The foundation of the house, built in 1803 on property that had remained in the family since 1667, was reportedly damaged and the structure was going to be demolished. The documents were headed for the garbage, but were rescued and delivered to Dixon’s Crumpton Auction in waxed seafood boxes, John Chaski, an antique-manuscript expert, told the Washington Post.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [Slavery] [History] [Systemic Racism] [Art & Culture] [Racial Terrorism] [White Supremacy] [White Culture]
Class Action Settlement Brings $59 Million to Descendents of the Pembina Band of Chippewa Indians
by Andrew Kennard | June 2021
WASHINGTON — A $59 million settlement in Peltier v. Haaland, a class action lawsuit alleging trust fund mismanagement and failure to account by the Department of the Interior, will go to four tribes located in the Midwest and Northwest United States and more than 39,000 beneficiaries. On June 10, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia finalized the settlement, which was reached in the Court of Federal Claims with the Chippewa Cree Tribe of the Rocky Boy’s Reservation of Montana, the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians of North Dakota, the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians of Montana, and the White Earth Band of Chippewa Indians of Minnesota, the Interior Department announced. The tribes were represented by the Native American Rights Fund (NARF), according to the website designated for the lawsuit.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [Reparations] [Indigenous] [Systemic Racism] [Justice System] [History] [Economics] [Politics]
The Blackfoot Wisdom that Inspired Maslow’s Hierarchy
by Teju Ravilochan | June 2021
Deeply curious about the reason for the stark difference between Blackfoot culture and his own culture, Maslow sought out positive deviants, or unusually successful individuals. He started with the wealthiest members of the Blackfoot tribe. He discovered that “for the Blackfoot, wealth was not measured by money and property but by generosity. The wealthiest man in their eyes is one who has almost nothing because he has given it all away” (Coon, 2006). Maslow witnessed a Blackfoot “Giveaway” ceremony in his first week at Siksika. During the Giveaway, members of the tribe arranged their tipis in a circle and publicly piled up all they had collected over the last year. Those with the most possessions told stories of how they amassed them and then gave every last one away to those in greater need (Blood & Heavy Head, 2007, (video 7 out of 15, minutes 13:00–14:00). By contrast, as shared by Maslow’s biographer Edward Hoffman, Maslow observed different qualities in members of his own culture.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [Indigenous] [Social Justice] [Advocacy] [Role Model] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [Assumptions] [Economics]
‘60 Minutes’ Ran an Episode about Algorithm Bias. Only White Experts Were Given Airtime.
by Julianne McShane | June 2021
The episode renewed calls to #CiteBlackWomen, many of whom have been leading research on AI bias. The 13-minute-long segment, which aired May 16, reported on how facial recognition technologies have led to the wrongful arrests of Black men. It featured interviews with two White experts in facial recognition technologies as well as two Black men who were wrongfully arrested based on faulty facial recognition. Joy Buolamwini, an artificial intelligence bias researcher at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Black woman, was not featured in the episode after spending what she said were between eight and 10 hours working with “60 Minutes” producers over the course of a few months, recommending research to incorporate and even building a custom demo program showing how facial recognition technologies analyze faces, she said.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [Policing] [Systemic Racism] [Justice System] [Prison System] [Social Justice] [Silencing POC] [Implicit Bias] [White Culture] [White Blindness]
The Battle for Mount Rushmore: ‘It Should be Turned into Something like the Holocaust Museum’
by Annette McGivney | July 2021
The national memorial draws nearly 3 million visitors a year – and Native Americans want the site back with a focus on oppression.
Mount Rushmore national memorial draws nearly 3 million visitors a year to its remote location in South Dakota. They travel from all corners of the globe just to lay their eyes on what the National Park Service calls America’s “shrine of democracy”. Phil Two Eagle is not opposed to the fact that the giant sculpture of American presidents is a major tourist attraction but he thinks the park should have a different focus: oppression. “It should be turned into something like the United States Holocaust Museum,” he said. “The world needs to know what was done to us.” Two Eagle noted what historians have also documented. Hitler got some of his genocidal ideas for ethnic cleansing from 19th and early 20th century US policies against Native Americans.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [Indigenous] [History] [Systemic Racism] [Denial] [Silencing POC] [Politics] [Social Justice] [Policing] [Economics]
I Did Nothing Wrong. I Was Arrested Anyway.
by Robert Williams | July 2021
I never thought I would be a cautionary tale. More than that, I never thought I’d have to explain to my daughters why their daddy got arrested in front of them on our front lawn. How does one explain to two little girls that a computer got it wrong, but the police listened to it anyway — even if that meant arresting me for a crime I didn’t commit? This is what happened to me: As I was getting ready to head home from work one day in January of 2020, my wife called me and told me that a police officer had called and said I needed to turn myself in. She was scared and confused. The officers called me next, but wouldn’t explain why I was supposed to turn myself in or what I was accused of, so I thought it was probably a prank. I couldn’t imagine what else it could be. But as I pulled up to my house, a Detroit police squad car was waiting for me. The squad car swooped in from behind to block my SUV — as if I would make a run for it. One officer jumped out and asked if I was Robert Williams. I said I was. He told me I was under arrest. By then, my wife, Melissa, was outside with our youngest in her arms, and my older daughter was peeking around my wife trying to see what was happening. I told my older daughter to go back inside, that the cops were making a mistake and that daddy would be back in a minute. But I wasn’t back in a minute. I was handcuffed and taken to the Detroit Detention Center.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [-ing While Black] [Systemic Racism] [Policing] [Assumptions] [Politics]
‘The Epitome of White Privilege’: White Woman Who Spit on Black Protester Might Have Hate Crime Charge Dropped
by Zack Linly | July 2021
Some white people are racist, and some white racists are just nasty AF. On Jan. 6—the same day as the whiny wypipo rebellion at the U.S. Capitol—Black woman Keren Prescott was leading a Black Lives Matter protest outside the Connecticut Capitol building when she told an “all lives matter”-spewing white woman, Yuliya Gilshteyn, to “back up,” because she wasn’t wearing a face mask. Gilshteyn wasn’t even asked to back away because she was yet another fragile-ass melanin-not who still, in 2021, is pretending not to understand that the words “Black lives matter” do not, by any rule of the English language, imply that other lives don’t. All Prescott wanted was to get this maskless white woman TF out of her face – instead, Gilshteyn spat on her.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [“All Lives Matter”] [White Privilege] [Justice System] [Systemic Racism] [Black Lives Matter] [White Culture] [White Supremacy]
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Dear White People
Being Allies
Reparations
Spiritual Foundations
Public Displays
Performance Art
Workshops
Activist Resources
Assessment Tools
History
Appropriation / Aggression
White Privilege / Supremacy
Introduction
Definitions
Facts
Maps
Dear White People
Being Allies
Reparations
Spiritual Foundations
Public Displays
Performance Art
Workshops
Activist Resources
Assessment Tools
History
Appropriation / Aggression
White Privilege / Supremacy
Introduction
Definitions
Facts