Resource Links Tagged with "2010’s"

Teaching First-Graders about Microaggressions: The Small Moments Add Up

by Bret Turner | March 2019
For young children, learning the power of words, personal boundaries and social dynamics is a crucial part of their development. In my first-grade classroom, students are in the thick of learning to read and write. And just as actively, they’re learning how to communicate with others. They experiment with tone, diction, intent and body language with one another and with the adults around them. It’s an expected, developmentally appropriate part of learning how to coexist with others. Sometimes, as in the common cases of name-calling, teasing and excluding, that experimentation can be painful. Addressing unkindness is part and parcel of working with young students. But not all unkindness is the same. It can be particularly detrimental when the hurtful language relates to race, gender, religion or other aspects of a child’s identity. These are microaggressions: small, subtle, sometimes-unintended acts of discrimination.
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2010’s] [Microaggressions] [Teachers] [Implicit Bias] [Implicit Racism] [White Privilege] [Anti-Racism]

Textbook Racism; How Scholars Sustained White Supremacy

*Paywall Alert
by Donald Yacovone | April 2018
After reviewing my first 50 or so textbooks, one morning I realized precisely what I was seeing, what instruction, and what priorities were leaping from the pages into the brains of the students compelled to read them: white supremacy. One text even began with the capitalized title: “The White Man’s History.” Across time and with precious few exceptions, African-Americans appeared only as “ignorant negroes,” as slaves, and as anonymous abstractions that only posed “problems” for the supposed real subjects of history: white people of European descent.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2010’s] [White Supremacy] [History] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [Accountability] [Myths]

In Our Resistance against the State, Black and Indigenous Peoples are Collectively Powerful

by Red Dawn Foster and Miski Noor | July 2020
Though the history books written by enslavers and colonizers would have us unaware, our stories as Black and Indigenous Peoples are threaded together through past and present, and surely, through the future as well. Settler-colonialism is a continuous project that relies on sustained socio-economic policies that perpetuate white supremacy and maintain violence against Black and Indigenous peoples. Both genocide and enslavement built the settler-colonial nation as we know it today. Black and Indigenous history is tied to the colonization of this land and our liberation is inherently tied together, that is why Black and Indigenous solidarity is essential.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [Indigenous] [Black Lives Matter] [Systemic Racism] [History] [Politics] [Reparations] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [Myths] [Confederate Monuments]

Retracing Slavery’s Trail of Tears; America’s Forgotten Migration – the Journeys of a Million African-Americans from the Tobacco South to the Cotton South

by Edward Ball | NOVEMBER 2015
“My grandfather went to the folks who had owned our family and asked, ‘Do you have any documentation about our history during the slave days? We would like to see it, if possible.’ The man at the door, who I have to assume was from the slaveholding side, said, ‘Sure, we’ll give it to you.’ “The man went into his house and came back out with some papers in his hands. Now, whether the papers were trivial or actual plantation records, who knows? But he stood in the door, in front of my grandfather, and lit a match to the papers. ‘You want your history?’ he said. ‘Here it is.’ Watching the things burn. ‘Take the ashes and get off my land.’ “The intent was to keep that history buried,” McQuinn says today. “And I think something like that has happened over and again, symbolically.”
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2010’s] [Slavery] [History] [Silencing POC] [Systemic Racism] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Blindness] [White Privilege]

How Slaveholders in the Caribbean Maintained Control The whip was not the only tool in their arsenal: slaveholders were masters of manipulation too.

by Christer Petley | November 2018
As elsewhere in the Americas, the right of masters in Jamaica to punish slaves was enshrined in law, and the violence that sustained slavery went far beyond whipping. Punishments could include amputation, disfiguring, branding and more. … Privileging some enslaved people above others was another effective means of sowing discord. Slaveholders encouraged complex social hierarchies on the plantations that amounted to something like a system of ‘class’. At the top of plantation slave communities in the sugar colonies of the Caribbean were skilled men, trained up at the behest of white managers to become sugar boilers, blacksmiths, carpenters, coopers, masons and drivers. Such men were, in general, materially better-off than field slaves (most of whom were women), and they tended to live longer.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2010’s] [Slavery] [History] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [Silencing POC] [Systemic Racism] [Economics] [Denial]

In 1912, This Georgia County Drove Out Every Black Resident Between the 1860s and the 1920s, White Americans Pushed out Thousands of Black Residents from Their Communities.

by Becky Little | August 2019
To understand what Abrams is up against in November, when she’ll compete against two Republican men in a red state that has only elected white men, it’s useful to look at the state’s history of white supremacy and how that legacy affects Georgians today. One county in particular shoulders an especially egregious past. The northern county of Forsyth, one of Georgia’s 10 most populous, leans heavily white and conservative. Its demographics are shaped by an event that happened in 1912, when white people forced out all 1,098 of Forsyth’s black residents, who comprised about 10 percent of the population at the time.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2010’s] [History] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Defensiveness] [Racial Covenants] [Denial] [Housing] [Accountability] [Policing]

American White People Really Hate Being Called “White People”

by David Roberts | July 2018
It occurred to me that white people rarely if ever experience questions like this, about their very legitimacy. Do they belong? Is having more of them around good for America? One thing white people have never experienced is a poll on whether their presence in their own country is intrinsically detrimental. In fact, I thought, I bet asking the question at all — not answering it either way, just asking it — would make a lot of white people flip out. Imagine if they saw that on a poll! So, as a bit of goofy provocation, I made just such a poll:
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2010’s] [Systemic Racism] [White Fragility/Tears] [White Supremacy] [White Defensiveness] [Politics]

It Took 10 Minutes to Convict 14-Year-Old George Stinney Jr. It Took 70 Years after His Execution to Exonerate Him.

by Lindsey Bever | December 2014
In March 1944, deep in the Jim Crow South, police came for 14-year-old George Stinney Jr. His parents weren’t at home. His little sister was hiding in the family’s chicken coop behind the house in Alcolu, a segregated mill town in South Carolina, while officers handcuffed George and his older brother, Johnnie, and took them away.
Two young white girls had been found brutally murdered, beaten over the head with a railroad spike and dumped in a water-logged ditch. He and his little sister, who were black, were said to be last ones to see them alive. Authorities later released the older Stinney – and directed their attention toward George. On June 16, 1944, he was executed, becoming the youngest person in modern times to be put to death. On Wednesday, 70 years later, he was exonerated.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2010’s] [Systemic Racism] [Policing] [Prison System] [White Supremacy] [History] [Black Lives Matter] [White Privilege] [White Culture] [-ing While Black] [Denial] [Assumptions] [Accountability]

Why the Media Loves the White Racist Story

by Martin LaMonica | January 2019
Why are so many people interested in pointing out and shaming individual white racists? There have been dozens of these events highlighted on social and mainstream media this year. Here are a few of the incidents that went viral and sparked outrage: a video of Fort McMurray teens mocking Indigenous dance, another of a North Carolina woman’s racist rant and the racist tirade against a Muslim family at the Toronto Ferry Terminal. Why are people less interested in calling out the systems that prime them to act in racist ways and foster lifelong inequities.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2010’s] [Systemic Racism] [Indigenous] [Assumptions] [White Supremacy] [White Privilege] [White Culture] [White Defensiveness] [Politics]

Race of Mass Shooters Influences How the Media Cover Their Crimes, New Study Shows

by Laura Frizzell, Sadé L. Lindsay, and Scott Duxbury | July 2018
If a news report mentions a shooter’s tough childhood, chances are he’s white. On Jan. 24, 2014, police found Josh Boren, a 34-year-old man and former police officer, dead in his home next to the bodies of his wife and their three children. The shots were fired execution-style on Boren’s kneeling victims, before he turned the gun on himself. On Aug. 8, 2015, 48-year-old David Ray Conley shot and killed his son, former girlfriend and six other children and adults at his former girlfriend’s home. Like Boren, Conley executed the victims at point-blank range. Both men had histories of domestic violence and criminal behavior. Yet despite the obvious similarities in these two cases and perpetrators, the media, in each case, took a different approach.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2010’s] [Myths] [Individual Change] [History] [White Supremacy] [Systemic Racism] [Policing] [Colorblindness] [Prison System] [-ing While Black]

Letter to My Son; “Here is what I would like for you to know: In America, it is traditional to destroy the black body – it is heritage.”

by Ta-Nehisi Coates | July 2015
Specifically, the host wished to know why I felt that white America’s progress, or rather the progress of those Americans who believe that they are white, was built on looting and violence. Hearing this, I felt an old and indistinct sadness well up in me. The answer to this question is the record of the believers themselves. The answer is American history. …When Abraham Lincoln declared, in 1863, that the battle of Gettysburg must ensure “that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth,” he was not merely being aspirational. At the onset of the Civil War, the United States of America had one of the highest rates of suffrage in the world. The question is not whether Lincoln truly meant “government of the people” but what our country has, throughout its history, taken the political term people to actually mean. In 1863 it did not mean your mother or your grandmother, and it did not mean you and me. As for now, it must be said that the elevation of the belief in being white was not achieved through wine tastings and ice-cream socials, but rather through the pillaging of life, liberty, labor, and land.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2010’s] [History] [Systemic Racism] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [-ing While Black] [Policing] [White Blindness] [Slavery]

*These Profound Photos Masterfully Turn Racial Stereotypes On Their Head

by Lilly Workneh | May 2017
A powerful new photo essay reexamines our relationship with race.Oe image shows several East Asian women at a nail salon being pampered by white female beauticians. Another shows a young white girl at a toy store standing before a row of shelves stocked only with black dolls, and the last image shows a posh Hispanic woman on the phone as her white maid tends to her.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2010’s] [Accountability] [Systemic Racism] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [Assumptions] [White Privilege] [Art & Culture]

Whites Only: SURJ And The Caucasian Invasion of Racial Justice Spaces

by DiDi Delgago | April 2017
Anti-racism work with a white lens is inherently flawed. White-led anti-racism groups have existed for hundreds of years, and they’ve often been problematic, counterproductive, and just fucking weird since their inception. Take, for instance, the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society of 1833, which believed that slave owners were missing out on a business opportunity by not putting slaves on the payroll. They argued that paying slaves “would make them doubly valuable to [their] masters,” because paid laborers are more motivated than forced laborers. That’s the whitest thing I’ve ever heard, and I own two Hanson records. I can think of a thousand better reasons not to own a person aside from increased productivity… I suspect many white people combatting racism have been so busy checking their privilege that they’ve forgotten to check their egos. It seemed that one chapter finally got it right, and they did so by realizing they got it wrong.
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2010’s] [Anti-Racism] [White Privilege] [Slavery] [History] [White Fragility/Tears] [White Supremacy] [Individual Change] [Reparations] [Black Lives Matter] [Accountability]

What Kind Of White Person Would I Have Been?

by Ali Michael, Ph. D. | January 2017
When I was growing up, we learned about the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in school. And I always wondered which side I would have been on if I had lived in his time. I imagined I would have been one of the White people who marched in his marches, and befriended Black children in the newly integrated schools. I was sure that I would not be one of the mean people who resisted integration, who thought that White people were better than people of color because of the color of their skin. But that was all I knew — that there were two sides. There were White people who supported what Dr. King was doing and White people who fought against what he was doing. I didn’t realize at the time that there was a third kind of White person. And in fact, I’m sorry to say, it’s much more likely that I would have fallen into the third group.
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2010’s] [Colorblindness] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [Accountability] [White Blindness] [White Privilege]

Do’s and Don’ts for Bystander Intervention

by American Friends Service Committee Staff | Date Unknown
If you witness public instances of racist, anti-Black, anti-Muslim, anti-Trans, or any other form of oppressive interpersonal violence and harassment, use these tips on how to intervene while considering the safety of everyone involved. Available to download as a PDF.
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2010’s] [Bystander Intervention] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [Role Model] [Individual Change] [Strategies] [Advocacy] [Quaker] [Faith-Based/Spiritual]

Why I’m Absolutely an Angry Black Woman

by Dominique Matti | October 2017
*Because when I was five, my kindergarten classmate told me I couldn’t be the princess in the game we were playing because black girls couldn’t be princesses. Because I was in third grade the first time a teacher seemed shocked at how “well-spoken” I was. Because in fourth grade I was told my crush didn’t like black girls. Because in sixth grade a different crush told me I was pretty — for a black girl. Because in 7th grade my predominantly black suburban neighborhood was nicknamed “Spring Ghettos” instead of calling it its name (Spring Meadows). Because I was in 8th grade the first time I was called an Oreo and told that I “wasn’t really black” like it was a compliment. Because in 9th grade when I switched schools a boy told me he knew I had to be mixed with something to be so pretty. Because in 10th grade my group of friends and I were called into an office and asked if we were a gang, or if we had father figures. Because in 11th grade my AP English teacher told me that I didn’t write like a college-bound student (though I later scored perfectly on the exam). Because when I volunteered in Costa Rica that summer, I was whistled at and called Negrita.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2010’s] [White Supremacy] [White Blindness] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [Systemic Racism] [Assumptions] [Accountability] [White Blindness]

Walking While Black

by Garnette Cadogan | July 2016
*On my first day in the city, I went walking for a few hours to get a feel for the place and to buy supplies to transform my dormitory room from a prison bunker into a welcoming space. When some university staff members found out what I’d been up to, they warned me to restrict my walking to the places recommended as safe to tourists and the parents of freshmen. They trotted out statistics about New Orleans’s crime rate. What no one had told me was that I was the one who would be considered a threat. On one occasion, less than a month after my arrival, I tried to help a man whose wheelchair was stuck in the middle of a crosswalk; he threatened to shoot me in the face, then asked a white pedestrian for help…
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2010’s] [-ing While Black] [Systemic Racism] [White Supremacy] [Policing] [Black Lives Matter] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [White Blindness]

11 Things White People Need To Realize About Race

by Emma Gray and Jessica Samakow | July 2015
#BlackLIvesMatter doesn’t suggest the other lives don’t – it’s about making sure black lives do. The same way men need to be forced to confront, interrogate and reckon with masculinity in order to address sexism, white people need to face their whiteness. And it is not the responsibility of people of color to educate white people about race. People of color don’t need to be taught that racism exists — they live it every day. It shouldn’t (and can’t) be on their shoulders to enlighten the rest of us. We have to do that for ourselves. Here are 11 things every white person who doesn’t want to be Part Of The Problem should know.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2010’s] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [White Blindness] [White Privilege] [Accountability] [“Reverse Racism”]

This Student’s Message about White Privilege is the Most Important Thing You’ll Read Today

by Bridie Pearson-Jones | June 2020
THIS is what white privilege looks like. This is me, only one year ago on this very campus, running around the academic quad with a fucking sharp metal sword. People thought it was funny. People laughed- oh look at that harmless, ~ silly white girl ~ with a giant sword!! Today, a black man carrying a f**king glue gun shut down my ~prestigious liberal arts college~ for 4 hours. The limited information that was released put all black men on this campus in danger and at risk of being killed. That is the reality of institutionalized racism in the United States. If you think for even a second this wasn’t profiling, ask yourself why this sword is still in my room and has not ONCE made anyone uncomfortable. No one has EVER called the police on me. Understand that there are larger forces at play than this one night and this one instance of racism. This is ingrained in our university and our larger society. White Colgate students, we need to do better. #blacklivesmatter [sic]
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2020’s] [Systemic Racism] [-ing While Black] [White Privilege] [Implicit Bias]

The Heart of Whiteness: Ijeoma Oluo Interviews Rachel Dolezal, the White Woman Who Identifies as Black

by Ijeoma Oluo | April 2017
And with that, the anger that I had toward her began to melt away. Dolezal is simply a white woman who cannot help but center herself in all that she does—including her fight for racial justice. And if racial justice doesn’t center her, she will redefine race itself in order to make that happen. It is a bit extreme, but it is in no way new for white people to take what they want from other cultures in the name of love and respect, while distorting or discarding the remainder of that culture for their comfort. What else is National Geographic but a long history of this practice. Maybe now that I’ve seen the unoriginality of it all, even with my sister’s name that she has claimed as her own, she will haunt me no more and simply blend into the rest of white supremacy that I battle every day.
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2010’s] [Anti-Racism] [Slavery] [Role Model] [White Privilege] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Fragility/Tears] [Implicit Racism]

What Do We Do With White Folks?

by Anthony James Williams | February 2019
But here is where the problem of progressive minded whiteness comes into play. No matter how “woke” mainstream media labels white people for doing things like reading The New Jim Crow, history has never given us examples of people in power who give up their power.
White supremacy is our abuser, and white folk are most often the ones embodying it and benefiting from it through their whiteness.
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2010’s] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [Individual Change] [Black Lives Matter] [Reparations] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [Accountability]

10 things every white teacher should know when talking about race

by Angela Watson | Janurary 2017
Let’s start by addressing the elephant in the room–why I am talking only to white people? Isn’t that racist? (Hold that question in your mind, because I want you to ask yourself that same question again after you’ve read my words here, and see if your thought process has changed.) I’m specifically addressing white people in this episode because around 83% of teachers in the U.S. are white. Most of you reading my blog are in fact, white. Conversations about race are super prevalent right now and for many white people, it feels like stepping into a minefield. They have literally no idea what to say, or feel like they don’t understand the history of people of color enough to contribute much to the conversation. Or, they say something they think is totally valid but inadvertently offend people of color in the discussion. Or get their own feelings hurt because they feel “attacked,” vowing to never, ever enter another conversation about race again. This can’t happen, teacher friends. It really hurts my heart to see so many misunderstandings in our country around race right now, particular when it’s among white teachers who are shaping the next generation of minds. Teachers are smart, thoughtful people tasked with raising up young people to be leaders. We cannot be ignorant about race or avoid talking about it. Includes PODCAST.
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2010’s] [Teachers] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [Accountability] [Podcast] [Anti-Racism] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [“Reverse Racism”] [White Privilege] [White Defensiveness]

Colin Kaepernick Was Right About Us

by John Pavlovitz | September 2018
* He exposed us when we felt it was our right to tell another human being how to express their personal freedoms, during an anthem supposedly devoted to celebrating those personal freedoms. He exposed us when we treasured flags and songs over flesh and blood; when we repeatedly ignored dissenting facts in order to hold on to our easy and lazy outrage.
TAGS: [Collective Action] [Accountability] [Role Model] [2010’s]

Black Women Have Never Had the Privilege of Rage

by Kimberely Seals Allers | October 2018
The past several weeks have sparked an unprecedented conversation about women’s collective fury in this #MeToo, #WhyIDidntReport and post-Kavanaugh hearings era. Three recent books and a flurry of op-eds, essays and social media energy has everyone talking about rage in a brand new way. This is good news for women. But what’s been blatantly missing from mainstream dialogue is a nuanced understanding of how rage is perceived by and received from black women ― and whether this alleged new moment in the ongoing liberation of women will actually be an equitable one.
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2010’s] [Silencing POC] [White Privilege]

Police Incitement Against Black Lives Matter Is Putting Protesters in Danger

by Sarah Lazare | July 2016
* From the floor of the Republican National Convention to the online pages of the Blue Lives Matter Facebook community, it is now commonplace for public officials, police and first responders to openly declare war on Black Lives Matter—the civil rights movement of our times. “After the shooting, when they [the police] talked about the protest, they talked about how violent protesters were,” Mica Grimm, organizer with Black Lives Matter- Minneapolis, told AlterNet. “They never talked about how five people were shot. No one will ever bring that up. They really don’t care that much about protesters.”
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2010’s] [Policing] [White Supremacy] [Black Lives Matter] [Accountability] [Silencing POC]

The Effects of Structural Racism are Not Normal

by Erin Okuno | November 2017
*The feeling of wondering why everyone else was ok to be at a meeting of all-white people is what Heidi (of the Fakequity team) describes as a byproduct of structural racism. We often don’t think twice about why whiteness pervades our society and we’re conditioned to accept and normalize it. “…imagine if I walked you into a room and it was of a major corporation, like ExxonMobil, and every single person around the boardroom were black, you would think that were weird. But if I walked you into a Fortune 500 company, and everyone around the table is a white male, when will it be that we think that’s weird too?”
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2010’s] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [White Culture] [Systemic Racism]

The 5 Types of ‘Becky’

by Michael Harriot | August 2017
*Becky: (noun); a white woman who uses her privilege as a weapon, a ladder or an excuse. Ex: “A random Becky hit me up on Twitter to explain why not all white women are racist.” An eyeopening description of different levels of racism, could you be one of them? (note: in 2020 “Becky” changed to “Karen”)
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2010’s] [Accountability] [White Blindness]

How America Spreads the Disease that is Racism by not Confronting Racist Family Members and Friends

by Racism Recovery Center | August 2017
In counseling many white Americans who are against racism, one thing stands out: they are afraid to confront their racist family members and friends. They are against racism, but they also love their family and friends. I am often asked, “April, I don’t know what to do. How do I confront them without upsetting them?” Where do you fall on the Racism Scale?
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2010’s] [Systemic Racism]

Curriculum for White Americans to Educate Themselves on Race and Racism–from Ferguson to Charleston

by Jon Greenberg | July 2015
There are no doubt complexities that come with White Americans working for racial justice. White privilege can lead to a chronic case of undiagnosed entitlement, creating poor listeners, impatient speakers who talk over others, and people unaccustomed to taking orders. Nevertheless, the movement for racial justice needs more White Americans to get involved. And it’s our responsibility to help each other get involved–and get involved productively. A list of articles and links to help on your journey.
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2010’s] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [White Privilege]

Whites Only: SURJ And The Caucasian Invasion Of Racial Justice Spaces

by DiDi Delgado | Updated April 2017
White-led racial justice groups have displayed problematic behavior, lack of accountability, and outright anti-Blackness. White folks need to ask themselves if they’re doing this work because it’s a moral imperative, or because they want accolades and kudos to soothe their white guilt. If it’s the latter, then they’ve picked the wrong hobby.
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2010’s] [White Fragility/Tears] [Accountability]