Resource Links Tagged with "Accountability"

Teaching the Hard History of Indigenous Slavery; TT’s newest film, ‘The Forgotten Slavery of Our Ancestors,’ offers a classroom-ready introduction to the history of Indigenous enslavement in What is Now the United States.

by Teaching Tolerance Staff | October 2020
Recognizing the ways that American enslavement and dispossession continue to shape our lives is a critical first step in working to address oppressive systems still in place. And students deserve an accurate reckoning of that legacy. As Hasan Kwame Jeffries, chair of our Teaching Hard History Advisory Board, wrote in his preface to that project, “Some say that slavery was our country’s original sin, but it is much more than that. Slavery is our country’s origin.”
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2020’s] [Teachers] [Indigenous] [Slavery] [Anti-Racism] [Accountability] [Systemic Racism]

Performative Allyship Is Deadly (Here’s What to Do Instead); Activism Can’t Begin and End with a Hashtag

*Paywall Alert
by Holiday Phillips | May 2020
In the days after Arbery’s death, I scrolled through Instagram, reading post after post from white friends and influencers professing their outrage and disbelief. Urging us to #sayhisname. The posts were flooded with comments from more (mostly) white people, thanking them for their “bravery” and praising them for “speaking truth to power.” … Still, as a black woman, instead of feeling inspired by this act of solidarity, I found myself feeling angry and afraid. Looking through my feed, I wanted to say to my white friends, “You’re here now, but where are you the other 364 days a year when anti-racism isn’t trending? When racism isn’t tucked safely behind the screen in your hand, but right there in front of your face?”
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2020’s] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [Anti-Racism] [Advocacy] [Accountability] [White Fragility/Tears]

Hundreds of Black Men, Women and Children Burned Alive, Shot, Lynched by White Mobs During Red Summer Ignored Century Later

by The Grio | July 2019
America in the summer of 1919 ran red with blood from racial violence, and yet today, 100 years later, not many people know it even happened. It flowed in small towns like Elaine, Arkansas, in medium-size places such as Annapolis, Maryland, and Syracuse, New York, and in big cities like Washington and Chicago. Hundreds of African American men, women and children were burned alive, shot, lynched or beaten to death by white mobs. Thousands saw their homes and businesses burned to the ground and were driven out, many never to return.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2010’s] [Black Lives Matter] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [Silencing POC] [Systemic Racism] [History] [Accountability]

Across America, Whites are Biased and They Don’t Even Know It

*Paywall Alert
by Chris Mooney | December 2014
Most white Americans demonstrate bias against blacks, even if they’re not aware of or able to control it. It’s a surprisingly little-discussed factor in the anguishing debates over race and law enforcement that followed the shootings of unarmed black men by white police officers. Such implicit biases — which, if they were to influence split-second law enforcement decisions, could have life or death consequences — are measured by psychological tests, most prominently the computerized Implicit Association Test, which has beens taken by over two million people online at the website Project Implicit. Includes a state map with the highest level of implicit bias.
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2010’s] [Implicit Bias] [Policing] [Implicit Racism] [Accountability] [White Privilege] [White Culture] [White Supremacy] [Systemic Racism]

New HUD Report Shows Continued Discrimination Against People of Color

by Mijin Cha | June 2013
People of color looking for homes are told about and shown fewer homes and apartments than their white counterparts. Earlier this year, we highlighted how the racial wealth gap tripled from 1984-2009, mainly due to structural barriers to wealth accumulation for households of color, including rampant housing discrimination that constrained where African-American families could live and restricted access to affordable home loans. A new report from HUD shows the extent of housing discrimination against people of color. The report found that people of color looking for homes are told about and shown fewer homes and apartments than their white counterparts. This type of discrimination raises the costs of the housing search for people of color and restricts their housing options.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2010’s] [Housing] [Economics] [History] [Systemic Racism] [Denial] [Accountability] [White Privilege] [White Culture] [White Supremacy]

The Death Penalty in Black and White: Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Decides

by Death Penalty Information Center | June 1998
The results of two new studies which underscore the continuing injustice of racism in the application of the death penalty are being released through this report. The first study documents the infectious presence of racism in the death penalty, and demonstrates that this problem has not slackened with time, nor is it restricted to a single region of the country. The other study identifies one of the potential causes for this continuing crisis: those who are making the critical death penalty decisions in this country are almost exclusively white.
From the days of slavery in which black people were considered property, through the years of lynchings and Jim Crow laws, capital punishment has always been deeply affected by race. Unfortunately, the days of racial bias in the death penalty are not a remnant of the past.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [Slavery] [1990’s] [History] [White Supremacy] [White Privilege] [Systemic Racism] [Silencing POC] [Accountability] [Prison System]

Black Kids Are Way More Likely to be Punished in Schools than White Kids, Study Finds

by German Lopez | April 2018
Whether and how a child is punished for acting up in school could depend on his race, a new report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found. The report found that black students in K-12 schools are far more likely to be disciplined — whether through suspension or referral to law enforcement — than their counterparts of other races. Charts show the topline finding, demonstrating that black children are overrepresented based on their actual population in the student body.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2010’s] [Systemic Racism] [White Privilege] [History] [White Culture] [Accountability]

Making Sure That #BlackLivesMatter is Not about Your Need to #DoSomething!

by Brian Corr | June 2020
A few people have written me to say they struggled with one particular part of what I wrote in my last piece, …But does my Black Life Matter? Here’s what I wrote: “But always beware the temptation to choose which Black people to follow and then using your privilege to promote them.” …I am asking you to examine your own need for agency, to examine your desire to take action, to examine the entitlement and privilege that allows you to decide what you want to do and to examine all the life experience that tells you that you should be in charge — even as you “follow Black leadership.”
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2020’s] [Black Lives Matter] [White Privilege] [Accountability]

Influencers are Doing blackface to ‘show Solidarity’ with BLM

by Brit Dawson | June 2020
One group seemingly still clueless about how to support Black Lives Matter is influencers. First, they were posing at protests for clout, and now they’re doing blackface to ‘show solidarity’ with the movement. In an Instagram post, satirist and socio-political activist Saint Hoax shared screenshots of influencers who had painted their skin Black, along with a brief history of blackface. They wrote: “How can you ‘spread awareness’ about a subject you know so little about? If you genuinely care about a cause, the least you can do is educate yourself about it.” They continued: “It’s infuriating that we still need to educate people about the racist and painful history of blackface. We shouldn’t be having this conversation in 2020.”
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2020’s] [Accountability] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [White Supremacy] [Black Lives Matter] [White Culture] [Myths] [Strategies]

Flogging: Holes Dug in Ground to Protect Unborn Children of Pregnant Slaves

by Jae Jones | March 2020
Most slave women worked in the fields right along with the men, enduring hard labor from sun up to sun down. Some slave women who were chosen to work inside the main house. Early adolescence for female slaves was often difficult because of the threat of exploitation. For some young women, puberty marked the beginning of a lifetime of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse from masters and mistresses, overseers, and male slaves.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2020’s] [Slavery] [History] [Systemic Racism] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [Accountability]

Huxley’s Adoption Story is Part of a Much Larger Narrative about Race, Disability and Abuse

by Lydia X. Z. Brown | May 2020
By now, you’ve probably heard about the YouTube influencers who made international news for abandoning their autistic child after adopting him from China almost three years ago. Huxley, originally adopted by the Stauffers, is one of thousands of children, many children of colour in the Global South who are adopted each year by predominantly white families in the Global North. Since his adoption – which was documented for YouTube in meticulous detail, including the fact that Huxley was disabled, the Stauffers have filmed numerous videos of him for their YouTube channel that they monetised and gained major corporate sponsors for producing. They filmed and posted videos that showed Huxley having meltdowns, which are terrifying, vulnerable moments. They are extremely emotionally, cognitively and physically draining for autistic people. They filmed and posted videos that showed Huxley with duct tape on his hands because his mother wanted to stop him from sucking his thumb. All of this is painfully familiar for autistic people, who routinely see nonautistic parents of autistic children exploiting and monetising their children for internet fame with no regard for their children’s autonomy, dignity, or privacy.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [Systemic Racism] [White Supremacy] [Asian] [White Privilege] [White Defensiveness] [White Blindness] [Accountability]

The White Privilege of Ignoring the News

by John Pavlovitz | June 2020
If there is evidence of privilege, that’s it: to feel so insulated from adversity, so inoculated from suffering, so immune from struggle, so unaffected by reality—that you could simply turn off the news, because the act feels inconsequential to your existence. It reveals that not only do you feel the events of the day have no tangible or lasting effect on you, but you’re blissfully ignorant to the way those events are painful, invasive, and even deadly to less fortunate people who lack the luxury of being oblivious; that soft, warm, intoxicating place you’ve chose to nestle down into while the world is burning.
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2020’s] [White Privilege] [White Blindness] [Denial] [Accountability]

A 1970 Law Led to the Mass Sterilization of Native American Women. That History Still Matters

by Brianna Theobald | November 2019
Over the six-year period that had followed the passage of the Family Planning Services and Population Research Act of 1970, physicians sterilized perhaps 25% of Native American women of childbearing age, and there is evidence suggesting that the numbers were actually even higher. Some of these procedures were performed under pressure or duress, or without the women’s knowledge or understanding. The law subsidized sterilizations for patients who received their health care through the Indian Health Service and for Medicaid patients, and black and Latina women were also targets of coercive sterilization in these years.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2010’s] [Indigenous] [Systemic Racism] [History] [Accountability] [White Supremacy] [Silencing POC]

6 Things White People Say That Highlight Their Privilege If You Want to be an Ally in the Fight against Racism, Start by Acknowledging Your White Privilege. Then Take Action that Supports the Black Community.

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]

A Quick Read for White People Who Don’t Consider Themselves Racist

*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]

I’m Black and Afraid of ‘White Fragility’; Robin DiAngelo’s Corporate-Friendly Anti-Racist Screed Actually Reinforces Racist Beliefs

by Cedrick-Michael Simmons | June 2020
DiAngelo views racism as a problem to be combated with sensitivity training. The premise of diversity and cultural competency training is that by educating European-Americans on the persistence and consequences of racism, they can be transformed into non-racist (or, ideally, anti-racist) individuals. But diversity training has been shown to be a largely ineffective way to address racism in American workplaces. These lectures and workshops do little—if anything—in the way of addressing the structural tensions that workers must navigate on a daily basis.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [White Fragility/Tears] [Anti-Racism] [Accountability] [Art & Culture] [Black Lives Matter] [Denial] [Myths] [Assumptions] [Systemic Racism]

Black Women Need to be Free; OPINION: We Must Work to Re-Build the System in Order to Amplify Black Women’s Voices and Prioritize Our Freedom

by Whitney Pirtle | July 2020
Black women live at the intersection of multiple systems of oppression: structural racism, structural sexism, and capitalism, which constrain the opportunity to live freely and fully. Thus, Kimberlé Crenshaw argued that “any analysis that does not take intersectionality into account cannot sufficiently address the particular manner in which Black women are subordinated.” Intersectional analysis should be employed as a unifying public health framework, especially as related to the pandemic and police brutality.
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2020’s] [Systemic Racism] [Policing] [Silencing POC] [Accountability] [Employment]

You Want a Confederate Monument? My Body Is a Confederate Monument; The Black People I Come from Were Owned and Raped by the White People I Come from. Who Dares to Tell Me to Celebrate Them?

by Caroline Randall Williams | June 2020
I have rape-colored skin. My light-brown-blackness is a living testament to the rules, the practices, the causes of the Old South.
If there are those who want to remember the legacy of the Confederacy, if they want monuments, well, then, my body is a monument. My skin is a monument. Dead Confederates are honored all over this country — with cartoonish private statues, solemn public monuments and even in the names of United States Army bases. It fortifies and heartens me to witness the protests against this practice and the growing clamor from serious, nonpartisan public servants to redress it. But there are still those — like President Trump and the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell — who cannot understand the difference between rewriting and reframing the past. I say it is not a matter of “airbrushing” history, but of adding a new perspective.
I am a black, Southern woman, and of my immediate white male ancestors, all of them were rapists. My very existence is a relic of slavery and Jim Crow.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2020’s] [Confederate Monuments] [History] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Blindness] [Slavery] [Systemic Racism] [Accountability]

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]

The False Promise of Anti-Racism Books

*Paywall Alert

by Saida Grundy | July 2020
Texts that seek to raise the collective American Consciousness are rendered futile without concrete systemic changes. …When offered in lieu of actionable policies regarding equity, consciousness raising can actually undermine Black progress by presenting increased knowledge as the balm for centuries of abuse. Executives at major corporations such as Amazon, for instance, have invited race scholars and writers to “help [them] unpack” such topics as the American justice system and how to be an anti-racist ally. Yet Black employees at many of these companies have pointed to the hypocrisy of in-house dialogues about race while practices like labor exploitation continue. In the form of hollow public statements and company-sponsored conversations, consciousness raising is often toothless.
TAGS: [Individual Change] [Collective Action] [2020’s] [Anti-Racism] [Confederate Monuments] [White Blindness] [Denial] [Accountability] [Implicit Racism] [White Privilege] [White Culture] [White Supremacy] [History]

Liberal, Progressive — and Racist? The Sierra Club Faces its White-Supremacist History

by Darryl Fears and Steven Mufson | July 2020
As Confederate statues fall across the country, Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune said in an early morning post on the group’s website, “it’s time to take down some of our own monuments, starting with some truth-telling about the Sierra Club’s early history.” Muir, who fought to preserve Yosemite Valley and Sequoia National Forest, once referred to African Americans as lazy “Sambos,” a racist pejorative that many black people consider to be as offensive as the n-word.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2020’s] [Confederate Monuments] [POC Climate Action] [Indigenous] [Black Lives Matter] [Accountability] [History] [White Supremacy] [White Blindness] [Economics] [Employment] [Anti-Racism] [White Privilege] [White Culture] [Systemic Racism] [Strategies]

White Supremacy Shaped American Christianity, Researcher Says

by Carol Kuruvilla | July 2020
It wouldn’t be hard for many white Christians to find examples of white supremacy’s claims on their own family’s trees, Jones said. But white Christians’ image of themselves and their religion has been warped by what Jones calls “white-supremacy-induced amnesia.” Jones wrestles with that amnesia in his new book, “White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity.” He argues that white Christians ― from evangelicals in the South to mainline Protestants in the Midwest to Catholics in the Northeast ― weren’t just complacent onlookers while political leaders debated what to do about slavery, segregation and discrimination. White supremacist theology played a key role in shaping the American church from the very beginning, influencing not just the way denominations formed but also white Christians’ theology about salvation itself.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2020’s] [Faith-Based/Spiritual] [History] [Slavery] [Systemic Racism] [White Supremacy] [White Blindness] [White Privilege] [Police Shootings] [Accountability] [Politics]

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]

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: [Strategies] [2020’s] [White Supremacy] [Silencing POC] [Systemic Racism] [White Privilege] [Black Lives Matter] [White Culture] [Economics] [Accountability] [White Defensiveness] [White Blindness]

7 Ways We Know Systemic Racism Is Real

by Ben & Jerry’s | Month Unknown 2020
While Barack Obama’s presidency was indeed a profound and meaningful mark of true progress, racism, of course, never really went away. The presence of a black president, hockey starOpens a new window, or movie-franchise superheroOpens a new window, however welcome and exciting, cannot reverse centuries of racial injustice. In fact, racism is built right into every level of our society in ways that might surprise you. Includes a video from Demos “We Must Talk about Race to Fix Economic Inequality.”
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [Systemic Racism] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [Employment] [Economics] [Prison System] [Housing] [Policing] [Advocacy] [White Privilege] [White Supremacy] [Accountability] [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]

Five White Louisiana Judges Uphold Life Sentence of Black Man Jailed for Stealing Hedge Clippers 23 Years Ago

by Namrata Tripathi | August 2020
A man from Louisiana, who was sentenced to life in prison for stealing a pair of hedge clippers over 20 years ago, will continue to remain in prison after the state Supreme Court denied a request to review his case. Fair Wayne Bryant, a 62-year-old Black man, was convicted for stealing garden equipment in 1997, which landed him in prison for the rest of his life. Bryant, in 2000, had appealed his life sentence to be unconstitutionally excessive and his case had made its way up to the high court of the state. However, his hopes were dashed after a Louisiana Supreme Court panel, consisting of five White men and one Black woman, upheld his life sentence 5-1 last week. The only person to dissent was the Black judge on the panel, Supreme Court Justice Bernette Johnson.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [Prison System] [Systemic Racism] [Silencing POC] [Accountability] [Policing] [Economics] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Blindness]

Whitesplaining: The Conversation about White Progressive Liberal Racism That We Aren’t Having

by Shanta Lee Gander | August 2020
Whitesplaining, or white people explaining things to Black people, is a phenomenon. Many of us Black folx swap stories with our friends or with family members as we deconstruct these situations and the assumptions. In this current moment of interrogating the culture, I’ve been re-visiting these moments of whitesplaining in my own life as an extension of an insidious kind of racism that often goes unnoticed. It is the other part of the conversation about race that America needs to have. I’ve lived in Vermont for 10 years. Here, the white progressive racism is partly due to the narrative that Vermont banned adult slavery in its constitution in 1777. With closer examination of the research conducted by Dr. Harvey Amani Whitfield, one learns that this “fact” is full of inconsistencies. Vermont at the time was still an environment that allowed slave owners to place ads for runaway slaves.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2020’s] [White Privilege] [White Blindness] [White Culture] [White Supremacy] [Definitions] [Individual Change] [History] [Slavery] [White Fragility/Tears] [Systemic Racism] [White Defensiveness] [Accountability]

After 78 Days, Michigan Teen Who was Jailed for Failing to Complete Her Homework While on Probation is Released

by Dawn R. Wolfe | August 2020
“Grace,” the 15-year-old Black girl who garnered international attention after she was jailed for failing to complete schoolwork while on probation, has been released after spending 78 days in a facility where at least four staffers have reportedly tested positive for COVID-19. Grace, who has been identified only by her middle name because of her status as a minor, was originally incarcerated in May by Oakland County Circuit Judge Mary Ellen Brennan. On Friday, the Michigan Court of Appeals ordered her immediate release pending an appeal of Brennan’s initial ruling. Brennan herself refused a motion to send Grace home on July 20. Criminal justice advocates say they believe the overwhelming attention given to the case—along with pressure brought on by tomorrow’s state primary—played a role in Grace’s release.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2020’s] [-ing While Black] [Systemic Racism] [Accountability] [Prison System] [Black Lives Matter] [White Supremacy]

Discover What Indigenous Land You’re on with This App

by Emily Long | August 2020
You may have seen land acknowledgments on social media, where instead of geotagging a photo, posters identify the Indigenous people the land belongs to;or maybe you’ve heard a land acknowledgment presented at the beginning of a live concert or theater performance (remember those?). Land acknowledgments help us better understand, reflect on, and celebrate the history of Indigenous peoples, languages, territories, and treaties. So how do you learn more about specific land and the people it belongs to?
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2020’s] [Indigenous] [White Supremacy] [History] [Accountability] [White Privilege]