by Jennifer Tsai | June 2021
Jordan is now 18, loves dogs, and is more interested in telling me about his college classes than the fact that he was recently hospitalized for seizures, a complication of his illness. He’ll need a kidney transplant soon. He would be closer to getting that kidney transplant, if only he were categorized as white. A patient’s level of kidney disease is judged by an estimation of glomerular filtration rate, or eGFR, which normally sits between 90 and 120 in a patient with two healthy kidneys. In the United States, patients can’t be listed for a kidney transplant until they’re deemed sick enough—until their eGFR dips below a threshold of 20. Jordan is biracial, with one Black grandparent and three white ones. His estimated GFR depends on how you interpret this fact: A white Jordan has a GFR of 17—low enough to secure him a spot on the organ waitlist. A Black Jordan has a GFR of 21.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2020’s] [Systemic Racism] [White Supremacy] [White Privilege] [White Culture] [Myths] [Black Lives Matter] [Strategies] [Advocacy] [Health Disparities]
Resource Links Tagged with "Advocacy"
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]
Anti-Racism is about Social Responsibility, Not Racial Guilt; Allyship is a Journey, and Shame Has Never Been the Destination
by Tim Wise | November 2021
Worried that racial justice activism might embolden progressives pushing for meaningful equity initiatives in policing, the workplace, and elsewhere, conservatives latched on to this strategy — attacking classroom discussions of racism as “indoctrination” — so as to limit awareness of racial injustice among youth, energized by last summer’s events. The right claims anti-racist curriculum is about guilt-tripping white students. One of the primary weapons in the rhetorical arsenal of this advancing army has been the claim that anti-racist curriculum seeks to make white children feel guilt and shame because of their skin color.
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2020’s] [Anti-Racism] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [Social Justice] [Policing] [Employment] [White Fragility/Tears] [History] [Teachers] [Systemic Racism] [Slavery] [Black Lives Matter] [Indigenous] [Advocacy][CRT]
BLACK LIVES MATTER; How White Feminism Failed in the Age of Trayvon Martin
by Rachel Cargle | February 2022
It was the Women’s March on January 21, 2017, that opened my eyes to the racist underbelly of the feminist movement. I was so eager to be a part of what was happening that I partnered with a friend of mine to organize a busload of people to leave from Manhattan’s Lower East Side for our nation’s capital at 4 a.m that day. … Admittedly, it didn’t dawn on me right away. It wasn’t until weeks after the march — after I was called in by a group of Black peers inviting me to question the ways white feminism gave space for my Blackness — that I took a pause to really think it through. At the march, there was an abundance of pink pussy hats but a disturbing lack of Black people among the millions chanting. It was alarming to consider, especially since the country remained in the midst of racial unrest. Audre Lorde once said, “I am a Black Feminist. I mean I recognize that my power as well as my primary oppressions come as a result of my blackness as well as my womaness, and therefore my struggles on both of these fronts are inseparable.” Years after she spoke these words, I felt the same tense inseparability of my doubly oppressed identity.
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2020’s] [Systemic Racism] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [White Blindness] [Anti-Racism] [Social Justice] [Racial Terrorism] [Policing] [Intersectionality] [Black Lives Matter] [Advocacy]
Jim Crow Laws
by history.com Editors| Updated January 2022
Jim Crow laws were a collection of state and local statutes that legalized racial segregation. Named after a Black minstrel show character, the laws—which existed for about 100 years, from the post-Civil War era until 1968—were meant to marginalize African Americans by denying them the right to vote, hold jobs, get an education or other opportunities. Those who attempted to defy Jim Crow laws often faced arrest, fines, jail sentences, violence and death.
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Dear White Allies: Don’t Appropriate Our Anger
by Anoosh Jorjorian | June 2020
Note to white allies: When you beat up on your fellow white people for being ignorant about racism, you are NOT HELPING. Those naïve white people just waking up to racial justice? That want to do the right thing but are saying the wrong thing because they were just born to the struggle yesterday? They are YOUR JOB #1. YOU are supposed to empathize with their white fragility, get them past their self-centeredness.
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2020’s] [White Fragility/Tears] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [Indigenous] [Black Lives Matter] [Advocacy]
Private Museums Could Face NAGPRA Scrutiny; Museums and Other Institutions that Accept Stimulus Funds Could Be Required to Repatriate Indigenous Artifacts and Remains
by Nanette Kelley | May 2021
Small museums and private institutions that accept federal CARES Act money or other stimulus funds could be forced to relinquish thousands of Indigenous items and ancestral remains now in their collections.
Under the Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990, museums or other institutions that accept federal funding must compile an inventory of Indigenous cultural items and initiate repatriation of the collections and remains to tribes or family members. At least two museums are now facing possible scrutiny – the nonprofit Favell Museum of Native American Artifacts and Contemporary Western Art in Klamath Falls, Oregon, and the End of the Trail Museum, which is connected to the Trees of Mystery gift shop in the redwood forest in Klamath, California.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2020’s] [Indigenous] [Art & Culture] [Silencing POC] [History] [Politics] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [Economics] [Systemic Racism] [Advocacy] [Social Justice]
In Artist Adrian Brandon’s Incomplete Portraits, A Year of Life Equals One Minute of Color
by Grace Ebert | June 2020
When Adrian Brandon starts to color a portrait, he sets a timer. For his rendering of Breonna Taylor, the clock is set to 26 minutes—for George Floyd, 46 minutes, for Tony McDade, 38, and for Aiyana Stanley Jones, just seven. “When the alarm sounds, I am hit with a wave of emotions ranging from anger, to deep sadness, to hopelessness, to feeling lucky that I am still here,” he says. The Brooklyn-based artist is working on Stolen, a series of partially filled-in depictions of Black people murdered by police. Each portrait remains incomplete as Brandon only colors one minute for each year of the subject’s life before it was cut short. “Aside from being able to give the viewer a visual of the various ages affected by police violence, the timer creates a lot of anxiety for me as the artist,” he says, wondering, “’When is the timer going off?’ ‘Will I be able to finish this eye?’ ‘Damn, I haven’t even gotten to the lips yet.’”
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [Art & Culture] [Racial Terrorism] [Police Shootings] [Policing] [Systemic Racism] [Black Lives Matter] [Advocacy]
How Black People Can Be Strong Allies to Asian Americans Right Now
by Char Adams | March 2021
“A big part of how to be allies in this moment is advocating with us,” said Alvina Wong, of the Asian Pacific Environmental Network. Thousands of hate incidents against Asian people across the country have been documented by advocacy groups in the last year, ranging in severity from spitting to the unprovoked push of an 84-year-old Thai American man in San Francisco who died of his injuries a few days later. These incidents have prompted the renewal of conversations about security in Asian American neighborhoods, privilege, solidarity and even anti-Blackness in response to the violence. That last element, activists say, devalues the decades of coalition building and allyship between Asian American and Black communities. But Russell Jeung, a professor of Asian American studies at San Francisco State University and co-founder of Stop AAPI Hate, notes that efforts to create a racial wedge between such groups only empowers the white supremacy that makes racist violence possible.
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‘Shut Down DAPL’: Lakota Youth Bring Black Snake to Biden’s Front Door
by Acee Agoyo | April 2021
Five years since the fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline became a worldwide movement, and four years after tribes and their allies took to the streets in protest, Lakota youth returned to the nation’s capital to once again hold the federal government to its trust and treaty responsibilities. Youth from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe and the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe traveled over 1,500 miles from their communities to make a simple yet pointed request. Shut down the Dakota Access Pipeline, which the federal courts have repeatedly determined was approved under a process that violated the law.
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2020’s] [Indigenous] [POC Climate Action] [Environment] [Politics] [Social Justice] [Justice System] [Systemic Racism] [Advocacy] [Role Model]
Carlisle Residents Urge Council ‘to Talk about the Scars’ before Solving Racial Equity
by Sue Gleiter | January 2021
Among the issues touched upon during the more than 2 1/2-hour meeting were affordable housing, the criminal justice system and schools, as well as the possibility of creating a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. “This is a first step. This is just opening the door to the conversation and it needs to be more than conversation and we need to actually do something,” said Deb Fulham-Winston, council member. “We need to understand it and we need to give people the time and the space to be able to bring their concerns to light,” she said.
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Ghosted by Allies: Why BIPOC Still Can’t Trust White People with Social Justice; We Always Knew Last Summer’s Allyship Was Fleeting
by Angie Franklin | February 2021
We all knew it was coming. I’d venture to say every single Black person in America not only knew it was coming but was actively waiting for it to happen. After the black square badge of anti-racism, the allyship die-off was not surprising, nor was it a new experience for us. What was new was Black Lives Matter and social justice going viral. All of a sudden people gave a fuck about us — or acted like they did — because it was trending and the perception of white people teetered on whether they showed public support for Black lives. … Few people are willing to consistently rub against the grain, bring up conversations about race with family, speak up for co-workers, step back or resign when a BIPOC person is more qualified, or question the status quo. Maybe they could do it for a week, or a few weeks, but six months later? Apparently not. The ghosted allies are those who spoke out against police brutality and murder, posted videos protesting in the streets, shed tears in their stories, followed as many Black accounts as they could find. This group was, for a moment, utterly shook by the reality of racism. But what they didn’t realize was their bewilderment — their shock — in waking up to what Black people go through every day in this country and have for hundreds of years was what added a real insult to injury.
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2020’s] [Social Justice] [Black Lives Matter] [White Fragility/Tears] [White Defensiveness] [White Privilege] [Advocacy] [White Supremacy] [Anti-Racism] [Policing] [Microaggressions] [Denial] [White Blindness] [Accountability]
A Forgotten Black Founding Father; Why I’ve Made it My Mission to Teach Others about Prince Hall
by Danielle Allen | March 2021
Many of us who live in Massachusetts know the basic outlines of this story and the early role the state played in standing against enslavement. But told in this traditional way, the story leaves out another transformative figure: Prince Hall, a free African American and a contemporary of John Adams. From his formal acquisition of freedom, in 1770, until his death, in 1807, Hall helped forge an activist Black community in Boston while elevating the cause of abolition to new prominence. Hall was the first American to publicly use the language of the Declaration of Independence for a political purpose other than justifying war against Britain. In January 1777, just six months after the promulgation of the Declaration and nearly three years before Adams drafted the state constitution, Hall submitted a petition to the Massachusetts legislature (or General Court, as it is styled) requesting emancipation, invoking the resonant phrases and founding truths of the Declaration itself.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2020’s] [History] [Role Model] [Black Lives Matter] [Slavery] [Teachers] [Silencing POC] [-ing While Black] [Advocacy] [Systemic Racism] [Social Justice] [Civil War]
Racism and ‘Years of Bullying’
by Jeffrey R. Young | February 2021
Dena Simmons, a prominent researcher of social-emotional learning, resigned from Yale University’s Center for Emotional Intelligence last month due to what she calls a pattern of behavior by some colleagues that left her feeling “tokenized, undermined and bullied.” The final straw for Simmons happened in June, during an antiracism town hall sponsored by Yale’s Child Study Center. Several people Zoombombed the event, yelling and typing racial slurs into the chat directed at Simmons. She quickly logged out of the forum, but colleagues encouraged her to return, and after she did, more unidentified participants attacked her with further racist comments.
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2020’s] [Silencing POC] [Systemic Racism] [-ing While Black] [Black Lives Matter] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [Social Justice] [Advocacy] [Teachers] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [Indigenous]
How Public Schools Fail to Recognize Black Prodigies
by Donna Ford | February 2021
The No. 1 reason for the underrepresentation of Black students in gifted education is the lack of teacher referrals, even when Black students are highly gifted. I definitely think stereotypes and biases hinder educators from seeing Black students’ gifts and talents. In most schools in the U.S., if you are not referred by an educator, you will not move through the identification pipeline for gifted education programs and services, as well as Advanced Placement. It starts and it stops with teachers. This is why Black families have reached out to me. They’re saying, “This predominantly white-female discipline” – meaning teachers – “is doing my child an injustice.” They’re saying, “I’m frustrated, I don’t know what to do other than pull my child out and home-school.” You don’t see a lot of Black home-schooling. If the parents are able to do it, they have the means.
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2020’s] [Teachers] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [Systemic Racism] [Implicit Racism] [Advocacy] [Environment] [History] [Black Lives Matter] [White Privilege]
Indiana University Health Responds to Black Doctor’s Video of COVID Treatment: Nursing Team ‘May Have Been Intimidated’
by Ishena Robinson | December 2020
Dr. Susan Moore died days before Christmas at 52, after a protracted battle to get racially equitable treatment at Indiana University Health North Hospital (IU), according to videos she posted on social media about her experience. In a press release from Indiana University Health, Murphy claimed that the nursing staff who cared for Dr. Moore—who she said left her unattended for hours without the pain medication she had to fight to receive—were likely “intimidated” by Moore as a patient.
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2020’s] [Health Disparities] [Systemic Racism] [Black Lives Matter] [Advocacy] [Implicit Bias] [White Privilege] [Individual Change] [Accountability]
Nez Perce Tribe reclaims 148 acres of ancestral land in Eastern Oregon
by Cassandra Profita | December 2020
The Nez Perce Tribe is reclaiming an ancestral village site in the Eastern Oregon town of Joseph more than a century after being pushed out the area. This month, the tribe purchased 148 acres of an area known as “the place of boulders,” or Am’sáaxpa. Chief Joseph held council on the ridge above, before a sweeping view of the Wallowa Mountains. Hundreds of tribal members would camp there at the peak of the fishing season and catch sockeye salmon along the Wallowa River. “There’s a lot of excitement buzzing around,” Nez Perce Tribal Executive Committee Chairman Shannon Wheeler said. “We feel fortunate to be at this juncture in time to be able to say that we are on our way home. We feel the landscape misses us, and we miss the landscape.”
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [Indigenous] [History] [Environment] [Systemic Racism] [Myths] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Blindness] [Advocacy]
Are Jews Indigenous People? Here’s What a Native American Jew Thinks
by Hen Mazzig | October 2020
Von Schlegel draws her definition of indigenous peoples from the United Nations, which defines the term as inheritors of unique cultures who have retained social, cultural, economic and political characteristics distinct from those of the dominant societies in which they live. She noted how indigenous peoples have sought recognition of their identities, lifestyles and their right to ancestral lands throughout history, but their rights have continuously been violated by empires, nation-states and external colonial powers. … As a member of both communities, von Schlegel has experienced firsthand how Pueblo People and Jews share ritual practices of giving thanks for the food, land, knowledge and other gifts from our Creator. In particular, she believes what Jews do every Friday, as we ritually welcome in the “Angels of Peace” to mark the beginning of Shabbat, resembles customary native rituals of welcoming spirits or ancestors.
TAGS: [Collective Action] [Indigenous] [2020’s] [History] [Systemic Racism] [Advocacy] [Social Justice] [Economics] [Politics] [Faith-Based/Spiritual] [Denial]
The Last Free River of Manitoba
by Stephanie Wood | November 2020
The Seal River is Manitoba’s only major waterway that hasn’t been dammed — and five Indigenous communities have banded together to keep it that way by establishing a protected area. Tadoule Lake is a Sayisi Dene community nestled in the Seal River Watershed, a vast, intact landscape that stretches across northern Manitoba from Hudson Bay almost to the Saskatchewan border. It’s dotted with trees, lakes and wetlands. Sandy hills left behind from glacial rivers, called eskers, snake across the land. The Sayisi Dene and the caribou have lived in relationship with the Seal River Watershed for many generations.
The 50,000-square-kilometre area — about the size of Nova Scotia — has escaped dams, mining and colonial settlement. It’s home to millions of birds, along with polar bears, moose, beluga whales and, of course, its namesake seals. The Seal River is also the only major river in Manitoba that is not dammed.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2020’s] [Indigenous] [Environment] [History] [POC Climate Action] [Justice System] [Systemic Racism] [Housing] [Advocacy] [Role Model] [Strategies]
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]
Teaching Indigenous Star Stories; Educators like Wilfred Buck Know that Astronomy Did Not, in Fact, Start with Aristotle and End with Neil DeGrasse Tyson
by Kelly Boutsalis | November 2020
When some Cree people look at the sky during summer months, they see Ochekatchakosuk, a group of stars in the shape of a fisher, a weasel-like animal related to the wolverine. According to Cree teaching, a long time ago (likely during the Ice Age), there was no summer in the northern hemisphere. The animals of the region wanted to find summer and bring it back, and the fisher, Ochek, was selected for the task. After he succeeded, he escaped into the sky, and the Creator stamped his shape into the stars. In spring and summer evenings, Ochek is located high in the sky, inviting celebrations of warmer weather; in autumn and winter, he appears closer to the horizon—a reminder to be grateful of the passing seasons.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [Indigenous] [History] [Silencing POC] [Advocacy] [Role Model] [White Culture] [White Supremacy] [Denial]
Black Professor at Loyola University Maryland Creates a Place for Positive Conversations about Race
by John-John Williams IV | December 2020
A series of deadly events culminated with Karsonya “Kaye” Wise Whitehead helping create a place at Loyola University Maryland where she wants positive conversations about race to exist and flourish. … Whitehead wants to bring students, teachers, community members and academics into the institute to train, discuss and devise solutions to combat racism. That means offering a curriculum and diversity equity and inclusion training for K-12 teachers through the institute’s Center for Teaching and Learning, which will be offered starting summer 2022. Junior fellowships will be offered to college students around the country so they can participate in discussions and research focused on race through the institute’s Center for Research and Culture as soon as this spring.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [Advocacy] [Systemic Racism] [Teachers] [Policing] [Police Shootings] [Role Model] [Black Lives Matter] [-ing While Black] [Anti-Racism] [History] [Individual Change] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts]
Episcopal Church Established by Baltimore Slave Owners Creates $500,000 Reparations Fund
by Jonathan M. Pitts | January 2021
A Baltimore Episcopal church founded by slaveholders in the 1860s says it will spend $500,000 over the next five years to establish a fund intended as reparations for slavery.
Members of Memorial Episcopal Church in Bolton Hill voted Sunday to set aside $100,000 to donate in the next year to community organizations doing “justice-centered work.” The fund aims to address race-based inequalities that took root during slavery and proliferated for generations in the church and in the community at large.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [Faith-Based/Spiritual] [Reparations] [Social Justice] [Systemic Racism] [Role Model] [Housing] [Environment] [Politics] [Racial Covenants] [History] [Civil War] [Collective Action] [Confederate Monuments] [Advocacy]
“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]
Black Farmers Have Been Robbed of Land. A New Bill Would Give Them a “Quantum Leap” Toward Justice. “This is the Black Farmers Civil Rights Act of 2020, and it’s Long Overdue.”
by Tom Philpott | November 2020
A new Senate bill, called the Justice for Black Farmers Act, set to be released November 30, would mount a long-delayed federal effort to reverse the “destructive forces that were unleashed upon Black farmers over the past century—one of the dark corners of shame in American history,” lead sponsor Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) told Mother Jones. …The Justice for Black Farmers Act’s much more modest proposal would amount to an “equitable balancing of the scales after decades of systemic racism within the USDA that disadvantaged Black farmers, excluded them from loans, and other programs, [and] prevented them from holding on to their land,” Booker said.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [Civil War] [Slavery] [White Supremacy] [Systemic Racism] [Politics] [Reparations] [Advocacy] [History] [Collective Action] [Racial Covenants]
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]
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]
Dear White Parents Of My Black Child’s Friends: I Need Your Help
by Maralee Bradley | June 2016
I’ve been wrestling with talking to you about some things I think you need to know. I’ve wrestled with it because I feel my own sense of shame—shame that I didn’t know or understand these issues before they touched my family. I’ve felt fear that you’ll respond in subtle ways that make it clear you aren’t safe for my child. I’ve been concerned that you won’t believe me and then I’ll feel more angry than if I hadn’t said anything. But my son is getting older, and as he transitions from an adorable black boy to a strong black man, I know the assumptions about him will change. And I need your help in keeping him safe.
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2010’s] [Assumptions] [Policing] [Colorblindness] [Systemic Racism] [Anti-Racism] [Individual Change] [Advocacy] [White Privilege]
Racism Is Killing the Planet; The Ideology of White Supremacy Leads the Way Toward Disposable People and a Disposable Natural World
by Hop Hopkins | June 2020
…As I struggled to maintain my posture and keep up the rhythm, I thought about the level of commitment it takes to hold someone down for nine minutes straight. The realization horrified me. The cop who has been charged with murdering George Floyd had to have been deeply committed to taking his life. The police officer had so many chances to let up the pressure, to let George live. Yet the officer made the choice not to. To spend nine minutes taking the life-breath from another person: That is what white supremacy does to white people. That is what white supremacy does to the rest of us too. White supremacy robs each of us of our humanity. It causes white people to view Black people as less than human. Every one of those cops watching George die was convinced that the man pinned to the ground was less than human, was in some way disposable. During the street protests and marches of the past two weeks, many people carried signs that read “Racism Is Killing Us.” It’s no exaggeration to say that racism and white supremacy harm all of us, because in addition to robbing us of our humanity, racism is also killing the planet we all share.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [Racial Terrorism] [Policing] [Systemic Racism] [Black Lives Matter] [POC Climate Action] [Advocacy] [Indigenous] [White Supremacy] [White Privilege] [Collective Action]
How to be a Good White Ally, According to Activists; Three Experts on What it Does and Doesn’t Mean to be an Ally, Now and Always
by Emily Stewart | June 2020
There are good ways — and there are less good ways — to be a white ally right now. Do take cues from black leaders and create space for their voices to be heard. Don’t think a performative emotional post on Instagram about your knowledge of racism does the trick. Do not center your feelings during this time of social unrest — an uprising that’s about racist violence against black Americans. … “Allyship is language, and being a co-conspirator is about doing the work,” said Ben O’Keefe, an activist and former senior aide to Sen. Elizabeth Warren. “It’s taking on the issue of racism and oppression as your own issue, even though you’ll never truly understand the damage that it does.”
TAGS: [Individual Change] [Black Lives Matter] [Anti-Racism] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [White Fragility/Tears] [Economics] [Policing] [Assumptions] [Advocacy] [White Supremacy] [White Blindness] [White Culture] [2020’s]
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Dear White People
Being Allies
Reparations
Spiritual Foundations
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