Resource Links Tagged with "Assumptions"

Black Student Who Was Knocked Unconscious by Florida Officer Is ‘Traumatized’ and Seriously Injured, Family Says

by Zack Linly | February 2021
Last week, The Root reported that a Black high school student was body-slammed and knocked unconscious by a school resource officer at Liberty High School in Kissimmee, Fla. The Osceola County Sheriff’s Department said the officer was trying to stop a fight between her and another student, but video footage of the incident recorded by another student has since gone viral and has understandably raised questions about police use of force, the necessity of police officers on school grounds and, of course, racism. Those concerns are likely to be compounded now that the girl’s family is speaking out saying that she was “traumatized” by the incident and that she’s suffered serious injuries.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2020’s] [Policing] [Assumptions] [Systemic Racism] [Black Lives Matter] [White Defensiveness] [White Privilege] [White Culture] [White Supremacy]

Former Falmouth Students Question Racial Disparity in Discipline

by Jessica Hill | February 2021
When freshman Adaesia O’Garro was accused of threatening another student at Falmouth High School in 2018, she was criminally charged and suspended for 10 months while her case made its way through the long court process. The charges, which included assault and battery, larceny and distributing material of a child in the nude, were later dismissed by Judge James J. Torney Jr., according to court records O’Garro shared with the Times. But O’Garro, who is Black, missed her sophomore year and, now a senior, continues to deal with the aftermath as she works to graduate in June with her class.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2020’s] [Systemic Racism] [Black Lives Matter] [White Privilege] [White Culture] [White Supremacy] [Social Justice] [-ing While Black] [Denial] [Calling Police] [Accountability] [Justice System]

The Weaponization of Whiteness in Schools; It’s Time to Recognize and Stop the Pattern

by Coshandra Dillard | Fall 2020
Typically, the weaponization of whiteness happens this way: There is a demonstrated sense of entitlement, anger and a need for retaliation, feigned fear and, finally, white fragility. It’s easy to recognize this pattern when it’s caught on video. We can observe for ourselves racial slurs, exaggerated fear and the privilege of whiteness forcefully taking up space. But when we publicly shame white people caught on video or demand severe penalties for their transgressions, we are individualizing racism rather than seeing how it can easily manifest in any white person because of how whiteness works in our society.
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2020’s] [White Supremacy] [White Privilege] [White Culture] [White Fragility/Tears] [Systemic Racism] [Teachers] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [Black Lives Matter] [-ing While Black] [White Defensiveness] [Calling Police] [Economics] [Assumptions] [Individual Change] [Latino/a] [Accountability] [Policing]

Whitesplaining Explained

by Chloe Edwards | February 2021
Mansplaining is a pejorative term used to describe the action of a man commenting on or explaining something to a woman in an often condescending or oversimplified way. … While there are obstacles for all women and stereotypes related to competence, Black women specifically face concrete ceilings that supersede gender as they are doubly oppressed. Black women are ranked the most educated group by race. … While many have heard of the terminology mansplaining, most may not be familiar with the concept whitesplaining. Whitesplaining is when white people condescendingly explain something — typically about race as well as other topics— to Black, indigenous or people of color. Whitesplaining shows up in a variety of common ways, so much so, the categories keep growing.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2020’s] [Microaggressions] [Slavery] [Cognitive Dissonance] [White Supremacy] [Systemic Racism] [Black Lives Matter] [Implicit Racism] [Indigenous] [Colorblindness] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts]

Understanding Africa: Shattering Myths about the Culture of the Second-Largest Continent

by Aukram Burton | February 2021
African culture is vastly misunderstood in western societies. This misunderstanding continues to be perpetuated by educational and media institutions in the Western world that consistently misrepresent the image and contributions of African culture and ethics to the world. For centuries, European-centric thinking has justified colonialism and imperialism as a “civilizing mission” meant to save the African “savages” who live in “sh–holes” often characterized by terms like “exotic,” “primitive” or “pagan,” which is a misconception. This thinking is rooted in the age of European Enlightenment in the 17th and 18th centuries. This movement provided an intellectual backdrop for European theories about human differences.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2020’s] [Myths] [History] [Definitions] [Slavery] [Systemic Racism] [White Supremacy] [Economics] [White Blindness]

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]

We Were the Last of the Nice Negro Girls

by Anna Deavere Smith | February 2021
This article is part of “Inheritance,” a project about American history and Black life.
In 1968, history found us at a small women’s college, forging our Black identity and empowering our defiance. I knew nothing about the multitude of small colleges across the U.S. that had been founded, many by religious institutions, for the specific purpose of educating white women. Nor did I know anything about “suitcase schools,” some of which had reputations as glorified finishing schools where girls were focused on meeting boys attending nearby institutions. (They were called “suitcase schools” because on Fridays the girls took off to spend the weekend with their prospective husbands.) But in 1966, as my counselor put it to my mother, many of these all-girls colleges were “looking for nice Negro girls like Anna.” My father did not like the idea. He was adamant that I attend Howard or Morgan State or some other historically Black college or university, just as he and his siblings and my older cousins had done. My mother and I made our case about “opportunity.” He became emphatic: If I went to a white women’s college, he said, I’d have no social life. This was a legitimate concern—but up to that point, my father’s strictness had severely circumscribed my “social life.” Now he was suddenly concerned about it?
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [History] [Systemic Racism] [Black Lives Matter] [-ing While Black] [White Privilege] [White Culture] [Policing] [Social Justice] [Assumptions]

How to Talk to Your Kids about White Privilege

by Bridget Sharkey | February 2021
Teaching our kids about concepts like white privilege can be daunting. It’s not a concept that even adults can always grasp, so we might balk at confronting this topic with our children. But here’s the thing: Black parents don’t have the luxury of not discussing white privilege with their children. Refusing to discuss white privilege with our children because it makes us uncomfortable is, in and of itself, a white privilege. Black parents have no choice but to educate their children about the very real existence of racism and how their skin color puts them at much greater risk for police violence, poverty, lower wages, inadequate schooling, harsher sentencing, wrongful convictions and shorter life spans.
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2020’s] [Police Shootings] [White Privilege] [Policing] [Economics] [Employment] [Health Disparities] [Systemic Racism] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [Assumptions] [Black Lives Matter] [-ing While Black] [Environment] [Anti-Racism] [Social Justice]

Hypothetical Racism: The Trauma We Feel when White Terrorists Go Home and Innocent Black People are Shot on the Spot

by Taharee Jackson | January 2021
Hi. My name is Taharee Jackson, and I am suffering from HYPOTHETICAL RACISM.
I have not slept in two nights due to hypothetical racism-induced insomnia.
Allow me to explain. … Last night, on January 6, 2021, I was glued to the television, trying to see with my own eyes if the invasion of the United States Capitol by angry, White, gun-toting terrorists was actually happening. I kept waiting to see if throngs of police officers, special forces for insurrections, and National Guard members would show up in riot gear, handle them violently, spray rubber bullets, arrest them, shoot them, or even execute them on the spot. It happened. They did not. What truly kept me awake last night was my inability to identify the emotion I was feeling as a multiracial-mixed-with-Black woman watching the storming of the U.S. Capitol unfold WITHOUT CONSEQUENCE. Or, I should say, without the SAME consequences as the Antiracism and Black Lives Matter protests we just witnessed in all 50 states and the world over.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2020’s] [Systemic Racism] [Accountability] [Black Lives Matter] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [Definitions] [Policing] [Indigenous] [Social Justice] [Politics] [Silencing POC] [Economics] [Denial] [Justice System] [Police Shootings] [Racial Terrorism] [History] [Anti-Racism]

White Suffragettes Chose White Supremacy over Collective Liberation

by Reina Sultan | January 2020
White women love saying some variation of, “We are the granddaughters of the witches you could not burn”—even though no “witches” were actually burned at the stake during the Salem Witch Trials. It would be more accurate for them to say, “We are the granddaughters of the Suffragettes who sold out Black and brown women for their own political gain.” Because white women have been choosing whiteness since they fought for the right to vote.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2010’s] [Systemic Racism] [History] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [White Blindness] [Politics] [Indigenous] [Myths] [Silencing POC] [White Fragility/Tears] [Collective Action]

This African American Woman Got No Credit for Designing the Image of Roosevelt on the U.S Dime in 1944

by Elizabeth Ofosuah Johnson | August 2018
Selma Burke was born on December 31, 1900, and was the 7th of ten children to her parents. Her father worked in the railway service and was a church minister, while her mother was a stay at home mom. At a very young age, Selma showed artistic skill and would often draw or carve objects out of used paper and cardboard. … In 1943, Selma entered a national competition which she won. Sponsored by the Fine Arts Commission in Washington D.C, the competition was to create a profile portrait of the then U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt with a granted commission. Selma then wrote a letter to the president and was invited to the White House to do her sketch.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2010’s] [Systemic Racism] [History] [Art & Culture] [Silencing POC] [Myths] [Black Lives Matter] [Denial] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [White Supremacy]

Why Have I Never Heard of This?’: Phila Orchestra Revives America’s First Black Woman Composer

by Peter Crimmins | February 2021
Florence Price had one of her pieces performed in 1933, by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Since then, she has disappeared from the classical canon. “She shouldn’t be an obscure composer. It’s sensational music that’s been overlooked,” said Orchestra CEO Matías Tarnopolsky. “It raises questions of how canons of music are made. Here we have this brilliantly creative compositional voice that has been largely unheard since her death in the middle of the 20th century.” “In the musical world we have to ask: Why is this the case?” he added.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2020’s] [Art & Culture] [Silencing POC] [White Privilege] [White Culture] [White Blindness] [History]

Educators Who Consider Themselves ‘White Allies’ Are Dangerous When It Comes To Developing Anti-Racist Classrooms

by Dr. Sana Shaikh| | February 2021
She knew the importance of using “She/her/hers” adjectives at the beginning of each virtual work session. She joined the book club where Dr. Kendi’s work was being discussed. By every metric, large or small, she showed that she was, inevitably and truly, an ally. But therein, laid the problem. She had characterized herself as an anti-racist ally. Black and brown educators and children around her would not label her in the same way. In the background, students of color—largely Black and Latinx—would complain to other teachers of color that their voices were not being heard. They would pushback against the teacher-centric approach in the classroom and the unilateral way that power and privilege played out in the school. When those suggestions and feedback were brought up to the white leaders, there was pushback: This teacher did not intend to have a harmful impact. She was leading with good intentions. She simply forgot to implement the feedback. All and all, this teacher was protected by the systems of white supremacy and power. Instead of her being held accountable, the messenger was classified as simply being uninformed. The messenger had a Ph.D. in culturally responsive pedagogy.
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2020’s] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [Anti-Racism] [Teachers] [Black Lives Matter] [Latino/a] [White Privilege] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [Accountability] [Social Justice] [Assumptions] [White Blindness]

How the History of Blackface Is Rooted in Racism

by Alexis Clark | February 2019
Blackface began in the US after the Civil War as white performers played characters that demeaned and dehumanized African Americans. The portrayal of blackface–when people darken their skin with shoe polish, greasepaint or burnt cork and paint on enlarged lips and other exaggerated features, is steeped in centuries of racism. It peaked in popularity during an era in the United States when demands for civil rights by recently emancipated slaves triggered racial hostility. And today, because of blackface’s historic use to denigrate people of African descent, its continued use is still considered racist. “It’s an assertion of power and control,” says David Leonard , a professor of comparative ethnic studies and American studies at Washington State University. “It allows a society to routinely and historically imagine African Americans as not fully human. It serves to rationalize violence and Jim Crow segregation.”
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2010’s] [History] [Systemic Racism] [Civil War] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [Art & Culture] [Assumptions] [Myths] [White Blindness] [Social Justice] [Economics]

Teaching America’s Truth

*Paywall Alert
by Joe Heim | August 2019
For generations, children have been spared the whole, terrible reality about slavery’s place in U.S. history, but some schools are beginning to strip away the deception and evasions. “Think about this. For 246 years, slavery was legal in America. It wasn’t made illegal until 154 years ago,” the 26-year-old teacher told the 23 students sitting before him at Fort Dodge Middle School. “So, what does that mean? It means slavery has been a part of America much longer than it hasn’t been a part of America.” It is a simple observation, but it is also a revelatory way to think about slavery in America and its inextricable role in the country’s founding, evolution and present.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2010’s] [Slavery] [History] [Collective Action] [Myths] [White Culture]

The 1950s: Long Live the Lumbee

by Philip Gerard| July 2019
The Native Americans of Robeson County are strong and proud, but their history is marked by the struggle to overcome bias. In the 1950s, a watershed moment brings national attention to the Lumbee Tribe.
Through the early decades of the 20th century, the Lumbee Indians were not much known outside of Robeson County in the southeastern part of the state — though their forebears settled there by at least 1754, when an agent for colonial Gov. Arthur Dobbs discovered some 50 families living at the headwaters of the Little Pee Dee. His description was less than flattering: “a lawless People [who] possess the Lands without patent or paying quit rents.” Thus began a long history with white settlers during which the Lumbee struggled to gain respect.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2010’s] [Indigenous] [History] [Implicit Bias] [Myths] [Politics] [Systemic Racism] [Denial] [White Supremacy] [Health Disparities] [Racial Terrorism] [Justice System]

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]

Did You See the Law Enforcement Response to the Rioters Taking Over the Capitol? This Is What White Privilege Looks Like

by Petula Dvorak | January 2021
Everyone — millions of people — saw this coming. President Trump invited his followers to D.C. a month ago, promising them it’s “gonna be wild.” They planned the riots openly on social media for weeks, bragging about how many guns they’d bring and the mayhem they’d set off. They came by the thousands, and outside the White House, Trump rallied them to march on the Capitol on Wednesday, reassuring them that “after this, we’re going to walk down there, and I’ll be there with you.” (He wasn’t.)
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2020’s] [White Supremacy] [White Privilege] [White Culture] [White Defensiveness] [White Blindness] [Systemic Racism] [Politics] [Policing] [-ing While Black] [Civil War] [Accountability]

Denial Is the Heartbeat of America; When Have Americans Been Willing to Admit Who We Are?

by Ibram X. Kendi | January 2021
“Let me be very clear: The scenes of chaos at the Capitol do not reflect a true America. Do not represent who we are,” President-elect Joe Biden said during Wednesday’s siege. …To say that the attack on the U.S. Capitol is not who we are is to say that this is not part of us, not part of our politics, not part of our history. And to say that this is not part of America, American politics, and American history is a bald-faced denial. But the denial is normal. In the aftermath of catastrophes, when have Americans commonly admitted who we are? The heartbeat of America is denial. It is historic, this denial. Every American generation denies. America is establishing the freest democracy in the world, said the white people who secured their freedom during the 1770s and ’80s. America is the greatest democracy on Earth, said the property owners voting in the early 19th century. America is the beacon of democracy in world history, said the men who voted before the 1920s. America is the leading democracy in the world, said the non-incarcerated people who have voted throughout U.S. history in almost every state. America is the utmost democracy on the face of the Earth, said the primarily older and better-off and able-bodied people who are the likeliest to vote in the 21st century. America is the best democracy around, said the American people when it was harder for Black and Native and Latino people to vote in the 2020 election.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2020’s] [Systemic Racism] [Black Lives Matter] [Indigenous] [Latino/a] [Denial] [History] [Politics] [White Defensiveness] [White Blindness] [White Privilege] [White Culture] [White Supremacy] [Slavery] [Civil War] [Racial Terrorism] [Policing] [Police Shootings] [Economics]

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]

This Waltz Once Attributed to Strauss Is Actually by Indigenous Mexican Composer Juventino Rosas

by Stephen Raskauskas | May 2017
The waltz is typically associated with composers from German-speaking countries. The word waltz is, after all, German. Viennese composers like Beethoven and Schubert composed waltzes. Viennese composer Johann Strauss II was known as the “Waltz King.” But at the same time that the Viennese were waltzing around ballrooms and clinking their champagne glasses, the people of Mexico were enjoying waltzes, too, many of which were composed in Mexico. One of the most famous waltz composers in Mexico was Juventino Rosas. He was born in 1868 in Santa Cruz de Galeana to parents who were Otomí. The Otomí people are one of many indigenous groups in Mexico. In 2015, over 25,000,000 people living in Mexico identified as indigenous.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [Indigenous] [2010’s] [Latino/a] [Myths] [Art & Culture] [Implicit Racism] [History] [Silencing POC]

12 Racist and Offensive Phrases That People Still Use All the Time

by Christina Sterbenz and Dominic-Madori Davis | June 2020
As language evolves, we sometimes forget the offensive origins of certain words and phrases. Or we never knew them in the first place. Many common terms and phrases are actually rooted in racist, sexist, or generally distasteful language. For example, the popular phrase “peanut gallery,” typically used to reference hecklers, originated as a term to refer to those — usually Black people — who sat in the “cheapest” section of the Vaudeville theaters.
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2020’s] [Systemic Racism] [Assumptions] [Implicit Bias] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [Definitions] [History] [Slavery] [Accountability] [Microaggressions] [White Blindness]

20 Things You’re Saying That You Didn’t Know Were Offensive; Many Common Words or Phrases Have Insidious Origins

by Morgan Greenwald | November 2020
Cobble together—in your head, please, particularly if there are children around—a list of the most offensive words and phrases you can think of. Chances are, it’s full of the usual suspects: F-words and a whole lot of S-words, right? But here’s the thing: Your list is missing quite a few offensive phrases. And we’re sorry to report that it’s a good bet you use them a lot. For instance, did you know that the common phrase “basket case” comes from a saying used in World War I to describe quadriplegics? Or that “rule of thumb” has an insidiously violent origin? (And we’re sure most parents aren’t aware that “fuzzy wuzzy” was a racist term before he was the protagonist of a harmless child’s rhyme.) Before you accidentally hurl an insult without even realizing, read up on these 20 offensive words and phrases.
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2020’s] [Assumptions] [Implicit Bias] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [Definitions] [History] [Systemic Racism] [Indigenous] [Accountability] [White Blindness]

Uncle Tom Was a Man Who Refused to Beat Black Woman….

by gamma | January 2020
Most Black folks have heard or used the term Uncle tom when we refer to a sell-out, or someone we feel is tap dancing for the attention and acceptance of other races. It has always been used in a derogatory manner to infer that this was the type of person who cozied up to his slave master, but did you know that the inference and analogy is totally wrong? … His name? Josiah Henson! Josiah Henson was an author, abolitionist, and minister. Born into slavery, in Port Tobacco, Charles County, Maryland, he escaped to Upper Canada in 1830, and founded a settlement and laborer’s school for other fugitive slaves at Dawn, near Dresden, in Kent County, Upper Canada, of British Canada.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2020’s] [Myths] [Slavery] [History] [Denial] [Teachers]

From Most Hated to American Hero: The Whitewashing of Martin Luther King Jr.

by Michael Harriot | April 2018
This week, America will commemorate the 50th anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., the most famous and beloved civil rights leader in the nation’s history. Lost in the remembrance of the death of our nation’s most heralded warrior for social justice is the fact that—at the time of his death—King was a man in exile. Contrary to popular belief, when King died, he was not an icon of freedom and equality. In fact, most of the country disliked him. Sadly, on April 4, 1968, a bullet splattered bits of Martin Luther King Jr.’s brains and blood across the balcony of Memphis, Tenn.’s Lorraine Motel. Then, and only then, was white America ready to make him a hero.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2010’s] [Myths] [History] [White Culture] [White Defensiveness] [Collective Action] [Role Model] [Social Justice] [Assumptions] [White Blindness] [Silencing POC] [Systemic Racism]

Field Correction: Race-Based Medicine, Deeply Embedded in Clinical Decision Making, is Being Scrutinized and Challenged

by Stephanie Dutchen | December 2020
A young Black man arrives in the emergency room, doubled over in pain from a sickle cell crisis. “It’s an act,” says the attending physician dismissively. “I think he just wants drugs.” The attending refuses to prescribe the opioids he might give to a white patient in similar straits. Andrea Reid, MD ’88, associate dean for student and multicultural affairs for the Program in Medical Education and director of the Office of Recruitment and Multicultural Affairs at Harvard Medical School, witnessed too many such scenes as a trainee in Boston-area hospitals in the 1980s and ’90s. “It was awful,” she says. “There was bias that reflected in the management of some patients, especially those who didn’t look like they were in pain.” After watching this scenario play out in the emergency department and on the wards, Reid quietly began to direct some of the sickle cell patients toward her outpatient clinic for continuity care. … Many clinicians have heard or been formally taught that Black people don’t feel pain as acutely as white people because they have different biology. Black bodies have fewer nerve endings than white bodies, they’ve been told. Black skin is thicker than white skin, they’ve learned. Digging deeper reveals that these notions, as old as transatlantic slavery, have no evidence behind them. Yet a 2016 survey in PNAS of white medical students and residents found that half of the respondents still believe and act on them.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2020’s] [Systemic Racism] [Health Disparities] [Myths] [Implicit Bias] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Blindness] [Denial] [History] [Indigenous] [Asian] [Latino/a] [White Privilege]

The Pre-Civil War Fight Against White Supremacy; In a Country Driven by Racial Politics, Three Women Strove for a Just Society

by Dorothy Wickenden | January 2021
Two years into the cataclysmic war, Lincoln found a way to justify emancipation, as a “military necessity.” Frances greeted the proclamation with relief, but not euphoria. She was equally subdued when the Thirteenth Amendment eventually passed, on January 31, 1865, inscribing into the Constitution the eradication of slavery. Back in Auburn, she read the Herald Tribune’s report about the giddy scene in Washington. The visitors’ galleries were full, and senators and Supreme Court Justices squeezed onto the House floor. Finally, Speaker Schuyler Colfax stood and gavelled the room to order, announcing in a quavering voice that the ayes had a hundred and nineteen votes, the nays fifty-six. As Democrats looked on stonily, Republicans threw their hats in the air, cheering and roaring. Women in the gallery waved their handkerchiefs. Artillery at the Capitol fired a hundred-gun salute. The Tribune’s headline declared, “freedom triumphant. commencement of a new era. death of slavery.” It was a historic victory, but it had been won as much by political horse-trading as by deep principle. Henry and Lincoln, in a months-long backroom campaign, had lobbied wavering representatives with bribes and offers of jobs. And, Frances thought, it was too soon to celebrate. The amendment still had to be ratified by three-quarters of the states. Half a million men had died in the war, and it was not over. General William Tecumseh Sherman was moving through the Carolinas, and Ulysses S. Grant was eight months into his siege of Petersburg. There were rumors that rebels would attempt to assassinate the President. After reading about the joyous outpouring in the House, Frances wrote Henry a bracingly solemn note: “I congratulate you on the passage of the Constitutional amendment which I know you had much at heart. The prospect of abolishing slavery throughout the United States is indeed cheering.” The battle for equality had barely begun.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2020’s] [Slavery] [Justice System] [Civil War] [History] [Politics] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [Systemic Racism] [Racial Terrorism] [Prison System] [Faith-Based/Spiritual] [Quaker]

How the Dawes Act Stole 90 Million Acres of Native American Land

by Dave Roos | January 2021
In the long, dark history of the United States government’s mistreatment of Native Americans, most people are familiar with the Trail of Tears, in which approximately 15,000 Native American men, women and children died during forced relocation from their tribal homelands in the American Southeast to Indian Territory in modern-day Oklahoma. But the theft of Native American tribal land didn’t stop with the Indian Removal Act of 1830 that authorized the Trail of Tears. Over the next century, Congress passed a series of laws that systematically stripped tribes of their lands, selling them to white settlers and corporations.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2020’s] [Indigenous] [History] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [Slavery] [Systemic Racism] [Politics] [Economics] [Implicit Bias] [Justice System] [Assumptions]

The Brutish Museums by Dan Hicks Review – Return Everything; A Powerful Call for Western Museums to Return the Objects Looted in the Violent Days of Empire, During ‘World War Zero’

by Charlotte Lydia Riley | November 2020
The book is a vital call to action: part historical investigation, part manifesto, demanding the reader do away with the existing “brutish museums” of the title and find a new way for them to exist, not as sites of violence or trauma but as “sites of conscience”. Hicks is a curator at the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, whose website says that it displays “archaeological and ethnographic materials from all parts of the world”. He focuses on one particular region – the kingdom of Benin, now located in modern Nigeria.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2020’s] [History] [Art & Culture] [Systemic Racism] [Denial] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [Racial Terrorism] [Economics] [Slavery] [Reparations]

Anti-Black Racism in Indian Country: Jim Crowfeather Lives

by Cedric Sunray | August 2020
Of 55 continuous, identifiable, cohesive Indian communities in the Eastern and Southern regions of the United States (of whom I have intimate knowledge of) were found that of the 29 federally-recognized entities, all but six have been listed in historical records as having mixed-white ancestry, as well as some of course being listed as of primarily Indian ancestry. In the remaining six (all of who battled the BIA more so than the other 23), as well as 26 more that were not federally recognized, it was found that all had some perceived or real association in historical accounts to have some measure of mixed-black ancestry. As the Bureau of Indian Affairs is run by whites, mixed-white Indians, and a smaller number of racially identifiable Indians, with few black employees or employees of mixed-black and Indian descent, it is clear that recognition is not about one’s racial proximity to Indian, but rather one’s racial distance from black. This is entrenched racism and the most obvious double standard one can imagine rearing its head in the Indian political spectrum. While tribes who are perceived or do have some black ancestry, as well as significant Indian ancestry, are being denied, tribes with large amounts of white ancestry and less significant Indian heritage have been acknowledged.
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2020’s] [Indigenous] [Systemic Racism] [History] [Denial] [Politics] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Blindness] [Assumptions] [Silencing POC]