Resource Links Tagged with "Denial"

American Churches are Apologizing for a Centuries-Old Injustice That Still Reverberates Today; How We Can Start to Undo the Damage

by Melissa J. Gismondi | September 2018
In 2016, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (PCUSA) repudiated the historic “doctrine of discovery.” Although it might sound benign, the doctrine was the pernicious theory that Christians could claim and conquer land inhabited by non-Christians. It helped justify and promote the violent colonization of indigenous lands throughout the Americas. This summer, the Assembly followed up on that repudiation by issuing a report outlining specific actions the church can take to grapple with the doctrine’s legacy. They include official acknowledgments before meetings of the indigenous nations on whose land the meeting is taking place, as well as more discussion of indigenous theologies and educational resources on the doctrine.
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2010’s] [Indigenous] [Faith-Based/Spiritual] [History] [Systemic Racism] [Justice System] [Denial] [White Culture] [White Supremacy] [White Blindness] [Accountability] [Economics] [White Privilege] [Role Model] [Strategies] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts]

Redlining’s Legacy of Inequality: Low Homeownership Rates, Less Equity for Black Households

*Paywall Alert

by Brenda Richardson | June 2020
A decades-old housing policy known as redlining has had a long-lasting effect on American society and the economic health of Black households in particular, according to a new report by Redfin real estate brokerage. The racist 1930s-era policy that was outlawed in the 1960s effectively blocked Black families from obtaining home loans and remains a major factor in the country’s already substantial wealth gap between Black and white families. The typical homeowner in a neighborhood that was redlined for mortgage lending by the federal government has gained 52% less—or $212,023 less—in personal wealth generated by property value increases than one in a greenlined neighborhood over the last 40 years. Black homeowners are nearly five times more likely to own in a formerly redlined neighborhood than in a greenlined neighborhood, resulting in diminished home equity and overall economic inequality for Black families.
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2020’s] [Racial Covenants] [Systemic Racism] [Economics] [Housing] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [History] [Denial] [Politics] [Justice System] [Policing] [Reparations] [Employment] [Social Justice]

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]

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]

‘An Unbelievable Chain of Oppression’: America’s History of Racism was a Preexisting Condition for COVID-19

by Alan Gomez, Wyatte Grantham-Philips, Trevor Hughes, Rick Jervis, Rebecca Plevin, Kameel Stanley, Dennis Wagner, Marco della Cava, Deborah Barfield Berry, and Mark Nichols | October 2020
As the country cries out for a vaccine and a return to normal, lost in the policy debates is the reality that COVID-19 kills far more people of color than white Americans. This isn’t a matter of coincidence, poor choices or bad luck — it’s by design. A team of USA TODAY reporters explored how the policies of the past and present have made Black, Asian, Hispanic and Indigenous Americans prime targets for COVID-19. They found: America’s education and economic systems are still unequal, disproportionately leaving people of color out of higher-wage jobs. When COVID-19 struck, more people of color were serving as essential workers directly in the path of the virus.
TAGS: [Collective Action] [Health Disparities] [2020’s] [Black Lives Matter] [Indigenous] [Asian] [Latino/a] [Economics] [Employment] [Systemic Racism] [Denial] [History] [Social Justice] [Politics] [Justice System] [White Privilege] [White Culture] [White Blindness] [Housing] [Slavery] [Racial Covenants] [Environment] [Silencing POC]

How COVID-19 Hollowed Out a Generation of Young Black Men

by Akilah Johnson and Nina Martin | December 2020
They were pillars of their communities and families, and they are not replaceable. To understand why COVID-19 killed so many young Black men, you need to know the legend of John Henry. Bates was only 36, too young to be at risk for COVID-19, or so the conventional wisdom went. He attributed his malaise to allergies and pushed forward with his second full-time job, as head pastor of Forest Aid Baptist Church, working on his Sunday sermon between naps. Online church was a new concept to his parishioners, and during the next morning’s service, he had to keep reminding them to mute their phones. As he preached about Daniel in the lion’s den — we will be tested, but if we continue to have faith, we will come through — he grimaced from the effort. That night he was burning up with fever. Five days later he was on a ventilator; five days after that, he died.
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2020’s] [Health Disparities] [History] [Black Lives Matter] [Systemic Racism] [White Blindness] [Economics] [Denial] [Social Justice] [Slavery] [Housing] [Employment] [Intersectionality] [-ing While Black] [White Privilege] [White Culture]

After Attempted Coup, We Must Fight White Supremacy and Sow Revolutionary Love

by Adrienne Maree Brown | January 2021
The confederacy, whose flag was waved in the Capitol building on Wednesday, was a four-year alignment of 11 states committed, among other things, to the right to own slaves. It emerged toward the end of a centuries-long period during which it was easily assumed that the role of people of African descent was to provide free labor until death. The foundations of U.S. wealth and reach are heavy bricks sunken into the bloody soil of that labor. There are many flags that could be created and waved if the issue at hand were the right of states to self-determine their own destinies, but those who claim the U.S. confederacy are easily aligning with a very specific and racist right, a very specific white supremacy.
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2020’s] [White Supremacy] [Slavery] [History] [Economics] [Civil War] [Systemic Racism] [Black Lives Matter] [Myths] [Denial] [Politics]

White Images, Black Reality: How to Talk to the Accidental Apologists for Monsters

by Earl Hazell | June 2020
We are now living in another one of those times in history when the majority of white people feel compelled to project all of their most deluded fantasies and deepest insecurities onto People of Color simultaneously, to avoid dealing with the systemic crisis they have created. As such, some of them are looking for any excuse to disrupt our communication with each other with a specific objective: to make themselves feel better by getting us to reestablish the sanctity of their illusions. How I ended an online conversation with several friends of mine that a white person entered recently—without invitation—is something that might be helpful to others who will inevitably find themselves in similar situations for some time to come. For some white people, particularly liberals , crisis does not begin when innocent people are ritualistically murdered . Crisis begins when ignorance is no longer bliss. When a lessor enlightened person of European descent elbows their way into one of your talks online, and passive/aggressively asks you to deny reality so you can comfort them, try telling them something like this: _____, the first thing you need to do is cop to the fact that your principle objective for coming into this conversation is to dominate it.
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2020’s] [Denial] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [History] [White Fragility/Tears] [White Blindness] [White Defensiveness] [Racial Terrorism] [Economics] [Silencing POC] [Systemic Racism] [Policing] [Slavery] [Reparations] [Black Lives Matter] [Indigenous] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts]

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]

Stop Whitewashing the Message of Martin Luther King Jr.

by Sa’iyda Shabazz | January 2021
My black friends are sharing messages of action and fighting for equality. But my white friends post messages of love and peace. For the most part, my white friends seem to gloss over the messages about anything other than love. His messages of love seem to fit the narrative white people have created about him. But in reality, most white people didn’t even like Dr. King when he was alive. And I think that gets forgotten a lot. As a Christian minister, King’s messages of love are intrinsically tied to his faith. And while he was a man of faith, even he knew that God could only get you so far in the fight for equality. To only share his message about love and not the ones about action is doing his legacy a great disservice.
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2020’s] [Systemic Racism] [History] [White Blindness] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [Social Justice] [Denial] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [Collective Action] [Economics] [Prison System]

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]

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]

Martin Luther King Jr Was a Radical. We Must Not Sterilize His Legacy

by Cornel West | April 2018
In this brief celebratory moment of King’s life and death we should be highly suspicious of those who sing his praises yet refuse to pay the cost of embodying King’s strong indictment of the US empire, capitalism and racism in their own lives. We now expect the depressing spectacle every January of King’s “fans” giving us the sanitized versions of his life. We now come to the 50th anniversary of his assassination, and we once again are met with sterilized versions of his legacy. A radical man deeply hated and held in contempt is recast as if he was a universally loved moderate.
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2010’s] [Economics] [Systemic Racism] [History] [White Blindness] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [Social Justice] [Policing] [Politics] [Denial]

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]

Fatal Police Shootings of Unarmed Black People Reveal Troubling Patterns

by Cheryl W. Thompson | January 2021
Ronell Foster was riding his bicycle through the hushed streets of Vallejo, Calif., one evening when a police officer noticed that the bike had no lights and that he was weaving in and out of traffic. The officer, Ryan McMahon, went after Foster with lights flashing, siren blaring and the car’s spotlight pointed directly at him. Foster stopped. The pair exchanged words before Foster, who was on community supervision for a car theft conviction a month earlier, fled, eventually ditching the bicycle. McMahon caught up with Foster and jumped on top of him. The two struggled. McMahon, a rookie on the force, used a Taser on the father of two and struck him several times with his department-issued flashlight. Gunfire erupted — seven shots total. When it was over, Foster, 33, lay dying in the bushes in a darkened courtyard near an apartment complex.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2020’s] [-ing While Black] [Police Shootings] [Policing] [Systemic Racism] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [Justice System] [Black Lives Matter] [White Defensiveness] [White Privilege] [Accountability] [Denial] [History]

Confronting Racism Is Not About the Needs and Feelings of White People Too Often Whites at Discussions on Race Decide for Themselves What Will be Discussed, What They Will Hear, What They Will learn. And it is Their Space. All Spaces Are.

*Paywall Alert
by The Guardian | March 2019
I was leaving a corporate office building after a full day of leading workshops on how to talk about race thoughtfully and deliberately. The audience for each session had been similar to the dozens I had faced before. There was an overrepresentation of employees of color, an underrepresentation of white employees. The participants of color tended to make eye contact with me and nod – I even heard a few “Amens” – but were never the first to raise their hands with questions or comments. Meanwhile, there was always a white man eager to share his thoughts on race. In these sessions I typically rely on silent feedback from participants of color to make sure I am on the right track, while trying to moderate the loud centering of whiteness.
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2010’s] [Systemic Racism] [White Fragility/Tears] [White Defensiveness] [White Blindness] [-ing While Black] [Economics] [Employment] [Anti-Racism] [Denial] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [Microaggressions]

Recovering Racist Tell Why, It Is So Hard to Remove Racism from Our Souls

by Jonathan Odell | July 2015
I m a recovering racist: I was somehow taught hate as a gift of love …
But the hardest thing to admit was that my racism and its inherent privileges were gifted to me by devoted parents, dedicated teachers, righteous preachers—an entire Caucasian community conspired to make me feel special. These were good people. How could I turn on them? What a conundrum! That would make racism a gift of love! As toxic as those gifts were, they were presented to me out of love, by someone I loved. These were good people. How could I turn on them? What adult, much less child, doesn’t want to feel special? What child is going to say, “No, I don’t want your gift because it takes away from others!” We hunger for the experience of feeling special and are grateful to those who see that specialness within us. No wonder it’s so hard to uproot racism from our souls. If we had acquired our racism from folks we detested, the monsters of the world, the lynchers and the church-bombers, the murderous, tobacco-spitting sheriff or the buffoonish sheet-shrouded Klan member, or our race-baiting governor standing in the schoolhouse door, how easy it would be to denounce our racism and to leave that kind of destructive thinking behind.
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2010’s] [White Privilege] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Defensiveness] [History] [Collective Action] [Teachers] [Social Justice] [Systemic Racism] [Accountability] [White Blindness] [Denial]

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]

Alexander Hamilton, Enslaver? New Research Says Yes; A Paper by a Researcher at the Schuyler Mansion Finds Overlooked Evidence in Letters and Hamilton’s Own Account Books Indicating That He Bought, Sold and Personally Owned Slaves.

by Jennifer Schuessler | November 2020
“Not only did Alexander Hamilton enslave people, but his involvement in the institution of slavery was essential to his identity, both personally and professionally,” she writes. “It is vital,” she adds, “that the myth of Hamilton as ‘the Abolitionist Founding Father’ end.” The evidence cited in the paper, which was quietly published online last month, is not entirely new. But Ms. Serfilippi’s forceful case has caught the eye of historians, particularly those who have questioned what they see as his inflated antislavery credentials.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2020’s] [Slavery] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [Art & Culture] [Denial] [Myths]

George Floyd’s Autopsy and the Structural Gaslighting of America; The Weaponization of Medical Language Emboldened White Supremacy with the Authority of the White Coat. How Will We Stop It from Happening Again?

by Ann Crawford-Roberts, Sonya Shadravan, Jennifer Tsai, Nicolás E. Barceló, Allie Gips, Michael Mensah, Nichole Roxas, Alina Kung, Anna Darby, Naya Misa, Isabella Morton, Alice Shen | June 2020
The world was gaslit by misreporting about George Floyd’s initial autopsy report. As concerned physicians, we write to deconstruct the misinformation and condemn the ways this weaponization of medical language reinforced white supremacy at the torment of Black Americans. Gaslighting is a method of psychological manipulation employed to make a victim question their own sanity, particularly in scenarios where they are mistreated.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2020’s] [Black Lives Matter] [Systemic Racism] [Silencing POC] [Racial Covenants] [Policing] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [History] [Collective Action] [Police Shootings] [Denial] [Accountability] [Health Disparities] [Definitions]

Going Beyond the Myth This Thanksgiving

by Maia Coleman | November 2020
“I contend that the Thanksgiving myth is just that — it’s a myth, it’s not history,” said Mr. Silverman. The real story, he explained, features far more bloodshed and destruction, including a European plague that wiped out enormous swaths of the native population, the continued exploitation of native people at the hands of the colonists and above all, the grabbing of native lands. The actual Thanksgiving feast was born from a mutual defense pact between the English colonists and the Wampanoags against the neighboring Narragansett tribe, Mr. Silverman said. “Neither side attributed much importance to this event,” Mr. Silverman told the audience. “The Wampanoags never invoked it again, at least on record in any diplomacy between themselves in the English…and English records dedicated two paragraphs to it.”
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2020’s] [Indigenous] [Myths] [History] [Silencing POC] [White Culture] [White Supremacy] [Denial] [Systemic Racism]

The Hurdles Ahead in 2021 for Maine’s Stalled Tribal Sovereignty Bid

by Caitlin Andrews | November 2020
Tribes are reviving a push to overhaul their relationships with the state, but they lost champions in the election and the complicated effort may face obstacles in a skeptical Gov. Janet Mills and special-interest opponents. … The complex issue of sovereignty would be revived in what promises to be one of the more high-stakes legislative sessions in state history in early 2021. Lawmakers will be facing an estimated $1.4 billion shortfall over the next three years. Racial disparities around the coronavirus, health and incarceration are also likely to drive policy conversations.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [Indigenous] [Politics] [Justice System] [Systemic Racism] [Health Disparities] [Prison System] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [Economics] [Denial]

Elites Use Race to Divide Us; The War on Police Brutality Hides a Much Bigger Threat to All Americans

by Monica Harris | June 2020
Let’s get something straight: white privilege is real. I know because I’ve lived in its shadow my entire life. I’ve felt it even when I’ve tried to forget or pretend it wasn’t there. White privilege wasn’t earned; it was gifted to people who brought others, shackled in the bowels of ships, to serve them. Living in a country where your ancestors were once stuff that other people “owned” leaves wounds so deep they can’t be erased from the collective memory. And when your ancestors were the ones allowed to “own” other people, it creates something equally indelible: an advantage that’s hard-wired into all levels of society. It’s like getting a head start in every race that always puts you a few yards from the finish line. It’s an entitlement that lingers, unspoken, in the back of all minds, silently playing out in everything we say, think, or do.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2020’s] [White Privilege] [White Culture] [Systemic Racism] [History] [Policing] [Slavery] [Implicit Racism] [Economics] [Black Lives Matter] [Police Shootings] [Denial] [Civil War]

White Violence, Church Silence; Many white churches have been guilty of not only espousing racist rhetoric, but also of preaching a theology that urges Christian silence when it comes to standing up for justice.

by L.A. Justice | November 2020
While Black people are being relentlessly pursued because our lives have been determined to be expendable, numerous churches across this country have not only been silent, but too many have been complacent and complicit with these atrocities. Myriad white churches have been guilty of not only espousing racist rhetoric, but also of preaching a theology that urges Christian silence when it comes to standing up for justice, especially when it means standing against the racially motivated brutalization of Black bodies. This encourages the perpetrators of such inhumane violence to continue to act with impunity, no matter how abhorrent the violence committed against us may be.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2020’s] [Systemic Racism] [Policing] [Denial] [History] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [White Blindness] [Accountability] [Faith-Based/Spiritual] [Black Lives Matter] [Collective Action] [Cognitive Dissonance]

Audio Reveals Heated Exchange Between Biden And Black Leaders Over Cabinet, Police Reform

*Paywall Alert

by Andrew Solender | December 2020
President-elect Joe Biden had a contentious discussion about executive power, police reform and his cabinet appointments in a call with civil rights leaders on Tuesday, according to leaked audio excerpts of the call published by The Intercept. The civil rights leaders on the call, including Rev. Al Sharpton and the NAACP’s Sherrilyn Ifill, pressed Biden to use executive orders to institute sweeping reforms, create commissions and launch investigations to further the cause of civil rights. But Biden said he would not test the legal bounds of executive action and use it in lieu of legislation, stating “I am not going to violate the constitution,” and arguing unfettered use of executive orders can set a dangerous precedent for future administrations.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [Politics] [Systemic Racism] [White Culture] [White Blindness] [Denial] [Policing] [Justice System] [Social Justice]

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]

Accounting for Race; A New Way to Compare the Financial Health of Households in States

by Prosperity Now | January 2019
Headlines of national economic strength belie the reality that millions in the US are living in financial precarity. Even worse, families that are still recovering from the last recession will be the first to suffer from the next recession, which many analysts warn is around the corner. Because people of color, particularly Black, Latino, Native American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander people, live in a different economic reality than what oft-cited national data shows, we need to be honest about the impacts race and ethnicity have on economic outcomes. The exploration and acknowledgement of racial and ethnic disparities and their origins make our data clearer and our local, state and federal policies stronger. Solutions to our collective economic peril will remain elusive if we do not center the impact of race and racism.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2010’s] [Systemic Racism] [Economics] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [Indigenous] [Asian] [Latino/a] [History] [Housing] [Denial] [Politics] [Employment]

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 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]