by Cedrick-Michael Simmons | June 2020
DiAngelo views racism as a problem to be combated with sensitivity training. The premise of diversity and cultural competency training is that by educating European-Americans on the persistence and consequences of racism, they can be transformed into non-racist (or, ideally, anti-racist) individuals. But diversity training has been shown to be a largely ineffective way to address racism in American workplaces. These lectures and workshops do little—if anything—in the way of addressing the structural tensions that workers must navigate on a daily basis.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [White Fragility/Tears] [Anti-Racism] [Accountability] [Art & Culture] [Black Lives Matter] [Denial] [Myths] [Assumptions] [Systemic Racism]
Resource Links Tagged with "Denial"
Glorifying White Authors like DiAngelo Erases Decades of Black Writing on Whiteness
*Paywall Alert
by Anastasia Kārkliņa | June 2020
For weeks, white liberal Americans have been praising White Fragility, treating it as a must-read manual for white people, forming online discussion groups, and joining book clubs all across the country. What is troubling about the current white liberal obsession with DiAngelo is how digital conversations that glorify her most recent work rarely consider writings on whiteness and white people by Black American authors, at least not with the same sense of urgency and importance. If DiAngelo’s readership is earnestly committed to decoding whiteness, we must ask a glaringly obvious question: why are white liberal Americans so quickly inclined to praise and venerate a white expert on race but generally don’t extend the same attention to what Black writers, intellectuals, and political leaders have have had to say about whiteness and white people for decades?
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [White Fragility/Tears] [Black Lives Matter] [Anti-Racism] [Art & Culture] [Denial]
The Dehumanizing Condescension of White Fragility; The Popular Book Aims to Combat Racism but Talks Down to Black People.
by John McWhorter| July 2020
“ … herein is the real problem with White Fragility. DiAngelo does not see fit to address why all of this agonizing soul-searching is necessary to forging change in society. One might ask just how a people can be poised for making change when they have been taught that pretty much anything they say or think is racist and thus antithetical to the good. What end does all this self-mortification serve? Impatient with such questions, DiAngelo insists that “wanting to jump over the hard, personal work and get to ‘solutions’” is a “foundation of white fragility.” In other words, for DiAngelo, the whole point is the suffering. And note the scare quotes around solutions, as if wanting such a thing were somehow ridiculous. A corollary question is why Black people need to be treated the way DiAngelo assumes we do. The very assumption is deeply condescending to all proud Black people. In my life, racism has affected me now and then at the margins, in very occasional social ways, but has had no effect on my access to societal resources; if anything, it has made them more available to me than they would have been otherwise. Nor should anyone dismiss me as a rara avis. Being middle class, upwardly mobile, and Black has been quite common during my existence since the mid-1960s, and to deny this is to assert that affirmative action for Black people did not work.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [Individual Change] [2020’s] [White Fragility/Tears] [White Defensiveness] [Systemic Racism] [White Supremacy] [Anti-Racism] [Myths] [“All Lives Matter”] [Denial]
What We Get Wrong about ‘People of Color’
by Jason Parham | November 2019
The phrase turns a plural into a singular, an action that betrays all the ways we have come to understand contemporary identity.
This past summer, in one of the most bizarre applications, Representative Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania, who is white and Republican, described himself as a “person of color” when discussing Trump’s comments about four Democratic congresswomen. “It’s time to stop fixating on our differences—particularly our superficial ones,” he said.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2010’s] [Systemic Racism] [Prison System] [Politics] [Racial Covenants] [White Privilege] [White Supremacy]
[White Defensiveness] [White Blindness] [Denial] [“All Lives Matter”] [White Fragility/Tears] [White Culture]
A Conversation about Truth and Reconciliation in the US
by Ezra Klein | July 2020
What would it take for America to heal? To be the country it claims to be? This is the question that animates Bryan Stevenson’s career. Stevenson is the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, a clinical professor at the New York University School of Law, a MacArthur “genius,” and the author of the remarkable book Just Mercy — which was recently turned into a feature film where Stevenson was played by Michael B. Jordan.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [Confederate Monuments] [Role Model] [Advocacy] [Prison System] [History] [Denial] [White Blindness] [Slavery] [Civil War] [Economics] [White Supremacy] [Systemic Racism]
The False Promise of Anti-Racism Books
*Paywall Alert
by Saida Grundy | July 2020
Texts that seek to raise the collective American Consciousness are rendered futile without concrete systemic changes. …When offered in lieu of actionable policies regarding equity, consciousness raising can actually undermine Black progress by presenting increased knowledge as the balm for centuries of abuse. Executives at major corporations such as Amazon, for instance, have invited race scholars and writers to “help [them] unpack” such topics as the American justice system and how to be an anti-racist ally. Yet Black employees at many of these companies have pointed to the hypocrisy of in-house dialogues about race while practices like labor exploitation continue. In the form of hollow public statements and company-sponsored conversations, consciousness raising is often toothless.
TAGS: [Individual Change] [Collective Action] [2020’s] [Anti-Racism] [Confederate Monuments] [White Blindness] [Denial] [Accountability] [Implicit Racism] [White Privilege] [White Culture] [White Supremacy] [History]
A Medical Student Couldn’t Find How Symptoms Look on Darker Skin. He Decided to Publish a Book about it.
by Sydney Page | July 2020
*Paywall Alert
Malone Mukwende, a 20-year-old medical student, found himself repeatedly asking the same question: “But what will it look like on darker skin?”
He’s publishing a book to answer that question.
Since his first class at St George’s, University of London, “I noticed a lack of teaching about darker skin tones, and how certain symptoms appear differently in those who aren’t white,” said Mukwende, who recently completed his second year of study in the medical program. Whether a rash, a bruise, blue lips or other common physical reactions, “it was clear to me that certain symptoms would not present the same on my own skin,” said Mukwende, who was born in Zimbabwe and now lives in London. “I knew that this would be a problem for patients of a similar skin tone to mine, or of a darker skin tone in general.” Not only was there an absence of imagery to highlight the difference, but students were not instructed on the correct terminology to describe conditions that appear on darker skin, Mukwende said.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [Role Model] [Advocacy] [Colorblindness] [Denial] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege]
How Slaveholders in the Caribbean Maintained Control The whip was not the only tool in their arsenal: slaveholders were masters of manipulation too.
by Christer Petley | November 2018
As elsewhere in the Americas, the right of masters in Jamaica to punish slaves was enshrined in law, and the violence that sustained slavery went far beyond whipping. Punishments could include amputation, disfiguring, branding and more. … Privileging some enslaved people above others was another effective means of sowing discord. Slaveholders encouraged complex social hierarchies on the plantations that amounted to something like a system of ‘class’. At the top of plantation slave communities in the sugar colonies of the Caribbean were skilled men, trained up at the behest of white managers to become sugar boilers, blacksmiths, carpenters, coopers, masons and drivers. Such men were, in general, materially better-off than field slaves (most of whom were women), and they tended to live longer.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2010’s] [Slavery] [History] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [Silencing POC] [Systemic Racism] [Economics] [Denial]
In 1912, This Georgia County Drove Out Every Black Resident Between the 1860s and the 1920s, White Americans Pushed out Thousands of Black Residents from Their Communities.
by Becky Little | August 2019
To understand what Abrams is up against in November, when she’ll compete against two Republican men in a red state that has only elected white men, it’s useful to look at the state’s history of white supremacy and how that legacy affects Georgians today. One county in particular shoulders an especially egregious past. The northern county of Forsyth, one of Georgia’s 10 most populous, leans heavily white and conservative. Its demographics are shaped by an event that happened in 1912, when white people forced out all 1,098 of Forsyth’s black residents, who comprised about 10 percent of the population at the time.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2010’s] [History] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Defensiveness] [Racial Covenants] [Denial] [Housing] [Accountability] [Policing]
It Took 10 Minutes to Convict 14-Year-Old George Stinney Jr. It Took 70 Years after His Execution to Exonerate Him.
by Lindsey Bever | December 2014
In March 1944, deep in the Jim Crow South, police came for 14-year-old George Stinney Jr. His parents weren’t at home. His little sister was hiding in the family’s chicken coop behind the house in Alcolu, a segregated mill town in South Carolina, while officers handcuffed George and his older brother, Johnnie, and took them away.
Two young white girls had been found brutally murdered, beaten over the head with a railroad spike and dumped in a water-logged ditch. He and his little sister, who were black, were said to be last ones to see them alive. Authorities later released the older Stinney – and directed their attention toward George. On June 16, 1944, he was executed, becoming the youngest person in modern times to be put to death. On Wednesday, 70 years later, he was exonerated.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2010’s] [Systemic Racism] [Policing] [Prison System] [White Supremacy] [History] [Black Lives Matter] [White Privilege] [White Culture] [-ing While Black] [Denial] [Assumptions] [Accountability]
William Penn Kept Enslaved People. These are Some of Their Names. An Important Piece of Pennsylvania’s Founder’s Legacy.
by Michaela Winberg | August 2020
Penn, though a pacifist Quaker, kept several Black enslaved people during his time overseeing his colony — even as the practice grew increasingly unpopular among Pennsylvanians. The records that exist aren’t totally clear, but it seems as if Penn enslaved roughly 12 people at his Pennsbury Manor estate, which was located in what is now the Philly suburbs. These people were purchased off the first slave ship known to have arrived in Philadelphia, and were of African and Carribean descent.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2020’s] [History] [Slavery] [Indigenous] [Quaker] [Systemic Racism] [Economics] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [Denial] [Accountability]
How Decades of US Welfare Policies Lifted up the White Middle Class and Largely Excluded Black Americans
by Marguerite Ward | August 2020
Far more white people have benefited from US welfare programs over the years — reflecting their greater share of the population — while Black people and other people of color have been denied them in various ways, multiple historians and researchers tell Business Insider. The coronavirus pandemic has exposed the underbelly of American inequality in many ways, with people of color disproportionately likely to be laid off, to be on the financial brink, and to die from the virus. That has helped prompt a growing chorus of financiers, business leaders, and regular folks to call for a reimagining of American capitalism and for moves to end racial inequality. Some top economists are calling for a “New New Deal” specifically targeting inequality, a platform to which the Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden seems open.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2020’s] [Accountability] [Economics] [History] [Systemic Racism] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [Denial] [Employment] [Politics]
How the Myth of a Liberal North Erases a Long History of White Violence
by Christy Clark-Pujara and Anna-Lisa Cox| August 2020
Anti-black racism has terrorized African Americans throughout the nation’s history, regardless of where in the country they lived. There is a toxic myth that encourages white people in the North to see themselves as free from racism and erases African Americans from the pre-Civil War North, where they are still being told that they don’t belong. What Langston experienced was not the massacre in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1921 or Rosewood, Florida, in 1923—this was Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1841, 20 years before the Civil War broke out. This was the third such racist attack against African Americans in Cincinnati in 12 years. This article was originally published as the first of a five-part series titled “Black Life in Two Pandemics: Histories of Violence” and provides link to view all parts.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2020’s] [History] [Myths] [Systemic Racism] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Blindness] [Slavery] [White Privilege] [Silencing POC] [Denial]
#Notracists be like: The Top 10 Phrases Used by People Who Claim They Are Not Racist
by Michael Harriot | October 2017
This is not about racists. This is about not-racists. You’ve seen them before: the special class of white people who say racist shit and do racist things but declare themselves the “least racist person you know.”
TAGS: [2010’s] [Assumptions] [Systemic Racism] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [White Privilege] [White Supremacy] [“Reverse Racism”] [Denial]
Anything but Racism
by James Mulholland | April 2019
“Note to my white self…You did it again. You made a racist assumption and then tried to
justify it. You assumed the black man who came to your hotel room was a member of the cleaning crew and not the manager.”
TAGS: [Assumptions] [Implicit Bias] [Individual Change] [Accountability] [Denial] [White Defensiveness] [White Fragility/Tears] [2010’s]
Racist Language Is Still Woven into Home Deeds across America. Erasing It Isn’t Easy, and Some Don’t Want to
by Nick Watt and Jack Hannah, CNN | February 2020
“Buried deep in the small print of deeds to a home that sold recently in this ritzy city lurks this stunning caveat: ‘Said premises shall not be rented, leased, or conveyed to, or occupied by, any person other than of the white or Caucasian race.’ … And though now illegal, language like it still exists in the deeds to homes all across the United States.”
TAGS: [Assumptions] [Denial] [White Privilege] [Housing] [Racial Covenants] [2020’s]
Confronting White Supremacy in the Work Place
by Caroline Taiwo | Date 2010’s
Two years ago, I started work as a recruitment and retention specialist for a small Minnesota nonprofit. The organization’s mission was to serve youth in crisis and their matriculation rate was 90 percent poor Black kids. I was hired on to replace a woman they fired a month prior, a Black woman, for reasons unresolved. She had been telling people that she was pushed out for challenging racist policy. Our department had tripled the number of volunteers coming in for weekly shift rotations but incredibly, the entire pool was white. When I brought it up, and offered to lead an effort to all in more volunteers of color, the more outspoken of the bosses interjected with, “Well we could look for more Black volunteers but I don’t think they would pass our background check.”
TAGS: [Strategies] [2010’s] [White Supremacy] [Systemic Racism] [Silencing POC] [Accountability] [Employment] [Denial] [White Culture] [White Blindness] [Economics] [White Privilege] [White Defensiveness] [White Culture] [Assumptions] [Myths]
How Racism Has Shaped Welfare Policy in America Since 1935
by Alma Carten | September 2016
It is true that the data show the number of families receiving cash assistance fell from 12.3 million in 1996 to current levels of 4.1 million as reported by The New York Times. But it is also true that child poverty rates for black children remain stubbornly high in the U.S. My research indicates that this didn’t happen by chance. Findings reveal that U.S. welfare policies have, from their very inception, been discriminatory.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2010’s] [History] [Economics] [White Privilege] [White Supremacy] [Systemic Racism] [Employment] [Denial]
KING: Micah Johnson is the Making of America’s Own Racist Creation
by Shaun King | July 2016
Somehow, the United States of America wants to have all of the ingredients for murder and mayhem, cook it at 500 degrees for a few years, and be shocked when what comes out on the other end isn’t sweet peace and colorful rainbows. That’s not how recipes work. Building a harmonious society is no different.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2010’s] [White Supremacy] [Slavery] [History] [Policing] [Denial] [Accountability] [Police Shootings] [Black Lives Matter]
Beware of Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing: The Tale of A Progressive Professor Who Forgot To Hide Her Racism And Got Her Ass Fired
by Kayla Renee Parker | June 2017
She wears a safety pin so everyone knows she’s an ally for minorities. Her cover photo has a Black power fist. She regularly discusses her love for the Obamas, the Black Lives Matter Movement, and her admonishment for this current administration. However, I would soon realize that nothing would shake her more than a confident, Black woman contradicting her in front of a classroom of her own students.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2010’s] [Accountability] [Denial] [Systemic Racism] [White Defensiveness] [Black Lives Matter] [Silencing POC]
More Resources
Introduction
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Facts
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Appropriation / Aggression
White Privilege / Supremacy
Public Displays
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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