by Connie Hassett-Walker | Updated June 2020
Outrage over racial profiling and the killing of African Americans by police officers and vigilantes in recent years helped give rise to the Black Lives Matter movement. But tensions between the police and black communities are nothing new. There are many precedents to the Ferguson, Missouri protests that ushered in the Black Lives Matter movement. Those protests erupted in 2014 after a police officer shot unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown; the officer was subsequently not indicted.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [Policing] [Slavery] [Black Lives Matter] [History] [Systemic Racism] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [-ing While Black] [Civil War] [Racial Covenants] [Politics] [Justice System] [Police Shootings] [Implicit Bias]
Resource Links Tagged with "Racial Covenants"
Is America Ready to Face the Truth About the Atrocities Against Indigenous Children?
by Nick Martin | June 2021
Deb Haaland is pushing for a federal reckoning with what the U.S. did to Native Americans. But she cannot be alone in her mission.
On Tuesday, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland revealed at the National Congress of American Indians’ annual midyear conference that the federal government, led by her department, will “undertake an investigation of the loss of human life and the lasting consequences” of federal Indian boarding schools. The announcement comes on the heels of a continent-shaking discovery made three weeks ago by the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation, which found the remains of 215 Indigenous children buried in a mass grave outside of Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia, Canada. That horrific announcement was followed by another on Wednesday evening, when Cowessess First Nation revealed that it had discovered 751 unmarked graves at Marieval Indian Residential School in Saskatchewan.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2020’s] [Indigenous] [Politics] [Systemic Racism] [Accountability] [History] [Silencing POC] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [Economics] [Justice System]
White People’s Fear of Critical Race Theory is Based in Ignorance Separating Fact from Fiction
by Allison Gaines | May 2021
Our nation is in the process of exchanging color-blind ideology with anti-racism. White people will have to take a good, hard look in the mirror and into their family albums. Some are afraid of the skeletons they will find, and others are leery of the theory that will make them take a look in the first place. White people want to focus on selected parts of American history, lionizing their role. Many choose to ignore that the gap between Black and white homeownership is wider than it was 50 years ago. Or that Black families have one-tenth the wealth as white ones. Currently, Black people are 3.25 times more likely to die in police encounters.
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2020’s] [History] [Policing] [White Privilege] [White Culture] [White Defensiveness] [White Supremacy] [White Blindness] [Denial] [Racial Covenants] [Housing] [Health Disparities] [Economics] [Politics] [Social Justice] [Definitions] [Intersectionality] [Colorblindness] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [CRT] [Accountability] [Slavery]
A slave Mother’s Love in 56 Carefully Stitched Words
by Amina Al-Sadi & Jeannie Yandel | December 2016
For about $300, a 9-year-old girl named Ashley was sold as a slave.
Her mother, Rose, remained a house slave at a mansion in South Carolina. This was the 1850s, roughly a decade before Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, setting slaves free. Before mother and daughter were separated, Rose gave Ashley a cotton sack. It contained a tattered dress, three handfuls of pecans and a lock of her hair. Rose told Ashley it was filled with love — always. Ashley never saw her mom again, but she kept the sack. It was handed down through the generations, along with her story, to her granddaughter, Ruth Middleton. Ruth, a single mom in Philadelphia, stitched her family story into the cloth sack in 1921…. Nearly 100 years later, the bag was found at a flea market in Tennessee. A woman bought it and donated it to Middleton Place, a famous plantation in South Carolina that refuses to shy away from its awful history.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2010’s] [Slavery] [History] [Art & Culture] [Civil War]
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.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2020’s] [Systemic Racism] [Silencing POC] [Racial Covenants] [History] [Collective Action] [Denial] [Politics] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [Black Lives Matter] [Policing] [Prison System] [Housing] [Justice System] [Advocacy] [Role Model] [Definitions]
What Is Critical Race Theory, and Why Is It Under Attack?
by Steven Sawchuk | May 2021
Is “critical race theory” a way of understanding how American racism has shaped public policy, or a divisive discourse that pits people of color against white people? Liberals and conservatives are in sharp disagreement. The topic has exploded in the public arena this spring—especially in K-12, where numerous state legislatures are debating bills seeking to ban its use in the classroom. …Critical race theory is an academic concept that is more than 40 years old. The core idea is that racism is a social construct, and that it is not merely the product of individual bias or prejudice, but also something embedded in legal systems and policies. The basic tenets of critical race theory, or CRT, emerged out of a framework for legal analysis in the late 1970s and early 1980s created by legal scholars Derrick Bell, Kimberlé Crenshaw, and Richard Delgado, among others.
A good example is when, in the 1930s, government officials literally drew lines around areas deemed poor financial risks, often explicitly due to the racial composition of inhabitants. Banks subsequently refused to offer mortgages to Black people in those areas.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [Housing] [Systemic Racism] [Politics] [Social Justice] [White Privilege] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Defensiveness] [Slavery] [Definitions] [Racial Covenants] [Black Lives Matter] [Latino/a] [Teachers] [History]
158 Resources to Understand Racism in America
by Meilan Solly | June 2020
Amid escalating clashes between protesters and police, discussing race—from the inequity embedded in American institutions to the United States’ long, painful history of anti-black violence—is an essential step in sparking meaningful societal change. To support those struggling to begin these difficult conversations, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture recently launched a “Talking About Race” portal featuring “tools and guidance” for educators, parents, caregivers and other people committed to equity. “Talking About Race” joins a vast trove of resources from the Smithsonian Institution dedicated to understanding what Bunch describes as America’s “tortured racial past.” From Smithsonian magazine articles on slavery’s Trail of Tears and the disturbing resilience of scientific racism to the National Museum of American History’s collection of Black History Month resources for educators and a Sidedoor podcast on the Tulsa Race Massacre, these 158 resources are designed to foster an equal society, encourage commitment to unbiased choices and promote antiracism in all aspects of life. Listings are bolded and organized by category.
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2020’s] [Systemic Racism] [Anti-Racism] [Policing] [Teachers] [History] [Intersectionality] [Slavery] [Racial Terrorism] [Black Lives Matter] [Civil War] [Politics] [Social Justice] [Racial Covenants] [Housing] [Employment] [Economics] [Silencing POC] [Health Disparities] [Prison System] [Implicit Bias] [Indigenous] [Police Shootings] [Latino/a] [White Supremacy] [White Culture]
The Decline of Black Business; and What it Means for American Democracy
by Brian S. Feldman | May 2017
The last thirty years also have brought the wholesale collapse of black-owned independent businesses and financial institutions that once anchored black communities across the country. In 1985, sixty black-owned banks were providing financial services to their communities; today, just twenty-three remain. In eleven states that headquartered black-owned banks in 1994, not a single one is still in business. Of the fifty black-owned insurance companies that operated during the 1980s, today just two remain. Over the same period, tens of thousands of black-owned retail establishments and local service companies also have disappeared, having gone out of business or been acquired by larger companies. Reflecting these developments, working-age black Americans have become far less likely to be their own boss than in the 1990s.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2010’s] [Art & Culture] [Justice System] [History] [Economics] [Systemic Racism] [Black Lives Matter] [Social Justice] [Politics] [Slavery] [Civil War] [White Supremacy] [White Privilege] [Racial Covenants] [Racial Terrorism]
How the GI Bill’s Promise Was Denied to a Million Black WWII Veterans; The Sweeping Bill Promised Prosperity to Veterans. So Why Didn’t Black Americans Benefit?
by Erin Blakemore | September 2019
When Eugene Burnett saw the neat tract houses of Levittown, New York, he knew he wanted to buy one. It was 1949, and he was ready to settle down in a larger home with his family. The newly established Long Island suburb seemed like the perfect place to begin their postwar life—one that, he hoped, would be improved with the help of the GI Bill, a piece of sweeping legislation aimed at helping World War II veterans like Burnett prosper after the war. But when he spoke with a salesman about buying the house using a GI Bill-guaranteed mortgage, the door to suburban life in Levittown slammed firmly in his face. The suburb wasn’t open to Black residents.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2010’s] [Systemic Racism] [Racial Covenants] [Black Lives Matter] [Economics] [White Privilege] [White Culture] [White Supremacy] [Denial] [Housing] [Politics] [History] [Social Justice]
How U.S. Backed Banks Robbed Ex-Slaves of $66 Million
by Jared Brown | Month Unknown 2016
In 1871, Congress authorized banks to provide business loans and mortgages. Paradoxically, such mortgages and loans were usually administered to whites at the expense of black depositors. Risky investments and lending patterns, coupled with cronyism and corruption at the level of upper management, slowly undermined the stability of the bank. According to Black Past, “By 1874, massive fraud among upper management and among the board of director had taken its toll on the bank. Moreover, economic instability brought upon by the Panic of 1873, coupled with the bank’s rapid expansion, proved disastrous.” The Freedmen’s Bank was officially closed on June 29, 1874. At the point of closing, 61,144 black depositors were robbed of the modern equivalent of $66 million. The failure of the bank left many black depositors and borrowers distrustful of the white banking community, especially since the Freedmen’s Bank was established and managed by white men.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2010’s] [Systemic Racism] [History] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [Slavery] [Accountability] [Social Justice] [Economics] [Denial] [Racial Covenants] [Black Lives Matter]
The Shameful Existence of Sundown Towns in America
by BLACKTHEN | February 2021
Don’t let the sun set on you in a sundown town. That’s what signs at the city limits of all-white communities warned when African-Americans were not allowed to live there or even visit after the sun set. This method of exclusion was often held by an official policy or restrictive covenant-. The practice of excluding blacks from American towns was so prevalent that, by 1936, it became the impetus for Harlem civic leader Victor Green to pen the Negro Motorist Green-Book, a guide designed to help African-American travelers avoid places where they could be harassed, threatened, or even killed. Today, it is illegal for sundown towns to exist on paper due to the 1968 Fair Housing Act, but some believe that communities remain sundown by reputation and reluctance to diversify.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [History] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [Systemic Racism] [Racial Covenants]
Slavery and New York City; Confronting Our History to End the Narrative of White Supremacy
by Chuck Armstrong | February 2021
The Historical Society reports that during the colonial period of our country, 41 percent of households in New York City owned slaves, compared with 6 percent in Philly and 2 percent in Boston. “Only Charleston, South Carolina, rivaled New York in the extent to which slavery penetrated everyday life.” In a lot of ways, the life of the enslaved African in New York City looked different than in Charleston or elsewhere in the South; according to The New York African Free School, “Although New York had no sugar or rice plantations, there was plenty of backbreaking work for slaves throughout the state. Many households held only one or two slaves, which often meant arduous, lonely labor. Moreover, because of the cramped living spaces of New York City, it was extremely difficult to keep families together. It was not uncommon for owners to sell young mothers, because they did not want the noise and trouble of children in their small homes.”
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2020’s] [White Supremacy] [History] [Slavery] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [Systemic Racism] [Anti-Racism] [Justice System] [Denial] [Racial Covenants] [Black Lives Matter]
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]
‘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 Urban Planning and Policy Decisions Created the Current Racial Segregation and Injustice in America’s Cities
by Bart Orr, Veronica Olivotto, and Timon McPhearson | June 2020
From Ferguson to Minneapolis, protests over the killing of Black and brown people by police have ignited difficult conversations around race, forcing us to confront the reality that racism exists and perpetuates itself in ways we’ve neglected to fully appreciate. In northern cities generally thought of as progressive enclaves, there’s often a tendency to absolve ourselves and think of racism as primarily a rural problem, or one associated with the deep south and the legacy of Jim Crow. But, as the protests over the killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis show, racism is very much an urban problem, even in the bluest cities of the blue states. New York City, for example, is home to the most segregated school system in the country and some of the highest levels of economic inequality in the nation.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [Systemic Racism] [Policing] [Police Shootings] [Social Justice] [Housing] [Economics] [Health Disparities] [Environment] [Implicit Bias] [History] [Silencing POC] [Racial Covenants] [White Privilege] [White Culture] [Black Lives Matter] [White Blindness]
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]
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]
“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]
How Red Lines Built White Wealth: A Lesson on Housing Segregation in the 20th Century Teaching Activity. Rethinking Schools; A Teaching Activity
by Ursula Wolfe-Rocca | Date Unknown
An 11th-grade student leaned back in his chair at Lincoln High School in Portland, Oregon, and said, “Absurd. That is the only way to describe those numbers. They are absurd.” He and his classmates had just read statistics about the racial wealth gap in their Political Economy class: White households are worth at least 10 times as much as Black households; only 15 percent of whites have zero or negative wealth while a third of Blacks do; Black families making $100,000 typically live in the kinds of neighborhoods inhabited by white families making $30,000. These numbers are absurd, and they are not accidental. The mixer role play is based on Richard Rothstein’s The Color of Law, which shows in exacting detail how government policies segregated every major city in the United States with dire consequences for African Americans.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [Teachers] [Economics] [History] [Politics] [Housing] [Racial Covenants] [Systemic Racism] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [Reparations]
The Ghosts of Elaine, Arkansas, 1919
by Jerome Karabel | September 2019
Given the magnitude of the Elaine Massacre, its absence from standard narratives in American history is striking. In America’s bloody history of racial violence, the little-known Elaine Massacre in Phillips County, Arkansas, which took place in October 1919, may rank as the deadliest. The reasons why the event has remained shrouded and obscure, despite a shocking toll of bloodshed inflicted on the African-American inhabitants of Phillips County, speak to a legacy of white supremacy in the US and ruthless suppression of labor activism that disfigures American society to this day.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2010’s] [White Supremacy] [History] [White Culture] [Systemic Racism] [Systemic Racism] [Policing] [Police Shootings] [Silencing POC] [Economics] [Employment]
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]
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]
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]
A Long History of Racial Preferences – for Whites
by Larry Adelman, California Newsreel | Month Unknown 2003
Many middle-class white people, especially those of us who grew up in the suburbs, like to think that we got to where we are today by virtue of our merit – hard work, intelligence, pluck, and maybe a little luck. And while we may be sympathetic to the plight of others, we close down when we hear the words “affirmative action” or “racial preferences.” We worked hard, we made it on our own, the thinking goes, why don’t ‘they’? After all, it’s been almost 40 years now since the Civil Rights Act was passed. What we don’t readily acknowledge is that racial preferences have a long, institutional history in this country – a white history. Here are a few ways in which government programs and practices have channeled wealth and opportunities to white people at the expense of others.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2000’s] [Slavery] [White Privilege] [History] [Systemic Racism] [White Supremacy] [Colorblindness] [Racial Covenants]
The Asset Value of Whiteness: Understanding the Racial Wealth Gap
by Amy Traub, Laura Sullivan, Tatjana Meschede, Thomas Shapiro | February 2017
Issues of racial inequity are increasingly at the forefront of America’s public debate. In addition to urgent concerns about racial bias in law enforcement and the criminal justice system, activists highlight deeply connected issues of economic exclusion and inequality. No metric more powerfully captures the persistence and growth of economic inequality along racial and ethnic lines than the racial wealth gap. According to data from the Survey of Consumer Finances, the median white household possessed $13 in net wealth for every dollar held by the median black household in 2013. That same year, median white households possessed $10 for each dollar held by the median Latino/a household.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2010’s] [Colorblindness] [Economics] [White Privilege] [Systemic Racism] [Myths] [Racial Covenants]
The Secret History of New England’s Sundown Towns
by New England Historical Society | Date Unknown
“Whites Only Within City Limits After Dark” reads the faded road sign, an artifact on display at the Tubman African American Museum in Georgia.
The sign was found in Connecticut outside of a sundown town – a municipality that prevented African-Americans or other minorities from lingering after dark.
TAGS: [Racial Covenants] [History] [Policing] [2010’s] [White Supremacy] [Racial Terrorism]
Plessy v. Ferguson
Plessy is widely regarded as one of the worst decisions in U.S. Supreme Court history and has never been explicitly overruled. This ruling stated that although the 14th Amendment established the legal equality of white and black Americans, it did not require the elimination of all social or other “distinctions based upon color.”
More Resources
Introduction
Definitions
Facts
Maps
Assessment Tools
History
Appropriation / Aggression
White Privilege / Supremacy
Public Displays
Performance Art
Workshops
Activist Resources
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