by Ricky Riley | July 2016
After uploading the video of Baton Rouge, Louisiana police killing Alton Sterling on July 5, Christoper LeDay has been arrested and not allowed back to work. According to Fox 5 Atlanta, LeDay revealed in a Thursday news conference that he has not been allowed back to work at Dobbins Air Reserve Base due to security-clearance issues. He was working security for only a month when the chaos surrounding the video occurred.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2010’s] [White Culture] [White Supremacy] [Systemic Racism] [Policing] [Police Shootings] [White Privilege]
Resource Links Tagged with "Racial Terrorism"
No Charges for Cops Who ‘Accidentally’ Fired 107 Bullets at an Innocent Mom and Daughter
by Andrew Emett | January 2016
Los Angeles, CA – Exposing the double standard between police and civilians, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office announced Wednesday that no criminal charges will be filed against the eight LAPD officers responsible for nearly killing an innocent woman and her daughter. Although the cops ambushed the unarmed women without warning and fired over 100 bullets without provocation, the district attorney justified the case of mistaken identity due to the fact that the officers involved were afraid and incompetent. At 5 a.m. on February 7, 2013, Margie Carranza and her mother, Emma Hernandez, were delivering newspapers throughout a residential neighborhood in Torrance when eight LAPD cops suddenly opened fire. As Carranza suffered cuts from the flying glass, Hernandez was shot twice in the back while trying to protect her daughter. One bullet exited just above Hernandez’s collarbone, while the other bullet struck her lower back, near her spine. A fragment of shattered glass also flew into her eye.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2010’s] [Policing] [Police Shootings] [Systemic Racism] [-ing While Black] [White Supremacy] [White Privilege] [White Culture]
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]
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]
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]
Women’s Suffrage Leaders Left Out Black Women
by Evotte Dionne | August 2018
In this piece black feminist writer, editor, and critic Evette Dionne explains how many famous white people working for women’s suffrage were actually racist, too. The singular focus on Anthony and her white women peers, including Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Carrie Chapman Catt, seemed to echo the historical maligning of black women activists, writers, and thinkers who were integral to the women’s suffrage movement. While Anthony and Stanton are in history books — and will soon be on the $10 bill — their failure to check what many perceive as their racism worked against black women who were also denied access to the ballot box.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2010’s] [History] [Silencing POC] [Politics] [White Supremacy]
Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome and Intergenerational Trauma: Slavery is like a Curse Passing through the DNA of Black People
by David Lowe | June 2016
In a society in denial, racism is proclaimed dead and an historical phenomenon. Yet it is very much alive, as manifested in the behavior of Black folk. In her book, Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America’s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing, Dr. Joy DeGruy discusses the condition that serves as the title of her book in a video.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2010’s] [Slavery] [White Supremacy] [History] [Systemic Racism] [Black Lives Matter]
Some of Us Are Complicit in Racism
By Rabbi Shai Held | May 2017
Amidst all the carnage, you may have missed the story of Richard Collins. If so, you missed a story that we must not ignore: Richard Collins III, a young black man and a student at Bowie State University, was murdered after he refused to step aside to let a white student pass by.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2010’s] [Faith-Based/Spiritual] [Accountability] [-ing While Black] [Black Lives Matter]
To The Guy Flying A Confederate Flag In New England
by Rev. Emily C. Heath | August 2017
In a time when nine African-American churchgoers were massacred at their church by a man wearing that flag, and in a week when seven black churches have been burned with little media attention, those flags tell everyone that you could care less about what is happening. Others can suffer, so long as you get to wear your flag. It’s like showing up at a funeral and dancing on the grave. I think you believe that the flag brands you as a “rebel” or somehow honors your outlook on life. It doesn’t. It brands you as a racist. You may not think you are one, but flying that flag is a racist act.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [Confederate Monuments] [History] [2010’s]
White People, The Philando Castile Acquittal Should Make You Mad as Hell
by Zenobia Jeffries Warfield | June 2017
It is a fact that Black and Brown people are herded through the prison system at higher rates, are killed by police officers at higher rates, and are not allowed the same privileges in this country as most of you, especially when it comes to receiving justice. That is the reality the country has been built on. People who are not White are treated as less than human because The System was designed by and for White people. So how does a system designed to benefit Whites also export and fail them?
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2010’s] [Prison System] [Police Shootings] [White Blindness]
Racial Trauma is Real: The Impact of Police Shootings on African Americans
by Administrator | July 2016
The violence witnessed towards people of color from police continues to damage perceptions of law enforcement and further stereotype people of color negatively. Decades of research have noted the impact of discrimination and racism on the psychological health of communities of color (e.g., Bryant-Davis & Ocampo, 2006; Carter & Forsyth, 2009; Comas-Díaz, 2016).
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [Police Shootings] [2010’s] [Policing] [Assumptions] [Systemic Racism] [History]
Betty Shelby’s New Job Is Why Cops Won’t Stop Killing Black People
by Michael Harriot | August 2017
OK, there’s a woman cop named Betty Shelby. One day, while on duty, Shelby kills an unarmed black man named Terence Crutcher while he is walking away from her with his hands in the air. It is caught on two different cameras.Betty Shelby, the former Tulsa, Okla., police officer acquitted of killing Terence Crutcher in cold blood—even though there are two videos that show her killing Crutcher in cold blood—has a brand-new job as a reserve deputy with the Rogers County (Okla.) Sheriff’s Office, according to several sources, including the Tulsa World.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [Black Lives Matter] [Police Shootings] [2010’s]
Why Do People Believe Myths about the Confederacy? Because Our Textbooks and Monuments are Wrong
by James W. Loewen | July 2015
The Confederates won with the pen (and the noose) what they could not win on the battlefield: the cause of white supremacy and the dominant understanding of what the war was all about. We are still digging ourselves out from under the misinformation they spread, which has manifested in our public monuments and our history books. With our monuments lying about secession, our textbooks obfuscating what the Confederacy was about, and our Army honoring Southern generals, no wonder so many Americans supported the Confederacy until recently.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [Myths] [Confederate Monuments] [Civil War] [Slavery] [History] [White Supremacy]
Black Farmer Gets Real in Viral Post About the Type of Subtle Racism He Fears Most
by Kyle Jaeger | May 2017
Chris Newman’s Facebook post called out the counter-protests that were organized after Spencer led a march of torch-bearing white nationalists on May 14. Spencer’s group was protesting the planned removal of a Confederate monument.
While the optics and sentiment of the demonstration were disturbing, Newman said he felt “far less bothered by the flag wavers in this picture than this town’s progressives assuming its race problem has nothing to do with them.” “The former is a visual inconvenience. The latter could leave my daughters without a father.”
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [-ing While Black] [Systemic Racism] [2010’s]
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]
U.S. Owes Black People Reparations for a History of ‘Racial Terrorism,’ Says U.N. Panel
by Ishaan Tharoor | September 2016
The history of slavery in the United States justifies reparations for African Americans, argues a recent report by a U.N.-affiliated group based in Geneva. This conclusion was part of a study by the United Nations’ Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent, a body that reports to the international organization’s High Commissioner on Human Rights. The group of experts, which includes leading human rights lawyers from around the world, presented its findings to the United Nations Human Rights Council on Monday, pointing to the continuing link between present injustices and the dark chapters of American history. “In particular, the legacy of colonial history, enslavement, racial subordination and segregation, racial terrorism and racial inequality in the United States remains a serious challenge, as there has been no real commitment to reparations and to truth and reconciliation for people of African descent,” the report stated. “Contemporary police killings and the trauma that they create are reminiscent of the past racial terror of lynching.”
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2010’s] [Reparations] [Slavery] [History] [Systemic Racism] [Policing] [Accountability] [White Supremacy]
Moral Mondays Leader Rev. Barber: Release Video of Keith Scott Shooting, It Belongs to the Public Video
by Democracy Now | September 2016
(Video Transcript) For a third night in a row, protesters chanted “release the video!” as they took to the streets and called for police to release video of the shooting of Keith Lamont Scott. His grieving family has been shown the dashboard and body camera videos of his fatal shooting, but Charlotte Police Chief Kerr Putney says he had no plans to release the video at this time. We get response from Rev. Dr. William Barber, president of the North Carolina NAACP and Moral Mondays leader. His most recent book is titled “Third Reconstruction: Moral Mondays, Fusion Politics, and the Rise of a New Justice Movement.”
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2010’s] [Policing] [Black Lives Matter] [Police Shootings]
NYPD Officers Accessed Black Lives Matter Activists’ Texts, Documents Show
by George Joseph | April 2017
Emails show that undercover officers were able to pose as protesters even within small groups, giving them extensive access to details about protesters’ whereabouts and plans. In one email, an official notes that an undercover officer is embedded within a group of seven protesters on their way to Grand Central Station. This intimate access appears to have helped police pass as trusted organizers and extract information about demonstrations. In other emails, officers share the locations of individual protesters at particular times. The NYPD emails also include pictures of organizers’ group text exchanges with information about protests, suggesting that undercover officials were either trusted enough to be allowed to take photos of activists’ phones or were themselves members of a private planning group text.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2010’s] [Policing] [Black Lives Matter] [White Supremacy] [White Privilege] [White Culture] [Systemic Racism]
Police Officers Not Indicted in Fatal Shooting of Henry Green
by John Futty | March 2017
More than nine months after two plainclothes Columbus police officers fatally shot Henry Green on a South Linden street, a Franklin County grand jury chose on Friday not to indict them on criminal charges.
The grand jury voted not to indict Officer Jason Bare or Officer Zachary Rosen for their actions. Bare and Rosen were wearing civilian clothes and patrolling in an unmarked SUV on the evening of June 6 when they saw Green, 23, and a friend walking in the area of Duxberry Avenue and Ontario Street and noticed that Green was holding a handgun, police said. According to the police division’s account, the officers jumped from the SUV and ordering Green to drop his gun. Instead, police said, Green pointed his gun at the officers and fired. The officers returned fire and killed Green, who was shot seven times.
Christian Rutledge, who was walking with Green, disputed the police account, saying Bare and Rosen gave no indication that they were officers and gave Green no time to react.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2010’s] [Police Shootings] [Policing] [Systemic Racism] [Black Lives Matter] [Accountability] [White Supremacy] [White Privilege] [White Blindness] [Systemic Racism]
Boston Police Data Shows Black Men were Stopped Most Often
by Allison Manning | January 2016
Police released a database of nearly 150,000 civilian encounters. A trove of data released by Boston police shows black males were the most likely demographic group to be stopped by officers in recent years. More than half of those stopped — 56 percent — were black males. In their own analysis, Boston police said “nearly 59 percent of the FIO subjects were black.’’ But about 4.3 percent of the total reports don’t state a race, or the officer checked “unknown.’’ Taking out those blanks or unknowns, the actual percentage of black people stopped among those with a known race is 61.2 percent. Boston’s population is about 25 percent black.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2010’s] [-ing While Black] [White Supremacy] [White Privilege] [Policing] [Systemic Racism] [Accountability]
BUSTED: Cops Caught on Video Pepper-Spraying Handcuffed Biracial Girl — after a Car Hit Her
by David Ferguson | September 2016
Police in Hagerstown, MD are under fire after a video surfaced showing them pepper-spraying a handcuffed teen girl after she tried to leave the scene after being struck by a vehicle. The Hagerstown Herald-Mail reported Wednesday that a Facebook video of police manhandling the 15-year-old girl has got the police department scrambling to explain itself. According to Flicker, the girl — who is the daughter of a white mother and a black father — was riding her bike on Sunday afternoon when she was struck by a car.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2010’s] [-ing While Black] [Policing] [White Supremacy] [Systemic Racism] [Accountability] [White Blindness] [Silencing POC] [White Privilege]
I’m Tired, but I’m Not Finished: Are We Ready to Call it Racism Now?
by Edward Rhymes | June 2015
It seems we live in an American society that is hellbent on euthanizing black hope and injecting our despair and frustration with adrenaline. We abide in a country that counts our lives as cheap, and through brutal conditioning has taught too many us to feel the same. White mass killers are apprehended by police alive, black children, just walking home are not. Nothing to see here, people, it’s just a 12-year-old boy gunned down by police. Keep moving along, citizens, it’s just another unarmed black man killed by a cop. Just stroll on by, folks, racism had absolutely nothing to do with the killing of those nine black people attending a Bible study, even though they were killed by a self-proclaimed white supremacist.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2010’s] [White Supremacy] [White Blindness] [White Privilege] [-ing While Black] [Systemic Racism] [Policing] [Calling Police] [Black Lives Matter] [History]
Native Lives Matter: Police Killing Native Americans at Astounding Rate
by Ruth McCambridge | July 2016
A recent report by the Center for Juvenile and Criminal Justice reports that Native Americans are killed by police at a higher rate than any other ethnic group. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that Native Americans make up almost two percent of those killed by police though they are only 0.8 percent of the population. While police kill young black men more than any other group, they kill Native Americans at a higher rate.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2010’s] [Policing] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [White Supremacy]
Delrawn Small: The Police Shooting Victim You Didn’t Hear About Last Week
by Simone Wilson | July 2016
A black Brooklyn dad was killed by a cop the same week as Alton Sterling and Philando Castille. New video proves his death equally horrific. The NYPD claimed that after Small and the officer were involved in a near fender-bender at the intersection of Atlantic Avenue and Bradford Street, Small “exited his car and approached the off-duty officer, who was still seated in his vehicle, and began to punch him repeatedly in the head through the car window.”
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2010’s] [Policing] [Police Shootings] [Black Lives Matter]
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.”
Documenting White Supremacy in US
White supremacy is hard wired into every American. Like fish swimming in an ocean who can’t identify themselves as wet, its impossible for most of white America to understand how deeply white supremacy is a part of us and how it has been woven into the very fabric of the United States existence from the first beginning.
White Supremacy and Colonization
This list documents white supremist and colonizing behavior in the US. As we start to see the extent and insidious nature of this behavior we can begin to realize the importance of doing things differently. This awareness will help us move toward decentering the negative white behavior and instead center the resilience, survival and strength of people of color.