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]
Resource Links Tagged with "Silencing POC"
Black Women Need to be Free; OPINION: We Must Work to Re-Build the System in Order to Amplify Black Women’s Voices and Prioritize Our Freedom
by Whitney Pirtle | July 2020
Black women live at the intersection of multiple systems of oppression: structural racism, structural sexism, and capitalism, which constrain the opportunity to live freely and fully. Thus, Kimberlé Crenshaw argued that “any analysis that does not take intersectionality into account cannot sufficiently address the particular manner in which Black women are subordinated.” Intersectional analysis should be employed as a unifying public health framework, especially as related to the pandemic and police brutality.
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2020’s] [Systemic Racism] [Policing] [Silencing POC] [Accountability] [Employment]
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]
How ‘Good White People’ Derail Racial Progress
by John Blake | August 2020
Angry White parents gripping picket signs. People making death threats and a piece of hate mail reading “Blacks destroy school systems.” Community panic about school desegregation orders. But this wasn’t archival footage of White Southerners from the 1960s. This took place last year in Howard County, Maryland, a suburban community that prides itself on racial integration. It was there that progressive White parents mobilized with other groups to try to stop a school integration plan that would bus poor students, who were mostly Black and brown, to more affluent, whiter schools.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [White Supremacy] [Silencing POC] [Systemic Racism] [White Privilege] [Black Lives Matter] [White Culture] [Economics] [Accountability] [White Defensiveness] [White Blindness]
What Is White Centering and Are You Doing It? Plus, 7 Ways To Stop
by Jessica Sager | June 2020
White centering is putting your feelings as a white person above the Black and POC causes you’re supposed to be helping. Layla F. Saad explains in Me and White Supremacy, “White centering is the centering of white people, white values, white norms and white feelings over everything and everyone else.” White centering can manifest as anything ranging from tone policing and white fragility to white exceptionalism and outright violence.
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2020’s] [White Fragility/Tears] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [Systemic Racism] [White Supremacy] [Silencing POC]
Five White Louisiana Judges Uphold Life Sentence of Black Man Jailed for Stealing Hedge Clippers 23 Years Ago
by Namrata Tripathi | August 2020
A man from Louisiana, who was sentenced to life in prison for stealing a pair of hedge clippers over 20 years ago, will continue to remain in prison after the state Supreme Court denied a request to review his case. Fair Wayne Bryant, a 62-year-old Black man, was convicted for stealing garden equipment in 1997, which landed him in prison for the rest of his life. Bryant, in 2000, had appealed his life sentence to be unconstitutionally excessive and his case had made its way up to the high court of the state. However, his hopes were dashed after a Louisiana Supreme Court panel, consisting of five White men and one Black woman, upheld his life sentence 5-1 last week. The only person to dissent was the Black judge on the panel, Supreme Court Justice Bernette Johnson.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [Prison System] [Systemic Racism] [Silencing POC] [Accountability] [Policing] [Economics] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Blindness]
Whitesplaining: The Conversation about White Progressive Liberal Racism That We Aren’t Having
by Shanta Lee Gander | August 2020
Whitesplaining, or white people explaining things to Black people, is a phenomenon. Many of us Black folx swap stories with our friends or with family members as we deconstruct these situations and the assumptions. In this current moment of interrogating the culture, I’ve been re-visiting these moments of whitesplaining in my own life as an extension of an insidious kind of racism that often goes unnoticed. It is the other part of the conversation about race that America needs to have. I’ve lived in Vermont for 10 years. Here, the white progressive racism is partly due to the narrative that Vermont banned adult slavery in its constitution in 1777. With closer examination of the research conducted by Dr. Harvey Amani Whitfield, one learns that this “fact” is full of inconsistencies. Vermont at the time was still an environment that allowed slave owners to place ads for runaway slaves.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2020’s] [White Privilege] [White Blindness] [White Culture] [White Supremacy] [Definitions] [Individual Change] [History] [Slavery] [White Fragility/Tears] [Systemic Racism] [White Defensiveness] [Accountability]
GREAT NEGRO PLOT OF 1741: THE RUMORS AND LIES THAT LED TO EXECUTION OF OVER 30 BLACK AMERICANS IN NEW YORK CITY
by Blackthen | August 2020
The details of the events that took place in New York City in the spring and summer of 1741 are recorded in numerous historic and later accounts, many of which contain contradictory information. According to nearly all accounts, a fire on March 18, 1741, at Fort George—then Lieutenant Governor George Clarke’s home—was the first in a series of fires in the city that may or may not have been set by slaves. The fires occurred at regular intervals and then with increased frequency until April 6, when four fires were set in a single day. Rumors raced across the city when a witness claimed to have seen a black man, identified as a slave named Cuffee, running from the scene of one of the fires.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2010’s] [History] [Slavery] [Accountability] [Systemic Racism] [Policing] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [White Blindness] [Silencing POC] [Assumptions]
On Nantucket, a Racist Act Gets a Second Look
by Dugan Arnett Globe Staff | August 2020
On March 11, 2018, island residents awoke to a startling act of hate. The front door of the African Meeting House — a nearly 200-year-old former church that now serves as a symbol of the island’s rich Black history — had been defiled with racist graffiti: “N—– LEAVE.” The crime made national news, shocking many who couldn’t fathom such overt bigotry in a place of rarefied tranquility. Residents quickly condemned the vandalism, while local officials, labeling the act a hate crime, vowed to seek justice. But justice hasn’t come.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2020’s] [Policing] [Systemic Racism] [Black Lives Matter] [White Supremacy] [White Blindness] [White Culture] [Accountability] [History] [Collective Action] [Silencing POC]
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]
Black Women Have Never Had the Privilege of Rage
by Kimberely Seals Allers | October 2018
The past several weeks have sparked an unprecedented conversation about women’s collective fury in this #MeToo, #WhyIDidntReport and post-Kavanaugh hearings era. Three recent books and a flurry of op-eds, essays and social media energy has everyone talking about rage in a brand new way. This is good news for women. But what’s been blatantly missing from mainstream dialogue is a nuanced understanding of how rage is perceived by and received from black women ― and whether this alleged new moment in the ongoing liberation of women will actually be an equitable one.
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2010’s] [Silencing POC] [White Privilege]
Police Incitement Against Black Lives Matter Is Putting Protesters in Danger
by Sarah Lazare | July 2016
* From the floor of the Republican National Convention to the online pages of the Blue Lives Matter Facebook community, it is now commonplace for public officials, police and first responders to openly declare war on Black Lives Matter—the civil rights movement of our times. “After the shooting, when they [the police] talked about the protest, they talked about how violent protesters were,” Mica Grimm, organizer with Black Lives Matter- Minneapolis, told AlterNet. “They never talked about how five people were shot. No one will ever bring that up. They really don’t care that much about protesters.”
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2010’s] [Policing] [White Supremacy] [Black Lives Matter] [Accountability] [Silencing POC]
Gaslighting: State Mind Control and Abusive Narcissism
by Vanessa Beeley | May 2016
Gaslighting as an abuser’s modus operandi, involves, specifically, the withholding of factual information and its replacement with false or fictional information designed to confuse and disorientate. Gaslighting involves a step by step psychological process to manipulate and destabilize its victim. It is built up over time and consists of repetitive information feeds that enter the victim’s subconscious over a period of time, until it is fully registered on the subconscious “hard disk” and cannot be overridden by the conscious floppy disk. Put more simply, it is brainwashing. “Overall, the main reason for gaslighting is to create a dynamic where the abuser has complete control over their victim so that they are so weak that they are very easy to manipulate.” ~ Alex Myles
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2010’s] [Silencing POC]
The Story on Reparations I’m Not Qualified to Write
by William Spivey | June 2019
The primary argument against Reparations is that individuals today shouldn’t bear the brunt of what happened long ago and that enough time has passed since (choose one); the end of the Civil War, the passage of the Civil Rights Act, the end of Jim Crow, the end of school segregation… that equality should have been achieved. The case for Reparations has never been to exact retribution from generic white people for the harm done to slaves in time past. The case is best made against the United States Government, which has been part of every effort to suppress black people since they came to this country until the present day.
TAGS: [Reparations] [Strategies] [2010’s] [Assumptions] [Collective Action] [Silencing POC] [Politics]
Meet the Young Activists of Color Who Are Leading the Charge Against Climate Disaster
by Nylah Burton | October 2019
These US-based activists know firsthand the impact racism, poverty, and colonialism have had on the planet. Not listening to “youth activists of color” we are only viewing it through “white eyes” and “we miss so much.” Vox speaks to a few of these teens to give us “a glimpse into some of the youth of color who are leading the climate movement in their communities – and who are motivated by the fierce need to protect the most vulnerable.”
TAGS: [Strategies] [2010’s] [POC Climate Action] [Role Model] [Advocacy] [Accountability] [Silencing POC]
I’m Tired of Suppressing Myself to Get Along with White People
by Priscilla Ward | January 2015
I pocket my black rage, and swap “hey girl” for hello. But in making others comfortable, I’m making myself sick. How much of my day-to-day experiences as a black woman do I have to filter?
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2010’s] [Silencing POC] [White Culture]
When White People Are Uncomfortable, Black People Are Silenced
by Rachel Elizabeth Cargle | January 2019
In 1962, Fannie Lou Hamer was fired from her job after she campaigned to encourage African Americans to vote. Two years later, when Hamer testified at the DNC in support of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party—specifically its efforts to further black voter registration —President Lyndon B Johnson called an impromptu news conference to make it impossible for national television networks to cover her testimony live.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [White Culture] [Silencing POC] [History] [2010’s]
Should I Give Up on White People?
by George Yancy | April 2018
Local morgue? Slammed shut permanently? These threatening words are taken from a letter sent to me by an anonymous white person. It was handwritten in black ink, covering both sides of a yellow sheet of paper torn from a legal pad. It is one of hundreds of letters, emails, postcards and voice messages I received — to say nothing of menacing discussions of me on white supremacist websites — after I wrote and published the essay “Dear White America” in December 2015 here at The Stone. What I had offered as a letter of love had unleashed the very opposite — a wave of white hatred and dehumanization.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [White Supremacy] [2010’s] [Systemic Racism] [Silencing POC]
How “Good” White People Silence People of Color Every Day
by Donyae Coles | February 2018
“Good” white people uphold and support white supremacy because they are unwilling to see their own roles within systemic racism. But never assume your initial reaction is the correct one, especially when faced with brand new information. Your bias plays a part in how you see things and must be actively overcome. Don’t do white supremacy any favors because something hurt your feelings.
TAGS: [Silencing POC] [Assumptions] [2010’s] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [Implicit Racism]
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]
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]
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]
‘Black lives don’t mean sh*t’: Mississippi Valedictorian Denied Solo Honor Deluged with Racist Attacks
by Noon Al-Sibai | July 2017
Jasmine Shepard should have become the first Black valedictorian in 110 years at Cleveland High School in Mississippi. An amazing achievement considering that Cleveland, MS still has not fully complied with federal desegregation orders from Brown v. Topeka Board of Education. But Jasmine was denied this honor when she was forced to share it with a white student who did not qualify for it.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2010’s] [Systemic Racism] [Accountability] [Silencing POC] [White Supremacy]
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]
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Dear White People
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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