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]
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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]
From Most Hated to American Hero: The Whitewashing of Martin Luther King Jr.
by Michael Harriot | April 2018
This week, America will commemorate the 50th anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., the most famous and beloved civil rights leader in the nation’s history. Lost in the remembrance of the death of our nation’s most heralded warrior for social justice is the fact that—at the time of his death—King was a man in exile. Contrary to popular belief, when King died, he was not an icon of freedom and equality. In fact, most of the country disliked him. Sadly, on April 4, 1968, a bullet splattered bits of Martin Luther King Jr.’s brains and blood across the balcony of Memphis, Tenn.’s Lorraine Motel. Then, and only then, was white America ready to make him a hero.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2010’s] [Myths] [History] [White Culture] [White Defensiveness] [Collective Action] [Role Model] [Social Justice] [Assumptions] [White Blindness] [Silencing POC] [Systemic Racism]
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]
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]
Embracing Reparations for Slavery
by Cabaretic Community | January 2021
Quakers have historically taken unpopular stances throughout history. We favored abolition and freed our slaves before most others did. We allowed women the right to participate in Worship, providing them the agency to contribute vocal ministry from the very beginning. Many women helped establish the Religious Society of Friends (our official name) as well. We revere our First Wave feminist foremothers who were suffragettes and indeed, many Second Wave feminists called themselves Friends as well. In recent times, Pendle Hill, a Quaker resource and learning center based outside of Philadelphia, has made tentative strides towards a potentially greater embrace of white wealth being transferred to black hands. The details of the proposal are below.
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2020’s] [Quaker] [Faith-Based/Spiritual] [History] [Slavery] [Politics] [Economics] [Reparations] [Systemic Racism] [Social Justice]
The Whiteness Within Me
by Ami Worthen | January 2021
Like you, I watched with horror as a violent mob stormed the Capitol building last Wednesday. Inflamed by white supremacy, misogyny, antisemitism, and homophobia, the rioters erupted like pus oozing from the infection that has been raging on this continent since Europeans arrived. Looking at the disturbing images of the hate-filled insurrectionists, who were almost all white, I forced myself to acknowledge that they are, figuratively and likely literally, my distant cousins. It was an urgent reminder that my commitment to collective liberation hinges on addressing the whiteness within me, the anti-Blackness in my blood. We anti-racist white folks can take note that, as Crystal Good (@cgoodwoman) put it, “This is a DANGEROUS moment because the illusion of a sliding scale of white supremacy — allows so many to point to whiteness over there not in the mirror.”
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2020’s] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [History] [Individual Change] [Policing] [Politics] [Accountability] [Systemic Racism] [Justice System] [Social Justice] [Black Lives Matter] [Indigenous] [White Privilege] [Economics]
PWB: Preaching While Black! Ten Indicators of Racism in Predominantly White Church Bodies and What You Can Do To Address Them; The Unholy Union of Racism and Christianity
by Rev. Dr. Jack Sullivan, Jr. | August 2015
Racism and Christianity are no strangers to each other. While no theologically and biblically alert and informed person of our day would dare to defend racism as a legitimate, holy expression of Christianity, it is important to note that United States church bodies were on both sides of the matter of the enslavement of Africans, with some “Christian” ministers and theologians taking the time to bend some biblical texts while remaining silent on others, in order to offer heretical justification of the evil practice of slavery while crafting the doctrine of White supremacy and Black inferiority to provide a perverse platform on which it was placed. Of course, segregation, discrimination, and White privilege as hallmarks of societal racism, were found in organized church bodies as well. Several predominantly White church bodies continue to struggle with racism in both society and their organizational bodies. Some have made defeating racism a priority, while other church organizations have gone so far as to call racism a sin and to issue apologies for their historic and contemporary silence and complicity with racist orientations, laws, and church practices. Still, a large number of church bodies choose to remain silent on the matter perhaps while not realizing that this option actually emboldens racist practices.
TAGS: [Collective Action] [Individual Change] [2010’s] [Systemic Racism] [Faith-Based/Spiritual] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [-ing While Black] [Employment] [Policing] [Slavery] [Latino/a] [Asian] [Indigenous] [Black Lives Matter] [Social Justice] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts]
White America’s Age-Old, Misguided Obsession With Civility
by Thomas J. Sugrue | June 2018
But in fact, civil rights leaders, while they did believe in the power of nonviolence, knew that their success depended on disruption and coercion as much — sometimes more — than on dialogue and persuasion. They knew that the vast majority of whites who were indifferent or openly hostile to the demands of civil rights would not be moved by appeals to the American creed or to bromides about liberty and justice for all. Polite words would not change their behavior. … That history is a reminder that civility is in the eye of the beholder. And when the beholder wants to maintain an unequal status quo, it’s easy to accuse picketers, protesters, and preachers alike of incivility, as much because of their message as their methods. For those upset by disruptive protests, the history of civil rights offers an unsettling reminder that the path to change is seldom polite.
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2010’s] [History] [Systemic Racism] [Police Shootings] [Policing] [Politics] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [Social Justice] [Justice System]
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]
Meet the New Generation of Black Climate Leaders
by Nexus Media | February 2019
Twenty-two experts and advocates talk about the struggle for racial justice in the face of rising temperatures. “Organizers and activists long relegated to the sidelines are gaining momentem – and political power – as they push for bold solutions to the greatest challenge of our time.”
TAGS: [2010’s] [Role Model] [Economics] [History] [Art & Culture] [Advocacy]
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Dear White People
Being Allies
Reparations
Spiritual Foundations
Public Displays
Performance Art
Workshops
Activist Resources
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History
Appropriation / Aggression
White Privilege / Supremacy
Introduction
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Dear White People
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Introduction
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