Resource Links Tagged with "Strategies"

Racism and Health: Racism is a Serious Threat to the Public’s Health

CDC Website | Date Unknown
Racism is a system consisting of structures, policies, practices, and norms—that assigns value and determines opportunity based on the way people look or the color of their skin. This results in conditions that unfairly advantage some and disadvantage others throughout society. Racism — both interpersonal and structural – negatively affects the mental and physical health of millions of people preventing them from attaining their highest level of health, and consequently, affecting the health of our nation. A growing body of research shows that centuries of racism in this country has had a profound and negative impact on communities of color. The impact is pervasive and deeply embedded in our society—affecting where one lives, learns, works, worships and plays and creating inequities in access to a range of social and economic benefits—such as housing, education, wealth, and employment. These conditions—often referred to as social determinants of health—are key drivers of health inequities within communities of color, placing those within these populations at greater risk for poor health outcomes.
TAGS: [Strategies] [Health Disparities] [Economics] [Systemic Racism] [Housing] [Employment] [Social Justice] [Politics] [Black Lives Matter] [Indigenous] [Asian] [Latino/a]

 

The Racist Roots of American Policing: From Slave Patrols to Traffic Stops

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]

How Textbooks Taught White Supremacy; A Historian Steps Back to the 1700s and Shares What’s Changed and What Needs to Change

by Liz Mineo | September 2020
Yacovone, who co-authored “The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross” with Henry Louis Gates Jr. in 2013, is now writing “Teaching White Supremacy: The Textbook Battle Over Race in American History.”
The Gazette interviewed Yacovone about the origins of his research, his findings, and why he thinks it’s necessary to teach the difficult story of slavery and white supremacy and their legacies.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [History] [Slavery] [Denial] [White Supremacy] [Systemic Racism] [Social Justice] [Black Lives Matter] [Civil War] [CRT]

Thousands of pages documenting slavery found in attic of Eastern Shore House

by Anagha Srikanth | July 2021
Thousands of papers, some documenting the auction and sale of enslaved Black Americans, were headed for the auction block themselves before Black historians and community members stepped in to reclaim ownership over their past. “It was important to the community because this will connect the dots for people and the younger generation, to let them know how things were. To move forward, you have to see what the past was like,” said Carolyn Brooks, a community historian with the Chesapeake Heartland Project. About 2,000 pages dating from the late 1600s to early 1800s were found in a plastic trash bag in the attic of a 200-year-old house near Chestertown, Maryland, as the owner, Nancy Bordely Lane, was cleaning it out this spring. The foundation of the house, built in 1803 on property that had remained in the family since 1667, was reportedly damaged and the structure was going to be demolished. The documents were headed for the garbage, but were rescued and delivered to Dixon’s Crumpton Auction in waxed seafood boxes, John Chaski, an antique-manuscript expert, told the Washington Post.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [Slavery] [History] [Systemic Racism] [Art & Culture] [Racial Terrorism] [White Supremacy] [White Culture]

Class Action Settlement Brings $59 Million to Descendents of the Pembina Band of Chippewa Indians

by Andrew Kennard | June 2021
WASHINGTON — A $59 million settlement in Peltier v. Haaland, a class action lawsuit alleging trust fund mismanagement and failure to account by the Department of the Interior, will go to four tribes located in the Midwest and Northwest United States and more than 39,000 beneficiaries. On June 10, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia finalized the settlement, which was reached in the Court of Federal Claims with the Chippewa Cree Tribe of the Rocky Boy’s Reservation of Montana, the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians of North Dakota, the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians of Montana, and the White Earth Band of Chippewa Indians of Minnesota, the Interior Department announced. The tribes were represented by the Native American Rights Fund (NARF), according to the website designated for the lawsuit.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [Reparations] [Indigenous] [Systemic Racism] [Justice System] [History] [Economics] [Politics]

Jordan Crowley Would Be in Line for a Kidney—if He Were Deemed White Enough; How An Assumption Made in a Study in 1999 is Delaying Treatment for Thousands of Black Americans

by Jennifer Tsai | June 2021
Jordan is now 18, loves dogs, and is more interested in telling me about his college classes than the fact that he was recently hospitalized for seizures, a complication of his illness. He’ll need a kidney transplant soon. He would be closer to getting that kidney transplant, if only he were categorized as white. A patient’s level of kidney disease is judged by an estimation of glomerular filtration rate, or eGFR, which normally sits between 90 and 120 in a patient with two healthy kidneys. In the United States, patients can’t be listed for a kidney transplant until they’re deemed sick enough—until their eGFR dips below a threshold of 20. Jordan is biracial, with one Black grandparent and three white ones. His estimated GFR depends on how you interpret this fact: A white Jordan has a GFR of 17—low enough to secure him a spot on the organ waitlist. A Black Jordan has a GFR of 21.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2020’s] [Systemic Racism] [White Supremacy] [White Privilege] [White Culture] [Myths] [Black Lives Matter] [Strategies] [Advocacy] [Health Disparities]

The Blackfoot Wisdom that Inspired Maslow’s Hierarchy

by Teju Ravilochan | June 2021
Deeply curious about the reason for the stark difference between Blackfoot culture and his own culture, Maslow sought out positive deviants, or unusually successful individuals. He started with the wealthiest members of the Blackfoot tribe. He discovered that “for the Blackfoot, wealth was not measured by money and property but by generosity. The wealthiest man in their eyes is one who has almost nothing because he has given it all away” (Coon, 2006). Maslow witnessed a Blackfoot “Giveaway” ceremony in his first week at Siksika. During the Giveaway, members of the tribe arranged their tipis in a circle and publicly piled up all they had collected over the last year. Those with the most possessions told stories of how they amassed them and then gave every last one away to those in greater need (Blood & Heavy Head, 2007, (video 7 out of 15, minutes 13:00–14:00). By contrast, as shared by Maslow’s biographer Edward Hoffman, Maslow observed different qualities in members of his own culture.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [Indigenous] [Social Justice] [Advocacy] [Role Model] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [Assumptions] [Economics]

‘60 Minutes’ Ran an Episode about Algorithm Bias. Only White Experts Were Given Airtime.

by Julianne McShane | June 2021
The episode renewed calls to #CiteBlackWomen, many of whom have been leading research on AI bias. The 13-minute-long segment, which aired May 16, reported on how facial recognition technologies have led to the wrongful arrests of Black men. It featured interviews with two White experts in facial recognition technologies as well as two Black men who were wrongfully arrested based on faulty facial recognition. Joy Buolamwini, an artificial intelligence bias researcher at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Black woman, was not featured in the episode after spending what she said were between eight and 10 hours working with “60 Minutes” producers over the course of a few months, recommending research to incorporate and even building a custom demo program showing how facial recognition technologies analyze faces, she said.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [Policing] [Systemic Racism] [Justice System] [Prison System] [Social Justice] [Silencing POC] [Implicit Bias] [White Culture] [White Blindness]

The Battle for Mount Rushmore: ‘It Should be Turned into Something like the Holocaust Museum’

by Annette McGivney | July 2021
The national memorial draws nearly 3 million visitors a year – and Native Americans want the site back with a focus on oppression.
Mount Rushmore national memorial draws nearly 3 million visitors a year to its remote location in South Dakota. They travel from all corners of the globe just to lay their eyes on what the National Park Service calls America’s “shrine of democracy”. Phil Two Eagle is not opposed to the fact that the giant sculpture of American presidents is a major tourist attraction but he thinks the park should have a different focus: oppression. “It should be turned into something like the United States Holocaust Museum,” he said. “The world needs to know what was done to us.” Two Eagle noted what historians have also documented. Hitler got some of his genocidal ideas for ethnic cleansing from 19th and early 20th century US policies against Native Americans.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [Indigenous] [History] [Systemic Racism] [Denial] [Silencing POC] [Politics] [Social Justice] [Policing] [Economics]

‘The Epitome of White Privilege’: White Woman Who Spit on Black Protester Might Have Hate Crime Charge Dropped

by Zack Linly | July 2021
Some white people are racist, and some white racists are just nasty AF. On Jan. 6—the same day as the whiny wypipo rebellion at the U.S. Capitol—Black woman Keren Prescott was leading a Black Lives Matter protest outside the Connecticut Capitol building when she told an “all lives matter”-spewing white woman, Yuliya Gilshteyn, to “back up,” because she wasn’t wearing a face mask. Gilshteyn wasn’t even asked to back away because she was yet another fragile-ass melanin-not who still, in 2021, is pretending not to understand that the words “Black lives matter” do not, by any rule of the English language, imply that other lives don’t. All Prescott wanted was to get this maskless white woman TF out of her face – instead, Gilshteyn spat on her.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [“All Lives Matter”] [White Privilege] [Justice System] [Systemic Racism] [Black Lives Matter] [White Culture] [White Supremacy]

This Man Not Only Invented the Gas Mask But Rescued 32 Men During An Explosion With It

by Storyteller | JULY 2021
The son of former slaves, Garrett Morgan was born in Paris, Kentucky on March 4, 1877. His early childhood was spent attending school and working on the family farm with his brothers and sisters. While still a teenager, he left Kentucky and moved north to Cincinnati, Ohio in search of opportunity. Although Garrett Morgan’s formal education never took him beyond elementary school, he hired a tutor while living in Cincinnati and continued his studies in English grammar.
… On July 25, 1916, Garrett Morgan made national news for using his gas mask to rescue 32 men trapped during an explosion in an underground tunnel 250 feet beneath Lake Erie. Morgan and a team of volunteers donned the new “gas masks” and went to the rescue. After the rescue, Morgan’s company received requests from fire departments around the country who wished to purchase the new masks. The Morgan gas mask was later refined for use by U.S. Army during World War I. In 1914, Garrett Morgan was awarded a patent for a Safety Hood and Smoke Protector. Two years later, a refined model of his early gas mask won a gold medal at the International Exposition of Sanitation and Safety, and another gold medal from the International Association of Fire Chiefs.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [History] [Role Model] [Assumptions]

My Turn: Abenaki People’s relationship to the Connecticut River should Not Be Overlooked

by Andrea Donlon & Kathy Urffer | June 2021
For hundreds of years the Indigenous history of the Northeast has been systematically erased. It is time to speak up to make sure that the federal government and power companies do not continue that bitter legacy. Five hydroelectric facilities on the Connecticut River are renewing their operating licenses under the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). Later this summer, the public will have an opportunity to weigh in on terms for these licenses that will impact more than 175 miles of the Connecticut River for the next 40-50 years. The five hydro facilities are the Wilder, Bellows Falls, and Vernon dams in Vermont and New Hampshire, and the Northfield Mountain Pumped Storage Project and Turners Falls dam in Massachusetts.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [Indigenous] [Environment] [History] [Systemic Racism]

Uncovering Indigenous Worlds and Histories on a Bend of a New England River before the 1650s: Problematizing Nomenclature and Settler Colonial History, Deep History, and Early Colonization Narratives

by Christoph Strobel | February 2022
The essay explores the often-ignored histories of the indigenous people who resided on the confluence of the Merrimack and the Concord rivers up to the 1650s. This place is characterized by a significant bend in the Merrimack River as it changes its southerly flow into an easterly direction. Today, the area includes the modern city of Lowell, Massachusetts, and its surroundings. While the 1650s saw the creation of a Native American “praying town” and the incorporation of the Massachusetts Bay Colony’s towns of Chelmsford and Billerica, it is the diverse and complex indigenous past before this decade which North American and global historians tend to neglect. The pre-colonial and early colonial eras, and how observers have described these periods, have shaped the way we understand history today. This essay problematizes terminology, looks at how amateur historians of the 19th and early 20th centuries have shaped popular perceptions of Native Americans, and explores how researchers have told the history before the 1650s. The materials available to reconstruct the history of the region’s Native Americans are often hard to find, a common issue for researchers who attempt to study the history of indigenous peoples before 1500. Thus, the essay pays special attention to how incomplete primary sources as well as archeological and ethnohistorical evidence have shaped interpretations of this history and how these intellectual processes have aided in the construction of this past.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [Indigenous] [History] [Systemic Racism] [Implicit Bias] [Myths] [Politics] [Slavery] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [Silencing POC] [Health Disparities] [Economics]

The Re-Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

by Wendell Griffen | January 2022
This year, the Arkansas Martin Luther King Jr. Commission, an agency of the Arkansas Department of Education, has invited an un-reconstructed Southern Baptist preacher, right wing politician, and Fox News pundit named Mike Huckabee to deliver a “keynote address” during what it terms an “inter-faith prayer breakfast” on the King holiday (January 17). Attendance will be by invitation only. The event will be held at the Arkansas Governor’s Mansion.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [History] [Systemic Racism] [Social Justice] [Role Model] [Politics] [Racial Terrorism] [Civil War] [Black Lives Matter] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [Economics] [White Privilege] [White Blindness] [Intersectionality]

Native Americans and Mount Rushmore

by From the Collection: Native Americans | Date Unknown
The creation of Mount Rushmore is a story of struggle — and to some, desecration. The Black Hills are sacred to the Lakota Sioux, the original occupants of the area when white settlers arrived. For some, the four presidents carved in the hill are not without negative symbolism. The Sioux have never had much luck dealing with white men. In the Treaty of 1868, the U.S. government promised the Sioux territory that included the Black Hills in perpetuity. Perpetuity lasted only until gold was found in the mountains and prospectors migrated there in the 1870s. The federal government then forced the Sioux to relinquish the Black Hills portion of their reservation.These events fit the pattern of the late 19th century, a time of nearly constant conflict between the American government and Plains Indians. At his second presidential inauguration in 1873, Ulysses S. Grant reflected the attitudes of many whites when he said he favored a humane course to bring Native Americans “under the benign influences of education and civilization. It is either this or war of extermination.” Many of the land’s original occupants did not choose to assimilate; for them war, was the only option.”
TAGS: [Strategies] [Indigenous] [Racial Terrorism] [Systemic Racism] [Silencing POC] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Blindness] [Politics] [Social Justice] [History] [White Privilege] [Prison System] [Art & Culture]

Opinion: Why Norman Rockwell Left Thanksgiving Americana behind

by Andrew L. Yarrow | November 2021
At this time of year, Norman Rockwell is best remembered for his iconic 1943 painting “Freedom From Want,” depicting a smiling White family gathered around a Thanksgiving turkey. But it is less well known that he decisively turned a corner just a few decades later, choosing to reject the airbrushed image of a nation implicitly populated with only happy, White, middle-class families.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [Systemic Racism] [Prison System] [Policing] [Black Lives Matter] [Art & Culture] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [History] [Politics] [Social Justice]

Time Will Not Heal: 5 Ways to Address the Inheritance of Black Poverty, Starting Now

by Richard V. Reeves | June 2021
In white families, poverty is almost never passed down “like a disease”. Our just-published paper shows that just 1.3% of whites are experiencing third-generation poverty. By comparison, more than one in five Black Americans (21.3%) are in the third generation of their family to be poor. (The full paper, co-authored with Scott Winship and Santiago Deambrosi of AEI as well as Christopher Pulliam and Ariel Gelrud Shiro from our own team, is “Long Shadows: The Black-white gap in multigenerational poverty”). Our paper represents the first attempt to analyze income mobility patterns across three generations, back to the Civil Rights era, and it is an empirical challenge. But the overall pattern is starkly clear. Black Americans are sixteen times more likely to be in the third generation of poverty, defined as the bottom fifth of the income distribution (i.e. less than around $48,000 a year for a family of four in today’s money).
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [Economics] [Systemic Racism] [Black Lives Matter] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [White Privilege] [White Culture] [White Supremacy] [History] [Social Justice] [Reparations] [Housing] [Indigenous] [Justice System]

Why Issa Rae Says Diversity Questions Should Be Asked Of White People Who Run the Industry

by Jordan Simon | February 2020
“Every time there’s an interracial romance, it feels like it centers on whiteness, and it doesn’t have to,” the Insecure star said to Variety. “Just so you know, there are people who don’t procreate with just white people.” In the wake of Joaquin Phoenix’s speech at the BAFTAs calling out institutional racism and discrimination in Hollywood, Rae said it’s about time discussions on inclusion be asked of the white people make major decisions in the film and television industry. “I don’t feel like it’s up to me to answer those questions. Like, I’m doing the work. I’m out here. I’m employing who I need to employ, I’m telling the stories that I need to tell,” she said. “Those questions need to be asked to the powers-that-be. It needs to be asked to the white people who run this industry.”
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [Art & Culture] [White Culture] [Systemic Racism] [White Privilege] [Employment]

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]

What it Means to be Black in the American Educational System

by The Conversation | October 2016
Sadly, racism and discrimination are facts of life for many black Americans. As an African-American scholar who studies the experiences of black college students, I am especially interested in this issue. My research has found that black college students report higher levels of stress related to racial discrimination than other racial or ethnic groups. The unfortunate reality is that black Americans experience subtle and overt discrimination from preschool all the way to college.
…The results of a recent survey by the Pew Research Center underscore this point. The survey found that black Americans with some college experience are more likely to say that they have experienced discrimination compared to blacks who did not report having any college experience.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2010’s] [White Privilege] [Systemic Racism] [Microaggressions] [Police Shootings] [Policing] [History] [Black Lives Matter] [-ing While Black] [Teachers]

Anthropology, Racial Science, and the Harvesting of Black Bones: Dr. Michael Blakey Interviewed

by Dr. Jemima Pierre | May 2021
Most renowned academic institutions in the United States are implicated in the macabre practices of “racial” science. “They don’t see African Americans as the same real complete human beings that they and their white families and neighbors are.” On Mother’s Day, May 13, 1985, the City of Philadelphia dropped two bombs on the MOVE Organization compound on Osage Avenue , killing 11 people including 5 children. Thirty-six years later, on April 21, 2021 , we learned that two anthropology professors had held on to the bones of two of the MOVE children. Alan Mann, a currently retired forensic anthropologist, had kept the remains of Tree and Delisha Africa in a cardboard box at the University of Pennsylvania Museum, and shuttled them back and forth between his jobs at UPenn and Princeton University. Janet Monge, Mann’s former student and currently a lecturer at both universities, used the bones in an online Princeton anthropology course titled, “Real Bones: Adventures in Forensic Anthropology.”
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [Racial Terrorism] [History] [White Supremacy] [Black Lives Matter] [Indigenous] [Slavery] [Systemic Racism] [Myths] [Social Justice] [Anti-Racism] [Politics]

8 Ways People of Color are Tokenized in Nonprofits

by Helen Kim Ho | September 2017
There’s a type of racism in the workplace many of us have personally witnessed, perpetrated or experienced: tokenism. Nowhere have I seen this play out more than in the nonprofit space. Tokenism is, simply, covert racism. Racism requires those in power to maintain their privilege by exercising social, economic and/or political muscle against people of color (POC). Tokenism achieves the same while giving those in power the appearance of being non-racist and even champions of diversity
TAGS: [Strategies] [2010’s] [White Privilege] [White Culture] [Systemic Racism] [Economics] [History] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [Social Justice] [Accountability] [White Supremacy] [White Blindness] [Black Lives Matter] [Asian] [Politics] [White Fragility/Tears] [Employment]

The Cost of Doing Nothing; Georgetown University Researchers Estimate in a New Report that the United States Loses Billions of Dollars Annually Because of Inequities in Higher Education

by Sara Weissman | May 2021
The United States loses out on hundreds of billions of dollars each year because of racial and socioeconomic inequities in higher education attainment, according to a new report by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce.
The report, conducted in partnership with the Postsecondary Value Commission, an initiative of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and managed by the Institute for Higher Education Policy, found that it would take $3.97 trillion to close racial and socioeconomic gaps in college degree completion in the country. But after that initial investment, the United States would gain $956 billion per year in increased in tax revenues and GDP and cost savings on social assistance programs.
TAGS: [Strategies] [Collective Action] [2020’s] [Economics] [Social Justice] [Black Lives Matter] [Latino/a] [Asian] [Systemic Racism] [History]

Historical Foundations Of Race

by David R. Roediger | Date Unknown
The term “race,” used infrequently before the 1500s, was used to identify groups of people with a kinship or group connection… The modern-day use of the term “race” is a human invention. The world got along without race for the overwhelming majority of its history. The U.S. has never been without it. Race is a human-invented, shorthand term used to describe and categorize people into various social groups based on characteristics like skin color, physical features, and genetic heredity. Race, while not a valid biological concept, is a real social construction that gives or denies benefits and privileges. American society developed the notion of race early in its formation to justify its new economic system of capitalism, which depended on the institution of forced labor, especially the enslavement of African peoples. To more accurately understand how race and its counterpart, racism, are woven into the very fabric of American society, we must explore the history of how race, white privilege, and anti-blackness came to be.
TAGS: [Strategies] [White Privilege] [Systemic Racism] [History] [Slavery] [Definitions] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [Indigenous] [Economics]

Racism and Health; Racism is a Serious Threat to the Public’s Health

CDC Website | Date Unknown
Racism is a system consisting of structures, policies, practices, and norms—that assigns value and determines opportunity based on the way people look or the color of their skin. This results in conditions that unfairly advantage some and disadvantage others throughout society. Racism — both interpersonal and structural – negatively affects the mental and physical health of millions of people preventing them from attaining their highest level of health, and consequently, affecting the health of our nation. A growing body of research shows that centuries of racism in this country has had a profound and negative impact on communities of color. The impact is pervasive and deeply embedded in our society—affecting where one lives, learns, works, worships and plays and creating inequities in access to a range of social and economic benefits—such as housing, education, wealth, and employment. These conditions—often referred to as social determinants of health—are key drivers of health inequities within communities of color, placing those within these populations at greater risk for poor health outcomes.
TAGS: [Strategies] [Health Disparities] [Economics] [Systemic Racism] [Housing] [Employment] [Social Justice] [Politics] [Black Lives Matter] [Indigenous] [Asian] [Latino/a]

Black Soldiers Played an Undeniable but Largely Unheralded Role in Founding the United States; Veterans like Prince Hall Fought for Independence and then Abolition in the Earliest Days of the Nation

by David A. Taylor | February 2021
Just after dawn on Christmas Day 2020, Clarence Snead Jr., received a phone call with harrowing news: The Prince Hall Masonic Lodge in Providence, Rhode Island, was ablaze. Snead, whose nickname is “Grand” (for “Most Worshipful Grand Master”), rushed the half-hour drive to the lodge on Eddy Street and found the building engulfed in flames. The lodge had a remarkable history that a passerby might not suspect from the two-story wooden structure; a destructive blaze would strike a terrible blow for historic preservation. It housed one of the earliest organizations established by African Americans, stretching back to the era of Prince Hall, a black Bostonian and Revolutionary War veteran. Hall started the first lodge for black Freemasons in his home city in the 1770s with a charter obtained from British Freemasons, because Massachusetts’ white Masonic brethren rejected his application. The arc of Hall’s life and legacy point to the underappreciated role played by African Americans in the Revolution, an indication that the path to black civil rights is as old as the nation itself.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [History] [Black Lives Matter] [Slavery] [Social Justice] [White Supremacy] [Indigenous]

Okinawans Exhibit Artful Way of Reclaiming Indigenous Space

by Megumi Chibana | April 2021
Note: This article originally appeared in Verge 4.2 (Fall 2018), published by the University of Minnesota Press.
In 1995, the Okinawan community of Yomitan — which had been dispossessed of their lands during the Pacific War to allow for the building of a Japanese airfield — revealed their plans for the future of their village. Village leaders placed an image and a poem at the center of this new vision, an artful way of imagining indigenous space…. In 1995, the Japan-US Special Action Committee on Okinawa, or SACO, agreed on joint use of the Yomitan Airfield. Although the permission provided only for “interim use,” the repossession and use of the airfield by the village opened new space for the community. Through self-organization and the reconfiguration of space, the village successfully refuted the military use of indigenous space and regenerated the landscape as a democratic hub for deliberating alternative futures. This is when the community developed and detailed the Phoenix Plan, as a new vision to imagine indigenous space.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [Art & Culture] [History] [Politics][Indigenous] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [Reparations] [Social Justice]

Why Does the World Reward Mediocre White Men?

Inspired by identity politics in the US, focusing on critiques about race and the oppression of Black women in contemporary culture, Ijeoma Oluo, the best-selling author behind So You Want to Talk About Race, explores the dominance of white men in her insightful new book.

Nulhegan Abenaki Post Statement on Abenaki Ethnocide

Posted on the website of the Nulhegan Band of the Coosuk-Abenaki Nation | January 2021
The Indigenous Abenaki people of the Northeast have, for generations, been subjected to both genocidal attacks (killing of people) and ethnocidal attacks (killing of culture) by colonial settlers and their descendants. In the colonial era, these threats took the form of murderous attacks on families and villages in war-time. In the modern era, these threats have included eugenic sterilization [http://www.uvm.edu/~lkaelber/eugenics/VT/VT.html], forced separations of children and families, misrepresentations of history, and other attacks that the United Nations classifies as “ethnocide.” By definition, ethnocide includes both a “mental element” – “the intent to destroy” – and a “physical element” – when perpetrators deliberately take actions to cause “serious bodily or mental harm” [https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml].
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [Indigenous] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [Systemic Racism] [Silencing POC] [Racial Terrorism] [History] [Social Justice]

Henry Ossawa Tanner: The Life and Work of a 19th-Century Black Artist

by Arnesia Young | February 2021
The 19th century was not an easy time to be a Black person in America, especially if you were trying to make it as an artist. For that reason, it is extremely remarkable to note when an American artist of African descent is able to rise above the racial discrimination so prevalent during that time period and become a renowned artist of international acclaim. Henry Ossawa Tanner was one such artist, and he was able to achieve that impressive feat during his lifetime. While he struggled with the complexities and the implications of his race and heritage, Tanner ultimately persevered and was able to develop his talent in a variety of genres. His artwork and story leave a lasting legacy that has impacted many Black artists who’ve followed since.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [Art & Culture] [History] [Role Model] [Slavery] [Black Lives Matter]

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Performance Art

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Freedom and Justice Crier

Activist Resources

Dear White People

Being Allies

James, Rachel, Dragon

Reparations

Three Candles

Spiritual Foundations

Dear White People

Being Allies

James, Rachel, Dragon

Reparations

Three Candles

Spiritual Foundations

Slave Owners Are in Your Pocket

Public Displays

Performance Art

Workshops

Freedom and Justice Crier

Activist Resources

Assessment Tools

History

Appropriation / Aggression

White Privilege / Supremacy

Introduction

Wood Stack Definitions Menu

Definitions

Facts

Maps

Dear White People

Being Allies

James, Rachel, Dragon

Reparations

Three Candles

Spiritual Foundations

Slave Owners Are in Your Pocket

Public Displays

Theater PTown

Performance Art

Maze

Workshops

Freedom and Justice Crier

Activist Resources

Assessment Tools

History

Appropriation / Aggression

White Privilege / Supremacy

Introduction

Wood Stack Definitions Menu

Definitions

Facts

Maps