Resource Links Tagged with "White Blindness"

The Violent History of White Supremacy Is Rarely Taught in Schools. It Should Be.

by Corey Mitchell | January 2021
Searing images from this month’s mostly white insurrection in Washington, D.C.—including a hangman’s noose on the Capitol grounds and the Confederate flag carried inside the U.S. Capitol—harken back to another era when both were tools and symbols of white supremacy across the country. But relatively few students have learned about previous sordid moments that foreshadowed this year’s efforts to instill terror and violently overturn an election such as the Wilmington Insurrection of 1898, widely thought to be the only successful coup in U.S. history, and the Tulsa Race Massacre.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2020’s] [History] [Social Justice] [Systemic Racism] [White Culture] [Slavery] [Politics] [Denial] [Silencing POC] [Teachers] [White Supremacy] [White Privilege] [White Blindness] [White Defensiveness] [Black Lives Matter]

Breaking From White Solidarity

by Erin Monahan | August 2019
Several times in the last week alone I have had encounters with white women who identify as liberal who have gotten upset when I address someone in the group about the casually racist or sexist thing they said. In one instance, I gave a very gentle mention to the person who said the casually racist statement. Because we are adults and we should be able to speak plainly about these things, we moved on. Everything seemed fine. As the night went on, a casually sexist thing was said, and then another casually racist thing was said. I interrupted both times with the intention to engage in conversation about it. … I have been addressed about my racism too many times to count. There are times that I have been defensive and violent in my response to being called out. And though I feel deep regret and shame for that behavior, I am always reflecting on these situations and thinking about how I can receive information with less guilt, shame, and anger the next time. I ask myself, what do I need to heal in myself in order to respond with more reception, true humility, and less ego? It’s never comfortable to receive how I have been racist. I feel a surge of embarrassment and desperation. I want to find a way to deny it, a way to rationalize my way out of it, a way to make myself feel better. This is my whiteness centering me. I focus on my feelings instead of my impact.
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2010’s] [White Fragility/Tears] [White Culture] [Cognitive Dissonance] [White Supremacy] [White Privilege] [Social Justice] [White Defensiveness] [White Blindness] [Anti-Racism]

White Suffragettes Chose White Supremacy over Collective Liberation

by Reina Sultan | January 2020
White women love saying some variation of, “We are the granddaughters of the witches you could not burn”—even though no “witches” were actually burned at the stake during the Salem Witch Trials. It would be more accurate for them to say, “We are the granddaughters of the Suffragettes who sold out Black and brown women for their own political gain.” Because white women have been choosing whiteness since they fought for the right to vote.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2010’s] [Systemic Racism] [History] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [White Blindness] [Politics] [Indigenous] [Myths] [Silencing POC] [White Fragility/Tears] [Collective Action]

“I Am My White Ancestors” Claims the Legacy of Oppression; An Artist’s Journey into Her Family’s Whiteness

by Nancy Hill | March 2019
“I am about to turn over a goodly number of acres to cotton and have added more slaves to total 50. They were a large investment with housing and such. … We have heard that some states in the north have gone against nature and profit to prohibit slaves. … Without slaves, where do they expect to get cotton, tobacco, molasses, and rice? … Sometimes I do wonder if the slaves are truly as simple and childlike as some say. When I put some up for sale, I see their mothers stand there and openly weep. Imagine! Perhaps they really do feel as we do. But I banish that thought from my mind. … I am a good and kind master. These African slaves could not survive without me. They are better treated here than in the heathen land they come from. We clothe them and feed them, give them shelter and medical care and the discipline they need They have the benefit of civilized and white society.” —John Salley, 1740-1794, excerpt from audio story about Salley
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2010’s] [Slavery] [Systemic Racism] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Defensiveness] [White Privilege] [White Blindness] [History] [Black Lives Matter] [Indigenous] [Art & Culture] [Anti-Racism]

Mississippi School Asks Students to ‘Pretend’ to Be Slaves and Write Letters About Their ‘Journey’ to ‘Family Back in Africa’

by Zack Linly | March 2021
I don’t understand these “educators” who insist on taking slavery—the most brutal, cruel, and inhumane thing America has ever done to an entire race of people whose freedom, heritage, families and humanity were stripped from them—and turning it into some Sesame Street-ass game or activity that trivializes the centuries-long practice. Just last week, I reported on a school in Delaware in which kindergartners were being taught yoga positions that mimicked the way enslaved people were positioned on slave ships.
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2020’s] [Slavery] [Teachers] [Black Lives Matter] [Systemic Racism] [White Blindness] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [White Supremacy] [History] [Microaggressions] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [Accountability]

Prejudice + Pretend Ignorance = Racism

by Deborah L. Plummer | March 2021
Like many social scientists, I learned that prejudice + power = racism. Having power is key for determining how someone could turn their everyday bias into racism. We all have prejudices but not everyone has the power to turn it into racism. With power, one can make laws, establish structures, enact practices and procedures that benefit Whites and disadvantage BIPOC. This classic definition of racism remains true today, especially for how structural and systemic racism get created and maintained. However, there is another kind of power being exhibited today that has become an equal catalyst for establishing and maintaining structural and systemic racism — ignorance. For many Americans, denying, dismissing, minimizing or being ignorant of the nature of racism and its impact on American society is enough to release them from accountability for racism. If racism doesn’t exist, they cannot possibly be racist.
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2020’s] [Systemic Racism] [Implicit Bias] [Accountability] [Denial] [Definitions] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [White Defensiveness] [Politics] [Social Justice] [White Blindness]

Why Have I Never Heard of This?’: Phila Orchestra Revives America’s First Black Woman Composer

by Peter Crimmins | February 2021
Florence Price had one of her pieces performed in 1933, by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Since then, she has disappeared from the classical canon. “She shouldn’t be an obscure composer. It’s sensational music that’s been overlooked,” said Orchestra CEO Matías Tarnopolsky. “It raises questions of how canons of music are made. Here we have this brilliantly creative compositional voice that has been largely unheard since her death in the middle of the 20th century.” “In the musical world we have to ask: Why is this the case?” he added.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2020’s] [Art & Culture] [Silencing POC] [White Privilege] [White Culture] [White Blindness] [History]

Racial Discrimination Has Been ingrained in the Criminal Legal System from its Earliest Days and Persists Today

by Daniele Selby | February 2021
The legacy of slavery, racist Jim Crow laws, and hateful lynchings has translated into modern-day mass incarceration and the disproportionate imprisonment of Black people. No where is that seen more clearly than in prisons like the Mississippi State Penitentiary — also known as Parchman Farm — and Louisiana’s Angola prison, which were built on and modeled after slave plantations and where several Innocence Project clients have been incarcerated. Racial discrimination and bias has been ingrained in the criminal legal and law enforcement system from its earliest days and continues to pervade every level of the system today. The Innocence Project, with your support, is committed to addressing these injustices. These eight statistics highlight the ways in which racial inequality persists in the criminal legal system today and contributes to wrongful conviction.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [Justice System] [Slavery] [Prison System] [Systemic Racism] [Social Justice] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [White Blindness] [Policing] [Implicit Bias] [Accountability] [Denial] [History] [-ing While Black] [Black Lives Matter]

Slavery Yoga Was Taught to Kindergarteners in Delaware for Black History Month. No, Seriously.

by Zack Linly | March 2021
Just Saturday, I wrote in a report that “It’s about time we have a serious conversation about how a lot of white teachers have no business whatsoever teaching Black students.” I based this statement on three separate stories—all of which occurred during this Black History Month—involving white teachers being racist while downplaying and/or distorting narratives around American racism during lectures to their students. Well, now there’s a fourth story—one that doesn’t necessarily feature educators denying the cruelty of slavery; they just made a fun game out of it which parents are rightfully calling “culturally insensitive, offensive” and “disturbing,”
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2020’s] [Teachers] [Slavery] [Black Lives Matter] [Systemic Racism] [White Blindness] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [White Supremacy] [History] [Microaggressions] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [Implicit Bias]

Educators Who Consider Themselves ‘White Allies’ Are Dangerous When It Comes To Developing Anti-Racist Classrooms

by Dr. Sana Shaikh| | February 2021
She knew the importance of using “She/her/hers” adjectives at the beginning of each virtual work session. She joined the book club where Dr. Kendi’s work was being discussed. By every metric, large or small, she showed that she was, inevitably and truly, an ally. But therein, laid the problem. She had characterized herself as an anti-racist ally. Black and brown educators and children around her would not label her in the same way. In the background, students of color—largely Black and Latinx—would complain to other teachers of color that their voices were not being heard. They would pushback against the teacher-centric approach in the classroom and the unilateral way that power and privilege played out in the school. When those suggestions and feedback were brought up to the white leaders, there was pushback: This teacher did not intend to have a harmful impact. She was leading with good intentions. She simply forgot to implement the feedback. All and all, this teacher was protected by the systems of white supremacy and power. Instead of her being held accountable, the messenger was classified as simply being uninformed. The messenger had a Ph.D. in culturally responsive pedagogy.
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2020’s] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [Anti-Racism] [Teachers] [Black Lives Matter] [Latino/a] [White Privilege] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [Accountability] [Social Justice] [Assumptions] [White Blindness]

American Churches are Apologizing for a Centuries-Old Injustice That Still Reverberates Today; How We Can Start to Undo the Damage

by Melissa J. Gismondi | September 2018
In 2016, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (PCUSA) repudiated the historic “doctrine of discovery.” Although it might sound benign, the doctrine was the pernicious theory that Christians could claim and conquer land inhabited by non-Christians. It helped justify and promote the violent colonization of indigenous lands throughout the Americas. This summer, the Assembly followed up on that repudiation by issuing a report outlining specific actions the church can take to grapple with the doctrine’s legacy. They include official acknowledgments before meetings of the indigenous nations on whose land the meeting is taking place, as well as more discussion of indigenous theologies and educational resources on the doctrine.
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2010’s] [Indigenous] [Faith-Based/Spiritual] [History] [Systemic Racism] [Justice System] [Denial] [White Culture] [White Supremacy] [White Blindness] [Accountability] [Economics] [White Privilege] [Role Model] [Strategies] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts]

How the History of Blackface Is Rooted in Racism

by Alexis Clark | February 2019
Blackface began in the US after the Civil War as white performers played characters that demeaned and dehumanized African Americans. The portrayal of blackface–when people darken their skin with shoe polish, greasepaint or burnt cork and paint on enlarged lips and other exaggerated features, is steeped in centuries of racism. It peaked in popularity during an era in the United States when demands for civil rights by recently emancipated slaves triggered racial hostility. And today, because of blackface’s historic use to denigrate people of African descent, its continued use is still considered racist. “It’s an assertion of power and control,” says David Leonard , a professor of comparative ethnic studies and American studies at Washington State University. “It allows a society to routinely and historically imagine African Americans as not fully human. It serves to rationalize violence and Jim Crow segregation.”
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2010’s] [History] [Systemic Racism] [Civil War] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [Art & Culture] [Assumptions] [Myths] [White Blindness] [Social Justice] [Economics]

Nez Perce Tribe reclaims 148 acres of ancestral land in Eastern Oregon

by Cassandra Profita | December 2020
The Nez Perce Tribe is reclaiming an ancestral village site in the Eastern Oregon town of Joseph more than a century after being pushed out the area. This month, the tribe purchased 148 acres of an area known as “the place of boulders,” or Am’sáaxpa. Chief Joseph held council on the ridge above, before a sweeping view of the Wallowa Mountains. Hundreds of tribal members would camp there at the peak of the fishing season and catch sockeye salmon along the Wallowa River. “There’s a lot of excitement buzzing around,” Nez Perce Tribal Executive Committee Chairman Shannon Wheeler said. “We feel fortunate to be at this juncture in time to be able to say that we are on our way home. We feel the landscape misses us, and we miss the landscape.”
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [Indigenous] [History] [Environment] [Systemic Racism] [Myths] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Blindness] [Advocacy]

‘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 COVID-19 Hollowed Out a Generation of Young Black Men

by Akilah Johnson and Nina Martin | December 2020
They were pillars of their communities and families, and they are not replaceable. To understand why COVID-19 killed so many young Black men, you need to know the legend of John Henry. Bates was only 36, too young to be at risk for COVID-19, or so the conventional wisdom went. He attributed his malaise to allergies and pushed forward with his second full-time job, as head pastor of Forest Aid Baptist Church, working on his Sunday sermon between naps. Online church was a new concept to his parishioners, and during the next morning’s service, he had to keep reminding them to mute their phones. As he preached about Daniel in the lion’s den — we will be tested, but if we continue to have faith, we will come through — he grimaced from the effort. That night he was burning up with fever. Five days later he was on a ventilator; five days after that, he died.
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2020’s] [Health Disparities] [History] [Black Lives Matter] [Systemic Racism] [White Blindness] [Economics] [Denial] [Social Justice] [Slavery] [Housing] [Employment] [Intersectionality] [-ing While Black] [White Privilege] [White Culture]

There Is No Such Thing as a ‘White Ally’ — “TNSWA” Part I

by Catherine Pugh, Esq. | June 2020
The logic behind the expression “White Ally” makes about as much sense as me going into your room, folding your affirmations and putting them neatly away, cleaning all the introspection off of your mirror, gathering your feelings for the laundry, and then you pick up your golliwog, put it away, and announce triumphantly, “We’re in this together, and I am totally committed to helping.” Mmmm, not so much with that.
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2020’s] [White Fragility/Tears] [Racial Terrorism] [Black Lives Matter] [Systemic Racism] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [Cognitive Dissonance] [Social Justice] [“All Lives Matter”] [White Defensiveness] [White Culture] [White Supremacy] [White Blindness] [Accountability] [Policing] [-ing While Black] [Colorblindness] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts]

Did You See the Law Enforcement Response to the Rioters Taking Over the Capitol? This Is What White Privilege Looks Like

by Petula Dvorak | January 2021
Everyone — millions of people — saw this coming. President Trump invited his followers to D.C. a month ago, promising them it’s “gonna be wild.” They planned the riots openly on social media for weeks, bragging about how many guns they’d bring and the mayhem they’d set off. They came by the thousands, and outside the White House, Trump rallied them to march on the Capitol on Wednesday, reassuring them that “after this, we’re going to walk down there, and I’ll be there with you.” (He wasn’t.)
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2020’s] [White Supremacy] [White Privilege] [White Culture] [White Defensiveness] [White Blindness] [Systemic Racism] [Politics] [Policing] [-ing While Black] [Civil War] [Accountability]

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]

White Images, Black Reality: How to Talk to the Accidental Apologists for Monsters

by Earl Hazell | June 2020
We are now living in another one of those times in history when the majority of white people feel compelled to project all of their most deluded fantasies and deepest insecurities onto People of Color simultaneously, to avoid dealing with the systemic crisis they have created. As such, some of them are looking for any excuse to disrupt our communication with each other with a specific objective: to make themselves feel better by getting us to reestablish the sanctity of their illusions. How I ended an online conversation with several friends of mine that a white person entered recently—without invitation—is something that might be helpful to others who will inevitably find themselves in similar situations for some time to come. For some white people, particularly liberals , crisis does not begin when innocent people are ritualistically murdered . Crisis begins when ignorance is no longer bliss. When a lessor enlightened person of European descent elbows their way into one of your talks online, and passive/aggressively asks you to deny reality so you can comfort them, try telling them something like this: _____, the first thing you need to do is cop to the fact that your principle objective for coming into this conversation is to dominate it.
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2020’s] [Denial] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [History] [White Fragility/Tears] [White Blindness] [White Defensiveness] [Racial Terrorism] [Economics] [Silencing POC] [Systemic Racism] [Policing] [Slavery] [Reparations] [Black Lives Matter] [Indigenous] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts]

Denial Is the Heartbeat of America; When Have Americans Been Willing to Admit Who We Are?

by Ibram X. Kendi | January 2021
“Let me be very clear: The scenes of chaos at the Capitol do not reflect a true America. Do not represent who we are,” President-elect Joe Biden said during Wednesday’s siege. …To say that the attack on the U.S. Capitol is not who we are is to say that this is not part of us, not part of our politics, not part of our history. And to say that this is not part of America, American politics, and American history is a bald-faced denial. But the denial is normal. In the aftermath of catastrophes, when have Americans commonly admitted who we are? The heartbeat of America is denial. It is historic, this denial. Every American generation denies. America is establishing the freest democracy in the world, said the white people who secured their freedom during the 1770s and ’80s. America is the greatest democracy on Earth, said the property owners voting in the early 19th century. America is the beacon of democracy in world history, said the men who voted before the 1920s. America is the leading democracy in the world, said the non-incarcerated people who have voted throughout U.S. history in almost every state. America is the utmost democracy on the face of the Earth, said the primarily older and better-off and able-bodied people who are the likeliest to vote in the 21st century. America is the best democracy around, said the American people when it was harder for Black and Native and Latino people to vote in the 2020 election.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2020’s] [Systemic Racism] [Black Lives Matter] [Indigenous] [Latino/a] [Denial] [History] [Politics] [White Defensiveness] [White Blindness] [White Privilege] [White Culture] [White Supremacy] [Slavery] [Civil War] [Racial Terrorism] [Policing] [Police Shootings] [Economics]

The Lies We Tell Ourselves about Race

by Sam Sanders | January 2021
There is a lie some Americans tell themselves when America is on its worst behavior: “This isn’t America!” or “This isn’t who we are!” or “We’re better than this!” You heard versions of this lie again this past week after armed insurrectionists stormed the U.S. Capitol on urging from President Trump, attempting to undo the results of last November’s election. Even in the halls of Congress, after the broken glass was cleared and U.S. senators and representatives were allowed back into their chambers from undisclosed locations, Republican Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska came back to this refrain: “Our kids need to know that this isn’t what America is.” We are a country built on fabrication, nostalgia and euphemism. And every time America shows the worst of itself, all the contradictions collapse into the lie I’ve heard nonstop for the last several years: “This isn’t who we are.”
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [Systemic Racism] [Accountability] [Civil War] [White Blindness] [White Defensiveness] [White Culture] [White Supremacy] [White Fragility/Tears] [Economics] [Politics] [Cognitive Dissonance] [Myths]

Stop Whitewashing the Message of Martin Luther King Jr.

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]

12 Racist and Offensive Phrases That People Still Use All the Time

by Christina Sterbenz and Dominic-Madori Davis | June 2020
As language evolves, we sometimes forget the offensive origins of certain words and phrases. Or we never knew them in the first place. Many common terms and phrases are actually rooted in racist, sexist, or generally distasteful language. For example, the popular phrase “peanut gallery,” typically used to reference hecklers, originated as a term to refer to those — usually Black people — who sat in the “cheapest” section of the Vaudeville theaters.
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2020’s] [Systemic Racism] [Assumptions] [Implicit Bias] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [Definitions] [History] [Slavery] [Accountability] [Microaggressions] [White Blindness]

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]

Field Correction: Race-Based Medicine, Deeply Embedded in Clinical Decision Making, is Being Scrutinized and Challenged

by Stephanie Dutchen | December 2020
A young Black man arrives in the emergency room, doubled over in pain from a sickle cell crisis. “It’s an act,” says the attending physician dismissively. “I think he just wants drugs.” The attending refuses to prescribe the opioids he might give to a white patient in similar straits. Andrea Reid, MD ’88, associate dean for student and multicultural affairs for the Program in Medical Education and director of the Office of Recruitment and Multicultural Affairs at Harvard Medical School, witnessed too many such scenes as a trainee in Boston-area hospitals in the 1980s and ’90s. “It was awful,” she says. “There was bias that reflected in the management of some patients, especially those who didn’t look like they were in pain.” After watching this scenario play out in the emergency department and on the wards, Reid quietly began to direct some of the sickle cell patients toward her outpatient clinic for continuity care. … Many clinicians have heard or been formally taught that Black people don’t feel pain as acutely as white people because they have different biology. Black bodies have fewer nerve endings than white bodies, they’ve been told. Black skin is thicker than white skin, they’ve learned. Digging deeper reveals that these notions, as old as transatlantic slavery, have no evidence behind them. Yet a 2016 survey in PNAS of white medical students and residents found that half of the respondents still believe and act on them.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2020’s] [Systemic Racism] [Health Disparities] [Myths] [Implicit Bias] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Blindness] [Denial] [History] [Indigenous] [Asian] [Latino/a] [White Privilege]

Confronting Racism Is Not About the Needs and Feelings of White People Too Often Whites at Discussions on Race Decide for Themselves What Will be Discussed, What They Will Hear, What They Will learn. And it is Their Space. All Spaces Are.

*Paywall Alert
by The Guardian | March 2019
I was leaving a corporate office building after a full day of leading workshops on how to talk about race thoughtfully and deliberately. The audience for each session had been similar to the dozens I had faced before. There was an overrepresentation of employees of color, an underrepresentation of white employees. The participants of color tended to make eye contact with me and nod – I even heard a few “Amens” – but were never the first to raise their hands with questions or comments. Meanwhile, there was always a white man eager to share his thoughts on race. In these sessions I typically rely on silent feedback from participants of color to make sure I am on the right track, while trying to moderate the loud centering of whiteness.
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2010’s] [Systemic Racism] [White Fragility/Tears] [White Defensiveness] [White Blindness] [-ing While Black] [Economics] [Employment] [Anti-Racism] [Denial] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [Microaggressions]

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]

Found Headstones Bring to Light Historic Injustice

by Gregory S. Schneider | October 2020
Richard and Lisa Stuart were walking beside the Potomac River when they noticed an odd rock in the riprap on the water’s edge. “I think that’s a headstone,” Richard Stuart remembers saying to his wife that day four years ago. Once they started looking, they saw another. And another. With horror, Stuart discovered that a two-mile stretch of erosion control along the riverfront farm he had just purchased was full of grave markers. A state senator, Stuart enlisted Virginia historians to figure out where they came from. The trail led upriver to the nation’s capital, and illuminated a dark truth about how Washington became the city it is today: The headstones were from Columbian Harmony Cemetery, a historic African American burial ground that was dug up and relocated in 1960 to make way for commercial development.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2020’s] [Systemic Racism] [Silencing POC] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Blindness] [History] [Black Lives Matter] [Accountability]

Anti-Black Racism in Indian Country: Jim Crowfeather Lives

by Cedric Sunray | August 2020
Of 55 continuous, identifiable, cohesive Indian communities in the Eastern and Southern regions of the United States (of whom I have intimate knowledge of) were found that of the 29 federally-recognized entities, all but six have been listed in historical records as having mixed-white ancestry, as well as some of course being listed as of primarily Indian ancestry. In the remaining six (all of who battled the BIA more so than the other 23), as well as 26 more that were not federally recognized, it was found that all had some perceived or real association in historical accounts to have some measure of mixed-black ancestry. As the Bureau of Indian Affairs is run by whites, mixed-white Indians, and a smaller number of racially identifiable Indians, with few black employees or employees of mixed-black and Indian descent, it is clear that recognition is not about one’s racial proximity to Indian, but rather one’s racial distance from black. This is entrenched racism and the most obvious double standard one can imagine rearing its head in the Indian political spectrum. While tribes who are perceived or do have some black ancestry, as well as significant Indian ancestry, are being denied, tribes with large amounts of white ancestry and less significant Indian heritage have been acknowledged.
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2020’s] [Indigenous] [Systemic Racism] [History] [Denial] [Politics] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Blindness] [Assumptions] [Silencing POC]