Resource Links Tagged with "White Culture"

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]

Fatal Police Shootings of Unarmed Black People Reveal Troubling Patterns

by Cheryl W. Thompson | January 2021
Ronell Foster was riding his bicycle through the hushed streets of Vallejo, Calif., one evening when a police officer noticed that the bike had no lights and that he was weaving in and out of traffic. The officer, Ryan McMahon, went after Foster with lights flashing, siren blaring and the car’s spotlight pointed directly at him. Foster stopped. The pair exchanged words before Foster, who was on community supervision for a car theft conviction a month earlier, fled, eventually ditching the bicycle. McMahon caught up with Foster and jumped on top of him. The two struggled. McMahon, a rookie on the force, used a Taser on the father of two and struck him several times with his department-issued flashlight. Gunfire erupted — seven shots total. When it was over, Foster, 33, lay dying in the bushes in a darkened courtyard near an apartment complex.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2020’s] [-ing While Black] [Police Shootings] [Policing] [Systemic Racism] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [Justice System] [Black Lives Matter] [White Defensiveness] [White Privilege] [Accountability] [Denial] [History]

Richmond Police Seize Guns from Group of Black Men at Gun Rights Rally While White ‘Boogaloo Boys’ Admit They Faced No Issues

by Niara Savage | January 2021
Richmond police seized at least two firearms from a group of Black men present at a gun rights rally in Virginia on Monday, Jan. 18, while white gun rights activists were not confronted by authorities. During the annual “Lobby Day” demonstration in Richmond, Black protesters expressed frustration about law enforcement’s disparate treatment of Black and white activists. … Just an hour before the group of Black men was stopped, the white leader of the Boogaloo Boys shared via megaphone that his group of anti-government, far-right extremists was violating gun and ammunition laws. The group of all white men called themselves the “Last Sons of Liberty.” Leader Mike Dunn, 20, shared with reporters and police alike that his group was openly carrying semiautomatic rifles “in pure defiance” of local laws, and “rocking mags (ammunition magazines) with double the legal limit.” Dunn told Reuters that the group did not face any issues. “We are here openly defying these laws, these unconstitutional city ordinances,” he said.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [Policing] [Systemic Racism] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [Silencing POC] [-ing While Black] [Implicit Bias] [Justice System]

How to Be a Black Ally

by Michael Harriot | January 2021
The most prominent member of White Twitter has been kicked off the internet. Parler (also known as Caucasian Clubhouse) has been dismantled. And, because the TSA put them on the no-fly list, our beloved Brads and Beckys are literally forced to sit on the back of the bus. Sure, they control 95 percent of the Fortune 500 corporations, legislatures, courts, media outlets, financial institutions and police departments in America. But white privilege also means that, when times get hard, they need someone to speak up for them. Our silence has to stop. For years, the Black community has ignored economic anxiety, racial resentment and white fragility. Very few African Americans attended the March on Wypipo-ing in Charlottesville or the Coup Klutz Klan cookout on the Capitol. We make excuses like: “There were too many Nazis there.” But, if we are being honest, it is because Black America loves to engage in this selfish practice called “minding our damn business.”
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2020’s] [Politics] [White Privilege] [White Supremacy] [Economics] [White Fragility/Tears] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [“Reverse Racism”] [Microaggressions] [White Culture] [Systemic Racism] [Accountability]

The Pre-Civil War Fight Against White Supremacy; In a Country Driven by Racial Politics, Three Women Strove for a Just Society

by Dorothy Wickenden | January 2021
Two years into the cataclysmic war, Lincoln found a way to justify emancipation, as a “military necessity.” Frances greeted the proclamation with relief, but not euphoria. She was equally subdued when the Thirteenth Amendment eventually passed, on January 31, 1865, inscribing into the Constitution the eradication of slavery. Back in Auburn, she read the Herald Tribune’s report about the giddy scene in Washington. The visitors’ galleries were full, and senators and Supreme Court Justices squeezed onto the House floor. Finally, Speaker Schuyler Colfax stood and gavelled the room to order, announcing in a quavering voice that the ayes had a hundred and nineteen votes, the nays fifty-six. As Democrats looked on stonily, Republicans threw their hats in the air, cheering and roaring. Women in the gallery waved their handkerchiefs. Artillery at the Capitol fired a hundred-gun salute. The Tribune’s headline declared, “freedom triumphant. commencement of a new era. death of slavery.” It was a historic victory, but it had been won as much by political horse-trading as by deep principle. Henry and Lincoln, in a months-long backroom campaign, had lobbied wavering representatives with bribes and offers of jobs. And, Frances thought, it was too soon to celebrate. The amendment still had to be ratified by three-quarters of the states. Half a million men had died in the war, and it was not over. General William Tecumseh Sherman was moving through the Carolinas, and Ulysses S. Grant was eight months into his siege of Petersburg. There were rumors that rebels would attempt to assassinate the President. After reading about the joyous outpouring in the House, Frances wrote Henry a bracingly solemn note: “I congratulate you on the passage of the Constitutional amendment which I know you had much at heart. The prospect of abolishing slavery throughout the United States is indeed cheering.” The battle for equality had barely begun.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2020’s] [Slavery] [Justice System] [Civil War] [History] [Politics] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [Systemic Racism] [Racial Terrorism] [Prison System] [Faith-Based/Spiritual] [Quaker]

How the Dawes Act Stole 90 Million Acres of Native American Land

by Dave Roos | January 2021
In the long, dark history of the United States government’s mistreatment of Native Americans, most people are familiar with the Trail of Tears, in which approximately 15,000 Native American men, women and children died during forced relocation from their tribal homelands in the American Southeast to Indian Territory in modern-day Oklahoma. But the theft of Native American tribal land didn’t stop with the Indian Removal Act of 1830 that authorized the Trail of Tears. Over the next century, Congress passed a series of laws that systematically stripped tribes of their lands, selling them to white settlers and corporations.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2020’s] [Indigenous] [History] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [Slavery] [Systemic Racism] [Politics] [Economics] [Implicit Bias] [Justice System] [Assumptions]

Enslaved Native Americans Played Central Role in 1600s New England Households

by Cecily Hilleary | January 2021
In 1614, six years before the Mayflower crossing, English explorer John Smith led two ships to survey the New England coast. As he described in his “Historie of New England,” Smith left shipmaster Thomas Hunt behind to fish and trade with the Natives. But Hunt saw an opportunity in another kind of trade: He kidnapped 27 Wampanoags and sailed to Spain, where he sold “these poor innocent souls” into slavery. … Slavery in America is usually associated with Africa and the American South. But Ohio State University historian Margaret Ellen Newell told VOA that up until 1700, Native Americans comprised the majority of slaves in America. “The first documented case was in 1605, when an English expedition captured four Wabanakis in what’s now Maine and brought them back to London,” Newell said. “The expedition was run by a man named Ferdinando Gorges, who hoped to establish a colony in northern New England and was looking for captives to use as guides and interpreters.” Since the start of their settlement, Puritan colonists sought Indians as indentured servants as a solution to labor shortages, she said.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2020’s] [Indigenous] [Slavery] [History] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [Systemic Racism] [Justice System] [Prison System]

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]

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]

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]

The Brutish Museums by Dan Hicks Review – Return Everything; A Powerful Call for Western Museums to Return the Objects Looted in the Violent Days of Empire, During ‘World War Zero’

by Charlotte Lydia Riley | November 2020
The book is a vital call to action: part historical investigation, part manifesto, demanding the reader do away with the existing “brutish museums” of the title and find a new way for them to exist, not as sites of violence or trauma but as “sites of conscience”. Hicks is a curator at the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, whose website says that it displays “archaeological and ethnographic materials from all parts of the world”. He focuses on one particular region – the kingdom of Benin, now located in modern Nigeria.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2020’s] [History] [Art & Culture] [Systemic Racism] [Denial] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [Racial Terrorism] [Economics] [Slavery] [Reparations]

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]

Alexander Hamilton, Enslaver? New Research Says Yes; A Paper by a Researcher at the Schuyler Mansion Finds Overlooked Evidence in Letters and Hamilton’s Own Account Books Indicating That He Bought, Sold and Personally Owned Slaves.

by Jennifer Schuessler | November 2020
“Not only did Alexander Hamilton enslave people, but his involvement in the institution of slavery was essential to his identity, both personally and professionally,” she writes. “It is vital,” she adds, “that the myth of Hamilton as ‘the Abolitionist Founding Father’ end.” The evidence cited in the paper, which was quietly published online last month, is not entirely new. But Ms. Serfilippi’s forceful case has caught the eye of historians, particularly those who have questioned what they see as his inflated antislavery credentials.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2020’s] [Slavery] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [Art & Culture] [Denial] [Myths]

The Violent Defense of White Male Supremacy; Trump and His Supporters Are Defending an America Where White Men Can Rule and Brutalize Without Consequence.

*Paywall Alert

by Ibram X. Kendi | September 2020
The violence of Chauvin and Rittenhouse bookended the summer of Trumpism. The three long, hot months from May 25 to August 25 compressed 413 years of American history into a cellphone video in which anyone could easily see the history for what it has always been: the violent “self-defense” of white male supremacy. Colonialism, capitalism, slavery and slave trading, Indian removal, manifest destiny, colonization, the Ku Klux Klan, Chinese exclusion, disenfranchisement, Jim Crow, eugenics, massive resistance, “law and order,” Islamophobia, family separation—all were done in the name of defending life or civilization or freedom.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2020’s] [Politics] [Systemic Racism] [White Supremacy] [History] [White Privilege] [White Culture] [Policing] [Police Shootings] [White Defensiveness] [White Blindness] [Health Disparities] [Justice System] [Black Lives Matter] [-ing While Black] [Accountability] [Indigenous] [Intersectionality]

George Floyd’s Autopsy and the Structural Gaslighting of America; The Weaponization of Medical Language Emboldened White Supremacy with the Authority of the White Coat. How Will We Stop It from Happening Again?

by Ann Crawford-Roberts, Sonya Shadravan, Jennifer Tsai, Nicolás E. Barceló, Allie Gips, Michael Mensah, Nichole Roxas, Alina Kung, Anna Darby, Naya Misa, Isabella Morton, Alice Shen | June 2020
The world was gaslit by misreporting about George Floyd’s initial autopsy report. As concerned physicians, we write to deconstruct the misinformation and condemn the ways this weaponization of medical language reinforced white supremacy at the torment of Black Americans. Gaslighting is a method of psychological manipulation employed to make a victim question their own sanity, particularly in scenarios where they are mistreated.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2020’s] [Black Lives Matter] [Systemic Racism] [Silencing POC] [Racial Covenants] [Policing] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [History] [Collective Action] [Police Shootings] [Denial] [Accountability] [Health Disparities] [Definitions]

For White Men Who Have Considered Genocide When Patriarchy and Privilege Are Not Enuf

by Mikol L. Clarke | November 2020
The cacophony of celebratory sounds that rang out last week in reaction to Joe Biden’s win was based on a sundry of emotions—ranging from relief at ending a racist regime dominated by white men who were fanatical about protecting their own wealth and privilege to jubilance over a historic win for Kamala Harris, the first woman and African American to be elected vice president. We were all celebrating our new white savior with a side of sister and new hopes that a brighter day was on the horizon. That day has not come just yet. The celebration only fueled the anger and resentment of a cadre of white men who’ve made it their dual mission in life to be both sycophants to a man in orange and to hinder any semblance of progress in this country. The days that followed Biden’s victory speech were riddled with egregious examples of toxic white masculinity.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2020’s] [Politics] [White Supremacy] [Systemic Racism] [White Privilege] [White Culture] [History] [Silencing POC] [Justice System] [Health Disparities]

Supreme Court Upholds Law Banning Chinese Americans from White Schools

by Equal Justice Initative | Date Unknown
On November 21, 1927, in Gong Lum v. Rice, the United States Supreme Court ruled against the Chinese-American Lum family and upheld Mississippi’s power to force nine-year old Martha Lum to attend a “colored school: outside the district where she lived. …When the Mississippi Supreme Court held that Martha Lum could not insist on being educated with white students because she was of the “Mongolian or yellow race,” her father appealed to the United States Supreme Court. In its decision siding with the state of Mississippi, the U.S. Supreme Court reasoned that Mississippi’s decision to bar Martha from attending the local white high school did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment because she was entitled to attend a colored school. This decision extended the reach of segregation laws and policies in Mississippi and throughout the nation by classifying all non-white individuals as “colored.”
TAGS: [Collective Action] [Asian] [Systemic Racism] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [Justice System] [White Blindness]

Going Beyond the Myth This Thanksgiving

by Maia Coleman | November 2020
“I contend that the Thanksgiving myth is just that — it’s a myth, it’s not history,” said Mr. Silverman. The real story, he explained, features far more bloodshed and destruction, including a European plague that wiped out enormous swaths of the native population, the continued exploitation of native people at the hands of the colonists and above all, the grabbing of native lands. The actual Thanksgiving feast was born from a mutual defense pact between the English colonists and the Wampanoags against the neighboring Narragansett tribe, Mr. Silverman said. “Neither side attributed much importance to this event,” Mr. Silverman told the audience. “The Wampanoags never invoked it again, at least on record in any diplomacy between themselves in the English…and English records dedicated two paragraphs to it.”
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2020’s] [Indigenous] [Myths] [History] [Silencing POC] [White Culture] [White Supremacy] [Denial] [Systemic Racism]

The Hurdles Ahead in 2021 for Maine’s Stalled Tribal Sovereignty Bid

by Caitlin Andrews | November 2020
Tribes are reviving a push to overhaul their relationships with the state, but they lost champions in the election and the complicated effort may face obstacles in a skeptical Gov. Janet Mills and special-interest opponents. … The complex issue of sovereignty would be revived in what promises to be one of the more high-stakes legislative sessions in state history in early 2021. Lawmakers will be facing an estimated $1.4 billion shortfall over the next three years. Racial disparities around the coronavirus, health and incarceration are also likely to drive policy conversations.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [Indigenous] [Politics] [Justice System] [Systemic Racism] [Health Disparities] [Prison System] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [Economics] [Denial]

“This is Where Our People Are”: Reflections on Plymouth 400

by Charles Thomas Lai FitzGibbon | November 2020
This month, in addition to being National Native American Heritage Month, marks 400 years since the Mayflower landed in Plymouth. Here in Massachusetts—a state named after the indigenous people of the “Great Blue Hill”—many of us are settlers on stolen land. I spoke with Cheryl Andrews-Maltais, Chairwoman of the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head Aquinnah based on Martha’s Vineyard, to hear her perspective on this moment, and what we can learn from reflecting on the anniversary. CF: This year marks 400 years since European settlers landed in Plymouth. How are your communities reflecting on and/or acting around this moment? …CAM: We wanted to really have our truth be told, not the whitewashed, watered down version [from] the history books that our children have to endure around fifth grade. Not the version to make the story sound good. As we say in Indian Country which is where we live and work: the truth is the truth is the truth.
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2020’s] [Indigenous] [History] [White Supremacy] [Racial Covenants] [White Culture] [White Blindness] [Systemic Racism] [Advocacy] [Justice System] [Politics] [White Privilege]

Honestie Hodges, Handcuffed by the Police at 11, Is Dead at 14

by Glenn Rifkin | November 2020
The incident occurred on Dec. 6, 2017. Honestie had stepped out the back door of her home with her mother and another family member to go to the store when they were confronted by police officers with their guns drawn. “Put your hands on top of your—,” an officer ordered them before he was interrupted by Honestie’s mother screaming, “She is 11 years old, sir!” “Stop yelling!” the officer responded, as recorded by an officer’s body camera. He ordered Honestie to walk backward toward him with her hands up. A second officer grabbed her arms, pulled them behind her back and handcuffed her. Honestie shouted, “No, No, No!” pleading with the officers not to place the cuffs on her. The police, who said they had been searching for a 40-year-old woman in connection with a stabbing, removed the handcuffs after several minutes.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2020’s] [Policing] [Systemic Racism] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [White Blindness] [-ing While Black] [Black Lives Matter] [Assumptions] [Health Disparities]

Elites Use Race to Divide Us; The War on Police Brutality Hides a Much Bigger Threat to All Americans

by Monica Harris | June 2020
Let’s get something straight: white privilege is real. I know because I’ve lived in its shadow my entire life. I’ve felt it even when I’ve tried to forget or pretend it wasn’t there. White privilege wasn’t earned; it was gifted to people who brought others, shackled in the bowels of ships, to serve them. Living in a country where your ancestors were once stuff that other people “owned” leaves wounds so deep they can’t be erased from the collective memory. And when your ancestors were the ones allowed to “own” other people, it creates something equally indelible: an advantage that’s hard-wired into all levels of society. It’s like getting a head start in every race that always puts you a few yards from the finish line. It’s an entitlement that lingers, unspoken, in the back of all minds, silently playing out in everything we say, think, or do.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2020’s] [White Privilege] [White Culture] [Systemic Racism] [History] [Policing] [Slavery] [Implicit Racism] [Economics] [Black Lives Matter] [Police Shootings] [Denial] [Civil War]

Can Anybody Hear Me? How White Nonprofit Writing Standards Erase BIPOC Voices — and Why That is Definitely Not OK

by Yolanda Contreras | November 2020
So many times, we see the creation of BIPOC-serving organizations by all white people — organizations devoid of voices exemplifying the very communities that these white people are trying to help. This kind of white saviorism is commonplace because we live within white supremacy — it often exhibits as the erasure of diverse voices in favor of the white dominant voice. Which is tragic, because oftentimes, our personal voice is one of the only things that we have. I’ve orbited around nonprofits and volunteering for almost as long as I can remember, at least ever since I took on my first volunteer gig while in elementary school, assisting the school librarian. I’ve held various volunteer positions throughout the years, which have also included an internship at an esteemed nonprofit. But it took me almost four years after college graduation for someone to actually hire me — to pay for my labor — and for me to finally jumpstart my official nonprofit career. Time after time, I found myself in front of an all-white hiring committee, defending and selling myself. Time after time, I would receive a rejection letter from a white leader figure who deemed me not good enough. Maybe these nonprofits wanted to hire me — but didn’t — for reasons they couldn’t quite put their fingers on. I think it’s the fact that I am a woman of color. And maybe I should have taken those instances as a warning of things to come.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [Silencing POC] [Systemic Racism] [White Supremacy] [White Privilege] [White Culture]

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]

White Violence, Church Silence; Many white churches have been guilty of not only espousing racist rhetoric, but also of preaching a theology that urges Christian silence when it comes to standing up for justice.

by L.A. Justice | November 2020
While Black people are being relentlessly pursued because our lives have been determined to be expendable, numerous churches across this country have not only been silent, but too many have been complacent and complicit with these atrocities. Myriad white churches have been guilty of not only espousing racist rhetoric, but also of preaching a theology that urges Christian silence when it comes to standing up for justice, especially when it means standing against the racially motivated brutalization of Black bodies. This encourages the perpetrators of such inhumane violence to continue to act with impunity, no matter how abhorrent the violence committed against us may be.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2020’s] [Systemic Racism] [Policing] [Denial] [History] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [White Blindness] [Accountability] [Faith-Based/Spiritual] [Black Lives Matter] [Collective Action] [Cognitive Dissonance]

About the Weary Weaponizing of White Women Tears

by Awesomely Luvvie | April 2018
White women tears are especially potent and extra salty because they are attached to the symbol of femininity. These tears are pouring out from the eyes of the one chosen to be the prototype of womanhood; the woman who has been painted as helpless against the whims of the world. The one who gets the most protection in a world that does a shitty job overall of cherishing women. The mothers, sisters, daughters and aunties of the world’s biggest bullies (white men). But the truth is, white women have been bullies themselves because they’ve been the shadows behind the white men who get all the blame. They have been doing much of the subjugation in white supremacy without any of the accountability, because: innocent white woman is a caricature many have chosen to embrace, even subconsciously. Why? Because it shields them from consequences. We talk about toxic masculinity but there is toxicity in wielding femininity in this way.
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2010’s] [White Fragility/Tears] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Defensiveness] [White Blindness] [White Privilege] [Accountability]

‘White Saviorism Is a Very Huge Issue’: White Spelman Student Offers Apology after Onslaught of Criticism for Her Tone In Celebrating Acceptance Letter

by Matt Bruce | December 2020
“As someone who has now attended two HBCUs (originally I went to Howard University then I transferred to Clark Atlanta), those places are a haven of Black thought,” Louis began.” There is nothing wrong with being not Black in these spaces but to do so vocally is something that doesn’t sit right with me. Spelman particularly, is as an institution that was created with Black Women in mind; sure there have been white Spelmanites before, yet the common comment that most Spelmanites seem to have is that to take up space in a Black space is something that is already not taken positively, yet to do so vocally and to compare a mental disability to the plight of Black women when discussing your ‘qualifications’ to attend Spelman College is not a good look.”
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2020’s] [White Blindness] [White Privilege] [History] [Assumptions] [White Culture]