by Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez | December 2020
A Black mother who was attacked by a horde of Philadelphia police officers is speaking out about the harrowing experience. Rickia Young was driving an SUV with her 2-year-old son and teenage nephew on October 27 as the city was engulfed in protest over the police killing of Walter Wallace Jr. earlier that day. Officers descended on the vehicle, broke its windows, assaulted and arrested her and separated her from her child. Young’s arrest went viral due to a shocking video of the police swarming her vehicle, and after the National Fraternal Order of Police — the country’s largest police union — posted a photo of her 2-year-old on social media, falsely claiming he “was lost during the violent riots in Philadelphia, wandering around barefoot in an area that was experiencing complete lawlessness.”
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2020’s] [Policing] [Systemic Racism] [White Supremacy] [White Privilege] [White Culture] [Black Lives Matter] [-ing While Black] [Assumptions] [Accountability]
Resource Links Tagged with "White Culture"
Why Did Racial Progress Stall in America? The Answer May Show Us the Path out of Our Fractured and Polarized Present
by Shaylyn Romney Garrett and Robert D. Putnam | December 2020
In measure after measure, positive change for Black Americans was actually faster in the decades before the civil rights revolution than in the decades after. For example, —- The life expectancy gap between Black and white Americans narrowed most rapidly between about 1905 and 1947, after which the rate of improvement was much more modest. And by 1995 the life expectancy ratio was the same as it had been in 1961. There has been some progress in the ensuing two decades, but this is due in part to an increase in premature deaths among working-class whites.
TAGS: [Individual Change] [Collective Action] [Assumptions] [2020’s] [History] [Black Lives Matter] [Policing] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [Systemic Racism] [Civil War] [Economics] [Politics] [Myths]
Audio Reveals Heated Exchange Between Biden And Black Leaders Over Cabinet, Police Reform
*Paywall Alert
by Andrew Solender | December 2020
President-elect Joe Biden had a contentious discussion about executive power, police reform and his cabinet appointments in a call with civil rights leaders on Tuesday, according to leaked audio excerpts of the call published by The Intercept. The civil rights leaders on the call, including Rev. Al Sharpton and the NAACP’s Sherrilyn Ifill, pressed Biden to use executive orders to institute sweeping reforms, create commissions and launch investigations to further the cause of civil rights. But Biden said he would not test the legal bounds of executive action and use it in lieu of legislation, stating “I am not going to violate the constitution,” and arguing unfettered use of executive orders can set a dangerous precedent for future administrations.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [Politics] [Systemic Racism] [White Culture] [White Blindness] [Denial] [Policing] [Justice System] [Social Justice]
Yiddisher Black Cantors from 100 Years Ago Rediscovered Thanks to Rare Recording
by Renee Ghert-Zand | November 2020
Early 1920s newspaper ads for the blockbuster New York Yiddish stage shows Dos Khupe Kleyd (The Wedding Dress) and Yente Telebende (Loquacious Battle‐Ax), featured a Black artist among the spotlighted performers. This was Thomas LaRue, a Yiddish-speaking singer widely known in the interwar period as der schvartzer khazan (The Black Cantor). Although long-forgotten now, LaRue (who sometimes used the surname Jones) was among the favorites of Yiddish theater and cantorial music. Reportedly raised in Newark, New Jersey, by a single mother who was drawn to Judaism, he even drew interest from beyond the US.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2020’s] [Systemic Racism] [Black Lives Matter] [White Supremacy] [White Privilege] [White Culture] [White Blindness] [History] [Cognitive Dissonance] [Art & Culture]
How ‘Good White People’ Derail Racial Progress
by John Blake | August 2020
Angry White parents gripping picket signs. People making death threats and a piece of hate mail reading “Blacks destroy school systems. Community panic about school desegregation orders. But this wasn’t archival footage of White Southerners from the 1960s. This took place last year in Howard County, Maryland, a suburban community that prides itself on racial integration. It was there that progressive White parents mobilized with other groups to try to stop a school integration plan that would bus poor students, who were mostly Black and brown, to more affluent, whiter schools.
TAGS: [Collective Action] [Individual Change] [2020’s] [Systemic Racism] [Black Lives Matter] [White Supremacy] [White Privilege] [White Culture] [White Blindness] [History] [Economics] [Housing] [Cognitive Dissonance]
12 Facts about Japanese Internment in the United States
by Scott Beggs | February 2019
On February 19, 1942, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which sanctioned the removal of Japanese immigrants and Americans of Japanese heritage from their homes to be imprisoned in internment camps throughout the country. At the time, the move was sold to the public as a strategic military necessity. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the government argued that it was impossible to know where the loyalties of Japanese-Americans rested. Between 110,000 and 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry were relocated to internment camps along the West Coast and as far east as Louisiana. Here are 12 facts about what former first lady Laura Bush has described as “one of the most shameful episodes in U.S. history.”
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [Assumptions] [2010’s] [Systemic Racism] [Asian] [History] [Accountability] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [White Defensiveness] [Economics]
Just How White Is the Book Industry?
by Richard Jean So and Gus Wezerek | December 2020
During last summer’s Black Lives Matter protests, books written by people of color climbed the best-sellers lists. Was last summer a vision of equality to come for the publishing industry? Or a flash in the pan? Nana Kwame-Adjei-Brenyah had just turned 26 when he got the call in 2017 that Mariner Books wanted to publish his short-story collection, “Friday Black.” Mr. Adjei-Brenyah suspected that the contract he signed — a $10,000 advance for “Friday Black” and $40,000 for an unfinished second book — wasn’t ideal. But his father had cancer and the money provided a modicum of security. Mr. Adjei-Brenyah’s uneasiness over his book deal became more acute last summer. Using the hashtag #PublishingPaidMe, writers had begun to share their advances on Twitter with the goal of exposing racial pay disparities in publishing. Some white authors disclosed that they had been paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for their debut books.
TAGS: [Strategies] [Individual Change] [2020’s] [Systemic Racism] [White Supremacy] [White Privilege] [White Culture] [White Blindness] [Art & Culture] [History] [Accountability] [Economics]
Fact Check: Quotes from Prominent American Statesmen on Race are Accurate
by Reuters Staff | July 2020
An old image that is recirculating on social media purportedly shows quotes on race by the Founding Fathers Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and member of the Virginia House of Delegates Henry Berry. The quotes, contextualized below, are accurate.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2020’s] [Systemic Racism] [History] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [Slavery]
As Nation Reckons with Race, Poll Finds White Americans Least Engaged
by Adrian Florido and Marisz Penaloza | August 2020
Collins sympathized with the people marching in the protests but felt “I’m not that type of person.” So instead, he called and wrote his representatives in Congress and asked what they were doing to address racism in the country. He didn’t hear back, “but I still thought it was important to do.” As the nation navigates its most consequential racial justice movement in a half-century, some people have responded to the calls for action to remedy the country’s racist past and present by protesting in the streets or doing something as simple as reading a book about race. But a new NPR/Ipsos poll finds that these people remain a minority.
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2020’s] [Anti-Racism] [Systemic Racism] [Policing] [Collective Action] [Latino/a] [Asian] [White Culture] [Black Lives Matter] [Reparations] [-ing While Black]
Black Girls in Mass. Nearly 4 Times More Likely to Face School Discipline than White Girls, Report Finds
by Naomi Martin | September 2020
The authors of the report, “Protecting Girls of Color from the School-to-Prison Pipeline,” said stark racial disparities in school discipline is a nationwide problem. But they chose to focus on girls, who they said should be included more in the national conversation on racial justice, and picked the three states to compare as case studies. … The report found that in all three states, Black female students were far more likely than white ones to be suspended in school, suspended out of school, expelled, referred to law enforcement, and arrested. Out-of-school suspensions affected the largest share of Black girls. Though Massachusetts’ racial disparities were generally comparable to the two other states, Kansas and Alabama both suspended a far larger portion of their Black female students from school.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2020’s] [Systemic Racism] [White Privilege] [White Culture] [White Supremacy] [White Blindness] [Prison System] [Policing] [Black Lives Matter] [-ing While Black]
The Ugly History of the Pledge of Allegiance — and Why It Matters; Requiring Displays of Patriotism Have Often Been Tied to Nativism and Bigotry
by Christopher Petrella | November 2017
The origins of the pledge trace to the late 19th century, the product of an expansionist American project. In 1891, the family magazine Youth’s Companion asked 35-year-old Francis Bellamy, a former pastor of Boston’s Bethany Baptist Church, to fashion a patriotic program for schools around the country to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s “arrival in America” by “raising the U.S. Flag over every public school from the Atlantic to the Pacific.” …Far from a political outlier, Bellamy tapped into the ubiquitous turn-of-the-century nativism that made enemies of the 2.5 million Slavs, Jews and Italians who immigrated to the United States throughout the 1880s and 1890s.
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2010’s] [Indigenous] [Policing] [History] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [Systemic Racism] [Immigration] [Slavery] [Anti-Racism] [Assumptions]
American Environmentalism’s Racist Roots Have Shaped Global Thinking about Conservation
by Prakash Kashwan | September 2020
American environmentalism’s racist roots have influenced global conservation practices. Most notably, they are embedded in longstanding prejudices against local communities and a focus on protecting pristine wildernesses. This dominant narrative pays little thought to indigenous and other poor people who rely on these lands – even when they are its most effective stewards.
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2020’s] [Indigenous] [Systemic Racism] [Myths] [Confederate Monuments] [Slavery] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [Economics] [History] [Environment]
Black Scholars Confront White Supremacy in Classical Music; The Field Must Acknowledge a History of Systemic Racism While Also Giving New Weight to Black Composers, Musicians, and Listeners.
by Alex Ross | September 2020
This spring, the journal Music Theory Online published “Music Theory and the White Racial Frame,” an article by Philip Ewell, who teaches at Hunter College. It begins with the sentence “Music theory is white,” and goes on to argue that the whiteness of the discipline is manifest not only in the lack of diversity in its membership but also in a deep-seated ideology of white supremacy, one that insidiously affects how music is analyzed and taught. The main target of Ewell’s critique is the early-twentieth-century Austrian theorist Heinrich Schenker (1868-1935), who parsed musical structures in terms of foreground, middle-ground, and background levels, teasing out the tonal formulas that underpin large-scale movements. Schenker held racist views, particularly with regard to Black people, and according to Ewell those views seeped into the seemingly abstract principles of his theoretical work.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2020’s] [Art & Culture] [Systemic Racism] [History] [White Supremacy] [Myths] [-ing While Black] [White Culture] [White Blindness] [Immigration] [Slavery] [Civil War] [Asian]
How the failure of multiculturalism led to the rise of Black Lives Matter
by Colins Imoh | September 2020
Since the killing of George Floyd, an African American man, during an arrest in May, 69% of people in the US report having discussed racial issues with others. Meanwhile, as the Pew research suggests, 82% say they will work with black people in their communities to resolve issues and 67% say they are supportive of the Black Lives Matter movement. This is to be welcomed, because people’s inability to discuss race issues in a civil manner has further contributed to minority inequality and conflict. Indeed, this failure to have forthright discussions about race has led to people of different ethnic groups living parallel lives in the same cities. This, along with the decreased life chances for non-white people in many western countries, is what the Black Lives Matter movement aims to eradicate. But it’s also important to recognise that one of the reasons Black Lives Matter came about in the first place is because the concept of multiculturalism has failed black people. …It’s crucial to appreciate that racism is so systemic that without people drawing attention to the deep-rooted and often invisible nature of the issue, it would be easy for many people to ignore. This is why the Black Lives Matter movement wants to confront and shake up the system and bring the plight of black people to the global consciousness.
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2020’s] [Black Lives Matter] [Policing] [Definitions] [Systemic Racism] [History] [Employment] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Blindness] [Teachers] [Assumptions]
The Perils of ‘Helpful’ White People Shaken by Police Violence; The Police Shooting of Jacob Blake is the Latest to Inspire White Americans to Protest and Demand Change. Here’s My Advice.
by Lola E. Peters | August 2020
Often, white people arrive on the scene of Black trauma and immediately move into action mode. Instead of asking, “How can I help?” and following through, these white people declare, “Here’s what I’m going to do,” and become offended when told that’s not what’s needed. More often than not, be it the local mom’s group, microlocal protest groups, even in the protest zone formerly known as CHOP, Black organizers end up being distracted in the midst of furthering their own work to clean up the mess these self-proclaimed allies create. …
Racist systems have a history of picking and choosing who they will anoint as leaders of oppressed communities, funneling resources to those individuals or organizations, then declaring disappointment when the programs are ineffective or corrupted. For example, funding organizations insisting that potential recipients have 501(c)(3) nonprofit status, a board of directors and a formal structure, often don’t consider Indigenous, African or other POC communities, where decisions are made in community or by a circle of elders. They often end up funding groups or projects that have the savvy or experience to properly fill out their paperwork, but have no deep ties to community.
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2020’s] [Police Shootings] [Policing] [Anti-Racism] [Black Lives Matter] [White Privilege] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [White Blindness] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Defensiveness] [Assumptions] [Systemic Racism] [Accountability] [White Fragility/Tears]
A Judge Asked Harvard to Find Out Why So Many Black People Were In Prison. They Could Only Find 1 Answer: Systemic Racism
by Michael Harriot | September 2020
When a judge tasked researchers with explaining why Massachusetts’ Black and Latinx incarceration was so high, a four-year study came up with one conclusion. Racism. It was always racism. “White people make up roughly 74% of the Massachusetts population while accounting for 58.7% of cases in our data,” the study explained. “Meanwhile, Black people make up just 6.5% of the Massachusetts population and account for 17.1% of cases.” Of course, that could only mean that Black people commit much more crime, right? Nope. OK, then maybe Black people commit worse crimes. That wasn’t it. What they found is the criminal justice system is unequal on every level. Cops in the state are more likely to stop Black drivers.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2020’s] [Policing] [Systemic Racism] [Prison System] [White Culture] [White Supremacy] [White Privilege] [Latino/a] [Myths] [Black Lives Matter] [-ing While Black]
How the Long Fight for Slavery Reparations is Slowly Being Won
by Kris Manjapra | April 2020
In a suburb of Chicago, the world’s first government-funded slavery reparations programme is beginning. Robin Rue Simmons helped make it happen – but her victory has been more than 200 years in the making. It began with an email. On an especially cold day in Evanston, Illinois, in February 2019, Robin Rue Simmons, 43 years old and two years into her first term as alderman for the city’s historically Black 5th ward, sent an email whose effects would eventually make US history. The message to the nine-member equity and empowerment commission of the Evanston city council started with a disarmingly matter-of-fact heading: “Because ‘reparations’ makes people uncomfortable.”
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2020’s] [Slavery] [Reparations] [Advocacy] [History] [Racial Covenants] [Systemic Racism] [Politics] [Denial] [Accountability] [Economics] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege]
Democrats Introduce Bill Addressing Cultural Genocide Against Native Americans
by Jordan Davidson | October 2020
Two lawmakers introduced a bill Tuesday addressing previous actions the U.S. government inflicted upon Native Americans. The bill, authored by Rep. Deb Haaland from New Mexico and Sen. Elizabeth Warren from Massachusetts, specifically addresses the “intergenerational trauma” caused by policies that tore Native American children away from their families and sent them to boarding schools to be educated in white culture, HuffPostreported. The bill, called The Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policy in the United States Act, would create a formal inquiry to document how the government’s Indian boarding school policy amounted to cultural genocide as children were prevented from learning Indigenous traditions. Instead, the government forced them to assimilate into mainstream American culture.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2020’s] [Indigenous] [Systemic Racism] [White Culture] [White Supremacy] [History] [Politics] [Teachers] [Accountability]
7 Racist Slurs Which You Should Drop from Your Vocabulary; Odds Are That You Use These Phrases Every Day
by Shourya Agarwal | October 2020 On this uphill climb to social justice, we have uncovered an underlying structure of discrimination that lurks beneath our milieu. As our language has been shaped alongside a predominantly racist climate, it has absorbed some of the...
The Racist History of Abortion and Midwifery Bans; Today’s attacks on abortion access have a long history rooted in white supremacy.
by Michele Goodwin | July 2020
Just like slavery, anti-abortion efforts are rooted in white supremacy, the exploitation of Black women, and placing women’s bodies in service to men. Just like slavery, maximizing wealth and consolidating power motivated the anti-abortion enterprise. Then, just as now, anti-abortion efforts have nothing to do with saving women’s lives or protecting the interests of children. Today, a person is 14 times more likely to die by carrying a pregnancy to term than by having an abortion, and medical evidence has shown for decades that an abortion is as safe as a penicillin shot—and yet abortion remains heavily restricted in states across the country. Prior to the Civil War, abortion and contraceptives were legal in the U.S., used by Indigenous women as well as those who sailed to these lands from Europe. For the most part, the persons who performed all manner of reproductive health care were women — female midwives. Midwifery was interracial; half of the women who provided reproductive health care were Black women. Other midwives were Indigenous and white.
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2020’s] [Indigenous] [History] [Slavery] [Black Lives Matter] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [Politics] [Civil War] [Asian]
American Violence in the Time of Coronavirus
by Graham Lee Brewer | May 2020
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz digs into the roots of violence buried deep within the country’s history. From the election of Donald Trump to the crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic, American violence has been on unprecedented display. The pandemic has likewise exposed some of the nation’s starkest disparities, not only in justice and health-related issues, but also along racial and class divides.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [Indigenous] [Economics] [Systemic Racism] [History] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Blindness] [White Privilege] [Employment] [Immigration]
The Numbers Don’t Speak for Themselves: Racial Disparities and the Persistence of Inequality in the Criminal Justice System
by Rebecca C. Hetey, Jennifer L. Eberhardt | May 2018
Many scholars and activists assume the public would be motivated to fight inequality if only they knew the full extent of existing disparities. Ironically, exposure to extreme disparities can cause people to become more, not less, supportive of the very policies that create those disparities (Hetey & Eberhardt, 2014). Here, we focus on the criminal justice system—policing and incarceration in particular. We argue that bringing to mind racial disparities in this domain can trigger fear and stereotypic associations linking Blacks with crime. Therefore, rather than extending an invitation to reexamine the criminal justice system, the statistics about disparities may instead provide an opportunity to justify and rationalize the disparities found within that system. With the goals of spurring future research and mitigating this paradoxical and unintended effect, we propose three potential strategies for more effectively presenting information about racial disparities: (a) offer context, (b) challenge associations, and (c) highlight institutions.
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2010’s] [Policing] [Prison System] [Systemic Racism] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [Politics]
Hundreds of Black Men, Women and Children Burned Alive, Shot, Lynched by White Mobs During Red Summer Ignored Century Later
by The Grio | July 2019
America in the summer of 1919 ran red with blood from racial violence, and yet today, 100 years later, not many people know it even happened. It flowed in small towns like Elaine, Arkansas, in medium-size places such as Annapolis, Maryland, and Syracuse, New York, and in big cities like Washington and Chicago. Hundreds of African American men, women and children were burned alive, shot, lynched or beaten to death by white mobs. Thousands saw their homes and businesses burned to the ground and were driven out, many never to return.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2010’s] [Black Lives Matter] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [Silencing POC] [Systemic Racism] [History] [Accountability]
Across America, Whites are Biased and They Don’t Even Know It
*Paywall Alert
by Chris Mooney | December 2014
Most white Americans demonstrate bias against blacks, even if they’re not aware of or able to control it. It’s a surprisingly little-discussed factor in the anguishing debates over race and law enforcement that followed the shootings of unarmed black men by white police officers. Such implicit biases — which, if they were to influence split-second law enforcement decisions, could have life or death consequences — are measured by psychological tests, most prominently the computerized Implicit Association Test, which has beens taken by over two million people online at the website Project Implicit. Includes a state map with the highest level of implicit bias.
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2010’s] [Implicit Bias] [Policing] [Implicit Racism] [Accountability] [White Privilege] [White Culture] [White Supremacy] [Systemic Racism]
Accounting for Race; A New Way to Compare the Financial Health of Households in States
by Prosperity Now | January 2019
Headlines of national economic strength belie the reality that millions in the US are living in financial precarity. Even worse, families that are still recovering from the last recession will be the first to suffer from the next recession, which many analysts warn is around the corner. Because people of color, particularly Black, Latino, Native American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander people, live in a different economic reality than what oft-cited national data shows, we need to be honest about the impacts race and ethnicity have on economic outcomes. The exploration and acknowledgement of racial and ethnic disparities and their origins make our data clearer and our local, state and federal policies stronger. Solutions to our collective economic peril will remain elusive if we do not center the impact of race and racism.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2010’s] [Systemic Racism] [Economics] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [Indigenous] [Asian] [Latino/a] [History] [Housing] [Denial] [Politics] [Employment]
New HUD Report Shows Continued Discrimination Against People of Color
by Mijin Cha | June 2013
People of color looking for homes are told about and shown fewer homes and apartments than their white counterparts. Earlier this year, we highlighted how the racial wealth gap tripled from 1984-2009, mainly due to structural barriers to wealth accumulation for households of color, including rampant housing discrimination that constrained where African-American families could live and restricted access to affordable home loans. A new report from HUD shows the extent of housing discrimination against people of color. The report found that people of color looking for homes are told about and shown fewer homes and apartments than their white counterparts. This type of discrimination raises the costs of the housing search for people of color and restricts their housing options.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2010’s] [Housing] [Economics] [History] [Systemic Racism] [Denial] [Accountability] [White Privilege] [White Culture] [White Supremacy]
Black Kids Are Way More Likely to be Punished in Schools than White Kids, Study Finds
by German Lopez | April 2018
Whether and how a child is punished for acting up in school could depend on his race, a new report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found. The report found that black students in K-12 schools are far more likely to be disciplined — whether through suspension or referral to law enforcement — than their counterparts of other races. Charts show the topline finding, demonstrating that black children are overrepresented based on their actual population in the student body.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2010’s] [Systemic Racism] [White Privilege] [History] [White Culture] [Accountability]
US Police Killings: What the Data Tells Us; Exploratory Data Analysis on Police Killings from 2015-20
by Nadar Nibris | December 2018
In this article, we will analyze one of America’s hottest political topics, which encompasses issues ranging from institutional racism to the role of Law Enforcement personnel in society. But first, I have a favor to ask. For the next 10 minutes, let’s leave our preconceived notions of what’s true at the door. Prior domain knowledge is vital for making inferences from data. But if we build our statistical models based on preexisting beliefs, we are less likely to get to the right answers and more likely to ask the wrong questions. That was my schpeal on the Philosophy of Statistics. Let’s get started.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2010’s] [Police Shootings] [Policing] [White Culture] [History] [Black Lives Matter]
How Racist Policing Took Over American Cities, Explained by a Historian; “The Problem is the Way Policing Was Built,” Historian Khalil Muhammad Says.
by Anna North | June 2020
Eugene Williams, a 17-year-old black boy, was stoned to death by white people in 1919 after he swam into what they deemed the wrong part of Lake Michigan. In response, black people in Chicago rose up in protest, and white people attacked them. More than 500 people were injured and 38 were killed. Afterward, the city convened a commission to study the causes of the violence. The commission found “systemic participation in mob violence by the police,” Khalil Muhammad, a professor of history, race, and public policy at Harvard Kennedy School and author of the book The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America, told Vox. “When police officers had the choice to protect black people from white mob violence, they chose to either aid and abet white mobs or to disarm black people or to arrest them.”
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [History] [Systemic Racism] [Policing] [White Culture] [White Supremacy] [Systemic Racism]
Influencers are Doing blackface to ‘show Solidarity’ with BLM
by Brit Dawson | June 2020
One group seemingly still clueless about how to support Black Lives Matter is influencers. First, they were posing at protests for clout, and now they’re doing blackface to ‘show solidarity’ with the movement. In an Instagram post, satirist and socio-political activist Saint Hoax shared screenshots of influencers who had painted their skin Black, along with a brief history of blackface. They wrote: “How can you ‘spread awareness’ about a subject you know so little about? If you genuinely care about a cause, the least you can do is educate yourself about it.” They continued: “It’s infuriating that we still need to educate people about the racist and painful history of blackface. We shouldn’t be having this conversation in 2020.”
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2020’s] [Accountability] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [White Supremacy] [Black Lives Matter] [White Culture] [Myths] [Strategies]