by Becky Little | August 2019
To understand what Abrams is up against in November, when she’ll compete against two Republican men in a red state that has only elected white men, it’s useful to look at the state’s history of white supremacy and how that legacy affects Georgians today. One county in particular shoulders an especially egregious past. The northern county of Forsyth, one of Georgia’s 10 most populous, leans heavily white and conservative. Its demographics are shaped by an event that happened in 1912, when white people forced out all 1,098 of Forsyth’s black residents, who comprised about 10 percent of the population at the time.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2010’s] [History] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Defensiveness] [Racial Covenants] [Denial] [Housing] [Accountability] [Policing]
Resource Links Tagged with "White 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: [Strategies] [2020’s] [White Supremacy] [Silencing POC] [Systemic Racism] [White Privilege] [Black Lives Matter] [White Culture] [Economics] [Accountability] [White Defensiveness] [White Blindness]
What Is White Centering and Are You Doing It? Plus, 7 Ways To Stop
by Jessica Sager | June 2020
White centering is putting your feelings as a white person above the Black and POC causes you’re supposed to be helping. Layla F. Saad explains in Me and White Supremacy, “White centering is the centering of white people, white values, white norms and white feelings over everything and everyone else.” White centering can manifest as anything ranging from tone policing and white fragility to white exceptionalism and outright violence.
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2020’s] [White Fragility/Tears] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [Systemic Racism] [White Supremacy] [Silencing POC]
It Took 10 Minutes to Convict 14-Year-Old George Stinney Jr. It Took 70 Years after His Execution to Exonerate Him.
by Lindsey Bever | December 2014
In March 1944, deep in the Jim Crow South, police came for 14-year-old George Stinney Jr. His parents weren’t at home. His little sister was hiding in the family’s chicken coop behind the house in Alcolu, a segregated mill town in South Carolina, while officers handcuffed George and his older brother, Johnnie, and took them away.
Two young white girls had been found brutally murdered, beaten over the head with a railroad spike and dumped in a water-logged ditch. He and his little sister, who were black, were said to be last ones to see them alive. Authorities later released the older Stinney – and directed their attention toward George. On June 16, 1944, he was executed, becoming the youngest person in modern times to be put to death. On Wednesday, 70 years later, he was exonerated.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2010’s] [Systemic Racism] [Policing] [Prison System] [White Supremacy] [History] [Black Lives Matter] [White Privilege] [White Culture] [-ing While Black] [Denial] [Assumptions] [Accountability]
Why the Media Loves the White Racist Story
by Martin LaMonica | January 2019
Why are so many people interested in pointing out and shaming individual white racists? There have been dozens of these events highlighted on social and mainstream media this year. Here are a few of the incidents that went viral and sparked outrage: a video of Fort McMurray teens mocking Indigenous dance, another of a North Carolina woman’s racist rant and the racist tirade against a Muslim family at the Toronto Ferry Terminal. Why are people less interested in calling out the systems that prime them to act in racist ways and foster lifelong inequities.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2010’s] [Systemic Racism] [Indigenous] [Assumptions] [White Supremacy] [White Privilege] [White Culture] [White Defensiveness] [Politics]
Five White Louisiana Judges Uphold Life Sentence of Black Man Jailed for Stealing Hedge Clippers 23 Years Ago
by Namrata Tripathi | August 2020
A man from Louisiana, who was sentenced to life in prison for stealing a pair of hedge clippers over 20 years ago, will continue to remain in prison after the state Supreme Court denied a request to review his case. Fair Wayne Bryant, a 62-year-old Black man, was convicted for stealing garden equipment in 1997, which landed him in prison for the rest of his life. Bryant, in 2000, had appealed his life sentence to be unconstitutionally excessive and his case had made its way up to the high court of the state. However, his hopes were dashed after a Louisiana Supreme Court panel, consisting of five White men and one Black woman, upheld his life sentence 5-1 last week. The only person to dissent was the Black judge on the panel, Supreme Court Justice Bernette Johnson.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [Prison System] [Systemic Racism] [Silencing POC] [Accountability] [Policing] [Economics] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Blindness]
Whitesplaining: The Conversation about White Progressive Liberal Racism That We Aren’t Having
by Shanta Lee Gander | August 2020
Whitesplaining, or white people explaining things to Black people, is a phenomenon. Many of us Black folx swap stories with our friends or with family members as we deconstruct these situations and the assumptions. In this current moment of interrogating the culture, I’ve been re-visiting these moments of whitesplaining in my own life as an extension of an insidious kind of racism that often goes unnoticed. It is the other part of the conversation about race that America needs to have. I’ve lived in Vermont for 10 years. Here, the white progressive racism is partly due to the narrative that Vermont banned adult slavery in its constitution in 1777. With closer examination of the research conducted by Dr. Harvey Amani Whitfield, one learns that this “fact” is full of inconsistencies. Vermont at the time was still an environment that allowed slave owners to place ads for runaway slaves.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2020’s] [White Privilege] [White Blindness] [White Culture] [White Supremacy] [Definitions] [Individual Change] [History] [Slavery] [White Fragility/Tears] [Systemic Racism] [White Defensiveness] [Accountability]
The Long History of How Jesus Came to Resemble a White European
by Anna Swartwood House | July 2020
The historical Jesus likely had the brown eyes and skin of other first-century Jews from Galilee, a region in biblical Israel. But no one knows exactly what Jesus looked like. There are no known images of Jesus from his lifetime, and while the Old Testament Kings Saul and David are explicitly called tall and handsome in the Bible, there is little indication of Jesus’ appearance in the Old or New Testaments.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2020’s] [Faith-Based/Spiritual] [Myths] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [History]
GREAT NEGRO PLOT OF 1741: THE RUMORS AND LIES THAT LED TO EXECUTION OF OVER 30 BLACK AMERICANS IN NEW YORK CITY
by Blackthen | August 2020
The details of the events that took place in New York City in the spring and summer of 1741 are recorded in numerous historic and later accounts, many of which contain contradictory information. According to nearly all accounts, a fire on March 18, 1741, at Fort George—then Lieutenant Governor George Clarke’s home—was the first in a series of fires in the city that may or may not have been set by slaves. The fires occurred at regular intervals and then with increased frequency until April 6, when four fires were set in a single day. Rumors raced across the city when a witness claimed to have seen a black man, identified as a slave named Cuffee, running from the scene of one of the fires.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2010’s] [History] [Slavery] [Accountability] [Systemic Racism] [Policing] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [White Blindness] [Silencing POC] [Assumptions]
On Nantucket, a Racist Act Gets a Second Look
by Dugan Arnett Globe Staff | August 2020
On March 11, 2018, island residents awoke to a startling act of hate. The front door of the African Meeting House — a nearly 200-year-old former church that now serves as a symbol of the island’s rich Black history — had been defiled with racist graffiti: “N—– LEAVE.” The crime made national news, shocking many who couldn’t fathom such overt bigotry in a place of rarefied tranquility. Residents quickly condemned the vandalism, while local officials, labeling the act a hate crime, vowed to seek justice. But justice hasn’t come.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2020’s] [Policing] [Systemic Racism] [Black Lives Matter] [White Supremacy] [White Blindness] [White Culture] [Accountability] [History] [Collective Action] [Silencing POC]
William Penn Kept Enslaved People. These are Some of Their Names. An Important Piece of Pennsylvania’s Founder’s Legacy.
by Michaela Winberg | August 2020
Penn, though a pacifist Quaker, kept several Black enslaved people during his time overseeing his colony — even as the practice grew increasingly unpopular among Pennsylvanians. The records that exist aren’t totally clear, but it seems as if Penn enslaved roughly 12 people at his Pennsbury Manor estate, which was located in what is now the Philly suburbs. These people were purchased off the first slave ship known to have arrived in Philadelphia, and were of African and Carribean descent.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2020’s] [History] [Slavery] [Indigenous] [Quaker] [Systemic Racism] [Economics] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [Denial] [Accountability]
Letter to My Son; “Here is what I would like for you to know: In America, it is traditional to destroy the black body – it is heritage.”
by Ta-Nehisi Coates | July 2015
Specifically, the host wished to know why I felt that white America’s progress, or rather the progress of those Americans who believe that they are white, was built on looting and violence. Hearing this, I felt an old and indistinct sadness well up in me. The answer to this question is the record of the believers themselves. The answer is American history. …When Abraham Lincoln declared, in 1863, that the battle of Gettysburg must ensure “that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth,” he was not merely being aspirational. At the onset of the Civil War, the United States of America had one of the highest rates of suffrage in the world. The question is not whether Lincoln truly meant “government of the people” but what our country has, throughout its history, taken the political term people to actually mean. In 1863 it did not mean your mother or your grandmother, and it did not mean you and me. As for now, it must be said that the elevation of the belief in being white was not achieved through wine tastings and ice-cream socials, but rather through the pillaging of life, liberty, labor, and land.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2010’s] [History] [Systemic Racism] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [-ing While Black] [Policing] [White Blindness] [Slavery]
How Decades of US Welfare Policies Lifted up the White Middle Class and Largely Excluded Black Americans
by Marguerite Ward | August 2020
Far more white people have benefited from US welfare programs over the years — reflecting their greater share of the population — while Black people and other people of color have been denied them in various ways, multiple historians and researchers tell Business Insider. The coronavirus pandemic has exposed the underbelly of American inequality in many ways, with people of color disproportionately likely to be laid off, to be on the financial brink, and to die from the virus. That has helped prompt a growing chorus of financiers, business leaders, and regular folks to call for a reimagining of American capitalism and for moves to end racial inequality. Some top economists are calling for a “New New Deal” specifically targeting inequality, a platform to which the Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden seems open.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2020’s] [Accountability] [Economics] [History] [Systemic Racism] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [Denial] [Employment] [Politics]
How the Myth of a Liberal North Erases a Long History of White Violence
by Christy Clark-Pujara and Anna-Lisa Cox| August 2020
Anti-black racism has terrorized African Americans throughout the nation’s history, regardless of where in the country they lived. There is a toxic myth that encourages white people in the North to see themselves as free from racism and erases African Americans from the pre-Civil War North, where they are still being told that they don’t belong. What Langston experienced was not the massacre in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1921 or Rosewood, Florida, in 1923—this was Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1841, 20 years before the Civil War broke out. This was the third such racist attack against African Americans in Cincinnati in 12 years. This article was originally published as the first of a five-part series titled “Black Life in Two Pandemics: Histories of Violence” and provides link to view all parts.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2020’s] [History] [Myths] [Systemic Racism] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Blindness] [Slavery] [White Privilege] [Silencing POC] [Denial]
*These Profound Photos Masterfully Turn Racial Stereotypes On Their Head
by Lilly Workneh | May 2017
A powerful new photo essay reexamines our relationship with race.Oe image shows several East Asian women at a nail salon being pampered by white female beauticians. Another shows a young white girl at a toy store standing before a row of shelves stocked only with black dolls, and the last image shows a posh Hispanic woman on the phone as her white maid tends to her.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2010’s] [Accountability] [Systemic Racism] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [Assumptions] [White Privilege] [Art & Culture]
Why I’m Absolutely an Angry Black Woman
by Dominique Matti | October 2017
*Because when I was five, my kindergarten classmate told me I couldn’t be the princess in the game we were playing because black girls couldn’t be princesses. Because I was in third grade the first time a teacher seemed shocked at how “well-spoken” I was. Because in fourth grade I was told my crush didn’t like black girls. Because in sixth grade a different crush told me I was pretty — for a black girl. Because in 7th grade my predominantly black suburban neighborhood was nicknamed “Spring Ghettos” instead of calling it its name (Spring Meadows). Because I was in 8th grade the first time I was called an Oreo and told that I “wasn’t really black” like it was a compliment. Because in 9th grade when I switched schools a boy told me he knew I had to be mixed with something to be so pretty. Because in 10th grade my group of friends and I were called into an office and asked if we were a gang, or if we had father figures. Because in 11th grade my AP English teacher told me that I didn’t write like a college-bound student (though I later scored perfectly on the exam). Because when I volunteered in Costa Rica that summer, I was whistled at and called Negrita.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2010’s] [White Supremacy] [White Blindness] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [Systemic Racism] [Assumptions] [Accountability] [White Blindness]
Walking While Black
by Garnette Cadogan | July 2016
*On my first day in the city, I went walking for a few hours to get a feel for the place and to buy supplies to transform my dormitory room from a prison bunker into a welcoming space. When some university staff members found out what I’d been up to, they warned me to restrict my walking to the places recommended as safe to tourists and the parents of freshmen. They trotted out statistics about New Orleans’s crime rate. What no one had told me was that I was the one who would be considered a threat. On one occasion, less than a month after my arrival, I tried to help a man whose wheelchair was stuck in the middle of a crosswalk; he threatened to shoot me in the face, then asked a white pedestrian for help…
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2010’s] [-ing While Black] [Systemic Racism] [White Supremacy] [Policing] [Black Lives Matter] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [White Blindness]
The Heart of Whiteness: Ijeoma Oluo Interviews Rachel Dolezal, the White Woman Who Identifies as Black
by Ijeoma Oluo | April 2017
And with that, the anger that I had toward her began to melt away. Dolezal is simply a white woman who cannot help but center herself in all that she does—including her fight for racial justice. And if racial justice doesn’t center her, she will redefine race itself in order to make that happen. It is a bit extreme, but it is in no way new for white people to take what they want from other cultures in the name of love and respect, while distorting or discarding the remainder of that culture for their comfort. What else is National Geographic but a long history of this practice. Maybe now that I’ve seen the unoriginality of it all, even with my sister’s name that she has claimed as her own, she will haunt me no more and simply blend into the rest of white supremacy that I battle every day.
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2010’s] [Anti-Racism] [Slavery] [Role Model] [White Privilege] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Fragility/Tears] [Implicit Racism]
What Do We Do With White Folks?
by Anthony James Williams | February 2019
But here is where the problem of progressive minded whiteness comes into play. No matter how “woke” mainstream media labels white people for doing things like reading The New Jim Crow, history has never given us examples of people in power who give up their power.
White supremacy is our abuser, and white folk are most often the ones embodying it and benefiting from it through their whiteness.
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2010’s] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [Individual Change] [Black Lives Matter] [Reparations] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [Accountability]
10 things every white teacher should know when talking about race
by Angela Watson | Janurary 2017
Let’s start by addressing the elephant in the room–why I am talking only to white people? Isn’t that racist? (Hold that question in your mind, because I want you to ask yourself that same question again after you’ve read my words here, and see if your thought process has changed.) I’m specifically addressing white people in this episode because around 83% of teachers in the U.S. are white. Most of you reading my blog are in fact, white. Conversations about race are super prevalent right now and for many white people, it feels like stepping into a minefield. They have literally no idea what to say, or feel like they don’t understand the history of people of color enough to contribute much to the conversation. Or, they say something they think is totally valid but inadvertently offend people of color in the discussion. Or get their own feelings hurt because they feel “attacked,” vowing to never, ever enter another conversation about race again. This can’t happen, teacher friends. It really hurts my heart to see so many misunderstandings in our country around race right now, particular when it’s among white teachers who are shaping the next generation of minds. Teachers are smart, thoughtful people tasked with raising up young people to be leaders. We cannot be ignorant about race or avoid talking about it. Includes PODCAST.
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2010’s] [Teachers] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [Accountability] [Podcast] [Anti-Racism] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [“Reverse Racism”] [White Privilege] [White Defensiveness]
The Effects of Structural Racism are Not Normal
by Erin Okuno | November 2017
*The feeling of wondering why everyone else was ok to be at a meeting of all-white people is what Heidi (of the Fakequity team) describes as a byproduct of structural racism. We often don’t think twice about why whiteness pervades our society and we’re conditioned to accept and normalize it. “…imagine if I walked you into a room and it was of a major corporation, like ExxonMobil, and every single person around the boardroom were black, you would think that were weird. But if I walked you into a Fortune 500 company, and everyone around the table is a white male, when will it be that we think that’s weird too?”
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2010’s] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [White Culture] [Systemic Racism]
It’s Time To Call Out ‘Nice Racists’ And Their White Fragility
by Christy DeGallerie | September 2017
When you think of a racist what pops in your mind? White supremacists? The KKK? You usually think of white people down south right? You know, the ones who have confederate flag bumper stickers, and hurl the N-word at Black people who cut them off while driving, or school districts that ban Black hairstyles. These folks are more of the poster children of racism. I’m here to let you in on a little secret: You don’t need to write a resume for the new available seat in the Ku Klux Klan to be a racist. We’ve heard many times before that racism is taught, that it starts at home with our parents and caregivers. This is absolutely true, but racism is also in our school systems, the media, it even comes from the mouths of orange men running for president.
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2010’s] [White Fragility/Tears] [Politics] [Implicit Racism] [White Supremacy] [White Privilege] [White Culture] [Systemic Racism] [Accountability]
Ibram Kendi, One of the Nation’s Leading Scholars of Racism, Says Education and Love Are Not the Answer
by Lonnae O’Neal | September 2017
Professor Ibram Kendi, founder of the new Anti-Racism Center at American University and author of Stamped from the Beginning, The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, talks about the “ideas that grow out of discriminatory policies.” and breaks down the “layers of racist ideas that account for why we think like we do. Just so you know, black people are not inherently better athletes than white people, Kendi says. We only think so because “black people have not only been rendered inferior to white people, they’ve been rendered like animals,” and thus physically superior creatures. It’s an old racist idea that helped justify African-Americans’ suitability for backbreaking labor and medical experiments and the theft of their children.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2010’s] [Implicit Racism] [Systemic Racism] [White Culture] [Assumptions] [Collective Action] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts]
When White Friends Don’t Believe What Blacks Go through, They’re Not Friends
by Mary C. Curtis | September 2014
*Yet whites are, frequently, disappointingly, incredulous. Very often a “friend’s” reaction that goes something like this: “I don’t think a police officer would stop anyone for no reason at all.” Or: “You must have done something suspicious.” Or my favorite: “If you haven’t done anything wrong, you don’t have anything to worry about.” I am not some child coming home with some tall tale, and I am certainly not a delusional liar.
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2010’s] [Policing] [Systemic Racism] [White Culture] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts]
The Sugarcoated Language of White Fragility
by Anna Kegler | Updated December 2017
*The language we use to talk about racism is obviously distorted, a big clue that something is being hidden. It’s pretty easy to pinpoint the source: most White people can’t handle talking about racism. We flail. We don’t understand the subject, we get really uncomfortable, and we either clam up because we don’t want to say the wrong thing, or we bust out the whitesplaining (FYI, this is a best-case scenario. It can be much worse).
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2010’s] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [White Supremacy] [Implicit Bias] [White Fragility/Tears] [“All Lives Matter”]
11 Things White People Need to Realize about Race
by Emma Gray and Jessica Samakow | July 2015
Article by two white women contains embedded links and short videos further explaining the points made in the article. Points in the article include; “Everyday racism is subtle and insidious.” “Don’t think you know it all — or even most of it. Listen, listen, listen.”
TAGS: [Individual Change] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [Systemic Racism] [Colorblindness] [White Privilege] [White Culture] [Implicit Racism] [Black Lives Matter] [“Reverse Racism”] [2010’s]
Conversations on Racism with White People Getting Stuck or Looping? Thirteen Questions to Get it Moving Again
by Tad Hargrave | August 2017
In this blog post the author, a white man, suggests 13 questions that white people might consider including in their conversations with other white people about racism, as well as possible follow-up strategies depending upon the answers given. A sample question: “If you woke up as a person of colour or indigenous person tomorrow in North America do you think it would change anything in your life? If so, what?”
TAGS: [Individual Change] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [Definitions] [White Culture] [White Fragility/Tears] [White Privilege] [History] [Systemic Racism] [2010’s]
The Real Reason White People Say ‘All Lives Matter’ – Why “Black” Makes Us Uncomfortable
by John Halstead | July 2017
“Dear fellow white people, … notice that no one was saying ‘All Lives Matter’ before people started saying ‘Black Lives Matter.’ So ‘All Lives Matter’ is a response to ‘Black Lives Matter.’ Apparently, something about the statement “Black Lives Matter” makes us uncomfortable.”
TAGS: [Individual Change] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [Implicit Racism] [Colorblindness] [Black Lives Matter] [“All Lives Matter”] [White Culture] [2010’s]
13 Things Even More Divisive than People Who Always Bring Race up in Discussions
by Jon Greenberg | February 2016
“If you are one who has avoided or even defensively shut down discussions of race, it’s never too late to make a change. In fact, when it comes to racial dialogue, defensive reactions are arguably a rite for passage for White anti-racists – an early step in the long journey of challenging racism.”
TAGS: [Individual Change] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [White Fragility/Tears] [Silencing POC] [White Privilege] [White Culture] [Colorblindness] [Anti-Racism] [2010’s]
Are You Sure You’re Not Racist?
by Jodi Picoult | October 2016
I just couldn’t find authenticity, and eventually I shelved the manuscript. I wondered if maybe my difficulty was because I had no right to write about racism — after all, I am not African American. I’d written multiple books from the points of view of people i was not – Holocaust survivors, rape victims, school shooters, men. Why was it so hard for me to write from the point of view of someone black? Because race is different. Racism is different. It’s hard to discuss without offending people. As a result, we often choose not to discuss it at all.
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2010’s] [Colorblindness] [Accountability] [White Culture] [White Supremacy] [White Fragility/Tears]