Resource Links Tagged with "White Privilege"

The Grave of a Former Slave Turned Florida State Senator May Be Buried Under What’s Now A Tampa Parking Lot

by J.L. Cook | June 2021
As Juneteenth approaches, Tampa’s local NAACP wants the city to commit to finding the graves that once rested at College Hill Cemetery. Robert Meacham, who became a Florida state senator after being freed from slavery, is one of more than 1,200 people buried at a site that is now believed to be a parking lot for the Italian Club Cemetery in Tampa, Fla. According to the Tampa Bay Times, Meacham’s unmarked grave was located in the College Hill Cemetery for Blacks and Cubans–which has long been erased. In an effort to rectify this, the local NAACP branch in Tampa has challenged the city to commemorate Juneteenth by funding an archaeological survey of the Italian Club Cemetery lot to find out if Meacham’s body and others are there.
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2020’s] [History] [Systemic Racism] [White Culture] [White Supremacy] [White Privilege] [Politics] [Silencing POC] [Black Lives Matter] [Social Justice] [Slavery] [Accountability]

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

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

History of Institutional Racism in U.S. Public Schools

by Matthew Lynch | October 2019
Racial biases are not unknown to the history of the U.S. education system. Dating back to the 1800s, Native American children were taken from their homes and forced into boarding schools where they were pushed to abandon their native language and adopt a foreign religion. Education was used to assimilate these Native American children to White culture forcibly. This institutional racism created a belief that White culture was far better than the Native American Way. These racial biases expressed themselves with the Chinese in a different manner. Instead of forcing them to assimilate into the prescribed White educational system, Chinese-American children were barred completely from going to school. Later legislation stated they had a right to public education but segregated them into Chinese-only schools. Latinos faced the same fate as the Chinese in being methodically shut out from education. Latinos were later granted access to education under the ruling of a judge with a particular belief; the judge asserted that Latinos were of White descent and therefore above other minorities. In the American South, laws against African-Americans completely obstructed their ability to get an education. By law, it was illegal for an African-American to learn how to read and write. African-American communities had to turn to schools established by Quakers and Christians in order to get an education. But turmoil and violence would always find their white allies, forcing these schools to close their doors. Fear of uprising was palpable in these plantation states, and illiteracy became a weapon used against African-Americans. If African-Americans remained uneducated, plantation owners and Southern Whites believed, they would not revolt, maintaining the status quo of slavery.
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2010’s] [History] [Implicit Bias] [Indigenous] [White Culture] [Asian] [Black Lives Matter] [Quaker] [Faith-Based/Spiritual] [Slavery] [Social Justice] [White Privilege] [Teachers]

What Is Critical Race Theory, and Why Is It Under Attack?

by Steven Sawchuk | May 2021
Is “critical race theory” a way of understanding how American racism has shaped public policy, or a divisive discourse that pits people of color against white people? Liberals and conservatives are in sharp disagreement. The topic has exploded in the public arena this spring—especially in K-12, where numerous state legislatures are debating bills seeking to ban its use in the classroom. …Critical race theory is an academic concept that is more than 40 years old. The core idea is that racism is a social construct, and that it is not merely the product of individual bias or prejudice, but also something embedded in legal systems and policies. The basic tenets of critical race theory, or CRT, emerged out of a framework for legal analysis in the late 1970s and early 1980s created by legal scholars Derrick Bell, Kimberlé Crenshaw, and Richard Delgado, among others.
A good example is when, in the 1930s, government officials literally drew lines around areas deemed poor financial risks, often explicitly due to the racial composition of inhabitants. Banks subsequently refused to offer mortgages to Black people in those areas.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [Housing] [Systemic Racism] [Politics] [Social Justice] [White Privilege] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Defensiveness] [Slavery] [Definitions] [Racial Covenants] [Black Lives Matter] [Latino/a] [Teachers] [History]

What it Means to be Black in the American Educational System

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

The Bloody History of Anti-Asian Violence in the West; One of the Largest Mass Lynchings in the United States Targeted Chinese Immigrants in Los Angeles

*Paywall Alert
by Kevin Waite | May 2021
This year marks the 150th anniversary of one of the largest mass lynchings in American history. The carnage erupted in Los Angeles on October 24, 1871, when a frenzied mob of 500 people stormed into the city’s Chinese quarter. Some victims were shot and stabbed; others were hanged from makeshift gallows. By the end of the night, 19 mangled bodies lay in the streets of Los Angeles.Lynching is a term most often associated with violence against African Americans in the post-Civil War South. But racial hatred has never been quarantined to one American region or confined to a single ethnic group. In Los Angeles in 1871, the victims were Chinese immigrants. Their deaths were part of a wave of anti-Asian violence that swept across the 19th-century American West—and reverberates to this day.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2020’s] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [History] [Asian] [Systemic Racism] [White Privilege] [Silencing POC]

What White Colleagues Need to Understand; White Supremacy Doesn’t Stop at the Teachers’ Lounge Door

by Clarice Brazas, Charlie McGeehan | Spring 2020
As educators doing antiracism work, we often focus extensively on the impact that white supremacy has on students. But even though we recognize that white supremacy shapes all of our lives and work, we spend little time talking about its impact on educators. …
We know we all live in the same society of racism and white supremacy. We know white educators have the privilege to ignore these conditions and often do. And we know our collaboration is the exception, not the rule. For this article, we interviewed eight educators of color across the country to hear about their work with white colleagues. We found disheartening trends. Educators of color report that they’re expected to take on a disproportionate share of work supporting students and teaching about race and racism. This work, they say, is often made more difficult by the indifference—and sometimes resistance—of white colleagues.
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2020’s] [White Supremacy] [Systemic Racism] [White Privilege] [Teachers] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [Anti-Racism] [White Fragility/Tears] [Latino/a]

For Our White Friends Desiring to be Allies

by Courtney Ariel | August 2017
1. Listen more; talk less. …
2. For one out of every three opinions/insights shared by a person of color in your life, try to resist the need to respond with a better or different insight about something that you read or listened to as it relates to their shared opinion. …
3. Being an ally is different than simply wanting not to be racist (thank you for that, by the way). Being an ally requires you to educate yourself about systemic racism in this country. …
4. Please try not to, “I can’t believe that something like this would happen in this day and age!” your way into being an ally when atrocities like the events in Charleston, S.C. …
5. Ask when you don’t know — but do the work first. This is nuanced. …
6. And finally, stop talking about colorblindness.
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2010’s] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [Anti-Racism] [Silencing POC] [White Supremacy] [White Privilege] [Systemic Racism] [Colorblindness] [Indigenous] [Slavery] [Black Lives Matter] [Intersectionality] [Denial] [Reparations]

8 Ways People of Color are Tokenized in Nonprofits

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

5 Phrases Your Black Friend Wishes You’d Stop Saying; If You Start Practicing Now, You Can Probably Eliminate These Words from Your Vocabulary by Black History Month

by Ajah Hales | January 2020 Statistically speaking, about 75% of White people don’t even have a Black friend, but on the off chance that you are one of the White people who do, I have a message for you from your (one) Black friend: Do better. In her New York Times...

‘Nomadland’ and the Supremacy of White People Problems; What’s the Strongest Liquid on Earth (and in Hollywood)? White Girl Tears

by Jeremy Helligar | January 2021
My 15-year-old niece recently floored her mother with some Black, bruising teen spirit: “What is the strongest liquid on earth?” she asked. Answer: “White girl tears.” It’s a revelation that has haunted me since my sister-in-law shared it with me. They live minutes away from Hollywood, a place on earth where hallowed White women have been crying themselves to Oscars for nearly a century. In 92 years of Academy Awards, Halle Berry remains the only Black woman whose tears have been strong enough to score a gong for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role. Only 11 others have been nominated in the category, none more than once.
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2020’s] [White Fragility/Tears] [Art & Culture] [Asian] [Politics] [White Culture] [White Blindness] [White Privilege] [Black Lives Matter] [Latino/a] [Economics]

Historical Foundations Of Race

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

Slave Traders Knew Exactly What They Were Doing; A New History of Three 19th-Century Human Traffickers Explodes All the Old Excuses

by Rebecca Onion | April 2021
The Ledger and the Chain tells the story of how these three men profited from the United States’ decision to outlaw the foreign slave trade, in 1808. The change, of course, did not put an end to slavery inside the United States, and because the slaveholding states of the Upper South were finding that their land was increasingly difficult to work after decades of tobacco cultivation, they profited by selling people further South, where cotton and sugar production was booming. …
This dynamic is most visible in the traders’ letters discussing teenage girls who were sold as sex slaves. In trading these young women, identifiable in documentation by their much-higher-than-usual prices (and, sometimes, by the traders’ explicit discussion of their likelihood to sell for those purposes), Franklin, Armfield, and Ballard prided themselves on their ability to know what buyers might want—their success “speculating on the erotic desires of slaveholders.” They also raped such women, themselves; Rothman found many ribald references to those activities in their own correspondence, interspersed with discussions of everyday business matters.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2020’s] [Slavery] [History] [Systemic Racism] [Black Lives Matter] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [Social Justice] [Politics]

Return the National Parks to the Tribes; The Jewels of America’s Landscape Should Belong to America’s Original Peoples.

by David Treuer | April 2021
The American story of “the Indian” is one of staggering loss. Some estimates put the original Indigenous population of what would become the contiguous United States between 5 million and 15 million at the time of first contact. By 1890, around the time America began creating national parks in earnest, roughly 250,000 Native people were still alive. In 1491, Native people controlled all of the 2.4 billion acres that would become the United States. Now we control about 56 million acres, or roughly 2 percent. And yet we remain, and some of us have stayed stubbornly near the parks, preserving our attachment to them. Grand Canyon National Park encloses much of the Havasupai Tribe and its reservation. Pipe Spring National Monument sits entirely inside the 120,000-acre Kaibab Paiute Indian Reservation, in northern Arizona. Many other parks neighbor Native communities. But while the parks may be near us, and of us, they are not ours.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2020’s] [History] [Indigenous] [Systemic Racism] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [Denial] [Social Justice] [Accountability] [Environment] [Politics] [Assumptions] [Silencing POC]

Whitewashing the Great Depression; How the Preeminent Photographic Record of the Period Excluded People of Color from the Nation’s Self-Image

by Sarah Boxer | December 2020
Quick, name one iconic Depression-era portrait each by Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, and Russell Lee. My guess is that you’d choose Lange’s Migrant Mother, a portrait of Florence Owens Thompson and her children taken in Nipomo, California, in 1936. For Evans, you’d probably pick a 1936 portrait of tight-lipped Allie Mae Burroughs standing before the wall of her family’s cabin in Hale County, Alabama. For Lee, you might draw a blank, but you’d likely recognize his 1937 group portrait Saturday Night in a Saloon, showing four drinkers in Craigville, Minnesota. (It was used in the opening sequence of the TV show Cheers.)
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2020’s] [Silencing POC] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [White Supremacy] [Art & Culture] [History] [Systemic Racism] [White Defensiveness] [Politics] [Denial]

Okinawans Exhibit Artful Way of Reclaiming Indigenous Space

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

Dealing with White Guilt Is Not Our Role for Your Soul; Black People Aren’t Your Priests and Priestesses

by Sam McKenzie Jr | November 2018
After facilitating a hearty discussion for a newly formed anti-racism group, Jaleesa, the group facilitator, notices an elderly white man hanging back and waiting for her. When they are face to face, the man tells her that he used to be a racist. He mentions how he made racist jokes and used racial slurs because “that was the time.” He says he has changed, and he wanted to share, but his guilt was obvious.
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2010’s] [Anti-Racism] [White Defensiveness] [White Blindness] [White Privilege] [Denial] [Black Lives Matter]

You’re Already on Stolen Land. You Might as Well Pay Rent.

by Sena Crow | November 2019
And yes, if you’re wondering: this post is for white settlers. f you’re not already actively working to unlearn colonizing habits and unconditionally support Indigenous people, now is the perfect time to start. It’s November, and that means it’s Native History Month. Native History Month urges us to ask how we can better recognize, support, and protect Indigenous communities.First, ask yourself this question every day: Whose land am I living on? The second question to ask yourself: What do I own on this land? And the third: What people have lost from what I have gained?
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2010’s] [Indigenous] [Systemic Racism] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [History] [Social Justice] [Accountability]

Why Does the World Reward Mediocre White Men?

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

Nulhegan Abenaki Post Statement on Abenaki Ethnocide

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

What Women’s Suffrage Owes to Indigenous Culture

by Briget Quinn | August 2020
It’s an under-known fact that the “revolutionary” concept of a democratic union of discrete states did not spring fully formed from the Enlightenment pens of the Founding Fathers, like sage Athena from the head of Zeus. No, the idea of “united states” sprang from the Haudenosaunee, collective name for six tribes that comprise the so-called (mostly by non-Natives) Iroquois Confederacy: the Seneca, Oneida, Mohawk, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Tuscarora nations. Should you doubt this, check out Congressional Resolution 331, adopted in 1988 by the 100th Congress of the United States, which says as much. It’s worth noting that the Haudenosaunee Confederacy still thrives today, likely the world’s oldest participatory democracy.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2020’s] [Collective Action] [History] [Indigenous] [Myths] [Politics] [Silencing POC] [Systemic Racism] [White Blindness] [White Culture] [White Fragility/Tears] [White Privilege] [White Supremacy]

The Aggressive Fragility of ‘I’m Not Racist: and ‘Not All White People’

by Jeremy Helligar | March 2021
Dear Sharon Osbourne, Piers Morgan, and Becky from ‘The Real World Homecoming’: Please. Stop. People can be so exhausting. Correction: Some people can be so exhausting. Although exceptions are generally implied when we generalize, for some people, nothing can be left to implication — especially if the subject is racism. I see evidence of this in the comments section of nearly every article I read or write about race. There are always a few in the audience, usually White, who take offense because they presume that when Black people write about the racism White people inflict on them, unless “White people” is qualified with “some,” they are being lumped in with the main offenders. Apparently, for them, the true horror of racism isn’t racism itself but being accused of it due to association.
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2020’s] [Systemic Racism] [History] [Social Justice] [White Fragility/Tears] [White Supremacy] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [Microaggressions] [White Privilege] [Economics]

10 Ways Your Social Justice Work Might Be Inaccessible and Elitist (And Why That’s a Problem)

by Hari Ziyad | October 2020
It’s comforting not to have to constantly explain yourself and your work. It’s beautiful to learn from and be around folks who understand ideas like microaggressions, gaslighting, white fragility, and all the other odd terms that describe the myriad, important, and insidious ways oppression operates. But some of those ways are too insidious to recognize even within these spaces. Some are, in fact, unique to these spaces. Some oppressions are fostered by the very things supposedly set up to help justice spaces thrive. Inadvertently, they create power structures mirroring those they’re working to address. Being in these spaces for a while now, I’ve noticed that I’ve been increasingly receiving feedback that my writing is inaccessible. I dismissed a lot of this critique on the basis that I am, at my core, a big idea and theory girl. My way of communicating isn’t supposed to be meant for everyone. But that became a more difficult excuse to embrace once I noticed these concerns coming even from those who generally embrace theoreticals.
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2020’s] [Microaggressions] [White Fragility/Tears] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [Social Justice] [Accountability] [Intersectionality] [White Privilege] [Definitions] [Black Lives Matter] [Indigenous] [Economics]

The Crimson Klan

by Simon J. Levien | March 2021
When J. Max Bond Jr. ’55 entered Harvard at the age of 16, he was among 15 Black students in his class, most of whom lived in the north corner of Harvard Yard. As his freshman spring semester began, two other Harvard freshmen erected a wooden cross facing that corner of the Yard, formed by Stoughton and Holworthy Halls. And around midnight on Feb. 5, 1952, the students lit the cross on fire… Post-Harvard, Bond became one of a few prominent Black architects in the 20th century. After his death in 2009, his widow, Jean Carey Bond, released an 11-page retelling of his life. In it, Jean reveals that the University threatened Bond or any Black student with suspension should they go to the media with the cross burning. Bond, who graduated Phi Beta Kappa and finished undergrad in three years, was never suspended.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2020’s] [Systemic Racism] [Silencing POC] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [White Defensiveness] [History] [Slavery] [Denial] [Social Justice]

How Native Americans Were Vaccinated Against Smallpox, Then Pushed Off Their Land; Nearly Two Centuries Later, Many Tribes Remain Suspicious of the Drive to Get Them Vaccinated Against the Coronavirus

by Dana Hedgpeth | March 2021
More than 180 years ago, the federal government launched the largest effort of its kind in the United States to vaccinate Native Americans against the deadly disease of smallpox… In 1832, Congress passed legislation — the Indian Vaccination Act — that allowed the federal government to use about $17,000 to hire doctors to vaccinate Native Americans who were living near White frontier settlements. Many White settlers feared that Indians would spread the disease to them. “It wasn’t in the interest of Indian people,” said Pecos, who is also co-director of the Leadership Institute at the Santa Fe Indian School. “It was a way of vaccinating them to move them so White Americans could move them into Western lands.”
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [Indigenous] [Health Disparities] [Politics] [Social Justice] [Systemic Racism] [Racial Terrorism] [Definitions] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [Silencing POC] [History]

If You Truly Knew What the N-Word Meant to Our Ancestors, You’d NEVER Use It; It Was Used and Still Can Be Used to Make Us Hate Ourselves

by Brando Simeo Starkey | May 2017
A few years ago, I read slave narratives to explore the lives of black agricultural workers after the end of the Civil War. The narratives came from the Federal Writers Project of the Works Progress Administration, a program that employed researchers from 1936 to 1938 to interview former enslaved people, producing more than 2,300 narratives that, thankfully, reside online and are fully searchable.
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2010’s] [Slavery] [Civil War] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [Systemic Racism] [Definitions]

The Decline of Black Business; and What it Means for American Democracy

by Brian S. Feldman | May 2017
The last thirty years also have brought the wholesale collapse of black-owned independent businesses and financial institutions that once anchored black communities across the country. In 1985, sixty black-owned banks were providing financial services to their communities; today, just twenty-three remain. In eleven states that headquartered black-owned banks in 1994, not a single one is still in business. Of the fifty black-owned insurance companies that operated during the 1980s, today just two remain. Over the same period, tens of thousands of black-owned retail establishments and local service companies also have disappeared, having gone out of business or been acquired by larger companies. Reflecting these developments, working-age black Americans have become far less likely to be their own boss than in the 1990s.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2010’s] [Art & Culture] [Justice System] [History] [Economics] [Systemic Racism] [Black Lives Matter] [Social Justice] [Politics] [Slavery] [Civil War] [White Supremacy] [White Privilege] [Racial Covenants] [Racial Terrorism]

For White Allies on Black History and Slavery in the U.S.

(posted) by Paula M. Fitzgibbons | Date Unknown
Black history month is about so much more than slavery, but in the U.S., Black history and slavery are inseparable. And sadly, many of us still don’t have an adequate education on the topic. I’m always flabbergasted when I hear people say that Black Americans need to “get past” slavery. “It wasn’t us,” they say. “That happened hundreds of years ago. Get over it already.” It’s clear to me that these people don’t fully grasp the horror of American slavery, how long it lasted, and what happened after it. They also don’t seem to understand how severe trauma works.
TAGS: [Collective Action] [Slavery] [Black Lives Matter] [Systemic Racism] [White Fragility/Tears] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [White Defensiveness] [White Blindness] [Social Justice] [Racial Terrorism] [Silencing POC] [History] [Denial]

The Samuel George Morton CRANIAL COLLECTION; Historical Significance and New Research

by Emily S. Renschler and Janet Monge | Month Unknown 2008
Although few visitors to the Museum would know this, the Samuel George Morton cranial collection at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology is one of the most famous collections of human skulls in the entire world. Its presence in Philadelphia is the result of the collecting activities of Samuel George Morton (1799–1851), a Philadelphian who actively participated in the vibrant medical and scientific community that spanned the Atlantic Ocean in the early 19th century.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2020’s] [Art & Culture] [History] [Slavery] [Indigenous] [Black Lives Matter] [Latino/a] [Myths] [White Supremacy] [White Privilege] [White Culture] [Systemic Racism]

Black Opera Composer Is Dismissed Over Lyrics for 100-Year Commemoration of the Tulsa Race Massacre

by Shanelle Genai | March 2021
When composer Daniel Roumain was commissioned to create an original work for “Greenwood Overcomes,” a celebration led by the Tulsa Opera to recognize the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre, I’m sure he never thought one lyric would be enough to lose him the commission. Unfortunately, it was. As Vulture reports, Roumain composed an aria inspired by the horrific details of the massacre titled They Still Want to Kill Us, with the last two lines reading: “God bless America/God damn America.” But when mezzo-soprano singer Denyce Graves, who was set to perform the aforementioned song, expressed concerns over those lines—Tulsa Opera asked Roumain if he would consider changing the lyrics. He said no, and now, both Roumain and his work are now no longer a part of the celebration.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2020’s] [Silencing POC] [Systemic Racism] [History] [Art & Culture] [-ing While Black] [Black Lives Matter] [Denial] [White Defensiveness] [White Supremacy] [White Privilege] [White Blindness] [White Fragility/Tears]