Resource Links Tagged with "White Supremacy"

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]

Race of Mass Shooters Influences How the Media Cover Their Crimes, New Study Shows

by Laura Frizzell, Sadé L. Lindsay, and Scott Duxbury | July 2018
If a news report mentions a shooter’s tough childhood, chances are he’s white. On Jan. 24, 2014, police found Josh Boren, a 34-year-old man and former police officer, dead in his home next to the bodies of his wife and their three children. The shots were fired execution-style on Boren’s kneeling victims, before he turned the gun on himself. On Aug. 8, 2015, 48-year-old David Ray Conley shot and killed his son, former girlfriend and six other children and adults at his former girlfriend’s home. Like Boren, Conley executed the victims at point-blank range. Both men had histories of domestic violence and criminal behavior. Yet despite the obvious similarities in these two cases and perpetrators, the media, in each case, took a different approach.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2010’s] [Myths] [Individual Change] [History] [White Supremacy] [Systemic Racism] [Policing] [Colorblindness] [Prison System] [-ing While Black]

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]

Whites Only: SURJ And The Caucasian Invasion of Racial Justice Spaces

by DiDi Delgago | April 2017
Anti-racism work with a white lens is inherently flawed. White-led anti-racism groups have existed for hundreds of years, and they’ve often been problematic, counterproductive, and just fucking weird since their inception. Take, for instance, the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society of 1833, which believed that slave owners were missing out on a business opportunity by not putting slaves on the payroll. They argued that paying slaves “would make them doubly valuable to [their] masters,” because paid laborers are more motivated than forced laborers. That’s the whitest thing I’ve ever heard, and I own two Hanson records. I can think of a thousand better reasons not to own a person aside from increased productivity… I suspect many white people combatting racism have been so busy checking their privilege that they’ve forgotten to check their egos. It seemed that one chapter finally got it right, and they did so by realizing they got it wrong.
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2010’s] [Anti-Racism] [White Privilege] [Slavery] [History] [White Fragility/Tears] [White Supremacy] [Individual Change] [Reparations] [Black Lives Matter] [Accountability]

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]

Why I’m Not a Shaman, and Neither Are You

If you’re white, learn more about anti-racist work and white privilege and do your best to be an ally to marginalized peoples. Do some research into what indigenous tribes are (or were) in your area, and figure out how to connect with living representatives of them, and how to appropriately honor both the lives and the spirits of Native elders in your area. Do some research into your own ancestry and figure out how to begin connecting with those traditions.

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]

Police Incitement Against Black Lives Matter Is Putting Protesters in Danger

by Sarah Lazare | July 2016
* From the floor of the Republican National Convention to the online pages of the Blue Lives Matter Facebook community, it is now commonplace for public officials, police and first responders to openly declare war on Black Lives Matter—the civil rights movement of our times. “After the shooting, when they [the police] talked about the protest, they talked about how violent protesters were,” Mica Grimm, organizer with Black Lives Matter- Minneapolis, told AlterNet. “They never talked about how five people were shot. No one will ever bring that up. They really don’t care that much about protesters.”
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2010’s] [Policing] [White Supremacy] [Black Lives Matter] [Accountability] [Silencing POC]

#Notracists be like: The Top 10 Phrases Used by People Who Claim They Are Not Racist

by Michael Harriot | October 2017
This is not about racists. This is about not-racists. You’ve seen them before: the special class of white people who say racist shit and do racist things but declare themselves the “least racist person you know.”
TAGS: [2010’s] [Assumptions] [Systemic Racism] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [White Privilege] [White Supremacy] [“Reverse Racism”] [Denial]

Black Codes, Slave Patrols and Policing Today

fearing the rise of the abolition movement in the North, slaveholders throughout the South strengthened laws governing slaves and free people of color, known as “black codes.” The black codes governed enslaved people as well as four categories of free people. By putting both into one legal category, whites divided the population along racial lines, not along categories of free and unfree.

RACIAL EQUITY: How to Value Black Lives

by Enola G. Aird | June 2016
The Black Lives Matter movement has correctly pointed to this dehumanization as the driving force behind the police killings of black people. But it’s crucial to recognize that the dehumanization of black people is rooted in the lies, and that black lives will never truly matter until these lies are extinguished. It’s been 150 years since the end of enslavement, and nearly 50 years since the official end of Jim Crow, but the lies are still warping the world’s perceptions of Black people, and our perceptions of ourselves. These lies are the reasons why, in spite of all the constitutional amendments, legislation, and litigation, the black community in the United States and around the world seems to be standing still — and, in some cases, moving backwards.
TAGS: [White Supremacy] [Black Lives Matter] [Strategies] [2010’s] [History] [Collective Action]

Should the Church Take Sides or Stay Neutral with the #BlackLivesMatter Movement?

by Drew G.I. Hart | November 2015
When is it the right time to take sides, standing with those that live with the daily threat of violence, suffering, and death? Who decides? In the midst of 400 years of white supremacist terrorism many Christian communities still do not want to take sides.
TAGS: [Faith-Based/Spiritual] [Black Lives Matter] [Strategies] [2010’s] [History] [White Supremacy]

Note to My White Self: The reflections of a White Man Confronting His Personal Privilege and Racism – Six Racist Facebook Posts You Should Never Share

by James Mulholland | August 2019
Unfortunately, many white people, who until recently thought they didn’t have a racist bone in their body, aren’t very good at recognizing a racist Facebook post. Torn between what they’ve always assumed and what they are beginning to learn, they are still prone to falling for the arguments of white supremacy. An informative list of “racist Facebook posts you should never share.”
TAGS: [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [White Supremacy] [Strategies] [2010’s] [Anti-Racism] [Implicit Racism]

Stop Asking People of Color to Get Arrested to Protest Climate Change

by Tatiana Garavito and Nathan Thanki | September 2019
Stop Asking People of Color to Get Arrested to Protest Climate Change Extinction Rebellion is overwhelmingly shaped by the concerns, priorities, and ideas of middle-class white people. If it doesn’t tackle white supremacy, it doesn’t serve us.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2010’s] [POC Climate Action] [Advocacy] [White Supremacy]

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]

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”]

Surveillance Footage Shows Rhode Island Officers Fabricated Assault That Nearly Ruined Man’s Life

by Ricky Riley | July 2016
A Providence, Rhode Island man was charged with assaulting police officers at a night club last year but surveillance footage released this week shows that officers started the raucous. Tuesday, the Rhode Island Attorney General’s office announced that 29-year-old Esmelin Fajardo will be allowed to enter a not guilty plea regarding the charges related to a melee in a club during closing hours.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2010’s] [Accountability] [Policing] [White Supremacy] [-ing While Black] [White Privilege]

Violent Arrest of Teacher Caught on Video; Officers Face Investigation

by Tony Plohetski | September 2018
Officials are investigating an Austin police officer’s violent arrest of an African-American elementary school teacher who was twice thrown to the ground during a traffic stop for speeding and comments by a second officer who told her police are sometimes wary of blacks because of their “violent tendencies.” Video from the previously unreported June 2015 incident was obtained by the American-Statesman and KVUE-TV this week. The video shows the traffic stop escalating rapidly in the seven seconds from when officer Bryan Richter, who is white, first gives a command to 26-year-old Breaion King to close her car door to when he forcibly removes her from the driver’s seat, pulls her across a vacant parking space and hurls her to the asphalt.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2010’s] [Policing] [White Supremacy] [-ing While Black] [Systemic Racism] [White Privilege]

Speak Out! Dangerous White Woman

by Pegi Eyers | September 2016
There are no shortage of tools for the highly-relevant learning curve that Allen Johnson calls “racial reconciliation and cultural competency.”1 And whether we are approaching anti-racist activism as a new direction or have been working as a change agent for years, it is extremely useful to look at the model of “The 8 White Identities” by Barnor Hesse… White Suremacist, White Voyerism, White Privilege, White Benefit, White Confessional, White Critical, White Traitor, & White Abolitionist.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2010’s] [Definitions] [White Supremacy] [White Privilege] [Individual Change] [Collective Action]

Anti-Racism Work is Messy: Observations from the Road

by Shay | May 2019
Too often, we conflate anti-racism, racial equity and racial justice work as being one and the same. In reality, while they are very much related, I don’t believe them to be the same. One can engage in racial equity, implicit bias or racial justice work while still dancing around the core issue of dismantling white supremacy. In fact, as we discussed at a recent board-staff retreat at my organization, equity is rapidly becoming the newest buzzword, much like “diversity” in the early 1990s. Increasingly when I hear people using it, I ask them to explain what they mean. People theoretically want equity, but without the larger framework, they are not committed to the type of systemic change that will require white people to actually give up something. And the fact is that active reallocation of resources is essential to equity.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2010’s] [White Supremacy] [Systemic Racism] [White Fragility/Tears] [Anti-Racism]

Hope for the White Supremacist Within

by LVM Shelton | September 2016
The author, a Black woman, writes: “Understanding white supremacy as addiction and as a disease of the spirit brings many of the tools of the well‐proven 12‐step recovery paradigm to hand…. Some individual spiritual practice for self‐examination is needed for progress in becoming whole. However, community—indeed, communion—is an essential feature of practicing a 12‐step program.” The author ends the article by proposing “12 Steps to Overcoming White Supremacy.” The 12 steps she then lists follow the pattern of traditional 12-step programs.
TAGS: [Individual Change] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [White Supremacy] [Quaker] [Faith-Based/Spiritual] [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]

14 Words That Carry a Coded Meaning for Black People

by Tamerra Griffin | February 2015
The article, written by a Black woman begins: “You don’t hear overtly racist language very often these days. Here are some words with a subtler implication. She then provides 28 examples of sentences and how they are perceived in some contexts by some Black people, in a “what you say” “what we hear” format.
TAGS: [Individual Change] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [Implicit Racism] [White Culture] [White Supremacy] [2010’s]