By Michael Gerson, The Washington Post — The national debate on race — which the president has made more angry and urgent with his racial demagoguery — is hindered by imprecise language. Most whites do not feel personally guilty for the United States’ long history of imposed white supremacy. A white man who has lost his job at the coal mine, or the daughter of a recent Ukrainian immigrant, probably…
By Kelebogile Zvobgo — Between 1850 and 1950, thousands of African American men, women and children were victims of lynchings: public torture and killings carried out by white mobs. Lynchings were…
By Earl Ofari Hutchinson — The Central Park 5 has been the textbook poster case for the one thing that has consistently and horribly racially disfigured America’s criminal justice system….
By Julianne Malveaux — Many know them as the Central Park Five, but filmmaker Ava DuVernay forces to us see the five wrongfully convicted men as individuals. Their names are…
By BLMLA — Twice in 20 months, employees have called police on black members, resulting in their murder. 24 Hour Fitness has refused to address this. THIS MUST STOP! On March 8, 2017, LA County Sheriff deputies responded to a call from 24 Hour Fitness employees at the location in the Ladera Heights section of Los Angeles, the employee claimed Dennis Todd Rogers, another unarmed Black gym member had stayed too long…
Too often whites at discussions on race decide for themselves what will be discussed, what they will hear, what they will learn. And it is their space. All spaces are. By Ijeoma Oluo, The Guardian — I was leaving a corporate office building after a full day of leading workshops on how to talk about race thoughtfully and deliberately. The audience for each session had been similar to the dozens…
Text calls on member states to tackle discrimination against people of African descent. By Jennifer Rankin, The Guardian — The European parliament has called for action to tackle the “structural racism” facing millions of Europeans of African descent in an unprecedented resolution that was overwhelmingly approved by MEPs. The resolution calls on European Union member states to develop national anti-racism strategies to deal with discrimination in education, health, housing, policing, the justice…
By Brittney Drakeford and Ras Tafari Cannady II, Greater Greater Washington — The effects of historic discriminatory urban design practices, such as redlining and racially-restrictive zoning, are by no means relegated to…
Michelle Obama’s new book reduces racial inequality to a matter of psychological impairment that can be overcome through grit and grin. This is a dangerous proposition. By Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Boston…
By David Brooks, The New York Times — I’ve been traveling around the country for the past few years studying America’s divides — urban/rural, red/blue, rich/poor. There’s been a haunting sensation the whole time that is hard to define. It is that the racial divide doesn’t feel like the other divides. There is a dimension of depth to it that the other divides don’t have. It is more central to…
A new study found that people who experience discrimination are almost twice as likely as others to struggle with hunger. By Greg Kaufmann, The Nation — With more than 40 million people in the country struggling with hunger, anti-hunger advocates in the United States have their work cut out for them. In 2017, nearly 12 percent of all US households were food insecure—meaning they didn’t have access to enough food for all household members…
By Jennifer Larino, The Times Picayune — What can we do to break New Orleans and its neighborhoods free from a long history of racist housing policies? That’s the question posed…