Skip to main content
Tag

Institutional Racism

Deante Campbell of Sanford joins student protesters during a demonstration June 4 against institutional racism at South Portland Police Station.

Teenagers lead the way in Black Lives Matter movement

By News & Current Affairs

Nationally and in Maine, young people of color are leading protests and asking their local leaders to address systemic racism. By Megan Gray, Press Herald — Mariam Beshir spent the days leading up to her graduation from Gorham High School organizing a Black Lives Matter march in her town. She wanted to celebrate. But she knew that Tamir Rice should have graduated from his own high school this year if…

Read More
Long before President Jair Bolsonaro tested positive for COVID-19, the pandemic was ravaging the country’s poor neighborhoods and prisons.

How Jair Bolsonaro and the Coronavirus Put Brazil’s Systemic Racism on Display

By Reparations

By Anakwa Dwamena, The New Yorker — Several months before the coronavirus first arrived in Brazil, this spring, a series of man-made tragedies befell Maria Marques Martins dos Santos. On November 12th, dos Santos, a thirty-eight-year-old mother of three, whose five-foot frame is crowned by curly brown hair, was at her home, in Favela do Amor, in São Paulo. Just after midnight, her fourteen-year-old son, Lucas, went out to buy soda and…

Read More
African nations call for racism debate at UN Human Rights Council

African nations call for racism debate at UN Human Rights Council

By News & Current Affairs

By DW — A letter signed by all 54 African nations requested the UN Human Rights Council to urgently debate racism and police violence as protests over George Floyd’s death grow around the world. African countries on Friday called on the United Nation Human Rights Council to urgently debate racism and police impunity, amid growing protests over George Floyd’s death in the United States and other parts of the world. Burkina Faso’s…

Read More
Five generations of a slave family.

American slavery: Separating fact from myth

By Reparations

By Daina Ramey Berry — People think they know everything about slavery in the United States, but they don’t. They think the majority of African slaves came to the American colonies, but they didn’t. They talk about 400 years of slavery, but it wasn’t. They claim all Southerners owned slaves, but they didn’t. Some argue it was all a long time ago, but it wasn’t. Slavery has been in the…

Read More
Protesters chant “Say His Name — George Floyd!” near a memorial for George Floyd in Minneapolis on June 2.

Poll: Black Americans outraged by George Floyd’s death, but optimistic about change after nationwide protests

By News & Current Affairs

More than a third of black Americans say there was an occasion when they feared being hurt by a police officer. By Cleve R. Wootson Jr., Scott Clement and Emily Guskin, The Washington Post — Jackie Beckley believes the video of the final moments of George Floyd’s life may finally help white friends and colleagues understand what she has labored to tell them about her experience as a black woman:…

Read More