Race Archives - Page 7 of 29

Media

Lovecraft Country

Past Present, Episode 224

September 2, 2020 • by Nicole Hemmer, Natalia Mehlman Petrzela and Neil J. Young

Lovecraft Country is attracting attention for its blend of historical drama and horror. Niki discussed this hybrid genre, as explained at Vox. She also mentioned the documentary, Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror. Neil compared Lovecraft Country to Colson Whitehead’s recent novel, The Underground Railroad. Natalia referred to this ...

Activism

A New Era in America’s Racial Politics

How a racial reparations alliance can prove that Black lives matter

August 27, 2020 • by Rogers M. Smith and Desmond King

Asheville isn’t the first American city to apologize for slavery and enact new policies to repair some of the damage it has done to Black families. For example, in November 2019, Evanston, Illinois, decided to levy a tax on marijuana to expand housing and employment opportunities for the city’s African ...

History

Why We Shouldn’t Try to Erase America’s Racist Past

Twitter’s misguided attempts at censorship

August 25, 2020 • by Karyn Lacy

Some Denny’s restaurants once bore the name “Sambo’s.” Sambo is a character featured in the children’s story Little Black Sambo, set in India, written by Helen Bannerman, a Scottish author, and first published in England in 1898. After it appeared in America a year later, the book inspired an outpouring of ...

Why We Shouldn’t Try to Erase America’s Racist Past

History

Let’s Build a Monument to Anastácia

An enslaved woman’s image that has traveled around the hemisphere can help us rethink slavery and memorialization

July 30, 2020 • by Marc Hertzman and Giovana Xavier

In May 2020, as the social movement to remove racist monuments grew and the COVID-19 pandemic spiraled out of control, two white women protesting against social distancing and masks were photographed with a sign. It read: “Muzzles are for dogs and slaves. I am a free human being.” It featured ...

Race

Asian Americans Suffer From Trump’s Racist Attacks Too

The long history of America’s hostility toward immigrants from China, Japan, and Korea

July 23, 2020 • by Nadia Y. Kim

We are all familiar with the racist tactics that vaulted Donald Trump into the Oval Office. He demonized Mexicans, he denounced Muslims, and he cozied up on Twitter to ardent White supremacists. In recent weeks, he’s relentlessly attacked the Black Lives Matter protests. Amid all the vitriol, it’s easy to overlook ...

Asian Americans Suffer From Trump’s Racist Attacks Too

Public Health

The Hidden Structural Racism in the American Response to Public Health Emergencies

Facing a disproportionate death rate among Black people from COVID-19, President Trump shrugs: “What, me, worry?”

July 23, 2020 • by R. Drew Smith

When faced with emerging epidemics related to HIV/AIDS in the 1970s, to crack cocaine in the 1980s, to Ebola in 2014 and 2018, the U.S. government was slow to intervene on behalf of homosexual populations, or urban poor populations, or African populations, who respectively were most-affected by those public health ...

The Hidden Structural Racism in the American Response to Public Health Emergencies

Activism

Trojan Horse

Misusing Greek mythology on a college campus sneaks white supremacy in the back door

July 23, 2020 • by Amelia Jones and Tania Modleski

These cultural forms act as “Trojan horses,” sneaking offensive, even racist and sexist ideas into the fabric of the university where they lie in wait to do harm. In our case, one has to begin, of course, with the hyper-masculine bronze statue of Tommy Trojan (erected in 1930) at the center ...

Education

The Happy Talk of Diversity

How can American colleges affect real change?

July 23, 2020 • by James M. Thomas

Scholars who study diversity find that among ordinary actors, it has multiple and contested meanings. For many, diversity is enriching. The idea of people from different backgrounds coming together through shared values and working toward shared goals fits well with the ethos of America as a melting pot. Sociologists Douglas ...

Activism

On Our Revolutionary Moment

Putting today’s revolt against institutional racism into historical context

July 22, 2020 • by James Traub

Protestors, who had been staging increasingly violent strikes, had assailed City College, CUNY’s flagship school, located in the middle of Harlem, as a racist institution that used academic standards to deny admission to all but a handful of Black and Puerto Rican students. They demanded that CUNY abandon those standards ...

Higher Ed

A Declaration of Independence by a Princeton Professor

Freedom to think for oneself is still a right, not a privilege

July 16, 2020 • by Joshua T. Katz

In Congress, on July 4, 1776, came the “unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America.” Signed by 56 men, many of whom were considered national heroes just a few minutes ago, it opens with a long and elegant sentence whose first words every American child knows, or used ...

A Declaration of Independence by a Princeton Professor

Race

The Need, and the Difficulty, of Collective Apologies & Forgiveness

When saying “I’m sorry” is not enough

July 16, 2020 • by Roy L. Brooks

This point is critically important in understanding the duty to apology. So long as the perpetrator or its successor-in-interest is alive (a family or institution, for example), the transgression’s moral stain does not perish with the victims. The perpetrator still has something for which to apologize. It is only the ...

The Need, and the Difficulty, of Collective Apologies & Forgiveness

Activism

Saying Goodbye to Aunt Jemima Is Not Enough

What we really need to do to address the economic impact of systemic racism in the United States

July 9, 2020 • by Elwood Watson

When Dinah Washington recorded “What a Diff’rence a Day Makes” in 1959, the blues diva managed to imbue the Tin Pan Alley lyrics with a kind of haunted hopefulness, the same kind of soulful yearning that would reappear a few years later in Sam Cooke’s monumental ode to the civil ...