Racism

Trials Highlight Racism

November 10, 2021 Monica Moorehead, Workers World. Educate! Black America, Criminal Justice and Prisons, Legal System, Racism

Two high-profile murder trials are taking place simultaneously in the U.S. – one in the Deep South and the other in the Midwest. Despite the obvious distance in miles, both trials have two main political themes in common: The first is the prevalence of white supremacy and the second is the Black Lives Matter struggle. These two important societal issues loom large over the individuals on trial. The first trial involves three white men – two who had openly voiced Klan-like opinions – who are accused of fatally shooting Ahmaud Arbery, the 25-year-old son of African immigrants, on Feb. 23, 2020. Arbery was jogging in a majority white suburb of Brunswick, Georgia, when he was chased down by a pickup truck driven by Greg McMichael and his son, Travis McMichael.

Don’t Ignore The 2021 Tribunal On Genocide

November 4, 2021 Salifu Mack, Hood Communist. Educate! Genocide, Human Rights, Racism, United Nations

When I walked through the doors of the Shabazz Center for the Spirit of Mandela Tribunal that took place on October 22-25th, I was not greeted by police or any other capitalist/white supremacist security force. Instead, after checking in, I was greeted by brothers that felt like my dad, like my uncles, like my high school track coach or my barber. These men were the Zulu Warriors, brothers who had made the trek from Atlanta to Washington Heights to protect this sacred space for the weekend. Brothers who came to offer protection to the house that Betty Shabazz built, while those who strive to continue her husbands legacy worked upstairs to follow through on the mission of charging the US, once again, with genocide against it’s African and Indigneous captive nations.

Verdict In The Case Of Black, Brown And Indigenous Peoples

October 26, 2021 International Tribunal on Human Rights Abuses Against Black, Brown, and Indigenous Peoples. Educate! Human Rights, Racism, Tribunal, United States

The fact that the United States has committed an array of human rights abuses against Black, Brown, and Indigenous Peoples should be as uncontroversial as it is incontrovertible. There is widespread agreement that settler colonialists committed genocide and other crimes against the Indigenous populations while taking their lands. No one would disagree that enslaved Africans were forced to work the settler colonial lands for hundreds of years in subhuman conditions. The historical record tells the story of additional human rights abuses committed against Mexicans and other groups as the US expanded West and colonized countries like Puerto Rico. No one doubts that Japanese were forced into concentration camps during World War II or that Blacks were lynched and brutalized during Jim Crow.

If You’re Afraid Kids Will Learn Racism Is Bad, Perhaps Public School Is Not For You

October 20, 2021 Steven M. Singer, Gadfly On The Wall. Educate! Education, Public schools, Racism, White Supremacy

Some people are terrified that kids will learn about racism. Especially white people. Especially that white KIDS might learn about it. How would that affect a white child’s self-esteem, they say. Imagine learning that racism existed in the United States. A country founded by white people. (Taken from brown people. Made largely profitable by the enslavement of black people.) Wouldn’t that make white kids feel bad? It’s a strange question. First of all, wouldn’t it make the black and brown kids feel worse than the white kids? After all, it was their ancestors who were brutalized and subjugated. Second of all, what does history have to do with your feelings? This isn’t aroma therapy or yoga. It’s the past.

Some Schools Remove Police, Others Continue Sending Students To Police

October 8, 2021 Dave Savini, Chris Hacker, And Michele Youngerman, CBS Chicago. Educate! Education, Police, Police abuse, Racism

Chicago - In January 2019, a cell phone video from inside Marshall High School on Chicago’s West Side was posted to Facebook. It shows a student, then-16-year-old Dnigma Howard, at the bottom of a staircase, and two Chicago Police officers trying to handcuff her. One of the officers fires his Taser at Dnigma as she’s on the ground. Now, more than two years and a $300,000 settlement with the school district later, many Chicago schools have opted to remove police from their hallways. At the same time, newly released body camera video sheds light on what happened to Dnigma, and data from the US Department of Education shows some schools send huge numbers of their students like her to the police. It all started at about 9:45 a.m. on January 29, 2019.

In A California Desert, Sheriff Deputies Settle Schoolyard Disputes

October 7, 2021 Emily Elena Dugdale And Irena Hwang , Black Agenda Report. Educate! Black America, Criminal Justice and Prisons, Public schools, Racism

Barron Gardner, a high school history teacher in Southern California’s Antelope Valley, stared down Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department deputies during an online meeting in April, trying to keep his composure. Gardner, 41, had become a reluctant spokesperson for a growing movement, driven primarily by Black and Latino residents, to get LASD deputies off school campuses. His wife, who's also a teacher, worried about the repercussions for their family. What if he lost his job? What if he became a target of discrimination or worse? After all, this valley at the western edge of the Mojave Desert, population roughly 500,000, has a long history of racial tension, including white supremacist attacks on Black community members.

ASU Students Fight To Defend Multicultural Center

October 2, 2021 Daniel Lopez, Liberation News. Resist! Arizona, Education, Racism, Student Activism

Arizona State University, like many other college campuses in America, is a pivotal location for the struggle against racism. The campus has had several incidents calling attention to the mistreatment of Black and Brown people in Arizona, such as when a Black professor was tackled to the ground for “jaywalking” by an ASU police officer in 2014. After the uprising against racism in 2020, many student groups have called for the defunding and disarmament of the ASU police department, as well as the creation of a “Cultural Excellency Center” on campus. The Cultural Excellency Center, also referred to as the Multicultural Center, is a long-running initiative spearheaded by the Multicultural Solidarity Coalition — a non-ASU-affiliated coalition of students who have been fighting for a space on campus since 2016.

‘Race Norming’ And Health Care Jim Crow

October 1, 2021 Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report. Educate! Health Care, Racism, White Supremacy

The term “race norming ” ought to be immediately suspected as having a nefarious intent. Anything referred to as norming in a racist society invariably ends with Black people getting the short end of the stick. The concept that Black bodies are anatomically different may be known as “race correction”, “ethnic adjustment”, or “race adjustment” and causes Black people to be undertreated for pain, undiagnosed for serious illness, and denied life saving treatments because of an idea which is inherently white supremacist and very much unscientific. While we are urged to trust science, there must be an acknowledgement that sciences, including medicine, are not exempt from the wider world in which they exist. Until very recently, a diagnosis of serious kidney disease was made by including race as a factor in determining eGFR, a measurement of kidney function.

Haitian Rights Are Migrant Rights

September 25, 2021 Janvieve Williams Comrie, Afro Resistance. Resist! Haiti, Immigration, Racism

The International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families, which was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly resolution in December 1990, took the Universal Declaration of Human Rights a step further, and other human rights conventions and treaties by the UN (United Nations) and the ILO (International Labor Organization), as well as the Convention on the Rights of the Child and was intentional to include migrants, both as they actively migrated and as they settled as immigrants, and categorized them as economic migrants, migrant workers, women, children who are particularly discriminated against, and therefore need their own targeted protection instruments that go beyond regions and intra and trans borders.

‘They Saw Me And Thought The Worst’

September 25, 2021 Richard A. Webster, Pro Publica. Educate! Black America, Louisiana, Police abuse, Racism

As Sojourner Gibbs pulled out of her parking space at a Sam’s Club in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, one afternoon last summer, she felt the familiar, sickening symptoms of diabetic shock. Weakness, confusion. She began to sweat and shake uncontrollably. And then, Gibbs said, panic set in. Her car lurched forward a few feet. She slammed on the brakes. The groceries she had just purchased for her family’s Juneteenth barbecue jostled in the back. People started honking their horns. A concerned woman walked up to her car. “I’m a diabetic! I need help!” Gibbs yelled. The woman called 911. Dispatcher notes show a report of a “Black female sitting/screaming” in a gold Ford Expedition. “Appears scared.” Moments later: “Needs EMS.”

Where Flowers Find No Peace Enough To Grow

September 24, 2021 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. Educate! Colonialism, Human Rights, Racism, Slavery

On 13 July 2021, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) adopted a landmark resolution on the prevalence of racism and for the creation of an independent mechanism made up of three experts to investigate the root cause of deeply embedded racism and intolerance. The Group of African States pushed for this resolution, which had emerged out of global anger over the murder of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police on 25 May 2020. The discussions in the UNHRC considered the problems of police brutality and went back to the formation of our modern system in the crucible of slavery and colonialism. A number of Western countries – such as the United States and the United Kingdom – hesitated over both the assessment of the past and the question of reparations; these governments were able to remove the requirement to investigate systematic racism in US law enforcement.

Racism Denies Common Prosperity In The United States

September 22, 2021 Danny Haiphong, Black Agenda Report. Educate! China, Oppression, Racism, wealth inequality

Mainstream U.S. media frequently depicts China as a "closed off" country that treats ethnic minorities with contempt and oppression. The New York Times took this baseless accusation further in an op-ed published on September 9 that claimed China was closing itself off from the world and rejecting the English language. No verifiable proof was offered beyond reforms to the education system that seek to address economic and social stressors faced by Chinese families. The op-ed argued that China's decision to place tighter regulations on its private tutoring and examination process is a sign that the country is closing itself off from the world. Yet China's reforms actually achieve the opposite by adhering to the goal set out by the central government to ensure "common prosperity" for all.

In Central York, Kids Rose Up To Save Books From Their Parents

September 22, 2021 Will Bunch, Philadelphia Inquirer. Resist! Censorship, Pennsylvania, Racism, Youth Activism

The mess in the Central York School District, which includes several suburban townships just north of York, in a county where Donald Trump won 62% of the vote, started after some parents and teachers had hoped to bolster the curriculum around anti-racism in the wake of the George Floyd protest marches in spring 2020. The move backfired when some parents started complaining about the reading list proposed by a committee. “I don’t want my daughter growing up feeling guilty because she’s white,” one parent, Matt Weyant, told a recent school board meeting. Then, panicked school board members imposed “a freeze” on students using the books. To critics, it sure looked like a school book ban — with a chilling effect on teachers hoping to teach lessons against racism.

I’m Fighting For Ethnic Studies So My History Won’t Be Erased

September 22, 2021 Adam Hudson, Truthout. Create! Education, Ethnic Studies, Higher Education, Racism

Last year, as a massive uprising against systemic racism swept across the world, activists fighting for Black liberation and racial justice put radical demands against institutional racism on the table, such as abolishing and defunding the police. Another key step toward challenging institutional racism is the push for ethnic studies and teaching about systemic racism in U.S. schools. I am part of that fight in California. Last year, Pittsburg, California’s school board passed an ethnic studies resolution and tasked an ethnic studies committee with implementing curricula for the school district. Pittsburg is a working-class, ethnically diverse city in the San Francisco Bay Area. Founded initially as a coal mining town, one of the main employers is the USS-POSCO steel mill.

Durban And 9/11

September 19, 2021 Ajamu Baraka, Black Agenda Report. Educate! 9/11, Durban, Racism, Wars and Militarism

The World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance (WCAR) was a watershed conference for a number of reasons. Coming at the end of a decade-long series of gatherings of global civil society sponsored by the United Nations, the WCAR represented a continuation of a progressive trend, which brought thousands of activists together to participate in the NGO forum of a UN gathering and to participate, in a much-limited manner, in the official State proceedings. However, from the time that the WCAR was announced, it also became clear that this conference would be different. The explosive nature of the WCAR process became apparent at the first world preparatory meeting of activists and State representatives in Geneva in 1999.

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