Racism

How The US Government Stokes Racial Tensions In Cuba

September 17, 2021 Alan MacLeod, Mintpress News. Educate! Black Lives Matter (BLM), Cuba, Racism, US Imperialism

Havana - “A Black uprising is shaking Cuba’s Communist regime,” read The Washington Post’s headline on the recent unrest on the Caribbean island. “Afro-Cubans Come Out In Droves To Protest Government,” wrote NPR. Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal went with “Cuba’s Black Communities Bear the Brunt of Regime’s Crackdown” as a title. These were examples of a slew of coverage in the nation’s top outlets, which presented what amounted to one day of U.S.-backed protests in July as a nationwide insurrection led by the country’s Black population — in effect, Cuba’s Black Lives Matter moment. Apart from dramatically playing up the size and scope of the demonstrations, the coverage tended to rely on Cuban emigres or other similarly biased sources.

‘Finding Kendrick Johnson’ Reveals FBI’s Complicity In Coverup Of Black Child’s Murder

September 15, 2021 Jacqueline L'uqman, Toward Freedom. Educate! FBI, Georgia, Police abuse, Racism

Millions of people in the United States believe the justice system—from the cops in the street right on up to the judges in the courthouse—is fair and unbiased. Millions of people also believe systemic racial and class biases are relics of a bygone era washed away by progressivism, the election of the First Black President, and the great healer called Time. But those millions of people need to wake up and watch Jason Pollock’s documentary, “Finding Kendrick Johnson” (2021), for a healthy and horrifying dose of reality. The film begins with Kendrick Johnson, a 17-year-old Black student, who was found dead in 2013 inside a rolled-up mat that was propped up against a little-used wall in the gymnasium of Lowndes High School in Valdosta, Georgia.

Segregation And The Case For School Funding Reparations

September 15, 2021 Insider NJ. Educate! Education, New Jersey (NJ), Racism, Reparations

The U.S. public school system is one of the most unequal in the industrialized world, and New Jersey is no exception, according to a new report by New Jersey Policy Perspective (NJPP). Due to racist housing practices such as “redlining” and “blockbusting,” many Black and Hispanic/Latinx students do not receive the resources they need to ensure equal educational opportunity in the Garden State. “We have long seen school funding and student outcome disparities that fall disparately by race, disadvantaging Black and Latinx communities in particular,” said Bruce Baker, Ed.D., report co-author and Professor in the Graduate School of Education at Rutgers University.

The United States’ Recent Failures Should Serve As A Warning To Its Allies

September 13, 2021 Charles Xu, Select. Educate! Afghanistan, China, Racism, US Imperialism

On May 26, 2021, President Joe Biden ordered US intelligence agencies to produce “analysis of the origins of COVID-19” within 90 days. This move followed weeks of speculation surrounding the claim that the virus had escaped from a Chinese laboratory, usually identified as the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Having rightly rejected this claim for more than a year as a Trumpian conspiracy theory, centrist and liberal commentators in the West have breathed new life into the “lab leak” hypothesis, taking cues from allegations and claims made by US state leaders and corporate media. Meanwhile, Facebook and other social media giants reversed their censorship of lab-leak disinformation almost overnight, impelled by a tawdry mix of insinuations from unnamed US intelligence sources and vague allegations of impropriety relating to the World Health Organization’s investigation into the origins of the pandemic earlier this year.

Students Stage Walkout To Support School’s First Black Principal

September 13, 2021 Elizabeth Campbell, Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Resist! Critical Race Theory, Education, Racism, Student Activism

Colleyville - Over 100 students walked out of their Friday morning classes at Colleyville Heritage High School to show their support of James Whitfield, the high school’s first Black principal who was placed on paid administrative leave last month. They want answers from school administrators as to why Whitfield is on leave. Students carried signs and wrote “We stand with Dr. Whitfield” in chalk on the sidewalks at the high school. They also marched around the school chanting, “Dr. Whitfield’s here to stay.” Sunehra Chowdhury, a senior at Colleyville Heritage who helped organize the walkout, said she and other students are not backing down or giving up on supporting Whitfield. She said the school board has contributed to the criticism and hostility toward Whitfield and his family.

Ten Post-9/11 Measures That Targeted Muslim Americans

September 11, 2021 Edward Ahmed Mitchell, CAIR. Educate! 9/11, Constitution, Muslim Americans, Racism

In the twenty years since September 11, 2001, our government has established dozens of laws, policies and programs ostensibly designed to prevent additional attacks on our nation. Some of those post-9/11 measures—such as increasing airport security and improving communication between federal agencies regarding potential threats—were reasonable, legal and successful in making us safer. But many other measures were as ineffective as they were unconstitutional. They undermined civil liberties, violated civil rights and harmed countless people—particularly Muslims in America—in the name of national security. Today, some of those programs have ended. Some of them persist.

US Government’s Lies About Prison Uprising Fueled Lingering Mistrust

September 10, 2021 Bruce C.t. Wright, NewsOne. Educate! Attica, Criminal Justice and Prisons, Prisoner rights, Racism

The rebellion began 50 years ago on Sept. 9, 1971, when prisoners took over the maximum-security Attica Correctional Facility in upstate New York after years of complaints about the conditions in the prison went unacknowledged. Aside from the inhumane conditions, prisoners alleged that they were subjected to treatment based on race and religion. Fed up with overcrowded prison cells with temperatures that soared during warmer months and froze during wintertime, among other gripes about a basic lack of humane treatment, the disproportionately Black and Hispanic prison population rebelled to take control of the correctional facility for four days. The prisoners took dozens of hostages while they negotiated with officials about their demands.

The Race Class Narrative Can Win

September 8, 2021 Anika Fassia And Tinselyn Simms, Dissent Magazine. Strategize! Capitalism, Class Struggle, Racism

We’re glad to be at a point in American political discourse where the question being posed is how to talk about race and class, rather than whether to do so. For too long, many on the left, especially white progressives, have shied away from talking directly about race and racism. Talking about race, they have argued, is divisive and costs us electoral victories. This approach centers the experiences of white voters, who don’t feel the direct impact of racism in our economy or democracy, and neglects the concerns of people of color, who make up a large portion of our base. It also ignores the fact that race is always being discussed by our opponents. By not responding to the racial sentiments of their narratives, we leave their potent messages unopposed. As a result, we lose persuadable voters and fail to mobilize our base.

War Is A Racist Enterprise

September 7, 2021 Danny Haiphong, Black Agenda Report. Educate! Afghanistan War, Racism, US Imperialism, Wars and Militarism

The U.S.’s failure to prevent the Taliban from retaking political power in Afghanistan sparked feelings of panic in the foreign policy establishment. Warmongers and their loyal servants made endless demands for the twenty-plus year occupation to continue indefinitely. Familiar faces from the neocon establishment such as John Bolton and Bill Kristol urged Joe Biden to reconsider the withdrawal for “national security” reasons. An even larger cohort held firm to the belief that the U.S. should remain in Afghanistan on the premise that the lives of women were in imminent danger under Taliban rule. Afghanistan has been the target of U.S. aggression since 1979 when Jimmy Carter approved of direct assistance to the Mujahideen, the pre-cursor to the Taliban.

The Political Economy Of Racial Inequality

September 7, 2021 Touré F. Reed, Dissent Magazine. Educate! Black America, Finance and the Economy, Poverty, Racism

In 1965, in response to President Lyndon B. Johnson’s anemic War on Poverty legislation, the labor and civil rights leaders A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin joined with Leon Keyserling, the former chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, to draft “A Freedom Budget for All Americans.” Their $180 billion proposal ($1.4 trillion adjusted for inflation) would have established a living wage and guaranteed employment through public works projects and urban revitalization initiatives. Randolph and Rustin were socialists who viewed racial inequality through the lens of capitalist labor and housing markets. They correctly anticipated that neither the 1964 Civil Rights Act’s antidiscrimination measures nor the War on Poverty would be capable of eliminating black poverty.

A Unified Story For A Divided World

September 6, 2021 Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, Dissent Magazine. Educate! Capitalism, Class Struggle, Racism

Wars of position rage between “race reductionists” who insist on the political primacy of race and their “class reductionist” counterparts. But some of us, especially those of us who make use of racial capitalism as a set of frameworks, insist that such debate is tired. In Golden Gulag, Ruth Wilson Gilmore offers an intricate definition of racism: “the state-sanctioned or extralegal production and exploitation of group-differentiated vulnerability to premature death.” It follows that races are divisions of populations into hierarchies of vulnerability to premature death (the likely fate of the materially insecure). What’s the difference between “race” and “class,” then? They are two, compatible ways of explaining how society is split into strata of material security.

Gentrification And The End Of Black Communities

August 26, 2021 Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report. Educate! Black America, Capitalism, Gentrification, Racism

Brooklyn, New York is the epicenter of gentrification, the displacement of Black people from cities in this country. Recently released census data shows that neighborhoods like Bedford-Stuyvesant , which was nearly all Black for decades, no longer has a Black majority. Bedford-Stuyvesant’s white population rose by 30,000 from 2010 to 2020 while its Black population decreased by 22,000. The devastation has been wrought by finance capital, which has once again upended life for Black people. Money was taken out of the cities in the 1950s and 1960s, creating what was known as “white flight” to the suburbs. Now the same forces have reversed themselves and are putting money back into the cities, and Black people are the losers.

The Roma Struggle From Protests To Political Liberation

August 20, 2021 Sebijan Fejzula, Roar Magazine. Strategize! Collective Liberation, Europe, Racism, Roma

The recent death of Stanislav Tomáš, a Roma man from Teplice, Czech Republic, has sparked demonstrations across many European countries. On June 19, a police officer kneeled on Tomáš’ neck while detaining him, leading to his death soon after. Despite the international solidarity among European Roma this case has encouraged, we still have a long way to go in mobilizing politically against all racially motivated anti-Roma violence. Moreover, when it comes to the struggle against anti-Roma racism — or antigypsyism — we are still lacking the solidarity of the leftist social and political movements in Europe. Why can white Europeans see and denounce oppression in Chiapas or Palestine, but not the oppression against Roma that is taking place within their own communities?

Black Lives Matter DC Responds To Brutal Beating Of Black Man By Officer

August 14, 2021 Black Lives Matter DC, Popular Resistance. Resist! Black Lives Matter (BLM), Police abuse, Racism, Washington DC

On Sunday August 1, 2021 we were alerted to a video of a Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) officer brutally punching Kimon Johnson in the head in Southeast D.C. This kind of brutality is not new for MPD, in the District of Columbia, and certainly not near Good Hope Rd. and 16th St. Southeast, but it is always unacceptable. It mirrors the experience of Derrick “Quan” Johnson at almost the same location on December 26, 2019. Quan was also not charged for the original stop or the second retaliatory one. Like Quan, we are so very glad he is still alive. As we predicted, his response to this brutal incident Chief Contee did little more than give a measured response at the August 9, 2021 press conference. As we explained when he was confirmed and have since learned about his complicity in the misconduct by the Gun Recovery Unit (Jumpouts) against almost only Black people, we could hardly expect more from him.

Data Suggests Police Prey On Drivers In Black DC Neighborhoods

August 9, 2021 Anoa Changa, News One. Educate! D.C., Police, Racism, Washington, Washington D.C.

In Washington D.C., Black residents fill the city’s coffers with fines and fees collected through traffic enforcement. A new analysis from The Washington Post found that 62 percent of all fines were from majority Black neighborhoods with an average median income of less than $50,000. Metro Database Reporter John D. Harden searched through millions of records over a five-year period from 2016 to 2020. According to the report, the disparity remains even through the pandemic period of March 2020 to June 2021. In a Twitter thread, Harden laid out some facts about the cycle of debt that can trap some drivers in the District. Harden’s reporting also illustrates the importance of data in exposing inequality. Data analyzed revealed that two-thirds of drivers ticketed by police since 2019 were Black.

«1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 »

Daily movement news and resources