White privilege can be a tricky thing for people to wrap their heads around. If you’ve ever called out white privilege before, chances are you’ve heard responses like “But I’m didn’t ask to be born white!” or “You’re being reverse racist.”
The next time that happens, just show the nay-sayer this succinct comic by Jamie Kapp explaining what white privilege is — and what it isn’t.
Click through for the full comic!
Ta-Nehisi Coates explores how mass incarceration has affected African American families. “There’s a long history in this country of dealing with problems in the African American community through the criminal justice system,” he says in this animated interview. “The enduring view of African Americans in this country is as a race of people who are prone to criminality.”
“She left this life as she lived it: surrounded by books, politics, people and ideas,” said her friends and caretakers Shay Howell and Alice Jennings.
Grace Lee Boggs was involved with the civil rights, Black Power, labor, environmental justice, and feminist movements over the past seven decades. She was born to Chinese immigrant parents in 1915. In 1992, she co-founded the Detroit Summer youth program to rebuild and renew her city.
Here is a Democracy Now! video interview in which she talks about her work in the civil rights, Black Power, labor, environmental justice and feminist movements for seven decades.
Click here to read an ongoing series of interviews with philosophers on race by George Yancy, philosophy professor at Emory University.
In March 2015 Ariana Miyamoto became the first half-black Japanese woman to be named Miss Japan. This video feature by Al Jazeera America explores the varied reactions to a mixed-race woman, or what the Japanese refer to as a “hafu”, being crowned Miss Japan.
“I don’t think the equivalent word for ‘hafu’ exists overseas; but in Japan, you need that word to explain who you are.” — Ariana Miyamoto
Furthermore, the video communicates to viewers the often misused and mislead power of assigning meaning to bodies and outward appearances as opposed to acknowledging individuals’ ethnicities or nationalities .
“My appearance isn’t Asian, but I believe I’m very much Japanese on the inside.” — Ariana Miyamoto
This piece connects well with our discussion of what it means to talk about race, how we use or misuse the term ‘race’ to assign meaning, and the significance of the language we use in race-talk.
http://america.aljazeera.com/watch/shows/live-news/2015/9/miss-japan-challenges-the-norm.html
Racism:
Racial Equity/Diversity Education:
White Privilege:
A two part series about how the racial integration of schools is a reform that has been shown to really improve the education for minority children, but that people have apparently given up on. It discusses the case of a school district in Normandy, Missouri (where Michael Brown studied), which accidentally happened upon an integration program.