Tag: Racism

VIDEO: 2 Videos by The Atlantic

Mass Incarceration, Visualized

“In this animated interview, the sociologist Bruce Western explains the current inevitability of prison for certain demographics of young black men and how it’s become a normal life event. ‘We’ve chosen the response of the deprivation of liberty for a historically aggrieved group, whose liberty in the United States was never firmly established to begin with,’ Western says.”

The Enduring Myth of Black Criminality

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.”

The new threat: ‘Racism without racists’

PC: Whitney Curtis for the NYTimes

Article Highlights:

  • Whites and blacks don’t speak the same language when they talk about racism
  • For many minorities, racism is less about overt hostility and more about bias
  • One sociologist calls it “racism without racists” and says “we are all in this game”
  • A new conversation on race can start with three phrases that often crop up

Click here.

A Look at Race as a Social Construct

Sometimes a picture is truly worth a thousand words. For those of us from the ‘multiracial’ or mixed race community, photos of our population — our people, our families, our children — aren’t as shocking as they are an affirmation of what we have already known: Race is a social construct.

Click here.

 

Remembering Legendary Detroit Activist Grace Lee Boggs (1915-2015)

Longtime Detroit activist and philosopher Grace Lee Boggs died this morning at the age of 100.

“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.

Conversations on Philosophy and Race

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Click here to read an ongoing series of interviews with philosophers on race by George Yancy, philosophy professor at Emory University.

Color-Blindness Is Counterproductive

Many sociologists argue that ideologies claiming not to see race risk ignoring discrimination.

 

Click here.

Ariana Miyamoto: the Black Miss Japan

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

 

Educational Resources

Below are links to some relevant educational pages… have at it!

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Racism:

Racial Equity/Diversity Education:

White Privilege:

AUDIO: This American Life – The Problem We All Live With

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.

Click Here.