Tag Archive: race
November 10, 2011
Ida B. Wells was an African American journalist, newspaper editor and, with her husband, newspaper owner Ferdinand L. Barnett, an early leader in the civil rights movement. She documented lynching in the United States, showing how it was often a way to control or punish blacks who competed with whites. She was active in the women’s rights and the women’s suffrage movement, establishing several notable women’s organizations. Wells was a skilled and persuasive rhetorician, and traveled internationally on lecture tours.
November 7, 2011
Last week, Tema Okun of the dismantling RacismWorks, spoke about her new book, The Emperor Has no Clothes-Teaching about Race and Racism to People who Don’t want to Know at an event hosted by Community Change (see their website for a video of the talk) in Boston.
Read More
October 31, 2011
Last week, colleagues Andrea Nagel, Jen Willsea and I facilitated the workshop, Fundamentals of Facilitation for Racial Justice Work for staff at the Boston Public Health Commission. One of the most powerful parts of the workshop was an exercise where participants had to listen to a view with which they disagreed without opposing, fixing or leading the speaker to another viewpoint. Challenging, to say the least! It raised a great question about not just how, but when to listen without attempting to shift anything. Like many of the workshop participants, I struggle with this practice, particularly when the speaker’s views fly in the face of realities I see and history I know, or when the very act of listening seems to give comfort to views that diminish my humanity. The struggle brought me back to a classic essay, “The Art of Listening,” by feminist author Brenda Ueland.
Read More
October 5, 2011
I too, sing America
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.
Tomorrow,
I’ll be at the table
When company comes
Nobody’ll dare
Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,”
Then.
Besides,
They’ll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed –
I, too, am America.
~Langston Hughes
I write this on a train to New York City, after a whirlwind half-weekend in the nation’s capital a/k/a Chocolate City. My time spent in DC is always edifying — good for my soul. Monday, I attended the opening day of what I expect will be a history making event – the Take Back the American Dream Conference 2011, sponsored by the Campaign for America’s Future and the Institute for America’s Future. Read More
October 3, 2011
“My heart is moved
by all I cannot save
so much has been destroyed.
I have cast my lot
with those who age after age,
perversely,
and with no extraordinary power,
reconstitute the world.”
-Adrienne Rich
I spent a couple of hours at Occupy Boston this weekend and a couple more hours on line reading about Boston, New York and the burgeoning movement in cities across the country. The issues in Boston are wide and varied, including student debt, unemployment, corporate “personhood” and greed, foreclosure prevention, and “deep green resistance.” Everything is loosely connected under the banner of the “99%” who want to “take our country back.”
Read More
September 26, 2011
I apologize to the passionate and brilliant Hena Ashraf for failing to link this post to her blog. My friend Saulo Colon shared her story with me and I wrongly assumed he had written it.
I woke up today as I’m sure many of you did thinking of how I get to wake up today, and Troy Davis doesn’t. I thought about how this country kills innocent people abroad and at home. And I felt immense frustration at the recent news of how much the NYPD targets and monitors the Muslim community. I went to the Troy Davis rally that took place last night at Union Square at 5pm.
Read More
September 19, 2011
A few weeks ago, in a post called Who do we think we are?, Curtis Ogden, retold the story of a Native American elder. At the start of a meeting about ecology with non-Native physicists, she concluded her introduction by saying “This is who I am. The features of the land determine my conduct, responsibility, and ethics. Now I want to know to whom I am talking, before I say anything else of substance.” This gave rise to Curtis’ question “What do we lift up as markers of our identity?” The ensuing rich discussion focused on the links between our identities and the land.
Read More
August 11, 2011
So I just came in from seeing the Hollywood movie that’s got my FaceBook page and Twitter account all abuzz: “The Help,” written and directed by Tate Taylor based on a novel by his childhood friend, Kathryn Stockett. It’s the fictional story of a group of black maids in 1960s Mississippi who agree to share their work lives with a young, aspiring, white female journalist. It’s clear that yet again this kind of story has struck a dissonant, familiar, chord with the American public — I’ll call it “The Race Chord.” While black thought leaders I respect are publicly denouncing the flick, others I also respect are making a point to enthusiastically support it via press release. Read More
August 8, 2011
In case you missed my earlier posts in this series, I am raising a series of questions about power and privilege in social change work at the invitation of the “Walk the Talk” zine/book project.
Today is the final post in this series. I want to end with a deceptively simple question.
What do I want badly enough to pursue? Read More
August 1, 2011
Picture was taken by Dmitri Markine. Check out this amazing portfolio!
In case you missed my earlier posts in this series, I am raising a series of questions about power and privilege in social change work at the invitation of the “Walk the Talk” zine/book project. Prior questions included:
- “How do I handle my privileges responsibly and avoid the “oppression Olympics?”
- How do I figure out which privileges to leverage, which to minimize and which to divest?
- When is it more responsible to “hold the bag” and when is it more important to “let the ball bounce?” and What has my contribution been and how do my colleagues of color see me?
- How do we “undo racism” without also “undoing race?” And, how do we “undo race” without leaving racism in place?
Today I also want to pose two related questions.
Read More
July 25, 2011
In case you missed my earlier posts in this series, [include hyperlink to first post], I am raising a series of questions about power and privilege in social change work at the invitation of the “Walk the Talk” zine/book project. Prior questions included:
Today I want to pose two related questions. Read More
July 11, 2011
In case you missed my first post in this series, I am raising a series of questions about power and privilege in social change work at the invitation of the Walk the Talk zine project. Today’s post is a bit long, and covers two questions:
How do I handle my privileges responsibly and avoid the “oppression Olympics?” Read More
