Black intellectuals, white audiences: searching for tales of authentic blackness | Books Sometime last fall, I received an email from a Harvard colleague inviting me to join a reading group of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me. “I just had an image this morning of a room full of white people discussing the book,” she wrote, before clarifying in the next line: “I certainly don’t mean to say, ‘come explain what it’s like to be black to us.’” But of course, in some way, that is precisely what she meant. Amid protests against racialized police violence and debates over the limits of free speech on increasingly diverse college campuses, a good many (often, white) progressives have been left scratching their heads. Where does this belief in, and demand for, racially authentic explanations of black life come from? The 1960s marked a turning point in the position of black intellectuals with respect to white progressives, Matlin argues. On the Corner opens during the Harlem riot of 1964. But there were costs, too. But Clark would later grow disillusioned.
How It Feels To Conquer Your Shame - BuzzFeed News “You can’t do that! Stories have to be about White people” – Media Diversified Young Writers of Colour by Darren Chetty I’ve spent almost two decades teaching in English primary schools, which serve multiracial, multicultural, multifaith communities. 1) Almost without exception, whenever children are asked to write a story in school, children of colour will write a story featuring white characters with ‘traditional’ English names who speak English as a first language. 2) Teachers do not discuss this phenomenon. Furthermore, simply pointing these two things out can lead to some angry responses in my experience. Why are you making an issue of race when children are colourblind?” is an example of the sort of question that sometimes gets asked. Well let’s look at that. But, surely you are not arguing that teachers are telling them to do this?” I’m not. A few years ago, I taught a Year 2 class in East London. “You can’t do that! I just hadn’t realised what I was up against. What do I mean? This isn’t confined at children’s literature of course. Then they wrote. Bang! Mrs.
Cult of Pedagogy What the Data Really Says About Police and Racial Bias As the nation reels from a series of high-profile fatal shootings of black men by police officers, many have decried the lack of readily available data on how racial bias factors into American policing. But while it’s true that there is no adequate federal database of fatal police shootings (F.B.I. director James Comey has described the lack of data as “embarrassing and ridiculous”), there exists a wealth of academic research, official and media investigations, and court rulings on the topic of race and law enforcement. The Hive has collected 18 such findings below. This list is not exhaustive, and does not purport to comment on the work of all police officers. It is, rather, merely a digest of the information available at present. Sometimes, studies and investigations reveal evidence of intentional bias; other studies point to broader societal and institutional factors that lead to implicit bias. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.
Dispatches from the Rap Wars | Chicago magazine | October 2016 When I first started interviewing Chicago youth about their interactions with the police, I never expected that I would spend a year and a half embedded with one of the most notorious gangs in the city. I had devoted the first five years of my career as a sociologist to talking to homeless people on Los Angeles’s Skid Row about how they navigated their lives around police presence. I planned to continue similar work after joining the faculty of the University of Chicago in 2012. But when I began talking to groups of kids in the city about the police, I quickly realized that what they really wanted to discuss was gangs. During one such meeting, I pulled up a map of Chicago on my tablet and pointed to random intersections. No matter what corner, even miles from their homes, these kids had an intimate knowledge of gang activity there. I asked these kids how the hell they knew all this. I met Zebo the next day, and we talked for hours. It was a couple of months before I saw Zebo again.
How Books Became The Language My Father And I Found Together As Allen Iverson Is Inducted Into Basketball's Hall of Fame, Has the NBA Reconciled Itself to His Legacy? If I close my eyes, I can still picture it, as vivid as day. The defender pulls up his shorts and enters a crouch, his arms stretching seven feet from Allen Iverson’s ankle to the passing lane to the right. Then, too quick to even notice, Iverson feints left and stops on a dime, putting the defender off balance for just a millisecond. By the time the defender is back in position, with his weight now on his left foot, Iverson does it. A lightning-fast hesitation move from left to right with the ball as far out as he can stretch turns the defender in the wrong direction. By the time he recovers, Iverson is already in his shooting motion. That night in 1997 was the night I became an Allen Iverson fan. Nineteen years later, Iverson was canonized in the same vaunted halls as some of the other basketball Goliaths he’d made fall. I remember the first name brand pair of basketball shoes I owned. “You think you a rapper with them Jordans on?”
A Younger Sister's Grief for a Brother in Prison - The Atlantic This is the fifth article in a six-part series about young people with siblings in prison. Read part one here. Dionna King’s older brother has been in and out of prison since he was 18 years old. Michael (a pseudonym to protect his privacy) is now 32 and currently serving time for a probation violation. King is two years younger than Michael and has had a front-row seat to his various incarcerations over the years. “The first arrest happened in our high school, and it was related to a drug offense,” she says. Growing up in Atlanta, Michael liked being the center of attention, making others laugh, and being popular. King says Michael was deeply impacted by their parents’ divorce, which occurred when she was 13 and he was 15. So after Michael’s first arrest back in high school, the siblings’ grandfather, who was close to both kids and already a significant part of their childhoods, decided to step up his role in Michael’s life. To that end, she has often tried to offer Michael a hand up.
How to Hold Anger and Summon Empathy Be an ally. If you become aware of yourself as being part of an oppressive identity group, listen before you talk. Be conscious and aware of your position of power. Speak up. When we imagine the changes that need to happen, we may envision new laws getting passed and sweeping national movements, but the painful reality is that this is going to be so, so slow. Advertisement - Continue Reading Below Remain curious about your opponent. The aforementioned avenues of action and education make sense to me. Christine makes a good point: when you go into a situation trying to change someone's position, it shuts down curiosity. This work is a marathon, not a sprint. Trump, in the final days before the election, proclaimed that if he lost, the whole thing would have been a "tremendous waste of time, energy, and money." Use your time to educate yourself and your tribe. We scream at the top of every meeting, then get down to business*. (*Let me know if you want to join. Thank You!