The Dark Fantastic: Race and the Imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games (Postmillennial Pop) (9781479800650): Ebony Elizabeth Thomas: Books Reparations for slavery Reparations for slavery is the idea that some form of compensatory payment needs to be made to the American descendants of slaves who had been enslaved as part of the slave trade. The most notable demands for reparations have been made in the United Kingdom and in the United States. The land that is now known as America, including the Caribbean, and also African states from which slaves were taken are owed these reparations. These reparations are speculative; that is, they have never been paid. United States[edit] Slavery ended in the United States with the end of the American Civil War and the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment, which declared that, "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction".[1] At this time, there were an estimated four million African Americans that were set free.[2] Support for reparations[edit]
Let Harvard Be Harvard, Only Bigger – Bloomberg View As Harvard’s defense of its admissions practices continues in a Boston courtroom, the university faces one main obstacle: It’s guilty as charged, as the Vox writer Matt Yglesias recently tweeted. Harvard policy does discriminate against Asian-Americans. So the next step is to arrive at a deeper understanding of how both America and Harvard got to this point. Like Matt, I attended Harvard (for my doctorate in economics), and most of the people there are as well-meaning as any you might find in Idaho or West Virginia. Step back from the emotions of the current debate and start with the general point that social elites need to replicate themselves, one way or another. One Harvard strategy, common among top universities, is to give preference to descendants of alumni. Another Harvard strategy has been to support affirmative action and related practices to make the university more welcoming to African-American and Latino applicants. Well, maybe those really are the best schools.
In The Dark Fantastic, Ebony Elizabeth Thomas asks what is really happening in fantasy worlds, and finds a mirror to our own | Penn GSE Ebony Elizabeth Thomas is a professor who studies and teaches how people of color are portrayed, or not portrayed, in children’s and young adult literature, film, and television — and how those portrayals shape our culture. Her book exploring these issues, The Dark Fantastic: Race and the Imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games, has just been published. Dr. Ebony Elizabeth Thomas But nearly two decades ago, she was a school teacher in her native Detroit during a snowy winter, opening a Harry Potter book for the first time. “I was supposed to be disavowing childhood and I ended up just falling straight into it,” Thomas told the Office Hours podcast. “I had always been drawn to speculative fiction and narratives, but I just didn't have anyone to talk to about my obsessions, or how much I loved these stories, and how much I would rather live in the wizarding world, or be a citizen of the United Federation of Planets instead of being a young Black woman in Detroit.
‘Better Is Good’: Barack Obama's Interview With Ta-Nehisi Coates - The Atlantic Coates: So it didn’t surprise you at all? Obama: No. I think, and look, Ta-Nehisi, I don’t want to discount those criticisms, but offsetting those criticisms is that I have 90 percent or 95 percent support in the African American community and it’s not sort of “Well, he’s black, so it’s okay. We’re not going to say anything even though we’re seething.” And I hang out with a lot of middle-aged black women, and they’re not casual in their support of me. Coates: So perhaps more substantive than that early-on critique, for instance—and Valerie [Jarrett] and I talked a little bit about this—when you attempted to bring in some of the Black Lives Matter activists and folks refused. Obama: Oh, I absolutely could comprehend it. Coates: Are you serious? Obama: Absolutely. Coates: How did he respond? Obama: Like a 21-year-old would, which is sort of a mixture of defiance and uncertainty and embarrassment. Coates: So it didn’t surprise you at all? Obama: No. Coates: Are you serious? Obama: Absolutely.
Opinion | The Newest Jim Crow Who loses? Nearly everyone. A recent analysis by a Brookings Institution fellow found that “efforts to reduce recidivism through intensive supervision are not working.” Reducing the requirements and burdens of community supervision, so that people can more easily hold jobs, care for children and escape the stigma of criminality “would be a good first step toward breaking the vicious incarceration cycle,” the report said. Many reformers rightly point out that an ankle bracelet is preferable to a prison cell. If you asked slaves if they would rather live with their families and raise their own children, albeit subject to “whites only signs,” legal discrimination and Jim Crow segregation, they’d almost certainly say: I’ll take Jim Crow. Some insist that e-carceration is “a step in the right direction.”
Letting Go of Literary Whiteness: Antiracist Literature Instruction for White Students (Language and Literacy Series) (9780807763056): Carlin Borsheim-Black, Sophia Tatiana Sarigianides, Timothy J. Lensmire: Books Slavery compensation Leaders of more than a dozen Caribbean countries are launching a united effort to seek compensation from three European nations for what they say is the lingering legacy of the Atlantic slave trade. The Caribbean Community, a regional organisation, has taken up the cause of compensation for slavery and the genocide of native peoples and is preparing for what would likely be a drawn-out battle with the governments of Britain, France and the Netherlands. It has engaged the British law firm of Leigh Day, which waged a successful fight for compensation for hundreds of Kenyans who were tortured by the British colonial government during the so-called Mau Mau rebellion of the 1950s and 1960s. Lawyer Martyn Day said his first step would probably be to seek a negotiated settlement with the governments of France, Britain and Netherlands along the lines of the British agreement in June to issue a statement of regret and award compensation of £19.9m to the surviving Kenyans.
Why Do Asian-Americans Remain Largely Unseen in Film and Television? Yet elsewhere in the arts, Asian-Americans have flourished: as poets, writers, directors, photographers, fashion designers, architects, interior decorators and visual artists. The creative offerings of Asian-Americans — from Vera Wang’s fantasy wedding dresses to the fiction of Jhumpa Lahiri to the haunting cinematography of Hiro Murai, the director of Donald Glover’s television show “Atlanta” — aren’t just accepted but celebrated. Only in the representational arts do Asians remain unseen — mostly in film and television, but in music, too, and, to a lesser degree, on the runway. In other words: It is only when we are hidden that we are allowed to succeed. Which leads to a more troubling but inevitable conclusion: that there is something about the very physiognomy of the Asian face that American audiences still cannot or will not accept. EXOTIC, OPPORTUNISTIC prostitutes. Their arrival was called the Yellow Peril. Inscrutable. Her mother was a housewife.
What It’s Like to See ‘Slave Play’ as a Black Person Still, some black people have felt a “recklessness or boldness to what I’m putting onstage in front of white people,” Mr. Harris, who began writing “Slave Play” during his first year as a graduate student at the Yale School of Drama, told me. A not-uncommon critique of the play is that most of the audience will be white, or that he wrote it with a white gaze in mind. “The main audience for this play was, and always has been, me,” he said. This dilemma is something most, if not all, black artists have had to wrestle with. Cast members from the original 1959 Broadway production of Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun” recalled white audience members laughing throughout the drama. “You must understand, an audience comes to own a play,” he said, adding that they responded to the protagonist’s mother controlling “her son’s rage. I know the prospect of seeing slavery depicted in this way is a turn off for many black people — their hesitation and dubiousness is understandable.
1/19/19: 2 women from families w/slaves make reparations payments CENTENNIAL, Colo. (AP) — Reparations. It’s the idea that white Americans should pay a moral debt to black Americans to compensate for slavery, Jim Crow and institutionalized racism. Reparations has been a concept debated as far back as emancipation. In late 2018, the Denver-based nonprofit Soul2Soul Sisters received a whopping $200,000 anonymous donation. The mystery benefactor ended up being a graduate student. She had delved deep into her family tree for a class assignment. But it turned out that wasn’t true. She even dug up a cassette recording of her grandmother, and she learned about Alice. Alice was an enslaved girl given to her “aristocratic” great-great grandmother when she left North Carolina for Mississippi. “It became true what I had thought was true,” she said. This revelation came four years after her father passed away, leaving her an inheritance that presented a challenge. She quietly made the donation, and figured that was that. “I began to think, ‘What do I call this?’”
The black history you might not learn at school Black History Month is celebrated in the UK every October. As this year's celebration comes to a end, here are four lesser-known historical figures who helped shape multicultural Britain. Una Marson - 'She was a real trailblazer' Poet, dramatist, and broadcaster Una Marson made history by becoming the first black woman to be employed by the BBC. Born in Jamaica, Marson moved to the UK in the early 1930s and took up her first position at the BBC as a programme assistant in March 1941. "She was a real pioneer in giving voice to black women's experience, as well as generously creating a platform for other contemporary black voices," historian Robert Seatter says. 'Sparked resentment' At the BBC, Marson worked alongside writers TS Eliot and George Orwell before establishing her own weekly feature within the Calling the West Indies radio programme, called Caribbean Voices. She went on to become the first black producer at the BBC. Image copyright London Borough of Lambeth 'Challenging oppression'
2019 Summer Reading List | We Are Kid Lit Collective 2019 Summer Reading List PDF Are you looking for a curated summer reading list that celebrates diversity, inclusivity and intersecting identities? The We Are Kid Lit Collective selects books by and about IPOC (Indigenous and People of Color), people with disabilities, and people from the LGBTQIA+ communities. Chosen books are thoroughly selected, discussed, and vetted by two or more members. 2019 WKL collective members: Tad Andracki, Edith Campbell, Laura M. Picture Books Campbell, Nicola I.; illustrated by Kim LaFave. Child, Brenda J.; illustrated by Jonathan Thunder; translated by Gordon Jourdain. Elwin, Rosamund, Michelle Paulse; illustrated by Dawn Lee. Harris, J.; illustrated by Ward Jenkins. Herrera, Juan Felipe; illustrated by Anita De Lucio-Brock. Hong, Jess. Hong, Nari. Martinez, Ernesto Javier; illustrated by Maya Christina González; translated by Jorge Gabriel Martinez Feliciano. Martinez-Neal, Juana. Medina, Tony; illustrated by various. Morales, Yuyi. Seki, Sunny. Like this:
Dem. Presidential Candidate Calls for $100B in Slavery Reparations Marianne Williamson, a best-selling author. spiritual teacher and activist, announced her bid for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination on Monday. On Thursday, she sat down on CNN’s New Day, where she said the United States needs to pay African-Americans reparations for slavery. “We need a moral and spiritual awakening in the country,” the candidate stated. “Nothing short of that is adequate to really fundamentally change the patterns of our political dysfunction.” Her platform includes proposal for public college, universal health care, Medicare for all, a green new deal and $10 billion per year for slavery reparations to be paid over the course of a decade. “I believe $100 billion given to a council to apply this money to economic projects and educational projects of renewal for that population is simply a debt to be paid,” Williamson said. Watch the full interview below to hear what she believes to be the “deeper truths” about what has failed the American people.