Trigger warning: violence Safety and security. These words conjure up different feelings and images for people of different races. For white people to feel safe, they must police Black and Brown people daily with tactics such as the paper bag test and stop-and-frisk. For Black and Brown people, it is vastly different. Black and Brown people, especially women, have been the target of some heinous crimes perpetrated by white people for centuries. Safety and security exist, but both are few and far between. The CDC reports that Black women die by homicide at nearly three times the rate that white women do. Crimes committed against Black women and Black women that are missing due to the result of crimes/violence are hardly investigated; they are regularly brushed aside to make room for finding the missing white women. (Doreen St. Felix writes about the above issue and more here.) Jay Pitter writes in her article “Black Women need to be Protected in Public Spaces” about who’s most at risk to be murdered in America: A recent report...
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Trigger warning: violence Safety and security. These words conjure up different feelings and images for people of different races. For white people to feel safe, they must police Black and Brown people daily with tactics such as the paper bag test and stop-and-frisk. For Black and Brown people, it is vastly different. Black and Brown people, especially women, have been the target of some heinous crimes perpetrated by white people for centuries. Safety and security exist, but both are few and far between. The CDC reports that Black women die by homicide at nearly three times the rate that white women do. Crimes committed against Black women and Black women that are missing due to the result of crimes/violence are hardly investigated; they are regularly brushed aside to make room for finding the missing white women. (Doreen St. Felix writes about the above issue and more here.) Jay Pitter writes in her article “Black Women need to be Protected in Public Spaces” about who’s most at risk to be murdered in America: A recent report … Read more
Let’s not forget that white children learn to be racist from their parents
Just like they are more likely to pass down wealth (property, money, etc.) to their kids, so too are white people more likely to pass down racism. The kids learn from the grown-ups, and that’s a fact even today, because plenty of racists have kids right now. And it’s why the pipedream of racism dying … Read more
The pollution in our soil: White supremacy
The president’s response to the tragedy in New Zealand… Well. He’s a eugenicist whose shriveled, quivering mouth has only ever dribbled out an endless ooze of hate, stupidity and lies when it comes to women, Black people, Islam and basically anyone who isn’t a rich, white man. He cut funding used to fight white supremacist … Read more
The college admission scandal is just one blossom from a deeper set of roots
(Following up on the recent post here at BGIM Media, a piece by one of our contributors on the pervasive inequities throughout the educational system that hold people back, often because of race) So I’m sure y’all have heard by now about this college admissions bribery/scandal/mess with this white dude, William Singer, the two white … Read more
Actions I take (as a white woman) to help dismantle white supremacy
[An evergreen reminder: I am a white woman writing about racism so I might share with other white people what I learn—mostly what I learn from people of color—so we can all work toward societal transformation, liberation.] “What actions do we take to help dismantle white supremacy?” I asked my nearly-10-year-old to help me brainstorm … Read more
Good faith isn’t always enough to close the gap
My father had a saying: “You wanna talk to somebody, you gotta meet them where they are… But some muthafuckas are just too far away.” This saying applies to a lot of situations, but he would use it most often when it came to talking to white people about race. Talking to white people about … Read more
Calling All White People, Part 33: Racism isn’t the white person’s call
(A periodic attempt to mobilize white people for something other than supporting just other melanin-deficient folks and maintaining a status quo of a nation geared toward whiteness as the baseline and the norm) By An Average White Guy TODAY’S EPISODE: Sorry, but white people don’t get to define what is racist [To find other … Read more
Calling All White People, Part 33: Racism isn’t the white person’s call
(A periodic attempt to mobilize white people for something other than supporting just other melanin-deficient folks and maintaining a status quo of a nation geared toward whiteness as the baseline and the norm) By An Average White Guy TODAY’S EPISODE: Sorry, but white people don’t get to define what is racist [To find other … Read more
After the turning point, Part 1
Losing a friend because I was steeped in white supremacy (and didn’t even see it) was the beginning of my turning point in racial justice work; she showed me that my “writing for white people” in a newspaper, however good my intentions were, had the impact of harming people of color. Without realizing it, I … Read more
Being Black in a white state: Why I “stick it out”
This story ran in Maine’s largest paper this past Sunday and it reminded of a question that I was recently asked by a Black woman from the south. What is it like to be a Black person in such a white state? To be frank, I have received some version of this question pretty regularly … Read more
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