We’re adding a regular feature here called “Under Reported” where readers can note an area of research that is under reported and needs attention. This page will be permanently linked to the main page of the blog, and you can add a comment whenever you like. Thanks to Dr. Terence Fitzgerald for this suggestion!
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We also provide substantive research and analysis on local, national, and global resistance to racial and ethnic oppression, including the many types of antiracist activism.
We’re always interested in more stories about antiracism to include on the blog and look forward to seeing any links that you post here that highlight antiracist activism in the news.
something else comes to mind, Zivilcourage/(moral courage I think it’s called in English?), the courage to speak up and act. It’s a current topic here in the city I live because of some incidents where people where attacked and nobody interfered.
In anti-racism, people may be able to “unlearn” their racism but this doesn’t give them the backbone to actually act against main-stream.
Every oppressive system has also it’s opponents from those in the powerful group, e.g. during slavery there have been whites helping Blacks to escape slavery, during Nazi-Germany there have been Germans hiding Jews.
That means, that everybody belonging to the ‘group in power’ is still responsible for his/her own actions, there is no such thing like “product of the time” and everybody can still act based on his/her conscience, regardless circumstances.
In democracies like the US and Germany today on average it doesn’t take so much courage to act as it took back in history, nonetheless the majority makes the choice to remain silent. Even in non-threatening situations. Even on internet, the safest place somebody could “train courage”.
What can we learn from these people, who were/are ‘white privileged’ and nonetheless say ‘no’ to the social pressure of main-stream.
Fellow Scholars, Wherefore Art Thou?
By Dr. T. Fitzgerald
“Either they don’t know, don’t show, or don’t care about what’s goin’ on in the hood.” At 18 years of age when I first heard this line from the 1991 movie, “Boyz in Da Hood,” I was blown away while sitting in a local movie theatre. Even though I was not from the hard inner city streets of Los Angeles, California, nonetheless, I related to the discussion related to the plight of socially and financially marginalized Black males in America. The connectivity to this movie sowed the seed of social justice and my passion for research related to those who share similar experiences of marginalization. Scholarly efforts in the early to late 90s produced a number of academic pieces (ex. The Assassination of the Black Male Image by Earl Ofari Hutchinson, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man by Henry Louis Gates Jr, Black Masculinity: The Black Male’s Role in American Society by Robert Staples, Young, Black, and Male in America: An Endangered Species by Jewelle Taylor Gibbs, and etc.). Very few books today exist that focus on the plight of Black males. Has the crisis subsided? Have Black males begun to rise from the ashes? Are they succeeding so well that the area of topic is extraneous? Actually, the state of Black males has continued to spiral out of control. Black males are out numbered by Black females completing high school, college, and graduate school. Black males are over represented in special education, receiving corporal punishment by school officials, expulsions and suspensions in public schools across the country. They are also more likely to be killed violently than their White and Black female counterparts. As a scholar I beseech my fellow academic social justice activists to begin to review this area of topic. Black males have had a history of being ignored in this country. It is up to the academy to force our society to realize that we do know, are showing, and do care about what’s going on with Black males.
I used to hate when people, mostly black men, would suggest that black men have it worst than black women. I still reserve some caution for endorsing the view because whatever happens to black men, black women are left holding the bag. For example, when we think about the history of lynching, we usually see images of black men hanging from trees in very states of mutilation and decomposition. What we don’t usually consider are the wives and children left behind. I’ve been putting off reading into the issue, but it does seem that the issues black men face as black men contribute to their resistance to marriage; therefore, we have a substantially high number of single mothers (although, it’s not as high as strict census numbers since a good number of single mothers live with their parents). So again, we see that whatever happens to black men as black men impacts black women, both in terms of blackness and the likelihood that black men couple with black women.
All that said, I wouldn’t trade places with my brother. And not just because I’m cuter.
I’d be interested to read what others experience in the assignment/selection of who teaches which courses. In short, do white professors teach race and ethnic relations at the same rates as non-whites? (Specifically Arican-Amrican professors. Although subtle I’d be hard pressed not to include teaching assisgnments as a by-product of a racism in academia.
The white oppression that supports racist attitudes towards blacks hasn’t been explored. What do white people do to each other to nurture and reproduce white racism? Are there social structures and historical narratives that form the framework for the continuation of racism among the classes of white people?
This question leads right to something I think and talk about all the time. My teenage years passed through the end of the civil rights movement that planted the “each-one-teach-one” principle in my brain. It programmed me to use that principle throughout my life. Yet,seeing the lack of that in African American life has been a great source of depression for me. (I’m in my 50’s now.) Living in NYC, I see it in other cultures and watch them pass us by in great strides as we watch in jealousy but fight those of us who try to reach back; or over to the right or left, to pull others along. I live in a building that the residents were fortunate to purchase from the City of New York with just $250 per apartment. Most of the shareholders pay less than $600 per month for maintenance; yet, half of them do not pay it. Some of these people receive substidy in paying that! So they don’t even pay the full amount. Yet, we’re only keep the building afloat with very basic services and my apartment is worth less today than when I bought it (sometime after the original purchase for $2000.) We had 24 hr Security and an active Management Team when I came here as a renter. Now Security is barely part-time and the Management Office is only open 3-4 hrs a week. Yet, we’re angry that other people are coming in and nudging us out of the neighborhood. All these ‘other people’; white, hispanic, asian…anyone but Black…Well, there are some Blacks in there that have enough money, but you get the picture. We are our worse enemy. So, the action of us implementing the’Each-one-teach-one” principle needs to be researched. Why isn’t it working for us??? Why aren’t we ‘receiving’ wisdom/information from eachother and using it to grow and produce wholesome, productive life for our people like the others??? We can’t even eat without buying from a hispanic owned supermarket. We can’t wash our clothes or buy clothes that most of us can afford without another people to provide it. Every medical office I go to has a full hispanic and/or other staff at the front desk…and the list goes on and on. Let the research begin;please:-).
Hi Racism Review admins,
I was hoping to pose a question, but as the “contact us” form is not present, and I could not find any other contact information on the site, I thought this might be the next best place to post.
First, let me say that I am very excited about the work you are doing on this blog, and have found the writing on this site engaging and informative. I also love the in-depth conversations being sparked in the comment sections, which have certainly prompted me to think critically about all the arguments being made here.
My question is about your submission policies. I was wondering about the decision to only publish articles written by invited “scholars and researchers” and who that includes. While the goal of having credible, reliable, and evidence-based information makes perfect sense to me, the idea that this equates directly to academia gives me pause, particularly considering the antiracist goals of this site.
As a white undergraduate student engaged in American Ethnic Studies and social justice work locally, I have been repeatedly encouraged to examine the white supremacist culture and values in which we are steeped here in the U.S., and how I have internalized those ideals and norms. One of the features of this culture that comes up both in these explorations and in my initial readings about antiracist pedagogy is the valuing of academic knowledge over all other forms of knowledge. The notion that the most legitimate information comes only from those who are experts or “advanced-level” in their scholarly pursuits seems, to me, to undermine much of the good work you are doing here to challenge systemic inequality. Such logic has long been used to uphold the voices of those already in positions of dominance, while discrediting the voices of those who do not have access to academic institutions (often, people of color, poor and queer folks, women…), but hold many other forms of knowledge. Additionally, the assertion that one must be an academic to make credible and fact-based arguments about racism and antiracist work seems to undercut the work you are doing here.
I want to re-emphasize: I think this website is doing great work and providing an important space for analysis and dialogue. I only offer this criticism in hopes of challenging and expanding the conversation here. I think as part of this antiracist struggle, we can all only benefit by learning to value many forms of knowledge as valid and essential, and by constantly questioning whose voices are being included and whose are being silenced in our own spaces. Think how this site could expand its shared knowledge if community advocates and organizers were sharing their experiences with us, if younger students were encouraged to assert their voices as valuable and intelligent. This doesn’t have to mean that the writing here couldn’t still be reliable and evidence-based; we all have the ability to fact check, cite other writings, and encourage each other to make stronger, more firmly-backed arguments without having years and years of higher education.
Thank you for the work you’ve been doing, and I hope this may be able to prompt a conversation here about how, even within our own antiracist communities, we still have work to do on our own internalizations of the values inherent to systems of racism and oppression.
Sincerely,
S. Quinn
I recently found out the Dallas Sheriff Department was investigation some of its officers for allegedly falisfying fedral grant overtime paper work. Ok, I know what your thinking. They should be investigated and I agree. But the I have a concern when the only deputies being investigated are all BLACK. I have a concern when a white deputy was given the opportunity to explain his inconsistencies and questionable entrees on his GRANT paper work. But the BLACK Deputies wasn’t given that option. Its a concern to me when a Assistant Chief in the depart makes a statement ” Im going to make and example out of guys about this Grant”. Its a concern when the Sheriff (Lupe Valdez) gets on a talk radio and makes a blank statement ” I’m almost postive we are going to fire some over this”. I’m not saying these guys are innocent or guilty. But I do know your command staff should not being making statements like that during a on going investigation. I feel these guys have been found guilty before all the evidence is in. I’m not playing the race card but if your dealt the hand play it…..
Sometimes it seems that antisemitism is studied to death — at least common wisdom says so. But contemporary antisemitism isn’t well studied. Particularly, the study of contemporary antisemitism, such as it is, is almost completely disconnected from the study of racism generally. And the discussion of contemporary antisemitism is almost completely absent from racism blogs and such.
I’d like to offer two recent posts.
http://volokh.com/2012/01/13/israel-firster/
http://www.tabletmag.com/arts-and-culture/books/88397/framed-2/
In the first, David Bernstein straightforwardly traces the use of the term “Israel-Firster,” which has been part of a controversy occupying the Jewish, anti-Israel, and other presses lately. The term originates from neo-Nazis – who used it to describe American Jews as disloyal, a standard antisemitic trope – and hadn’t been used in mainstream media until recently. However, today, it’s use is fairly widespread in news media and think tanks.
In the second, Adam Kirsch describes the growth in antisemitic discourse in recent years, concluding “Now we live in a world where it is possible to say in leading publications, without fear of censure, that Jews buy and pay for the U.S. Congress and American troops are sent to die in Israel’s wars.” Being a literary critic, his article is more literary-criticky than Bernstein’s, but also well worth reading.
On the one hand, the growth itself is worth exploring. At the same time, the fact of where it has grown (not in entertainment, where more people might notice) and why it grows there, is worth exploring. As well as why certain sections we might expect to respond aren’t doing so.
Disability & the African Diaspora.
Who is Mark Regnerus? Is this study going to be published in a peer-reviewed journal? It seems blatantly flawed.
I thought maybe it’d be about the impact of social stigma. It’s not.
This part of the article you cite says it all: The study was funded by two conservative-leaning foundations, Witherspoon Institute and the Bradley Foundation, though the funders had no control over the study design, interpretation or conclusions, Regnerus wrote.”
Bradley is more than conservative, but a far-right foundation….. and Judith Stacey is a leading sociologist of the family, too. Her assessment of the method seems very much on target….
Got it. Thanks.