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Showing posts with label racism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label racism. Show all posts
Thursday, July 6, 2023
Author Discusses "The Lynching of Matthew Williams & the Politics of Racism in the Free State"
Saturday, February 25, 2023
Don't forget this story from last year
Md. Attorney General Frosh Overrules 22 Racist Opinions of Predecessors
The 22 rulings, previously rendered unconstitutional by courts, had enabled state agencies to uphold segregation, discriminate against people of color, and deny marriage licenses based on race. While Frosh’s office noted the opinions are not legal, formally overruling them "helps Maryland atone for generations of racist policies." Read his new opinion here.
“The laws were abhorrent and ultimately held to be unconstitutional,” Frosh (D) commented. “We hope that our opinion today will help remove the stain of those earlier, harmful and erroneous works. We will continue to fight to stamp out racism and hate in all of our work for Maryland.”
He started the effort to review these old legal opinions after Virginia’s outgoing attorney general, Democrat Mark Herring, in 2022 overturned 58 legal opinions upholding racial discrimination issued by past attorney generals. Maryland's Office looked at opinions as old as 1916, the first year they were compiled in published volume. “As much as we might prefer otherwise, our research showed that the Office of the Maryland Attorney General was sometimes complicit in the State’s history of racial discrimination,” Frosh wrote.
Some examples of the overruled opinions are: (1) After the U.S. Supreme Court ruled schools could not be segregated by race under the “separate but equal” doctrine, one argued that Maryland could separate Black and White children in trouble with the law and assigned by courts to remedial boarding schools known as “training schools;” and (2) In 1928, Maryland’s attorney general opined a clerk should deny a marriage license to a White man and a woman whose paternal grandparents were Black.
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Saturday, January 7, 2023
Book Review
The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together
by Heather McGhee
One World, 2021
448 pages. Hardcover, $28.00
This book is by the former president of the progressive think tank Demos, and current chair of the board of Color of Change, a nationwide online racial justice organization. Read a February 17, 202 NPR interview with the author. McGhee examines both the macro and micro sides of inequality and who is damaged by racism and possible ways to lessen the problems. In addition to the most current statistics and information about racism and its damages, the book has a series of interviews all over the U.S. with those people affected by and those denying racism and its consequences.
Her book has been popular and widely praised because it challenges the actions and opinions of both advocates for dismantling racism as well as those denying problems exist. It was a New York Times bestseller, was longlisted for the National Book Award; won the Porchlight Business Book award; cited as one of the best books of the years by Time, the Washington Post, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Ms. magazine, BookRiot, Library Journal, etc. Ibram X. Kendi, #1 New York Times bestselling author of How to Be an Antiracist, said “This is the book I’ve been waiting for.”
“[McGhee] takes readers on an intimate odyssey across our country’s racial divide to explore why some believe that progress for some comes at the expense of others. Along the way, McGhee speaks with white people who confide in her about losing jobs, homes, and hope, and considers white supremacy’s collateral victims. Ultimately, McGhee—a Black woman viewing multiracial America with startling empathy—finds proof of what she terms the Solidarity Dividend: the momentous benefits that derive when people come together across race. A powerful, singular, and prescriptive blend of the macro and the intimate.” O: The Oprah Magazine.
Thursday, December 29, 2022
Book Review
The Third Reconstruction: America's Struggle for Racial Justice in the Twenty-First Century
by Peniel E. Joseph. Basic Books, 2022. 288 pages, hardcover. $27.00
In this book, distinguished race and democracy historian Peniel E. Joseph (professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs and the History Department, College of Liberal Arts, University of Texas at Austin) argues that that the period since 2008 has constituted the country's Third Reconstruction.
Joseph previously has published several books on the Black Power movement and a Stokely Carmichael biography. His Dark Days, Bright Nights: From Black Power to Barack Obama (2010) is utilized in 1,120 libraries according to WorldCat and Wikapedia.
Joseph, in The Third Reconstruction, thus gives a new interpretation of recent history. He submits that the racial conflicts in 2020 "marked the climax of a Third Reconstruction: a new struggle for citizenship and dignity for Black Americans, just as momentous as the movements that arose after the Civil War and during the civil rights era." The book traces this Third Reconstruction from the election of Barack Obama to the rise of Black Lives Matter to the 2021 failed assault on the Capitol.
Tuesday, December 27, 2022
Book Review
Under the Skin: The Hidden Toll of Racism on American Lives and on the Health of Our Nation
by Linda Villarosa. Doubleday: 2022. 288 pages. $30.00, hardcover.
From an award-winning writer at the New York Times Magazine and a contributor to the newspaper's 1619 Project*, this book discusses the extent of racial health disparities in the U.S., showing the toll racism takes on individuals and the nation's health. It is a New York Times Top 10 Book of the Year. Oprah Daily calls it: "A stunning exposé of why Black people in our society 'live sicker and die quicker'—an eye-opening game changer."
Linda Villarosa's 2018 New York Times Magazine article on the poor maternal and infant mortality of black mothers and babies was important because it showed that a Black woman with a college education is as likely to die or nearly die in childbirth as a white woman with an eighth grade education. Many studies had previously linked racial discrimination and Black Americans' health, but this one revealed the extent of the problem.
This book examines the forces in the American health-care system and in society that cause Black people to “live sicker and die quicker” compared to whites. For example, many of today's medical texts and instruments still assume that Black bodies are basically different from white bodies.
This book personalizes and adds to the many studies that have documented that there is worse medical treatment and outcomes for Black patients. Because of housing discrimination and income, Blacks live in dirtier, more polluted communities - and contribute to the problems that need solution.
* The 1619 Project is "an ongoing initiative from the New York Times Magazine that began in August 2019, the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. It aims to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative."
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