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This is the time of giving. So you have to figure out what non profits to give to. You all know that there has been an uptick in reported hate crimes in recent years. Also issues of gender oppression are rampant. Institutions and organizatiins need to go deeper than diversity trainings to become anti oppressive. Since 1995 Roots Of Justics has been relentless in our focus on systemic and instirutional change along with the ideological change that diversity trainings offer. We need your support on this giving Tuesday so that we may continue playing our part in the struggle. Thank You in advance.
(In response to the disruption of a Bernie Sanders campaign rally by Black Lives Matter activists in Seattle this week.) A phrase I dislike: ‘giving voice to the voiceless.’ I don’t like this because no one is voiceless. Everyone has a voice. When students write that phrase in their papers, I flag it, and comment ‘everyone has a voice’. It may be very quiet, it may speak in a language that you don’t understand, it may stammer and stutter and use words in a way that the hearer is not used to, but the voice is there. And, let’s be real: the ‘voiceless’ are people who are not listened to, not seen, people who are ignored, discounted and pushed away.
by Conrad Moore, ROJ Trainer Ignorance is bliss. White people can decide if and when they want to enter the discussion about systemic racism, or not. We need to go much farther than just conversations about race. It is time to get to the hard work of dismantling institutional racism. The YWCA’s Race Against Racism is merely a first step. The most recent national manifestations are around police misconduct — highlighting the ways they behave toward people of color when they think no one is watching. I am really tired of even trying to keep up with what seems to be a daily installment in the news about some unarmed African American, or Latin American man or woman being beaten or killed by police.
Last week, PBS premiered a new documentary on racism as part of the Independent Lens program. The one-hour film, American Denial, uses the 1944 investigation of Swedish intellectual Gunnar Myrdal into “America’s race problem” as a way to highlight the disconnection between the stated values of US society (it’s citizens as well as its founding documents) and the lived reality of people of color. It provides a succinct, non-jargon-y entry into some key points of antiracist analysis, including internalized inferiority and superiority. It is available to view in full at the above link until May 24, 2015.
The other week I was visiting family in the St. Louis area and drove by a billboard showing two hands, one white and one black, making a heart. The only words were “Hands Together.” I don’t know what group created the billboard, but it seems pretty clearly in response to “Hands up, don’t shoot,” a prominent slogan in the anti-police-brutality movement that has grown since the shooting of Michael Brown. “The kingdom of God for which the true prophets are now in the streets crying out, demanding, will upend our white world no matter how much we believe ourselves to be allies. Perhaps we can participate in that coming kingdom, but we do so in a confessional posture…not a prophetic stance.”
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