systemic racism
By any fair assessment, the United States has come a long way over the last century and a half in overcoming its original sins of slavery and institutionalized racism. A century and a half ago – the span of just two lifetimes – millions of Black Americans were held in bondage by force of law and treated as chattel property because of their skin color.
...When former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd by kneeling on his neck in 2020, the world witnessed the most racist elements of the U.S. criminal legal system on broad display. The uprisings that followed Floyd’s death articulated a vision for transforming public safety practices and investments.
...“Why do you pick on Republicans so much? Don’t you know it was the Democrats who were the authors of Jim Crow?” That's one the gripes frequently voiced by my conservative correspondents these days when I write about race and racism – especially when it comes to barbs directed at GOP leaders over racially-charged policy decisions like making it harder to vote, punishing protesters, or denying access to healthcare.
...If culturally responsive teaching is promulgated in North Carolina's public schools, students will learn that math is racist. Students who are Black, LGBTQ or of minority ethnic backgrounds will be taught that teachers are bigots. And educators will be allowed to engage in "age-inappropriate promotion" of homosexuality.
...Conservatives warn of a conspiracy to indoctrinate schoolchildren, but critics dismiss claims as cynical political theater A well-orchestrated and growing movement to ban Critical Race Theory from America’s classrooms has taken root in North Carolina, even though many educators say the concept is not taught in public schools.
...The late historian John Henrik Clarke explained the dominant subculture’s preoccupation with manipulating history. Europeans “began manipulating history in the 15th century to justify the slave trade,” said Clarke, a pioneer in Pan-African studies, during an interview with Tony Brown on Brown’s eponymous show in the 1970s. Modern racism incubated during this period, Clarke said.
...WASHINGTON — When U.S. Rep. Cori Bush of Missouri was pregnant with her first child, Zion, she saw a sign in her doctor’s office encouraging her to speak up about anything unusual she was feeling. She did so, telling her physician that she was having severe pains, but her concerns were swiftly dismissed. The doctor told Bush, who is African American, that she was fine and sent her home — and one week later, Bush went into early labor.
...Decades after the enactment of civil rights laws, people of color remain largely excluded from the county's political power structure To go to Alamance County is to step back in time, to the days of the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. More than a half-century later, law enforcement officers pepper-sprayed and arrested anti-racist protesters.
...Report, statistics document a significant diversity problem, but questions persist as to whether there is a genuine commitment to address it A report on racial equity in the UNC System exposes the depth of the diversity problem in leadership at most of the state’s universities. For many Black students, faculty and staff the problem is not news. But it is, they say, at the heart of many of the system’s problems.
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