Richmond, Virginia Affiliate Group
Sagal Ahmed, Contributing Writer
The Richard T. Robertson School of Media and Culture kicked off its speaker series Tuesday with a discussion on race, media, and the 2020 election. Five panelists spoke in the event, moderated by VCU associate professor of journalism Aloni Hill and Robb Crocker, a podcaster, digital journalist and doctoral student in VCU’s Media, Art and Text Program.
Panelists were Kym Grinnage, Danita Rountree Green (our own co-CEO), Samantha Willis, Calvin Anthony Duncan and Elliott Robinson.
California became the first state to pass a law establishing a task force to study and make recommendations on reparations for Black Americans.
The landmark legislation calls for the creation of a nine-member commission to "inform Californians about slavery and explore ways the state might provide reparations," according to a statement from Gov. Gavin Newsom's office.
This past summer, white parents across the United States have repeatedly asked the same question: “How should I talk to my white child about race?” In response, parenting magazine writers, bloggers and newspaper columnists have framed article after article as responses to this question. Again and again, social scientists who study families have been bombarded by mainstream media requests to respond to this same query: “What advice do you have for white parents on how they can talk to their white kid about racism in America?”
The National Basketball Association postponed Wednesday's playoff games after the Milwaukee Bucks did not take the floor for a game against the Orlando Magic in an apparent protest over the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Wisconsin.
Knowing how to respond to racist remarks from friends and relatives can be a minefield. On the one hand, you want to call them out for their misinformed bigotry but doing so can lead to an argument or awkwardness, without actually convincing them to change their view.
Adapted from: Goodman, D. (2011). "Promoting Diversity and Social Justice: Educating People from Privileged Groups."
Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski sends a message about fighting for social justice.
Breonna Taylor's death, along with George Floyd and Rayshard Brooks, has intensified the calls for police reform that are at the center of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Taylor's case has also reignited conversations about centering Black women's experiences with the police and sparked the Say Her Name campaign to include Black women in the larger conversation surrounding racial justice in America.
Raphael Bostic, president and CEO of the Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank, says racism is a danger to the health of America's economy.
In a recent opinion piece, Bostic reflected on the recent protests against police brutality that he says are fueled, in part, by economic inequalities that stem from systemic racism.
A pair of Hanover County schools will no longer be named for Confederate leaders, the Hanover School Board decided Tuesday in a split 4-3 vote.
The decision followed years of debate that again boiled over this summer following nationwide protests over racial injustice prompted by the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd. The board did not discuss any possible replacement names.
ASHEVILLE, N.C. – In an extraordinary move, the Asheville City Council has apologized for the North Carolina city's historic role in slavery, discrimination and denial of basic liberties to Black residents and voted to provide reparations to them and their descendants.
The 7-0 vote came the night of July 14.
"Hundreds of years of black blood spilled that basically fills the cup we drink from today," said Councilman Keith Young, one of two African American members of the body and the measure's chief proponent.
"It is simply not enough to remove statutes. Black people in this country are dealing with issues that are systemic in nature," Young said.
Learning about the dangers of systemic racism often leads people to ask: What can I do personally to make a difference?
Layla Saad, an East African, Arab, British, Black, Muslim woman living in Qatar, came up with an impressive answer — a 28-day process that she calls a "personal anti-racism tool" designed to teach those with white privilege how systemic racism works and how they can stop contributing to white supremacy in the world.
Lawmakers in Mississippi voted to remove the Confederate battle emblem from the state flag on Sunday, clearing the way for Republican Gov. Tate Reeves to sign the measure into law.
The state House and Senate both approved legislation to remove the 126-year-old current flag and to form a commission to redesign it.
Over the past weeks, thousands of protesters of different races, ages and backgrounds have taken to the streets of Richmond to protest police brutality.
An often repeated chant is the call to “Defund the police.” That demand has led to a nationwide conversation about the role of policing in communities, and has even drawn the attention of two Richmond City Council members.
If you're white, you may not think of yourself as racist. Maybe you hardly think about race at all. But Robin DiAngelo, the author of White Fragility, says white people need to think about how they fit into racist systems if they want to be anti-racist. She calls for a more nuanced and informed understanding of racism so white people can take accountability for the ways they benefit from these structures:
"The simplistic idea that racism is limited to individual intentional acts committed by unkind people is at the root of virtually all white defensiveness on this topic," writes DiAngelo in White Fragility.
You’ve probably seen this phrase floating around a lot lately: It is not enough to be not racist, we must be antiracist.
It's a term that has been made most prominent by Ibram X. Kendi, an author and the founding director of the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University, and there are a lot of different facets to the concept. By and large, it's about tearing down the racist ideas — and the policies that protect those ideas — that have been actively stymying the growth of Black America throughout the country's history. In Kendi's best-selling book, How to Be an Antiracist, he writes, “When racist ideas resound, denials that those ideas are racist typically follow.”
Part of tearing down those impeding policies, specifically in an economic sense, is actually putting your money where your mouth is. That means instead of getting all of your goods through Amazon and other big-name retailers, you should try to spend your money at Black-owned businesses; preferably local ones.
The death of George Floyd and resulting protests across the U.S. have prompted many leaders to urgently condemn racism within their organizations.
These public statements are a beginning, but to foster truly authentic dialogue and actual change, business leaders first need to turn inward and assess how prepared they are to lead these conversations, said Ashleigh Shelby Rosette, professor at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business.
The movement to defund the police in the United States is gaining unprecedented momentum as protests continue across the globe.
In this discussion, Ruth Wilson Gilmore offers a sweeping and detailed analysis of the relentless expansion and funding of police and prisons, and how locking people in cages has become central to the American project.
Activists across the country are calling for radical reforms to policing in the U.S., including abolishing the police entirely.
Camden, N.J., took its own big step in 2013. The city was in a public safety crisis, with murder rates 18 times the national average and scores of excessive-force complaints, when the mayor and City Council dissolved the existing police department and created a countywide force in its place.
It's easy to sight the obvious racism such as using race-based slurs or threats. But there's a more subtle and insidious form of racist stereotyping that can be hard to pin down.
These stereotypes often come in the form of microaggressions — brief and commonplace verbal, behavioral or environmental indignities, said Beverly Daniel Tatum, a psychologist and former Spelman College president, in a previous interview with CNN. Tatum is also author of the classic books "Can We Talk About Race?" and "Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?"
Workers removed a statue of Philadelphia's controversial former Mayor Frank Rizzo from its place of honor across from City Hall early Wednesday morning, finishing a job that protesters attempted to accomplish during recent demonstrations against police brutality.
In the 1970s, Rizzo famously told Philadelphia voters to "vote white." But on Wednesday, the City of Brotherly Love took down a memorial to a man who exploited its divisions.
The Confederate statue “Appomattox,” which depicts a southern-facing Civil War soldier and has stood in an Alexandria intersection for 131 years, was removed Tuesday morning, a month earlier than planned.
Alexandria Mayor Justin Wilson (D) said the United Daughters of the Confederacy, which owns the statue, opted to remove the memorial a month ahead of schedule because of demonstrations nationwide in which segregation-era statues have been vandalized.
Police officers in Virginia’s capital city are facing disciplinary action after they were filmed using tear gas on a group of peaceful protesters.
The last thing Martin Luther King Jr. ever wanted to do was get arrested.
So on Oct. 19, 1960, when he and dozens of young protesters were arrested in downtown Atlanta for participating in a sit-in demonstration at Rich’s department store, setting off a series of historic events, he was devastated.
A group of Richmond high school students are trying to make a difference for the children who will follow them.
Asia Goode is one of the students who on Wednesday evening called for state lawmakers to help improve school learning conditions.
"We're pushing for equitable funding for schools," Goode said.
Current U.S. politicians are considering paying reparations to black descendants of American slavery at a level they haven’t since the Reconstruction Era. And a Duke professor is at the helm of the discussion.
