Blog #33: Racism, Real Estate, and Rats
Our president once again stirred up racial animus with a tweet, criticizing Rep. Elijah Cummings and saying that his congressional district “is a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess.” Baltimore’s CBS affiliate swiftly pointed out that a company owned by a top presidential advisor, the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, owns and operates properties in the […]
Blog #32: The Battle for the Ballot: The Voting Rights Act
Racism has affected the battle for the ballot in the United States ever since 1870 when the 15th Amendment supposedly guaranteed the right to vote, regardless of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Almost immediately white supremacists severely restricted that right through legal impediments, police repression, and KKK terrorism. It took enduring the hostility […]
Blog #31: Great-Grand Paternalist Racism
In blog #30, I connected our current president with the racism of our history, including the ten presidents that owned human beings. One reader felt I was getting a little “strident,” defined as “loud and harsh; grating.” “Strident” might be an appropriate reaction to 400 years of white supremacy, but my self-righteousness was evident in […]
400 Years Blog #30 – The Racism of Our Presidents
During the investigation of the Central Park Five, Donald Trump manipulated public opinion by appealing to racism. He paid $85,000 for full-page ads in newspapers with the headline, “Bring Back The Death Penalty. Bring Back Our Police!” His vengeful words included, “these muggers and murderers…should be forced to suffer.” Michael Warren, who represented the Central […]
400 Years Blog #29 – When They See Us
While no real harm was done to any woman in the cases of Scottsboro and Emmett Till, in 1989 Trisha Meili was brutally attacked and raped in Central Park. Today at 59 she is still affected by the brain injury the beating caused. When exploring how racism unjustly targeted five teenagers, I also acknowledge the […]
400 Years Blog #28 – Targeting Black Teens in Scottsboro, the Mississippi Delta, and Central Park
Fictional, exaggerated, and misplaced accusations of sexual assault haunt Black men in America. Over a century of racist promotion of the black sexual predator myth has welded together fearful fantasy and terror. This myth is alive today in the anxious glances, assumed criminal guilt, and sensational headlines that sell newspapers. White men like me, not […]
400 Year Blog #27 – What, to Black People, is the 4th of July?
In 1852, Frederick Douglass delivered a speech entitled, “What, to the American slave, is your fourth of July?” It’s worth reading as we prepare for another Independence Day celebration. Douglass said that July 4th revealed to those still enslaved, “the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim.” Douglass continued, “To […]
400 Year Blog #26 – The Weapon of the Black Sexual Predator Myth
Please visit www.400years.today. Few stereotypes have harmed Black men as much as the myth of “the Black sexual predator.” It wasn’t prevalent before the Civil War when stereotypes defended slavery by representing Black people as childlike, foolish, and in desperate need of “benevolent white control.” After emancipation, however, white portrayals of Black men as uninhibited, […]
400 Year Blog #25 – White Supremacists Wage War
[PLEASE, before reading this week’s blog, go to www.400years.today and make a commitment] In July of 1863, Union soldiers who had just survived the bloodiest battle of the Civil War at Gettysburg were given a new assignment. They were sent to New York City to protect African Americans from white workers incensed at being drafted […]
400 Year Blog #23 – Greenwood: The Ugly Paradox of Success
After the Civil War, some Black entrepreneurs overcame Jim Crow laws and white supremacy in their pursuit of “the American Dream.” In 1900, two decades after his Tuskegee Institute began training Black workers, Booker T. Washington founded the National Negro Business League. Washington counseled that, “economic independence is the foundation of political independence…. Land ownership […]
