Sunday, June 28, 2020
Coach K's Response
Black Lives Matter pic.twitter.com/p14w8PFdhY
— Duke Men’s Basketball (@DukeMBB) June 26, 2020
Friday, June 26, 2020
NASA Headquarters Renamed After Black Female Engineer
Our headquarters building in Washington, D.C., will be named after Mary W. Jackson, the first African-American female engineer at NASA. She started in @NASAaero research and later moved into the personnel field, working to ensure equal opportunity in hiring and promotion. pic.twitter.com/eMandeaMyv
— NASA (@NASA) June 24, 2020
Monday, June 22, 2020
A Fascinating Discovery
From ESPN - (Faye's commentary: It's worth the read. I promise you. Don't cheat and watch the video first. It doesn't do justice to the story).
KC Chiefs RB coach Deland McCullough's jaw-dropping story behind the search for his family
By Sarah Spain
https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/29324031/kc-chiefs-rb-coach-deland-mccullough-jaw-dropping-story-search-family
Buy Black
From Buy Black The Movement -
This is the first “Buy Black” movement that quantifies how Black consumers and allies buy from Black-owned businesses as a collective. Our goal is to hold consumers who pledge to Buy Black accountable, while publicly demonstrating what happens when we follow through on supporting Black-owned businesses publicly. Black-owned businesses are at risk of going extinct with 90% of them not receiving Payment Protection Program Loans and 41% projected to close permanently as a result of COVID-related hardship. Our goal is to activate an army of consumers to support where systems have failed Black entrepreneurs.
Achieving Greatness @ 17 and Just Getting Started
An excerpt from Black Enterprise -
THIS 17-YEAR-OLD RECEIVED 24 COLLEGE OFFERS WHILE CREATING A COMPANY DEDICATED TO STOPPING GUN VIOLENCE
by Dana Givens
The spread of COVID-19, or the novel coronavirus, may have led to the cancellation a lot of major milestones like graduation or prom for young people but the viral outbreak isn’t stopping them from still excelling academically. In the case of 17-year-old RuQuan “Ru” Brown, his mission was always clear—excel in school and get into college. Not only was he able to accomplish both, but he also managed to do it all while running his own company to help stop gun violence.
https://www.blackenterprise.com/high-school-senior-received-24-college-offers-dedicated-to-stopping-gun-violence/
Sunday, June 21, 2020
Protest Photos
From USA Today -
Photos of protests around the world. View gallery about midway down the page.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/06/17/george-floyd-police-reform-hearing-turns-into-debate-over-black-lives-matter/3207310001/
Anti-Racist Teachers
An excerpt from the Atlantic -
What Anti-racist Teachers Do Differently
They view the success of black students as central to the success of their own teaching.
By PIRETTE MCKAMEY
Ask black students who their favorite teacher is, and they will joyfully tell you. Ask them what it is about their favorite teacher, and most will say some version of this: They know how to work with me. So much is in that statement. It means that these students want to work, that they see their teachers as partners in the learning process, and that they know the teacher-student relationship is one in which they both have power. In other words, black students know that they bring intellect to the classroom, and they know when they are seen—and not seen.
As the principal of San Francisco’s Mission High School and an anti-racist educator for more than 30 years, I have witnessed countless black students thrive in classrooms where teachers see them accurately and show that they are happy to have them there. In these classes, students choose to sit in the front of the class, take careful notes, shoot their hands up in discussions, and ask unexpected questions that cause the teacher and other classmates to stop and think. Given the chance, they email, text, and call the teachers who believe in them. In short, these students are everything their families and community members have raised and supported them to be.
https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2020/06/how-be-anti-racist-teacher/613138/
The Token Black Friend
An excerpt from Upworthy -
Reflections from a token black friend
By Ramesh A. Nagarajah
I am regularly the only black kid in the photo. I have mastered the well-timed black joke, fit to induce a guilty "you thought it but couldn't say it" laugh from my white peers. I know all the words to "Mr. Brightside" by the Killers.
I am a token black friend. The black one in the group of white people. This title is not at all a comment on the depth of my relationships; I certainly am blessed to have the friends that I do. But by all definitions of the term, I am in many ways its poster child. And given the many conversations occurring right now around systemic racism, it would feel wrong not to use my position as a respected friend within a multitude of different white communities to contribute to the current dialogue. I believe my story speaks directly to the covert nature of the new breed of racism — its structural side, along with implicit bias — and may prove helpful to many I know who seek a better understanding.
Growing up, I lived in the inner city of Boston, in Roxbury. I attended school in the suburbs through a program called METCO — the longest continuously running voluntary school desegregation program in the country, which began in the late 1960s. My two siblings and I attended school in Weston, Massachusetts, one of the nation's wealthiest towns. The place quickly became our second home, and alongside Boston, I would count it equally as the place I was raised. All three of us did very well by all standards. We had all been co-presidents of the school, my brother and I were both football captains, and all three of us went on to top-end universities.
For those wondering about the structural side of systemic racism, I'd ask you to consider a few questions. First: Why does METCO still exist? Segregation ended more than 60 years ago, yet there is a still a fully functioning integration program in our state. We haven't come very far at all. Many of our schools remain nearly as segregated as they were in the 1960s.
Second: What is the point? Weston improves its diversity. Without us, most of Weston's students would go through all those years seeing possibly three or four local black faces in their schools (and that's the reality for many white people in this country). As for the Boston students, most of whom are black, they receive a much higher-quality education. Property taxes, a structural form of racism meant to allow segregation to endure, have ensured that while schools have grown increasingly better in our suburbs, the inner-city schools continue to struggle with resources, attendance, and graduation rates.
https://www.upworthy.com/reflections-of-a-token-black-friend
Charts of Racial Disparities
From USA Today -
12 charts show how racial disparities persist across wealth, health, education and beyond
When people talk about systemic racism, they mean systemic: impacting institutions, policies and outcomes across all aspects of Black Americans' lives.
By Mabinty Quarshie, N'dea Yancey-Bragg, Anne Godlasky, Jim Sergent, and Veronica Bravo, USA TODAY
https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/2020/06/18/12-charts-racial-disparities-persist-across-wealth-health-and-beyond/3201129001/
Black Daddies
An excerpt from the Washinton Post -
A dad posted joyful photos of black fathers to shatter stereotypes. Then it became a movement.
By Sydney Page
Williams aimed to debunk the misconception of black fatherhood by creating an initiative called The Dad Gang.
He began by posting photos of him and his kids, now ages 15, 4 and 3, on social media. Then he started posting photos of other black fathers he knew.
“It started as an Instagram page, with the goal of focusing exclusively on positive stories, images and videos of active black dads,” Williams said. “I wanted to showcase the reality of black fatherhood and rewrite the narrative.”
When he and some friends called out to black fathers to share their stories, submissions started overflowing.
The account, which now has more than 86,000 followers, features dads doing it all: From braiding hair to dancing, teaching to cooking, The Dad Gang Instagram page shows black fathers collectively smashing the stereotype.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2020/06/19/dad-posted-joyful-photos-black-fathers-shatter-stereotypes-then-it-became-movement/
Reign of Terror
An excerpt from National Geographic -
Remembering ‘Red Summer,’ when white mobs massacred Blacks from Tulsa to D.C.
The U.S. was gripped by a reign of racial terror after World War I, when whites rose up to quash prosperous Black communities.
BY DENEEN L. BROWN
A group of white women beat a group of Black women with sticks and stones as they begged “for mercy,” Hurd wrote. But the white women “laughed and answered the coarse sallies of men as they beat the negresses’ faces and breasts with fists, stones and sticks.”
The East St. Louis Massacre launched a reign of racial terror throughout the U.S. that historians say stretched from 1917 to 1923, when the all-Black town of Rosewood, Florida, was destroyed. During that period, known as the Red Summer, at least 97 lynchings were recorded, thousands of Black people were killed, and thousands of Black-owned homes and businesses were burned to the ground. Fire and fury fueled massacres in at least 26 cities, including Washington, D.C.; Chicago, Illinois; Omaha, Nebraska; Elaine, Arkansas; Charleston, South Carolina; Columbia, Tennessee; Houston, Texas; and Tulsa, Oklahoma.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/2020/06/remembering-red-summer-white-mobs-massacred-blacks-tulsa-dc/#close
Thursday, June 18, 2020
Powerful Reflections
Please take the time to read this in its entirety. It's too powerful to cherry-pick an excerpt.
Reflections on the Color of My Skin
By Neil deGrasse Tyson
https://www.haydenplanetarium.org/tyson/commentary/2020-06-03-reflections-on-color-of-my-skin.php
Tuesday, June 16, 2020
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