There is a certain narrative about racism that White America has long believed in. It would like us to believe it too. According to that narrative, racism is something done by individuals — hateful, evil individuals. Acts of racism are tragic but rare. Slavery and segregation are things of the past, and through peaceful protests
50-year-old Sue Caribou contracts pneumonia once a year, every single year. The illness, she says, emerged as a result of the physical abuse she had faced at a Canadian residential school: “I was thrown into a cold shower every night, sometimes after being raped.” Caribou continued being sexually assaulted and tortured routinely until 1979 when
There were some special arrangements the Black jazz icon Billie Holiday requested every time she performed her 1939 song “Strange Fruit.” It would always be at the very end of her show. The waiters at the club or restaurant would stop all service while she performed the song. All the lights in the room would
It would be an understatement to say that much of the world’s perception of beauty comes from White Europeans. Caucasian colonialism has left in its wake not only a legacy of enslavement, bloodshed, and instability but also a lingering sense of inferiority — an often subtle but constant desperation to be more like the people
What’s missing from most modern discussions of racial injustice is the overarching ideology that has amplified, legitimized, and advanced every facet of systemic racism we see today. A number of key phrases have been foundation to the international conversations surrounding this topic—systemic racism, the cycle of poverty, mass incarceration, racial profiling, police brutality, the military-industrial
After establishing MLK Day, Reagan actually sent an apology to Republican Governor Meldrim Thomas, Jr, who had opposed recognizing MLK’s historical significance. In the letter, Reagan claimed he was celebrating “an image of King, not reality” — perhaps the most explicit admission by White America that it had actively manipulated MLK’s legacy to make him
“Alright” was a song from To Pimp a Butterfly—perhaps its most famous track. It had served as a Black Lives Matter anthem upon its release, during the marches of 2015. The New York Times has described the song as the “unifying soundtrack to BLM protests nationwide”, and numerous commentators including Black American Television (BET) has
She argues that in the fight against Modi’s authoritarianism, India is not only fighting for democracy or fundamental human rights — it is fighting for its soul. It is fighting to protect its writers, its artists, its creators, its visionaries. It is fighting for the minds that face arrest, imprisonment, censorship, and subjugation. Terror
“I was sitting at my desk…the doorbell rang, I went to open the door. Then these people came around the back, they’d obviously been hiding by the side. They grabbed me…I was handcuffed, blindfolded, taken away. Once I got there, I was interrogated, tortured…I was hit, I was bleeding, they threatened me with waterboarding. They
October 13th, 1988. Two men stand poised on opposite ends of the stage, their faces contorted in forced smiles as the din of applause slowly but surely dies down. Beyond the confines of the university auditorium, millions of eyes across the U.S. and the world linger on the image of these two graceful, sharply
“To maintain international peace and security, and to that end…achieve international co-operation in solving international problems, promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all…” For some, these words have become a punchline to a rather cruel joke—a joke impassionedly played out across the last seventy years, tantalizing its captivated audience
