Social Justice

When people of color give voice to the discrimination they experience, they are often silenced by their white colleagues. While the reasons for this are myriad, the authors identify common themes including the invisible labor and “inclusion tax” people of color are subjected to; the use of racism-evasive rhetoric; attempts to limit and define who gets to be an ally to Black academics; and the tendency toward normalize white experiences and exclude other racial groups.

Ta-Nehisi Coates landmark article describes the effects of "two hundred fifty years of slavery, ninety years of Jim Crow, sixty years of separate but equal, and thirty-five years of racist housing policy."

Author Sherry K. Watt introduces the Privileged Identity Exploration (PIE) Model, which identifies eight (8) defense modes associated with behaviors individuals display when engaged in difficult dialogues about social justice issues. Implications for the model and ways it can be used to assist facilitators as they engage participants in discussions about diversity are discussed.

Federal housing policies created after the Depression ensured that African-Americans and other people of color were left out of the new suburban communities — and pushed instead into urban housing projects.

Author and historian Khalil Muhammad deals with the idea of black criminality, which he defines as the process by which “people are assigned the label of criminal, whether they are guilty or not.”

Black and brown people have been protesting for centuries. Savala Trepczynski says it's white people who are responsible for what happens next.

Little comments can have a big impact; Nicole Vassell looks at how microaggressions play a part in the jigsaw of daily racism and the damage they do over a lifetime.

The lynching of African Americans was terrorism, a widely supported campaign to enforce racial subordination and segregation. Lynching in America documents more than 4400 racial terror lynchings in the United States during the period between Reconstruction and World War II.

Tiffany Jewell's recently published anti-racist primer, "This Book Is Anti-Racist: 20 Lessons on How To Wake Up, Take Action, and Do The Work," aims to provide everyone, especially young readers, with ways to combat racism. In this interview, Jewell discusses her book and its message.

Pew Research Center's nationally representative survey of 6,637 adults explores the public’s views about the state of race relations and racial inequality in America. The survey also looks at personal experiences with racial and ethnic discrimination and the role race plays in people’s lives.

White Fragility is a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves. These moves include the outward display of emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and behaviors such as argumentation, silence, and leaving the stress-inducing situation. These behaviors, in turn, function to reinstate white racial equilibrium. This paper explicates the dynamics of White Fragility.

Dr. Robin DiAngelo explains how to engage in the necessary dialogue and self-reflection that can lead to structural change.

Peggy McIntosh unpacks the invisible knapsack of white privilege by listing conditions of daily experience that she once took for granted and identifying some of the daily effects of white privilege in her life.

Ibram X. Kendi provides thoughts on Ahmaud Arbery and race-based fear in America. He contrasts the fear white Americans often have of black Americans with "how terrorizing it is to black males when we are falsely suspected as violent criminals."

For years, racism has been defined by the violence of far-right extremists, but a more insidious kind of prejudice can be found where many least expect it – at the heart of respectable society.

In this article the author examines how the frameworks of color-blind racism have influenced many topics during the pandemic.