Here I am, trying to move past my white-bread mindset, in hope of being able to listen with an open mind to the perspectives of people of color. At the same time, I think of Shakespeare’s “To thine own self be true, and thou canst not be false to any man” and I wonder: how […]
When I became determined to free myself of group stereotypes based on ignorance, I first tried a shortcut, reading book with titles like Everything You Need to Know About Latino History, Everything You Need to Know About Asian American History, 100 Things Everyone Should Know about African Americans, or The Arab-American Handbook. As for Native […]
Several years ago, when I sat on the diversity committee of the National Writers Union, we asked anyone attending our caucus to introduce him or herself as either a “person of color,” an LGBT person, a person with a disability — or an ally of one or all of the above. I happily introduced myself […]
Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns – The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration is a great narrative journalism saga, told through the stories of three African Americans — who were among the millions of Southern Blacks who went North (one in 30s, one in 40s, one in 50s) to escape white supremacist threats […]
Liz Petry, author of “At Home Inside: A Daughter’s Tribute to Ann Petry” http://www.upress.state.ms.us/books/1134 and “Can Anything Beat White? A Black Family’s Letters” www.lizpetry.com comments on her blog http://lizr128.wordpress.com/ Barbara Beckwith has done a brave and wonderful thing in writing What Was I Thinking?: Reflecting on Everyday Racism. I’ve long believed that no one in the United […]
People of Color have spoken out against white privilege and racism for two centuries. It’s time for white people to listen and to act In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the […]
Join me in writing about your experiences growing up, with a focus on your awareness (or not) of race, racism, and white privilege.
Howard Zinn − historian, activist, and a member of the National Writers Union and the Boston Chapter for almost 20 years died on January 27, 2010. But his life and writing will inspire grassroots activists for many future generations.
Howard Zinn died Wednesday, January 26, 2010. When I think about why Zinn is so important to me, I think of how he often describes his own experience, his own complicity, his own gradual understanding of “what’s going on” (eg as WWII Air Force bomber, bombing people he couldn’t see, including the first napalm drops […]
Sarah Solomont feels stuck. She blames her house — it drives her crazy. “There’s too much stuff,” she says. “I can’t breathe.”
