Combating Racism – Have Uncomfortable Conversations

A recent rationale for not inviting a Black man to join a group of white women to discuss racism was: “Black people shouldn’t have to do the work of educating whites about racism.” The comment took me back to an early June article in The Washington Post entitled “I’m your Black friend, but I won’t educate you…

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Combating Racism – Stamp Out Microaggressions

The biases I wrote about last week (here), can lead to microaggressions. Racial microaggressions are brief and commonplace verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative slights and insults toward people of color. They have also been defined as “acts of disregard that stem from unconscious attitudes of…

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Combating Racism – Awareness of Bias

Explicit Biases Explicit biases are those conscious attitudes and beliefs we have about a person, a group, or a situation. We are aware of these biases. An example of an explicit bias would be, “I hate Brussels sprouts.” (I don’t actually but I’m using that as an example) You can provide justifications for why you hate them, you…

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Combating Racism – Understanding History Part 2

Last week I shared the ways that Jim Crow laws and discriminatory federal legislation created today’s systemic racism. Now I share some of the Supreme Court decisions and landmark legislation that ended Jim Crow laws and tried to eradicate, although unsuccessfully, the systemic racism created by our earlier history. THE ENDS OF JIM CROW In the…

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Combating Racism – Understanding History

To combat racism, it is important to acknowledge our history and understand the ways it impacts our current realities. Systemic Racism (also called “institutional racism” and “structural racism”) refers to systems and structures that have procedures or processes that disadvantage certain groups, in this case Black Americans. Systemic racism began with the colonization of this…

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