racial bias

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When the oppressed turn into oppressors: Parenting & internalised racism

Article by Guilaine Kinouani

 

Excerpts selected by Glenn Robinson

The privilege of being lighter skinned

I am a lighter skinned Black woman. I am light enough to benefit from shadism but dark enough to still be accepted as Black. A uniquely privileged position. Throughout my upbringing I have received messages in my environment that this made me more desirable, more worthy, and/or more significant than my darker skinned counterparts. These messages were both covert and overt and articulated in the home and outside the home, at school, in the media etc… Pretty much everywhere.  There is no doubt that I was, at times, spoken to in kinder voices or treated with more patience than my darker skinned peers or sisters by both people of colour and by White people, all things being equal.  In time, I have learnt that my femininity and womanhood would be more easily accepted.

 

Parenting and internalised racism

 

…in our efforts to compensate for racism, we socialise children into injustice, compliance and complicity and instil a sense of inferiority in them. In doing so we may limit children’s scope to be themselves. We may reduce our capacity to respond to them with compassion and kindness. We may attend to stereotypes of what our children could be or could be seen as, rather than attending to them as unique persons. In a nutshell, we may contribute to racism’s self-fulfilling prophecies, perpetuate racial inequalities and more worryingly, may increase their risk of psychological  distress.
The perpetuation of oppression is everyone’s business

 

  • Internalising racism is adaptive. It is no pathology.
  • The construction of reality is controlled by the dominant group and circulated throughout society
  • those who are oppressed come to internalise the dominant group’s interests as their own
  • the interests of the oppressors are presented as actually reflecting everyone’s best interests…
  • the construction of a superior class is dependent upon the existence of an inferior one.
  • double bind: Be like us to be human. Trying to be like us is evidence that you are not human.
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Sourced through Scoop.it from: racereflections.co.uk

Many pearls of wisdom in this article!

 

Note: Parents of all colors can have internalized racism and bias.

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Stop racist executions!

The Supreme Court has backed the use of an execution drug used in U.S. prisons over the objection of death row inmates. By a vote of 5-4, the court’s five right-wing justices on June 29 gave the stamp of approval to death-penalty states to utilize midazolam during executions. Their ruling in Glossip v. Gross endorses painful deaths and has been widely denounced by progressive forces everywhere.

Four Oklahoma death row prisoners had brought the lawsuit seeking to stop the use of midazolam. One inmate has since been executed. While the drug is supposed to decrease pain during executions, the prisoners say that it does not — and cited three excruciating executions in 2014 that used the drug. Plaintiffs claimed the state’s three-drug protocol violates the Eighth Amendment’s ban on “cruel and unusual punishment.” Absurdly, the high court also ruled that the prisoners had to take responsibility to find an available alternative to this drug.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote the main dissent, joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan. In the Glossip v. Gross section of the Supreme Court’s blog, Sotomayor stingingly criticizes the ridiculous “available-alternative requirement.” “Petitioners contend that Oklahoma’s current protocol is a barbarous method of punishment — the chemical equivalent of being burned alive. But under the court’s new rule, it would not matter whether the state intended to use midazolam, or instead have petitioners drawn and quartered, slowly tortured to death or actually burned at the stake.”

 

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Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.workers.org

A couple messages from the article:

 

19 states plus Washington, D.C., have abolished the death penalty.

 

What kind of government continues to kill prisoners and tortures them in the process?

 

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Film “Angola 3”, 3 Black Men Spend Decades in Solitary Confinement

Robert King with Philippe Diaz at Cinema Libre Studio in February 2015
Los Angeles, CA (BlackNews.com) — Woodfox is the last imprisoned member of the Angola 3 – three African-American men held for decades in solitary confinement, two of whom were framed for the 1972 killing of a prison guard at Louisianas State Penitentiary at Angola. Woodfox, along with Robert King (released in 2001) and Herman Wallace (who died from terminal cancer in 2013, three days after he was released from prison) have all become a cause celebre for the gross injustices committed to them by the Louisiana penal system and the blatant disregard for black lives. Kings life story is the foundation for an independent feature film about the three men and their decades-long battle against institutionalized racial injustice and is now in pre-production.
Cinema Libre Studios Philippe Diaz has collaborated with Robert King on a feature length script Angola, 1, 2 and 3, which provides an unvarnished look at the three black mens experiences in prison and how, as young black men in the south in the 50s and 60s, they were consistently railroaded by the penal and justice systems. They were further persecuted for their efforts to end systemic rape, cavity searches, segregation and corruption in Angola, as well as for being members of the Black Panther Party. Each man has spent decades in solitary confinement, about which the UN has declared, Four decades in solitary confinement can only be described as torture.The film is on track to go into production in Fall 2015 and shares Kings perspective on the manipulation of evidence by the justice system, the fabrication of false testimonies, and the mental and emotional challenges of solitary confinement.

King spent 29 years in solitary confinement at Angola, accused in the murder of another convict, although all witnesses testified that he had nothing to do with it. King struggled for decades to prove his innocence but was forced to plead conspiracy to murder in order to be released even after his conviction had been overturned.
Released in 2001 at the age of 59, King has worked ceaselessly to build international support for the remaining two members of the Angola 3. He has spoken before the parliaments of the Netherlands, France, Portugal, Indonesia, Brazil and Britain about his fellow prisoners and about solitary confinement, which has been likened to torture in the US. He was invited by the African National Congress to South Africa where he met with Desmond Tutu.
Amnesty International added the Angola 3 to their watch list of “political prisoners”/”prisoners of conscience.” In July 2013, Amnesty International called for the release of 71-year-old Herman Wallace, who had advanced liver cancer. Although he was released October 1, 2013, he was re-indicted on October 3, 2013, and died the next day before he could be re-arrested. With regards to Woodfox, Amnesty International has called for Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell to “stop pursuing a campaign of vengeance by trying to re-indict a man who has already spent more than four decades in cruel confinement, after a legal process tainted with flaws.”
The Angola 3 members have been the subject of three documentary films, 3 Black Panthers and the Last Slave Plantation (2006), In the Land of the Free (2010), and Hermans House (2013) as well as a music video and numerous public interest pieces.
Philippe Diaz, founder of Cinema Libre Studio, a production/distribution company known for controversial social impact cinema, will produce the film. We cheered when we heard the news of Alberts possible release. But seeing how the Louisiana justice system has been allowed to deny justice to this man, and is still trying to do so, it may take months or years for Albert to be freed. In the last 20 years, the state has become the worlds number one prison capital, with a for-profit system that incarcerates people at 5 times the rate of Iran and 13 times the rate of China. We feel its essential to make this film now so that social pressure increases to aid Alberts release and so that it never happens again.
More about the Campaign to Free the Angola 3 (official website) can be found here: www.angola3.org/category/albert-woodfox/
More about the film: www.facebook.com/angola3thefilm

Sourced through Scoop.it from: socialaction2014.wordpress.com

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Muslim chaplain claims discrimination on United flight

(CNN) A simple request for an unopened can of Diet Coke on a United Airlines flight left Tahera Ahmad in tears.

A Muslim chaplain and director of interfaith engagement at Northwestern University, Ahmad, 31, was traveling Friday from Chicago to Washington for a conference promoting dialogue between Israeli and Palestinian youth. She was wearing a headscarf, or hijab.

For hygienic reasons, she asked for an unopened can of soda, she said. The flight attendant told her that she could not give her one but then handed an unopened can of beer to a man seated nearby. Ahmad questioned the flight attendant.

“We are unauthorized to give unopened cans to people because they may use it as a weapon on the plane,” she recalled the flight attendant telling her.

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Source: www.cnn.com

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San Francisco arrests under review after officers’ slur-filled texts revealed

At least 3,000 arrests are under review in San Francisco in a bias scandal about how police officers allegedly wrote racist and homophobic text messages.

Source: www.cnn.com

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How To Fight Racial Bias When It’s Silent And Subtle [AUDIO]

In the popular imagination and in conventional discourse — especially in the context of highly charged news events such as the shooting of Trayvon Martin — prejudice is all about hatred and animosity.

Scientists agree there’s little doubt that hate-filled racism is real, but a growing body of social science research suggests that racial disparities and other biased outcomes in the criminal justice system, in medicine and in professional settings can be explained by unconscious attitudes and stereotypes.

Subtle biases are linked to police cadets being more likely to shoot unarmed black men than they are unarmed white men. (Some academics have also linked the research into unconscious bias to the Trayvon Martin case.)

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Source: www.npr.org

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Study Reveals Police Are 10 Times More Likely To Shoot African Americans

 

It’s official: African American residents are 10 times more likely than Caucasians to be shot by police. At least that’s what one study found for residents of Chicago.

In an analysis of recent data from the City of Chicago Independent Police Review Authority, “In black and Latino, lower-income neighborhoods you will see police officers who are instructed to stop and frisk and aggressively search every day,” civil rights attorney Craig Futterman told the Chicago Reporter, which first crunched the data.

 

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Source: countercurrentnews.com

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The Anniversary of the George Zimmerman Trial

 

This coming Tuesday will be a year since several hundred potential jurors appeared for jury selection for the 2nd degree murder trial of George Zimmerman.  The process continued to actual selection and trial.  On July 13, 2013, 6 women acquitted Zimmerman for killing unarmed 17-year old Trayvon Martin.

 
See on blackbutterfly7.wordpress.com

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Holder: DOJ To Examine Racial Bias Data In Criminal Justice System

On Monday, Attorney General Eric Holder (pictured) announced tthe Justice Department’s aims in collecting data on stops and arrests in order to combat racial bias in the criminal justice system. In…

 

Community Village‘s insight:

 

“…Department wants to peel back the layers of the data to see if there is a trend that suggests bias.”

 

There is bias, and racism too.

 

Michelle Alexander already figured that out and documented it for you.

See on newsone.com