In this back to school season, millions of American students are returning to classrooms where the wrong course, lesson, or textbook can lead to deep trouble. Why? Because for the last several years, conservative activists and lawmakers have been waging a crusade against “critical race theory,” or CRT.
Critical race theory is an academic concept acknowledging that racism isn’t simply the result of individual prejudice but is also embedded in our institutions through laws, regulations, and rules.
As school districts have emphasized, it’s a higher education concept rarely taught in K-12 schools. But cynical activists have used CRT as a catch-all term to target a broad range of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives — and seemingly any discussion about race and racism in the classroom.
Since January 2021, 44 states have “introduced bills or taken other steps that would restrict teaching critical race theory or limit how teachers can discuss racism and sexism,” according to Education Weekly. And as of this writing, UCLA has identified 807 anti-CRT “bills, resolutions, executive orders, opinion letters, statements, and other measures” since September 2020.
Critics claim — falsely — that CRT teaches that all white people are oppressors, while Black people are simply oppressed victims. Many opponents claim it teaches white students to “hate their own race,” or to feel guilty about events that happened before they were born.
In reality, CRT gives students of every race the tools to understand how our institutions treat people of different races unequally — and how we can make those systems fairer. That’s learning students of every race would be better off with.
But instead, this barrage of draconian legislation is having a chilling effect on speech in the classroom.
In 2022, Florida passed the “Stop W.O.K.E. Act,” which prohibits teaching that could lead to a student feeling “discomfort” because of their race, sex, or nationality. But the law’s vague language makes it difficult for educators to determine what they can or cannot teach, ultimately restricting classroom instruction. In my home state of Texas, SB3 similarly restricts these classroom discussions.
Running afoul of these laws can get teachers and school administrators in trouble. As a result of this hostile environment, the RAND Corporation found that two-thirds of K-12 school teachers have decided “to limit instruction about political and social issues in the classroom.”
Notably, this self-censorship extends beyond states with such policies: 55 percent of teachers without state or local restrictions on CRT have still decided to limit classroom discussions of race and history.
As a student, I find this distressing.
My high school history classes gave me a much richer understanding of race in our history, especially the discussions we had at the height of the Black Lives Matter protests. And in college, I’ve gotten to learn about racial inequalities in everything from housing and real estate to health care, politics, education, and immigration policy.
As a person of color, I can’t imagine where I’d be without this understanding. Neither white students nor students of color will benefit from laws designed to censor their understanding of history, critical thinking, and open dialogue in the classroom.
The fight against CRT is a fight against the principles of education that encourage us to question, learn, and grow. Rather than shielding students from uncomfortable truths, which they can certainly handle, we should seek to equip them with the knowledge to navigate the world, think critically about our history and institutions, and push for a more inclusive country.
Ian Wright is a Henry A. Wallace Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies and a student at Rice University from Dallas, Texas. This op-ed was distributed by OtherWords.org.
Well, well, well — look who’s waking up and raring to go: Mr. and Ms. Woke!
We so-called “woke” people have been the target of far-right politicos and front groups that are frantically trying to ban us and our ideas from America’s political discourse. In the past few years, such thuggish gubernatorial demagogues as Ron DeSantis have perverted the power of Big Government to attack teachers, librarians, public agencies, and even beer. Beer!
Why? Because such people and organizations make educational efforts to reduce bigotry, hatred, and exclusiveness in our society. “That’s woke,” screech the ultra-rightists, demanding that any talk about racism, sexism, gender discrimination, or other ugly realities in America must be suppressed.
Like the witch hunters of old, today’s pious puritans of ideological conformity have demonized such basic values as diversity and equity, calling them “toxic.” DeSantis outlawed any teaching of them in Florida universities, and then he cut sociology from the core curriculum of the state’s educational system — essentially cutting out “us,” the study of humanity.
If ignorance is bliss, the DeSantis clique must be ecstatic, for they are eliminating crucial lessons in the art of tolerance, community, sharing, collaboration, and getting along together. You can have a society that works for the benefit of all — or a DeSantisWorld, where the few rule, and everyone else is forced to conform to their biases.
But the great majority of Americans are rebelling and saying: “We are woke!”
Even Republicans flatly rejected DeSantis’ presidential campaign that promised to “Floridize” America with anti-woke nonsense. And far from wanting to reverse efforts to increase diversity and inclusiveness, a recent poll found that70 percent of Americans (including half of Republicans) say our country “needs to do more to increase social justice.”
About the author ~ OtherWords columnist Jim Hightower is a radio commentator, writer, and public speaker. This op-ed was distributed by OtherWords.org.
by Jyoti Madhusoodana
In a now-classic series of experiments, researchers teased out the deep-rooted nature of human bias simply by distributing red shirts and blue shirts to groups of 3- to 5-year-olds at a day care center. In one classroom, teachers were asked to divide children into groups based on the color of their shirts. In another, teachers were instructed to overlook the shirt colors. After three weeks, children in both classrooms tended to prefer being with classmates who wore the same color as themselves—no matter what the teachers did.
Photo: Markus Winkler/Pixabay
This preference for people who seem to belong to our own tribe forms early and drives our choices throughout life. There appears to be no avoiding it: We are all biased. Even as we learn to sort shapes and colors and distinguish puppies from kittens, we also learn to categorize people on the basis of traits they seem to share. We might associate women who resemble our nannies, mothers, or grandmothers with nurturing or doing domestic labor. Or following centuries of racism, segregation, and entrenched cultural stereotypes, we might perceive dark-skinned men as more dangerous than others.
The biases we form quickly and early in life are surprisingly immutable. Biases are “sticky,” says Kristin Pauker, a psychology researcher at the University of Hawaii, “because they rely on this very fundamental thing that we all do. We naturally categorize things, and we want to have a positivity associated with the groups we’re in.” These associations are logical shortcuts that help us make quick decisions when navigating the world. But they also form the roots of often illogical attractions and revulsions, like red shirts versus blue shirts.
Our reflexive, implicit biases wreak devastating social harm. When we stereotype individuals based on gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or race, our mental stereotypes begin to drive our behavior and decisions, such as whom to hire, who we perceive as incompetent, delinquent, or worse. Earlier this year, for instance, an appeals court overturned a Black man’s conviction for heroin distribution and the 10-year prison sentence he received in part because the Detroit federal judge who handed down the original verdict admitted, “This guy looks like a criminal to me.”
People who live in racially homogeneous environments may struggle to distinguish faces of a different race from one another.
Correcting for the biases buried in our brains is difficult, but it is also hugely important. Because women are stereotyped as domestic, they are also generally seen as less professional. That attitude has reinforced a decades-long wage gap. Even today, women still earn only 82 cents for every dollar that men earn. Black men are perceived as more violent than white men, and thus are subjected to discriminatory policing and harsher prison sentences, as in the Detroit case. Clinicians’ implicit preferences for cisgender, heterosexual patients cause widespread inequities in health care for LGBTQ+ individuals.
“These biases are operating on huge numbers of people repetitively over time,” says Anthony Greenwald, a social psychologist at the University of Washington. “The effects of implicit biases accumulate to have great impact.”
Greenwald was one of the first researchers to recognize the scope of the problems created by our implicit biases. In the mid-1990s, he created early tests to study and understand implicit association. Along with colleagues Mahzarin Banaji, Brian Nosek, and others, he hoped that shining a light on the issue might quickly identify the tools needed to fix it. Being aware that our distorted thinking was hurting other people should be enough to give pause and force us to do better, they thought.
They were wrong. Although implicit bias training programs help people become aware of their biases, both anecdotal reports and controlled studies
have shown that the programs do little to reduce discriminatory behaviors spurred by those prejudices. “They fail in the most important respect,” Greenwald says. When he, Banaji, and Nosek developed the Implicit Association Test, he took it himself. He was distressed to discover that he automatically associated more positive words with the faces of white people, and more unfavorable words with people who were Black. “I didn't regard myself as a prejudiced person,” Greenwald says. “But I had this association nevertheless.”
His experience is not unusual. The Implicit Association Test (IAT) measures the speed of subjects’ responses as they match descriptors of people (such as Hispanic or gay) to qualities (such as attractiveness, athleticism, or being professional). It’s based on the idea that people react more quickly when they are matching qualities that are already strongly associated in their minds. Implicit bias exists separately from explicit opinion, so someone who honestly believes they don’t have anything against gay people, for instance, may still reveal a bias against them on the test. “A lot of people are surprised by their results,” Greenwald says. “This is very hard for people to come to grips with intuitively.”
People’s beliefs may not matter as much if they can be persuaded not to act on them.
One reason we are so often unaware of our implicit biases is that we begin to form these mental associations even before we can express a thought. Brain-imaging studies have found that six-month-old babies can identify individual monkey faces as well as individual humans. Just a dozen weeks later, nine-month-old babies retain the ability to identify human faces but begin to group all the monkey faces together generically as just “monkey,” losing the ability to spot individual features. Shortly after, babies begin to group human faces by race and ethnicity. Our adult brains echo these early learning patterns. People who live in racially homogeneous environments may struggle to distinguish faces of a different race from one another.
As it became clear how deeply ingrained these biases are—and how they might be unfathomable even to ourselves—researchers began to design new types of strategies to mitigate bias and its impact in society. By 2017, companies in the United States were spending $8 billion annually on diversity training efforts, including those
aimed at reducing unconscious stereotyping, according to management consulting firm McKinsey & Company. These trainings range from online educational videos to workshops lasting a few hours or days in which participants engage in activities such as word-association tests that help identify their internalized biases.
Recent data suggest that these efforts have been failing too. In 2019 researchers evaluatedthe effectiveness of 18 methods that aimed to reduce implicit bias, particularly pro-white and anti-Black bias. Only half the methods proved even temporarily effective, and they shared a common theme: They worked by giving study participants experiences that contradicted stereotypes. Reading a story with an evil white man and a dashing young Black hero, for example, reduced people’s association of Black men with criminality. Most of these strategies had fleeting effects that lasted only hours. The most effective ones reduced bias for only a few days at best.
Even when training reduced bias, it did little to reduce discriminatory outcomes. Beginning in early 2018, the New York City
Police Department began implicit bias training for its 36,000 personnel to reduce racial inequities in policing. When researchers evaluated the project in 2020, they found that most officers were aware of the problems created by implicit bias and were keen to address these harms, but their behaviors contradicted these intentions. Data on arrests, stops, and stop-and-frisk actions showed that officers who had completed the training were still more likely to take these actions against Black and Hispanic people. In fact, the training program hardly had any effect on the numbers.
This and similar studies have “thrown some cold water on just targeting implicit bias as a focus of intervention,” says Calvin Lai, a social psychologist at Washington University in St. Louis. Even if you are successful in changing implicit bias or making people more aware of it, “you can’t easily assume that people will be less discriminatory.”
But researchers are finding reason for hope.
Although the dozens of interventions tested so far have demonstrated limited long-term effects, some still show that people can be made more aware of implicit bias and can be moved to act more equitably, at least temporarily. In 2016, Lai and his colleagues tested eight ways of reducing unconscious bias in studies with college students. One of the interventions they tested involved participants reading a vividly portrayed scenario in which a white person assaulted them and a Black person came to their rescue. The story reinforced the connection between heroism and Black identity.
Other interventions were designed to heighten similar connections. For instance, one offered examples of famous Black individuals, such as Oprah Winfrey, and contrasted them with examples of infamous white people, including Adolf Hitler. Participants’ biases were gauged using the IAT both before and after these interventions. While the experiments tamped down bias temporarily, none of them made a difference just a few days later. “People go into the lab and do an intervention and there’s that immediate effect,” Pauker says.
From such small but significant successes, an insight began to emerge: Perhaps the reason implicit bias is stable is because we inhabit an environment that’s giving us the same messages again and again. Instead of trying to chip away at implicit bias merely by changing our minds, perhaps success depended on changing our environment.
The implicit associations we form—whether about classmates who wear the same color shirt or about people who look like us—are a product of our mental filing cabinets. But a lot of what’s in those filing cabinets is drawn from our culture and environment. Revise the cultural and social inputs, researchers like Kristin Pauker theorize, and you have a much greater likelihood of influencing implicit bias than you do by sending someone to a one-off class or training program.
Babies who start to blur monkey faces together do so because they learn, early on, that distinguishing human faces is more critical than telling other animals apart. Similarly, adults categorize individuals by race, gender, or disability status because these details serve as markers of something we’ve deemed important as a society. “We use certain categories because our environment says those are the ones that we should be paying attention to,” Pauker says.
Just as we are oblivious to many of the biases in our heads, we typically don’t notice the environmental cues that seed those biases. In a 2009 study, Pauker and her colleagues examined the cultural patterns depicted in 11 highly popular TV shows, including Grey’s Anatomy, Scrubs, and CSI Miami. The researchers tracked nonverbal interactions among characters on these shows and found that even when white and Black characters were equal in status and jobs and spoke for about the same amount of time, their nonverbal interactions differed. For instance, on-screen characters were less likely to smile at Black characters, and the latter were more often portrayed as stern or unfriendly.
Thinking of implicit bias as malleable allows us to constantly reframe our judgments about people we meet.
In a series of tests, Pauker and her colleagues found that regular viewers of such shows were more likely to have stronger anti-Black implicit biases on the IAT. But when the researchers asked viewers multiple-choice questions about bias in the video clips they saw, viewers’ responses about whether they’d witnessed pro-Black or pro-white bias were no better than random. They were being influenced by the bias embedded in the show, “but they were not able to explicitly detect it,” Pauker says.
Perhaps the most definitive proof that the outside world shapes our biases emerged from a recent study of attitudes toward homosexuality and race over decades. In 2019 Harvard University experimental psychologist Tessa Charlesworth and her colleagues analyzed the results of 4.4 million IATs taken by people between 2007 and 2016. The researchers found that anti-gay implicit bias had dropped about 33 percent over the years, while negative racial attitudes against people of color declined by about 17 percent.
The data were the first to definitively show that implicit attitudes can change in response to a shifting zeitgeist. The changes in attitudes weren’t due to any class or training program. Rather, they reflected societal changes, including marriage equality laws and protections against racial discrimination. Reducing explicit discrimination altered the implicit
attitudes instilled by cultures and communities—and thus helped people rearrange their mental associations and biases.
Until societal shifts occur, however, researchers are finding alternate ways to reduce the harms caused by implicit bias. People’s beliefs may not matter as much if they can be persuaded not to act on them. According to the new way of thinking, managers wouldn’t just enter training to reduce their bias. Instead, they could be trained to remove implicit bias from hiring decisions by setting clear criteria before they begin the hiring process.
Faced with a stack of resumes that reveal people’s names, ethnicities, or gender, an employer’s brain automatically starts
slotting them based on preconceived notions of who is more professional or worthy of a job. Then bias supersedes logic.
When we implicitly favor someone, we are more likely to regard their strengths as important. Consider, for example, a hiring manager who perceives men as more suited to a role than women. Meeting a male candidate with a low GPA but considerable work experience may lead the manager to think that real-world experience is what really matters. But if the man has a higher GPA and less experience, the manager might instead reason that the latter isn’t important because experience can be gained on the job.
To avoid this all-too-common scenario, employers could define specific criteria necessary for a role, then create a detailed list of
questions needed to evaluate those criteria and use these to create a structured interview. Deciding in advance whether education or work experience matters more can reduce this problem and lead to more equitable decisions. “You essentially sever the link between the bias and the behavior,” explains Benedek Kurdi, a psychologist at the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign. “What you’re saying is the bias can remain, but you deprive it of the opportunity to influence decision making.”
In the long run, reducing the biases and injustices built into our environment is the only surefire path toward taming the harmful implicit biases in our heads. If we see a world with greater equity, our internal attitudes seem to adjust to interpret that as normal. There’s no magical way to make the whole world fair and equitable all at once. But it may be possible to help people envision a better world from the start so that their brains form fewer flawed associations in the first place.
To Pauker, achieving that goal means teaching children to be flexible in their thinking from an early age. Children gravitate toward same-race interactions by about the age of 10. In one study, Pauker and her colleagues found that offering stories to children that nudged them to think about racial bias as flexible made them more likely to explore mixed-race friendships. In another study, Pauker and team found that children who thought about prejudice as fixed had more uncomfortable interactions with friends of other races and eventually avoided them. But those who thought about prejudice as malleable—believing they could change their minds about people of other races—were less likely to avoid friends of other races.
The key, Pauker suggests, is not to rethink rigid mental categories but to encourage mental flexibility. Her approach, which encourages children to consider social categories as fluid constructs, appears to be more effective. The data are preliminary, but they offer a powerful route to change: simply being open to updating the traits we associate with different groups of people.
Thinking of implicit bias as malleable allows us to constantly reframe our judgments about people we meet—evaluating each unique individual for what they are, rather than reducing them to a few preconceived traits we associate with their race, gender, or other social category. Rather than trying to fight against our wariness toward out-groups, reconsidering our mental classifications in this manner allows us to embrace the complexity of human nature and experience, making more of the world feel like our in-group.
Blurring the implicit lines in our minds might be the first step to reducing disparities in the world we make.
This story is part of a series of OpenMind essays, podcasts, and videos supported by a generous grant from the Pulitzer Center's Truth Decay initiative.
By Dedrick Asante-Muhammad & Chuck Collins
This January marks what would have been Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s 95th birthday. Nearly a century after the late civil rights leader’s birth, it’s a good time to reflect on the work still to be done.
Just over 60 years ago, in his famous “I Have A Dream” speech at the 1963 March on Washington, King declared: “We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so we’ve come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.”
Sixty years on, as our report “Still A Dream” highlighted late last year, there’s been some progress. The African American community is experiencing record low unemployment, record highs in income and educational attainment, and has seen a massive decline in income poverty since the 1960s.
Despite all that, the check for racial economic equality is still bouncing. Without intervention, we found it will take centuries for Black wealth to catch up with white wealth in this country.
The 1960s were years of crucial economic progress for African Americans, even as the Black Freedom struggle faced assassinations and government suppression. In 1959, when King was 30, 55 percent of African Americans lived in income poverty. By what would have been his 40th birthday in 1969 (a year after his assassination), that poverty rate had dropped to 32 percent.
Yet this substantial progress still wasn’t enough to bridge the radical and ongoing racial economic divide between Blacks and whites. And since then, progress has slowed.
Library of Congress/Unsplash
Compared to the political and economic progress of the 1960s, the 21st century has been much less fruitful — even as the country saw its first African American president and a national recognition of police brutality through the Black Lives Matter protests. From 2000 to 2021, there was only a 3 percentage point decline in Black poverty (22.5 percent to 19.5 percent).
One modest area of progress: the unemployment rate for African Americans is no longer twice that of whites. Since 2018, Black unemployment has reached record lows of 5 and 6 percent, except during the 18-month recession caused by COVID-19. But as of 2021, Black unemployment was still about 1.8 times that of white unemployment.
The racial wealth divide was created by federal policies and national practices like segregation, discrimination, redlining, mass incarceration, and more. So it will require federal policy and national practices to close the divide.
And just as massive federal investment was necessary to develop the white American middle class, so too is it essential for a massive federal investment to bridge racial economic inequality.
Investing in affordable housing and programs designed to strengthen homeownership for African Americans will be essential. Other important policies include investments like a national baby bond program targeted at African Americans, national health care, and breaking up the dynastic concentration of wealth that’s made our country more unequal for all Americans.
Going 60 years without substantially narrowing the Black-white wealth and income divide is a policy failure. In this election year, policies that can finally bridge the Black-white divide should be at the forefront of our national debate.
Making a dream into a reality is challenging work, but it’s something our country has the resources to attain. The national celebration of Dr. King’s 95th birthday should be a time to rededicate ourselves to this work.
About the authors . . .
Chuck Collins
Dedrick Asante-Muhammad
Dedrick Asante-Muhammad is the chief of Race, Wealth, and Community at the National Community Reinvestment Coalition.
Chuck Collins directs the Program on Inequality and co-edits Inequaity.org at the Institute for Policy Studies. They are co-authors of the report, Still a Dream: Over 500 Years to Black Economic Equality. This op-ed was distributed by OtherWords.org.
by Glenn Mollette, Guest Commentator
Some people try to forgive but they never forget.
The people of Israel will never forget the October 7th massacre by Hamas which barbarically took the lives of over 1400 people. The goal of Israel now is to eliminate Hamas by whatever means it takes.
In the process of Israel now avenging their rage, innocent civilian Palestinians are being killed by Israel’s aggression. Thousands are being killed. What is this doing to the minds of the Palestinians? Palestinians who survive Israel’s aggression will forever have an internal malice and hate toward Israel that will never be forgotten. Most likely many if not all of the Palestinians already hated Israel. If there were any Palestinians who had any love for Israel, they don’t have it any longer.
For years and ages to come there will be Palestinians who will hate Israel more than ever before. How many of these will act out their hate in terroristic ways? Israel will never forget, nor will the Palestinians. This is a lousy way for neighbors to get along with each other. The goal of Israel is to eliminate Hamas. Their goal is not to kill the Palestinians. Unfortunately, thousands of Palestinians are being killed.
Have you ever been to Pearl Harbor? Take the tour out to the USS Arizona where 1171 of our soldiers are buried there in a watery grave. Around Pearl Harbor there are other sunken ships and the remains of buried Americans. Even today it will invoke serious feelings of ill will toward the Japanese and what they did to us on December 7, 1941. We will never forget. Can you imagine how the Japanese feel about Americans? We obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki killing as many as 226,000 innocent civilians with our two atomic bombs on August 6 and 9, 1945. Do you think they will ever forget? Never. Our country and Japan have made great strides in international relations. However, nobody has forgotten what took place on both sides of the Pacific.
I often see shirt tags that say made in Vietnam. I have a hard time using anything made in Vietnam because of the thousands of American lives that were wasted in that country. It’s in the past but how do ever forget such a senseless war?
How do they people of Afghanistan and Iraq feel about America? They hate us Regardless of any good that we might have done they see us as a bunch of murderous thugs who don’t mind our own business.
Ukraine will forever hate Russia. Do you think Jewish people have feelings of love for the Germans and what happened to them during the holocaust?
We live in a world of an eye for eye and a tooth for a tooth and it isn’t changing or going anywhere. You can talk about forgiveness and loving your enemies until you are blue in the face but the world doesn’t operate this way. It’s wonderful if you have truly forgiven someone who has wronged or hurt you. When you allow that deep internal malice to dominate your mind it’s only eroding your well-being and life. Hate doesn’t hurt the other person unless you allow that hate to manifest itself in a violent way toward that person.
Hamas has demonstrated their hatred for Jewish people.
The Palestinians will hate Israel for ages to come. Israel cannot coexist with unrelenting evil whose mission is to torture and kill Jewish people. The result is an ongoing mess that will never go away.
This is not working for our planet. A world that is able to take care of billions of people is going to be destroyed. Our only hope is to put away our bombs and live in peace and love. As long as there is evil in this world then unfortunately for us all, it’s not going to happen.
He is the author of 13 books including UUncommom Sense, the Spiritual Chocolate series, Grandpa's Store, Minister's Guidebook insights from a fellow minister. His column is published weekly in over 600 publications in all 50 states. The views expressed are those of the author and are not necessarily representative of any other group or organization. We welcome comments and views from our readers. Submit your letters to the editor or commentary on a current event 24/7 to editor@oursentinel.com.
Imagine you sit on the admissions committee of a major medical school where only one slot remains available for the 2023 entering class. You must select between two candidates: one Latino, one white—both qualified.
Liam, the white student, is the son of an affluent lawyer. He scored 507 out of a possible 528 points on the MCAT; his GPA is 3.76. The son of a poor immigrant from Mexico, Jesse has the same MCAT score and GPA. Liam graduated from UCLA in four years with a pre-med major and a minor in business. Jesse graduated from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in five and a half years with a biology major.
Whom do you choose? Do you expand the opportunities for minorities to compensate for previous discrimination?
“Affirmative action is reverse discrimination,” one person opines. “We should select the most qualified person. We should not discriminate against an applicant simply because he’s affluent.”
“I’m disgusted with these social programs that liberals are shoving down our throats,“ remarks another. “The government has no right fiddling in the business of private schools. Liam graduated from one of the nation’s most prestigious universities while Jesse matriculated through an obscure school and took much longer to graduate. ”
“But Jesse has had fewer opportunities than Liam,” another remarks. “Given the same entitlements, he would have scored higher than Liam. I’m sure Jesse took longer to graduate simply because he had to work to help support his family.”
“Since there are fewer minorities in the healthcare field,” someone states, “We must give Jesse this opportunity.”
“It bothered me to hear stereotypes about minorities.”
Someone who had yet to speak finally chimes in, “Let’s use a mile footrace as example: Two runners, one white, one black. The race begins. The white runner dashes out for an early lead. The black runner, as it turns out, has a 20-lb. iron ball attached to a chain around his ankle. He can barely move; yet he perseveres. Someone yells, “That’s not fair!”
“The official unlocks the ball and chain but even so the black runner remains far behind. It’s still not fair even though both runners now are unfettered. Equal treatment is not enough. We must compensate for previous inequality.”
The argument continues, the dialogue full of passion, adamancy and outrage. No consensus emerges.
The “committee members” are actually SMU students role-taking in my “Minority-Dominant Relations” class offered through the Sociology Department and Ethnic Studies program. We examine ethnic groups with unequal power in the US. In order to delve into social inequality, students scrutinize their own assumptions, stereotypes and prejudices.
“It was a tense and painful discussion,” says a Black female. “Some of us carried on our debate after class and into the next day at the student center. Some began to recognize attitudes in themselves that they didn’t know existed. “
“It bothered me to hear stereotypes about minorities,” states a Latino on the football team. “But that’s part of the learning process in this course.”
As students debate, I remain in the background, walking quietly among discussion groups, watching, listening, taking mental notes. I have engaged in such observation all my life, as the son a Mexican American mother whose family is from San Miguel de Alto, Jalisco and a father who had immigrated to the US from Sicily and had never graduated high school.
Democracy is more than majority rule— more than a mama puma, her cub and a white-tailed deer voting on what to have for lunch. It is also the protection of minority rights to prevent dominion of the minority by the majority. Diversity ensures respect for distinctive identities and protects those at greatest risk of being displaced and alienated internally within the US. On September 17, 1787, the Constitution's framers codified minority rights by structuring equality between states in the Senate (and representation of state populations in the House).
Apparently, SCOTUS never seemed to mind that affirmative action for white males has traditionally prevailed in society’s economic, political, military, educational, law enforcement and criminal justice institutions. Legacy admissions continue affirmative action for white males. Large, pervasive and disproportionately high rates of student loan debts perpetuate social stratification.
Diversity is not a zero-sum game. Society suffers when diverse elements are excluded from decision-making processes and leadership positions.
Lack of diversity harms both individual victims of exclusion and society at large. The harm to individuals, especially children, includes damage to psyches (depression, internalized anger, lowered self-esteem). There are also physical harms (high blood pressure, rapid shallow breathing, insomnia). Finally, lowered monetary and social opportunities pressure minorities to recoil from exclusive and discriminatory settings and become guarded and vigilant. If you do not have a seat at the table, you are probably on the menu.
Diversity is not a zero-sum game. Society suffers when diverse elements are excluded from decision-making processes and leadership positions. The most serious harm is at the macro societal level. Societies have used affirmative action for white males to stereotype categories of people as unintelligent, dangerous, or menacing. Such labels have been used to justify slavery, segregation, removal of indigenous people and genocide. Lack of diversity is perhaps most treacherous when its effects are slow-developing, largely unnoticed and toxic like carbon monoxide.
The lack of diversity is dysfunctional; it silences and marginalizes minorities depriving communities of their voices and contributions. The goal of the First Amendment is to energize speech and dialogue. A society without diversity curtails the spirit of the debate of ideas. It reveals to minorities nothing of which they are not already aware. It censors minorities and emboldens the majority with entitlement. Lack of diversity has damaging consequences, conveys exclusive uncertainty for youth, and desensitizes a society with ramifications that can extend from crucial injustice to outright atrocity. If we fail to take affirmative steps, the social unrest and violence proceeding the murder of George Floyd while in police custody will inescapably pale in terms of what lies ahead.
Anthony J. Cortese is Professor Emeritus of Sociology, Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences, SMU, Dallas Texas and sits on the Board of Directors of SMU’s Retired Faculty Association. Cortese has served as Director of Chicano Studies, Colorado State University and Director of Ethnic Studies and Director of Mexican American Studies at SMU.
Other opinions worth noting:
Fining kids by the Illinois criminal justice system needs to end
by Officer Dave Franco (Ret.)
From my perspective, after 31 years in law enforcement and now as an adjunct professor teaching Juvenile Justice Administration at Wright College in Chicago, failure is when people involved in the justice system are left without the means to create a better future for themselves and their families. Across communities, those means can take many shapes.
...
No doubt life is always changing. If you don’t like the weather it will change, eventually. It’s been hot most all over but cooler weather will come. In most of the country, cooler weather will be welcomed sooner rather than later.
...
"In times of war, the enemy gets a vote." Those words are particularly relevant today, as tensions build between the U.S. and Russia.
But this all seems eerily familiar.
As Americans, we need to ask ourselves how we would feel if Russia ...
"We know the sacrifices he and countless others made for the betterment of us as African-Americans and society itself....So often, our kids are misled by the wrong things. It will take us as adults in the room to lead them in a different direction to prosperity and to grow success."
~ Maurice Hayes
Executive Director HV Neighborhood Transformations
America has been through a tough time. A national election separated friends and family, divided churches and took over our media. We’ve been intoxicated with poisonous rhetoric and toxic street gatherings that led to more division, injuries and even death.
Americans horrifically viewed the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer and said we aren’t going to take that anymore.
Over 762,000 people have died from Covid-19 in America. Over 47 million of us have been sick. Families who have buried loved ones don’t need convincing about the realities of Covid-19. Americans who have spent weeks in hospital intensive care units know they are fortunate to be alive. However, in the midst of America’s pandemic nightmare, Americans have debated with each other over vaccinations, masks, school and business closures. We have watched our businesses suffer. Our government’s finances have been further strained to supply money to hurting unemployed people.
Americans watched our departure from Afghanistan in horror. We argued among ourselves about how we should have left, the timing of our departure, and whether we should have left at all.
We continue to struggle with racism in America. People who have experienced it know the reality. At all levels of society we must rise above any and all words or actions that denigrate others.
We continue to have other crises impacting our nation. People pouring over our border illegally, an ongoing drug epidemic, homelessness, rising costs of medical treatment and insurance, unaffordable college tuition, unaffordable housing and unaffordable and sometimes unavailable groceries. Americans are now facing the fire of growing inflation. Groceries are becoming even more unaffordable for poor Americans. The cost of living adjustment coming for America’s retirees in January, which is reported to be 5.9 percent, might buy a small bag of groceries, maybe.
America has gone through a tough time, maybe better said, we are going through a tough time. This is why we desperately need Thanksgiving.
In November 1621, after the Pilgrims’ first corn harvest proved successful, Governor William Bradford organized a celebratory feast and invited a group of the fledgling colony’s Native American allies, including the Wampanoag chief Massasoit. Now remembered as American’s "first Thanksgiving" — although the Pilgrims themselves may not have used the term at the time — the festival lasted for three days.
That first brutal winter, most of the colonists remained on board the Mayflower ship, where they suffered from exposure, scurvy and outbreaks of contagious disease. Only half of the Mayflower’s original passengers and crew lived to see their first New England spring. In March, the remaining settlers moved ashore, where they received an astonishing visit from a member of the Abenaki tribe who greeted them in English.
Several days later, he returned with another Native American, Squanto. Squanto taught the Pilgrims, weakened by malnutrition and illness, how to cultivate corn, extract sap from maple trees, catch fish in the rivers and avoid poisonous plants. He also helped the settlers forge an alliance with the Wampanoag, a local tribe, which would endure for more than 50 years and tragically remains one of the sole examples of harmony between European colonists and Native Americans according to History.com.
The early settlers who came to America suffered hardships that few Americans can comprehend. In the midst of so much death, sickness and starvation they found a way to stop and express gratitude. The friendship and humanitarian aid given to them by native Americans stand out as to what really makes America great.
We all need to learn from the first Thanksgiving. This year maybe we all could take time to be grateful, and do something to help each other.
Dr. Glenn Mollette is a syndicated American columnist and author of American Issues, Every American Has An Opinion and ten other books. He is read in all 50 states. The views expressed are those of the author and are not necessarily representative of any other group or organization.
This article is the sole opinions of the author and does not necessarily reflect the views of The Sentinel. We welcome comments and views from our readers. Submit your letters to the editor or commentary on a current event 24/7 to editor@oursentinel.com.
The Co-Moderators of the 224th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) say churches need to step out of their comfort zones to bridge the divide in race relations across the country. Ruling Elder Elona Street-Stewart and the Rev. Gregory Bentley participated in a Zoom webinar initiated and co-sponsored by Westminster Presbyterian Church in Richmond, Virginia but attended by many more congregations. Participants represented 33 different churches, many Presbyterian, but also Baptist, Methodist, and Catholic.
There’s an inverse relationship between charity and justice.
Ruling Elder Kenna Payne and member Noah Morgan moderated the online event reading questions from participating members on the role of the church in their communities and how to build community relationships. The Co-Moderators say it’s hard work, but churches don’t always have to start from scratch.
"Cast your bucket where you are. If you look around your community, you will find an organization or an institution that is livng into the Matthew 25 vision," said Bentley. "We don’t have to re-invent; just look at what’s already going on and move alongside and make it all it can be."
Street-Stewart says Westminster is in a community steeped in history and she suggests the congregation consider that as they seek equity.
"You are in a place where you can lead conversations about memorials or street names," she said. "You can bring honor to persons buried in cemeteries that are segregated or don’t have headstones. These conversations can touch your community in deep ways."
The Co-Moderators told Westminster members that the needs are all around them.
"There’s an inverse relationship between charity and justice. If you need a lot of charity, there’s a lot of injustice. At some point, you’ve got to deal with the cause," said Bentley. "That’s when we put our hands to the work of justice. We have to ask the tough questions. Why do we have so many hungry people when we live in a land of plenty?"
One Westminster member asked how churches and individuals can get connected with other groups without stepping on toes.
"You have people that are part of charter organizations that have been around for generations. Start talking with members of those organizations,” Street-Stewart said. “Find out wha the opportunities are to learn or participate.”
Some of the discussion centered on how the church can be more connected to the community. Bentley said, "You gotta just do it."
"I’m more concerned about being hospitable than being welcoming and polite. Hospitality is inviting someone into your life, creating a safe space to work and build together," he said. "That means you have to risk discomfort, risk going outside where you may feel you have some type of expertise. It means taking the risk of being misunderstood, ridiculed or even severing relationships we’ve had in the past that have been holding us back from where God wants us to be."
Street-Stewart adds that it means more than just opening the doors of the church to the community.
"The need is to be there to participate in community activities, such as supporting someone else’s child in a sports program or arts project," she said. "What does the artwork or pictures in your building represent? Are they white or do they represent the full diversity in your community? What type of music is played at church? Do the books in your church library represent you community?"
Street-Stewart adds that churches need to provide multiple language support and ensure that their building is accessible with numerous ways to participate.
Both Street-Stewart and Bentley told the church members that starting this kind of work can be scary and overwhelming, giving members a sense of vulnerability.
"It’s like starting an exercise program. Everything hurts. You must change what you’re doing in order to change your thinking. If you do it long enough, your thinking will change," said Bentley. "You have to work through all of the resistance or excuses like ‘We’ve never done that before.’ Change your behavior and do it because it’s right."
To change thinking regarding white supremacy, Bentley suggested the six Rs: Remembrance, Remorse, Repentance, Repair, Reconciliation and Resurrection.
"There is a lot of mythology about ourselves that suggests we are the greatest and well-intentioned," he said. "We have to look at ourselves as we are. We don’t have to lie about America in order to love America. For it to become all it can be, we have to tell the truth, even if it makes us uncomfortable."
By Kena Dijiba, Guest Commentator
Is calling for immigration reform racist?
I say, "No".
First things first. My perspective is not that of your average Trump supporter, so Liberals hold your horses at bay and put down the ammo. In fact, I’m quite the middle of the road kind of woman when it comes to 60 percent of the issues the United States is currently facing. But, admittedly we all have personal bias that pushes us towards one end of a grey spectrum. So as the daughter of an African immigrant here is my take:
Growing up on two polar opposite sides of this country has offered me a rainbow bucket of insight that most people might not be able to comprehend. From a baby until I was eight-years-old, I spent my life in "The Land of Enchantment". Good ole Albuquerque, New Mexico, where Native, along with Mexican culture enveloped me like a warm blanket.
When starting school there, it was customary to do the pledge of allegiance completely in Spanish, and all my closest friends were mostly of Mexican descent. Then abruptly due to familial issues, we left and moved to where my mother was raised in Kentucky.
Now, let's just say that was the culture shock of a lifetime. From the country twang to confederate flags, life had really changed. But, as I grew up and found my way back to New Mexico to attend college, I realized that both places held beauty in a myriad of ways.
Skip to me working at my new job as a busser on the campus of the University of New Mexico, which was one of the greatest experiences of my life.
While working there I was able to speak Spanish comfortably with my coworkers and cultivate strong friendships. Unapologetically as the conversationalist I am, it was customary discussing hot button issues of the day, and immigration came up.
While talking to my friend Alejandra, who was working harder than anyone to make a decent amount of money before graduating we went nose deep into battle. With her being from Mexico I expected, like an ignorant pundit, that her perspective on immigration wouldn't shy away from the status quo.
Well, Alejandra went off. She was quite concise with her stance.
She didn't agree with people coming to America illegally because she herself had spent years tirelessly following all the rules.
She expressed, that she all out didn't think it was justified, and that right there in 2018 was what shifted my view.
For a project around that same time I was tasked to interview someone in my dorm. I chose an Indian woman by the name of Taz to speak about her perspective on immigration, which rung similar to Alejandra.
She herself had put so much into her education and urged others to fight to come to the United States in a responsible manner. It was interesting with all the vitriol the left spills on how it's such a "racist", along with a xenophobic, stance to have, when simply most immigrants, including children of immigrants, feel this way.
While in school I met countless people who had the same story. From Nepal to China, there were immigrants at University busting their way through, and doing it legally. This was the story of my father from Africa who got his Ph.D. and lawfully became a U.S. citizen.
So, what I’m trying to communicate thoroughly and without judgement is the need for compassionate reform on immigration.
I do not believe in this ridiculous phantom dream of a magical wall, and I forthrightly don't believe in sending people back to where they "came from". In my opinion that style of rhetoric is dangerous. What should be focused on is securing valid paths to citizenship, and the denormalization of the "act" of crossing over.
If we can do this, then hopefully people will stop blindly compounding their energy into what they don't understand and begin the process of trying to.
Kena Dijiba is the 21 year-old author of "Millennial Vegan" featured last year in the Winchester Sun. She is also worked as an entertainment writer whose work has published in over 700 articles.
A peace walk is scheduled for this Friday, June 19, at 6:10pm starting on the Northeast corner of US 150 and Main Street in St. Joseph to celebrate Juneteenth. Participants should arrive at 6pm or earlier prior to the start of the march.
Members of SJOnward, a local community group promoting diversity, inclusion, and racial equality in St. Joseph-Ogden and surrounding towns, will lead a procession through town stopping at least once for eight minutes and 46 seconds to pay homage to George Floyd, and African-American man in Minneapolis who was allegedly killed by an on-duty police officer in a video captured by a 17-year-old onlooker.
Juneteenth commemorates the day when Union general Gordon Granger read federal orders in Galveston on June 19, 1865, that anyone held in bondage in the state of Texas were free. The day is also known as Freedom Day, Jubilee Day or Cel-Liberation Day. Despite that the Emancipation Proclamation was signed nearly two years and six months earlier, a large number of Americans, especially in remote areas of the country, continued to endure slavery due to the lack of availability of Union trips to enforce the Abraham Lincoln's executive order.
After walkers arrive at Kolb Park, there will be a speaker talking about the cultural and historical significance of Juneteenth, information about the history of sundown towns and how this has shaped perspectives of our community. Other speakers will be on hand to discuss their personal experiences with racism in St. Joseph and beyond.
Organizers ask that participants observe social distancing precautions by wearing a mask and keep a six foot distance from others as much as possible.
For more information visit the event page on Facebook here.
The St. Joseph-Ogden soccer team hosted Oakwood-Salt Fork in their home season opener on Monday. After a strong start, the Spartans fell after a strong second-half rally by the Comets, falling 5-1. Here are 33 photos from the game.
by Ian Wright
In the process of Israel now avenging their rage, innocent civilian Palestinians are being killed by Israel’s aggression. Thousands are being killed. What is this doing to the minds of the Palestinians? Palestinians who survive Israel’s aggression will forever have an internal malice and hate toward Israel that will never be forgotten. Most likely many if not all of the Palestinians already hated Israel. If there were any Palestinians who had any love for Israel, they don’t have it any longer.
For years and ages to come there will be Palestinians who will hate Israel more than ever before. How many of these will act out their hate in terroristic ways? Israel will never forget, nor will the Palestinians. This is a lousy way for neighbors to get along with each other. The goal of Israel is to eliminate Hamas. Their goal is not to kill the Palestinians. Unfortunately, thousands of Palestinians are being killed.
Have you ever been to Pearl Harbor? Take the tour out to the USS Arizona where 1171 of our soldiers are buried there in a watery grave. Around Pearl Harbor there are other sunken ships and the remains of buried Americans. Even today it will invoke serious feelings of ill will toward the Japanese and what they did to us on December 7, 1941. We will never forget. Can you imagine how the Japanese feel about Americans? We obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki killing as many as 226,000 innocent civilians with our two atomic bombs on August 6 and 9, 1945. Do you think they will ever forget? Never. Our country and Japan have made great strides in international relations. However, nobody has forgotten what took place on both sides of the Pacific.
I often see shirt tags that say made in Vietnam. I have a hard time using anything made in Vietnam because of the thousands of American lives that were wasted in that country. It’s in the past but how do ever forget such a senseless war?
How do they people of Afghanistan and Iraq feel about America? They hate us Regardless of any good that we might have done they see us as a bunch of murderous thugs who don’t mind our own business.
Ukraine will forever hate Russia. Do you think Jewish people have feelings of love for the Germans and what happened to them during the holocaust?
We live in a world of an eye for eye and a tooth for a tooth and it isn’t changing or going anywhere. You can talk about forgiveness and loving your enemies until you are blue in the face but the world doesn’t operate this way. It’s wonderful if you have truly forgiven someone who has wronged or hurt you. When you allow that deep internal malice to dominate your mind it’s only eroding your well-being and life. Hate doesn’t hurt the other person unless you allow that hate to manifest itself in a violent way toward that person.
Hamas has demonstrated their hatred for Jewish people.
The Palestinians will hate Israel for ages to come. Israel cannot coexist with unrelenting evil whose mission is to torture and kill Jewish people. The result is an ongoing mess that will never go away.
This is not working for our planet. A world that is able to take care of billions of people is going to be destroyed. Our only hope is to put away our bombs and live in peace and love. As long as there is evil in this world then unfortunately for us all, it’s not going to happen.
