The Big Isms

Bruce family representative Chief Duane Yellowfeather Shepard speaks in Manhattan Beach on April 9, 2021 at an event to shed light on efforts by LA County Supervisor Janice Hahn for the county to return Bruce's Beach to Charles and Willa Bruce's descendants. Brittany Murray/MediaNews Group/Long Beach Press-Telegram via Getty Images        T aylor Ardrey   Jul 19, 2021, INSIDER

Chez Baldwin: An Exploration of James Baldwin's Life and Works Through the Powerful Lens of His House "Chez Baldwin" in St. Paul de Vence, France National Museum of African American History and Culture James Baldwin’s house in the South of France serves as a powerful lens to explore his life and works. From 1971 to 1987, the last sixteen years of his life, Baldwin's home in St. Paul de Vence was his permanent, vibrant abode and an important social center for artists and intellectuals from Europe, Africa, America, and around the world. Discover stories exploring Baldwin's time in St. Paul de Vence, his early life in Harlem, world travels, and impact as a writer and activist. VISIT  

  In the News Our ‘Racial Reckoning’ Is Turning Out to Be a White Lie Kali Holloway, July 19, 2021, The Nation With inevitable regularity, racial injustice and violence lead to moments of national conflict when even white Americans can no longer ignore the issue. And just as inevitably, instead of addressing this country’s pervasive racism and anti-Blackness, white Americans locate the problem somewhere within Black people themselves. We’re in yet another of those moments, as last summer’s promised “racial reckoning” turns out to be a white lie. Black demands for full citizenship and equality are being treated as entitlement, calls for white racial accountability redefined as white persecution, and anti-racism falsely construed as anti-whiteness. To reestablish unchallenged white dominance, a movement of white resistance, or anti -anti-racism, is working tirelessly to blot out what it sees as a problematic presence—purging Black folks from democracy by stripping voti

Gloria Richardson and Black Women’s Intellectual History Robert Greene II,  July 19, 2021, Black Perspectives Gloria Richardson passed away on July 16, 2021, at the age of 99. Tributes have already poured in for the Black freedom movement icon.  The Washington Post referred to Richardson as a “firebrand civil rights activist.” Having come first to prominence in the early 1960s as a result of a civil rights campaign in her hometown of Cambridge, Maryland, Richardson’s life and legacy should be seen in light of two critical intellectual topics: the radicalism of the Civil Rights and Black Nationalist movements of the 1960s, and the importance of African American women to both movements before, during, and after the 1960s.  At Black Perspectives, Richardson has been the central figure in several blog posts—namely, those that have dealt with the ever-changing contours of civil rights and Black Power historiography historians continue to argue about. In an excerpt from hi

  https://www.news5cleveland.com/news/local-news/remembering-the-1936-national-spelling-bee-and-how-hatred-eliminated-a-bright-young-girl-from-akron Remembering the 1936 National Spelling Bee and how hatred eliminated a bright young girl from Akron www.news5cleveland.com

 

  There is No Debate Over Critical Race Theory Ibram X. Kendi, July 9, 2021, The Atlantic The United States is not in the midst of a “culture war” over race and racism. The animating force of our current conflict is not our differing values, beliefs, moral codes, or practices. The American people aren’t divided. The American people are being divided. Republican operatives have buried the actual definition of critical race theory: “a way of looking at law’s role platforming, facilitating, producing, and even insulating racial inequality in our country,” as the law professor Kimberlé Crenshaw, who helped coin the term, recently defined it. Instead, the attacks on critical race theory are based on made-up definitions and descriptors. “Critical race theory says every white person is a racist,” Senator Ted Cruz has said. “It basically teaches that certain children are inherently bad people because of the color of their skin,” said the Alabama state legislator Chris Pringle.

  We Should Think Differently About the Preservation of Racist Monuments Today more museum professionals are considering what it could mean to exhibit defaced monuments. Tsione Wolde-Michael

  The Forgotten “Black Woodstock” of 1969 Summer of Soul , Questlove’s directorial debut, seeks to resurrect the memory of the Harlem Cultural Festival, a vital touchstone of Black music. Kambole Campbell

 “It’s a gut punch,” he said. “When one sees it, you can’t help but shiver and you can’t help but feel the immensity of the act of the transatlantic slave trade. It makes one speechless.”  350 Sculptures Invoke First Enslaved Africans Dana King’s sculptures surround a plinth in San Francisco that formerly held a statue of Francis Scott Key, an anti-abolitionist. SEE and READ

Four Things Schools Won’t Be Able to Do Under ‘Critical Race Theory’ Laws Eesha Pendharkar, June 30, 2021, Education Week Conservatives and liberals are at loggerheads over what critical race theory is, if it’s taught in schools, and whether it should be permanently banned from classroom discussions. While the debate over critical race theory has driven the passage of laws restricting how teachers talk with students about America’s racist past, only eight of the 26 bills actually refer to critical race theory, according to an Education Week analysis of proposed and passed legislation and state school board policies. Portions of many states’ bills are vague and myopic about what will and will not be allowed in schools. But other sections lay out in sweeping language exactly what administrators and teachers will no longer be allowed to do. continue   The Whitewashing of Empire and Britain’s Radical Historical Amnesia Pieter van der Houwen, June 26, 2021, The Elephant It was