NAACP Culpeper #7058

Also Serving Madison and Rappahannock Counties

Tag: White Supremacy

Banned in Madison

1) For failure to promote a love of our country, citizenship, military service, or present an unbiased approach to these topics:
2) For failure to promote respect for marriage/family/parents:
3) For disrespect of religious faith:

School Board / Board Members

Madison County School Board Priorities for 2022 Promote excellence both in the classroom and in extracurricular activities to inspire student achievement and lifelong learning, success, and American citizenship. Ensure every student has access to the resources and educational rigor they need at the right moment in their education, regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, language, ability, family background or family income.

Reckoning With Honest History Through Ongoing Education

The classroom isn’t the only place for learning honest history. In various community spaces—including virtual ones—many people are reckoning with our nation’s history of anti-Blackness and white supremacy. They are making connections between the past and present, as well as searching for liberatory ways forward.

“If white people must be self-taught about racism, they can too easily opt out of engagement beyond the text. The deepest, most impactful learning is interactive, and for white people to really understand what Black people often experience, they must be in the same space with Black people—engaging in difficult conversations, listening, asking, learning, and, perhaps most importantly, feeling. Feeling is where empathy begins.”

 

“Safe Saturday” Conversations About Race

On March 13, 2020, Breonna Taylor was shot and killed by police in her apartment in Louisville, Kentucky. Days later, my workplace, the University of Louisville, transitioned to remote operation in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Enough with playing it nice and safe in the fight against anti-Blackness.

It seems that a healthy handful of White folks wait to express their outrage and disgust over racial injustice after a highly publicized or sensationalized tragedy takes place. Often, after a new hashtag begins trending on social media, a variety of tweets and posts speaking out against anti-Blackness and anti-Black violence soon follow. Which, I suppose, is fine, but very few extend far beyond their comfort zone in their advocacy efforts. This is not to say that allyship in any form is not helpful, but it’s time to start being clear about what is needed and what ultimately perpetuates White supremacy and further insulates White guilt. Let’s be honest: to combat anti-Blackness in America, we don’t need allies. We need abolitionists.

We Don’t Need Allies, We Need Abolitionists

While following the Derek Chauvin trial, I’ve noticed one common theme that also struck me immediately following the gruesome killing of George Floyd – White people speaking out against racism after the fact. It seems that a healthy handful of White folks wait to express their outrage and disgust over racial injustice after a highly publicized or sensationalized tragedy takes place.

What it Means to Be an Anti-racist Teacher

We have to deconstruct the way that science is taught, the concepts that are included and the concepts that are excluded, because what we’re not talking about is also a problem—those silences in our curriculum are problematic.

Lorena Germán has worked in education for nearly 20 years. As director of pedagogy at EduColor, chair of the National Council of Teachers of English Committee Against Racism and Bias in the Teaching of English, and co-founder of Multicultural Classroom, she has advocated for culturally sustaining pedagogy and practices. Nearly three years ago, Germán joined together with educators Tricia Ebarvia, Dr. Kim Parker, and Julia E. Torres to form #DisruptTexts, a grassroots movement encouraging K-12 English teachers to rethink their approach to teaching the “classics,” including deciding whether they need to teach them at all. In 2019, she published The Anti Racist Teacher: Reading Instruction Workbook, a resource to help educators develop anti-racist practices in their ELA classes. And late last year, Germán sat down with then-TT Professional Development Manager Val Brown to discuss the damage white supremacy causes in education—and the uplift inherent in reimagining the process. Their conversation included here, has been edited for length and clarity.

 

What it Means to Be an Anti-racist Teacher

Lorena Germán has worked in education for nearly 20 years. As director of pedagogy at EduColor, chair of the National Council of Teachers of English Committee Against Racism and Bias in the Teaching of English and co-founder of Multicultural Classroom, she has advocated for culturally sustaining pedagogy and practices.

When “Heritage” Means Hate

Many statues like the one next to the Culpeper courthouse were built across the South during the Jim Crow era (from 1877 to the 1950s) to intimidate Blacks, send a message about white supremacy and sentimentalize Confederate soldiers, according to historians.

George Floyd’s Autopsy and the Structural Gaslighting of America

The world was gaslit by misreporting about George Floyd’s initial autopsy report. As concerned physicians, we write to deconstruct the misinformation and condemn the ways this weaponization of medical language reinforced white supremacy at the torment of Black Americans.

 

The COVID Contract

The Declaration of Independence states that all men are created equal; the racial contract limits this to white men with property. The law says murder is illegal; the racial contract says it’s fine for white people to chase and murder black people if they have decided that those black people scare them. “The terms of the Racial Contract,” Mills wrote, “mean that nonwhite subpersonhood is enshrined simultaneously with white personhood.”

Tar Heel Confederates

Just days ago, UNC faculty voted to condemn the Board of Governors’ decision to give $2.5 million to a Confederate hate group for keeping the Silent Sam statue. The statue was removed last Spring after students and other university supporters protested it’s on-campus presence. The statue, erected in 1913 by a former UNC trustee as he whipped a Black woman for insulting it, will now be housed at the Sons of Confederate Veterans headquarters. The university’s gift of $2.5 million will fund the headquarters for a group whose mission is heavily invested in a return to slavery. With growing university support, we can demand the Board of Governors to stop funding Confederate hate.

[urlpreviewbox url=”https://act.colorofchange.org/sign/tar-heel-confederates/”/]

Toni Morrison Deconstructs White Supremacy in America

“Few intellectuals have waged a public battle against white supremacy and patriarchy like Toni Morrison. Morrison has both examined and challenged systems of domination throughout her intellectual life. With her novels, essays, and interviews she has taken critical looks at the interlocking systems of race and gender oppression. In this interview she is asked by PBS’s Charlie Rose what it is like for her to encounter racism. In true Morrison fashion she turns the question on its head, and places the onus for explaining racism back into the hands of White people. She asks Rose what he thinks of racism, why do Whites hold onto, and what are they going to do about it ending it. She rejects the notion that racism is simply something that Black people must grapple with, insisting, demanding, that White people also grapple with it. Fearless. Brilliant. Powerful.”

Toni Morrison (born Chloe Ardelia Wofford; February 18, 1931 – August 5, 2019) was an American novelist, essayist, editor, teacher and professor emeritus at Princeton University. Her first novel, The Bluest Eye, was published in 1970. The critically acclaimed Song of Solomon (1977) brought her national attention and won the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 1988, she won the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award for Beloved (1987).

© 2023 NAACP Culpeper #7058

Design and Hosting by ren@localcause.netUp ↑