Colorful Prism Of Racism

A frightening look at what happens when LGBTQ women of color refuse to accept street harassment and other violence

A disproportionate number of Hispanics are housed in private prisons across the United States, a pattern that could leave such prisons vulnerable to legal challenges, new research from Oregon State University shows.

POST TRAUMATIC SLAVE SYNDROME
As a result of twelve years of quantitative and qualitative research Dr. DeGruy has developed her theory of Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome, and published her findings in the book Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome - America’s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing”. The book addresses the residual impacts of generations of slavery and opens up the discussion of how the black community can use the strengths we have gained in the past to heal in the present.

WHAT IS P.T.S.S.?
P.T.S.S. is a theory that explains the etiology of many of the adaptive survival behaviors in African American communities throughout the United States and the Diaspora. It is a condition that exists as a consequence of multigenerational oppression of Africans and their descendants resulting from centuries of chattel slavery. A form of slavery which was predicated on the belief that African Americans were inherently/genetically inferior to whites. This was then followed by institutionalized racism which continues to perpetuate injury.

Thus, resulting in M.A.P.:
 

• M: Multigenerational trauma together with continued oppression;
• A: Absence of opportunity to heal or access the benefits available in the society; leads to
• P: Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome.
   

At a time when international adoption is on the wane in many countries, it is becoming a surprising — and controversial — growth industry in Florida, where some birth mothers are seemingly looking ...

Note: The following is mostly based on chapter 14 of “Race in North America” (2012) by Audrey and Brian D. Smedley.

Racism in the US is always changing but changes slowly. That means the near future will be pretty much the same, but the longer term it will bring change.

American racism will have to somehow adjust to:
 

1. Japan as a country fully the equal of the US and Britain.
2. Asian Americans scoring higher on IQ tests.
3. The Black middle-class and Blacks in important positions.
4. Immigration from Asia and Latin America pouring into the US, bringing millions of people who do not fit into the old black-and-white boxes.
5. Multiracial identities, particularly those who are half White and half Asian or Latino. It not only challenges the idea that race determines culture and behaviour, but also makes one’s “race” harder to determine and therefore less useful.
6. Barack Obama, whose very person goes against everything most Americans think they know about race. He is multiracial. He looks Black but culturally is like Dorothy of “The Wizard of Oz”: a White person from Kansas. American racism is incapable of making sense of him – thus all the Birther and Secret Muslim stuff.
7. The Human Genome Project – which left only 0.1% of the genome for scientific racism.

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Grace Lee Boggs, 99, is a Chinese American philosopher, writer, and activist in Detroit with a thick FBI file and a surprising vision of what an American revolution can be. Rooted for 75 years in the labor, civil rights and Black Power movements, she challenges a new generation to throw off old assumptions, think creatively and redefine revolution for our times.

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There are 160 known, active Ku Klux Klan chapters in the United States, according to research from the Southern Poverty Law Center. How many are near you? Here's a interactive map.

This “Incident Summary” details acts of harassment, big and small, reported by civil rights activists and allies working in McComb, Miss. in the summer of 1964.

Today, June 21st, is my birthday; I turn 50. I feel pretty much the same way I did when I wrote this two years ago, "A lifetime of so little progress is just too much."; only more so. *sigh* I was ...