Jessica Sperber – Contemporary Racism

Trump-isms: What’s Next?

Jessica Sperber — Sun, 06 Nov 2016 22:47:31 +0000

I write this on November 2nd, less than a week before the presidential election. I choose to write this now for multiple reasons: 1) it’s becoming pretty clear who the next POTUS will be, and 2) I’m honestly afraid of what the consequences will be. This evening in my Facebook Newsfeed, towards the bottom of the trending bar, was the label “Black Church Burned” (The Atlantic, 2016). Immediately I felt my stomach sink, and when ...

Segregated Housing in 2016

Jessica Sperber — Sun, 30 Oct 2016 15:59:28 +0000

My first interaction with the concept of segregated housing came in my freshman year from a friend of color on campus. They confided to me once, while discussing the topic of race, “Sometimes I wish there was housing just for the students of color…it’d be so nice to just have a place where you could chill with your people.” I was pretty taken aback with this concept, as the idea of outright segregation was something ...

The White Man as The ‘Boogie Man’

Jessica Sperber — Sun, 25 Sep 2016 20:34:16 +0000

In the classroom, when we talk about who benefits from systems of power & privilege, the answer is usually White, straight, cis males. As I continue to have conversations about race with my White friends (males especially), this response is usually one not received well. I’m often met with anger and frustration – an emotional response to what has been described to me as feeling ‘attacked.’ As one male friend put it, “blaming everything on ...