ally – Contemporary Racism

Hold Your Applause

screen_name — Wed, 11 Oct 2023 15:20:47 +0000

White people don’t deserve to be congratulated for doing the bare minimum. When a white person aims to be anti-racist the first thing they do is expect those of minority groups to hold their hand while they mess up. They are not your parent, your therapist, or your teacher. The checking-in glance to people of color when you want to make sure you said the right thing, the anxiety of not being “politically correct” is ...

Double Jeopardy: COVID-19 and Racism (Wait…they’re related?)

ShellyZK — Sun, 18 Oct 2020 14:52:33 +0000

November 2019 was when the first case of the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, was reported in China. January 2020 a lab confirmed the first case of COVID-19 in the United States. Fast forward to today, September 2020, where there are 34.4M cases and 1.02M deaths worldwide (CDC, 2020). This led to closures, social distancing, and quarantining. People all around the world had their everyday lives shift and change. However, the coronavirus is not the only pandemic ...

Diversity Conversation(s)

hopp — Mon, 13 May 2019 16:36:32 +0000

Race is not talked about at Muhlenberg. One of the programs at Muhlenberg, and honestly the only program, that is mandatory for students to increase awareness about diversity is the Sedehi Diversity Project (a documentary theater project created by students, culminating in a performance for incoming First Years at orientation). I applaud all those involved in the emotional and extremely valuable play that is intended to promote not only race talks, but conversation about all ...

#NotYourMule

Wilhelmina Minney — Sun, 17 Jun 2018 16:05:46 +0000

This idea that Black women are the perpetual mules of everyone else has been ingrained in our society. We see it in the media when all we see are Black women marching for Black lives. We see it portrayed in the media with Black women playing the help, the nanny, the supporting motherly character, or the best friend used simply to illuminate the main actress’s character. The image of the Black woman has been, historically ...

Lens of Awareness: Racism Outside of the Classroom

Kyle Watkins — Tue, 01 May 2018 11:31:10 +0000

Something that comes with education, of any kind, is the tendency to find ways to apply it and allow it to inform the way we now view the world. These new understandings and connections are the drive that makes us eternal students. What is complex, especially in the vital and often difficult path of education that unpacks and explains the functions of racism and oppression in a White Supremacist system, is allowing this to begin ...

Advice for a White Ally

Benjamin Starr — Mon, 26 Feb 2018 19:52:31 +0000

It starts with you. If you want to be an agent for positive change, your actions must be self-motivated. You have to start with yourself. Whether you’re aware of it or not, you’ve incorporated biases that frame your perception of people of color. It’s difficult to come to terms with this, because no one wants to think they hold prejudices. But we all do. And we often exercise these prejudices without knowing. We make fundamental ...

Racism and Tornados

Amanda Fogelman — Mon, 12 Dec 2016 01:32:37 +0000

In a couple of days, I will graduate from learning about racism. I will complete the course with the choice of continuing to stay informed or not. I can run on the moving sidewalk, stand still, or forget about it all together. I will no longer be graded on the quality of my newfound knowledge, but the true evaluation will be how I use it to make a difference. A letter grade in a course ...

Holding the Smog-Breathers Accountable

Amanda Fogelman — Mon, 12 Dec 2016 01:24:25 +0000

My mom was born in South Africa, and when I was in the fifth grade, everybody asked why I was not black. I remember thinking how ignorant these kids were, and wondering why they thought everybody born in Africa was automatically a person of color. There were times where I felt bullied, and I was uncertain about my identity. Here I was being told that I should be black, when the color of my skin ...

November 8, 2016: The Week After

Sofia Montgomery — Mon, 28 Nov 2016 21:02:06 +0000

I cried when I found out the results of the 2016 presidential election. I cried hard. I fell asleep the night before quite early, because I was tired of being bombarded with political ads and the disgusting hate that I would see every day on Facebook. I went to bed early believing that I would wake up to Hillary Clinton being our next president. It didn’t happen that way and the several paragraphs that were ...

Politics with Kids

G_Wolfe — Fri, 11 Nov 2016 03:18:51 +0000

Special Guest Post by Ginelle Wolfe ’16 I knew work would be tough the day after the election because I work with kids at an elementary school. Each teacher I talked to said they were not going to discuss the election, as the assumption is that most students would not even understand what happened. While I understand that approach, my situation is a little bit different. I teach English Language Development classes, so the majority ...

Whiteness as Social Capital

Cassandra Baker — Sun, 06 Nov 2016 22:12:41 +0000

Recently I was listening to an episode of the podcast About Race, a podcast where 3 hosts discuss current race issues in an open way. One of the hosts mentioned that black assimilation to white culture as a solution to race disparity is problematic. They looked at a specific study that showed that black people who moved to white middle-class neighborhoods before they were twelve had a “compound interest of awesomeness” where they were more ...

Can a White Person be a Good Ally?

jsykgrl — Thu, 12 May 2016 12:55:59 +0000

After stumbling upon Macklemore’s “White Privilege II,” I was excited to hear what he had to say. It felt like a direct application of the concepts that we had been learning in Contemporary Racism. The song directly references protest slogans from the Black Lives Matter Movement, police brutality, the double standard of hip-hop, and (of course) white privilege. He goes as far as to call himself out for the base of his fame from—and the ...

Protesting #101

Steven Feldman — Fri, 22 Apr 2016 18:14:55 +0000

On April 13th, Muhlenberg College participated in a nationwide day of action against racism and student debt by participating in the #MillionStudentMarch. This movement is a united demand for education as a human right. The movement seeks to gain 1) tuition-free public college, 2) cancellation of all student debt, 3) a $15 minimum wage for all campus workers, and 4) divestment from private prisons by all colleges and universities. Our Contemporary Racism class thought that ...

An Outside Perspective on the Million Student March

Jennieleeb649 — Sat, 16 Apr 2016 20:14:37 +0000

On Friday, Muhlenberg participated in the Million Student March. The Million Student March is an event held at colleges to demand tuition-free public college, cancellation of all student debt, a $15/hour minimum wage for all campus workers, and divestment from private prisons. As a class, we were informed of the protest and its goals, and then headed over to take part, as a sort of exercise in allyship. There, the student organizing the protest gave ...

Why Excluding Whites from Black Liberation Movements is Counterproductive

Jennie Colabatistto — Tue, 12 Apr 2016 13:09:04 +0000

Recently, I came across an article on Facebook posted by a fellow like-minded student, which surprised and intrigued me. The article was entitled “White People Have No Place in Black Liberation” and was from RaceBaitr.com, written by Kevin Rigby Jr. and Hari Ziyad. The basic premise of the article was that white people should not be allowed to participate in black liberation movements. Rigby and Ziyad argue that because whiteness is historically and contextually seen ...