“Ignorant White Girl”: One Man’s Attempt to Defend his Sexism

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We’re pleased to feature this special guest post authored by Muhlenberg College (and Contemporary Racism) alum, Brittany Smith (’17). Brittany is at Columbia University pursuing an MPH focusing on health promotion and children’s health equity. A few weeks ago, I went dancing at a few bars with some college friends who were visiting. I also encountered one of the most fragile and aggressive examples of masculinity I’ve ever seen. (And, as a woman who dates …

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#NotYourMule

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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 …

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Gender, Queerness, and Performative Masculinity as an Escape: An Analysis of Moonlight

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In her essay “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe”, Hortense Spillers argues that the gendered configuration for Black people through slavery and its afterlife is “the dehumanizing, ungendering, defacing project of African persons” (Ziyad, 2017). She points out that, historically, Black gender has not been used to indicate a shared womanhood or manhood with people within white society, but to highlight how black people are out of step with womanhood and manhood. Essentially, Black gender can never …

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Talking About Race: Performativity

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Norms prove to be incredibly strong motivating factors in dictating social interaction. Following norms is like following the rules, they give people a feeling that they’re acting acceptably. This lends especially helpful when one finds themselves in an ambiguous situation where they’re unsure of how to act. In white American culture three ground rules provide guidelines for normative social behavior. These three ground rules are the politeness protocol, the academic protocol, and the colorblind protocol …

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Mental Health in 2018: If You’re Black, Can You Never Come Back?

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According to a study done by the Office of Minority Health through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, as adults, Black and African American males are 20 percent more likely to suffer from serious psychological distress than adult White males. It was also found that Black and African American males are more likely than White males to have feelings of sadness, hopelessness, and worthlessness. According to the study, “Black/African Americans hold beliefs related …

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Just Waiting For Our Friend…

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On April 12th, two Black men were arrested in a Philadelphia Starbucks. They had not placed an order; they were just sitting at a table in a public coffee shop, waiting for their friend to arrive. And an employee working at the Starbucks called the police on them. When the police asked the two Black men to leave, they did not, because it was absurd that they were being asked to leave a public store; …

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So What is Affirmative Action?

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Affirmative action was created as an effort to improve employment and educational opportunities for members of minority groups, and it was an outcome of the 1960’s Civil Rights Movement. President Kennedy was the first to use the term in an Executive Order that directed government contractors to take “affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin”. In 1965, …

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Lens of Awareness: Racism Outside of the Classroom

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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 …

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Race, Terror and Mass Shootings

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White males do the majority of mass shootings, yet people tend to associate violence and crime with people of color and minority groups. When the Stoneman Douglass school shooting happened it was rare to see media outlets talk about the shooters history of violence against minorities and it took days to find out that the shooter was apart of a white supremacist group. If this were a person of color someone associated with the Muslim …

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“The only thing that separates women of color from anyone else is opportunity” – Viola Davis

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Stereotypes of gender and race permeate our everyday discourses from classrooms to politics and throughout the media. When we aren’t viewing individuals through the impressions granted by stereotypes, we are commonly white-washing our outlooks across matters; from mental illness, physical health, poverty, education and so much more, we downplay the intersections of race and gender. There is typically little room in society for minority groups to speak up for themselves, to challenge the stereotypes allocated …

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Theta Tau Expulsion Causing Campus Convulsion

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On April 18th, Syracuse University decided to permanently expel the Theta Tau fraternity after footage emerged of its members participating in a racist and anti-Semitic skit. The Chancellor of the University, Kent Syverud, emailed a statement to students, faculty, and staff affirming that the video included, “words and behaviors that are extremely racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic, sexist, and hostile to people with disabilities”. He continued: “The conduct is deeply harmful and contrary to the values and …

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Silence is a Luxury

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The idea of white privilege is a very controversial topic for many, primarily because many white individuals do not acknowledge their race and its meaning, are not aware of the advantages and benefits they receive because of their race, and do not see how their whiteness affects their perception of society. However, white privilege and society have a large intersection because, “when it comes to privilege, it doesn’t matter who we really are. What matters …

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