Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes
Beginning November 3, 2019, I set out to share a monthly post addressing what I was learning about the systemic nature of racism that poisons every single facet of life in the United States. I sought to position myself not as a teacher but as someone committed to dismantling the white supremacy in myself as an individual and in institutions.
I wrote a total of 15 posts. I will link them all below so that they can be found in one place. I found the data that highlighted the racial disparities in each system and then searched for information on the history that led to the disproportional statistics. As historian Lettie Shumate always says, “History does not happen in a vacuum.” Over and over again, we see that the history of yesterday leads us to where we are today and unless we act to extract every vestige of white supremacy in ourselves and this country, our tomorrows will be no different. Each post contained action steps and resources, which included videos, podcasts, music, articles, and books to appeal to the content preferences of numerous types of people.
Systemic Racism Series Introduction
Systemic Racism: Justice System
Systemic Racism: Environmental Racism
After I had already published the posts on wealth and employment, I read the 10th anniversary edition of The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander. Alexander wrote, “One reason so many people have a false impression of the economic well-being of African Americans, as a group, is that poverty and unemployment statistics do not include people who are behind bars. People in prison are literally erased from the nation’s economic picture, leading standard estimates to underestimate the true jobless rate by as much as 24 percentage points for less-educated black men” (Alexander, 2020, p. 284).
The series changed as I wrote because I changed. As a human, I am ever evolving, and my writing reflects that evolution. For example, I stopped using and recommending Robin DiAngelo’s book White Fragility after hearing Black womxn explain why it’s problematic. In her March 2020 webinar “Let’s Talk About White People Profiting From Antiracism Work,” Tina Strawn addressed Robin DiAngelo, Tim Wise, and other white people who are considered antiracism educators. She helped me change the way I looked at white people making money doing antiracism work. I also watched Louiza “Weeze” Doran’s Instagram video “Breaking down problematic whiteness and the book ‘white fragility’” where she talked about this as well. I then made a more conscious effort to solely elevate the voices of the marginalized, not in addition to white voices but only the marginalized voices, as I heard L. Glenise Pike expound on in a webinar.
The series had limits. I originally set out to write the posts listed above and would come across more articles that could have become additional posts. This means that I didn’t tackle systemic racism in:
Orchestras
“American orchestras remain among the nation’s least racially diverse institutions: Of the 106 full-time players in the New York Philharmonic, only one is Black.”
Source: NY Times Morning Briefing July 20, 2020
“Orchestras are among the least racially diverse cultural institutions in the U.S. Black musicians accounted for 1.8 percent of the country’s orchestra players in 2014 (and there isn’t much data since then). Some large institutions are trying to change the situation, and a good place to learn is from the sustained efforts of smaller local organizations, Joshua Barone writes in The Times.”
Source: NY Times Morning Briefing Jan. 28, 2021
Business
“For Black jam makers, systemic racism across the craft food movement means obstacles in scaling their businesses, getting book deals and receiving widespread recognition. ‘It’s easier for white makers to get these opportunities than for people of color,’ Rouse said. And if they make mistakes, ‘people are more willing to forgive.’”
Source: NY Times Morning Briefing Aug. 19, 2020
You can read more about this here.
“Several dozen former McDonald’s franchisees sued the fast food company over racial discrimination, accusing it of selling Black owners stores in undesirable locations and failing to support their businesses, The Wall Street Journal reports.”
Source: NY Times Morning Briefing Sept. 2, 2020
You can read more about this here.
“This tradition of ‘borrowing’ from Black artists and promoting white artists over more talented Black artists continues to make the record industry billions today.”
Email, call, and tag representatives to hold them accountable to a commitment to support policies that address the disparities in every institution in this nation. No matter what your passions, gifts, or skills are, there is somewhere you can get involved under the leadership of Black, Brown, Indigenous, Asian/Asian American, and Pacific Islander People of Color in the dismantling of systemic racism.
Grace and peace, friends.
-Nicki Pappas
