Race Matters
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Texas School District Faces Lawsuit After Staffers Fill in Black Student’s Hair With a Sharpie: ‘That’s Assault’
If ever there was a perfect justification for throwing hands, it’s the discovery that staffers at your 7th grader’s middle school filled in his fade with a Sharpie. Thankfully, however, cooler heads prevailed, and instead of snatching the soul out of the offending party’s chests, a federal civil rights lawsuit was filed instead. From Yahoo:…
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Texas Rangers Decline to Criminally Investigate Officers Who Paraded Black Man in Street Like Runaway Slave
No surprise here. If police are barely investigated, hardly charged, and scarcely convicted for killing black people—on video—why would they face any sort of consequence for parading a black man through the streets tied to a rope while on horseback? And so it goes. The Texas Rangers announced on Friday that the actions of two…
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#FundraisingWhileBlack: White Woman Pulls Gun on Black Teenagers Raising Money for Their Football Team
Well, hello there! In today’s edition of #ExistingWhileBlack, we have a despicable human being named Jerri Kelly, who pulled a gun on a group of black teenagers whose only crime was raising money for their high school football team. ABC News has the scoop: The wife of an Arkansas jail administrator was arrested and charged…
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#LookingWhileBlack: Police Stop, Question Black Man for ‘Looking Suspiciously’ at a White Woman
In what serves as the latest example of #ExistingWhileBlack, I present 20-year-old Devin Meyers, who was stopped by police for—wait for it—“looking suspiciously” at a white woman. No, really. Have you ever seen a white woman in public? They do a lot of suspicious shit. But regardless, according to the Daily Dot, police in Royal…
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Pediatricians: Black Children Suffer Significantly From Racism
Surprise! Racism—that “thing” white people say doesn’t exist—has dire long-term effects on the health of black children and adolescents, according to a report released by the country’s largest group of pediatricians. The report, crafted into a first-of-its-kind policy statement from the American Academy of Pediatrics, calls racism “a socially transmitted disease passed down through generations,…
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Mike Brown’s Death Changed the World, but Local Activists Say It Hasn’t Changed Ferguson
Today marks five years since Darren Wilson gunned down 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Brown was far from the only black man to die at the hands of the police that year; other high-profile cases—Eric Garner died in New York months earlier, Laquan McDonald would be shot and killed later that fall—sparked protests and…
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'I Don't Pay Attention to the Negativity': Halle Bailey Takes the High Road on Her Role in The Little Mermaid
We love Halle Bailey’s quick clapbacks as “Sky Forster” on Grown-ish, trading clever quips with older sister Chloe, who play her track star twin, “Jazz.” But as the newest—and newly envisioned—Disney princess to enter the reboot game, we seriously admire Bailey’s restraint when dealing with the onslaught of racists armchair critics who took issue with…
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8Chan, Breeding Ground for White Supremacist Shooters Goes Dark; Founder Says Pull the Plug Permanently
In a move that is deeply decent and sensical, a technology company has announced that it will no longer be complicit in white supremacist hatred by pulling the plug on services for 8chan, a website that has become the stomping grounds for mass murderers. The Washington Post reports that an announcement from CloudFlare came shortly…
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White Students Pose With Guns in Front of Bullet-Ridden Emmett Till Memorial, Department of Justice Launches Investigation
On what would’ve been the 78th birthday of Emmett Till came some disturbing news: three University of Mississippi students are being investigated by the Department of Justice after a picture surfaced of them posing with guns next to a memorial honoring Till’s death. ProPublica reports that the students, each of whom is white, have been…
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White Professor Accuses Historically Black Tuskegee University of Age, Racial Discrimination: 'It's Just Wrong'
Here’s something I never thought I’d live to see: a historically black college has been slapped with a lawsuit alleging age and racial discrimination—by a white guy. According to the Daily Beast, the school in question is Alabama’s Tuskegee University, which is being sued by its own 73-year-old physics professor and one-time Teacher of the…