systemic racism
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Surgeon General Jerome Adams Tells Black People to Lay Off Alcohol, Tobacco, and Drugs to Prevent COVID-19 Deaths: 'Do It for Your Big Mama'
It didn’t take long for U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams to dip into personal responsibility talking points—and some other questionable rhetoric—in remarks given to the press today about the disproportionate impact the novel coronavirus has had on black communities and other communities of color. Adams’ comments were shared by PBS White House correspondent Yamiche Alcindor…
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More Than Half of Homeless Families Are Black, Government Report Says
More than half a million Americans experienced homelessness in 2019—a number that has slowly ticked upward in recent years. Of the families that make up that number, the Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress finds that 52 percent are black. Of an estimated 568,000 Americans who were without shelter last year, individual black Americans comprised…
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New Statistics Highlight How New York City’s Most Elite Public Schools Are Leaving Black Students Behind
Offers to black students at New York City’s elite public schools are dropping—and the numbers are absolutely dismal. On Monday, only seven black students were offered admission to Stuyvesant High School, the most selective school in the city, out of 895 potential slots, the New York Times reports. Just as concerning: the number of admissions…
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Police Pocketing Innocent People’s Money: Report Shows Huge Racial Gap in South Carolina Civil Forfeitures
A new investigative project from the Greenville News and Anderson Independent Mail analyzing civil forfeitures in South Carolina reveals that police departments across the state have netted millions of dollars from state residents—the vast majority of them being black men. Despite accounting for just 13 percent of South Carolina’s population, black men composed 65 percent…
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You Don't Say? Joe Biden Preaches to the Choir About White America's Systemic Racism
At a breakfast Monday morning in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, former Vice President Joe Biden stood in front of a crowd of black people and told them “white America has to admit there is systemic racism.” The breakfast was hosted by Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, HuffPost reports, and it was attended…
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Trump’s New ‘Work for Welfare’ Rules Protect Poor Whites at the Expense of Urban Blacks
Let’s talk about institutional racism, shall we? For those who don’t know (and at this point, there’s really no reason not to), institutional racism occurs when discrimination is perpetuated by the state or government, versus the actions of individuals, and given its outsize influence is wont to perpetuate more insidious and long-lasting damage on marginalized…
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Why 2017 Was the Year of Rose Armitage
To be a person of color in America is to always be tangled between dueling worlds. What was different in 2017, more so than any other year in recent memory, was how those polarities were laid bare for everyone else to see. It was the year American streets were crowded with both pussy hats and…
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The Privilege of White Individuality
Stop lying; you did it, too. I’m sure I’m not alone in being among those who—for a brief moment when they heard about the Las Vegas shooting—quietly mumbled to themselves, “Dear God, please don’t let the shooter be black.” As you’re reading this, someone is typing a variation of the comment “Nah, I knew. Black…
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Dear Family, Please Move Out of Mo., Love, Danielle
Last month the NAACP issued its first-ever travel advisory for a state—a whole entire state—for people of color. That state was my home state, the place of my birth and home to the people I love most in the world: Missouri. The advisory was shocking in that it wasn’t for other states much more historically…
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The Real O’Neals Star Martha Plimpton to White Liberals: ‘Speak Up Against State Violence and Racist Injustice’ [Retracted]
RETRACTED (6/12/18): This story has been removed because we have discovered it was in breach of our editorial standards. If you’d like to know more, you can read an editor’s note here. A cached version of the story is available here for transparency.