Books, Articles, Media

"For virtually the first time, white Americans have faced social disapproval for being caught on camera in the act of treating utterly normal behavior by black people as criminal. But people like “BBQ Becky” are not new. They continue a long tradition that began in slavery. From the 1600s to 1865, white Americans watched Africans and African Americans, checked to see if they fit the description of specific fugitives from slavery, stopped, questioned and seized them — and got rewards for doing so. The pattern established by white policing of African Americans’ movement during slavery is something that many remain all too eager to continue."

Anne Warfield Rawls and Waverly Duck

UB's Baldy Center Podcast Series (episode 10) features UB Distinguished Visiting Scholar Prof. Waverly Duck and co-author Prof. Anne Rawls (Bentley University) in a discussion of their new book, Tacit Racism. 

"We need to talk about racism before it destroys our democracy. And that conversation needs to start with an acknowledgement that racism is coded into even the most ordinary interactions."  -- Excerpt 

"She is a woman of color, and in some other storyteller’s hands this might make her a token exotic with a predicable narrative arc, especially in 1813 England. This, however, is Shondaland’s Regency England, so Marina is not alone; she’s not even the only mixed-race character in the series. There are Black actors among the servants, the people walking along the street, the merchant class, the young members of the ton, and their mothers. The queen is Black (Queen Charlotte played by Golda Rosheuvel). The dashing Duke at the center of the primary love story is Black (Simon Basset the Duke of Hastings played by Regé-Jean Page), and so are both of his parents (Daphne Di Cinto and Richard Pepple). The ton’s most feared matron Lady Danbury (Adjoa Andoh) is Black. With such a diverse cast, Bridgerton not only enters the contemporary Regency-era lexicon at a time when contemporary Black writers, artists, critics, and scholars have successfully punctured the myths about its homogeneity but also gives us a multicultural world that feels organic and allows its young characters of color their own bildungsroman."

Education Week (October 5, 2020) by David E. Dematthews and Terri N. Watson

"Critical race theory, which presupposes that racism is embedded within society and institutions, is not propaganda or anti-American; it is a toolkit for examining and addressing racism and other forms of marginalization. Rather than rejecting this toolkit, the Department of Education should ensure principals and teachers learn how it can be applied to address long-standing educational inequities."

Eli Clare named one of a group of 20 creatives in an exceptionally diverse cohort of disabled practitioners. 

"Kenosha, Wisconsin, became a national byword for racial unrest when protests in August erupted in violence.

After local police shot a Black man, Jacob Blake, seven times in the back, leaving him paralyzed, furious residents took to the streets expressing years of pent-up anger. During nighttime hours, fires were set.

Law enforcement’s response only escalated the situation. One night an armed white militia showed up, and Kenosha officers thanked them. Then, at 11:45 p.m. on Aug. 25, a white teenager allegedly fired an assault rifle during a confrontation, killing two protesters and wounding one.

Most anti-racism demonstrations across the United States last summer were fairly peaceful.

What went wrong in Kenosha?"

"Udondian creates work that questions notions of cultural identity and post-colonial positions in relation to her experiences growing up in Nigeria, a country flooded with cast-off from the West. Her work is driven by her interest in textiles and the potential for clothing to shape identity, informed by the histories and tacit meanings embedded in everyday materials. She engages with repurposed material to investigate how fundamental changes in fabric can affect one's perception of identity."

"THE INTRODUCTION TO Lavelle Porter’s The Blackademic Life: Academic Fiction, Higher Education, and the Black Intellectual is titled “Blackademic Lives Matter” and the sentiment has never carried as much weight as in this moment when academic institutions are faced with two overlapping pandemics — one that has been within their walls for centuries and one that is redefining how they will go about their work in the fall."