Biracial & Multiracial Identities in America

Hi Friends!
Welcome to Issue 37 of this newsletter! This week’s topic is Biracial & Multiracial Identities in America. In the past, I’ve referred to myself as “mixed-race” because I am Latinx and Black, but really, that doesn’t mean I’m mixed-raced at all. The first step in having conversations around race and oppression is understanding the language that we use, and I was mistaken when I interpreted my intersectional identity as a mixed-race identity. In short, Latinx or Hispanic is not a race, it’s an ethnicity. And race—while tied to ethnicity—is based more on phenotype (or your appearance) than anything else. Some might say language makes these conversations too difficult, but I say it makes it more specific, more nuanced, and more interesting. This week we talk about the complexities in identities that are biracial or multiracial from the way they are interpreted in the US Census to the way they are experienced. Let’s get into it.

Key Terms

Race: Many constructions of race are associated with phenotypic traits and geographic ancestry. The concept of "race" as a classification system of humans based on visible physical characteristics emerged over the last five centuries, influenced by European colonialism. The concept has manifested in different forms based on social conditions of a particular group, often used to justify unequal treatment. These false notions of racial difference have become embedded in the beliefs and behaviours of society, especially in Western nations. Race is strongly linked to skin colour.

Ethnicity: A social construct that divides people into smaller social groups based on characteristics such as shared sense of group membership, values, behavioral patterns, language, political and economic interests, history and ancestral geographical base. It is usually an inherited status based on the society in which one lives. Membership of an ethnic group tends to be defined by a shared cultural heritage, ancestry, origin myth, history, homeland, language or dialect, symbolic systems such as religion, mythology and ritual, cuisine, dressing style, art or physical appearance. By way of language shift, acculturation, adoption and religious conversion, it is sometimes possible for individuals or groups to leave one ethnic group and become part of another. The social construct that ethnic groups share a similar gene pool has been contradicted within the scientific community as evidenced by data finding more genetic variation within ethnic groups compared to between ethnic groups. The only classifications for ethnicity on the US census is “Hispanic” or “Non-Hispanic”.

Nationality: A legal identification of a person in international law, establishing the person as a subject, a national, of a sovereign state. It affords the state jurisdiction over the person and affords the person the protection of the state against other states.

Multiracial: Having two or more races.

Monoracial: Having one race.

Intersectionality: Intersectionality is a framework for conceptualizing a person, group of people, or social problem as affected by a number of discriminations and disadvantages. It takes into account people’s overlapping identities and experiences in order to understand the complexity of prejudices they face.

American Indian or Alaska Native: A person having origins in any of the original peoples of North and South America (including Central America), and who maintains tribal affiliation or community attachment.

Asian: A person having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, or the Indian subcontinent including, for example, Cambodia, China, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippine Islands, Thailand, and Vietnam.

Black or African American: A person having origins in any of the black racial groups of Africa.

Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander: A person having origins in any of the original peoples of Hawaii, Guam, Samoa, or other Pacific Islands.

White: A person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa.

Minority: Sociologist Louis Wirth (1945) defined a minority group as “any group of people who, because of their physical or cultural characteristics, are singled out from the others in the society in which they live for differential and unequal treatment, and who therefore regard themselves as objects of collective discrimination.” Note that being a numerical minority is not a characteristic of being a minority group; sometimes larger groups can be considered minority groups due to their lack of power. It is the lack of power that is the predominant characteristic of a minority, or subordinate group. For example, consider apartheid in South Africa, in which a numerical majority (the black inhabitants of the country) were exploited and oppressed by the white minority.

Person of Color: A person whose skin pigmentation is other than and especially darker than what is considered characteristic of people typically defined as white. A person who is of a race other than white or who is of mixed race

Marginalized: Marginalization is the act of relegating someone to an unimportant or powerless position, oppressing a person or a group, relegating them to the fringes of society.

Let’s Get Into It

From National Geographic's "The Changing Face of America"

In October 2013 I distinctly remember seeing the Nation Geographics cover image below with the words “The Changing Face of America.” In this issue, these faces are described as “disrupting our expectations” as we see hair that doesn’t align with our expectations on eye color or skin tone that seems mismatched with a certain shaped nose. This made a lasting impression on me because much like the faces in the photos I constantly have had my features questioned and scrutinized throughout my life. The bottom line is race is a social construct, it means nothing, but it means everything. It makes less and less sense as time passes and society becomes more integrated and cross culturalization becomes more common, yet we are still ruled by white supremacy. It’s a lot.

The US Census & Race

From National Geographic's "The Changing Face of America"

In 2015, Time Magazine wrote, “Half of all children in the U.S. will be nonwhite by 2020… and more than half the entire population by 2044.” Today, the US Census says America is 76% “White, alone” and 2.8% “Two or more races”. Getting accurate data when it comes to how Americans identify their race is tricky and often skewed. Let me share a little history to explain why.

Did you ever wonder why “Hispanic” was the only ethnicity on any census or on official US forms? In the 1930’s “Mexican” was listed as a race on the US Census while Mexican-Americans were often targeted and discriminated against, and Mexican-Americans didn’t want to check this box. Mexican-Americans and other Latinx groups like Puerto Ricans used their proximity to whiteness to challenge discrimination, claiming they too were fair enough to be considered “white” (remember race is mostly about how you look). In 1980, we see “Hispanic” pop up on the official US Census after various attempts at collecting this data. They asked people to categorize themselves as Puerto Rican or Cuban or Mexican, and that didn’t work well, barely anyone answered, but the, “Check here if you are Hispanic” question seemed to get the largest response. However, in a 2010 study, when when people were contacted who checked both “white” and “Hispanic” and asked if they considered themselves white, less than half of them identified that way. They just didn’t feel they fit into any other category.

When I was in college, I took a masters summer program at NYU called “The Cultural Imperative” where we went to Puerto Rico and learned about it’s colonization, economy, race relations and infrastructure. One of the most overwhelming issues is that over 70% of the population checked “white” on the census. They attributed this to many issues. One was a lack of culturally appropriate language — Latinos might say Mestizo, Indesito, Mulatto, Negro, Blanquito to differentiate between skin tones and characteristics. When race is diluted to only having the options of Black and white, especially in Latinx communities with ancestry comprised of European, Indigenous and African components, it’s often easier to check the box that says “white” than grapple with your family tree. We’ve also all been told and shown over and over that the lighter you are, the more privilege, power and security you have in America.

What Is Considered Mulitracial?

Whether biracial (two races) or multiracial (multiple races), the noteworthy element of these terms is first and foremost understanding what constitutes a race. Someone who is Korean and Chinese is most likely not biracial because both of their ethnicities can be categorized under the race “Asian.” But this can get far more complicated. What about someone who is Dominican and Argentinian? Both countries speak Spanish, though Dominicans are considered Hispanic and Argentinians are considered European. The real question is, what does this person look like? Are they dark skinned or fair? Do they have Indigenous features? Where were they born? What does the world see when they look at them without any context of their ancestry? This is why race can be complicated. The answer, based on the social construct of race, would be most closely tied to the color of their skin.

In and of itself, race is based on appearance alone. Bringing it back to my experience with race, my mom is Puerto Rican and my dad is Dominican. They are both from the Caribbean, speak similar dialects of Spanish and have similar ancestry — a mix of Spanish, Taino and African descendants. My dad is a little darker than me and my mom a little lighter. As a kid I grappled with this idea of what water fountain I would be allowed to drink from during segregation in the Jim Crow South as I learned about it in history class—was I light enough to call myself white or dark enough to be considered Black? As I got older my parents told me they always checked off “Black” on forms and I felt confused because we spoke Spanish at home so weren’t we just Hispanic? This is why I mentioned earlier that I am not multiracial, both of my parents are Black, so I am Black. A Black Latina. Labels can be exhausting, but as I said earlier, then can also be nuanced and useful.

I share my personal story around race and identity because race and identity is a personal thing. While we can scrutinize the key terms above and delve into history and genetics, unpacking specific geographical ties, identity is shaped from the outside in and the inside out.

Vox talked to 6 mixed-race people in this article and describes that while America is becoming more multiracial, we haven’t reached a “multiracial utopia free of racial strife”. “Multiracial people have long been targets of fear and confusion, from suspicions of mixed people “passing” as white under the Jim Crow system to accusations of not embracing one’s ‘race’ enough.”

The “What Are You” Question

Being asked “What are you?” does not feel good. Starting now, make a decision to stop asking people that question. I’ll drop some better options below, but before you even ask, check in with yourself:

• Why do I want to know this person’s race, ethnicity or nationality?

• Is this question useful or am I just being nosy (and rude) because I feel they are an “other”?

• Is it an appropriate time and setting to ask this question?

• Can I offer something about myself while asking something about them?

Once you’ve checked in with yourself, try:

• Being specific: “What is your ethnicity?” or “How do you racially identify?” or “What is your nationality?” — and know the difference between ethnicity, race and nationality!

• Offer information about why you’re asking: “I’m celebrating Lunar New Year with my husband. He’s Chinese. What’s your ethnicity?”

As we know better, we do better. Don’t make assumptions or feel entitled to someone else’s personal information. See ya next week!

“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for, we are the change we seek” — With love and light, Taylor Rae

The Black Panther Party

“Black people need some peace. White people need some peace. And we are going to have to fight. We’re going to have to struggle. We’re going to have to struggle relentlessly to bring about some peace, because the people that we’re asking for peace, they are a bunch of megalomaniac warmongers, and they don’t even understand what peace means.”

— Fred Hampton

Hi Friends!
Welcome to Issue 36 of this newsletter! This week’s topic is The Black Panther Party. Writing this newsletter was a clear reminder of why I began writing in the first place, because knowing our history matters, especially when the truth is constantly denied to us through the American public education system. The brief, yet impactful legacy of the BPP is both inspiring and devastating. The assassination of Chairman Fred Hampton has brought me to tears on more than one occasion. The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense was founded in October 1966 in Oakland, California by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale and the first point of their Ten Point Platform and Program was “We want freedom.” In 1968, the FBI’s first director, J. Edgar Hoover called the Black Panthers, “One of the greatest threats to the nation’s internal security,” because they were angry, organized and defiant. COINTELPRO wanted the Black Panthers exterminated, disgraced and omitted from the history books — and largely succeeded. Today, we focus on the truth of their legacy. Let’s get into it.

Let’s Get Into It

Who Were The Black Panthers?

• Founded in 1966 in Oakland, California, the Black Panther Party for Self Defense (BPP) was the era’s most influential militant Black power organization.

• Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton founded the Black Panther Party for Self Defense with a slogan of “Power to the People.”

• They were inspired by Malcom X and drew on Marxist ideology. The Civil Rights Movement seemed aimed at the Jim Crow South to Seale and Newton, and they wanted to create a movement in the North and the West.

• While the Black Panthers were often portrayed as a gang, their leadership saw the organization as a political party whose goal was getting more African Americans elected to political office.

• They wore leather jackets, black berets and walked in lock step formations.

• They were a sophisticated political organization comprised of predominantly uneducated, young, poor, disenfranchised Black people who realized that through organization and discipline, they could use their talents and resources to make a real impact in their community.

• They had a radical political agenda compared to non-violence advocates like Martin Luther King Jr (least we forget King was hated, a target of the FBI, assassinated and murdered).

• While the Civil Rights Movement sought equality, the Black Power Movement assumed equality of person, and sought the opportunity to express that equality through pride.

• Women made up about half of the Panther membership and often held leadership roles.

• At its peak in 1968, the Black Panther Party had roughly 2,000 members.

• The party enrolled the most members and had the most influence in the Oakland-San Francisco Bay Area, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Philadelphia.

• They worked with many non-Black folks and organizations, with Bobby Seale stating: “The biggest misconception is the FBI said that the Black Panthers hated all white folks. How could we hate white folks when we protested along with thousands of our white left radical and white liberal friends? We worked in coalition with each other, in coalition with the Asian community organizations and coalition with Native American community organizations, in coalition with Hispanic, Puerto Ricans and brown [people]. I had coalitions with 39 different organizational groups crossing all racial and organizational lines.”

The Ten Point Platform

1. We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our Black Community.

2. We want full employment for our people.

3. We want an end to the robbery by the Capitalists of our Black Community.

4. We want decent housing, fit for shelter of human beings.

5. We want education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society. We want education that teaches us our true history and our role in the present day society.

6. We want all Black men to be exempt from military service.

7. We want an immediate end to POLICE BRUTALITY and MURDER of Black people.

8. We want freedom for all Black men held in federal, state, county and city prisons and jails.

9. We want all Black people when brought to trial to be tried in court by a jury of their peer group or people from their Black Communities, as defined by the Constitution of the United States.

10. We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace.

Why Were They Feared By White America?

• The New York Times wrote an article claiming responsibility for their portrayal of The Black Panther Party, stating: “The media, like most of white America, was deeply frightened by their aggressive and assertive style of protest,” Professor Rhodes said. “And they were offended by it.”

• The media called them “antiwhite” (though the Panthers frequently called on ALL Americans to fight for equality) and constantly focused on their guns and militant style.

• When discussing clashes with police, the media focused on the altercation, not the critique of police brutality — something Black America continues to deal with to this day. What went largely unreported was the fact that these conflicts stemmed not just from the Panthers, but also from the federal government.

• It was not until years later that the Senate’s Church Committee would show how pervasively the F.B.I. worked against the Panthers and how much it influenced press coverage. It encouraged urban police forces to confront Black Panthers; planted informants and agents provocateurs; and intimidated local community members who were sympathetic to the group. The Panther-police conflict that inevitably followed played directly into the narrative that had been established: that the party was a provocative, dangerous organization.

What Did The Black Panthers Do?

• Although created as a response to police brutality, the Black Panther Party quickly expanded to advocate for other social reforms:

  • Local chapters of the Panthers, often led by women, focused attention on community “survival programs.”

  • A free breakfast program for 20,000 children each day as well as a free food program for families and the elderly.

  • They sponsored schools, legal aid offices, clothing distribution, local transportation, and health clinics and sickle-cell testing centers.

  • They created Freedom Schools in nine cities including the noteworthy Oakland Community School.

• They practiced copwatching, observing and documenting police activity in Black communities. They often did this with loaded firearms because they advocated for armed self defense. The BPP rejected nonviolence as both a tactic and a philosophy, emphasizing instead the importance of physical survival to the continuing struggle for civil and human rights.

Prominent Members

• Huey P. Newton

• Bobby Seale

• Angela Davis

• Fred Hampton

• Stokely Carmichael/ Kwame Ture

• Elaine Brown

How Were They Destroyed?

• The Mulford Act of 1967 in California was a state-level initiative that prohibited the open carry of loaded firearms in public spaces as a direct response to the BPP. The Black Panther Party sparked fear among policymakers, who translated these anxieties into legislation designed to undermine this social activism. Because the BPP relied on strategies (like having firearms) that were not widely used by mainstream civil rights activists, the group faced new forms of legal repression. Policymakers successfully employed gun control legislation to undercut the BPP. By criminalizing the BPP’s use of weapons on California streets, the Mulford Act weakened the BPP and provided opportunities to show them breaking the law.

• In 1969, COINTELPRO (a branch of the FBI aimed at surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting domestic American political organizations) targeted the Panthers for elimination — shown in various documents.

• FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, who deemed the Black Panther Party a threat to American security, launched a counterintelligence attack against the group, which included infiltrators and deadly raids. By the time the group was dismantled in the mid-1970s, 28 members were dead. 750 Panthers were imprisoned. Systematically, the local and federal authorities dismantled the organization.

• Read FBI director J. Edgar Hoover’s statement from May 15, 1969 calling “to neutralize the BPP and destroy what it stands for.’

Today, American children learn a false and warped history of The Black Panther Party. Teachers’ Curriculum Institute’s textbook History Alive! The United States Through Modern Times states: “Black Power groups formed that embraced militant strategies and the use of violence. Organizations such as the Black Panthers rejected all things white and talked of building a separate black nation.” Holt McDougal’s textbook The Americans reads: “Huey Newton and Bobby Seale founded a political party known as the Black Panthers to fight police brutality in the ghetto.” This same textbook then says, “Public support for the Civil Rights Movement declined because some whites were frightened by the urban riots and the Black Panthers.”

While there is so much more to unpack about The Black Panther Party and the legacies of some of its most prominent members, I hope this newsletter clarified a lot of omitted history. In a time when critical race theory is under attack, it becomes crystal clear how much has been warped by the media — from news channels to text books — and how much more we need the truth.

See ya next week!

“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for, we are the change we seek” — With love and light, Taylor Rae

Stereotypes: 6

Hi Friends!
Welcome to Issue 36 of this newsletter! It’s the sixth week of our Stereotypes series, and this week we focus on the Jewish community. I grew up in a predominantly white, catholic community, and while I had one or two classmates over the years who were Jewish, I never knew anything about Judaism until I went to college, where two of my roommates were Jewish along with many of my classmates. While I had not encountered many Jewish people in my childhood, I still had a lot of ideas about what they might be like—stereotypes—that I learned from television or pop culture or the things I would overhear classmates or teachers say. This is how stereotypes manifest in our subconscious, most often not based in our lived experiences, but on the caricatures we see in the media. Today, about 61% of American adults agree with at least one or more classic anti-Semitic canards, while 1 in 5 believe Jewish-Americans “still talk too much about what happened to them in the Holocaust.” Today, we will continue to unpack these stereotypes while understanding the history and background that’s created these caricatures of the Jewish community in America.

Key Terms

Jewish: Any person whose religion is Judaism. In the broader sense of the term, a Jew is any person belonging to the worldwide group that constitutes, through descent or conversion, a continuation of the ancient Jewish people, who were themselves descendants of the Hebrews of the Bible (Old Testament).

Anti-Semitism: Anti-Semitism is hostility toward or discrimination against Jews as a religious or racial group. The term anti-Semitism was coined in 1879 by the German agitator Wilhelm Marr to designate the anti-Jewish campaigns under way in central Europe at that time. Although the term now has wide currency, it is a misnomer, since it implies a discrimination against all Semites. Arabs and other peoples are also Semites, and yet they are not the targets of anti-Semitism as it is usually understood. Nazi anti-Semitism culminated in the Holocaust.

Zionism: Zionism is a religious and political effort that brought thousands of Jews from around the world back to their ancient homeland in the Middle East and reestablished Israel as the central location for Jewish identity. While some critics call Zionism an aggressive and discriminatory ideology, the Zionist movement has successfully established a Jewish homeland in the nation of Israel.

“Jewface”: “Jewface” is a term that contemporary audiences are unlikely to recognize, aside from its obvious connection to the term “blackface.” It refers to the vaudeville mainstay of the stage Jew, a Yiddish-speaking, large-nosed, bearded caricature, often played by a non-Jewish actor, that sprang into popular circulation after large numbers of Eastern European Jews began immigrating to the United States in the 1880s. Although such a portrayal would provoke outrage from Jews and non-Jews alike in America today, reactions in the turn-of-the-century Jewish community were mixed. Read more about it and Eddy Portnoy, curator of the new exhibit “Jewface: Yiddish Dialect Songs of Tin Pan Alley” at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.

Let’s Get Into It

As with every group we have discussed so far, no one group is a monolith. All people have complex backgrounds, beliefs and feelings. But what we are dissecting today are un-truths that you may subconsciously be believing. These archetypes in all communities are offensive because they reduce real people to characters. Let’s dive in and describe some of the most believed stereotypes of the Jewish community in America.

The Greedy, Wealthy Moneylender: One of the most prominent and persistent stereotypes about Jews is that they are greedy and avaricious. They are seen both as relentless in the pursuit of wealth while also as stingy misers. They are imagined to exert control over the world’s financial systems, but are also accused of regularly cheating friends and neighbors. The stereotype of Jewish greed dates back to the Middle Ages. Jews typically had restrictions placed on their economic activity. Sometimes the only option available to earn a living in such circumstances was through high-interest crediting and while Christians were prohibited from moneylending, they often recruited Jews to do this work. This made it easy for leaders to position Jews as a scapegoat and the cause of the common people’s financial woes. Characters like Shylock in The Merchant of Venice reflect this attitude towards Jews being greedy and immoral. Eventually this stereotype worked its way into modern vernacular: “To Jew someone down” became a common expression meaning to bargain for a lower price.

The Jewish Mother: The Jewish Mother is depicted as a “middle-aged woman with a nasal New York accent, who either sweats over a steaming pot of matzah balls while screaming at her kids from across the house. Or, in an updated version, she sits poolside in Florida, jangling her diamonds and guilt-tripping her grown children into calling her more often. She is sacrificing yet demanding, manipulative and tyrannical, devoted and ever-present. She loves her children fiercely, but man, does she nag.” Her predecessor, the Yiddishe Mama, carried little of the negative cultural weight of the Jewish Mother and was celebrated at the turn of the 20th century. The Yiddishe Mama was a sentimentalized figure, a good mother and homemaker, known for her strength and creativity, entrepreneurialism and hard work, domestic miracles and moral force. The Yiddishe Mama reminded Jews of the Old World and was synonymous with nostalgia and longing. But while the Yiddishe Mama and her selfless child-rearing contributed to the success and upward mobility of the American Jewish family, the Jewish mother stereotype became warped as many American Jews rose economically and socially — she was now represented as entitled and overbearing, showy and loud, she became the scapegoat for anxieties around Jewish assimilation and by mid-century, the Jewish mother was primarily identified by negative characteristics, tinged with self-hatred and misogyny.

The JAP (Jewish American Princess): The archetype was forged in the mid-1950s, in concert with the Jewish-American middle-class ascent. The JAP is neither Jewish nor American alone. She makes herself known where these identities collide. As a philosophy, JAP style prioritizes grooming, trepidatious trendiness, and comfort. In any given season, the look is drawn from mainstream fashion trends. “She buys in multiples (almost hysterically in multiples),” wrote Julie Baumgold in a 1971 New York magazine op-ed. “She has safe tastes, choosing an item like shorts when it is peaking.” JAP style is less concerned with capital-F fashion than it is with simply fitting in. JAP is rarely used outside the Jewish world, it is far too acute to be relevant in places where people don’t know many actual Jews. While the Jewish Mother stereotype was designed to absorb the stigmas of the old world, the JAP was designed to absorb the stigmas of the new world. “The JAP was a woman who had overshot the mark, piling on the trappings of the stable middle class like so many diamond tennis bracelets.”

The Jewish Community in Today’s Media

• The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which tracks incidents of anti-Jewish violence and bias, says they saw a 75% increase in anti-Semitism reports to the agency's 25 regional offices after the most recent Israeli-Palestinian conflict. You can read my previous newsletter on the conflict here.

• While depictions of Jewish people in the media have improved — with shows like “Unorthodox,” “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and “Shtisel” all focusing their attention on Jewish characters making their way through the world, often through a positive lens — there are still displays of these stereotypes shown.

I’ve heard my Jewish friends say they often feel excluded from conversations about discrimination and prejudice in America. That antisemitism is often seen as something separate from the discrimination other marginalized folks encounter. The history of Jews being stigmatized, stripped of their rights, forced into ghettos as early as 1516 Venice, banished from cities and towns, murdered and ostracized is overwhelming. While Jewish Americans make the highest income of all religious groups in America, these stereotypes of greed and avarice are simply not true, and make it easy to ignore the historical discrimination of Jewish people around the world. As with all of these newsletters, take some time to reflect on any implicit biases you may be harboring and continue to learn more.

Next week, I’m talking about the real history of the Black Panther Party and I am EXCITED about this one. See ya there!

“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for, we are the change we seek” — With love and light, Taylor Rae

The 4th of July

“What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. ”

— Frederick Douglass, July 5, 1852

Hi Friends!
Welcome to Issue 35 of this newsletter! Today we are talking about The 4th of July. We’ve learned from elementary school through adulthood that this is a holiday meant to celebrate liberty and freedom, but who did the Founding Fathers seek to celebrate when they signed the Declaration of Independence? Whose freedom was secured when 41 out of the 56 men who signed that document owned slaves? Let’s get into it.

Let’s Get Into It

The 4th of July commemorates the passage of the Declaration of Independence by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776.

• From 1776 to the present day, July 4th has been celebrated as the “birth of American independence”.

• Important Dates to Remember:

  • The end of slavery: January 31, 1865 (The 13th Amendment)

  • The right to vote for women: August 26, 1920 (The 19th Amendment)

  • The right to vote for non-white Americans: May 26, 1965 (Voting Rights Act of 1965)

  • The end of Jim Crow South: 1960s

  • The legalization of same-sex marriage: June 26, 2015 (Obergefell v. Hodges)

• In 1776, who’s independence was being celebrated?

  • Not enslaved Americans (86 years until the end of slavery).

  • Not women (144 years until women will have the right to vote).

  • Not people of color (189 years until the Voting Rights Act).

  • Not Black Americans (about 189 years until the end of Jim Crow Laws).

  • Not gay or queer Americans (239 years until same sex marriage).

  • And still today we wait for so much more equality for the majority of Americans — POC, Indigenous, Black, Queer, Trans* Americans and so many others.

• In 1852 (13 years before the end of slavery), Fredrick Douglas delivered one of his most famous speeches, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” Watch his descendants recite some of his most poignant lines.

As you barbecue and ignite fireworks this 4th of July, remember that many still wait for the promise of liberty and justice. That freedom has yet to be granted to all.

Pride Month

Hi Friends!
Welcome to Issue 34 of this newsletter! Today we are focusing on LGBTQ+ Pride Month, which is celebrated in June throughout the United States. Black queer and trans* women have always been at the forefront of LGBTQ+ activism, and we remember the large role they played during The Stonewall Riots of 1969, commemorated every Pride. Let’s review some key terminology, check out a brief history of gay rights in America, and then close with some additional resources and activists to continue to learn from. Let’s get into it.

Key Terms

Gender: Gender refers to the socially constructed characteristics of women and men, such as norms, roles, and relationships of and between groups of women and men. It varies from society to society and can be changed.

Sex: “Sex” tends to relate to biological differences. For instance, male and female genitalia, both internal and external and the levels and types of hormones present in male and female bodies.

Sexual Orientation: An inherent or immutable enduring emotional, romantic or sexual attraction to other people.

Gender Identity: One’s innermost concept of self as male, female, a blend of both or neither – how individuals perceive themselves and what they call themselves. One's gender identity can be the same or different from their sex assigned at birth.

Pronouns: Pronouns are words that refer to either the people talking (like you or I) or someone or something that is being talked about (like she, they, and this). Gender pronouns (like he or them) specifically refer to people that you are talking about. Examples: she/her, he/him, they/them, ze/hir.

Queer: An umbrella term to describe individuals who don’t identify as straight and/or cisgender.

Trans*: An umbrella term covering a range of identities that transgress socially-defined gender norms. Trans with an asterisk is often used in written forms (not spoken) to indicate that you are referring to the larger group nature of the term, and specifically including non-binary identities, as well as transgender men (transmen) and transgender women (transwomen).

Gender Non Conforming: A gender descriptor that indicates a non-traditional gender expression or identity. A gender identity label that indicates a person who identifies outside of the gender binary.

Cisgender: A gender description for when someone’s sex assigned at birth and gender identity correspond to their gender identity.  

Non Binary: Noting or relating to a person with a gender identity or sexual orientation that does not fit into the male/female or heterosexual/gay divisions.

Let’s Get Into It

A Brief History

• In 1779, Thomas Jefferson proposes Virginia law to make sodomy punishable by mutilation rather than death. Bill 64 stated: “if a man, by castration, if a woman, by cutting thro' the cartilage of her nose a hole of one half inch diameter at the least.”

• The Harlem Renaissance was from 1917 to 1935. Historians have stated that the renaissance was “as gay as it was black.” Some of the lesbian, gay or bisexual people of this movement included writers and poets such as Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen and Zora Neale Hurston; Professor Alain Locke; music critic and photographer Carl Van Vechten, and entertainers Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Ethel Waters and Gladys Bentley.

• In 1924, Henry Gerber, a German immigrant, founded in Chicago the Society for Human Rights, the first documented gay rights organization in the United States. Soon after its founding, the society disbands due to political pressure and frequent police raids.

• In 1950, a Senate report titled "Employment of Homosexuals and Other Sex Perverts in Government" is distributed to members of Congress. The report states since “homosexuality is a mental illness, homosexuals constitute security risks" to the nation because "those who engage in overt acts of perversion lack the emotional stability of normal persons." More than 4,380 gay men and women had been discharged from the military and around 500 fired from their jobs with the government.

• In April of 1952 the American Psychiatric Association lists “homosexuality” as a sociopathic personality disturbance. That same year Christine Jorgensen became one of the most famous transgender people when she underwent gender affirming surgery and went on to a successful career in show business.

• On April 27, 1953 President Dwight Eisenhower signs Executive Order 10450, banning gay people from working for the federal government or any of its private contractors.

• On January 1, 1962 Illinois repeals its sodomy laws, becoming the first U.S. state to decriminalize homosexuality.

• On April 21, 1966 Members of the Mattachine Society stage a "sip-in" at the Julius Bar in Greenwich Village, where the New York Liquor Authority prohibits serving gay patrons in bars on the basis that homosexuals are "disorderly." The New York City Commission on Human Rights declares that homosexuals have the right to be served.

• A few years later, in 1969 were The Stonewall Riots. The Stonewall Inn was a gay bar in Greenwich Village in New York City. In response to an unprovoked police raid on an early Saturday morning, over 400 people, including gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and straight people protested their treatment and pushed the police away from the area. Some level of rioting continued over the next six nights, which closed the Stonewall Inn. The Stonewall Riots became a pivotal, defining moment for gay rights. Key people at the riots who went on to tell their stories were: Sylvia Rivera, Martha P. Johnson, Dick Leitsch, Seymore Pine and Craig Rodwell.

• In 1970, at the one-year anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, New York City community members marched through local streets in commemoration of the event. Named the Christopher Street Liberation Day, the march is now considered the country’s first gay pride parade.

• In 1977, the New York Supreme Court ruled that transgender woman Renée Richards could play at the United States Open tennis tournament as a woman.

• On November 8, 1977 Harvey Milk wins a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and is responsible for introducing a gay rights ordinance protecting gays and lesbians from being fired from their jobs. Milk asked Gilbert Baker, an artist and gay rights activist, to create an emblem that represents the movement and would be seen as a symbol of pride. Baker designed and stitched together the first rainbow flag, which he unveiled at a pride parade in 1978.

• In 1981, The New York Times prints the first story of a rare pneumonia and skin cancer found in 41 gay men in New York and California. The CDC initially refers to the disease as GRID, Gay Related Immune Deficiency Disorder. When the symptoms are found outside the gay community, Bruce Voeller, biologist and founder of the National Gay Task Force, successfully lobbies to change the name of the disease to AIDS.

• In 1992, Bill Clinton, during his campaign to become president, promised he would lift the ban against gays in the military. But after failing to garner enough support for such an open policy, President Clinton in 1993 passed the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) policy, which allowed gay men and women to serve in the military as long as they kept their sexuality a secret. Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was officially repealed on September 20, 2011.

• September 21, 1996, President Clinton signs the Defense of Marriage Act into law. The law defines marriage as a legal union between one man and one woman and that no state is required to recognize a same-sex marriage from out of state.

• In 2004, Massachusetts becomes the first state to legalize gay marriage. The court finds the prohibition of gay marriage unconstitutional because it denies dignity and equality of all individuals.

• On November 4, 2008, California voters approved Proposition 8, making same-sex marriage in California illegal.

• In 2009, The Matthew Shepard Act is passed by Congress and signed into law by President Obama on October 28th. The measure expands the 1969 U.S. Federal Hate Crime Law to include crimes motivated by a victim's actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability.

• On June 26, 2015, with a 5-4 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, the U.S. Supreme Court declares same-sex marriage legal in all 50 states.

• In 2016, the U.S. military lifted its ban on transgender people serving openly, a month after Eric Fanning became secretary of the Army and the first openly gay secretary of a U.S. military branch. In March 2018, Donald Trump announced a new transgender policy for the military that again banned most transgender people from military service. On January 25, 2021—his sixth day in office—President Biden signed an executive order overturning this ban.

• In 2021, Florida, South Dakota, Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee, West Virginia, Montana and Alabama have enacted anti-trans sports bans. Under the law, public secondary school and college sports teams are required to be designated based on "biological sex," thus prohibiting trans women and girls from participating on women's athletic teams.

• Today, universal workplace anti-discrimination laws for LGBTQ+ Americans is still lacking. Gay rights proponents must also content with an increasing number of “religious liberty” state laws, which allow business to deny service to LGBTQ+ individuals due to religious beliefs, as well as “bathroom laws” that prevent trans* individuals from using public bathrooms that don’t correspond to their assigned sex at birth.

Pride Month

• Pride month commemorates The Stonewall Riots in June of 1969. It is an entire month dedicated to the uplifting of LGBTQ+ voices, celebration of LGBTQ+ culture and the support of LGBTQ+ rights.

• In the rainbow pride flag, each color has a meaning. Red is symbolic of life, orange is symbolic of spirit, yellow is sunshine, green is nature, blue represents harmony and purple is spirit. In 2021, the flag has was altered in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter protests, including black to represent diversity, brown to represent inclusivity and light blue and pink, the colors of the trans pride flag, along with t purple circle to represent the intersex community.

• Pride was made possible through the sacrifices of Black queer and trans women like Marsha P. Johnson who paved the way and continue to be the most vulnerable, most targeted, and most at risk in the community.

Resources

• Subscribe To The 'Them" Newsletter

• ACLU Petition For The Equality Act

• Alok - Gender Non-Conforming Activist

• 10 Black Trans* Activists You Should Know

The best Pride Month is an intersectional Pride Month. That means whether someone is “out” or not, queer, gay, non-binary, intersex, gender non-conforming, or any other identity, Pride is still for them. Happy Pride to all of my queer siblings, see ya next time!

“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for, we are the change we seek” — With love and light, Taylor Rae

Juneteenth

Hi Friends!
Welcome to Issue 33 of this newsletter! Today we are focusing on Juneteenth, which just became national holiday this week. Juneteenth is an incredibly meaningful moment because enslaved people longed for freedom for generations, and Juneteenth represents that liberation. While many Black Americans have celebrated Juneteenth for their entire lifetime, there are definitely those that learned about this holiday later in life because it isn’t discussed in most curriculums and was not a national holiday. For most white Americans, Juneteenth is brand new. In this newsletter, I’ll discuss the history of Juneteenth, and encourage you to watch the clip below. I also want to encourage you to celebrate this holiday appropriately. This holiday may not be for you, and that’s okay. While it was so easy to pass it through senate and get Juneteenth approved on a national scale, it continues to be difficult for Black people to get their basic freedoms guaranteed. This Juneteenth is a great time to consider how you, as an ally, can help to achieve that. Let’s get into it!

Let’s Get Into It

A Brief History

• Juneteenth marks the day when federal troops arrived in Galveston, Texas in 1865 to take control and ensure that all enslaved people be freed.

• The Emancipation Proclamation was signed, after a very bloody civil war, in 1862 (over two years prior), making chattel slavery illegal, but the United States was still in a vulnerable position, with the south having succeeded, and President Lincoln’s policies had to be enforced through federal soldiers.

• General Order No.3 lead to 4 million newly freed Black Americans and they found themselves a very hostile, racist society.

“The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor.” - General Order No.3

• The military stepped in to ensure Black Americans received food, medical care and were protected from violence. When they left the south, it was a signal to southerners that the Federal Government would not protect the rights of Black people. Black folks were lynched and brutalized with impunity. There is still no anti-lynching law in America today.

• There has always been constant, random, racist violence inflicted on Black people in this country and it continues today.

• Juneteenth honors the end of slavery while also acknowledging that Black Americans continue to be marginalized and disenfranchised

• This year, the senate unanimously passed a bill making Juneteenth a national holiday.

Juneteenth

• As an ally to the Black community, Juneteenth should be a moment of reflection, contemplation, un-learning and reevaluating. Only 156 years ago troops marched into Texas. Still today, Black Americans are policed, villainized, disenfranchised and subjected to violence. Still today, schools around our nation are banned from teaching critical race theory. Still today, police benefit from qualified immunity, the same police who began as slave catchers. And today, jails will be closed on Juneteenth to celebrate its first year as a national holiday, as an overwhelming number of Black bodies sit in cages. So if this Juneteenth you have the day off of work, use it to amplify this message, to learn this history, to reflect on how a system that exploits Black humans has built your America.

• As for my Black siblings this Juneteenth, you know what to do. Whatever you want. Whether that means kicking back at a family BBQ or taking a nap. It might mean showing up for a full day of work like you always do—since we know Black workers make up the largest percentage of front-line workers in America and will most likely not receive a day off on this national holiday. Feel however you want to feel, and do whatever you need to do this Juneteenth.

Next week, we wrap up June chatting about Pride Month and then circle back to our series on Stereotypes. I’ll see you there!

“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for, we are the change we seek” — With love and light, Taylor Rae

Stereotypes: 5

Hi Friends!
Welcome to Issue 32 of this newsletter! It’s the fifth week of our Stereotypes series, and this week we focus on the Indigenous or Native community. Constantly, we see the oversimplification of Indigenous cultures into one homogenous group. The stereotyping of American Indians must be understood in the context of history which includes conquest, forced displacement, and organized efforts to eradicate native cultures. Though there are indigenous cultures across the globe from Inuit people to First Nations people to Aboriginals, today we’re going to keep the focus on the USA. Let’s get into it!

Key Terms

American Indian, Native, Native American, Indigenous American: All of these terms are considered acceptable. In the United States, Native American has been widely used but is falling out of favor with some groups, and the terms American Indian or Indigenous American are preferred by many Native people. The consensus, however, is that whenever possible, Native people prefer to be called by their specific tribal name. All global terminology must be used with an awareness of the stereotype that "Indians" are a single people, when in fact there are hundreds of individual ethnic groups, who are all native to the Americas. This type of awareness is obvious when European Americans refer to Europeans with an understanding that there are some similarities, but many differences between the peoples of an entire continent.

Let’s Get Into It

Check out my past newsletter on Mental Health in the Indigenous Community for more history and background.

First and foremost, there are many historical misconceptions when it comes to Natives. From the earliest period of European colonization, images of Natives found expression in drawings, engravings, portraiture, political prints, maps and cartouches, tobacconist figures, weather vanes, coins and medals, and books and prints, and these depictions have shaped a lot of the public’s perception of them. There is the myth that they are nearly extinct, when there are 6.79 million in the United States as of 2021, making up over 2% of the population. From the story of Pocahontas to, the tale of the first Thanksgiving, to the purchase of Manhattan by European settlers—many of the most common tales that we are taught in school and showed in pop culture are lies. We also almost always see Natives in historical settings, as if they don’t continue to live and change today, but are just fixtures of the past. Let’s dive into some of the most common stereotypes.

The Drunk: Few images of Native peoples have been as damaging as the trope of the “drunken Indian”. It has been used to support the claims of Indian inferiority that have resulted in loss of culture, land, and sovereignty. The drunken Indian male is often seen as morally deficient because of his inability to control himself, making him a menace to society. Or he has become alcoholic because of his tragic inability to adjust to the modern world and he is pitied. In contrast to enduring stories about extraordinarily high rates of alcohol misuse among Native Americans, University of Arizona researchers have found that Native Americans’ binge and heavy drinking rates actually match those of whites. The groups differed regarding abstinence: Native Americans were more likely to abstain from alcohol use.

The Warrior: American Indians are represented as barbarous, with tomahawk and scalping knife in hand while European Americans are depicted as innocent victims of savagery. Meanwhile, it was the Europeans who decimated their lands, infected them with diseases, commited genocide, captured their children and tried to eradicate Native culture completely. William “Buffalo Bill” Cody and other showmen, including Plains Indians, drew huge audiences. These shows, and related influences, inspired filmmakers to produce Westerns depicting hordes of Natives attacking European settlers.

Braves/ Chiefs: We most commonly hear these names and see these symbols as mascots. Much like blackface, such inventions and imaginings, meant to represent a racial other, tell us much more about European Americans than they do about Natives. Teams with “Indian” names come with a variety of practices, among them the adoption of “red-face” mascots costumed as Plains Indians, ersatz Indian dances and rituals at halftime, face paint and feathered headdresses, and the antics of war whooping, tomahawk chopping fans. See an updated list on current teams with Native mascots here. There are still hundreds.

The Indian Princess: The term "princess" was often mistakenly applied to the daughters of tribal chiefs or other community leaders by early American colonists who mistakenly believed that Indigenous people shared the European system of royalty. Frequently, the "Indian Princess" stereotype is paired with the "Pocahontas theme" in which the princess offers herself to a captive Christian knight, a prisoner of her father, and after rescuing him, she is converted to Christianity and live with him in his native land. In this way, Native women are objectified and sexualized.This objectification of Indigenous women has lead to a human rights crisis known as Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW). Statistics show that Indigenous women and girls are ten times more likely to be murdered than any other ethnicity.

The Costume: “While minstrel shows have long been criticized as racist, American children are still socialized into playing Indian. Columbus Day celebrations, Halloween costumes and Thanksgiving reenactments stereotype Indigenous Peoples as one big distorted culture. We are relegated to racist stereotypes and cultural caricatures.”

In a study by Children NOW, a child advocacy organization examining children’s perceptions of race and class in the media, Native youngsters said they see themselves as “poor,” “drunk,” “living on reservations,” and “an invisible race.” These stereotypes are seen in everything from cartoons to sporting events, and it’s no wonder why Indigenous people feel invisible, especially when it is America’s best interest to do so.

Next week, I’m celebrating one year of having this newsletter! The following I’ll be talking about Juneteenth, and the last week of June I’ll write about LGBTQ+ Pride Month and “rainbow washing”. We’ll resume the stereotype series with a focus on the stereotyping of the Jewish community in July. I’ll see you there!

“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for, we are the change we seek” — With love and light, Taylor Rae

Stereotypes: 4

Hi Friends!
Welcome to Issue 31 of this newsletter! It’s the fourth week of our Stereotypes series, and this week we focus on the Asian-American community. My partner Richard—who is Chinese, Korean and Puerto Rican—and I are a part of the 3% of the US population that are in an interracial couple comprised of a predominantly Asian male and Hispanic female, according to Pew Research. In creating this newsletter, as I did when creating my newsletter about Anti Asian Violence During COVID, I asked him about his experiences in America as someone who identifies and exists in this society as an Asian man. From fetishization to emasculation to feeling like a perpetual outsider, his experiences are similar to those of many Asian-Americans. If you’re looking for more history and background, definitely read this past newsletter, today we’ll be breaking down some specific stereotypes and connecting it to the past. Let’s get into it!

Key Terms

Xenophobia: The fear or hatred of that which is perceived to be foreign or strange. It is an expression of perceived conflict between an ingroup and an outgroup and may manifest in suspicion by the one of the other's activities, a desire to eliminate their presence, and fear of losing national, ethnic or racial identity.

Chinese Exclusion Act: In the spring of 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed by Congress and signed by President Chester A. Arthur. This act provided an absolute 10-year moratorium on Chinese labor immigration. For the first time, Federal law proscribed entry of an ethnic working group on the premise that it endangered the good order of certain localities.

Japanese Internment Camps: These were established during World War II by President Franklin Roosevelt through his Executive Order 9066. From 1942 to 1945, it was the policy of the U.S. government that people of Japanese descent would be interred in isolated camps. Enacted in reaction to Pearl Harbor and the ensuing war, the Japanese internment camps are now considered one of the most atrocious violations of American civil rights in the 20th century.

Let’s Get Into It

For more on Yellow Peril, the Chinese Exclusion Act, Japanese Internment Camps and other background, read this newsletter first.

Asian Americans, who represent 6% of the US population, report less discrimination in employment, housing and criminal justice compared with other racial minorities in the United States (Discrimination in America, Harvard Opinion Research Program, 2018). But they often fall victim to a unique set of stereotypes—including the false belief that all Asian Americans are successful and well adapted. Let’s dive into the most common.

Model Minority: East Asians in the United States have been stereotyped as possessing positive traits such as being seen as being hardworking, industrious, studious, and intelligent people who have elevated their socioeconomic standing through merit, persistence, self-discipline and diligence. Between 1940 and 1970, Asian Americans not only surpassed African Americans in average household earnings, but they also closed the wage gap with whites. Hilger’s research suggests that Asian Americans started to earn more because their fellow Americans became less racist toward them. Embracing Asian Americans “provided a powerful means for the United States to proclaim itself a racial democracy and thereby credentialed to assume the leadership of the free world,” Ellen Wu writes in her book “The Color of Success”. Stories about Asian American success were turned into propaganda. By the 1960s, anxieties about the civil right movement caused white Americans to further invest in positive portrayals of Asian Americans. The image of the hard-working Asian became an extremely convenient way to deny the demands of African Americans. Both liberal and conservative politicians pumped up the image of Asian Americans as a way to shift the blame for Black poverty. This is the birth of the Model Minority stereotype.

Yellow Peril: The term “yellow peril” originated in the 1800s, when Chinese laborers were brought to the United States to replace emancipated Black communities as a cheap source of labor. Chinese laborers made less than their white counterparts, and also became victims of racist backlash from white workers who saw them as a threat to their livelihood. This fear led to the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the first law to restrict immigration based on race. Overall, Yellow Peril is the fear of the Asian man coming to America to take jobs away from the white population.

Forever Foreigner: The Forever Foreigner is constantly asked, “Where are you really from?” Asian characters are often portrayed as being unable to assimilate, speak English and create a sense of home in America. This idea helped lay the groundwork for Japanese internment during World War II, when Japanese American citizens were sent to detention camps solely on the basis of their ethnicity, due to suspicions that they were abetting the Japanese government in some way. In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Islamophobia toward Muslim Americans and prejudice toward South Asian Americans was similarly fueled by assumptions that people were not loyal to the United States because of their religion, ethnicity and external appearance.

ABG (Asian Baby Girl): Asian Baby Girls are seen as rebellious, replacing polite, studious cultural norms with being loud and taking up space; however, there are both negative and positive connotations for those that are self proclaimed ABGs. Birthed out of 90s club culture, it’s described here by NY locals as a reaction to Chinatown gangs being largely imprisoned, and the community that was left creating this subculture of Asian Baby Gangsters. Asian Baby Gangsters sprang up as a way to gain social capital, a familiar teenage defence mechanism to fit in and advance themselves within their communities. It’s taken on various characteristics since the 90s but is used frequently on TikTok and Instagram today as both a self proclaimed title, and a jab at an Asian girl, similar to the “Dumb Blonde” stereotype.

Effeminate Asian Man: As a way of minimizing the threat posed by Chinese men -- who were often portrayed as stealing white Americans' jobs and women -- Asians were characterized as passive, effeminate and weak. These stereotypes were further promoted in movies, where white actors like Mickey Rooney (Mr. Yunioshi in "Breakfast at Tiffany's") and Warner Oland (who played both Fu Manchu and the fictional detective Charlie Chan), used thick, stunted accents and exaggerated mannerisms to reinforce existing stereotypes, ridiculing or villainizing Asian men as a form of entertainment.

Dragon Lady: The dragon lady is a stereotype portraying East Asian women as domineering, deceitful, mysterious and sexually alluring creatures. The stereotype finds its history in the Yellow Peril movement and the Pace Act of 1875, which barred Asian women from entering the US. This not only branded the women as unwelcome, but also essentially a threat to white supremacy. Another view is that the dragon woman is someone who needs to be “civilized” for western culture. The U.S. military contributed to this conception of Asian women as hypersexualized. During the wars in the Philippines at the start of the 19th century, and during the mid-20th-century wars in Korea and Vietnam, servicemen took advantage of women who had turned to sex work in response to their lives being wrecked by war.

The Lotus Blossom: The Lotus Blossom Lady, also known as China Doll or Geisha Girl, is the very symbol of feminine Asian “flowers” – the complete opposite of the sexual Dragon Lady. The modest butterfly known as the Lotus Blossom Lady is demure, innocent, gentle, but most of all, obedient.Unlike the Dragon Lady who needs to be conquered, the gentle China Doll needs to be saved by the Western man, someone who can take care of her fragile, almost child-like self. Above all, she is a good girl, making her the perfect wife.

Like every community we have discussed thus far, the Asian-American community is complex, multifaceted and far from a monolith. Next week, let’s talk about stereotypes surrounding the Indigenous community in The United States. See ya there!

“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for, we are the change we seek” — With love and light, Taylor Rae

Israel and Palestine

Hi Friends!
Welcome to Issue 30 of this newsletter! Today I’m sharing resources in regard to the current conflicts between Israel and Palestine. In this moment, I want to be clear that it would be inappropriate for me to center myself and my opinions. My goal is to share resources and amplify those that know more than me in this area. Above all, my goal is to continue to encourage each and every person to actually take time to learn before you talk about a topic as if you have all of the information. An Instagram infographic doesn’t have all of the answers. A soundbite from the news doesn’t have all of the answers. Like all things, it’s going to take time, effort and some discomfort, to grapple with realities that are complex and nuanced. I will never be silent in the face of oppression, but I will also never jump on a bandwagon without doing my best to fully break down the historical, cultural, economic and political backdrop of a conflict. Do I feel like I have the clearest idea about what is transpiring in the Middle East? No. But I have a greater sense of understanding and I have some very clear tips on how you can do your best to be an ally. Let’s get into it!

Key Terms

Israel: The nation of Israel—with a population of more than 9 million people, most of them Jewish—has many important archaeological and religious sites considered sacred by Jews, Muslims and Christians alike, and a complex history with periods of peace and conflict.

Palestine: Palestinians, the Arab population that hails from the land Israel now controls, refer to the above mentioned territory as Palestine, and want to establish a state by that name on all or part of the same land. The history of Palestine has been marked by frequent political conflict and violent land seizures because of its importance to several major world religions, and because Palestine sits at a valuable geographic crossroads between Africa and Asia. The people of Palestine have a strong desire to create a free and independent state in this contested region of the world.

Gaza Strip: A piece of land located between Egypt and modern-day Israel.

Golan Heights: A rocky plateau between Syria and modern-day Israel.

West Bank: A territory that divides part of modern-day Israel and Jordan.

Jerusalem: Both Jews and Muslims consider the city of Jerusalem sacred. It contains the Temple Mount, which includes the holy sites al-Aqsa Mosque, the Western Wall, the Dome of the Rock and more.

Jewish: Any person whose religion is Judaism. In the broader sense of the term, a Jew is any person belonging to the worldwide group that constitutes, through descent or conversion, a continuation of the ancient Jewish people, who were themselves descendants of the Hebrews of the Bible (Old Testament).

Muslim: 98% of Palestinians identify as Sunni Muslims. The definition of Muslim varies depending on which criteria you use. Most textbooks give a definition based on practice of the “five pillars” of Islam, so that Muslims are those who give the profession of faith, pray five times a day, fast during Ramadan, give charity to the needy, and make the pilgrimage to Mecca at least once during their lifetimes.

Arab: Arab is an ethno-linguistic category, identifying people who speak the Arabic language as their mother tongue (or, in the case of immigrants, for example, whose parents or grandparents spoke Arabic as their native language). Arabic is a Semitic language, closely related to Hebrew and Aramaic. While Arabs speak the same language, there is enormous ethnic diversity among the spoken dialects.

Semitic: Relating to or denoting a family of languages that includes Hebrew, Arabic, and Aramaic and certain ancient languages such as Phoenician and Akkadian, constituting the main subgroup of the Afro-Asiatic family.

Anti-Semitism: Anti-Semitism is hostility toward or discrimination against Jews as a religious or racial group. The term anti-Semitism was coined in 1879 by the German agitator Wilhelm Marr to designate the anti-Jewish campaigns under way in central Europe at that time. Although the term now has wide currency, it is a misnomer, since it implies a discrimination against all Semites. Arabs and other peoples are also Semites, and yet they are not the targets of anti-Semitism as it is usually understood. Nazi anti-Semitism culminated in the Holocaust.

Hamas: The Palestinian militant group that rules Gaza.

Zionism: Zionism is a religious and political effort that brought thousands of Jews from around the world back to their ancient homeland in the Middle East and reestablished Israel as the central location for Jewish identity. While some critics call Zionism an aggressive and discriminatory ideology, the Zionist movement has successfully established a Jewish homeland in the nation of Israel.

Let’s Get Into It

This conflict is complex. Every group can explain why they feel that this land belongs to them and every group has historical, religious and emotional ties to that land. It’s not my place to say who is or isn’t deserving, but I think it’s everyone’s job to understand why folks feel the way they do. Nothing ever justifies bloodshed, displacement or violent. Period. But nonetheless, it is enacted every day around the world. A great place to start finding a solution is understanding the cause. Below is an outline of how I researched this topic. First, I went straight for a historical timeline to understand the background. Then, I checked out some lightly opinionated pieces. Then, I spent a lot of time reading some widely conflicting pieces to get a sense of various perspectives and personal opinions. Below are some of those resources.

Resources

• I started my research with these basic timelines of Israel and Palestine.

• This video from HISTORY is two years old, but breaks down how the Israel-Palestine conflict began in a relatively neutral way.

• I moved into some lightly opinionated pieces from NPR and VOX.

• Next, I read a wide range of articles from varied perspectives. Without an entire community of folks for me to interview and learn from personally, I felt like this was the best way for me to understand some conflicting, opposing and complex viewpoints. My goal was overall not to read anything that seemed like propaganda, but to read the most opinionated pieces I could find, within reason.

  • Many articles like this one from The New York Times describe an internal conflict for the young Jewish community in America being torn between their support of Israel or Palestine. “Many young American Jews are confronting the region’s longstanding strife in a very different context, with very different pressures, from their parents’ and grandparents’ generations.”

  • This article by The Anne Frank House discusses if all criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic. “Criticism of Israel or of the policies of the Israeli government is not automatically antisemitic. For example, anyone is free to reject or criticise the Israeli government's policy regarding the Palestinian territories. This happens in Israel, too…But it is increasingly difficult to have a proper discussion about 'Zionism' or a normal, critical debate about Israel.”

  • This article from Yahoo News talks about why “young left-leaning Americans are increasingly using social media to urge more support and aid for Palestinians, framing it as a human rights issue that echoes the antiracism movement from this past year.” It also talks about how “young people are also susceptible to peer pressure to post online about issues to prove that they are engaged.” One opinion in this article states: “On social media, nuanced topics like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are reduced to “shallow, facile” content rather than seriously explaining the issues.” Another states: “When we’re talking about Israeli violence against Palestinians, it’s not complex at all…Ultimately it’s a cause about total freedom, justice and equality for all people." This article attempts to share varying perspectives and is the most opinionated piece in this line up.

• These live updates from The New York Times seem to have the most current information, including the most recent cease fire.

What To Do Next

• If you say you’re taking this time to learn, actually learn something about the history of Israel and Palestine.

• Slow down the reposts and the likes and fact check what you’re posting. It might take more than one Google search, and that’s okay.

• This conflict isn’t the same as #BlackLivesMatter. Neither situation is the same as #StopAsianHate. Not every movement has the same social, historical, political and economic implications and there’s no reason to conflate them. Yes, there are similarities in various systems of oppression, but not all systems operate and exists in the same way.

• Whatever your opinion, continue to denounce violence, racism, anti-semitism and hatred of every kind, always.

Friends, this is where I am at thus far with my learning. Have something else to share or a better resource? Send me an email. This was a lot to learn and unravel in a weeks time and there are plenty of areas I’m not knowledgeable of just yet, so let me know what I missed! Next week, we bring it back to the series on Stereotypes. See ya there!

“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for, we are the change we seek” — With love and light, Taylor Rae

Stereotypes: 3

Hi Friends!
Welcome to Issue 29 of this newsletter! It’s the third week of our Stereotypes series, and this week we focus on the Latinx community. Do you know the difference between “Hispanic” and “Latino”? What about “Latino” and “Latinx”? Today we start out by unpacking these terms, then dive into some common stereotypes, archetypes and media depictions. While American pop culture confuses Puerto Ricans for Mexicans and Colombians for Brazilians, the Latinx community spans over 33 countries and 2 continents with various cultures, dialects, histories, religions and motivations for immigrating to America. Let’s get into it!

Key Terms

Hispanic: Hispanic refers to people who speak Spanish or who are descendants of those from Spanish-speaking countries. In other words, Hispanic refers to the language that a person speaks or that their ancestors spoke. For this reason, people who are Hispanic may vary in their race and also where they live or originate.

Latino/ Latina: Latino refers to geography: specifically, people from Latin America including Central America, South America, and the Caribbean. Like being Hispanic, being Latino says nothing about your race; Latinos may be White, Black, Indigenous, Asian, etc. A person who is Hispanic may also be Latino, but this is not always necessarily the case. For example, a person from Spain would be Hispanic but not Latino because Spain is a Spanish-speaking country but not a Latin American country.

Latinx: A gender-neutral or non-binary alternative to Latino or Latina. Only about 3% of the population it is meant to describe use this term.

Let’s Get Into It

The Latinx Community

• When we say “Latinos” or refer to the “Hispanic community”, who are we talking about? It’s multifaceted and a little complex, so let’s break it down:

  • While the terms Hispanic and Latino have existed for centuries, it wasn't until they were introduced into the United States Census that they became more popularized.

  • During the 1960s, Mexicans on the west coast and Puerto Ricans on the east coast experienced a lot of discrimination. The joining of these communities across the nation to address these issues led to a new perspective and a new method of categorization. The 1980 census was the first to include a question asking respondents if they identified as Spanish/Hispanic as part of their ethnicity. Respondents could also identify their race (e.g., White, Black, Asian, American Indian or Pacific Islander).

  • Remember, your race is largely based on how you phenotypically appear based on skin-color, features and hair (Black, White, Asian, American Indian, Pacific Islander) . Ethnicity divides people into smaller social groups based on characteristics like culture, ancestry, language, history or country of origin (Hispanic is the only one listed on the US census due to the lobbying mentioned above, but Italian, Irish, Swiss, Nigerian, Somalian, Dominican are all ethnicities too). Nationality refers to the country in which you are a legal resident.

  • I’ll use myself as an example: I am Black, Latina/Hispanic (specifically Puerto Rican and Dominican), American. I am both Hispanic—because my ancestors were colonized by Spain and speak Spanish—and Latina—because geographically my ancestry lies in the Caribbean.

  • Folks from Mexico, Central America, South America and the Caribbean may identify as Latinx, Hispanic, or both.

  • Unlike last week’s newsletter on the Black community, the Latinx community is comprised of a massive population from over 33 countries and 2 continents with different reasons for immigrating to the United States. This was a big pain point during the 2020 elections because the media continued to lump all communities from Mexico, Central and South America and the Caribbean together. These countries have different languages, histories, cultures, religions and traditions.

Common Archetypes

• Cholo: Historically the term was used by European colonizers to refer to full or mixed indigenous populations in South and Central America, but in the 1960s was reclaimed in the US by working-class Mexican Americans and the Chicano Power movement as a way to flip and empower a term that had historically been used to denigrate them. Eventually, this term became synonymous in American culture with drugs, gangs, poverty and illegal activity and gained a negative connotation.

• Illegal Alien: Latinos are frequently seen as the "others" in the US despite their large percentage of the population. The otherness becomes a lens in which to view them as foreign or not being American. That mentality creates the illegal stereotype and the concept of job stealing. Donald Trump’s constant racist rhetoric further fueled this idea.

• Fiery/Spicy/Fiesta Latina: Most Latina’s portrayed in the media are sexy, sensual and emotional. In 1922, Mexico called for an embargo on American films because Mexicans were portrayed so badly. By 1933, this started to shift when President Roosevelt created The Good Neighbor Policy and Mexicans started being portrayed differently, though not necessarily more accurately. One of the most popular icons that emerged from this policy was the Brazilian dancer, Carmen Miranda. She was so much the symbol of Latin culture that the United Fruit Company created Chiquita Banana in her likeness to sell their “extotic” and “tropical” fruit. Today we see this image continue of Latina women being portrayed as light-skinned with long wavy hair, hourglass figures, accented voices and explosive personalities.

Racial Bias in the Media

• Latino Americans represent approximately 18% of the US population but only 0.6 to 6.5% of all primetime program characters and 1% of television families.

• Research shows that on English-language news media networks, during the 1990s, negative attitudes started to arise against Hispanics-and-Latinos. This began after voters approved California Proposition 187 in 1994. Proposition 187 was a 1994 ballot initiative to establish a California-run citizenship screening system and prohibit illegal aliens from using non-emergency health care, public education, and other services in the state. The proposition began a spur of negative images and claims associated with Hispanics and Latinos in the US.

• In a study that the National Hispanic Media Coalition did a study with 900 non-Latinos across the United States and found:

  • 71% see Latinos in criminal or gang member roles very often or sometimes

  • 64% frequently see Latinos as gardeners

  • 47% hardly ever see Latino attorneys or judges on tv or film

  • 38-40% agree Latinos have too many kids

  • 36-44% agree Latinos take jobs from Americans

  • 42-48% agree Latinos refuse to learn English

  • Nearly half (49%) think Latinos are welfare recipients

The Latinx community is multifaceted and it’s relationship with America is complex and varied. This community has been reduced to one homogenous wash of housekeepers, gardeners, sexy women, gangsters and illegal aliens. While some Latinos are gardeners and maids—like any other ethnic group has gardeners and maids—they are also human beings, parents, friends, citizens of their communities. Next week we will dive into Asian stereotypes. See ya there.

“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for, we are the change we seek” — With love and light, Taylor Rae

Stereotypes: 2

Hi Friends!
Welcome to Issue 28 of this newsletter! Today we continue the conversation on Stereotypes more specifically, we will talk about stereotypes of the Black community. From portrayals in pop culture to depictions in newspapers, the way in which Black Americans are portrayed affects the way in which society at large views them. Let’s break down depictions originating during slavery, talk through some of the first portrayals of Black folks in pop culture and culminate with the ways Black people are described and represented in the news in connection to crime. There’s a lot to unpack here, and a lot more to learn outside of this newsletter. Let’s get into it!

Let’s Get Into It

Many of the Black characters we see in movies, books and TV shows are derived from old stereotypes founded during slavery and exaggerated through minstrel shows, where white men wore blackface and created caricatures of Black human beings. Let’s talk about some of these stereotypes, and as you read about them, think about how familiar some of these are. They’re often seen in pop culture today, and continue to reaffirm to society that they are accurate and realistic representations of Black people. Let’s unpack some of these concepts.

Archetypes Derived From Chattel Slavery

• The Mammy figure represents Black women as mothers, caregivers, selfless servants and trustworthy nurturers. This figure depicted house slaves as overweight, dark-skinned and middle-aged. The Mammy was the right hand to the white mistress and loved by all. Historians believe this idea was created to discredit the very real narrative that most house slaves were young and lightskin and the frequent victims of rape by their masters. Mammy was created to desexualize Black women in the home. The Mammy caricature implied that Black women were only fit to be domestic workers; thus, the stereotype became a rationalization for economic discrimination. During slavery only the very wealthy could afford to purchase Black women and use them as house servants, but during Jim Crow even middle class white women could hire Black domestic workers. With this fictionalized women portrayed in pop culture and talked about for generations, white folks sought to create her in their homes. But unlike Aunt Jemima or Aunt Chloe, these were real Black women, denied opportunities for economic freedom, bearing slavery by another name.

• The Uncle Tom stereotype derives from the book Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which was a pop culture depiction of an already established caricature of the time. Uncle Tom represents a Black man who is simple-minded and compliant but most essentially interested in the welfare of whites over that of other Blacks. Uncle Tom is often old, physically weak, psychologically dependent on whites for approval. White folks in the antebellum south upheld this figure as a loyal, religious, subservient character who, like The Mammy, was happy as slave and loved his master. During Black Lives Matter rallies, Black protestors called Black police officers Uncle Tom over riot shields and batons.

• The Brute portrays Black men as innately savage, animalistic, destructive, and criminal -- deserving punishment, maybe death. Black Brutes are depicted as predators who target helpless victims, especially white women. Historically, proponents of slavery created and promoted images of Black folks that justified slavery and soothed white consciences, depicting Black people as docile, childlike, groveling, ignorant or harmless. More importantly, slaves were rarely depicted as Brutes because that portrayal might have become a self-fulfilling prophecy and slave owners wanted everyone to stay as calm and small as possible. During the Radical Reconstruction period (1867-1877), many white writers argued that without slavery -- which supposedly suppressed their animalistic tendencies -- Blacks were reverting to criminal savagery, and this is where the Brute stereotype begins. At the beginning of the twentieth century, much of the virulent, anti-black propaganda that found its way into scientific journals, local newspapers, and best-selling novels focused on the stereotype of the Black rapist. The claim that Black Brutes were, in epidemic numbers, raping white women became the public rationalization for the lynching of Black men.

• The Angry Black Women or Sapphire with masculine features and dark skin, the hypersexual light-skinned Jezebel with Eurocentric features, the disrespectful and dimwitted Coon and childlike and ignorant Sambo, are all violent attacks on Black character, intelligence and virtue. I encourage you to explore these depictions more deeply, but for today’s newsletter, I want to dive deeper into how some of the archetypes above have translated to pop culture today.

Depictions in Pop Culture

• Through this research I have been overwhelmed by the massive amount of stereotypes we see in modern pop culture. We see the crack head, pimp, drug dealer and prostitute, largely fueled by unfair media coverage and the emergence of reality shows like Cops, which disproportionately highlighted and televised Black and Brown criminals, though they make up a smaller percentage of the population and a smaller percentage of crimes than white people. We see the Welfare Queen who is a lazy Black women living off of the government, even though 43% of those on welfare are white, with 18% being Black. This trope is fueled by Linda Taylor, a mixed race women who became an infamous criminal for fraud as she was targeted by Ronald Reagan and more. We see Black people depicted as superhuman athletes more closely related to animals than humans, dominating sports because of breeding. Though the real reason why 75% of NBA players and 65% of NFL players are Black has more to do with societal expectations and the fact that many Black role models are rappers or athletes, while founding fathers, scientists, doctors and astronauts shown in school textbooks are almost exclusively white. There are too many tropes to unpack, but here are a few. What others have you learned?

• The Black Brute stereotype was depicted for the world to see in The Birth of a Nation, a landmark of film history, as the first 12-reel film ever made and, at three hours, also the longest up to that point. A white man in blackface portrays a violent and dangerous rapist who terrorizes a white women. Just to be clear, in the most historic movie in cinematic technology, the first of its kind, we see a white man in blackface specifically and intentionally represent Black men as violent rapists. I want to continue unpacking the Brute stereotype as we ask about news coverage and portrayal.

Racial Bias in News Coverage

• Have you ever heard the term Superpredator? John DiIulio, a professor at Princeton, coined the term in 1995. He predicted a coming wave of “superpredators”: “radically impulsive, brutally remorseless” “elementary school youngsters who pack guns instead of lunches” and “have absolutely no respect for human life.” As DiIulio and Fox themselves later admitted, the prediction of a juvenile superpredator epidemic turned out to be wrong. But after seeing Black men—since the first film ever created—being portrayed as violent criminals, it was easy for America to point to Black boys and label them as not just predators, but Superpredators. This rhetoric not only frightened white Americans, but made Black folks afraid of their Black neighbors.

• In the 1970’s “The War on Drugs” was another war on young Black men. Nixon’s policy chief said, “We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or Black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and Blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities.”

• In today’s media, the news portrays that 72% of assaults are perpetrated by Black people, while in reality it is closer to 49%. On New York’s local news, 80% of theft discussed on the news is committed by Black people, while theft by Black folks accounts for approximately 55% of the NYPD’s arrests.

• Black men comprise about 13% of the male population, but about 35% of those incarcerated. 1 in 3 black men born today can expect to be incarcerated in his lifetime, compared to 1 in 6 Latino men and 1 in 17 white men. Black women are similarly impacted: 1 in 18 Black women born in 2001 is likely to be incarcerated sometime in her life, compared to 1 in 111 white women.

• Do you remember the Black Brute? Dangerous. Frightening. Criminal. Does this seem familiar?

There are so many more stereotypes perpetuated by the news, by societal expectations, by pop culture and within our own biases. This week’s newsletter is just a starting point. What do you think of when you think of a Black man or Black women or Black child or Black person? What stereotypes are you believing and perpetuating? Do you see the thread that connects the desires of white supremacy to the depictions of Black human beings? Take a moment and think about what you just read and how you can use it to fuel some new interactions and perceptions in your day to day life.

Next week, we dive into stereotypes around the Latinx community. See ya there.

“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for, we are the change we seek” — With love and light, Taylor Rae

George Floyd

Hello Friends,
On Tuesday, April 20, Derek Chauvin was found guilty of the murder of George Floyd.

I want to take this opportunity to pause and reflect on George Floyd’s life — a life he wanted to live, deserved to live, and was supposed to live. I wish that we as a society were moved to action simply by witnessing the everyday trauma that is being a marginalized person in America and not because we watched a man call out for his mother and have the life drain from his body under the knee of white supremacy. George Floyd was not a martyr. He was a father. He was a son. He was a brother. He was a partner. He was a human being deserving of dignity and respect. Derek Chauvin’s conviction represents accountability for the crime he committed, but it falls short of justice. Justice would be George Floyd’s life and not his death.

Last week we mourned 20-year-old Daunte Wright who was murdered at a traffic stop in Minneapolis, only a few miles from where George Floyd took his last breath. Soon after, we mourned Adam Toledo, the seventh grader who was shot in the chest by Chicago Police. Moments before Tuesday’s verdict was read, 16-year-old Ma'Khia Bryant died at the hands of a Columbus police officer. While writing this, I learned about Andrew Brown of North Carolina, a father of ten who was murdered by police.

White people who are heavily armed, visibly dangerous, and unequivocally guilty are apprehended and arrested without issue. Why are Black and Brown human beings not given the same treatment? We know the answer is racism, and the reason you’re here, reading this newsletter, is because you wonder what you can do to combat it.

After a year of writing out three point action steps, and hyperlinking charities, and selling tickets for workshops, I know (and you know) that the answer to combating white supremacy is more arduous and more challenging than reading a book, or following a color coded list. The work is lifelong. It took 400 years to establish this society and it will take time to unravel its web of bias and privilege.

I am tired, but not hopeless. I am devastated, but not despondent. I believe in a future without endless waves of tragedy and injustice drowning those that are most vulnerable.

Today, I don’t ask you to watch a video or take a survey or sign a petition, but to sit with yourself and shine a light on the darkest corners of yourself. To question your efforts. To question your biases. To question your motives. To imagine a world where you do nothing more than eradicate racism from your own mind, from your own home, from your own community.

The learning and the donating and the uplifting never stop. Buying from Black-owned businesses and ordering books from Black authors, signing petitions to relinquish Indigenous lands and writing letters to abolish ICE, uplifting Black and Brown leaders and paying for Patreons and workshops and events — these things matter. But take a look inside. Take a moment to think about who you are and who you want to be.

I am tired, but not hopeless.

Continue. I know I will.

“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for, we are the change we seek” — With love and light, Taylor Rae

Stereotypes: 1

“We all use stereotypes, all the time, without knowing it. We have met the enemy of equality, and the enemy is us.”

— Annie Murphy Paul

Hi Friends!
Welcome to Issue 26 of this newsletter! Today’s topic is Stereotypes. This will be a multi-week topic that I am very excited about and that tons of y’all voted for in my recent survey. I want to breakdown specific stereotypes of a few marginalized groups over the next few weeks including stereotypes of Black, Latinx, Asian, Indigenous, Jewish, queer, disabled and overweight communities. This week we are just focusing on what stereotyping really is and how it affects our daily decision making, interactions and lives. Remember, though we all have implicit bias and stereotype those around us, some of these prejudices are more dangerous and harmful to our most vulnerable communities. We will continue to unpack this throughout the next few weeks. Let’s get into it!

Key Words

Stereotypes: In social psychology, a stereotype is an over-generalized belief about a particular category of people. It is an expectation that people might have about every person of a particular group.

Racism: Racial prejudice + power. Power here is defined as the authority granted through social structures and conventions—possibly supported by force or the threat of force—and access to means of communications and resources, to reinforce racial prejudice, regardless of the falsity of the underlying prejudiced assumption. Racism cannot be understood without understanding that power is not only an individual relationship but a cultural one, and that power relationships are shifting constantly.

Discrimination: Unfair or unequal treatment of an individual (or group) based on certain characteristics, including age, disability, ethnicity, gender, marital status, national origin, race, religition, sexual orientation, etc.

Prejudice: Prejudice is a baseless and often negative preconception or attitude toward members of a group. Negative feelings, stereotyped beliefs and a tendency to discriminate. Although prejudice is a noun and not a verb, the behavior is often influenced by bias. Once the switch is made from "thought/feeling" to "action," discrimination has occurred. 

Implicit Bias: The attitudes or stereotypes that affect our understanding, actions, and decisions in an unconscious manner. They are activated involuntarily and without an individual’s awareness or intentional control and reside deep in the subconscious. The implicit associations we harbor in our subconscious cause us to have feelings and attitudes about other people based on characteristics such as race, ethnicity, age, and appearance.

Profiling: The act of suspecting or targeting a person on the basis of observed characteristics or behavior.

Essentialism: A belief that things have a set of characteristics which make them what they are.

Let’s Get Into It

We stereotype and profile people all the time. On the one hand, it’s a logical way for our brains to make sense of the world around us and categorize things into groups. Psychologists call our mental shortcuts “heuristics”—and we need them to help our brains navigate the world. But heuristics can lead us to make potentially damaging assumptions about other people. These associations develop over the course of a lifetime beginning at a very early age through exposure to direct and indirect messages, early life experiences, the media and news programming. Our family, community, favorite shows and toys reinforce this messaging. Because many of these ideas are subconscious, folks might be surprised by their implicit biases and believed stereotypes.

Think about some of the groups I mentioned earlier — Black, Latinx, Asian, Indigenous, Jewish, queer, disabled and overweight communities — What images and associations pop into your head?

Common Types of Stereotypes

• Racial Profiling: Based on someone’s perceived or known race, do you have specific ideas about them? Do you feel that they are more or less dangerous? Do you feel like you are more or less likely to date them or be friends with them?

• Gender Profiling: Based on someone’s perceived or known gender, do you assume things about them? Do you feel they are stronger or weaker? More or less emotional? More or less trustworthy or capable or able to lead? Do you all together assume someone’s gender without inquiry into how they identify?

• Cultural Stereotyping: Based on someone’s perceived or known cultural background, do you believe certain things to be true about them? Do you think they would be good or bad at math? Do they seem like they are a fast or slow runner? Do you think they are a foreigner?

• Grouping: When you see a jock, goth, skater or emo kid (because this usually takes place in schools) do you assume how they will behave?

• Sexual Stereotyping: Based on someone’s perceived or known sexual orientation, do you have certain expectations about their behaviors? Do you assume they will dress or speak a certain way?

Remember, everyone has implicit bias. Let’s unpack some common stereotypes and understand where they originated and how we can dismantle them.

Resources

• Take An Implicit Bias Test

“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for, we are the change we seek” — With love and light, Taylor Rae

Incorporating Racial Justice Into Your Everyday Life

“Change will not come if we wait for some other person or time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change we seek.”

— Barack Obama

Hi Friends!
Welcome to Issue 26 of this newsletter! Today’s topic is Incorporating Racial Justice Into Your Everyday Life. Last week I sent out a survey and this was by far the most requested topic, with 79.5% of folks wanting to learn more about it. When I first wrote my newsletter on Allyship ten months ago (wow time flies!), I had a good idea of what I wanted to see my friends, coworkers and community doing to step up and fight for equality. Now, after almost a year of weekly newsletters, a growing community and the creation of ACTIV-ISM (alongside my friend Kira West)—I have a greater understanding of what it really takes to do something with real world impact every single day. Let’s get into it!

Key Terms

Allyship: an active, consistent, and arduous practice of unlearning and re-evaluating, in which a person in a position of privilege and power seeks to operate in solidarity with a marginalized group. Read my blog post on allyship here.

Toxic Positivity: Positivity becomes toxic when it is implied that we should always look on the bright side at all times and not allow ourselves to feel difficult emotions. The downside of positivity culture is that it can vilify the normal range of human emotional experience. Toxic positivity undermines the pain of others. Example: We are all one human race, I don’t see color. Let’s focus on the positives instead of always talking about oppression.

Tone Policing: Tone policing is a diversionary tactic used when a person purposely turns away from the message behind another’s argument in order to focus solely on the delivery of it.

Emotional Labor: When a person must constantly manage their emotions—either by suppressing them, showing them, or redefining them— in order to sustain the outward countenance that produces the proper state of mind in others.

Intersectionality: Intersectionality is a framework for conceptualizing a person, group of people, or social problem as affected by a number of discriminations and disadvantages. It takes into account people’s overlapping identities and experiences in order to understand the complexity of prejudices they face.

Tokenism: The practice of doing something (such as hiring a person who belongs to a marginalized group) only to prevent criticism and give the appearance that people are being treated fairly.

Let’s Get Into It

Some folks wonder what constitutes doing “enough.” They become so consumed with a desire to do more and the overwhelming feeling that they cannot measure up. Eventually, they just stop trying all together because it seems like too much. The term “allyship fatigue” describes this feeling when it comes to racial justice. And while I cannot decide to be tired of racism and just stop caring, white folks can.

How do we combat this? Well, we have to see racial justice work not like a new hobby that you can forget about, like knitting or painting—but like a lifelong practice, like your health. We try new supplements, new workouts, better activewear, new sneakers, physical therapy, foam rolling, mindfulness and meditation practices, mental health services, and so much more to better our health throughout our lives. It’s not something we forget about because every single day we eat, sleep, move and live, which effects our bodies.

So, how do we make racial justice as ingrained in our lives as our daily probiotics or green juice?

Make a Plan

• Actually read this newsletter every week! I love that you’ve signed up and I know you’re reading it right now, but it takes commitment and accountability.

• Sign up for EJI”s A History of Racial Injustice daily or monthly email. I read these every single day. They are impactful and important.

• Join a group like ACTIV-ISM where you have community to hold you accountable and guidance through a set curriculum.

• Get a guided journal like this one that accompanies the book Me and White Supremacy by Layla F. Saad. Make a schedule of when you’re going to sit down and engage with the book and journal. Make it realistic. This might be one page every morning with your coffee. Something doable and actionable.

• Set up instagram notifications for Anti-Racism Daily on Instagram and easily learn one thing every morning.

• Listen to a podcast like For Your DisComfort, hosted by my friend Bryce Michael Wood. Spend 10 minutes a day listening to this on your headphones while you make your bed. Play it in the car. Actually go take those daily walks you keep talking about and bring these conversations with you.

You find time every single day to check your email or scroll on Instagram or film a TikTok, so let’s be really real for a minute, you have ten minutes to learn that on this day, April 2, in 1933 a Black man was lynched in Mississippi and not a single person out of a 17 person mob was convicted. You have time to sit with that and think: just 88 years ago, this happened. You have time.

Find a Support System

• Does your partner care about racial justice? What about your kids? Your parents? First off — if they don’t you need to step up and start talking about it. Instead of arguing with strangers on Facebook and cursing strangers on the news, look across your dinner table and actually talk to the people you live with.

• When you find a few folks (or even just one) that have the same goals as you — to learn more about racism, unlearn the delusion of white supremacy and create actionable change — choose any of the above plans and hold each other accountable.

• Use this opportunity to let down your walls, and admit it when you shrug off your plan and decided to watch Netflix instead. Be honest with your circle. Practice letting go of defensiveness. Reflect, and move on. No need to fester in guilt or shame because it serves no one. Just face it, get back to a plan, and get to work.

Ask Yourself the Tough Questions

• Why are you passionate about creating an equal world for all folks, regardless of race, gender identity, sexual preference, socioeconomic status, disability, weight, age, education or criminal record?

• What stereotypes and implicit biases do you have? What are the dark things in the corners of your mind and your heart and how can you bring them out into the light? If you finished this sentence, what might it reveal: I accept _____ people, but I would never want my child/partner/friend to be ______.

• What is your WHY? What is the reason that you’ve started on this journey and the reason that will keep you going?

I started this newsletter because I needed more information, more statistics, more language, more resources to effectively express and understand my rage, trauma and anguish. Whatever your reason for being here, either as an ally or a marginalized person, an activist or an advocate, someone just starting to unpack their priviledge or someone who has been doing the work for years — there is always something more to be done. If not you, who will do it? If not now, when will you start? We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change we seek.

“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for, we are the change we seek” — With love and light, Taylor Rae

Internalized Colonialism & Lateral Oppression

“With lateral violence, the oppressed become the oppressors. We’ve internalised the pain of colonisation and our oppression and we’ve taken it into our communities.”

— Allen Benson, CEO Native Counselling Services Of Alberta, Canada

Hi Friends!
Welcome to Issue 25 of this newsletter! Today’s topic is Internalized Colonialism & Lateral Oppression. I know, it’s a mouthful. After doing more research, I felt like I had to include both terms in the title. I think you’ll understand why. Lateral oppression, or lateral violence, is displaced violence directed against one’s peers rather than adversaries. This construct is one way of explaining violence between marginalized groups. It is a cycle of abuse and its roots lie in factors such as: colonisation, oppression, intergenerational trauma and the ongoing experiences of racism and discrimination. Internalized colonialism, or internalized oppression, is a concept in which an oppressed group uses the methods of the oppressor against itself. It occurs when one group perceives an inequality of value relative to another group, and desires to be like the more highly-valued group. Ultimately, these are a lot of terms that mean similar things—we’re talking about the concept of marginalized folks being oppressed and, in turn, oppressing those around them, and themselves.

A Note: After this week’s tragedy, where Asian-American women were targeted and murdered by a white man in Georgia, I would be remiss if I didn’t also take today’s newsletter as an opportunity to spread awareness and resources on the anti-Asian violence that has been more prominent than ever during the pandemic. I’ll be closing with those thoughts, but also encourage you to read my past newsletter on Anti-Asian Violence During COVID.

Let’s get into it.

Key Terms

Internalized Racism/ Internalized Oppression/ Internalized Colonialism: Internalized racism can be defined as the tendency of some individuals belonging to historically oppressed ethnic groups to regularly invalidate, demean, and/or suppress their own and other marginalized groups’ heritage, identity, self-worth, and human rights. Often, those with degrees of internalized racism are consciously or unconsciously socialized into believing that being a member of their own cultural group is somehow “lesser,” “inferior,” “shameful,” “undesirable,” or “unacceptable” in relation to the “mainstream” dominant culture. They regard themselves and/or members of their own cultural group with embarrassment (self-rejection) and disdain (self-loathing).

Lateral Violence/ Lateral Oppression: Displaced violence directed against one’s peers rather than oppressors. This construct is one way of explaining violence between marginalized groups. It is a cycle of abuse and its roots lie in factors such as: colonisation, oppression, intergenerational trauma and the ongoing experiences of racism and discrimination. It can also be described as, organized, harmful behaviors that we do to each other collectively as part of an oppressed group, within our families, within our organizations and within our communities.

Horizontal Aggression: The results of people of targeted racial groups (Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Native) believing, acting on or enforcing the dominant (White) system of racist discrimination and oppression. Horizontal aggression can occur between members of the same racial group or between members of different, targeted racial groups.

“Black-On-Black Crime”: When a white person commits a crime against another white person, it’s just called a crime; race isn’t a factor, and that’s intentional. Using language like “Black-on-Black crime” perpetuates the myth that intraracial violence is specific to the Black community — a myth that implies Black people are inherently more violent. This tactic has been used to justify the mistreatment of Black people since the abolishment of slavery. This term originated during the race riots in the USA in the late 1960s. The earliest record I can find of it in print is this piece from The Chicago Daily Defender, March 1968: "The violence of black man stabbing black man, mugging black man stomping black man, raping black woman. Black on black. And a black crime against a black gets cancelled out in the mind of a white precinct commander."

Intergenerational Trauma: Multiple generations of families can transmit the damage of trauma throughout the years. Where trauma has been untreated, what is fairly common is that the untreated trauma in the parent is transmitted through the child through the attachment bond and through the messaging about self and the world, safety, and danger. Less visibly, intergenerational trauma also plays out in neglect and in the internal resources children gain or don’t gain as a result of their parents.

Let’s Get Into It

What Is It?

Now, what lateral oppression is not is “Black-On-Black Crime.” Not only because it’s a politicized term that’s misleading and gross, but because it’s more nuanced than that, which is why we’re talking about lateral oppression and internalized colonialism at the same time. Racism and discrimination cause internalized colonialism, which results in lateral oppression between marginalized folks in shared communities.

“One of the consequences of oppression and historical trauma is lateral violence. Lateral violence happens when people who are victims of dominance, turn on each other rather than confront the system oppressing them. Lateral violence occurs when oppressed groups or individuals internalize feelings, such as anger and rage, and manifest them through other behaviors, such as gossip, jealousy, putdowns, and blame. Adult bullying behavior can also be a manifestation of lateral violence. In addition to raising awareness about youth bullying, communities may also want to raise awareness about lateral violence, its relationship to historical trauma, and steps people can take to counteract it.” (SAMHSA)

Let’s Break It Down

• Who Is Effected:

  • Lateral violence is especially prevalent in the Native American communities in the United States, and Aboriginal and Indigenous communities in Canada and Australia. “Lateral violence has impacted indigenous peoples throughout the world to the point of where we harm each other in our communities and workplaces on a daily basis.” (Rod Jeffries)

  • Other communities experience lateral oppression as well. Though there is minimal research on this topic outside of Indigenous communities, there are various opinion pieces and lived experiences that demonstrate lateral violence is prevalent amongst many groups.

• How Common Is It:

  • In Australia, surveys have reported that up to 95% of Aboriginal youth had witnessed lateral violence in the home, and that 95% of the bullying experienced by Aboriginals was perpetrated by other Aboriginals.

• Why Does It Happen:

  • In Canada, lateral violence in the workplace is seen as a crisis. With one source stating: “Lateral violence is a learned behaviour as a result of colonialism and patriarchal methods of governing and developing a society. For Aboriginal people, this has meant that due to residential schools, discrimination and racism; Aboriginal people were forced to stop practicing their traditional teachings of oneness. As a result of this trauma, some Aboriginal people have developed social skills and work practices which do not necessary create healthy workplaces or communities. Since many Aboriginal people work in environments which may be predominantly Aboriginal, these practices mean that Aboriginal people are now causing pain and suffering on their own people.” (NWAC)

  • These behaviors are passed down through generations, like most intergenerational trauma. They are learned from the oppressor initially but are also learned from family and friends and the community as they become a part of the social norms—like racism or discrimination.

• What Does It Look Like:

  • Lateral oppression can look like bullying, harassment, misogyny, gossip, finger pointing, domestic violence or abuse. There are many individual motivating factors, but consistently it is enacted by someone who has been oppressed themselves.

  • In 1970, when a Black man was asked why he “robbed and beat up [other] black people,” he explained that he “commits crimes against other African Americans because that’s who lives around him—and that’s what police will let him get away with”. This also adds another layer to the conversation about communities of color often being removed from white communities and how that might impact the enactment of lateral violence.

Final Thoughts

Initially when I saw the term “Lateral Oppression,” which led me to want to know more, it was used in a context to describe homophobia in the Black community. Based on my research, the term has not historically been used in that context—to talk about homophobia in the Black community or sexism in the AAPI community or colorism in the Latinx community—but it definitely seems applicable. If lateral oppression’s definition is “displaced violence directed against one’s peers rather than oppressors,” than it makes sense to use it in that context, and perhaps, like all language, it will continue to evolve until it is used that way more commonly. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see!

A Note On Anti-Asian Violence

Asian Americans reported more than 2,800 first-hand accounts of hate crimes between late March and December 2020, everything ranging from being coughed and spat on to having “kung flu” shouted at them in grocery stores. Most recently, 8 people lost their lives when a white man attacked Asian-owned businesses in Georgia. 6 of them were Asian.

White supremacy has long created divides between marginalized communities, but we know liberation is only possible when we all work together. It’s imperative that all people of color stand in solidarity with the AAPI (Asian American Pacific Islander) community right now, just as it has always been crucial that all people of color support the Black community—something that was widely discussed during the Black Lives Matter protests. Ultimately, the pandemic has exposed the cracks in America’s society, bringing forth the layers of systemic racism and legacies of injustice that many Americans have chosen not to pay attention to until now. And it’s not only up to Black and AAPI communities to do the work of building solidarity — it’s the responsibility of all Americans to understand the role that white supremacy has played in creating these rifts that are exploited again and again. Learn more about the history of tensions and solidarity between the Black and AAPI communities here, and remember that it’s not the responsibility of the oppressed to teach and forgive the oppressor, it is the responsibility of all those who benefit from white supremacy to dismantle it. Though solidarity amongst BIPOC folks is necessary, allyship from white folks is essential.

Next week, it’s another personal newsletter drop coming at your inbox! I love to share more personal insights every now and then and hope you guys like to read them! I’ll see ya there!

“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for, we are the change we seek” — With love and light, Taylor Rae

Black American Sign Language

“The difference between BASL and ASL is that BASL got seasoning.”

— Nakia Smith

Hi Friends!
Welcome to Issue 24 of this newsletter! Today’s topic is Black American Sign Language (BASL). Like many, I saw Nakia Smith’s (@itscharmay) viral videos about BASL on TikTok. I knew right away that I wanted to dig in and learn more. Black American Sign Language (BASL) or Black Sign Variation (BSV) is a dialect of American Sign Language (ASL) used most commonly by deaf Black Americans in the United States. The divergence from ASL was influenced largely by the segregation of schools in the South. Let’s go through a brief history and then I’ll share some resources and folks that I am learning from. This is definitely a topic that I will be continuing to learn more about, so if you have anything to add to this week’s blog post, let me know! Let’s get into it!

Key Terms

Black American Sign Language: Black American Sign Language (BASL) or Black Sign Variation (BSV) is a dialect of American Sign Language (ASL) used most commonly by deaf Black Americans in the United States.

American Sign Language: American Sign Language (ASL) is a complete, natural language that has the same linguistic properties as spoken languages, with grammar that differs from English. ASL is expressed by movements of the hands and face. There is no universal sign language. Different sign languages are used in different countries or regions.

deaf (Lowercase “d”): The word deaf is used to describe or identify anyone who has a severe hearing problem. Sometimes it is used to refer to people who are severely hard of hearing too.

Deaf (Uppercase “D”): Folks use Deaf with a capital D to refer to people who have been deaf all their lives, or since before they started to learn to talk. They are pre-lingually deaf. It is an important distinction, because Deaf people tend to communicate in sign language as their first language. For most Deaf people English is a second language.

Oralism: Places less emphasis on signing and more emphasis on teaching deaf students to speak and lip-read.

Ableism: Ableism is the discrimination of and social prejudice against people with disabilities based on the belief that typical abilities are superior. At its heart, ableism is rooted in the assumption that disabled people require ‘fixing’ and defines people by their disability. Like racism and sexism, ableism classifies entire groups of people as ‘less than,’ and includes harmful stereotypes, misconceptions, and generalizations of people with disabilities. Being deaf is considered a disability under the ADA.

Let’s Get Into It

A Brief History

• Schools for Black deaf children in the United States began to emerge after the Civil War. The first permanent school for the deaf in the United States, which later came to be known as the American School for the Deaf, opened in 1817 in Hartford, Conn. The school enrolled its first Black student in 1825.

• Segregation in the South in 1865 played a large role in Black ASL’s development.

• Separation led to Black deaf schools’ differing immensely from their white counterparts. White schools tended to focus on an oral method of learning and provide an academic-based curriculum, while Black schools emphasized signing and offered vocational training.

• In the 1870s and 1880s, white deaf schools moved toward oralism — which places less emphasis on signing and more emphasis on teaching deaf students to speak and lip-read. Because the education of white children was privileged over that of Black children, oralism was not as strictly applied to the Black deaf students. Oralist methods often forbade the use of sign language, so Black deaf students had more opportunities to use ASL than did their white peers.

• The last Southern state to create an institution for Black deaf children was Louisiana in 1938. Black deaf children became a language community isolated from white deaf children, with different means of language socialization, allowing for different dialects to develop.

• As schools began to integrate, students and teachers noticed differences in the way Black students and white students signed. Carolyn McCaskill, now professor of ASL and Deaf Studies at Gallaudet University, recalls the challenge of understanding the dialect of ASL used by her white principal and teachers after her segregated school of her youth integrated: “Even though they were signing, I didn’t understand,” she said. “And I didn’t understand why I didn’t understand.”

• With the pandemic forcing many to flock to virtual social spaces, Isidore Niyongabo, president of National Black Deaf Advocates, said he had seen online interaction grow within his organization and across the Black deaf community as a whole. “We are starting to see an uptick with the recognition of the Black deaf culture within America,” Mr. Niyongabo said, adding that he expected it would “continue spreading throughout the world.”

Facts & Figures

• Several scholars say that Black ASL is actually more aligned with early American Sign Language than contemporary ASL, which was influenced by French sign language.

• Compare ASL with Black ASL and there are notable differences: Black ASL users tend to use more two-handed signs, and they often place signs around the forehead area, rather than lower on the body.

• About 11 million Americans consider themselves deaf or hard of hearing, according to the Census Bureau’s 2011 American Community Survey, and Black people make up nearly 8 percent of that population.

From Nakia Smith

• In her interview with the New York Times, Nakia (@itscharmay) talks about code switching, but with sign language. When she attended a school that consisted of primarily hearing students, she says: “I started to sign like other deaf students that don’t have deaf family,” said Ms. Smith, whose family has had deaf relatives in four of the last five generations. “I became good friends with them and signed like how they signed so they could feel comfortable.”

Viral Video With Her Grandfather

Viral Video With Her Grandparents

Resources

• @itscharmay

• Deaf U On Netflix

• Signing Black In America

• The Black ASL Project

• New York Times - Black, Deaf And Extremely Online

This is really my first week ever learning about BASL, so I am definitely no expert, but I hope you’re just as excited to learn as I am. Above are a bunch of great resources, as well as linked throughout this post. Let’s keep learning from folks that practice BASL and experts in that community. Next week, we’re talking about Lateral Oppression which occurs within marginalized groups where members strike out at each other as a result of being oppressed. I’ll see ya there!

“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for, we are the change we seek” — With love and light, Taylor Rae

The 13th Amendment

“So many aspects of the old Jim Crow are suddenly legal again once you’ve been branded a felon. And so it seems that in America we haven’t so much ended racial caste, but simply redesigned it.”

— Michelle Alexander

Hi Friends!
Welcome to Issue 23 of this newsletter. Today’s topic is The 13th Amendment. I’ve spoken about the 13th amendment in my newsletters on The Prison Industrial Complex, Prison Reform: Week 1 and Prison Reform: Week 2. The 13th amendment to the Constitution made slavery illegal while repackaging it into a different form. The prison system in America is vile, exploitative and inhumane. I feel overwhelmed by fear to merely do a google image search of prison conditions in America, and yet, we disappear human beings into those conditions every single day. America has 5% of the world’s population but nearly 25% of its incarcerated population. (EJI) 1 in 17 white men are likely to go to prison in their lifetime, while 1 in 3 Black men receive imprisonment. Black men account for roughly 6.5% of the US population, but 40.2% of the prison population. Why is this? We can trace it back to the 13th amendment. Let’s get into it!

Key Terms

The Abolition Amendment: A joint resolution introduced by Democrats that would remove the "punishment" clause from the amendment, which effectively allows members of prison populations to be used as cheap and free labor.

Prison Labor: Prison labor, or penal labor, is work that is performed by incarcerated and detained people. Not all prison labor is forced labor, but the setting involves unique modern slavery risks because of its inherent power imbalance and because those incarcerated have few avenues to challenge abuses. The minimum estimated annual value of incarcerated labor from U.S. prisons and jails is $2 billion, according to the nonprofit Prison Policy Initiative. As recently as 2010, a federal court held that “prisoners have no enforceable right to be paid for their work under the Constitution.”

The Black Codes: Restrictive laws designed to limit the freedom of African Americans and ensure their availability as a cheap labor force after slavery was abolished during the Civil War. These were new laws that explicitly applied only to Black people immediately after the 13th amendment was passed and and subjected them to criminal prosecution for “offenses” such as loitering, breaking curfew, vagrancy, having weapons, and not carrying proof of employment. Crafted to ensnare Black people and return them to chains, these laws were effective; for the first time in U.S. history, many state penal systems held more Black prisoners than white.

The Prison Industrial Complex: A term we use to describe the overlapping interests of government and industry that use surveillance, policing, and imprisonment as solutions to economic, social and political problems. This term is derived from the "military–industrial complex" of the 1950s and describes the attribution of the rapid expansion of the US inmate population to the political influence of private prison companies and businesses that supply goods and services to government prison agencies for profit.

Let’s Get Into It

“Neither Slavery Nor Involuntary Servitude, Except As A Punishment For Crime Whereof The Party Shall Have Been Duly Convicted, Shall Exist Within The United States, Or Any Place Subject To Their Jurisdiction.”

A Brief History

• Chattel slavery existed in the United States from its founding in 1776 until the passing of the 13th amendment in 1865 (not really but, that’s the whole point of this blog post so just bare with me).

• Our founding fathers—George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Patrick Henry were all slave-owners. 12 former presidents owned slaves, with 8 of them still owning human beings while in office.

• By 1861, during the Civil War, more than 4 million people were enslaved in 15 southern and border states.

• Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, which took effect in 1863, announced that all enslaved people held in the states “then in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.” The Emancipation Proclamation it itself did not end slavery in the United States, as it only applied to the 11 Confederate states then at war against the Union. To make emancipation permanent would take a constitutional amendment.

• On January 31, 1865, the House of Representatives passed the proposed amendment with a vote of 119-56, just over the required two-thirds majority.

• In late 1865, Mississippi and South Carolina enacted the first black codes. The Black Codes were restrictive laws designed to limit the freedom of African Americans and ensure their availability as a cheap labor force after slavery was abolished during the Civil War. Black codes varied from state to state. In South Carolina, one of these laws prohibited Black people from holding any occupation other than farmer or servant unless they paid an annual tax of $10 to $100. Mississippi’s law required Black people to have written evidence of employment for the coming year each January; if they left before the end of the contract, they would be forced to forfeit earlier wages and were subject to arrest. Black codes were also laws that made things like stealing something over $10 while being Black the equivalent of grand larceny. It made loitering or talking back to a white person grounds for imprisonment. In the years following Reconstruction, the South reestablished many of the provisions of the black codes in the form of the so-called "Jim Crow Laws."

• The year after the amendment’s passage, Congress passed the nation’s first civil rights bill, the Civil Rights Act of 1866. The Civil Rights Act of 1866 declared all male persons born in the United States to be citizens, "without distinction of race or color, or previous condition of slavery or involuntary servitude." This tried to invalidate black codes, but many were repackaged into Jim Crow Laws.

• After Reconstruction, for the first time in U.S. history, many state penal systems held more Black prisoners than white. Black codes made it very easy to imprison someone for an offense like not showing proper respect to a white person. States put prisoners to work through a practice called “convict-leasing,” where white planters and industrialists “leased” prisoners to work for them. Chain gangs of predominantly Black prisoners built many of today’s roads and farmed the land. Prisoners were not paid. Many Black prisoners found themselves living and working on plantations (that had been turned into prisons) against their will and for no pay decades after the Civil War.

• Today, states and private companies still rely on prisoners performing free or extremely low-paid labor for them. For example, California saves up to $100 million a year, according to state corrections spokesman Bill Sessa, by recruiting incarcerated people as volunteer firefighters. The minimum estimated annual value of incarcerated labor from U.S. prisons and jails is $2 billion, according to the nonprofit Prison Policy Initiative. As recently as 2010, a federal court held that “prisoners have no enforceable right to be paid for their work under the Constitution.”

Ratifying the 13th Amendment

• The Abolition Amendment is joint resolution introduced by Democrats that would remove the "punishment" clause from the amendment, which effectively allows members of prison populations to be used as cheap and free labor.

• States like Nebraska, Utah and Colorado have approved an amendment to remove language on the use of slavery as a punishment for convicted criminals. The passage of the measure will amend Section 21 of Article I of the Utah Constitution, removing language that disallowed slavery "except as a punishment for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted." This makes prison labor voluntary.

• Currently, OSCA’s (Occupational Safety Councils Of America) standards do not protect prison laborers, so if prisoners are forced to work in unsafe or dangerous situations, like working with toxic chemicals, they are not protected.

• Learn more in this podcast: Closing the 13th Amendment Loophole, The Brian Lehrer Show WNYC

Resources

Sign This Petition From EJI - Sign this petition from the Equal Justice Initiative and call on Congress to amend the Thirteenth Amendment to make all slavery and involuntary servitude unconstitutional in the United States, without exception.

Watch 13th

13th is potentially the most impactful film I’ve ever watched on the topic of systemic racism. This comprehensive documentary explores the intersection of race, justice, and mass incarceration in the United States. DuVernay contends that slavery has been perpetuated since the end of the American Civil War through criminalizing behavior and enabling police to arrest poor freedmen and force them to work for the state under convict leasing; suppression of African Americans by disenfranchisement, lynchings, and Jim Crow; politicians declaring a war on drugs that weighs more heavily on minority communities and, by the late 20th century, mass incarceration affecting communities of color, especially American descendants of slavery, in the United States. Watch it for free on YouTube, or on netflix.

Next week, I’m going to be focusing on Black American Sign Language. I came across this topic recently and am so excited to learn more about BASL and how I can be an ally to those that use sign language. See ya there!

“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for, we are the change we seek” — With love and light, Taylor Rae

Tone Policing

“Imagine if you will, experiencing an act of violence and then being asked to talk about what you experienced without expressing any strong emotions. This is clearly inhumane. To be human is to feel. To talk about pain without expressing pain is to expect a human to recall information like a robot. When you insist that BiPOC talk about their painful experiences with racism without expressing any pain, rage or grief, you are asking them to dehumanize themselves.”

— Layla F. Saad

Hi Friends!
Welcome to Issue 22 of this newsletter. Today’s topic is Tone Policing. While I’ve discussed this concept in other newsletters like one of my first on Allyship, I’ve not given it it’s own specific piece, and I thought it was time! Tone policing is a diversionary tactic used when a person purposely turns away from the message behind another’s argument in order to focus solely on the delivery of it. By telling people not to express their anger at oppression, tone police are not only promoting their own personal comfort over that of someone who is in pain, but they are also asking a traumatized group to suffer in silence. Let’s get into it!

Key Terms

Gaslighting: Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation in which a person or a group covertly sows seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or group, making them question their own memory, perception, or judgment.

Conditional Support: Choosing to only support an individual, a group or a cause if they behave in a predetermined mannar. The opposite of unconditional support.

Angry Black Women Troupe: In the aftermath of slavery and the resulting social, economic, and political effects, Black women have become the victims of negative stereotyping in mainstream American culture. Such stereotypes include the myth of the angry Black woman that characterizes these women as aggressive, ill tempered, illogical, overbearing, hostile, and ignorant without provocation.

Let’s Get Into It

Tone policing isn’t something that just happens when we are talking about racism. Tone policing might be something you do in an argument with your spouse or your parent. It might be something you do at work. It could happen anytime someone feels attacked or triggered and (understandably) is unable to regulate their emotions in a “socially acceptable” manner. When you speak to someone who has been traumatized, and you are able to be more articulate, concise and calm, it says nothing about your communication skills, what it says is that the other person (rightfully so) might not have the ability to both grapple with their lived experience and artfully craft a conversation. It’s important to remember this as an ally, or on the receiving end of a person discussing their triggers.

Tone policing suggests:

1. The only productive conversation is a calm conversation.

2. Conversations are debates with with 2+ sides being presented calmly, equally and neutrally,

3. Conversations must drive towards solutions and that emotions are a hindrance towards solution-finding.

Examples of tone policing:

• “Calm down so we can discuss this like adults.”

• ”You get more flies with honey than with vinegar.”

• “It’s hard to take you seriously when you’re so emotional.”

• “When you’re ready to talk about this in a rational way, let me know.”

• “Your language is divisive.”

• “This isn’t the time or place for you to express your emotions.”

• “You cannot speak to me in that tone.”

• “You’d have a lot more people on your side if you weren’t so rude.”

Why You Should Stop Tone Policing:

• Tone policing genders emotions and reinforces stereotypes.

• It preserves privilege for folks who do not want to have uncomfortable conversations.

• It suppresses the voices of the marginalized who have righteous anger that deserves to be expressed.

• It prevents allies from acknowledging their mistakes, educating themselves, and lifting up others.

How to Stop Tone Policing:

• The right reaction is to listen, check where and how you went wrong and do better in future.

• Don’t be quick to condemn the anger, instead examine the root of the problem.

• Focus should be on the issue and not the tone in which the issue is expressed.

• Anger, frustration and pain are valid emotions. People (including you) are allowed to be angry and emotional when you are being mistreated. They do not owe anyone any sort of explanation and it doesn’t make them unreasonable or rude.

Tone policing is a specific diversionary tactic that someone in a position of power forces onto a marginalized or vulnerable person or group. It’s not tone policing to demand respect or to enforce your boundaries, and while this may seem difficult to discern, power dynamics play a key role and can shed more clarity on any given situation. I know this can be a complex issue friends, as always, reach out with your thoughts. See ya next week!

“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for, we are the change we seek” — With love and light, Taylor Rae

Anti-Asian Violence

“When I hear the phrase “Asians are next in line to be white,” I replace the word “white” with “disappear.” Asians are next in line to disappear. We are reputed to be so accomplished, and so law-abiding, we will disappear into this country’s amnesiac fog. We will not be the power but become absorbed by power, not share the power of whites but be stooges to a white ideology that exploited our ancestors.”

— Cathy Park Hong, Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning

Hi Friends!
Welcome to Issue 21 of this newsletter. Today we are talking about something that’s been shared across social media and news outlets with haste the last few weeks, Anti-Asian Violence During COVID. To understand the surge of xenophobia that’s been highlighted recently, you must understand the history of Asians in America. From being exploited as cheap labor, to being stereotyped as effeminate men and promiscuous women, to constantly being “othered” in internment camps and 9/11 hate crimes, to being reduced to the Model Minority Myth, racism against the Asian-American community is not new. Let’s talk about how Donald Trump’s racist rhetoric in regard to the “kung flu” has resulted in a resurgence of anti-Asian xenophobia.

As an Afro-Latina who lives with (and is engaged to) an Asian and Latino partner, we often discuss the ways in which our identities intersect. We talk about the types of racism we have faced, the stereotypes associated with our identities, and the ways in which our future child will navigate the world as a Puerto Rican, Dominican, Chinese and Korean person. Lunar New Year is here and it’ll be my fifth one with Richard’s family. I’ve seen so many folks take this opportunity to talk about this topic at this time, and wanted to do the same. Today we delve into some background, cover some of the most recent examples of bigotry, and as always, discuss action steps to create change. Let’s get into it!

Key Terms

Asian: The Census Bureau defines a person of the Asian race as “having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, or the Indian subcontinent including, for example, Cambodia, China, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippine Islands, Thailand, and Vietnam.”

Xenophobia: The fear or hatred of that which is perceived to be foreign or strange. It is an expression of perceived conflict between an ingroup and an outgroup and may manifest in suspicion by the one of the other's activities, a desire to eliminate their presence, and fear of losing national, ethnic or racial identity.

Model Minority: An ethnic minority demographic group whose members are perceived to achieve a higher degree of socioeconomic success than the population average. This success is typically measured by income, education, low criminality, and high family/marital stability. When we call Asian-Americans “model minorities” we refer to them as a monolith, erase their history, reduce their experiences, and perpetuate white supremacy.

“Forever Foreigner” Trope: A misguided argument founded on “respectability politics” that further puts the onus on Asian Americans to demonstrate how American they are — and it’s revealing of how much some people still think Asians need to compensate for looking “different.” This idea helped lay the groundwork for Japanese internment during World War II, when Japanese American citizens were sent to detention camps solely on the basis of their ethnicity, due to suspicions that they were abetting the Japanese government in some way. In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Islamophobia toward Muslim Americans and prejudice toward South Asian Americans was similarly fueled by assumptions that people were not loyal to the United States because of their religion, ethnicity and external appearance.

Yellow Peril: The term “yellow peril” originated in the 1800s, when Chinese laborers were brought to the United States to replace emancipated Black communities as a cheap source of labor. Chinese laborers made less than their white counterparts, and also became victims of racist backlash from white workers who saw them as a threat to their livelihood. This fear led to the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the first law to restrict immigration based on race.

Chinese Exclusion Act: In the spring of 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed by Congress and signed by President Chester A. Arthur. This act provided an absolute 10-year moratorium on Chinese labor immigration. For the first time, Federal law proscribed entry of an ethnic working group on the premise that it endangered the good order of certain localities.

Japanese Internment Camps: These were established during World War II by President Franklin Roosevelt through his Executive Order 9066. From 1942 to 1945, it was the policy of the U.S. government that people of Japanese descent would be interred in isolated camps. Enacted in reaction to Pearl Harbor and the ensuing war, the Japanese internment camps are now considered one of the most atrocious violations of American civil rights in the 20th century.

Let’s Get Into It

A Brief History

• In the 1880s, Chinese laborers were brought to the United States to replace emancipated Black communities. “Yellow peril”—fear of an Asian invasion and resentment of the cheap labor coming from China—paved the way for the Chinese Exclusion Act, banning both new immigrants and existing residents from becoming U.S. citizens. It wasn’t until the Immigration Act of 1965 that the race-specific barriers were removed.

• On February 19, 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt ordered more than 120,000 Japanese Americans into internment camps during WWII. Enacted in reaction to Pearl Harbor and the ensuing war, the Japanese internment camps are now considered one of the most atrocious violations of American civil rights in the 20th century.

• Between 1940 and 1970, Asian Americans not only surpassed African Americans in average household earnings, but they also closed the wage gap with whites. Hilger’s research suggests that Asian Americans started to earn more because their fellow Americans became less racist toward them. Embracing Asian Americans “provided a powerful means for the United States to proclaim itself a racial democracy and thereby credentialed to assume the leadership of the free world,” Ellen Wu writes in her book “The Color of Success”. Stories about Asian American success were turned into propaganda.

• By the 1960s, anxieties about the civil right movement caused white Americans to further invest in positive portrayals of Asian Americans. The image of the hard-working Asian became an extremely convenient way to deny the demands of African Americans. Both liberal and conservative politicians pumped up the image of Asian Americans as a way to shift the blame for black poverty. This is the birth of the Model Minority stereotype.

• In the 1980s, Asian communities in America starting mobilizing to fight for their civil rights. The trigger was a murder: In 1982, Chinese-American Vincent Chin was beaten to death by two white men a few days before his wedding.

• After 9/11, Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs, many of whom were South Asian, documented scores of revenge-motivated hate crimes in the U.S.

• In 2020, as COVID-19 infections appeared in the U.S., President Trump repeatedly referred to COVID-19 as the "China virus" and "Kung flu," and pushed a disproved theory that it had originated in a Chinese lab. By April an IPSOS poll found that 3 in 10 Americans blamed China or Chinese people for the virus.

Violence During the Pandemic

• Over the past year, anti-Asian incidents have surged across the country: There have been more than 2,800 since last spring, according to Stop AAPI Hate.

• Ranging from verbal abuse and workplace discrimination to storefront vandalism and physical violence, many of these assaults have been fueled by xenophobic sentiment that seeks to scapegoat Asian Americans for the spread of the coronavirus.

• Activists emphasize that it’s important for communities of color to stand in solidarity, and to make sure that policing is not viewed as the main form of redress — given how policing has disproportionately harmed Black Americans. Instead, they note that communities need to focus on cross-racial education and healing, in order to raise awareness about the discrimination that different groups experience.

• According to an Ipsos survey, 60 percent of Asian Americans have observed people blaming members of their community for Covid-19.

• The association of Asian Americans with the coronavirus activated age-old stereotypes that have associated immigrants of Asian descent with “weird” foods, dirtiness, and illness.

• Attacks on the Asian-American community have included included an Asian American child getting pushed off her bike by a bystander at a park, a family at a grocery store getting spat on and accused of being responsible for the coronavirus, vandalism outside businesses, elders being attacked on the street, a man in New York being slashed across the face, and then there is the death of Ratanapakdee in San Francisco this past month.

• In a recent executive action, President Joe Biden condemned anti-Asian racism, marking a stark change from the Trump administration. He’s also instructed the Justice Department to begin gathering data on these attacks and to strip discriminatory language from federal documents. But it is going to take more than one message denouncing such acts to maintain this dialogue and ensure that members of these communities get the funding and legal backing they need. (Vox)

Action Steps

Don’t be a bystander. The term “bystander effect” refers to the phenomenon in which the greater the number of people present, the less likely people are to help a person in distress. When an emergency situation occurs, observers are more likely to take action if there are few or no other witnesses. Being part of a large crowd makes it so no single person has to take responsibility for an action (or inaction). There are 2 major reasons why this happens:

1. When folks are in a group, they don’t feel as much pressure to act because of a sense of shared responsibility.
2. When others fail to act, we see this as a social cue, that stepping in would be in inappropriate and not socially acceptable.

Support your local Asian-American community. In NYC, the Light Up Chinatown Project helps support struggling small businesses who have suffered during this pandemic. In California, you can support Chinatown through the Chinatown Service Center. You can also order yourself some amazing Chinese food and support small businesses that way!

Next week, we talk about Tone Policing! See ya there.

“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for, we are the change we seek” — With love and light, Taylor Rae

Mental Health in the Latinx Community

Hi Friends!
Welcome to Issue 20 of this newsletter. This is our final consecutive week talking about Mental Health. Today we turn our attention to the Latinx communities of the United States. As a Puerto Rican and Dominican person, I grew up with Latinx food, music, traditions and culture. While some Latinx people are light-skin, even white passing, I am not, I am an Afro-Latina, descended from slaves, Tainos and Spaniards. For me, the fact that some of my cousins were two shades lighter and some were two shades darker, some had straight brown hair, and others had coiled dark hair, some spoke Spanish and some spoke English, just seemed fun, until I got older, and felt confused. Even within the microcosm that is my life, it’s clear to see that the Latinx experience is so varied. “The Hispanic/Latinx community in the U.S. is very diverse, including people from many different nations and regions of the world. Individuals of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Central American and South American descent have been part of the American cultural tapestry for centuries.” (NAMI) It was very clear during the election that a lot of folks in America thing of Latinidad as a monolith, when that simply isn’t the case. While some areas in my research on mental health overlap, there are so many nuances within specific ethnic groups and regions, just like all people. With that being said, let’s get into it!

Key Words

Hispanic: This English word evolved from the Latin word Hispanicus, which is reported to have been used to refer to people living in Hispania — the Iberian Peninsula in today’s Spain — during the Roman Empire. It came into use by the United States government during Richard Nixon’s presidency, which spanned 1968‒1974. It first appeared on the U.S. Census in 1980, as a question prompting the Census taker to determine whether or not the person was of Spanish/Hispanic origin. It specifically refers to people who speak Spanish and/or are descended from Spanish-speaking populations.

Latino/Latina/Latinx/Latine: In an effort to be more inclusive to groups like Brazilians, who speak Portuguese, not Spanish, the word Latino came into the lexicon. This term takes the focus off the the Spanish colonizers and onto thee indigenous people of these regions. In 2004, Latinx became a gender neutral term. Recently, Latine became a gender neutral option that also follows along with the grammatical rules of the Spanish language.

Machismo: An exaggerated sense of masculinity wherein men must provide and protect their family.

Marianismo: A form of toxic femininity in response to machismo where women strive to be pure and moral like the Virgin Mary.

Limpias: A Mexican spiritual cleansing practice used to heal from emotional and spiritual imbalances, or after acute shock and trauma to support the spirit and emotional body. 

Familismo: A cultural foundation that emphasizes connectedness and a strong attachment and duty to one’s family.

Acculturation: The level of a person’s acculturation, how thoroughly they have embraced or adopted the predominant culture of the place they live, can play a role in mental health and access to care. Acculturation has been found to predict use of health care services, with a higher level of acculturation resulting in higher utilization. Hispanic/Latinx communities have an added risk of experiencing mental health issues because of the stress of facing discrimination while also trying to navigate between different cultures.

Let’s Get Into It

Background

• Unlike the newsletters about the Black and American Indigenous communities, the Latinx community is so massive, from so many various regions, that it’s impossible to create a succinct history that encompasses all perspectives. Instead, here is a brief and inclusive background based in shared culture.

• The Latinx community has always struggled with stigma—both in and outside of the United States. The reasons are as varied as our our cultures’ pressure due to machismo, a heavy reliance on faith versus therapy, and a general lack of education when it comes to what psychology and psychiatry can do for us. And that doesn’t even take into consideration the financial and language barriers that cause many to view therapy as a “waste of money” or “something for white people.” (Oprah Magazine)

• A 2019 NPR story revealed that Latinx youth are struggling more than ever with their mental health—in part due to the rise of the current anti-migrant rhetoric by Donald Trump and the previous administration. Additionally, a study in JAMA found that there’s been an uptick in the number of premature births among pregnant Latinx persons since the 2016 election.

• There is the very real damage currently being inflicted upon immigrant families who are being separated at the border and across the country due to a rise in deportations. Even the American Psychological Association has spoken out about the traumatic effects these separations will have on the mental well-being of parents and children alike.

• Language barriers, lack of health insurance, lack of financial ability, lack of cultural competence—meaning a doctor unfamiliar with Hispanic culture is more likely to misdiagnose, immigration status, acculturation and stigma are the main barriers to mental health services for the Latinx community. (NAMI)

Facts & Figures

• Approximately 34% of Hispanic/Latinx adults with mental illness receive treatment each year compared to the U.S. average of 45%. (NAMI)

• Among Hispanic American immigrants experiencing mental health issues, fewer than 1 in 20 use services from mental health specialists. (NCBI)

• Only 5.5% of psychologists here in the States are able to give care in Spanish. (APA)

• According to Pew Research, 84% of Latin Americans were raised Catholic, and 77% of Latinxs overall identify as Christian. This affects the stigma around seeking mental health care when most families rely on the church for this support. There is some similarity and overlap here with the Black community.

• 15.7% of Hispanic/Latinx people in the U.S. live in poverty (compared to 7.3% of non-Hispanic whites). This impacts access to healthcare. (NAMI)

• In 2018, 19% of Hispanic people had no form of health insurance. (NAMI)

Over the last few weeks, I think we have learned that overall in POC communities, mental health is often stigmatized, or when folks seek help, they can be misdiagnosed or discriminated against due to culture and language barriers. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find many resources that support mental health in the Latinx community, but I did find one organization that’s definitely worth mentioning. #MenOfColorSmile pushes back against toxic masculinity and explores “the intersection of Masculinity, Vulnerability, and Mental Wellness—together.”

Continue learning about the nuances between various Latinx ethnicities. Just because someone is European, we don’t assume Italians and Swedes have the same culture. In the same way, remember that Puerto Ricans and Mexicans, Cubans and Ecuadorians, Colombians and Dominicans, are different ethnic groups with rich and multifaceted histories.

“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for, we are the change we seek” — With love and light, Taylor Rae