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Stand With the AAPI Community: Resources and Actions
Resources to help educate on how to be a better ally to the Asian and AAPI (Asian American and Pacific Islander) community and educate about anti-Asian bias, hate crimes, and violence.
The Last Pick in Gym Class
“Being a BIPOC woman in a PWI felt a lot like being the last pick in gym class—you know, in middle school when they are picking teams for a competitive game of dodgeball…That is the feeling I had while pursuing my graduate degree, the feeling of being less than even though we all deserved a spot in that class.”
Sentiments of a Black Scientist: Letter to My White Colleagues
“You have the privilege to choose when you want to listen, reflect, and act on diversity in STEM. Because you have chosen, for now, to listen, can I make a suggestion? Rather than replying with sympathy, stories, and silver linings, develop a plan for what you’re going to do to change.” In his contribution to our Surviving PWIs for POC series, Charles Scaife writes a letter to white scientists.
How Was Your Weekend?
To break the awkwardness of a group discussion, a student asks, “how was your weekend?” For Namarig Kram, the question from a white classmate was a window into the dynamics of racism on and around her university campus in northern NY. Read her story in the latest installment of our Surviving PWIs for POC series.
Straddling Gratitude and Resentment
In the latest installment of our Surviving PWIs for POC series, Karen Chalamilla reflects on her postgrad education at SOAS (University of London). “Simply being critical of Euro-patriarchal thinking will never be enough,” writes Chalamilla. “Its dominance runs too deep. If this is what academic institutions consider to be decolonization, then we ought to question whether the project is worth our energy at all.”
SLU Faculty Letter to the Community About Systemic Racism in America
A statement released on June 11, 2020, by members of the local AAUP chapter at St. Lawrence University (Canton, NY) and other St. Lawrence faculty members in response to systemic racism and the nationwide and worldwide protests against following the police killing of George Floyd.
Open Letter to the American People from Burma/Myanmar Human Rights/Activist Groups
This open letter from Burma/Myanmar human rights activists was originally published on Facebook and is reprinted here with the permission of the authors. It expresses “solidarity with American people protesting against racism and police brutality.”
“I Am Home!”: Locals March against Racism and Xenophobia in Majority-White Potsdam, N.Y.
By Nicole Roché
As the “March against Racism” began on Saturday morning in Potsdam, New York, organizer Jennifer Baxtron told the crowd to raise their signs and let their voices be heard. “Show everybody that even in this little town, love conquers hate,” she said. “Love overpowers hate.” Nicole Roché reports on a march that sought to shine a light on the need to address issues of racism and xenophobia in the majority-white “North Country” of northern NY - and beyond.
Surviving PWIs for POCs: Two Too Many
By Jarrodd Davis
Jarrodd Davis on the Mayweather vs. McGregor fight: "What had I gotten myself into? We gathered in a white space to watch America’s race relations play out on a literal stage and in real time."
Surviving PWIs for POC: Keeping Up Appearances
By Cordenne Brewster
"I still felt skepticism when someone told me there was no racism in Massachusetts, even after they had told me the white supremacists I had heard about '[weren’t] a big deal,'” Cordenne Brewster writes in the first entry of Surviving PWIs for POC, a new series from Weave News.
Attack on Academia, Part 5: Interview with Tommy Curry
By Sarita Farnelli
"We’re moving back into a period of time when being a Black academic or a racialized minority in the university is an extremely dangerous occupation. People are threatening our lives because of our research. People are threatening our jobs because of our research." --Dr. Tommy Curry
Israeli Anti-Blackness, Part III
By Jimmy Johnson
Anti-Blackness is built into Zionism and brought from Europe to the colonial encounter, argues Jimmy Johnson. Part III of III.
Why I'm Reclaiming My Asian Racial Identity in Trump's America
By Nicole Eigbrett
In the past week, people who identify as Women, Muslims, Disabled, LGBTQ+, Immigrants, Black, Asian, Latinx, and anyone else in between have faced a startling rise in hate threats, visual statements, and actual assault. Insanul Ahmed, a Brooklyn-based music editor, collected an ongoing Twitter list of racist accounts towards people of color in the first day following the election. The Southern Poverty Law Center launched a #ReportHate portal for citizens and witnesses to submit incidences of hateful harassment and intimidation. As of November 11, over 200 incidences were directly reported. That number is bound to rise. Not that these threats didn’t exist before, but the reactionary nature and hyper-visibility of these recent incidents are directly tied to the election of Trump.
The Pledge of Resistance in Buffalo, NY
By Steve Peraza
This article is the first contribution to Beyond Broken Windows, a new Weave News project that explores the impacts of the “broken windows” style of policing, which encourages police officers to use arrests and citations to regulate outward signs of disorder (like broken windows). The project will also examine reform initiatives and issue campaigns nationwide that seek to implement alternative styles of policing.
Are Comparisons of South Africa and Israel Useful?
By Jon Soske and Sean Jacobs
This post is part of our project, Holot: Crossroads of Global Violence. It was originally published by Mondoweiss and is reprinted here with permission of the authors.
The South African Nobel laureate J.M. Coetzee has a habit of speaking in rhetoricals. The effect, however, is that he makes his point quite clearly. This was the case recently at the Palestine Festival of Literature, which travels through Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. Speaking on the festival’s last day, Coetzee noticed that “naturally people ask me what I see of South Africa in the present situation in Palestine.”
At first, Coetzee suggested that using the word apartheid to describe the occupation is not a productive step (“it diverts one into an inflamed semantic wrangle which cuts short the opportunities of analysis”). Coetzee then offered a definition of South African apartheid: “Apartheid was a system of enforced segregation based on race or ethnicity, put in place by an exclusive, self defined group in order to consolidate colonial conquest particular to cement its hold on the land and natural resources.” He continued, “In Jerusalem and the West Bank we see a system of …” and proceeded to read the same definition, ending to applause: “Draw your own conclusions.”
Interweaving: Somdeep Sen on Race, Fieldwork, and Colonization in Israel/Palestine
By John Collins
As part of our occasional series of “Interweaving” conversations, I recently had the opportunity to interview Dr. Somdeep Sen, a Weave News blogger and postdoctoral researcher at the University of Copenhagen, regarding a number of issues related to his field research in Palestine/Israel. Our conversation touched on his experience of the politics of race and violence while in the field as well as his first-hand observations from Jerusalem and the West Bank regarding the current state of Israel's settler-colonial project.