A few days ago I went to the Museum of Our National Heritage in Concord, Massachusetts, to hear a lecture by Dr. David W. Blight, author of Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory. Read on…
Tag Archives: people of color
Free..And…Freed
March, 2001
If free people of color in New England had anticipated enacting their freedom as an entitlement, under the same terms as whites enacted theirs, they soon learned that whites’ understanding of antislavery and Revolutionary rhetoric was quite different from their own. As whites’ eighteenth-century observation that servitude made slaves servile hardened into their nineteenth-century conviction that all people of color were inherently servile ¾ freed slaves perhaps, but free people, never ¾ people of color struggled to adapt their expectations of citizenship to the grim truth of mounting hostility, ridicule, and escalating efforts to control and even eliminate their presence.
Joanne Pope Melish, Disowning Slavery: Gradual Emancipation and Race in New England, 1780-1860 Read on…
The Danger of Becoming a WANNABUT
December, 1993
There have been numerous occasions in my work on issues related to racism when I have seen creativity stifled by someone who says, “but,” “but,” “but.”…. It usually comes in response to a suggestion about what a person or group might do programmatically to counter the effects of racism. Read on…
Self-Interest for White Anti-Racists
April, 1993
Recently in a class I teach at Boston College, I observed a young African American woman speak firmly and eloquently about her anger in the face of racism; in that context she challenged white students to be angry also. One of the women asked, “What should I do, as a white?” The answer was quick: Read on…
An Open Letter to White Males October 1991
October, 1991
During a panel at a recent conference I heard an African American woman direct an important question. She directed it specifically to white males, and that is what prompted me to think about some response. Since she is a person for whom I have great affection, I am also eager to respond. Read on…
The Death Penalty, Honor and Dignity
February, 1991
“You killed! Killing is wrong. You’ve got to pay. You’ve got to die!”
Getting even is what it’s about Read on…
The “New” Racism ???????
June, 1990
Every once in a while I read about a phenomenon which is described as the “new” racism. That sends my thoughts racing, trying to figure out what is “new” about the action being described. Soon my thoughts go in two contrary directions: one direction tells me that there is no such thing as a “new” racism, and the other acknowledges that maybe there is. Read on…
Multicultural/Diversity Emphases …Not Enough!!!!!
June, 1989
Many places I turn today I see, hear, and read about an emphasis on multicultural studies, intercultural relationships, and managing diversity. Both my head and my files bulge with the concepts those words represent. Most of what I have heard about, read, and seen has been good; I applaud those who engage multicultural and diversity issues as major foci for the emerging century.
BUT …multicultural/diversity emphases are not enough! Read on…