A Christian cartoonist explains systemic racism to white folks

A video by Phil Vischer, creator of Christian cartoon series VeggieTales, explains to his white evangelical audience why people are in the streets protesting racism and police brutality. “I’m not here to tell you what the right solutions are, because I don’t know. I’m just here to ask you to do one thing — it is the thing that begins every journey to a solution for every problem. What am I asking you do to? Care.”

18 minutes and well worth it, even if Bob the Tomato isn’t involved.

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Housing Segregation in America: A Short History

NPR’s Gene Demby explores the history of housing segregation in America for Code Switch.

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Frederick Douglas, July 4, 2020

“Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.”
— Frederick Douglass (ca. 1818 — 1895), a speech on the twenty-fourth anniversary of Emancipation in the District of Columbia, Washington, D.C. (April 1886)

This year, descendents of Frederick Douglass read his powerful 1852 Independence Day speech “What To The Slave Is The Fourth Of July?”

Related:

“How Black Lives Matter transformed the Fourth of July,” Peniel Joseph, CNN

“How Black Americans Co-opted the Fourth of July,” Livia Gershon, JSTOR Daily

African American Fourth of July

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Top image (“Frederick Douglass, July 4, 2020” after an 1856 Ambrotype in the National Portrait Gallery) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

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W. E. B. Du Bois: Strivings

“Strivings of the Negro People” by W. E. B. Du Bois, from The Atlantic, August 1897, animated by Tynesha Foreman. Read the full essay here.

“It dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was different from the others; or like … in heart and life and longing, but shut out from their world by a vast veil.”

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Columbusing

Columbusing: When a person (generally a white one) discovers something that isn’t really new. A video by Felice León.

More:

“‘Columbusing’: The Art Of Discovering Something That Is Not New,” Brenda Salinas, NPR

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Adiós blanco América cristiana

The United States is no longer a majority white, Christian country. At 45 percent of the population, white Christians are a shrinking demographic, and it’s obvious, hence the bitter backlash from many members of the group against the country’s increasing diversification.

“People fight like that when they are losing a sense of place, a sense of belonging, and a sense of the country that they understand and love. How do they reengage in public life when they can’t be the majority?” — Robert P. Jones, author of The End of White Christian America.

An Atlantic video.

Related:

“Trump can’t make America white again,” Eugene Robinson, Washington Post

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Access

When Starbucks closed 8,000 stores on May 29th to give 175,000 employees racial bias education, one element was a short film by Stanley Nelson, The Story of Access:

A Pardon for Jack Johnson

Heavyweight Boxing Champion Jack Johnson, convicted in a unjust federal trial in 1913, was posthumously pardoned by President Donald Trump on Thursday. Mr. Johnson, the first African American boxing champion, was a victim of racism, and there has been a long campaign to right this historical wrong, complicated by Johnson’s history of adultery and domestic violence.

But remedying racial injustice doesn’t seem to be why Mr. Trump pardoned Jack Johnson. He did it because celebrity pal Sylvester Stallone asked him to, and because Mr. Johnson was “a truly legendary boxing champion, legendary athlete, and a person that, when people got to know him, they really liked him,” said the president. A flamboyant, womanizing, larger-than-life celebrity? Donald Trump can certainly relate to that.

And of course if Donald Trump can pardon a dead man, surely there’s hope for Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn ….

More:

“Trump’s pardon of Jack Johnson is not insignificant. But caring about racial injustice in 2018 would be more meaningful.” Eugene Scott, Washington Post

 

Video: Celebrity Jack Johnson conducts an unidentified jazz band, 1929. Alternate takes here.

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Slavery to Mass Incarceration

“Slavery to Mass Incarceration,” a short video by the Equal Justice Initiative. Narrated by Bryan Stevenson, illustrated by Molly Crabapple. Directed by Jim Batt; sound design by Kim Boekbinder.

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American Terrorism

“Terror Lynching in America” a short video by the Equal Justice Initiative. Narrated by Bryan Stevenson, illustrated by Molly Crabapple. Directed and produced by Jim Batt and Kim Boekbinder.

h/t: Colorlines

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