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A really great series, that showcases Black Britons and not just Americans: https://www.theguardian.com/society/series/black-lives

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A really great series, that showcases Black Britons and not just Americans: https://www.theguardian.com/society/series/black-lives

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The extraordinary stories of the people at the forefront of social change and civil rights

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White people - stop misusing the word 'woke'. Learn the history and origin of the word. 

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White people - stop misusing the word 'woke'. Learn the history and origin of the word. 

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“Woke” was a term developed within the African-American community as a reminder to be aware and prepared. It was stolen to be directed at White people suspected of “virtue signaling” as a way to disarm its power and pervert it. Using it as a pejorative tells on yourself.

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“Woke” was a term developed within the African-American community as a reminder to be aware and prepared. It was stolen to be directed at White people suspected of “virtue signaling” as a way to disarm its power and pervert it. Using it as a pejorative tells on yourself.

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“Woke” was a term developed within the African-American community as a reminder to be aware and prepared. It was stolen to be directed at White people suspected of “virtue signaling” as a way to disarm its power and pervert it. Using it as a pejorative tells on yourself.
— Leslie Streeter (@LeslieStreeter) September 13, 2021

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“Woke” was a term developed within the African-American community as a reminder to be aware and prepared. It was stolen to be directed at White people suspected of “virtue signaling” as a way to disarm its power and pervert it. Using it as a pejorative tells on yourself.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.original_text
“Woke” was a term developed within the African-American community as a reminder to be aware and prepared. It was stolen to be directed at White people suspected of “virtue signaling” as a way to disarm its power and pervert it. Using it as a pejorative tells on yourself.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.text
“Woke” was a term developed within the African-American community as a reminder to be aware and prepared. It was stolen to be directed at White people suspected of “virtue signaling” as a way to disarm its power and pervert it. Using it as a pejorative tells on yourself.

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"‘If it’s my job to break down historical trauma in my bloodline, then it must be white people’s job to break down historical oppression in theirs.’

- my very brilliant, observant teenage daughter. If she can see it, I hope other folks can too. " - Dr. Twyla Baker

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‘If it’s my job to break down historical trauma in my bloodline, then it must be white people’s job to break down historical oppression in theirs.’

- my very brilliant, observant teenage daughter. If she can see it, I hope other folks can too. 

Good morning. ☀️

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‘If it’s my job to break down historical trauma in my bloodline, then it must be white people’s job to break down historical oppression in theirs.’

- my very brilliant, observant teenage daughter. If she can see it, I hope other folks can too. 

Good morning. ☀️

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‘If it’s my job to break down historical trauma in my bloodline, then it must be white people’s job to break down historical oppression in theirs.’

- my very brilliant, observant teenage daughter. If she can see it, I hope other folks can too.

Good morning. ☀️
— Dr. Twyla Baker (@Indigenia) April 4, 2021

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props_source.data.text
‘If it’s my job to break down historical trauma in my bloodline, then it must be white people’s job to break down historical oppression in theirs.’

- my very brilliant, observant teenage daughter. If she can see it, I hope other folks can too. 

Good morning. ☀️

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.original_text
‘If it’s my job to break down historical trauma in my bloodline, then it must be white people’s job to break down historical oppression in theirs.’

- my very brilliant, observant teenage daughter. If she can see it, I hope other folks can too. 

Good morning. ☀️

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.text
‘If it’s my job to break down historical trauma in my bloodline, then it must be white people’s job to break down historical oppression in theirs.’

- my very brilliant, observant teenage daughter. If she can see it, I hope other folks can too. 

Good morning. ☀️

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Racism towards East and South East Asian (ESEA) people in the UK has been heightened by the pandemic and has historically been overlooked. Educate yourself on sinophobia, the model minority myth, anti-Asian historical issues and current events, and support grassroots organisations and ESEA businesses in the UK.

EndTheVirusofRacism - this organisation tackles racism towards people of East and Southeast Asian heritage living in the UK.

GoFundMe has partnered with prominent British East and South East Asian (BESEA) figures to raise money to #StopESEAHate - View the GoFundMe

As AAPI month (May) comes to an end, sign the petition to support the development of  ESEA Heritage Month in the UK.

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To capitalize 'Black' and 'White' or not?

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To capitalize 'Black' and 'White' or not?

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Article by philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah on what's at stake in capitalizing terms like 'Black' and 'White', and why it could be important to do so.

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Black and white are both historically created racial identities-and whatever rule applies to one should apply to the other.

About the author: Kwame Anthony Appiah is a professor of philosophy and law at New York University and the author of The Lies that Bind: Rethinking Identity.

Should the b in black, as a designation for people of African descent, be uppercase? Media outlets and other institutions are asking themselves that question these days, and many are answering in the affirmative. But the reasons given for why can sometimes be perplexing-in a way that reveals larger perplexities about the meaning of race.

Everyone knows that black people aren't literally black. Plenty of white Americans are darker in complexion-look at your olive-skinned friends of Mediterranean or Armenian extraction-than plenty of black Americans. If Kim Kardashian, the media personality and entrepreneur, counts as white while Maulana Karenga, the radical activist and creator of Kwanzaa, counts as black, it isn't because he's darker than she is. So the color term is a poor metonym for the group in question.

And there's plainly a rationale for capitalizing black in order to head off ambiguity (what am I referring to when I refer to "black hair"?). For many advocates of the uppercase, though, the stakes are far greater. "Black with a capital 'B' refers to a group of people whose ancestors were born in Africa, were brought to the United States against their will, spilled their blood, sweat and tears to build this nation into a world power and along the way managed to create glorious works of art, passionate music, scientific discoveries, a marvelous cuisine, and untold literary masterpieces," Lori L. Tharps, who teaches journalism at Temple University, wrote in 2015. "When a copyeditor deletes the capital 'B,' they are in effect deleting the history and contributions of my people." Or as Anne Price, the president of the Insight Center for Community Economic Development, put it last year: "capitalizing Black is about claiming power." When W. E. B. Du Bois campaigned, back in the 1920s, for Negro, rather than negro, he remarked, mordantly: "Eight million Americans are entitled to a capital letter." According to the diversity committee of USA Today, which decided last week to capitalize the B-word, the change reflected "understanding and respect."
Ta-Nehisi Coates: What we mean when we say 'race is a social construct'
What complicates things is that, as a rule, capitalizing a word doesn't convey elevation: We don't rank Masonite over mahogany. Written languages are not highly consistent, to be sure, so we generalize at some peril. But in English, the long-standing convention is to capitalize proper nouns and proper names, which are terms that refer to what philosophers call "particulars" or "individuals"-a specific person, place, or thing. We routinely name and capitalize entities (the Middle Ages, January, the Pacific Ocean, Copenhagen) that reflect human interests or actions. On the other hand, we tend not to capitalize "natural kinds"-that is, categories that track with inherent features of the world, independent of our interests or doings. Einstein, the physicist, is capitalized; einsteinium, the element, is not.

A good reason to capitalize the racial designation "black," then, is precisely that black, in this sense, is not a natural category but a social one-a collective identity-with a particular history. ("Race is psychology, not biology" is a formulation Du Bois once offered.) What's more, the very label "black" plays a role in generating that identity.

That's how social identities work. The specific labels can shift over time (Negro, colored, Afro-American), but they help to bring into existence the group to which they refer. A pack of gray wolves exists regardless of our naming practices; they don't need to know that they're "gray wolves." But to be black involves (among other things) identifying as black or being identified as black-usually both. Identity labels come with norms, and so a black person sometimes does things as a black person, is sometimes treated as a black person. (Because that treatment has its effects on you whether you like it or not, your race isn't generally up to just you.) Social identities aren't reducible to a label, but labels play a role in generating and sustaining them.

Conventions of capitalization can help signal that races aren't natural categories, to be discovered in the world, but products of social forces. Giving black a big B could signal that it's not a generic term for some feature of humanity but a name for a particular human-made entity. To paraphrase Simone de Beauvoir, one is not born, but rather becomes, black-and the same goes for all of our social identities.

So what about white folks? The style guide of the American Psychological Association declares, as it has for a generation: "Racial and ethnic groups are designated by proper nouns and are capitalized. Therefore, use 'Black' and 'White' instead of 'black' and 'white.'" That seems sensible enough. But for some people, White is the sticking point. As The American Heritage Dictionary (on whose usage panel, now disbanded, I have served) ventured, in its fourth edition: "In all likelihood, uncertainty as to the mode of styling of white has dissuaded many publications from adopting the capitalized form Black."

If you consider the capital letter to be a conferral of dignity, you may balk at the symmetry. "We strongly believe that leaving white in lowercase represents a righting of a long-standing wrong and a demand for dignity and racial equity," Price, of the Insight Center, wrote. Until the wrongs against black people have been righted, she continued, "we cannot embrace equal treatment in our language." The capital letter, in her view, amounts to cultural capital-a benefit that white people should be awarded only after white supremacy has been rolled back.

Luke Visconti, the chairman of the nonprofit DiversityInc and the author of an online column titled "Ask the White Guy," has offered another perspective: In his opinion, capitalizing black but not white makes sense, because, while black people describe themselves as black, "people in the white majority don't think of themselves in that way. I don't think there's anything wrong with this-it's just how it is."

Both perspectives may have informed The Seattle Times when, counseled by a diversity and inclusion task force, it updated its style guide last year as follows:

Black (adj.): Belonging to people who are part of the African diaspora. Capitalize Black because it is a reflection of shared cultures and experiences (foods, languages, music, religious traditions, etc.) ...

white (adj.): Belonging to people with light-colored skin, especially those of European descent. Unlike Black, it is lowercase, as its use is a physical description of people whose backgrounds may spring from many different cultures.

Here, I fear, we start to run into trouble. The Seattle Times style guide takes pains to note that Black may be more inclusive than African American by encompassing recent African immigrants. So what to make of the contrast between the "shared cultures" of Black folks and the "many different cultures" of white folks? Does The Seattle Times imagine that Africa is less culturally varied than Europe? To what extent is blackness, as a social identity, really contoured by culture? The NYPD officers who shot Amadou Diallo, a Guinean immigrant, did not care whether their victim's foods, languages, music, and religious traditions were similar to those of most African Americans. Barack Obama may, culturally speaking, have far more in common with his white Harvard Law School classmates than with someone from the Gullah community of the Georgia Low Country. (Elsewhere in the diaspora, the black British cabinet member Kwasi Kwarteng will have less in common with Magic Johnson than with his fellow Etonian Boris Johnson.) But perhaps talk of culture is a distraction. The Chicago Sun-Times recently announced that it would capitalize Brown as well as Black, and Brown-which has been used to designate Arabs, South Asians, and Latinos-is neither a culture nor a salient social category. The main experience that African Americans share is being treated as African American. That experience arises from this identity, not vice versa, because without the concept of black, you can't be treated as black. Once we do have the notion of black people as an identity group, we can freely talk about cultural practices and experiences common among its members. But we can't start with the culture and experiences and derive the identity.
Ibram X. Kendi: The greatest white privilege is life itself
What about Visconti's argument that white people don't think of themselves as white people? If he were right-and he isn't-we could still ask: Should it be that way? It's true that white people have the luxury of not thinking of themselves as white when they're in all-white settings; the less that's the norm, the less they can think of race as something that only other people have-the way talk of "ethnic" food suggests that ethnicity is a property only "ethnics" have.

And so the way the Seattle Times style guide treats whiteness as an objective feature of populations is unsettling. "People of light-colored skin, especially of European descent": the equivocal force of "especially" leaves unclear whether white could apply, say, to a pale-skinned Japanese person. We know better only because we have a prior notion of who counts as white, a prior sense of white people as an identity group. By treating Black as a name and white as a fact, the style guide would exempt white people from history-a rather troubling history at that.

As a generation of work in "whiteness studies"-by scholars such as Nell Painter, David Roediger, and Noel Ignatiev-has emphasized, "white" arises as a racial designation only in contradistinction to other racial designations (the "blackamoor," the "red man," and so on). Without the theory and practice of racism, there are neither blacks nor whites.

Nor did whiteness arrive as some fully formed and stable social category. Madison Grant's 1916 book, The Passing of the Great Race, perhaps the most influential racist tract of the previous century, was scarcely concerned with people of African ancestry: The threat to American racial purity it decried came from the wrong sort of Europeans. In his day, Jewish and southern-European immigrants hardly qualified as white. They were members of the Semitic and Mediterranean races whose intermingling with the Nordic stock of "true" Americans would result-as a 1922 volume by a Saturday Evening Post contributor warned-in a "hybrid race of people as worthless and futile as the good-for-nothing mongrels of Central America and Southeastern Europe." Such European immigrants, over the decades, became "white," in a historical process driven, in large part, by their not being black.

When we ignore the dialectical relation between the labels "black" and "white," we treat a bloodstained product of history as a neutral, objective fact about the world. We naturalize the workings of racism. More than a few institutions have been mindful of this peril. This spring, the Center for the Study of Social Policy, in a statement by two nonwhite staff members, announced that it would follow the American Psychological Association's style rules, and helpfully elaborated its reasoning:

To not name 'White' as a race is, in fact, an anti-Black act which frames Whiteness as both neutral and the standard ... We believe that it is important to call attention to White as a race as a way to understand and give voice to how Whiteness functions in our social and political institutions and our communities. Moreover, the detachment of 'White' as a proper noun allows White people to sit out of conversations about race and removes accountability from White people's and White institutions' involvement in racism.

John McWhorter: The origins of the 'acting white' charge
The point of the capital letter, then, isn't to elevate; it's to situate. "White Americans deserve their capital letter too," Tharps says magnanimously, "but I'm not here to fight their battles." Perhaps a stronger argument would be that white people don't deserve a lowercase w and shouldn't be allowed to claim it. One reason that the MIT philosopher Sally Haslanger prefers to capitalize the names of races is, she explains, "to highlight the artificiality of race," by contrast to the seeming naturalness of color. A larger argument lurks here: Racial identities were not discovered but created, she's reminding us, and we must all take responsibility for them. Don't let them disguise themselves as common nouns and adjectives. Call them out by their names.

That's not the end of the conversation, of course. White-supremacist websites have been known to capitalize the w in white; by doing the same, do we lend them support? You could argue that it's the other way round: If the capitalization of white became standard among anti-racists, the supremacists' gesture would no longer be a provocative defiance of the norm and would lose all force. Supremacists would have to find another way to ennoble themselves. Who knows, maybe they'd find empowerment in the (soon to be) provocatively lowercase form of the word.

A final word of caution: Reasoned arguments about linguistic usages must always reckon with the fact that language is a set of conventions, to be determined by the consensus of language users. (That's why I've been content here to comply with the punctuating conventions of this publication.) There's no objectively correct answer to the question of whether to capitalize black and white in advance of such a consensus. Sure, if you're a popular autocrat, like Atatürk, you might be able to modernize a language by diktat. But in this country, the process of language reform is complicated. It's not exactly grassroots democracy; some voices count more than others, and people usually leave typographical niceties to the expert associations concerned with them. What vox populi retains is veto power. A century ago, the editors of one black magazine decided that Negroes would be renamed "Libranians," from the Latin liber, meaning "free." It didn't take. Nor had earlier candidates such as Anglo-African and Africo-American. A reason the ethnonym African American did take, starting in the late 1980s, was the endorsement of high-profile black Americans, notably Jesse Jackson. At the time, the term didn't necessarily sit well with many black Americans, especially older ones, used to insisting correctly that they did not personally come from Africa; but the mainstream media came onboard and, before long, it gained wide acceptance. Critics have tried to discredit the gender-neutral coinage Latinx by noting that, despite the enthusiasm for it among activists, most of those it designates don't go for it. Give it time. We can't yet tell whether the term will gain broader popularity or, perhaps, be supplanted by another.

Arguments matter; but only the arguments that win the day will determine what usages become standard, and it's hard to say in advance which ones that will be. Informal deliberations among a larger community of users will produce a new consensus, and create new facts of language. Words are public property; so are capital letters. As those deliberations continue, though, let's try to remember that black and white are both historically created racial identities-and avoid conventions that encourage us to forget this.

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style guide of the american psychological association

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influential racist tract of the previous century

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The Case for Capitalizing the 'B' in Black

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Black and white are both historically created racial identities-and whatever rule applies to one should apply to the other. About the author: Kwame Anthony Appiah is a professor of philosophy and law at New York University and the author of The Lies that Bind: Rethinking Identity.

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Nell Irvin Painter is a Harvard historian and author of The History of White People. In this Washington Post article she reflects on how Whiteness is made invisible as a raced category, and what is at stake in how it is described.

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Nell Irvin Painter, author of "The History of White People," explains how the language of whiteness - and its meaning - has evolved. (The Washington Post)

Nell Irvin Painter is the author of "The History of White People."

Let's talk about that lowercase "white."

Restructuring policing in ways that matter will take years, and many more Confederate monuments remain standing than have come down. But in these past few earth-shaking months, one change has advanced with startling speed: All this social upheaval has suddenly and widely restored a capital B to the word "Black."

I say "restored," because that capital B appeared in the 1970s. I used it myself. Then editors, uncomfortable with both the odd combination of uppercase "Black" and lowercase "white," and the unfamiliar, bumpy "Black and White," took off both capital letters. "Black" returned to "black."

In the wake of massive George Floyd and Black Lives Matter protests, however, media outlets and journalist associations are re-embracing the capital B. The Associated Press, New York Times, Los Angeles Times and many others took the step. (The Post has said it is considering the change.) Even Fox News joined the crowd. The most common motive can be summed up as respect. To many, the case for capitalizing "Black" seemed obvious, whether as an ethnicity or a racial designation.

But what about "white"?

I had been inclined toward the new formula: capital B for "Black"; lowercase w for "white" and lowercase b for "brown" (another important question to resolve) - but with serious reservations.

My initial thinking: When I compare the cultural, intellectual and historical heft of the three categories, "Black" comes out well ahead of "white" and "brown." We have whole libraries of books and articles about "Blackness," world-beating traditions of music and literature, even entire academic departments 30 to 50 years old specializing in African American/black studies. Compared with blackness, whiteness and brownness are severely under-theorized.

But, in a June statement, the National Association of Black Journalists articulated a different view, stating, "NABJ also recommends that whenever a color is used to appropriately describe race then it should be capitalized, including White and Brown." Such a recommendation from the leading organization representing black journalists should give anyone pause.

A second reservation arose as I considered the asymmetry of racial identities of blackness and whiteness - and how they function differently in American history and culture.

These two identities don't simply mirror each other - one works through a pronounced group identity; the other more often is lived as unraced individuality. However much you might see yourself as an individual, if you're black, you also have to contend with other people's views. W.E.B. Du Bois summed this up as " twoness," as seeing yourself as yourself but also knowing that other people see you as a black person. You don't have to be a black nationalist to see yourself as black.

In contrast, until quite recently white Americans rarely saw themselves as raced - as white. Most of them, anyway. The people who have embraced "white" as a racial identity have been white nationalists, Ku Klux Klansmen and their ilk. Thanks to President Trump, white nationalists are more visible than ever in our public spaces.

But that group does not determine how most white people see themselves. Instead, in terms of racial identity, white Americans have had the choice of being something vague, something unraced and separate from race. A capitalized "White" challenges that freedom, by unmasking "Whiteness" as an American racial identity as historically important as "Blackness" - which it certainly is.

No longer should white people be allowed the comfort of this racial invisibility; they should have to see themselves as raced. Being racialized makes white people squirm, so let's racialize them with that capital W.

Others have come to similar conclusions. In June, Kwame Anthony Appiah of New York University said capitalizing "White" along with "Black" would situate "White" within historically created racial identities that have linked the two terms over a very long run. For intellectual clarity, what applies to one should apply to the other.

More emphatically, Eve L. Ewing, a poet and sociologist of education at the University of Chicago, recently started capitalizing "White" to emphasize the presence of whiteness as a racial identity: "Whiteness, she says, is not only an absence." She compares the fates of the McCloskeys, a white couple who pointed loaded firearms at protesters in St. Louis, with that of young Tamir Rice, who lost his life simply for playing with a toy gun in Cleveland. The capital W stresses "White" as a powerful racial category whose privileges should be embedded in its definition.

Ewing may have been thinking of James Baldwin, who said at Wayne State University in 1980, " white is a metaphor for power." The capital letter can underscore the existence of an unjust racial power imbalance.

Capital-W "Whiteness" is less saliently linked to white nationalism than to racial neutrality or absence. We should capitalize "White" to situate "Whiteness" within the American ideology of race, within which "Black," but not "White," has been hypervisible as a group identity. Capitalizing all our races - "Black," "Brown" and "White" - simply makes this ideology visible for all.

One way of remaking race is through spelling - using or not using capital letters. A more potent way, of course, is through behavior.

Watch more Opinions videos:

Read letters in response to this piece: Rather than focusing on skin color, let's focus on defeating prejudice

Shirley Carswell: Why news organizations' move to capitalize 'Black' is a win

DeNeen L. Brown: Black people are tired of trying to explain racism

Benyam Tesfai: I don't smile when I run to be sociable. I smile so I don't get shot.

Donna F. Edwards: There seems to be nothing our black sons and daughters can do to remain alive

Ben Crump: Another unarmed black person has been killed. It's no wonder we can't breathe.

Jonathan Capehart: Dear white people, please read 'White Fragility'

Full coverage: Race & Reckoning

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Opinion | Why 'White' should be capitalized, too

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Nell Irvin Painter is the author of " The History of White People ." Let's talk about that lowercase "white." Restructuring policing in ways that matter will take years, and many more Confederate monuments remain standing than have come down.

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There's no emotion we ought to think harder and more clearly about than anger. Anger greets most of us every day - in our personal relationships, in the workplace, on the highway, on airline trips - and, often, in our political lives as well. Anger is both poisonous and popular. Even when people acknowledge its destructive tendencies, they still so often cling to it, seeing it as a strong emotion, connected to self-respect and manliness (or, for women, to the vindication of equality). If you react to insults and wrongs without anger you'll be seen as spineless and downtrodden. When people wrong you, says conventional wisdom, you should use justified rage to put them in their place, exact a penalty. We could call this football politics, but we'd have to acknowledge right away that athletes, whatever their rhetoric, have to be disciplined people who know how to transcend anger in pursuit of a team goal.

If we think closely about anger, we can begin to see why it is a stupid way to run one's life. A good place to begin is Aristotle's definition: not perfect, but useful, and a starting point for a long Western tradition of reflection. Aristotle says that anger is a response to a significant damage to something or someone one cares about, and a damage that the angry person believes to have been wrongfully inflicted. He adds that although anger is painful, it also contains within itself a hope for payback. So: significant damage, pertaining to one's own values or circle of cares, and wrongfulness. All this seems both true and uncontroversial. More controversial, perhaps, is his idea (in which, however, all Western philosophers who write about anger concur) that the angry person wants some type of payback, and that this is a conceptual part of what anger is. In other words, if you don't want some type of payback, your emotion is something else (grief, perhaps), but not really anger.

Is this really right? I think so. We should understand that the wish for payback can be a very subtle wish: the angry person doesn't need to wish to take revenge herself. She may simply want the law to do so; or even some type of divine justice. Or, she may more subtly simply want the wrongdoer's life to go badly in future, hoping, for example, that the second marriage of her betraying spouse turns out really badly. I think if we understand the wish in this broad way, Aristotle is right: anger does contain a sort of strike-back tendency. Contemporary psychologists who study anger empirically agree with Aristotle in seeing this double movement in it, from pain to hope.

The central puzzle is this: the payback idea does not make sense. Whatever the wrongful act was - a murder, a rape, a betrayal - inflicting pain on the wrongdoer does not help restore the thing that was lost. We think about payback all the time, and it is a deeply human tendency to think that proportionality between punishment and offence somehow makes good the offence. Only it doesn't. Let's say my friend has been raped. I urgently want the offender to be arrested, convicted, and punished. But really, what good will that do? Looking to the future, I might want many things: to restore my friend's life, to prevent and deter future rapes. But harsh treatment of this particular wrongdoer might or might not achieve the latter goal. It's an empirical matter. And usually people do not treat it as an empirical matter: they are in the grip of an idea of cosmic fitness that makes them think that blood for blood, pain for pain is the right way to go. The payback idea is deeply human, but fatally flawed as a way of making sense of the world.

There is one, and I think only one, situation in which the payback idea does make sense. That is when I see the wrong as entirely and only what Aristotle calls a 'down-ranking': a personal humiliation, seen as entirely about relative status. If the problem is not the injustice itself, but the way it has affected my ranking in the social hierarchy, then I really can achieve something by humiliating the wrongdoer: by putting him relatively lower, I put myself relatively higher, and if status is all I care about, I don't need to worry that the real wellbeing problems created by the wrongful act have not been solved.

A wronged person who is really angry, seeking to strike back, soon arrives, I claim, at a fork in the road. Three paths lie before her. Path one: she goes down the path of status-focus, seeing the event as all about her and her rank. In this case her payback project makes sense, but her normative focus is self-centred and objectionably narrow. Path two: she focuses on the original offence (rape, murder, etc), and seeks payback, imagining that the offender's suffering would actually make things better. In this case, her normative focus is on the right things, but her thinking doesn't make sense. Path three: if she is rational, after exploring and rejecting these two roads, she will notice that a third path is open to her, which is the best of all: she can turn to the future and focus on doing whatever would make sense, in the situation, and be really helpful. This may well include the punishment of the wrongdoer, but in a spirit that is deterrent rather than retaliatory.

Most people begin with everyday anger: they really do want the offender to suffer

So, to put my radical claim succinctly: when anger makes sense (because focused on status), its retaliatory tendency is normatively problematic, because a single-minded focus on status impedes the pursuit of intrinsic goods. When it is normatively reasonable (because focused on the important human goods that have been damaged), its retaliatory tendency doesn't make sense, and it is problematic for that reason. Let's call this change of focus the Transition. We need the Transition badly in our personal and our political lives, dominated as they all too frequently are by payback and status-focus.

Sometimes a person may have an emotion that embodies the Transition already. Its entire content is: 'How outrageous! This should not happen again.' We may call this emotion Transition-Anger, and that emotion does not have the problems of garden-variety anger. But most people begin with everyday anger: they really do want the offender to suffer. So the Transition requires moral, and often political, effort. It requires forward-looking rationality, and a spirit of generosity and cooperation.

The struggle against anger often requires lonely self-examination. Whether the anger in question is personal, or work-related, or political, it requires exacting effort against one's own habits and prevalent cultural forces. Many great leaders have understood this struggle, but none more deeply than Nelson Mandela. He often said that he knew anger well, and that he had to struggle against the demand for payback in his own personality. He reported that during his 27 years of imprisonment he had to practise a disciplined type of meditation to keep his personality moving forward and avoiding the anger trap. It now seems clear that the prisoners on Robben Island had smuggled in a copy of Meditations by the Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius, to give them a model of patient effort against the corrosions of anger.

But Mandela was determined to win the struggle. He wanted a successful nation, even then, and he knew that there could be no successful nation when two groups were held apart by suspicion, resentment, and the desire to make the other side pay for the wrongs they had done. Even though those wrongs were terrible, cooperation was necessary for nationhood. So he did things, in that foul prison, that his fellow prisoners thought perverse. He learned Afrikaans. He studied the culture and thinking of the oppressors. He practised cooperation by forming friendships with his jailers. Generosity and friendliness were not justified by past deeds; but they were necessary for future progress.

Mandela used to tell people a little parable. Imagine that the sun and the wind are contending to see who can get a traveller to take off his blanket. The wind blows hard, aggressively. But the traveller only pulls the blanket tighter around him. Then the sun starts to shine, first gently, and then more intensely. The traveller relaxes his blanket, and eventually he takes it off. So that, he said, is how a leader has to operate: forget about the strike-back mentality, and forge a future of warmth and partnership.

Mandela was realistic. One would never have found him proposing, as did Gandhi, to convert Hitler by charm. And of course he had been willing to use violence strategically, when non-violence failed. Non-anger does not entail non-violence (although Gandhi thought it did). But he understood nationhood and the spirit that a new nation requires. Still, behind the strategic resort to violence was always a view of people that was Transitional, focused not on payback but on the creation of a shared future in the wake of outrageous and terrible deeds.

Again and again, as the African National Congress (ANC) began to win the struggle, its members wanted payback. Of course they did, since they had suffered egregious wrongs. Mandela would have none of it. When the ANC voted to replace the old Afrikaner national anthem with the anthem of the freedom movement, he persuaded them to adopt, instead, the anthem that is now official, which includes the freedom anthem (using three African languages), a verse of the Afrikaner hymn, and a concluding section in English. When the ANC wanted to decertify the rugby team as a national team, correctly understanding the sport's long connection to racism, Mandela, famously, went in the other direction, backing the rugby team to a World Cup victory and, through friendship, getting the white players to teach the sport to young black children. To the charge that he was too willing to see the good in people, he responded: 'Your duty is to work with human beings as human beings, not because you think they are angels.'

Mandela asks only, how shall I produce cooperation and friendship?

And Mandela rejected not only the false lure of payback, but also the poison of status-obsession. He never saw himself as above menial tasks, and he never used status to humiliate. Just before his release, in a halfway house where he was still officially a prisoner, but had one of the warders as his own private cook, he had a fascinating discussion with this warder about a very mundane matter: how the dishes would get done.

I took it upon myself to break the tension and a possible resentment on his part that he has to serve a prisoner by cooking and then washing dishes, and I offered to wash dishes and he refused ... He says that this is his work. I said, 'No, we must share it.' Although he insisted, and he was genuine, but I forced him, literally forced him, to allow me to do the dishes, and we established a very good relationship ... A really nice chap, Warder Swart, a very good friend of mine.

It would have been so easy to see the situation as one of status-inversion: the once-dominating Afrikaner is doing dishes for the once-despised ANC leader. It would also have been so easy to see it in terms of payback: the warder is getting a humiliation he deserves because of his complicity in oppression. Significantly, Mandela doesn't go down either of these doomed paths, even briefly. He asks only, how shall I produce cooperation and friendship?

Mandela's project was political; but it has implications for many parts of our lives: for friendship, marriage, child-rearing, being a good colleague, driving a car. And of course it also has implications for the way we think about what political success involves and what a successful nation is like. Whenever we are faced with pressing moral or political decisions, we should clear our heads, and spend some time conducting what Mandela (citing Marcus Aurelius) referred to as 'Conversations with Myself'. When we do, I predict, the arguments proposed by anger will be clearly seen to be pathetic and weak, while the voice of generosity and forward-looking reason will be strong as well as beautiful.
Anger and Forgiveness: Resentment, Generosity, and Justice (2016) by Martha C Nussbaum is out now through Oxford University Press.

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There's no emotion we ought to think harder about than anger | Aeon Essays

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There's no emotion we ought to think harder and more clearly about than anger. Anger greets most of us every day - in our personal relationships, in the workplace, on the highway, on airline trips - and, often, in our political lives as well. Anger is both poisonous and popular.

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he ideas of the modernisation theorists, particularly those of Walt Rostow, remained dominant throughout the 1960s, but it was not long before they came under sustained critique from the intellectual left, who developed a counter-tradition: the dependencia, or dependency, school of thought.

The kernel of this thinking developed within the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, (Eclac, or Cepal as it is often known, after its Spanish acronym). Founded in the 1950s to carry out research that would contribute to greater development across the continent, Eclac was a training ground for many dependency writers. Like a modern-day thinktank, it sought to overturn many of the rather western-centric assumptions of modernisation theory, replacing them with a critique of the unequal terms of economic exchange between core (rich) and periphery (poor) countries.

This approach set the tone for the dependency school. But it was the likes of Andre Gunder Frank who would go on to politicise - and indeed radicalise - the message, in publications such as his 1967 book Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America.

Frank was, in many ways, a rather unlikely radical, having been trained at the notoriously free market Chicago School of Economics (the bad guys in Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine) under the supervision of the school's head, Milton Friedman. But quite unlike his supervisor, in the early 1970s Frank worked under Chile's socialist president, Salvador Allende, not against him. And this experience of working outside the metropolitan centres was to be central to his radical perspective.

Above all, it prompted him to notice what he saw as the unforgivable historical amnesia of mainstream development theories. Rather than taking poor countries' impoverished status as the starting point for analysis, he argued, their poverty ought to be thought of as the end point. This was the heart of the underdevelopment critique: the claim that what made rich nations rich and kept poor nations poor was not geographical bad luck or the wrong policies, much less an unproductive "culture", but the ongoing legacy of colonialism, slavery and resource extraction. Frank's colleague, the Stanford economist Paul Baran, neatly summarised this as "plunder thinly veiled as trade".

In short, Frank was saying that while today's rich countries may once have been undeveloped, they were never underdeveloped in anything like the same way. Moreover, this was not a case of unintended consequences. It was central to the whole capitalist enterprise. If we stand back and look at the capitalist system as a whole, he said, it is impossible not to notice "its simultaneous generation of underdevelopment in some of its parts and of economic development in others". This primary observation led to a host of follow-on arguments, such as the idea that the exploitation of poor countries by rich ones is possible only because ruling elites in poor countries have something to gain from that exploitation, and are therefore complicit at every level - nationally, regionally and locally - resulting in a cycle of repeated exploitation and misery.

The only possible solution to this rather hopeless situation, Frank believed, was socialism - although this was a conclusion that, like Rostow's unflinching adherence to capitalism (and damn the costs), he reached before carrying out his research. We don't have to agree with Frank on the solution, however, to recognise the many useful insights to come from the dependency critique more broadly: such as the idea that even if countries could successfully begin to develop - and not all dependency theorists thought that they could - they would never do so in a vacuum, as modernisation theorists believed. They would be increasingly propelled into a world system already clanking away at full speed.

That may not sound so novel or insightful today. But it is interesting in retrospect because here, much more clearly than before, is a deliberate concern to consider the material forces of history - the actual lived reality of the world - when elaborating a model of economic development (rather than simply sketching it out according to the abstract reckonings of neoclassical economics). As a result, we can detect here a whiff of the idea that it is inequality as much as absolute poverty that most accounts for the problems of global poverty.

But do the insights of dependency theorists still hold water? The somewhat pessimistic implication of the dependency approach is to assume that poor countries can only improve their condition by de-linking from the world economy. And as Frank himself was later to acknowledge, that makes it very hard to develop at all. Moreover, it has been largely disproved by the experience of the east Asian tiger economies: something other dependency scholars, such as the Brazilian intellectual and later president Fernando Henrique Cardoso, recognised at the time. But, above all, dependency theory could never really account for the sheer variety of experiences that poor countries around the world exhibit.

In its hardline form, then, dependency theory is of perhaps limited value today, which reiterates a lesson learned from modernisation: that when theories become all encompassing, they tend to become ever further removed from useful policy advice.

It is nonetheless clear that the problems of uneven starting points and the structural unfairness of global capitalism that interested Frank and others have not gone away. And the underlying critique of western chauvinism (that western-style capitalist democracy is the best model for the rest) remains pertinent when people persist in talking of development "ladders", for example. Perhaps more important, Frank's belief that we too readily overlook the way that too many of the privileges of the rich nations are not only unearned but predicated upon the prior and active removal of that wealth from others is, if anything, making something of a comeback in these days of heightened discussion of inequality.

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Do resource extraction and the legacy of colonialism keep poor countries poor? | Simon Reid-Henry

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he ideas of the modernisation theorists, particularly those of Walt Rostow, remained dominant throughout the 1960s, but it was not long before they came under sustained critique from the intellectual left, who developed a counter-tradition: the dependencia, or dependency, school of thought.

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On Tuesday, June 2, you likely saw a flood of black squares filling your social feeds. Dubbed #BlackOutTuesday, the campaign was intended to be a sign of solidarity from non-Black people in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd. These #BlackOutTuesday posts were born from an initial call for a mindful pause within the music industry. Under the hashtag #TheShowMustBePaused, Jamila Thomas and Brianna Agyemang, two Black women in music marketing, began the initiative to urge people to pause their usual social content and redirect to conversations about racism and systemic injustice. However, the posts quickly shifted to an endless stream of plain black squares, often captionless or utilizing the hashtag #BlackOutTuesday, were criticized for being counterproductive, for allowing non-Black people to stay silent in a conversation that needs non-Black people to speak up.

"Optical Allyship" is a term coined by Latham Thomas, founder of Mama Glow and author of Own Your Glow. In an Instagram post from May 1, Thomas defines optical allyship as "allyship that only serves at the surface level to platform the 'ally,' it makes a statement but doesn't go beneath the surface and is not aimed at breaking away from the systems of power that oppress." Essentially, it is performative allyship. Instead of standing up, building trust, and doing the groundwork to disassemble white supremacy, optical allyship does the bare minimum. It's retweeting a contextless MLK quote without learning about the depth of King's work and his actual words on protesting. It's using a "woke" cultural moment to build your brand while continuing practices rooted in racism. It's relying on Black people to do the work for you.

On May 29, writer and editor Mireille Cassandra Harper shared a thread of ways to partake in non-optical allyship on Twitter that should be required reading for anyone who wants to be an effective ally. Her tips are concise, direct, and cohesive, giving non-Black people a straightforward guide to turning their performative allyship into "non-optical allyship." You can read Harper's full thread on or on Twitter.

Harper is one of the many Black people laying the groundwork for dismantling racism, following in the footsteps of activists like Audre Lorde, Angela Davis, and Maya Angelou. Though many non-Black people may be just joining the conversation. There are generations of Black people who have been well aware of the anti-Blackness built into our country, who have been working to fight systemic oppression long before we were filling out feeds with empty black squares. Below are three ways to shift performative allyship to non-optical allyship, to start doing the work.

1. Read, Listen To, And Watch Anti-Racist Work

In her Twitter thread, Harper includes a list of Black leaders, activists, and writers she's learned from, encouraging non-Black people to familiarize themselves with the annals of Black activism. While many may have the instinct to ask the Black people in their life what to do, how to help, where to start, we cannot expect Black people to be our personal anti-racism guides. This is especially true if you don't have a close, personal relationship with the person you are asking for help.

Harper lists checking in on the Black people in your life as a form of non-optical allyship. She also retweeted someone who added the importance of having "a pre-existing relationship that invites this kind of intimacy." They added that this kind of reaching out feels like the "worst kind of [performative allyship]."However well-intentioned this line of questioning may be, it's still asking Black people to do emotional labor for you. Black people do not owe us their time and emotional energy.

Listening is, of course, imperative to non-optical allyship. Knowing when your voice is helpful and when it is harmful, when it needs to be heard and when it is drowning out more important voices, is crucial. We can start by listening to the Black voices whose work is readily accessible with a simple Google search. Here are some good places to start:

2. Don't Share Traumatic Content

Reposting videos of the police killing ofGeorge Floyd perpetuates a harmful cycle, one in which we continue to normalize the propagation of Black death. You should not need to share a video of someone's killing to prove you care about their life.

Yomi Adegoke wrote about performative grief for Vogue that speaks to the detrimental consequences of sharing such videos, of hastily written captions as an effort to establish oneself on the "right side." Adegoke writes about the "pics or it didn't happen" approach to activism, about the danger of needing to post about something merely to prove that you care about it. "Put simply," Adegoke writes, "the idea that silently doing the work can be negatively weaponised [sic] while empty barrels can sate themselves with the noise they make is dangerous." This kind of virtue signaling is optical allyship embodied. It prioritizes appearances over Black lives.

3. Plan To Make A Long-Term Effort

The work does not stop after a certain amount of time has passed. It doesn't begin and end with one post, one march, one #BlackOutTuesday. How do you plan to commit to fighting for racial justice in the long term? Are you going to educate yourself along with Rachel Cargle's The Great Unlearn? Will you hold your employer accountable for racial justice? How will you use your time, your money, your resources, your voice to continue fighting white supremacy? "Make the effort to do something valuable over a long-term period," Harper concludes in her guide for non-optical allyship. How will you keep the movement going?

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What Is Optical Allyship? 3 Ways To Be Actively Anti-Racist

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On Tuesday, June 2, you likely saw a flood of black squares filling your social feeds. Dubbed #BlackOutTuesday, the campaign was intended to be a sign of solidarity from non-Black people in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd. These...

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Episode 58: The Neoliberal Optimism Industry by Citations Needed Podcast

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We're told the world is getting better all the time. In January, The New York Times' Nick Kristof explained "Why 2017 Was the Best Year in Human History." The same month, Harvard professor and Bill Gates' favorite optimist Steven Pinker lamented (in a special edition of Time magazine guest edited by - who else? - Bill Gates) the “bad habits of media... bring out the worst in human cognition”. By focusing so much on negative things, the theory goes, we are tricked into thinking things are getting worse when, in reality, it's actually the opposite. 

For the TEDtalk set, that the world is awesome and still improving is self-evidently true - just look at the data. But how true is this popular axiom? How accurate is the portrayal that the world is improving we so often seen in sexy, hockey stick graphs of upward growth and rapidly declining poverty? And how, exactly, are the powers that be "measuring" improvements in society?

On this episode, we take a look at the ideological project of telling us everything's going swimmingly, how those in power cook the books and spin data to make their case for maintaining the status quo, and how The Neoliberal Optimism Industry is, at its core, an anti-intellectual enterprise designed to lull us into complacency and political impotence.

Our guest is Dr. Jason Hickel.

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"The scale of corruption in Africa is daunting," warns The Economist. "Corruption a Cause of Poverty in the Developing World," DW tells us. "Why corruption is holding Africa back," CNN laments. Everywhere we turn in elite media and halls of power, we are told the global South is poor, in part or in whole, due to rampant "corruption."

But a closer look at the data - and any effort to put notions of corruption in their proper historical context - reveals our limited, racialized definition of corruption is the geopolitical equivalent of complaining about "black on black" crime. True in a limited, technical sense but, in practice, often functions as a victim-blaming red herring meant to avoid uncomfortable discussions of white supremacy, deliberate economic dispossession and a far greater global regime of corruption leveled by the super-wealthy.

This episode examines the extraction of trillions annually from the global South in illicit transfers of money through the exploitation of tax shelters, so-called "hot money", interests on exploitative IMF loans, trade misinvoicing and a host of other routine and totally unscrutinized financial schemes.

We are joined today by anthropologist and author Jason Hickel.

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Episode 73: Western Media's Narrow, Colonial Definition of "Corruption"

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"The scale of corruption in Africa is daunting," warns The Economist. "Corruption a Cause of Poverty in the Developing World," DW tells us. "Why corruption is holding Africa back," CNN laments. Everywhere we turn in elite media and halls of power, we are told the global South is poor, in part or in whole, due to rampant "corruption."

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Citations Needed: Episode 82: ‘Western Civilization’ and White Supremacy: The Right-Wing Co-option of Antiquity

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The term “Western civilization” has long been a staple of the American Right, but with the recent resurgence of white nationalism, it is having something of a comeback. Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly are hosting a two-week Mediterranean “cruise thru history” to “explore the roots of Western civilizat…

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The recent debacle of David Cameron's filmed condemnation of Nigerian and Afghan corruption and the Queen's remark on Chinese officials' rudeness highlights the persistence of imperial thinking in Britain. There seems to be a continuing assumption within the British establishment that it sets an example for others to follow and that the British are owed deference by others.

Ever since evangelical antislavery activists campaigned for Britain to abolish the transatlantic slave trade, Britons have assured themselves that imperial overrule is compatible with the " benign tutelage " of other races and nations. Unlike the other European empires, Britons tell themselves, theirs was an empire founded on humanitarian compassion for colonised subjects.

The argument runs like this: while the Spanish, Portuguese, French, Belgians and Germans exploited and abused, the British empire brought ideas of protection for lesser races and fostered their incremental development. With British tutelage colonised peoples could become, eventually, as competent, as knowledgeable, as "civilised" as Britain itself. These platitudes have been repeated time and again - they are still at the heart of most popular representations of the British Empire.

Even when we are encouraged to pay attention to empire's costs as well as its benefits, these costs are imagined solely in terms of specific incidents of violence such as the Amritsar Massacre in India or the suppression of the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya. Britain has excused itself from that most structural injustice of empire - the slave trade itself - by the fact that it was Britain that pioneered its abolition.

Acknowledgement that cities such as Bristol, Liverpool and London were enriched by Britain's dominance of the trade, that many stately homes were built on its wealth and that the compensation money paid to owners upon emancipation - rather than the enslaved - helped drive the industrial revolution and the growth of the City of London, tends to be confined to more critical quarters.

By contrast, runs the same argument, the benefits that empire brought to the world are universal. Everyone - Nigerians, Afghans and Chinese included - should be grateful for the rule of law, the English language, modern education, railways and free trade, all things that Britain provided in order to usher in the modern age.

Selective memory

But to remember empire in this way is an act of incredible selectivity, if not wilful forgetting. Far from being of universal benefit, these features of British rule were designed in the first instance to benefit British settlers, producers and traders. The partial inclusion of colonised peoples themselves in their benefits had to be hard won by those peoples in the face of racist laws and customs.

Black people generally weren't allowed to travel on the railways on the same terms as white people. Gandhi's political awakening came when he was thrown out of a whites only carriage on a South African railway. Government-run education systems varied hugely in time and place but were generally not extended to "natives". Their education was left to mission societies able to reach only a tiny proportion of them. The Indian Residential Schools of Canada and many of the institutions into which Aboriginal and so-called "half-caste" children were forced in Australia were notoriously neglectful and abusive.

One of the first things that some indigenous elites did with their education was challenge white peoples' entitlement to rule their countries. The colonial "rule of law" generally worked in favour of white settlers, elites and men. Even where explicitly racist legislation was avoided, proxies for race such as English language tests were used. These either imposed different standards on "native" populations or kept Asian people out of settler colonies unless their labour was required.

The wider adoption of English certainly facilitated more global conversations and business transactions among male elites. But it only served to heighten the exclusion of most non-English speaking subjects and women from access to the credit and political capital that flowed through Anglophone global networks.

Much the same could be said for free trade, which tended to enrich the colonial masters rather than their imperial subjects - let's not forget it was the argument for free trade which was used to force China to continue accepting opium imports against its will, starting China's " Century of Humiliation ".

Imperialism was no gift

Democracy was not actually a concept with which British elites were comfortable - or with which colonised peoples were familiar throughout most of the era of Britain's imperial rule. Rather, it was something hard won, largely once the British had left.​

Those under the "benevolent" rule of empire did not necessarily experience British imperialism as a gift. For many around the world, the costs of empire were not restricted to the occasional episode of violent repression, nor even to structural injustices such as the slave trade. Rather, these were systematic, everyday costs. These costs included exclusion - from power and privilege in their own lands - coupled with humiliation at being made to pay deference to white people who assumed the right to govern them.

Before condemning the corruption and rudeness of others perhaps we should remember the act of imperialism itself may be seen as self-interested, arrogant rudeness on a global scale.

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Britain should stop trying to pretend that its empire was benevolent

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The recent debacle of David Cameron's filmed condemnation of Nigerian and Afghan corruption and the Queen's remark on Chinese officials' rudeness highlights the persistence of imperial thinking in Britain. There seems to be a continuing assumption within the British establishment that it sets an example for others to follow and that the British are owed deference by others.

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Photographer Kiyun asked her friends at Fordham University's Lincoln Center campus to "write down an instance of racial microaggression they have faced."

The term "microaggression" was used by Columbia professor Derald Sue to refer to "brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial slights and insults toward people of color." Sue borrowed the term from psychiatrist Dr. Chester Pierce who coined the term in the '70s.

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21 Racial Microaggressions You Hear On A Daily Basis

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The term "microaggression" was used by Columbia professor Derald Sue to refer to "brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial slights and insults toward people of color." Sue borrowed the term from psychiatrist Dr. Chester Pierce who coined the term in the '70s.

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here are so many sides to Serena Williams. Slick and powerful in heels and leotard, she dances, squats and bounces beside Beyoncé in the video for Sorry. She has been lauded by Claudia Rankine, whose award-winning, book-length poem Citizen last year depicted Williams "as hemmed in as any other black body thrown against our American background". She is the world's top-earning female athlete. And arguably more than any of her contemporaries, her body has been the focus, the point of intersection, of so many arguments about femininity, power and race that it would almost be possible to overlook the tennis.

But the tennis, of course, is unforgettable. Williams has won 21 grand slams. One more - next week at Wimbledon, say - would bring her level with Steffi Graf's total, and only two short of Margaret Court 's all-time record of 24. Williams has been playing since she was three. In September, she turns 35. If she stays fit, if the strength holds, if she keeps winning, if young rivals prosper temperately, maybe she can hurl herself through the narrowing gap of time to leave a new number in the record books. But meanwhile, she is singing karaoke at a pre-tournament party. When a TV interviewer points out that a strap of her crop top has slipped, she gives her shoulder a brief glance. "Yeah," she says. "I know." Through everything, she is a self-stylist.

We've known each other a really long time. I've known the director [ Dikayl Rimmasch] since he was nine. My lawyer - it's his son. We kind of grew up together. They were like, "It would be good for Serena." Beyoncé had so many inspirational women in that part, in her documentary video. She says she loves when I dance cos I dance like no one's watching. I'm like, "Oh, but that's different cos there's no cameras, there's no one watching." But, yeah, that's kind of what I was trying to do. It worked out good. She had a lot of people. She had Trayvon Martin's mother, Michael Brown 's [mother] as well, the victims of that horrible violence we are seeing in the United States, as well as some beautiful ballerinas, body-imaging women who really love themselves and embrace themselves, so other people embrace them, too. It was really powerful putting African-American women together in her story, because she's obviously a super strong African-American woman.
Did she explain it to you in those terms?
She explained it to me in different terms, but we kind of have a similar take on a lot of things. She's gone through so much and been so positive.
Some people argue that only African-American women can truly relate to Lemonade ...
No! I think women in general can relate to it. I think it was a powerful piece for everybody, I think it definitely, 100% crossed colour boundaries. Absolutely.

Oh God, no. No, that's not my ... I don't know about that. It was just getting together with strong women.
Over the years, your body has been described and criticised repeatedly. Why do you think people have felt so free to comment?
I guess it's a part of being in the public eye. You have to accept that people are going to have a say, whether it's your body, or your face, or your hands. It could be your feet. Nothing is off limits. I think that's why, growing up, my mum - not consciously, subconsciously - taught myself and all my sisters to be so strong. It prepared me for these moments.

A little bit. Also my older sister, too. But she always taught us to love ourselves and I think that is a wonderful message that I spread now to so many females. It's really important. You are who you are, you can't change it. And you're beautiful.
Do the comments still hurt, or did you stop listening?
For every negative comment, there's a million good comments. I always say, "Not everyone's going to like the way I look." Everyone has different types. If we all liked the same thing, it would make the world a really boring place! What matters most is that I like myself.

Too muscly and too masculine, and then a week later too racy and too sexy. So for me it was just really a big joke.

No, it's fine. I find it really funny. Sometimes it's true. I'm like, "Gosh, I need to shape these brows!" Can't argue with the truth sometimes!
You have triumphed in a white-male-dominated world without compromising who you are. Do you feel you have fought for black women everywhere?
I do, but I feel it's for all women everywhere. I have so many different people, races and colours who can relate with my story, whether they're poor or rich or middle class, it doesn't matter. My goal is to inspire every woman out there. My new saying for the past few years has been: "The success of one woman should be the inspiration for the next." And by the way, it's great for your health and it keeps young women and girls out of trouble.
This job of inspiring or representing others - does it sometimes feel like a duty or a burden?
I don't see it as a responsibility and a duty, but I embrace it because I am who I am. I feel I can give that message because I'm living that message. Does that make sense? I embrace it and I love that I have an opportunity to do it because a lot of people don't. And I don't have to be anyone different, cos this is me. And it really fits well with me.
Claudia Rankine included a long section about you in her brilliant poem Citizen. Was that a surprise? Rankine's poem Was there anything in particular that stood out, where you felt she nailed it? refers to the mistaken You said that your dad describes you as a good daughter, and one day you hope to have good children, too. Is having kids on your mind? decisions And will you know when it's time? by umpire Mariana Alves at the US Open in 2004, which contributed to your early exit from the tournament. It includes the line: "Though no one was saying anything explicitly about Serena's black body, you are not the only viewer who thought it was getting in the way of Alves' sightline ..." Did that resonate with you? Do you have a number of grand slams in your head that you want to reach before you allow yourself to retire?
Totally. She interviewed me, too. Her piece [ on black excellence, for the New York Times] was one of the best things I've read. It wasn't about a story, it was just about the truth. And that poem, with me in it - it was so powerful. I love her work.

The poet Claudia Rankine, whose book-length poem Citizen includes a section about Serena Williams. Photograph: Anna Webber/Getty Images for The New Yorker

Male tennis players can just go on playing without needing to decide or choose in the same way ...
I just felt it was very true. And that's why I liked the story [on black excellence], too. It was just things that are true. There's fact and there's reality, and there's fiction and what she said, she just said facts. Those are simple facts.

That line you gave is a great example, but there's a lot of stuff. Besides all that, she's a really inspiring writer.
Serena Williams was talking at the Delta Air Lines Baseline Sessions, for which she is an official ambassador
It is, it is. It is something I think about a lot, especially now. But I think everything will be OK. I have a feeling that everything is going to work out, and I don't think I am done with what I am supposed to do yet. I just don't feel it's time, and I think when it is time, everything will work out.

Yeah, I think I'll know. I know I'll know. I've been intuitive my whole life. I just think when everything is done and said, I'll have a great feeling, and I'll have a great life, I hope.

No. I never even thought, at 21, I would be here. I don't think anyone thinks about it. I mean, maybe some people do, but I didn't. I don't have a number. I'm just relying on a feeling. A good old feeling.

Man! There's a part of it that's just not fair! But it's OK. I definitely wouldn't have it any other way.

I will always be myself. Yeah. I will always be myself, and if that includes getting angry, that's what that is. I probably wouldn't use some of the language. But other than that, I don't want to be anyone else. I'm Serena, I'm happy to be Serena, and I will always be Serena. And if I'm not true to myself, then who am I?

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Serena Williams: ​'​Not everyone's going to like the way I look​'​

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here are so many sides to Serena Williams. Slick and powerful in heels and leotard, she dances, squats and bounces beside Beyoncé in the video for Sorry. She has been lauded by Claudia Rankine, whose award-winning, book-length poem Citizen last year depicted Williams "as hemmed in as any other black body thrown against our American background".

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"Privilege" is a word you'll hear often in social justice spaces, both offline and online.

Some people understand the concept easily. Others - and I was like this - find the concept confusing and need a little more help.
If you're willing to learn about privilege, but you don't know where to start, you've come to the right place!
Before we get started, I want to clarify that this article is not entirely comprehensive. That is to say, it's not going to explain everything there is to know about privilege. But it'll give you a good foundation on the basics.

Think of privilege not as a single lesson, but as a field of study. To truly understand privilege, we must keep reading, learning, and thinking critically.

Defining Privilege

The origins of the term "privilege" can be traced back to the 1930s, when WEB DuBois wrote about the "psychological wage" that allowed whites to feel superior to black people. In 1988, Peggy McIntosh fleshed out the idea of privilege in a paper called "White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences through Work in Women's Studies."
We can define privilege as a set of unearned benefits given to people who fit into a specific social group.
Society grants privilege to people because of certain aspects of their identity. Aspects of a person's identity can include race, class, gender, sexual orientation, language, geographical location, ability, and religion, to name a few.

But big concepts like privilege are so much more than their basic definitions! For many, this definition on its own raises more questions than it answers. So here are a few things about privilege that everyone should know.

1. Privilege is the other side of oppression.

It's often easier to notice oppression than privilege.

It's definitely easier to notice the oppression you personally experience than the privileges you experience since being mistreated is likely to leave a bigger impression on you than being treated fairly.

So consider the ways in which you are oppressed: How are you disadvantaged because of the way society treats aspects of your identity? Are you a woman? Are you disabled? Does your sexuality fall under the queer umbrella? Are you poor? Do you have a mental illness or a learning disability? Are you a person of color? Are you gender non-conforming?

All of these things could make life difficult because society disenfranchises people who fit into those social groups. We call this oppression.

But what about the people society doesn't disenfranchise? What about the people society empowers at our expense? We call that privilege.
Privilege is simply the opposite of oppression.
2. We need to understand privilege in the context of power systems.

Society is affected by a number of different power systems: patriarchy, white supremacy, heterosexism, cissexism, and classism - to name a few. These systems interact together in one giant system called the kyriarchy.
Privileged groups have power over oppressed groups.
Privileged people are more likely to be in positions of power - for example, they're more likely to dominate politics, be economically well-off, have influence over the media, and hold executive positions in companies.

Privileged people can use their positions to benefit people like themselves - in other words, other privileged people.

In a patriarchal society, women do not have institutional power (at least, not based on their gender). In a white supremacist society, people of color don't have race-based institutional power. And so on.

It's important to bear this in mind because privilege doesn't go both ways. Female privilege does not exist because women don't have institutional power. Similarly, black privilege, trans privilege, and poor privilege don't exist because those groups do not have institutional power.

It's also important to remember because people often look at privilege individually rather than systemically. While individual experiences are important, we have to try to understand privilege in terms of systems and social patterns. We're looking at the rule, not the exception to the rule.

3. Privileges and oppressions affect each other, but they don't negate each other.

I experience my queerness in relation to my womanhood. I experience these aspects of my identity in relation to my experience as a mentally ill person, as someone who's white, as someone who is South African, as someone who is able-bodied, as someone who is cisgender.

All aspects of our identities - whether those aspects are oppressed or privileged by society - interact with one another. We experience the aspects of our identities collectively and simultaneously, not individually.

The interaction between different aspects of our identities is often referred to as an intersection. The term intersectionality was coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw, who used it to describe the experiences of black women - who experience both sexism and racism.

While all women experience sexism, the sexism that black women experience is unique in that it is informed by racism.

To illustrate with another example, mental illness is often stigmatized. As a mentally-ill woman, I have been told that my post-traumatic stress disorder is "just PMS" and a result of me "being an over-sensitive woman." This is an intersection between ableism and misogyny.

The aspects of our identities that are privileged can also affect the aspects that are oppressed. Yes, privilege and oppression intersect - but they don't negate one another.

Often, people believe that they can't experience privilege because they also experience oppression. A common example is the idea that poor white people don't experience white privilege because they are poor. But this is not the case.

Being poor does not negate the fact that you, as a white person, are less likely to become the victim of police brutality in most countries around the world, for example.

Being poor is an oppression, yes, but this doesn't cancel out the fact that you can still benefit from white privilege.

As Phoenix Calida wrote:

"Privilege simply means that under the exact same set of circumstances you're in, life would be harder without your privilege.

Being poor is hard. Being poor and disabled is harder.

Being a woman is hard. Being a trans woman is harder.

Being a white woman is hard, being a woman of color is harder.

Being a black man is hard, being a gay black man is harder."

Let's look at the example of people who are both poor and white. Being white means that you have access to resources which could help you survive. You're more likely to have a support network of relatively well-off people. You can use these networks to look for a job.

If you go to a job interview, you are more likely to be interviewed by a white person, as white people are more likely to be in executive positions. People in positions of power are usually the same race as you, so if they are racially prejudiced, it's likely that they would be prejudiced in your favor.

A poor black person, on the other hand, will not have access to those resources, is unlikely to be of the same race as people in power, and is more likely to be harmed by racial prejudice.

So once again: Being white and poor is hard, but being black and poor is harder.

4. Privilege describes what everyone should experience.

When we use the word "privilege" in the context of social justice, it means something slightly different to the way it's used by most people in their everyday environment.

Often we think of privilege as "special advantages." We frequently hear the phrase, "X is a privilege, not a right," conveying the idea that X is something special that shouldn't be expected.
Because of the way we use "privilege" in our day-to-day lives, people often get upset when others point out some of their privileges.
A male acquaintance of mine initially struggled to understand the concept of privilege. He once said to me, "Men don't often experience gender-based street harassment, but that's not a privilege. It's something everyone should expect."

Correct. Everyone should expect to be treated that way. Everyone has a right to be treated that way. The problem is that certain people aren't treated that way.

To illustrate: Nobody should be treated as if they are untrustworthy based on their race. But often, people of color - particularly black people - are mistrusted because of prejudice towards their race.

White people, however, don't experience this systemic, race-based prejudice. We call this "white privilege" because people who are white are free from racial oppression.
We don't use the term "privilege" because we don't think everyone deserves this treatment. We call privilege "privilege" because we acknowledge that not everyone experiences it.
5. Privilege doesn't mean you didn't work hard.

People often get defensive when someone points out that they have privilege. And I totally understand why - before I fully understood privilege, I acted the same way.

Many people think that having privilege means you have had an easy life. As such, they feel personally attacked when people point out their privilege. To them, it feels as if someone is saying that they haven't worked hard or endured any difficulties.
But this is not what privilege means.
You can be privileged and still have a difficult life. Privilege doesn't mean that your life is easy, but rather that it's easier than others.

I saw this brilliant analogy comparing white privilege and bike commuting in a car-friendly city, and it inspired me to broaden the analogy to privilege in general.

So let's say both you and your friend decide to go cycling. You decide to cycle for the same distance, but you take different routes. You take a route that is a bit bumpy. More often than not, you go down roads that are at a slight decline. It's very hot, but the wind is at usually at your back. You eventually get to your destination, but you're sunburnt, your legs are aching, you're out of breath, and you have a cramp.

When you eventually meet up with your friend, she says that the ride was awful for her. It was also bumpy. The road she took was at an incline the entire time. She was even more sunburnt than you because she had no sunscreen. At one point, a strong gust of wind blew her over and she hurt her foot. She ran out of water halfway through. When she hears about your route, she remarks that your experience seemed easier than hers.

Does that mean that you didn't cycle to the best of your ability? Does it mean that you didn't face obstacles? Does it mean that you didn't work hard? No. What it means is that you didn't face the obstacles she faced.

Privilege doesn't mean your life is easy or that you didn't work hard. It simply means that you don't have to face the obstacles others have to endure. It means that life is more difficult for those who don't have the systemic privilege you have.

So What Now?

Often, people think that feminists and social justice activists point out people's privilege to make them feel guilty. This isn't the case at all!
We don't want you to feel guilty. We want you to join us in challenging the systems that privilege some people and oppress others.
Guilt is an unhelpful feeling: It makes us feel ashamed, which prevents us from speaking out and bringing about change. As Jamie Utt notes, " If privilege guilt prevents me from acting against oppression, then it is simply another tool of oppression. "

You don't need to feel guilty for having privilege because having privilege is not your fault: It's not something you chose. But what you can choose is to push back against your privilege and to use it in a way that challenges oppressive systems instead of perpetuating them.
So what can you - as a person who experiences privilege - do?
Understanding privilege is a start, so you've already made the first move! Yay!

There's a great deal of information out there on the Internet, so I'd firstly recommend that you read more about the concepts of oppression and privilege in order to expand your understanding. The links in this article are a good place to start.
But merely understanding privilege is not enough. We need to take action.
Listen to people who experience oppression. Learn about how you can work in solidarity with oppressed groups. Join feminist and activist communities in order to support those you have privilege over. Focus on teaching other privileged people about their privilege.

Above all else, bear in mind that your privilege exists.

Sian Ferguson is a Contributing Writer at Everyday Feminism. She is a South African feminist currently studying toward a Bachelors of Social Science degree majoring in English Language and Literature and Gender Studies at the University of Cape Town. She has been featured as a guest writer on websites such as Women24 and Foxy Box, while also writing for her personal blog. In her spare time, she tweets excessively @sianfergs, reads about current affairs, and spends time with her gorgeous group of friends. Read her articles here.

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Privilege 101: A Quick and Dirty Guide - Everyday Feminism

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"Privilege" is a word you'll hear often in social justice spaces, both offline and online. Some people understand the concept easily. Others - and I was like this - find the concept confusing and need a little more help. If you're willing to learn about privilege, but you don't know where to start, you've come to the right place!

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It’s A Slap In The Face When White Women Wear Black Hairstyles

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The concept of cultural appropriation has become a frequent topic of conversation, but still, the fashion world continues to make the most painfully obtuse, racially insensitive editorial decisions.

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ccording to its editor Nikesh Shukla, The Good Immigrant is "a document of what it means to be a person of colour" in Britain today. In 21 essays by black, Asian and minority ethnic writers working across literature and the media, the book highlights the standards by which immigrants - first or second generation, refugees and asylum seekers - are either accepted into, or judged to be apart from, a dominant culture determined by whiteness.

It's a kind of unspoken deal at the heart of multiculturalism that immigrants are perceived to be "good" or "bad". A black or Asian Olympic gold medallist or the winner of a reality TV programme is considered a "good" immigrant by a host nation wanting sporting success or culinary entertainment. "Bad" immigrants are "job-stealers" or "benefit-scroungers" or, worse, potential terrorists. Sparked by a disgruntled comment below an interview in the Guardian, Shukla's crowdfunded editorial project emerged from the "constant anxiety we feel as people of colour to justify our space, to show that we have earned our place at the table". Against the unspoken backdrop of post-EU referendum hostility towards "foreigners", Shukla points to "the backwards attitude to immigration and refugees, the systemic racism that runs through this country to this day".

The essays interrogate a British national culture trapped in a post-imperial state of nostalgia. There is a strong sense throughout that a white universal experience is a fiction against which black and Asian writers must racialise themselves for a reading audience. Several essays speak to the myths of the Asian "model minority" or a "monolithic blackness". For Wei Ming Kam, "being a model minority is code for being on perpetual probation" as well as denying an individual's complexity. According to Reni Eddo-Lodge: "It is up to you to make your own version of blackness in any way you can - trying on all the different versions, altering them until they fit."

Varaidzo, editor at the online magazine gal-dem, writes: "There is no one way to be black. Our worst performance is entertaining the idea that there is." As well as anatomising subtle and not-so-subtle forms of racism, The Good Immigrant engages at various points with the identity politics of language, authenticity and cultural appropriation: even - controversially no doubt - white practitioners of yoga repeating "om" and "namaste" while understanding little of their meanings.

Chimene Suleyman movingly traces the origins of names - her own, her family's - across linguistic and political borders from Cyprus to the UK. "Words, names, and their noises are careless in England. They are not put to use in the way that obstructed communities have learned to pronounce every violence put upon us as though it is sacred. We carry our trauma in every word that we say." As Suleyman rightly suggests, "standardisation is the backbone of empire".

The legacy of imperialism, including its racial hierarchies, is deep; with the current approval rating of the British empire at 43%, this seems unlikely to change. Suleyman identifies British cultural deafness to historical violence: "It is there in the white men and women who do not understand, to the point of frustration, why we still walk with the noose of our ancestors around our necks, as we cannot comprehend how they do not carry the indignity of their ancestors tying it there."

Along with Suleyman's essay, Riz Ahmed's "Airports and Auditions" is a standout piece. Ahmed, an increasingly well-known actor, is twice subjected to extensive visa scrutiny when travelling between the UK and the US and is repeatedly searched and detained by officials on both sides of the Atlantic, largely due to assumptions about his race and religion. "You see," he writes, "the pitfalls of the audition room and the airport interrogation room are the same. They are places where the threat of rejection is real. They're also places where you're reduced to your marketability or threat-level, where the length of your facial hair can be a deal breaker, where you are seen, and hence see yourself, in reductive labels."

We should recognise both the courage that has been shown in producing these essays and the contradictions that necessarily exist across them. While, inevitably, some are better crafted and more convincing than others, The Good Immigrant helps to open up a much-needed space of open and unflinching dialogue about race and racism in the UK.

The Good Immigrant is published by Unbound. To order a copy for £12.29 (RRP £14.99) go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99.

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The Good Immigrant review - an unflinching dialogue about race and racism in the UK

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ccording to its editor Nikesh Shukla, The Good Immigrant is "a document of what it means to be a person of colour" in Britain today. In 21 essays by black, Asian and minority ethnic writers working across literature and the media, the book highlights the standards by which immigrants - first or second generation, refugees and asylum seekers - are either accepted into, or judged to be apart from, a dominant culture determined by whiteness.

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The British empire’s hidden history is one of resistance, not pride | Priyamvada Gopal

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We should celebrate the many forgotten voices who spoke out against the march of imperialism, says Priyamvada Gopal

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Millions of Indians flee their homes from India to a newly-formed Pakistan, or in the opposite direction.

In August 1947, around 12-15 million people fled their homes from one side of a new border within the former British colony of India to the other. The direction they took depended on their faith: Hindus and Sikhs came together and separated from Muslims.

An estimated 1 million people died along the way, many facing a violent end. It's also reported that about 75,000 women were abducted and brutally raped by people belonging to the opposite faith.

What became known as partition gave birth to a new nation called Pakistan, conceived by a Muslim political party for India's minority Islamic community. But it was fraught with problems from the moment the British hastily drew the borderline.

This took place as Britain, India's imperial ruler, was handing back power to its colonies. The fight to gain independence for India was a tense yet tireless one for political leaders such as Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi, Jawarharlal Nehru, who became India's first prime minister, and Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who became the founder of Pakistan.

But how exactly was the British colony split into the nations of India and Pakistan? And what led to one of the most harrowing events of the 20th century? Here are some of the key events that led to one of global history's most defining moments.

May 1857

Known as the Indian Rebellion, or the Indian Mutiny, the Indian army launches a shocking and bloody nationwide attack on British officers in India.

The attack occurs during the rule of the East India Company, a British corporation originally formed to facilitate trade with the East Indies, which aggravates ties with India through a lack of consideration for local traditions.

1858

Although the mutiny was unsuccessful, the British empire takes over the rule of India from the East India Company.

December 1906

A political group called the Muslim League is formed to look after the interests of India's minority Muslim community.

April 13, 1919

British troops, under orders from commander Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer, fire without warning on a peaceful protest of thousands of unarmed Indians in Amritsar, Punjab. Hundreds of men, women and children are killed and many injured, although the actual numbers are disputed between British and Indian authorities.

Known as the Amritsar massacre, or the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, it is one of the events that spurs lawyer, politician and activist Mohandas Gandhi to focus his efforts on separating India from the British.

1919

Jawaharlal Nehru joins and becomes a prominent figure in the Indian National Congress party, which campaigns for independence from the British. He is deeply inspired by Gandhi, whom he met in 1916.

1921

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, better known as Mahatma Gandhi, becomes the leader of India's independence movement and revamps the Indian National Congress Party.

Promoting non-violence and civil disobedience, he also begins the Quit India Movement, calling for the British to withdraw from India. Believing in unity, he is wholly against the partition of the country.

August 1946

The Muslim League provincial government in Calcutta, now known as Kolkata, makes a call to Muslims for a "Direct Action Day" - ostensibly a day of strikes, although it has been open to different interpretations - to support the creation of Pakistan.

It ends up becoming a harrowing day of violence between Muslims and Hindus. At least 4,000 people are killed and more than 10,000 injured.

June 3, 1947

The plan to partition the Indian subcontinent is announced by then-Prime Minister of Britain, Clement Attlee, to the House of Commons by radio, which is then broadcast to India from Delhi.

Attlee says power will be handed to the Indian people before June 1948, but it happens far sooner than that.

August 14-15, 1947

Though planned to take place before June 1948, Pakistan gains independence on August 14, 1947 and India the day after - ten months before the scheduled date, and without the border finalised.

Jinnah becomes Pakistan's first governor-general.

Before the strike of midnight on August 15, Nehru, appointed India's first Prime Minister, delivers his famous and rousing 'Tryst with Destiny' speech from inside Parliament in the country's capital of New Delhi.

August 17, 1947

The border line, cutting through Bengal in the east and Punjab in the west, is confirmed two days after India becomes independent. The line is quickly marked on maps using censuses of "minority" and "majority" populations.

An estimated 500,000 - 1 million men, women and children perish in partition, although this figure varies.

Individual murders are barbaric, often involving disfiguration and dismemberment. "It seems that the aim was not only to kill, but to break people," historian Yasmin Khan would later note.

October 1947

The first war between India and Pakistan takes place over Kashmir - a region in the Himalayan and Karakoram mountain ranges that both countries are still fighting over today.

November 21, 1947

The number of evacuations in Punjab exceeds 8 million people.

About 12-15 million people flee between India and Pakistan; Muslims to Pakistan, and Hindus and Sikhs to a newly-shaped India.

December 6, 1947

An operation to recover and restore abducted women is agreed at an inter-dominion conference in Lahore, Pakistan.

Women are victims of violent sexual attacks, with approximately 75,000 women abducted and raped. Many are also reported to be disfigured or dismembered.

January 30, 1948

Gandhi is assassinated by a Hindu extremist, Nathuram Godse, as he walks from Birla House, where he lives, through the gardens for his prayer meeting. He is 78.

"Our light has gone out," mourns Nehru, in a radio announcement of the death, as a nation plunges into mourning.

"When top leaders of Congress, with the consent of Gandhi, divided and tore the country - which we considered a deity of worship - my mind was filled with direful anger," Godse says in a speech on November 8, 1948.

September 30, 1948

Indian banknotes are no longer legal tender in Pakistan.

January 1, 1949

A UN-sponsored ceasefire is announced in Kashmir. However, tensions and fighting persist.

1951

Following partition, an estimated 14.5 million people become migrants within four years. But that number could be even higher as millions may have not been accounted for in census statistics.

India becomes home to 303.5 million Hindus and 35.4 million Muslims.

May 27, 1964

Nehru dies from a heart attack. He is cremated at Raj Ghat, where Gandhi was also cremated. Many Indians are left concerned about the country's future.

January 19, 1966

Nehru's daughter, Indira Gandhi, becomes the first female prime minister of the country. She is assassinated in 1984. Her son, Rajiv, who succeeds her in 1984, will also be killed in an assassination.

December 16, 1971

After a brutal and bloody war, East Pakistan gains independence from West Pakistan.

It becomes the nation of Bangladesh, founded by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.

Seventy years have passed since India was divided and Pakistan was born. And tensions have persisted between the two nuclear powers, especially over the disputed region of Kashmir - a picturesque region in the Himalayan and Karakoram mountain ranges.

Four wars have been fought since 1947. The conflict in 1971 that led to the creation of Bangladesh, formerly known as East Pakistan, was the bloodiest of all, claiming hundreds of thousands of lives.

But there have been glimmers of hope. When he was elected in 2014, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi made various attempts to strike a bond with his country's neighbor. He invited his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif to his inauguration ceremony in 2014. And the following year, a surprise stopover made him the first Indian PM to visit Pakistan since 2004.

Relations have gone back and forth between attempts at dialogue and frequent spats across the Kashmiri line of control, with tensions surfacing even on the big screen and the cricket field.

Partition was about enabling peace. But after seven decades, this goal is yet to be achieved.

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Faith, fury and fear: The story behind one of history's greatest mass migrations | CNN

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Millions of Indians flee their homes from India to a newly-formed Pakistan, or in the opposite direction. In August 1947, around 12-15 million people fled their homes from one side of a new border within the former British colony of India to the other.

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To write is to create something that will have its own life, Audre Lorde thought. A writer needs to hold her nerve, conquer her fears and speak out. Her great mantra - and the title of this Lorde reader, which collects for the first time in a single volume a selection of her poetry and essays - was: "Your silence will not protect you."

It's strange to think that Lorde would now be 84. (She was 58 when she died in November 1992.) Trying to imagine what she would have made of the world we live in today is not the least bit difficult. Her words are current and run alongside our lives. Her writing did not just have its own life, but now has an afterlife - though the term "afterlife" is not altogether satisfying when it comes to Lorde, because it immediately makes you think of death. To read her now is to feel accompanied through these strange and surreal political times.

Her work still speaks directly to us. This is from an essay entitled "Age, Race, Class and Sex", included in the reader:

For we have, built into all of us, old blueprints of expectation and response, old structures of oppression, and these must be altered at the same time as we alter the living conditions which are a result of those structures. For the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house.

Audre Lorde was born Audrey Geraldine Lorde in 1934 in Harlem, New York. Her parents were from Barbados and Carriacou. Near-sighted and defined as legally blind, Lorde nonetheless taught herself to read at the age of four and memorised poetry from a very young age. (She dropped the Y in Audrey as soon as she learned to read.) Poetry was a survival tool. "I am not only a casualty," she later said. "I am also a warrior."

Lorde attended the National Autonomous University of Mexico in 1954 (which gave her a lifelong love for the country) and Hunter College, New York, in 1959. She worked as a librarian and was a visiting professor for many years in Berlin. (Dagmar Schultz made an award-winning documentary about her time there.) She was New York's poet laureate from 1991 until her death the following year, an honour that meant a lot to her.

Lorde - black, feminist, mother, lesbian, poet, teacher, Zami - always introduced herself with a long list. It was unusual then to name yourself so particularly. She wanted to show that she was complex, that she contained multitudes, that she would not prioritise one aspect of her identity over another. The kind of person who would ask, "Is being black more important to your identity than being a woman or a lesbian?" baffled and annoyed her.

In her work, too, Lorde was hard to define. She wrote across the forms; her poetry, her essays and her memoirs are equally loved. Lorde was a polymath, a poly-mother. She made you want to invent new words. She created unique forms and encouraged a generation of people to fuse the personal and the political. She was passionate about the body as well as the body politic. The Cancer Journals is a brave, beautiful book that could double as a handbook to accompany anyone on their journey through cancer. It is questioning, and it has not a note of self-pity. It was ahead of its time.

I first met Audre in 1984. At the time, I was working for Sheba Feminist Press, which produced an English edition of her wonderful "biomythography" Zami: A New Spelling of My Name. It had pink waves on the cover. Back then, I lived with three other lesbians in a house on Manor Road in Stoke Newington, and I invited Audre to stay as she was attending the first International Feminist Book Fair. She wrote back saying that it was kind of me to offer and that she would accept, but that if she found she needed her own space she would move to a hotel. (She stayed with me for the whole time.) We held a welcome party and a group of black feminists and lesbians came to meet her. She was a presence in a room but at the same time easy to get along with. She had already had her cancer and a mastectomy. (She had come from Germany, where she was receiving an unusual treatment involving mistletoe.)

Though weak and unwell, she still had plenty of energy. I was struck by how she had refused to wear a prosthesis - covering things up was not in Audre's nature. Instead, she made a dynamic virtue of being her true self: she would wear one long earring and one stud to mirror being one-breasted. She wore her one breast like a Dahomey warrior queen.

She had to have a special diet of steamed food (no oil), but I remember us going into a Jewish bakery in Stamford Hill, and her delightedly buying a huge box of cakes. She was great fun to be with; nothing escaped her attention. She was fascinated by the natural landscape and had been a geologist, so just walking out with Audre was a treat. She always stopped to pick something up, to tell you the story of a stone.

I first tasted a black fig when I visited Audre in her house in Staten Island, New York, where she then lived with her long-time partner Frances Clayton - though she was in transition and was shortly to move to Saint Croix, in the US Virgin Islands, to be with her last partner, Gloria I Joseph. She asked me if I had ever tasted one before. "No?" she said. "Then you haven't lived." And she peeled the fig and fed it to me, standing outside in her garden
by the fig tree.

Audre was just three years younger than my mother, but she never struck me as someone from that generation. She articulated for many people that strange and emergent newness you feel when you have decided to come out. Her message was clear: we should transform silence into language and action.

Death... might be coming quickly,
now, without regard for whether
I had ever spoken what needed to
be said, or had only betrayed myself
into small silences... I was going to die,
if not sooner then later, whether or not
I had ever spoken myself. My silences
had not protected me. Your silence
will not protect you.

In those early days of the black feminist movement - of the Organisation of Women of African and Asian Descent (OWAAD) and the Black Lesbian Group (BLG) - Audre's words were a breath of fresh air. We had only just found each other. We were only just hearing each other's stories. Some of the 50 or so members of the BLG had never met other black lesbians before. We'd come from all over the country, from Glasgow and Glossop to London, and the two things converged - discovering each other and reading the work of Lorde. She encouraged people to find their voices. She made a big impact on me when she told me, "You know, Jackie, you can be black and Scottish. You don't have to choose."

Everything she said seemed fresh, but it also contained a deep and ancient truth: poetry is not a luxury. "For to survive in the mouth of this dragon we call America, we have had to learn this first and most vital lesson - that we were never meant to survive." In an interview that Pratibha Parmar and I conducted with Audre for Charting the Journey: Writings by Black and Third World Women, Lorde said: "Don't let them muck around with your realities. You may not be able to make very much inroad, but at least you've got to stop feeling quite so crazy. Because, after a while, constantly exposed to unacknowledged racism, black women get to feeling really crazy."

During that first week's visit to London in 1984, I accompanied her to interviews with radio stations and to readings at places such as Conway Hall and the Africa Centre. Driving her around - driving Ms Lorde - I was struck by the enthusiasm that greeted her. Audre had such a huge following, even though her work had only just been published here. People had sought her out (as they sought out some of her contemporaries, such as June Jordan and Alice Walker). She helped people to survive.

There was a fervour that greeted Audre. She had the aura of a superstar. To hear her was to be aware that you were in the company of somebody who would become legendary. You knew that her words would reach an ever-widening audience. She had a way of reading, of enunciating her lines and letting the vowels hang in the air, one line perhaps belonging to the one in front of it or the one behind. Her readings captured the rich ambivalence of her line breaks, the complexities of what she was trying to say: "For those of us/who were imprinted with fear/like a faint line in the center of our foreheads..."

A framed poster of "A Litany for Survival" signed by Audre hangs in my kitchen. It has come with me from house to house since she first gave me the poem when she came to stay in 1984 and I was 23. It is probably the poem that captures the essence of what she wants to say about silence. Many of the poems from The Black Unicorn are included in this reader, as are many of my favourites. It is perhaps her most unified collection, effortlessly weaving ancient African myth with contemporary reality.

Her work is so quotable. It has the zeitgeist factor. The other day at the Edinburgh Festival, I went to see Hot Brown Honey, a fantastic cabaret and variety group of black women from Australia. On the screen behind them appeared Audre's words: Dominator culture has tried to keep us all afraid, to make us choose safety instead of risk, sameness instead of diversity. Moving through that fear, finding out what connects us, revelling in our differences; this is the process that brings us closer, that gives us a world of shared values, of meaningful community.

Lorde's body of work is best approached holistically. You need the whole picture, which is why this book is so welcome. When you read all of her work, you see her poetry in conversation with her prose, how her ideas cross-pollinate her forms; you see that her work should be digested and taken in the same spirit that she introduced herself. She was somebody who mashed things up, who questioned the borders between things, who knew that the stories our bodies tell were important, who knew that hiding things could be destructive and corrosive. She was not afraid to say the difficult thing, to fall out with people. She had felt very alone, the aloneness that came with being ahead of her time. And yet she embraced the huge contradictions and complexities of being a black lesbian in the 1970s and 1980s.

Black lives mattered to Audre Lorde before Black Lives Matter. In her poem "After-images", she wrote:

I inherited Jackson, Mississippi.
For my majority it gave me Emmett Till
his 15 years puffed out like bruises
on plump boy-cheeks
his only Mississippi summer
whistling a 21 gun salute to Dixie
as a white girl passed him in the street
and he was baptized my son forever
in the midnight waters of the Pearl.

She is here, in this future that she hoped we wouldn't have, through the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner and Trayvon Martin, through Charlottesville and the inauguration of Donald Trump. She would have been standing side by side. She might have worn a "pussyhat", or might not have, but she would have been on the women's marches, still making her voice heard and still finding something to be hopeful about.

Audre Lorde speaks not just for the living. She also speaks for the dead, for all those people who stood up and were knocked down, for those who spoke out and were silenced. She spoke in advance of the dead lives she did not live to see. Her rage rings through these times. It has the power of a huge bell rung across centuries. Now, just as much as ever, we need the voice of Audre Lorde. Your Silence Will Not Protect You is both a perfect introduction and a lovely way to remake her acquaintance.

Jackie Kay is the Scottish Makar (poet laureate). Her collection "Bantam" is published by Picador on 19 October and she appears at the Cambridge Literary Festival, in association with the NS, on 26 November: cambridgeliteraryfestival.com

Your Silence Will Not Protect You: Essays and Poems
Audre Lorde
Silver Press, 230pp, £12.99

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Feminist, lesbian, warrior, poet: rediscovering the work of Audre Lorde

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To write is to create something that will have its own life, Audre Lorde thought. A writer needs to hold her nerve, conquer her fears and speak out. Her great mantra - and the title of this Lorde reader, which collects for the first time in a single volume a selection of her poetry and essays - was: "Your silence will not protect you."

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The proposition that I attend the African Travel Writing Encounters (ATWE) workshop held at the University of Birmingham in the UK on a blustery, drizzly day in March came from a close acquaintance who fits the customary profile of a professional travel writer - meaning that he is white and male. Daniel Metcalfe, my acquaintance, followed his own impulse: he travelled solo around Angola for three months and recorded his discoveries, adventures and experiences in the critically-acclaimed Blue Dahlia, Black Gold: A Journey into Angola, published in 2013.

But the line-up of speakers seemed to have been hand-picked explicitly to shake-up such complacent views as I held prior to arriving at the university's labyrinthine medical school where the workshop took place. With the exception of University of Sussex graduate student Matthew Lecznar, all the male presenters were black African, and all the white ones were female. And the marathon session (we began at nine in the morning and finished late into happy hour) was brought to a triumphant close by the irrepressible and enormously talented Lola Akinmade Åkerström (a Nigerian, now living in Sweden), whose evocative photography is represented by National Geographic Creative and travel writing has been published in a plethora of national and international media outlets.

In fact, Lola's presentation was one of only three given by Africans who are practicing travel writers. Fellow Nigerian, Pelu Awofeso was another, and Zambian author Humphrey Nkonde was linked to the meeting by telephone after encountering problems in his bid for a British visa (par for the course when you attempt to ram global travel and Africans into the same frame). Most of the remaining presenters hailed from universities and research institutes in Algeria, Brazil, Ghana, Morocco, Nigeria, and United Kingdom - in other words, they were scholars.

And, given that the racial profile of Britain's academic staff almost precisely mirrors that of the traditional travel writing cohort, I won't startle anyone by saying that the UK-based academics in attendance were almost all white. In other words, despite the surprising and exhilarating racial diversity on display, it remained true that, like a Montgomery County magnet school, most of the blacks had been bussed (more accurately, flown) in. And the main reason why this matters is because it highlights an important loop-hole in equality and diversity initiatives in UK higher education that arises from the popular notion of the 'global university.' Higher education institutions can buy in diversity through funding for international research projects, conferences, networks and the like, while simultaneously falling short of rectifying glaring racial inequalities locally.

Appropriately enough, one of the first papers, delivered by York university-based researcher Janet Remmington, drew attention to the possibilities for unsettling the status quo inherent in travel that is seen as "without purpose" or "meandering." Her subject, Sol Plaatje, was at one time described by colonial South African officials as a "political native engaged in peregrinations amounting to travel (my emphasis)."

Despite breaking new ground in several ways, the workshop's presentations - running the gamut from journeys undertaken by Moroccan ambassadors in the 19 century (Hamza Salih) to Samuel Crowther's expeditions to the Niger (Alexsander Gebara), and inclusive of the contemporary travel writing showcased by Awofeso and Nkonde - failed to reflect the basic concept of the European archetype: travel undertaken for its own sake. African travelers, it would seem, must still justify their movements across the planet (whether the motives be professional, economic or political). Passports may have replaced passbooks for a number of us; but we must still answer the question, "Why are you here?"

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The proposition that I attend the African Travel Writing Encounters (ATWE) workshop held at the University of Birmingham in the UK on a blustery, drizzly day in March came from a close acquaintance who fits the customary profile of a professional travel writer - meaning that he is white and male.

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This is the first in a series on race and racism in Australia. The series examines this complex and incendiary topic, and the role it plays in contemporary Australia.
Today, what can be defined as racism and what cannot has become a matter for debate. Every racist caught in the act, whether it be wrongly accusing a black child of sexual assault or running over and killing a mosque-goer, claims not to be racist.

Eric Kaufmann, a prominent professor at a London university, has claimed that " racial self-interest is not racism". He is joined by others who see talking about race as " unhelpful ", be that from a left-wing perspective that privileges class, or from a conservative one that ridicules "identity politics".

Black people, Indigenous people, people of colour, Muslims and Jews regularly report being lectured to on racism - and what constitutes racism - by people who have never experienced it.

How did we get here?

As Cheryl Harris explained in her landmark 1993 article, " Whiteness as Property ", white people in settler colonial countries such as the US and Australia have benefited directly from being white. This has endowed them with the birthright of neither being owned (as in the case of enslaved people) nor "in the way" (as in the case of Indigenous peoples whose lands were coveted).

Many denials of racism come from feelings of discomfort over this fact, a state referred to as " white fragility ". When attention is drawn to white people's racial privilege, or the assumptions and structures that prop up racist beliefs are challenged, white people tend to respond with anger and a refusal to engage in the discussion.

Read more: Explainer: what is casual racism?

LeRon Barton has written that viral videos of police shootings of black people are the "new lynching postcard" - a reference to postcards that were sent depicting lynching scenes - and that white people in the US choose not to know the depth of America's problem of institutionalised racist violence.

Likewise, many Australians are only now becoming aware of the plight of detainees in Australia's offshore detention camps, after more than five years.

Not seeing racism is integral to what the philosopher Charles Mills has called " white ignorance." This is not real ignorance, but a wilful one that allows those unaffected by racism to maintain their "innocence" and ultimately protects their privilege, as the academic Gloria Wekker has powerfully argued.

This refusal to acknowledge or engage in discussions about racism creates a dangerous situation of racial illiteracy. Not only does it mean that racialised people are expected to bear the belittling of their experiences, but ultimately that we are all worse off in the face of open white supremacy in Australia and across the Global North.

Neither our schooling nor our media equip us to understand what race and racism are. We have only been told that racism is wrong. And when people feel accused of wrongdoing, they go into denial mode.

But this is unproductive. We need to move away from a moral understanding of racism, which sees it as a problem of "bad" individuals, and towards a systemic one, which grounds our understanding in the history of European colonialism. And to do that, we need to examine what race is.

Or rather, what race does.

So what does race do?

As the late academic Jose Munoz argues, because it is impossible to adequately theorise race as any one thing, we are better served by looking at what race does. What functions does race perform? How does it continue to reproduce the idea of a natural social hierarchy?

The main problem we face in understanding race is the fixation on the biological. In fact, as Stuart Hall explains, race - a modern phenomenon that developed within the context of European colonial domination - unfurls in three stages: the religious, the cultural and the biological.

Ideas of inherent racial difference between human beings took shape during the Spanish inquisition when the notion of limpieza de sangre (purity of blood) was used to justify the mass expulsion or forced conversion of Jews and Muslims to Catholicism.

This idea then influenced Spanish invaders' attitudes to the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, whose very humanity they questioned on the basis of their different spiritual beliefs.

It was mainly religious men such as Sepulveda and De Las Casas who were concerned with the question of Indigenous peoples' humanity. However, race became tethered to culture in the context of European anti-Semitism in the 19th and 20th centuries and the "civilising mission" enacted by colonisers to bring "progress" to Indigenous peoples in Africa, the Americas and Asia.

The biological understanding of race, or the idea that, as Hall puts it, a people's intellectual abilities, character or temperament is linked to their "genetic code", came last.

The inference of race in human biology solidified the taxonomical systems devised and used by European anthropologists since the early 18th century. If race was indeed written into the body, the organisation of the world's people, which previously had used geography as its primary means of hierarchical demarcation, could no longer be denied.

This idea enabled such policies as the forced assimilation of Aboriginal peoples through "breeding" and sterilisation - practices that, as Dorothy Roberts notes, are still used in the US against poor black, Latina and First Nations women.

Read more: How do you talk to kids about racism?

In contemporary times, the focus has turned to debunking the idea of race as a biological category. However, this narrow focus has led us to ignore the myriad other ways race takes effect.

It is important to note that biological ideas of race continue to frame the work of many geneticists and medical practitioners, and that assumptions of links between intelligence and race have not faded away and have an impact on policy-making. However, we do not need to believe in biological differences between human groups for race to still have an impact.

Indeed, the notion that race is purely about biology is at the core of the strident claim that Islamophobia cannot be racism because, as it is said, "Islam is not a race".

At the same time, commentators such as the British journalist David Aaronovitch, have claimed that anti-Semitism is racism because Jews can be qualified as a racial group. This demonstrates the confusion and ideological grandstanding at play when discussing race.

In fact, though distinct, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia take very similar forms. Each is based on associating all members of the religion and often the religion itself with negative assumptions about the degree of control they have in society. Clearly, then, both are forms of racism.

What does this mean for racism?

Race is not singular. Rather, it weaves together ideas from biology, culture, nationalism and religion to make inferences about whole populations. It is first and foremost a technique for the management of human difference that has been used by states, governments and institutions, such as the police, education, healthcare and welfare, to organise and demarcate between people.

Race can be in play even when it is disavowed because, over the course of modernity, it came to structure the relationship between Europeanness and non-Europeanness, which is often, but not always, equatable to whiteness and non-whiteness.

Racism cannot be "anti-white" because it is does not describe feelings of animosity or hostility; it is not a synonym for prejudice. Ideas of race gave rise to racist ideologies, such as the idea that Europe is the pinnacle of progress and civilisation. This legitimated the invasion and domination of the majority of the world's peoples, the enslavement of Africans, the theft of land, the assimilation and appropriation of Indigenous cultures and the erasure of local knowledges.

Read more: The Herald Sun's Serena Williams cartoon draws on a long and damaging history of racist caricature

Racism is systemic. While it manifests in individual attitudes and behaviours, it is not produced by them. That is the primary reason it is so difficult to eradicate. The other is its ability to constantly adapt to changing circumstances.

For example, the removal of Aboriginal children from their families at unprecedented rates today does not require the openly racist language of blood quantum and improvement. Nevertheless, both the motivations for their removal - a systemic belief in the inherent inferiority of Aboriginal family structures - and the effects on children and families are the same.

Race is mobile and ever-changing. But ultimately, it serves to maintain white supremacy, at both a local and global level.

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Why racism is so hard to define and even harder to understand

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This is the first in a series on race and racism in Australia. The series examines this complex and incendiary topic, and the role it plays in contemporary Australia. Today, what can be defined as racism and what cannot has become a matter for debate.

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JAVA303: Daftar 13 Situs Judi Slot Online Terpercaya & Judi Online Terbaik

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JAVA303 adalah agen judi online yang menyediakan daftar situs judi slot online terpercaya di Indonesia dan provider casino online terbaik serta judi bola terlengkap.

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Better Life Lab is a partnership of Slate and New America.

Editor's note, April 18, 2018: The original version of this article contained two sentences from an article in the Guardian without quotation marks or proper attribution. This is not up to Slate's standards and we regret the error. The post has been revised with attribution and a link to properly credit the Guardian and its writers, Molly Redden and Jana Kasperkevic.
The pushback against institutionalized work patterns and the movement for work-life balance is an emerging, yet critical wing of feminism that is long overdue. But this wave can't ignore the unique circumstances of women of color nor the socioeconomic dynamics of how white women came to even begin to have the conversation about work-life balance in the first place. Throughout history, white women have used the labor of women of color to reduce their own domestic burden and free themselves up for corporate and civic pursuits. Simply put, the labor of Black, Hispanic and Asian American women has raised white women's standard of living.

So if we're talking about work-life balance, let's be clear that many white women of means have achieved that balance standing on the backs of women of color.

After all, women of color's participation in the labor force has always outpaced that of white women. As early as 1900, 26 percent of married black women were employed, compared to only 3.2 percent of white women. Asian American wives also had high employment rates, according to Evelyn Nakano Glenn in " Cleaning Up/Kept Down: A Historical Perspective on Racial Inequality in 'Women's Work.' " And there was a time when the only work options available to women of color were doing the work that white women of means did not want to do. White women needed us and we needed them.

So we breast-fed your babies. We raised your children. We cleaned your houses. We did your laundry. We cooked your food.

With much of the caring duties covered by women of color, many white women had the privilege to freely seek educational and other professional and civicopportunities.

By 1920, for example, black women comprised 82 percent of the female servants in the South; native born white women made up 15 percent and foreign born Whites accounted for the remaining three percent. In southwestern cities such as El Paso and Denver, approximately half of all employed Mexican women were domestic or laundry workers. In 1930, half of all employed Japanese women in the San Francisco Bay area were private household workers, according to Glenn. The cultural norm was concretized and repeated. Today, women of color and immigrants dominate the domestic worker ranks, comprising some 54 percent of that workforce compared to 46 percent whites. Yet, the 2012 Domestic Workers Survey found that white domestic workers had the highest median wages compared to women of color.

With much of the caring duties covered by women of color, many white women had the privilege to freely seek educational and other professional and civic opportunities. "Ironically, many white women fulfilled White society's expectation of feminine domesticity only through the domestic labor of their servants, who were women of color," Nakano Glenn writes.

While white women were on the come-up, black women's devalued identity as a means of labor was sealed, with very little regard for their own responsibilities as mothers and wives.

There was no flex time. No work from home options. Work-life balance was an impossible dream.

It was simple economics, and simple economics created different value systems that divide our priorities today. White women had money but wanted more time. Black and brown women needed more money. The limited ability of our men to find work that could solely sustain a family is a documented phenomenon and the subject of many a research papers, therefore our role as economic providers was critical for our family stability. In that regard, our personal value system as mothers was created around providing financially-not necessarily by the measure of "time spent." We took pride in seeing our children in new shoes, clean clothes or with fresh toys and books and we developed community mothering models with extended family members and other care-givers who gave "time" to our children. The money earned from work was our gateway to getting our children into good schools, having swimming or music lessons, and other experiences that would give them cultural and educational opportunities-things that white families could easily access. This was our pride and focus. This was our value system for mothering. Our matrix also included a trade off of time spent now for the chance of greater opportunities for our children later.

Much of that way of being still exists.

As do the economics. White women are calling for time to mother, but black women still need money to mother. While the male-female pay gap has been slowing decreasing, the pay gap between white women and black women is the fastest growing income inequality there is, according to a report by the Economic Policy Institute. In 1979, black women earned only 6 percent less than white women. Today, black women earn 19 percent less than white women, according the the report.

According to Molly Redden and Jana Kasperkevic who reported on the study in the Guardian, "At the beginning of the 1980s, black women with a college degree or higher and white women with a college degree or higher earned roughly the same wages. But today, wages for black women with a college degree or higher are 12.3 percent less than those of their white counterparts. That is double the disparity experienced by black women with only a high school degree," the report found.

About 28 percent of employed black women work in service occupations, the occupational group with the lowest wages. Jobs in this broad occupational group often lack important benefits such as paid sick days, according to a report by the Institute of Women's Policy Research.

Black women in this country are viewed as perfectly acceptable and desirable for taking care of other's people children but somehow stereotyped as not being able to take care of theirown.

So when looking at paid leave programs, a common demand of the work-life balance movement, we have to think about how they're structured and how that will affect women of color. When they offer a percentage of what the person already earned while she is on leave, that percentage will always be lower for women of color. For offerings that allow you to take out what you put in, black women will always have less to put in. It's essential then that at the very least, our future paid leave program gives a progressive wage replacement, ensuring that lower wage workers get 100 percent of their wages while on leave.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution.

Add to that the complexity of women of color's own relationship to work. Historically, we have always worked and mothered. Many have even grown up seeing their mother and grandmother work more than one job. This is all we know. So the notion of having time to mother feels unfamiliar. There is still the social stigma of taking time off to mother-something black and brown women have never felt free to do. Ever since our bodies and our babies lost economic value, we have struggled to reassert our value as mothers and our importance in raising our own children. As I often say, black women in this country are viewed as perfectly acceptable and desirable for taking care of other's people children but somehow stereotyped as not being able to take care of their own.

And corporate environments can be particularly harsh to black and brown women. As one Latina corporate executive told me, "I was terrified to ask for flex-time when I had my children. For me, if I gave my company the impression that I was more interested in my family than the firm then it would take me off the advancement track or that it would somehow be used against me later," she said. "Women of color don't have the luxury of being perceived as weak or taking their foot off the corporate ladder rung for one minute."

Those who work in the companies that do offer flexible work options, are often afraid to take advantage of those perks, fearing that if they are perceived as needing help it will make them look weak or less committed. Taking time off or being perceived as not working hard is even riskier for women of color. Our corporate climb is not the same climb as for white women. It often feels more precarious, less sure-footed. And for many women, its a risk they are not willing to take.

Until flexible options are truly mainstream and socially acceptable, they can still be viewed as a "hand out," and in our culture we absolutely, positively cannot be viewed as taking a hand out. The Latina corporate executive says that in the corporate world, many white men look at women of color as "lucky" to have made it to such levels and unworthy of taking advantage of any benefits. (We've heard these "you should be grateful" sentiments uttered by the current President toward successful athletes and entertainers).

The real work is removing the stigma of flexible work and creating a nuanced understanding that women of color don't have the same relationship to work. White women must openly acknowledge the role women of color have played in their advancement and make sure all are included at the discussion table for new policies, innovative businesses and creating paradigm shifts.

If Walter Lippmann is correct in that we are "captive to the images in our heads." What are the images of motherhood and work that hold women of color captive? What are the images of who works for white women that holds white women captive?

We all need to break free and create new images for any of this to work.

In those images, black women are valued as nurturing, competent mothers, in their own communities and by white women. Every time I am in Starbucks reading the New York Times with my 13-year-old son, a white person will not feel compelled to come over and compliment me as if I'm doing something so extraordinary it requires commendation from a complete stranger. They come over because the image in their head of black mothers does not include reading the science section with a black boy. Why is that?

As black women, we may not have seen a woman of color who successfully took extended time off for mothering and returned without corporate penalty. How do we change that?

As women of color, we must examine our cultural association to being strong and not needing help and honestly ask, how has it served us? Black women have a greater mortality rate for nearly every disease there is. It is true that we have never been allowed to be "fragile" but many have taken the "strong black woman" thing on as a self-affirming identity. The truth is, at times it is crippling and counter productive.

What the flex time movement needs is an awareness to include the experiences of all women of color, not as token spokesperson ambassadors but as decision-makers involved in setting policy and rethinking norms. And let's expect white women to play their part not just as allies, but as co-liberators. Our freedoms and futures in the work world have always been interdependent and inextricably linked. Our reimagined work-life experience is connected to yours. We deserve a seat at this table, too.

We too are deserving of time. And it's about time.

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White Women Make Work-Life Balance Possible by Relying on Women of Color

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Better Life Lab is a partnership of Slate and New America. Editor's note, April 18, 2018: The original version of this article contained two sentences from an article in the Guardian without quotation marks or proper attribution. This is not up to Slate's standards and we regret the error.

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By Mariam Veiszadeh

Updated first published

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MARIO! Mario!" The barista is calling out a coffee order. I'm half asleep so it doesn't register. "Mario? Skinny flat white". It dawns on me then - he means me. It's my coffee order!

OMG. How embarrassing. I walk over; he takes a look at me and then at the coffee and realises their cashier has totally butchered my name. He apologises. I politely say thank you, pick up my coffee, my ego off the ground, and walk off.

"It's OK," I think to myself. I'm used to it. Worse still was the time I ordered my coffee using the Hey You app which clearly displays my full name - correct spelling and all - and the considerate barista thought he'd Anglicise my name for me - it had "Mary" written on the cup.

Do you remember that feeling as you're sitting in roll call at school and your teacher is yelling out a list of each of the students' names, and then there's that infamous pause and you just know that they are about to butcher yours?

Mariam Veiszadeh is Daily Life's 2016 Woman of the Year. Credit:Louie Douvis

Are you nodding? Or maybe you're like, "nope I can't relate." That means you probably have a pronounceable name - by Western standards anyway.

My name, you see, is Mariam Veiszadeh. No not, Miriam (I get that A LOT), not Maria, not Mary, definitely not Mario, but MAAARIAM. As for my surname, oh boy - Trump's press secretary Sean Spicer would have no hope in hell trying to utter it, ever.

It's Veiszadeh. Not Visydeh, Versace, Veh-veh-veh -?

Look, I get it. It's not easy - not even by ethnic standards. (I can say that because I'm ethnic.)

But having a name like mine does have its perks. You never have to worry about someone else having the same Gmail address or Instagram handle. As a work colleague once pointed out to me, "your name is unusual enough for me to be able to easily find you in the directory". (PS: Please don't say that to people, especially ones you've just met).

But yeah, being different ain't always cool. Just ask Emma Alberici, Neel Kolhatkar, Annastacia Palaszczuk, Magda Szubanski or Gladys Berejiklian about how many times well-intentioned people have butchered their names before they finally got it.

These are the brave folks who persevered and didn't give in to the urge to change their names or Anglicise them - and now, after years of practice, we just know how to say their names.

The thing is not everyone who changes, shortens or Anglicises their names is doing it because their names are unpronounceable. Some are doing to avoid or reduce discrimination.

"Don't be ridiculous, there's no such thing as discrimination," I hear you say! Well, an ANU 2009 study found that someone with a Chinese-sounding name typically must submit 68 per cent more applications than a person with an Anglo-sounding name to get the same amount of call backs and therefore land a job interview.

And if you're Middle Eastern, not only are you more likely to be randomly selected for a bomb test at the airport, but to get the same number of interviews as a job applicant with an Anglo-Saxon name, you must submit 64 per cent more applications. An Indigenous applicant 35 per cent more, and an Italian applicant 12 per cent more applications.

With odds like that, it is entirely understandable why some feel the need to go from Ming to May or from Mohammed to Michael because you just can't beat unconscious (or in some cases conscious) bias in the recruitment process.

The fact that people from the above named ethnic groups are less likely to advance to leadership positions once they make it through the recruitment process is a topic that we will have to leave for another day. Needless to say if you don't see folks with unpronounceable names in the top ranks of society, there's even less incentive to retain the names given to you at birth.

But what if your parents named you North West - surely you should be able to change that when you're older, I hear you say? Hey, this is a judgment-free zone.

It's a sad reality that on the top of the usual anxieties that new parents battle with, some have the added problem of having to worry about their name selections - trying to settle on names that will less likely result in bullying and discrimination in the playground and beyond.

In an era where parents try to be different by naming their child a variant of popular names like Sophia (who knew that Sophia could be spelt at least 10 different ways?) - let's truly embrace difference and let us encourage others to be proud of their identities.

Most importantly, let us become conscious of the role each of us play in society in ensuring that we don't merely tolerate difference, be in it in name or otherwise, but rather, we celebrate it.

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The beauty of unpronounceable names is that we all eventually learn them

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By Mariam Veiszadeh Updated first published Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size MARIO! Mario!" The barista is calling out a coffee order. I'm half asleep so it doesn't register. "Mario? Skinny flat white". It dawns on me then - he means me. It's my coffee order!

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Barack and Michelle Obama have barely left the stage - it's been a month - and already the U.S. press are gripped by nostalgia. In an era of ubiquitous images, no matter where you live in the world, the scenes of their kisses and hugs, their loving gazes and their fist bumps, are inescapable.

Even if you disagree with their politics - if you saw them as having been too focused on being "magical negroes" and not invested enough in challenging the structural underpinnings of American poverty, inequality and imperial violence -- there is no denying the elegance, intellect and fierceness of their bond. And in a world in which images of healthy loving black families are still too rare - their example has been important and powerful not simply to a generation of Americans of all races, but to Brazilians, South Africans and people in countries that are still too starkly defined by the color bar.

Michelle Obama, in particular, has been widely embraced. For white women in Middle America, she represents the black best friend they lost when Oprah went off air. She is now white America's most relatable black person in much the same way that Ellen has become the totem for straight people who aren't sure where to find queer allies.

I don't write this to discredit Michelle Obama. Like other celebrities, she has little control over how her likeness and her persona are used by people she doesn't know. Obama can't help it that she is the new imaginary BFF of white American women who don't know how to reach out across racial divides in their own lives. There is no doubt however that she is aware of the role she plays in the racial imaginary. The mantle of being the-first-black-anything is heavy, but the burden of being the first black First Lady, in a country that anachronistically values a spousal office in spite of reputation of being a democracy built on the notion of modernity, must be heavy indeed.

Obama has handled her position with grace. She has learned to blunt her edges; to smile for the camera, and to package her blackness in ways that are both authentic to her and her family, but palatable to mainstream America. As the real signifier of American blackness in the couple (the one who comes from a long and storied line of African-Americans), at a cultural level, Michelle was always going to be the key to her husband's success in the White House. While Barrack was - and remains - a skillful orator and a powerful intellect - Michelle has brought the racial social capital to the table.

In this way, Michelle Obama is not unlike Winnie Mandela; who some might argue was the de facto first lady for people in African countries that were seeking liberation in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. Barack Obama is no Nelson Mandela either so forgive the tenuous analogy, but there are some parallels about unapologetic black women that are worth pursuing if only at a superficial level.

Unlike Winnie Mandela, Michelle Obama has not been tarnished with scandal, and operates in a dramatically different context from apartheid-era South Africa. Still, like Winnie Mandela, she married a man who was her intellectual equal and she has found a way to occupy a particular place in the firmament amongst her female peers and in the mind of the general public. Like Winnie, Michelle has managed to inspire both adoration and vitriol. And while the Obamas have only had contemporary racists as their enemies and the Mandelas were classified as terrorists and had an entire racist minority regime as their enemy, both women are emblematic of the difficulty women - and women of African descent in particular - have had when in the limelight.

So as the US media extol the virtues of the Obamas, Africans may wish to cast back further than the Obamas; may wish to look beyond America. For South Africans in particular, who are facing the beginning of a long hard leadership race in which a woman may very well emerge as President of the country at the next polls, it is worth remembering that long before the Obamas, there were the Mandelas.

For a younger generation that has grown up in post-apartheid South Africa, Winnie Mandela is an iconic figure, yet one with whom they are little acquainted. Some will know that her marriage to Nelson's ended in a nasty divorce shortly after his release from jail in 1992. Others will be aware that in the 1980s she was known for her firebrand politics. They will know she spent three decades fighting for her husband's release, and that she is known as the Mother of the Nation, but they may be unfamiliar with all but the outlines of her battles against the apartheid state.

Many will not know that she was a qualified social worker in a time when few African women were educated. They will not know that rumors circulated in the early years that is was she who had betrayed her husband to the police - even from within the ANC. They may not know that she was accused of cheating on him; that in the first decade of his incarceration when she was prohibited from seeing him all but once, they suggested that she was unfaithful. These allegations of course would never have been made against a man.

They may not know that these difficult years with two small children were followed by the nine lean years when she was banished to Brandfort in the Free State province (away from her home in Johannesburg) - a time during which she was separated from her youngest child, Zenani. They may never have been taught that the authorities targeted those children immensely- not only to punish Nelson but also to torture Winnie. They will have seen pictures of Mam' Winnie in black and white, and they may have caught their breath because she was such a beauty, but they probably will not know that her picture on the cover of Drum magazine in those days had ten times the power of Michelle's photo on the cover of Vogue today.

From 1956 when they met when Nelson was already facing charges for treason (let that sink in) to 1958 when in her words, she "married the struggle and not the man," to the mid 1980s when the Mandela Football Club that became her ruin took over her life, Winnie Mandela's intellectual strength, her powers of articulation and her disarming beauty were both legendary and fearsome. Her looks and her intellect were also mutually reinforcing. In part this was because the subject of beauty and desirability in African women has always been about more than lines and proportions and whatever is in the eye of the beholder - it has been about whether or not Africans are fully human.

In societies in which the white gaze is normative, the very notion of African beauty has been oxymoronic. In spite of overwhelming evidence indicating white male sexual desire for African women (and men for that matter), the orthodoxy of apartheid insisted that blacks were no better than animals they were not capable of complex thought and therefore any physical attraction between whites and blacks was immoral and unnatural - it was an attraction between varying species. The manufacture of these myths - the simplicity of the African mind and the brutishness of the African physique - served as important justifications for apartheid. Winnie Mandela embodied in a very public manner - the shattering of these ideas.

Winnie was everything Africans - and African women in particular - were not supposed to be. She was unafraid and independent-minded, going to considerable lengths to indicate that she was not a product of Nelson Mandela - she was forged by the needs of African women. In interviews she has always been forthright and unrepentant in her articulation of the "sickness" of racism in South Africa and she is simultaneously - from the perspective of the white gaze (ridiculous as it is) stunningly beautiful.

Winnie Mandela became the thorn in the side of the white minority regime in a manner that cannot be over-stated. She was not simply the wife of Nelson Mandela - a terrorist who in his own right was intelligent, defiant and articulate. She was a beautiful, compelling, clever woman who refused to apologize or bow down. She was always on message - always prepared to raise a clenched fist. Always prepared to say the unsayable. Always impeccably stylish in a manner that in the mind of the enforcers of apartheid - was appealing to the women of Ladies Home Journal and to their cleaners.

It was no wonder then that the regime subjected her to such profound mental and physical anguish. They forced her children out of the country and so Zindzi and Zenani had to study in Swaziland. Whenever it was school holidays, the authorities would conveniently raid her home and detain her so that she would be deprived of the opportunity to see them. In addition to banning her for seven years to Brandfordt, they also harassed her on a daily basis when she returned. Mandela may have been in jail, but Winnie was in an exile of sorts.

She took to traveling with bodyguards. Her home was a fortress - with high walls and large gates and a phalanx of security. In a tragically shallow and misogynistic account of meeting her, British journalist John Carlin elected to depict these as the trappings of a woman who was living a life of luxury while her black compatriots suffered excruciating poverty. He missed the mark: over time Winnie certainly lost touch and became paranoid. She almost certainly enjoyed too many of the finer things in life. Yet no one who knows the history of Winnie and Nelson Mandela could suggest that there was not some basis for the trajectory Winnie's life took in the 1980s.

Ironically, as Winnie took on a more thuggish persona, the less dangerous she became to the white minority regime. She was no longer the long-suffering mother with two beautiful daughters; clad in chic attire and so her appeal to women in Johannesburg's northern suburbs declined. By the mid-1980s when she declared, "with our matchboxes and our necklaces we will liberate this country," to white South Africans she appeared deranged; no longer an ambassador. And on some level she was deranged: out of order and disarrayed, after years of bearing the brunt of the vitriol of the regime and the sexism of the comrades and the pains of motherhood. Yet, she was no more off-kilter than thousands of her male comrades who made similar declarations and who involved themselves in directing and undertaking violence as ugly and brutal as the murder of Stompie Moeketsi, the young man whose 1989 murder Winnie allegedly oversaw.

There can be no excuse for any of the violence that took place during those terrible years; nor can there ever be an excuse for those sorts of crimes enacted against children. It is unhelpful however, to ignore the context in which Winnie and thousands of others were operating. It is also disingenuous to deny the double standards that governed how the media and the liberation struggle itself elected to depict Winnie in relation to those they shielded. She was a woman and so it was her reputation that suffered the most.

Amongst black people on the streets - not those in the leadership but those who lived hand-to-mouth and were looking for charismatic and rooted inspiration - Winnie was always a hero. Tired of the platitudes of the ANC in exile, and fired up by the promise of the United Democratic Front, which organized mass rallies and insisted on making liberation more urgent, people who lived in South Africa's townships came to see her as the Mother of the Nation. For who had suffered more than Winnie Mandela? Like countless black women she knew the pain of being separated from the man she loved, by authorities that had no regard for African love and family ties. Like thousands of black people who had endured the indignities of gaol for infringing on one of the thousands of petty laws that kept apartheid in place, she too was familiar with the inside of a jail cell. Like hundreds and thousands of African women who found themselves living far away from their children, through no fault of their own, Winnie too understood how that felt.

And unlike the ordinary black masses, Winnie had a platform. There were microphones in her face. And at every opportunity, when given the chance to repent, she stood defiant and unrepentant. Again and again and again, she spat in the face of the apartheid regime.

Many have argued Julius Malema is her political heir. As footage from her eightieth birthday party at the end of 2016 indicates, the two are fond of one another and they indeed have much in common. The quick wit and sharp intellect; the common touch. The propensity to deviate from the script to delight and surprise and yes, dismay.

Interestingly, there are few women in contemporary party politics who operate in her mould. Winnie was never one for feminist rhetoric, but she was a powerful proponent for women's rights. She was authentically able to articulate the relationship between racism and sexism, without using academic language that alienated the people on whose behalf she fought.

Today Winnie's sins seem startlingly modern. Subjected to harassment then isolation then violence, she became violent herself. She was too high profile. She was too angry. She refused to be a pawn of Mandela and so long before he was released from jail she disentangled herself from any perception that she might have been made from his rib. She insisted that she owed her political education to the ANC - not Mandela. She had the audacity to take younger men as lovers. She got caught. She refused to be sorry and then of course, when Mandela was released, she couldn't forgive him for all the things that had been done to her in his name.

It is fitting then that in her waning years Mam' Winnie seems to have found a new following amongst this angry rebellious generation. The young women who led the marches in the #FeesMustFall movement; the ones who continue to fill newspaper columns and raise hell in schools across the country. In their language, Winnie's slay is undeniable. With her uncompromising brand of politics, her Instagram-ready good looks, her Twitter-style barbs and her take-no-prisoners brand of feminism, Mrs Mandela is far more au courant today than any of the women who currently occupy the South African political stage - even those decades younger.

I want to imagine there any many women in this generation who can step out of the shadows and emulate Winnie Mandela's courage. I want to hope that they can leave behind Winnie's recklessness whilst channelling her connection to the country's most vulnerable denizens. If my hopes have any basis in reality, 2019 - when the country goes to the polls to elect a replacement for Jacob Zuma - will throw up a range of exciting possibilities. Whether or not a woman takes up the mantle there is no question that as she hits her 80s, Winnie Mandela need not fear being forgotten. Her fearlessness is needed now - more than ever.

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Barack and Michelle Obama have barely left the stage - it's been a month - and already the U.S. press are gripped by nostalgia. In an era of ubiquitous images, no matter where you live in the world, the scenes of their kisses and hugs, their loving gazes and their fist bumps, are inescapable.

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How many times have you heard someone say that they "don't see color," "are color-blind," or "don't have a racist bone in their body?" Maybe you've even said this yourself. After all, the dominant language around racial issues today is typically one of color blindness, as it's often meant to convey distaste for racial practices and attitudes common in an earlier era.

Many sociologists, though, are extremely critical of color blindness as an ideology. They argue that as the mechanisms that reproduce racial inequality have become more covert and obscure than they were during the era of open, legal segregation, the language of explicit racism has given way to a discourse of color blindness. But they fear that the refusal to take public note of race actually allows people to ignore manifestations of persistent discrimination.

For the first half of the 20th century, it was perfectly legal to deny blacks (and other racial minorities) access to housing, jobs, voting, and other rights based explicitly on race. Civil-rights reforms rendered these practices illegal. Laws now bar practices that previously maintained racial inequality, such as redlining, segregation, or openly refusing to rent or sell real estate to black Americans. Yet discrimination still persists, operating through a combination of social, economic, and institutional practices.

Concurrently, it is no longer socially acceptable in many quarters to identify oneself as racist. Instead, many Americans purport not to see color. However, their color blindness comes at a cost. By claiming that they do not see race, they also can avert their eyes from the ways in which well-meaning people engage in practices that reproduce neighborhood and school segregation, rely on " soft skills" in ways that disadvantage racial minorities in the job market, and hoard opportunities in ways that reserve access to better jobs for white peers.

The Atlantic 's Conor Friedersdorf recently argued that the academic left errs in attacking color blindness. He suggested that encouraging whites to be color conscious and to think of themselves in racial terms would encourage the nativism embraced by some Donald Trump supporters-that a heightened awareness of whiteness would produce a sense of persecution, and encourage some to rally in defense of white rights. He contends that there is some merit to color blindness that has been ignored by what he describes as "the academic left," which spends too much time focused on nitpicking color blindness rather than drawing attention to "macroaggressions" such as "racially tinged hatred and conspiracy theories directed at the first black president" or the convenience of labeling Mexican immigrants rapists "despite the fact that first-generation immigrants commit fewer crimes than native born Americans."

As a presumptive member of the academic left that Friedersdorf critiques, I read the post with particular interest. I think that Friedersdorf makes some important points worth more detailed attention from both academics and those outside the academy who are familiar with the debates and concepts he references. For instance, academic debates can often become divorced from broader audiences. It is way too easy for academics in many fields to ground their conversations, disputes, and discussions among other like-minded scholars. He's right to note that, by and large, academics can do a much better job engaging with folks outside of our ivory towers.

However, there are some misrepresentations in Fridersdorf's piece as well. Based on a single statement from one book chapter in an edited volume, Friedersdorf makes the sweeping generalization that "the academic left casts all proponents of colorblindness as naïve." I've read books and articles by numerous sociologists who critique the color-blind ideology, and while they find problems with the ways this perspective allows individuals to ignore patterns of racial bias, I've never seen any studies that broadly categorize advocates of color blindness in this way. What's more important to sociologists are the consequences of how this ideology has implications for social inequality.

My colleague Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, for example, has written extensively about the idea of color blindness, charting the ways that it functions as an ideology that legitimizes specific practices that maintain racial inequalities-police brutality, housing discrimination, voter disenfranchisement, and others. His book Racism Without Racists is part of a broad set of sociological research that draws attention to the ways that colorblind ideology undergirds bigger, more problematic social issues.
There are more than a few members of the academic left who argue that color blindness is problematic precisely because it offers a way to avoid addressing social problems.
Yet, in addition to suggesting that the academic left casts all proponents of color blindness as naïve, Friedersdorf also contends that they waste time picking apart this concept rather than addressing "macroagressions" such as police brutality and growing expressions of virulent racist hatred. But Bonilla-Silva, among others, describes the ways that color blindness sustains these very macroaggressions that Friedersdorf thinks are ignored. In other words, Friedersdorf suggests the academic left wastes time dissecting the concept of color blindness, and would be better served focusing on more pressing, systemic processes of inequality. But a careful read of sociological literature in this area finds that there are more than a few members of the academic left who argue that color blindness is problematic precisely because it offers a way to avoid addressing these exact social problems. Other sociologists such as Jessie Daniels and David Cort focus explicitly on researching hate speech on the internet and the lower rates of crime among immigrants relative to native-born Americans, respectively-the very issues that Friedersdorf, by his own admission, charges are important and believes are overlooked by the academic left. Sociologists are actually very involved in highlighting these macroaggressions-and in underscoring the ways color-blind ideology allows them to go ignored.

Advocates of color blindness, like Friedersdorf, tend to claim that emphasizing whites' group identity as whites (rather than as individuals) is counterproductive. Rejecting color blindness and encouraging whites to see themselves as members of a distinct racial group, they argue, will produce nativism. They will cling to, rather than critique, the privileges that whiteness affords, which are jeopardized by a more multiracial society. Friedersdorf calls it naïve to believe that upon focusing on their status as members of a racial group and the privilege and power that affords them, "masses of white people will identify more strongly with their racial tribe and then sacrifice the interests of that tribe."

This is, in the abstract, a compelling point. The trouble is that the weight of the scholarly evidence directly contradicts this argument. Sociologists such as Karyn McKinney, Eileen O'Brien, Joe Feagin, Hernan Vera, and Matthew Hughey, who have studied the pathways and trajectories by which whites become involved in anti-racist activism, show that contrary to Friedersdorf's beliefs, moving away from color blindness can actually serve as a pathway toward anti-racism. In many of these studies, as whites came to understand themselves as members of a racial group that enjoyed unearned privileges and benefits, this compelled them to forge a different sense of white identity built on anti-racism rather than simply supporting the status quo. Moving away from the color-blind ideology that sociologists critique-the idea that it's admirable to profess not to see color, that it's problematic to see oneself as a member of a racial group-is, according to the research in this area, actually an important step to anti-racist activism.
In most social interactions, whites get to be seen as individuals. Racial minorities become aware from a young age that people will often judge them as members of their group.
There's a strong emphasis on individualism in American culture. Friedersdorf argues that "race is a pernicious concept that robs people of their individuality ... the academic left also underestimates how divisive it can be to put anything other than individualism at the center of identity." But ironically, this focus on individualism is itself a function of group position. Whites, by and large, enjoy the luxury of promoting the importance of the individual, because they benefit from living in a racially stratified society where whiteness is normalized. In most social interactions, whites get to be seen as individuals. Racial minorities, by contrast, become aware from a young age that people will often judge them as members of their group, and treat them in accordance with the (usually negative) stereotypes attached to that group.

Everyone wants to be treated as an individual and recognized for their personal traits and characteristics. But the color blindness that sociologists critique doesn't allow for this. Instead, it encourages those who endorse this perspective to ignore the ongoing processes that maintain racial stratification in schools, neighborhoods, health care, and other social institutions. Can color consciousness draw attention to these issues? The research demonstrates that it can lead to more understanding of our racially stratified society and can give rise to a willingness to work for change. So from that perspective, it doesn't seem worth abandoning just yet.

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white peers.the atlantic’s conor friedersdorf

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part of a broad set of sociological research

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If You Don't See Race, How Can You See Racial Inequality?

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How many times have you heard someone say that they "don't see color," "are color-blind," or "don't have a racist bone in their body?" Maybe you've even said this yourself. After all, the dominant language around racial issues today is typically one of color blindness, as it's often meant to convey distaste for racial practices and attitudes common in an earlier era.

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This story is part of a group of stories called

First-person essays and interviews with unique perspectives on complicated issues.

It didn't take long for the internet to explode when Nike announced who would be the new face of its brand.

On Labor Day, Nike tweeted a photo of NFL player Colin Kaepernic k, (in)famous for sparking controversy when he took a knee during the national anthem to protest police brutality, to celebrate the corporation's 30th anniversary of the slogan "Just Do It." The image - Nike's usual stark, intense black-and-white style - features Kaepernick staring directly at the camera overlaid by the text, "Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything. Just Do It."

The ad garnered significant response on social media. Many applauded Nike's embrace of such an openly political figure. Some on the right were livid that the brand endorsed someone who, to them, represents a lack of loyalty to American values. Others on the left were indignant about the ways protest and resistance were being commodified and used to build a behemoth company's brand. And some were just happy that Kaepernick, who has yet to be signed to an NFL team since his contract expired in 2016, has any kind of job at all.

Rather than wade through this debate, I'd like to offer a more broadly contextual analysis of Nike's latest campaign, situating it within a long history of what Roopali Mukherjee - a professor at CUNY Queens College with whom I co-wrote a book on this subject - and I have called "commodity activism."

This practice merges consumer behavior with political or social goals. Whether challenging police brutality or questioning unattainable beauty norms, branding in our era has extended beyond a business model: It is now both reliant on and reflective of our most basic social and cultural relations. The use of brands to "sell" dissent is not a new business strategy. Individual consumers act politically by purchasing particular brands over others in a competitive marketplace, where specific brands are attached to political aims and goals.

Nike has a history of using political movements in its ads

There are ample examples of commodity activism. In 2008, Starbucks began offering "fair trade" coffee that pledged to pay producers in developing countries a fair wage. Gap joined several other companies to form RED, a philanthropic organization dedicated to fighting AIDS in Africa, in 2006. In 2011, Chrysler used the context of global economic collapse and the failing automobile industry to build its brand and advocate for more consumption as a way to overcome crisis; the ad featured Detroit rapper Eminem.

Nike's latest effort to connect its brand with a political project is certainly not its first. In 1992, the company created one of the first "girl empowerment" ad campaigns, one that specifically positioned sports as a route to empowerment for girls and women. The campaign, "If You Let Me Play," created before hashtags existed, first appeared as a print ad. With this campaign, Nike launched one of the first corporate efforts to sell its products alongside self-confidence, strength, and empowerment for girls and women.

Dozens of companies followed its lead. Dove's widely successful "Real Beauty" campaign is just one of dozens of examples of companies following Nike's lead in selling female confidence and empowerment as part of their shampoo, cereal, or yoga pants brand. At this point in contemporary culture, it is utterly unsurprising to "participate" in social activism by buying something.

But not all politics is equally "brandable." Female empowerment, fighting AIDS in Africa, building homes for people left homeless after national disasters - those are fairly uncontroversial politics for brands to partner with. Even when brands harness politics to sell their products, they don't want to alienate too much of their consumer base. After all, they still want to sell products.

But race and racial tension - especially in the context of continued violence against people of color in the United States, an issue on which the public is deeply divided - are not quite as easy to simply commodify and brand. For example, in 2017, when Pepsi decided to create an ad using Kendall Jenner, a 21-year-old white reality television star and brand influencer, to advocate for "a global message of unity, peace, and understanding" between police officers and the Black Lives Matter movement, it was an epic failure.

Pepsi's incredibly tone-deaf ad, which minimized the urgency of the Black Lives Matter movement, diminishing it as a happy peaceful gathering where people are most interested in drinking soda, is an example of how not to connect brands with politics. Pepsi pulled the ad only days after it aired.

Nike's partnership with Kaepernick is riskier than its previous politically motivated campaigns

The Nike Kaepernick ad campaign also treads on risky ground, given the public outrage that Kaepernick has faced for his political stance against racial violence in the US - not to mention that Nike's own history with questionable labor practices hardly makes it a progressive bastion.

But unlike Pepsi, Nike has a history of connecting with politics as part of its branding, and while the company is not uncontroversial, openly advocating for political stances hasn't ruined the brand. Brand culture creates a context within which consumer participation is not simply (or even most importantly) indicated by purchases, but by brand loyalty and affiliation, linking brands to lifestyles, politics, and social activism.

Nike knew what it was doing when it decided to sponsor Kaepernick; it knew perfectly well that the ad would enrage some consumers who have been vocal about their anger around NFL players kneeling in protest. Nike also knew that the campaign would further solidify it as a socially progressive company, which is important for many of its younger consumers, who skew liberal and represent the company's future customers.

The proliferation of commodity activism such as Nike's, in other words, serves as a trenchant reminder that there is no "outside" to the logic of contemporary capitalism; social action may itself be shifting shape into a marketable commodity. We may, on the one hand, characterize Nike's most recent "Just Do It" campaign as yet another corporate appropriation, an elaborate exercise in hypocrisy and artifice intended to fool the consumer and secure ever-larger profits.

On the other hand, Kaepernick's ad, and the message he offers, may also illuminate the promise of innovative creative forms, including advertising. His role in the Nike partnership might be a cultural intervention that we need right now - it allows us to think critically about modes of dominance and resistance within changing social, cultural, and political landscapes.

Sarah Banet-Weiser is a professor of media and communications at the London School of Economics. She is the author of Authentic™: The Politics of Ambivalence in a Brand Culture and the forthcoming Empowered: Popular Feminism and Popular Misogyny.

First Person is Vox's home for compelling, provocative narrative essays. Do you have a story to share? Read our submission guidelines, and pitch us at firstperson@vox.com.

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Nike, Colin Kaepernick, and the history of "commodity activism"

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First-person essays and interviews with unique perspectives on complicated issues. It didn't take long for the internet to explode when Nike announced who would be the new face of its brand.

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Legal academic and writer based in Toronto.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali has been a supporter of the Trump administration, writes Kanji [File: AP Photo/Shiho Fukada]

The prospect of Judge Brett Kavanaugh being elevated to Supreme Court justice - without a thorough investigation of the multiple allegations of sexual assault against him and after a confirmation hearing in which his rage and sense of entitlement were on full display - has triggered an outpouring of shock, pain, and righteous anger.

However, for one prominent "advocate for women's rights", Harvard and Stanford fellow Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the real victim of the whole process has been Kavanaugh himself.

She has that the Senate should "confirm Brett Kavanaugh", and shared articles insisting that he is the target of a "set-up" comparable to the Salem witch trials: an analogy that astonishingly manages to twist one of the most infamous exhibitions of institutionalised patriarchy into a shield for patriarchal violence.

Beyond her Twitter crusade for Judge Kavanaugh's "rights", Hirsi Ali has also been fully supportive of the Trump administration and its onslaught against women's rights.

This same woman has been lauded in the West as a courageous feminist standing up to Islam in defence of women. A closer look at her work shows that her advocacy for women's safety and equality is hardly principled or consistent, while her "critique" of Islam built on a foundation of distortions and fabrications.

Imperial feminism

Hirsi Ali's enthusiastic complicity with non-Muslim sources of violence against women indicates that her politics are not anti-oppression, but anti-Islam. Over the years, she has also never spoken out against crimes committed by Western countries against Muslim women (or men) and she has demonstrated a remarkable lack of concern for the plight of non-Muslim women.

Unsurprisingly, since separating thousands of migrant children from their parents, but she Donald Trump won the presidential elections in 2016, she has been an avid supporter of his. She has never criticised him for boasting about violating women or has pointed out that he has "lost his focus" on "radical Islam."

She has exhorted Trump to expand his Muslim ban and intensify "extreme vetting" of Muslim migrants: Measures that impose collective punishment on Muslim women while simultaneously relying on stereotypes of them as helpless victims who need to be saved from Muslim men.

Apart from failing to defend Muslim women refugees (despite herself pursuing refugee status in the West), Hirsi Ali has also failed to show any sympathy for American women or fellow feminists.

She has dismissed the Women's March as an "anti-Trump crusade," and demeaned feminists in North America, who does the dishes at home". calling them "idiotic women" consumed with "trivial" matters like "

The one-sided reasoning and double standards that pervade Hirsi Ali's output are all too common in the annals of imperial feminism. From British colonial officials such as Lords Cromer and Curzon, who paraded as saviours of women in the colonies while heading the League for Opposing Women's Suffrage at home, to US President George W Bush, who launched a global "war on terror" in the name of rescuing Muslim women while assaulting women's reproductive rights in the US, self-serving and cynical appeals to women's liberation have long been a speciality of imperial crusaders.

But individuals like Hirsi Ali provide something that the Cromers, Curzons, and Bushes cannot: a stamp of ostensibly authentic insider approval to their supremacist discourses.

And so, despite the alternative-facts quality of her assertions and Trumper-than-Trump nature of her politics, Hirsi Ali continues to be given prestigious posts at Ivy League universities, and prominent platforms in newspapers including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Washington Post.

In an interview last year denigrating organisers of the Women's March, Hirsi Ali told "the serious and sincere feminists who really care about the equality between men and women" that they "should not be seen with these fake feminists." But her advocacy track record shows that her own feminist credentials are largely a sham.

Getting Islam wrong

Hirsi Ali is also no mere "critic of Islam", but a cheerleader for Muslim annihilation. In interviews, she has labelled Islam a "destructive, nihilistic cult of death" that must be "crushed" - an operation that, ironically, would itself require mass infliction of destruction and death, including upon the very same Muslim women whose rights she claims to be championing.

Hirsi Ali's depictions of Islam and Muslims bear the same tenuous relationship to reality as her own biography, which she substantially fabricated to bolster her claim for asylum in the Netherlands. In her 2007 autobiography, Infidel, she urges readers to "judge [her] on the validity of [her] arguments, not as a victim" - but judgment on either basis reveals an impressive talent for blatant misrepresentation.

For instance, in her latest book, Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now and various derivative op-eds, Hirsi Ali identifies "five precepts central to the faith" that she diagnoses as requiring urgent reformation: Prophet "Muhammad's semi-divine status", "the supremacy of life after death", "shariah, the vast body of religious legislation", "the right of individual Muslims to enforce Islamic law" and "the imperative to wage jihad, or holy war".

However, none of the five is actually an accurately-stated "precept" of Islam, rendering their description as "central" spurious and the call to reform them (now!) nonsensical.

Some of Hirsi Ali's formulations are the exact opposite of mainstream interpretations. Prophet Muhammad is not considered semi-divine but repeatedly described in the Quran as "only human" and ascribing partners in divinity to God is a fundamental transgression. Enforcement of Islamic law by private individuals is not only not a right, but explicitly prohibited by Muslim jurists.

The rest of her "precepts" are simply incorrect. Far from discounting the importance of earthly life, the Quran represents actions in this life as the basis for reward or punishment in the afterlife. Shariah is not a book of codified legislation, but rather "a body of Quran-based guidance that points Muslims toward living an Islamic life", in the words of University of Wisconsin law professor Asifa Quraishi-Landes. And jihad is not holy war - the concept of holy war being, as UCLA law professor Khaled Abou El Fadl notes, "the unique product of European Christian culture ... Islamic theology does not recognize the idea of a sacred or consecrated war."

Hirsi Ali's grasp of basic facts about Islam is disturbingly shaky, particularly for someone listed as an "expert" on the Harvard and Stanford websites and entrusted with teaching seminars on Islamic political theory.

While highly-qualified women of colour continue to struggle against their from American academia, Hirsi Ali has been welcomed with open arms to its most elite echelons.

Clearly, the utility of her interventions lies not in their scholarly rigour or factual accuracy - both remarkably lacking - but in their confirmation of Orientalist caricatures of exceptional Muslim backwardness, under the cover of standing up for Muslim women.

Repudiating her imperial faux-feminism is the least we can do to support the Muslim activists and organisations struggling against patriarchal systems around the world - whose brave and essential work is only made more difficult by the intensifying Islamophobia and securitisation fuelled by ideologues like Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial stance.

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Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Brett Kavanaugh, and imperial feminism

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Legal academic and writer based in Toronto. The prospect of Judge Brett Kavanaugh being elevated to Supreme Court justice - without a thorough investigation of the multiple allegations of sexual assault against him and after a confirmation hearing in which his rage and sense of entitlement were on full display - has triggered an outpouring of shock, pain, and righteous anger.

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Beacon Broadside: A Project of Beacon Press

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By Dina Gilio-Whitaker

Robin DiAngelo's brilliant 2018 manifesto on white fragility was a much-needed truth bomb at a time when it's more clear than ever that we are light years away from the " post-racial state." Perhaps most important about the book was its clarity that racism is systemic and structural, that no white people are immune from it, and that their fragility about it is based on a belief that they are being judged as bad people (the good-bad binary). In this second part of a two-part series ( see part one here), I take on the similar but very different concept we in Indian country call settler privilege and its companion, settler fragility.

Settler fragility stems from settler privilege, which is similar to white privilege in that it is systemic, structural, and based on white supremacy, making it difficult to identify. Only in some ways, settler privilege is far more covert and cunning. The reason is because of the ubiquitous ways the US is normalized; that is, the US settler state is the "water we swim in." US citizens of all races and ethnic groups have been indoctrinated their entire lives with messages designed to foster a sense of national pride and belonging in the making of what has been called an " imagined community," which always occurs on Indigenous lands. Their citizenship and their very identity are taken for granted without critical consciousness about the US's contradictory foundational structures and narratives.

Settler colonialism is said to be a structure, not an historic event, whose endgame is always the elimination of the Natives in order to acquire their land, which it does in countless seen and unseen ways. These techniques are woven throughout the US's national discourse at all levels of society. Manifest Destiny-that is, the US's divinely sanctioned inevitability-is like a computer program always operating unnoticeably in the background. In this program, genocide and land dispossession are continually both justified and denied.

Like white fragility, settler fragility is the inability to talk about unearned privilege-in this case, the privilege of living on lands that were taken in the name of democracy through profound violence and injustice. Like white privilege, white supremacy is also at the root of settler fragility. The difference is that foreign invasion, dispossession of Indigenous lands, and genocide were based on (white) European religious and cultural supremacy as encoded in the doctrine of discovery, not racial supremacy. And, unlike for other people of color who have made significant legal gains in the US legal system, the nearly two-centuries-old doctrine of discovery is at the foundation of the legal system that still paternalistically determines Native lives and lands.

Settler privilege thus simultaneously implicates and is beyond racism, which is one reason why, paradoxically, even non-Native people of color can experience a type of privilege and fragility. Fragility stems from the need to distance oneself from complicity in settler colonialism, in what some scholars have called " settler moves to innocence." The good-bad binary is part of this distancing impulse, because like racism, nobody wants to be associated with genocide and injustice, especially in a country that touts its democracy and equality, and especially for people who have been oppressed by it in other ways. But compared to white privilege, this is what makes settler privilege so much more beguiling and difficult: it cuts to the core of American identity in all its iterations, subtly calling into question the legitimacy of the US and the sense of belonging on the land.

Here are some of the ways settler fragility can be seen in all ranges of the political spectrum. On the liberal end we see:

1. "I love Indians and Indian culture. I believe I have Native ancestry somewhere in my family tree" (I have been oppressed, too, even though I'm white).

2. "Even though the Indians didn't deserve what we did to them, the damage is done and there is nothing we can do to right the wrongs that have been done to them" (We should all move on and forget the past, and Indians should get beyond their victimization).

3. "We are all one people now" (The settler state and all its attendant privileges must prevail).

4. "I am a person of color and am subject to racism, so I don't have settler privilege" (I have no reason to be accountable to settler colonialism since I am oppressed, too).

5. "Since I am poor and don't own any land, I don't have settler privilege."

In the middle we see:

1. "Neither I or my ancestors killed anyone to be here" (my people are not to blame).

2. "We can't apply the standards of today to the behavior of our (European) ancestors" (evasion of accountability).

3. "Most Native American people have white ancestry" (that means they are complicit in settler colonialism, too; if everyone is to blame, then no one is to blame).

On the right end of the spectrum:

1. "Indians were all killing each other anyway when Europeans got here" (they were uncivilized savages anyway).

2. "I'm a 'native' American because I was born here" (American Indian history is irrelevant, and the settler state prevails).

It's important to emphasize that like white privilege, settler privilege is systemic, so just denying that one doesn't possess it doesn't mean one isn't complicit in it. This is about deeply questioning all the assumptions we have been raised with in a society built on imperialism, private property (which includes slavery), and capitalism. Even for Native people who don't live in their ancestral homelands, the questions need to be asked: who are the original people of the place where I live, and what are my responsibilities to them?

Here's how some of these ideas apply in my own life, which are vexing and uneven but do not relieve me from accountability. I am of mixed European and Native ancestry. A phenomenon I have been exposed to throughout my life is the minimization of my Nativeness by others in order to emphasize my Europeanness ("you're not a real Indian"). However, my non-Native ancestry does not cancel out the ways my Indigenous ancestors were victimized by the genocidal policies of the US, nor has it shielded me from inheriting the negative impacts of that history.

At the same time, I was born and raised outside my Native community due to the policies of forced assimilation my mother and her ancestors were subjected to; I live in the Native American diaspora. This means that as long as I don't live in my ancestral lands, even though I am Native, I am still a guest in someone else's homelands (currently the lands of the Acjachemen Nation in Southern California). Based on the way I look I have a degree of skin privilege, so I rarely experience overt racism. On the other hand, as a mixed-blood Native person, due to colonial processes of erasure and prevailing stereotypes, I cannot be seen by dominant society for who I am as an "authentic" member of my group.

This is extremely complex terrain, and there are many shades of grey depending on a person's own ancestral origins. But the most important point is that this is a structural, societal issue to which we each have an individual relationship. The central question is: what is our relationship to place, and what processes have granted and/or denied us privilege in it? To unsettle settler privilege, we need to accept that we have responsibilities not only to the land we live upon, but to the Native community of that place in order to be good relatives, accomplices, and tenants.
About the Author
Dina Gilio-Whitaker (Colville Confederated Tribes) is a lecturer of American Indian Studies at California State University San Marcos, and a consultant and educator in environmental justice policy planning. Her research interests focus on Indigenous nationalism, self-determination, environmental justice, and education. She also works within the field of critical sports studies, examining the intersections of indigeneity and the sport of surfing. She is co-author with Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz of Beacon Press's "All the Real Indians Died Off" and 20 Other Myths About Native Americans, and her forthcoming book, As Long as Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice from Colonization to Standing Rock, is scheduled for release by Beacon Press in April 2019. Follow her on Twitter at and visit her website.

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Settler Fragility: Why Settler Privilege Is So Hard to Talk About

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By Dina Gilio-Whitaker | Robin DiAngelo's brilliant 2018 manifesto on white fragility was a much-needed truth bomb at a time when it's more clear than ever that we are light years away from the "post-racial state."

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Why Do We Humanize White Guys Who Kill People?

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In July 2011, I found myself in the office of Ellen Margrethe Loj, a Danish diplomat who was then the top official in charge of the UN peacekeeping mission in Liberia, which was then less than a decade removed from its civil war. I was a member of a small team of graduate students from Columbia University who'd been assigned to carry out research into the impact of a massive post-war influx of foreign capital into natural resource extraction there. Towering above the grit and hustle of Monrovia in her glass-paneled office, we delivered our findings.

Across the country, the new projects were causing chaos. Multi-billion-dollar mining and plantation ventures-owned by the Chinese, British, Russians, and everyone in between-were creating bitter land disputes, marginalizing increasingly frustrated forest communities, and fostering rampant corruption among local officials. There had been minor riots in some areas, and in nearly every region we'd visited, the anger was palpable. It was, we warned, a volatile situation that could easily erupt into violence.

Throughout our presentation, Loj sat in her chair, listening intently with a dour expression. When we finished, she looked at us from above her glasses, and said, "Thank you for this, but I expect you'll hold off on publishing until after the election. You wouldn't want to be known as the students who brought conflict back to Liberia, would you?" It was just a few months before Liberians were scheduled to head to the polls, where they'd decide in November whether to give a second term to then-President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, darling of the international donor community.

Young, inexperienced, and not really in charge, we deferred to her request despite our reservations. Sirleaf was subsequently re-elected in a runoff. And during her second term, much of what we'd worried about came to pass. There were bloody riots at the palm oil plantations and  iron mines we visited,  clashes between security forces and villagers, and only a fraction of the jobs and social services promised by the companies ever appeared.

The report we wrote was covered by the media when it was released a few months later, but I've always been uncomfortable with the decision to hold it until after the charged election period, when it might have been used by the local press to force Sirleaf to answer tough questions about the impact of her economic policies. Whatever reception it might have gotten, why did Loj think it was appropriate to keep information from Liberians that might have helped them hold their leaders accountable in a rare moment when they had some leverage?

I've been contemplating this moment, which marked the beginning of nearly five years I spent working in and reporting on Liberia, since reading ProPublica's investigation of a US-based charity called More Than Me in October. The investigation detailed how the organization failed to protect dozens of young Liberian girls at a school it operated from being sexually abused by a staff member. I knew More Than Me well. I lived just a few blocks from the school for a stretch and I first met Katie Meyler, its founder, years before she won a million-dollar grant from JP Morgan Chase. The awful story has rightfully provoked outrage and calls for accountability both inside and outside of Liberia. But it's been instructive to note where the boundaries of those calls seem to have fallen.

ProPublica's investigation has largely been received as a cautionary tale about the archetype that Meyler represents: white saviors. And it's understandable why. More Than Me's portrayal of the girls in its school was exploitative and crude from the beginning, selling an absurdly simplistic and depoliticized solution to the problem of girls' education in West Point. Pitching donors on the idea that a little bit of elbow grease and American optimism could work as a substitute for strong institutions in Liberia, Meyler often seemed like she'd emerged from a Hollywood casting call for white saviors in Africa. (The joke in Monrovia for years was that More Than Me really did seem to have a lot of "Me" in it.)

But the cringeworthy aesthetics of white saviorism aren't the great offense here-the harm done to the young girls is-and in this, the focus on Meyler herself obscures rather than illuminates the deeper lessons of the scandal.

A great deal of commentary about the ProPublica story has explained the abuses as a result of Meyler's amateurism, framing her as an unqualified intruder into the world of aid work. Vox, for example, pointed to her "inexperience," arguing that the tragedy would have been avoided had she left the complexities of humanitarianism to the cadre of trained professionals who found her so distasteful for so many years in Liberia. "Altruism that isn't fortified by rigor or metrics can lead to disastrous results," writes Abigail Higgins.

The problem with this analysis is that it completely contradicts everything we know about the aid and development industry. The UN peacekeeping mission in South Sudan had more than its share of "rigor," but that didn't prevent its peacekeepers from sexually abusing minors, nor were Oxfam's "metrics" a firewall against its staff hiring local sex workers for orgies in Haiti. Glittering resumes at the WHO didn't keep top officials from looking the other way while the Guinean government downplayed its Ebola epidemic in order to keep investors in the country, and it didn't stop the UN from causing a cholera outbreak in Haiti. In fact, scandals very much like More Than Me's are common in even the most elite aid organizations.

This obviously doesn't let More Than Me or Meyler off the hook-the calls for accountability in Liberia are loud for good reason. But it should tell us that Meyler's lack of credentials isn't an adequate explanation for the scandal, and that if we want to understand what went wrong and why, we have to go beyond a simplistic critique of white savior figures. If the harm that More Than Me caused in Liberia is our focus rather than how we feel about Meyler herself, it means we have to think critically about other forms of harm that the aid and development industry cause in places like Liberia-and how they might be connected to what happened to those girls.

Liberia is a complex nation, and no quick sound bite can do it justice. But it's fair to say that there are reasons to be concerned right now. The economy is in free-fall, with skyrocketing inflation at least partially linked to an ongoing exodus of investors and aid workers who've departed in droves over the past few years along with the dollars they brought with them. Agriculture and education remain largely dysfunctional, and corruption is so pervasive that over a hundred million dollars in currency appears to have simply vanished from the port -with an official investigation offering the dubious explanation that it was simply never there in the first place. It would be wise for the world to take a moment now and evaluate what the impact of fifteen years of intensive aid-which included one of the most expensive peacekeeping missions in history-actually accomplished.

Liberia is often touted as an aid and peacekeeping "success story." But is it? Billions of dollars were spent on the reconstruction effort during the post-war period. Through its control over these funds, the international community exercised vast influence in the Sirleaf administration, shaping and guiding the country's post-war economic strategy and playing an outsized role in its present trajectory. This generational effort had its successes-nobody would deny Liberia is in better shape now than in 2004-but it would be hard to argue that it produced the kind of lasting systemic change that most Liberians were hoping for. Certainly, it should have more to show than an economy in shambles along with health care, education, and agricultural systems that continue to rank among the worst on earth.

The architects of this effort had every degree, pedigree, and piece of resume candy on offer in the Western world. But while they may have outclassed Meyler on credentials, what they shared in common with her were good intentions. Like Meyler, most of those in charge of aid efforts believed they were improving the lives of long-suffering Liberians. But good intentions are tricky. They can absolve us of the responsibility to engage in critical self-examination and provide cover for us to downplay or brush off our failures. And more importantly, they often serve to mask the ideology that underlies our efforts to "help," blinding us to how conditioned those efforts are by our view of who we are and whether our solutions are, in fact, the right ones...

In the documentary that accompanied the ProPublica investigation, one of the only Liberians involved in the management of More Than Me presents a profound insight into the mentality of the charity's funders-one which cuts directly to the heart of philanthropy and aid work. "The customer for More Than Me isn't the children, it's the donor," he says. "And our customer has no idea what's going on with the kids in Liberia, nor do they really care." For More Than Me's funders, being able to celebrate a successful project was the priority. Whether that project was the best option for girls in West Point was an afterthought, as was any critical examination of whether it fit into a coherent vision of Liberia's future.

The impulse to help is never value-neutral. Without exception, it is guided by ideology and shaped by power. More Than Me had a vision of change for young girls in West Point that reflected the ideology of its wealthy US donors, following a well-worn script for philanthropy that prioritizes the narcissism of Western elites over any kind of meaningful systemic change. Those donors could easily, for example, have demanded that the charity's day-to-day management team included Liberians with a working knowledge of West Point and the country's education system, structuring More Than Me to embed local staff at all levels of decision-making and operations. Instead they allowed Meyler to wield near-absolute administrative power, and to select her local partners with the sole criteria being how useful they were to her agenda-and thus, theirs.

But for donors to have made such a demand, their priority would have to have been finding local knowledge to support lasting change in Liberia rather than being able to celebrate their undeserved status as the gatekeepers of altruism. There were good intentions behind More Than Me, but they were channeled through a belief that the role of Liberians should simply be to help Meyler and her board implement their project, which existed to serve their egos as much as the lives of the girls they said they wanted to help. This is why there were no Liberians in the room at More Than Me with the power to say "something isn't right here" without having to fear for their livelihood.

But this flawed approach isn't the sole province of white savior figures like Meyler and their pool of naïve donors. In fact, it was mirrored in nearly every aid initiative implemented in Liberia during the post-war period, including the overall economic plan favored by Western donors as the centerpiece of reconstruction. This model-auction off Liberia's land and natural resources, turn the country into a one-dimensional rentier state, and hope a domestic private sector emerged from the mist-was written in Western capitals and pushed by development professionals who were myopically unwilling to address any criticism of its logic, and who are now escaping accountability for what looks a lot like its collapse.

It's fair to point out that this strategy was not entirely imposed on Liberia. Sirleaf was a former World Bank director, and she and her closest advisors shared the ideology of the donors who footed much of its bill. But had her ideas for change deviated significantly from the interests and economic ideology of those donors, it's hard to imagine she would have had the carte blanche support from the international community that she enjoyed for her two terms. It seemed clear during much of that period that they'd thrown their weight behind Sirleaf largely because they felt she could be trusted as a custodian of their vision for Liberia's future.

This, I think, is why Loj asked us to bury our report until it couldn't present a risk to Sirleaf's electoral prospects. When presented with evidence that her implementation of the world's dogmatic reconstruction agenda in Liberia was causing harm, the impulse was to protect the project-and her-rather than deal head-on with the harm. In this, there are some parallels to how Meyler related with the suggestion that Macintosh Johnson, a staff member at More Than Me, might have been abusing young girls. Johnson was integral to Meyler's ability to carry out her vision and fulfill the needs of More Than Me's "customers," just as Sirleaf was for the powerful donors financing Liberia's development. And thus, it wasn't in the UN's interest to disrupt their partnership or place her at risk.

Liberia often seemed to reflect all the worst dynamics of aid delivery at once. On one hand, the imposition of a dubious top-down economic plan was placed entirely in the hands of Sirleaf and her advisors, with no effort to create space for dissenting voices to participate in planning or oversight. Reformers and watchdogs both in and out of government who grasped that the plan was breeding corruption and elite capture of resources were generally ignored so as to not disrupt high-level partnerships. Simultaneously, most on-the-ground aid organizations operated in a very similar fashion to More Than Me, implementing expensive pet projects with little coordination amongst themselves or meaningful guidance from Liberians who wanted lasting change.

What's striking about More Than Me is how the organization encapsulated both of those dynamics at once, establishing its version of change with little to no local input or oversight, and then selecting its partners based on how well they'd follow the script rather than any genuine desire for guidance. It's here, in the charity's flawed approach to "helping" where we see the crucial lessons of the scandal, not in a critique of white savior amateurism that's ultimately pinned to reverence for credentials-a particularly absurd response given the state of the world we live in and who's been in charge of it.

It's far more helpful to think about the abuses that took place at More Than Me in terms of what might have prevented them. That framing should lead us to examine how input into aid projects is solicited, who's brought to the tables of power, and how we can keep good intentions from becoming a channel for self-interest. At the core of the tragedy is the way we conceptualize what it means to "help" people in faraway places. Are we doing our due diligence to create partnerships that include accountability and bottom-up oversight, or are we swooping in with the blueprints already written and insulating ourselves from any critique of the solutions we've decided to invest ourselves in? If it's the latter, harm will continue to occur, and not just at the hands of small charities like More Than Me.

The scandal is a call for us all to be extremely cautious in how we translate our good intentions into action. Aid and philanthropy have become such an ingrained element of the flow of power in the world that we rarely stop to consider just how disruptive they can be. Structural disadvantages in countries like Liberia make disbursal of aid a life-or-death matter for people and the form it takes can shape politics, sideline or empower talented reformers, and exert far-reaching influence on the lives of those it affects. Rather than recklessly bulldozing ahead out of an impulse to do something about poverty or injustice, we have to start by seeing aid for what it should be-a shared project in which we sit at eye level with people working towards change in the societies we want to help, and whose guidance and oversight are necessary if we want to be of any use to their future.

This requires a different-and far more subversive-form of generosity than we've been conditioned to adopt: the willingness to abdicate and meaningfully share the very power that allowed us to be there in the first place, and not just with those who we deem useful in carrying out our agenda.

In the wake of ProPublica's investigation, the brilliant Kenyan writer Nanjala Nyabola tweeted a famous quote by Lilla Watson, an indigenous Australian activist: "If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together." This call to humility and collective action is one that we'd all do well to bear in mind. Meyler and More Than Me are facing their reckoning, but accountability is not a finite resource, and the scandal is a call for us all to honestly examine the consequences of our good intentions, in Liberia as well as the many other countries that have felt their sting.

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In July 2011, I found myself in the office of Ellen Margrethe Loj, a Danish diplomat who was then the top official in charge of the UN peacekeeping mission in Liberia, which was then less than a decade removed from its civil war.

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How Professionals of Color Say They Counter Bias at Work (Published 2018)

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An African-American man in a suit was handed car keys by someone who thought he was a parking attendant. A black lawyer was patted down by guards at a courthouse, even though his white colleagues entered without a search. An African-American politician was told she did not look like a legislator.

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With Brexit, the chumocrats who drew borders from India to Ireland are getting a taste of their own medicine.

Earl and Countess Mountbatten, behind naval and military members of the governor-general's staff, descending the steps of Government House in New Delhi on June 21, 1948. Credit... Associated Press

Mr. Mishra is the author, most recently, of "Age of Anger: A History of the Present."

Describing Britain's calamitous exit from its Indian empire in 1947, the novelist Paul Scott wrote that in India the British "came to the end of themselves as they were" - that is, to the end of their exalted idea about themselves. Scott was among those shocked by how hastily and ruthlessly the British, who had ruled India for more than a century, condemned it to fragmentation and anarchy; how Louis Mountbatten, accurately described by the right-wing historian Andrew Roberts as a "mendacious, intellectually limited hustler," came to preside, as the last British viceroy of India, over the destiny of some 400 million people.

Britain's rupture with the European Union is proving to be another act of moral dereliction by the country's rulers. The Brexiteers, pursuing a fantasy of imperial-era strength and self-sufficiency, have repeatedly revealed their hubris, mulishness and ineptitude over the past two years. Though originally a "Remainer," Prime Minister Theresa May has matched their arrogant obduracy, imposing a patently unworkable timetable of two years on Brexit and laying down red lines that undermined negotiations with Brussels and doomed her deal to resoundingly bipartisan rejection this week in Parliament.

Such a pattern of egotistic and destructive behavior by the British elite flabbergasts many people today. But it was already manifest seven decades ago during Britain's rash exit from India.

Mountbatten, derided as "Master of Disaster" in British naval circles, was a representative member of a small group of upper- and middle-class British men from which the imperial masters of Asia and Africa were recruited. Abysmally equipped for their immense responsibilities, they were nevertheless allowed by Britain's brute imperial power to blunder through the world - a "world of whose richness and subtlety," as E.M. Forster wrote in "Notes on the English Character," they could "have no conception."

From left seated at the table, Jawaharlal Nehru, vice president of India's interim government; Earl Mountbatten, viceroy of India; and Muhammad Ali Jinnah, president of the Muslim League, discuss Britain's plan for India, June 2, 1947. Credit... Max Desfor/Associated Press

Forster blamed Britain's political fiascos on its privately educated men, callow beneficiaries of the country's elitist public school system. These eternal schoolboys whose "weight is out of all proportion" to their numbers are certainly overrepresented among Tories. They have today plunged Britain into its worst crisis, exposing its incestuous and self-serving ruling class like never before.

From David Cameron, who recklessly gambled his country's future on a referendum in order to isolate some whingers in his Conservative Party, to the opportunistic Boris Johnson, who jumped on the Brexit bandwagon to secure the prime ministerial chair once warmed by his role model Winston Churchill, and the top-hatted, theatrically retro Jacob Rees-Mogg, whose fund management company has set up an office within the European Union even as he vehemently scorns it, the British political class has offered to the world an astounding spectacle of mendacious, intellectually limited hustlers.

Even a columnist for The Economist, an organ of the British elite, now professes dismay over "Oxford chums" who coast through life on "bluff rather than expertise." "Britain," the magazine belatedly lamented last month, "is governed by a self-involved clique that rewards group membership above competence and self-confidence above expertise." In Brexit, the British "chumocracy," the column declared, "has finally met its Waterloo."

It is actually more accurate, for those invoking British history, to say that partition - the British Empire's ruinous exit strategy - has come home. In a grotesque irony, borders imposed in 1921 on Ireland, England's first colony, have proved to be the biggest stumbling block for the English Brexiteers chasing imperial virility. Moreover, Britain itself faces the prospect of partition if Brexit, a primarily English demand, is achieved and Scottish nationalists renew their call for independence.

It is a measure of English Brexiteers' political acumen that they were initially oblivious to the volatile Irish question and contemptuous of the Scottish one. Ireland was cynically partitioned to ensure that Protestant settlers outnumber native Catholics in one part of the country. The division provoked decades of violence and consumed thousands of lives. It was partly healed in 1998, when a peace agreement removed the need for security checks along the British-imposed partition line.

The re-imposition of a customs and immigration regime along Britain's only land border with the European Union was always likely to be resisted with violence. But Brexiteers, awakening late to this ominous possibility, have tried to deny it. A leaked recording revealed Mr. Johnson scorning concerns about the border as "pure millennium bug stuff."

Politicians and journalists in Ireland are understandably aghast over the aggressive ignorance of English Brexiteers. Businesspeople everywhere are outraged by their cavalier disregard for the economic consequences of new borders. But none of this would surprise anyone who knows of the unconscionable breeziness with which the British ruling class first drew lines through Asia and Africa and then doomed the people living across them to endless suffering.

The malign incompetence of the Brexiteers was precisely prefigured during Britain's exit from India in 1947, most strikingly in the lack of orderly preparation for it. The British government had announced that India would have independence by June 1948. In the first week of June 1947, however, Mountbatten suddenly proclaimed that the transfer of power would happen on Aug. 15, 1947 - a "ludicrously early date," as he himself blurted out. In July, a British lawyer named Cyril Radcliffe was entrusted with the task of drawing new boundaries of a country he had never previously visited.

Given only around five weeks to invent the political geography of an India flanked by an eastern and a western wing called Pakistan, Radcliffe failed to visit any villages, communities, rivers or forests along the border he planned to demarcate. Dividing agricultural hinterlands from port cities, and abruptly reducing Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs on either side of the new border to a religious minority, Radcliffe delivered a plan for partition that effectively sentenced millions to death or desolation while bringing him the highest-ranked knighthood.

Up to one million people died, countless women were abducted and raped, and the world's largest refugee population was created during the population transfers across Radcliffe's border - an extensive carnage that exceeds all apocalyptic scenarios of Brexit.

In retrospect, Mountbatten had even less reason than Mrs. May to speed up the exit clock - and create insoluble and eternal problems. Just a few months after the botched partition, for instance, India and Pakistan were fighting a war over the disputed territory of Kashmir. None of the concerned parties were pushing for a hasty British exit. As the historian Alex von Tunzelmann points out, "the rush was Mountbatten's, and his alone."

Mountbatten was actually less pigheaded than Winston Churchill, whose invocation stiffens the spines of many Brexiteers today. Churchill, a fanatical imperialist, worked harder than any British politician to thwart Indian independence and, as prime minister from 1940 to 1945, did much to compromise it. Seized by a racist fantasy about superior Anglo-Americans, he refused to help Indians cope with famine in 1943 on the grounds that they "breed like rabbits."

Needless to say, such ravings issued from an ignorance about India as intractable as that of the Brexiteers about Ireland. Churchill's own secretary of state for India claimed that his boss knew "as much of the Indian problem as George III did of the American colonies." Churchill displayed in his long career a similarly imperial insouciance toward Ireland, sending countless young Irishmen to their deaths in a catastrophic military fiasco at Gallipoli, Turkey, during World War I and unleashing brutal paramilitaries against Irish nationalists in 1920.

The many crimes of the empire's bumptious adventurers were enabled by Britain's great geopolitical power and then obscured by its cultural prestige. This is why images cherished by the British elite of itself as valiant, wise and benevolent could survive, until recently, much damning historical evidence about these masters of disaster from Cyprus to Malaysia, Palestine to South Africa. In recent years, such privately educated and smooth-tongued men as Niall Ferguson and Tony Blair could even present the British as saviors of suffering and benighted humanity, urging American neoconservatives to take up the white man's burden globally.

Humiliations in neo-imperialist ventures abroad, followed by the rolling calamity of Brexit at home, have cruelly exposed the bluff of what Hannah Arendt called the "quixotic fools of imperialism." As partition comes home, threatening bloodshed in Ireland and secession in Scotland, and an unimaginable chaos of no-deal Brexit looms, ordinary British people stand to suffer from the untreatable exit wounds once inflicted by Britain's bumbling chumocrats on millions of Asians and Africans. More ugly historical ironies may yet waylay Britain on its treacherous road to Brexit. But it is safe to say that a long-cosseted British ruling class has finally come to the end of itself as it was.

Pankaj Mishra is the author, most recently, of "Age of Anger: A History of the Present."

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Opinion | The Malign Incompetence of the British Ruling Class (Published 2019)

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With Brexit, the chumocrats who drew borders from India to Ireland are getting a taste of their own medicine. Mr. Mishra is the author, most recently, of "Age of Anger: A History of the Present."

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by Huma Munshi

"White privilege is one of the reasons why I stopped talking to white people about race...the idea of white privilege forces white people who aren't actively racist to confront their own complicity in its continuing existence". This quote from Reni's book captures the struggle many people of colour have experienced.

Talking about race and racism in white spaces can be emotionally draining and frustrating. At times it has led me to withdraw from activist spaces. But Reni Eddo-Lodge new book, Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race isn't a book about withdrawing, it is a book to galvanise activists into taking action.

I remember the twitter furore that followed BBC Woman's Hour when Reni was on with Laura Bates from the Everyday Sexism Project and the feminist writer and campaigner, Caroline Criado-Perez. Reni spoke out about the racism within feminism. This was misconstrued and in the aftermath, Reni wrote her viral blog which forms the basis of this book. She had said that she wouldn't talk about race with white people who deliberately choose to shut their eyes to racism and its impact or refused to accept the structural nature of racism. That viral blog got considerable attention and this book expands on those points.

This book should be essential reading for any activist navigating the choppy waters of society when you're a visible minority. It describes the journey Reni has been on in her own activism and what led to her awakening. For her it was academia that opened her eyes to the impact of slavery. She also describes what led to the riots of the 80's and the police response. The US #BlackLivesMatter movement gives a modern voice to a long-standing injustice. Police brutality of black men and women is steeped in historical and institutional racism. Racism does not happen in a vacuum, it happens when racist tropes have been legitimised and perpetuated throughout the years.

Reni makes a cogent case of how racism permeates everyone sphere of society.

I was in secondary school when Stephen Lawrence was murdered. As Reni says at the time, the public still had faith in the criminal justice system. We now know it was a charade. Indeed as Reni notes, the Macpherson report concluded that the investigation into the death of Stephen Lawrence was "marred by a combination. Of professional incompetence, institutional racism and the failure of leadership by senior officers." It was through the dogged determination of Doreen Lawrence that the case stayed in the public consciousness.

Later in the book, Reni describes an encounter in a feminist space when black women are looking through women's magazines and look at how infrequently black women are featured. So being a black woman is rarely seen as the standard of beauty and the default position on beauty, as in all parts of the mainstream media, is whiteness. The encounter is positively uncomfortable for white women who are able to analyse beauty standards in terms of how it impacts women (like them) but cannot - or refuse to see - the impact of racism.

This encounter is just a slight indicator of t he experience Reni has encountered in feminist spaces. It is this section that I could most relate to. She initially found great comfort and solidarity in those spaces. It is a movement that provides a structural analysis of the way patriarchy has forced women into gendered roles, it gives voice to the rape culture we all live in which legitimises violence against women, sexualises women and young girls and benefits no one including men who are forced into gendered masculine roles.

However, Reni, like many of us, then encounters either a stony silence or outright hostility in feminist spaces when trying to talk about racism within society. There is a feeling amongst some white women that racism dilutes the movement and an analysis based on race should be secondary (or non-existent) when talking about overturning patriarchal structures.

It is an absurd response. True liberation, as Reni points out, cannot take place without overturning all the structures - institutional and ideological - which oppress minority groups.

Black people experience higher levels of unemployment and worklessness, they are more likely to be stopped and searched, they are disproportionately represented in the criminal justice system and more likely to be sectioned under the Mental Health Act. They are less likely to be at senior management levels in all sectors and underrepresented in political offices. True liberation cannot take place without getting rid of the shackles of racism.

In the aftermath of UK general election, there has been some interesting analysis of the power of the youth vote - a record 72% of under 25's turned out. There was also interesting points about BAME representation. There are ten new MPs from non-white backgrounds elected, taking the total in the House of Commons from 41 to 51. That is still one in 13 but diversity is improving. There was the first-ever female Sikh MP, Preet Gill in Birmingham Edgbaston and Tanmanjeet Singh, of Labour, the first turban-wearing Sikh in parliament.

There are reports of an increased BAME voter turnout. In several seats with high BAME population including Kensington and Chelsea, Croydon Central and Enfield Southgate saw a switch from the Tories to Labour.

Operation Black Vote undertook a provocative campaign with the slogan " Blacks don't vote " before the election. Despite some of the criticism levelled at the campaign, it is timely to think of the electoral power black people have in changing circumstances. This is what I also take away from this book - acknowledge the injustice and inequality you experience but recognise that there is power in a movement to bring about change. It starts with individuals coming together and campaigning to overturn the unjust society we live it.

Huma Munshi is a writer, activist and trade unionist. She writes on feminism, race and fighting for justice. She is a regular contributor for the F-Word and Open Democrac y and has also written for the Guardian and Feminist Review Journal.
If you enjoyed reading this article, help us continue to provide more! Media Diversified is 100% reader-funded - you can subscribe for as little as £5 per month here or support us via Patreon here All work published on Media Diversified is the intellectual property of its writers. Please do not reproduce, republish or repost any content from this site without express written permission from Media Diversified. For further information, please see our reposting guidelines.

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Not talking to white people about race doesn't mean withdrawing

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by Huma Munshi "White privilege is one of the reasons why I stopped talking to white people about race...the idea of white privilege forces white people who aren't actively racist to confront their own complicity in its continuing existence". This quote from Reni's book captures the struggle many people of colour have experienced.

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Academic at the University of London and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Lord Louis Mountbatten, the last Viceroy of India, and his wife, Lady Edwina Mountbatten, ride in the state carriage towards the Viceregal lodge in New Delhi, on March 22, 1947 [File: AP]

There is a story that is commonly told in Britain that the colonisation of India - as horrible as it may have been - was not of any major economic benefit to Britain itself. If anything, the administration of India was a cost to Britain. So the fact that the empire was sustained for so long - the story goes - was a gesture of Britain's benevolence.

New research by the renowned economist Utsa Patnaik - just published by Columbia University Press - deals a crushing blow to this narrative. Drawing on nearly two centuries of detailed data on tax and trade, Patnaik calculated that Britain drained a total of nearly from India during the period 1765 to 1938.

It's a staggering sum. For perspective, $45 trillion is 17 times more than the total annual gross domestic product of the United Kingdom today.

How did this come about?

It happened through the trade system. Prior to the colonial period, Britain bought goods like textiles and rice from Indian producers and paid for them in the normal way - mostly with silver - as they did with any other country. But something changed in 1765, shortly after the East India Company took control of the subcontinent and established a monopoly over Indian trade.

Here's how it worked. The East India Company began collecting taxes in India, and then cleverly used a portion of those revenues (about a third)to fund the purchase of Indian goods for British use. In other words, instead of paying for Indian goods out of their own pocket, British traders acquired them for free, "buying" from peasants and weavers using money that had just been taken from them.

It was a scam - theft on a grand scale. Yet most Indians were unaware of what was going on because the agent who collected the taxes was not the same as the one who showed up to buy their goods. Had it been the same person, they surely would have smelled a rat.

Some of the stolen goods were consumed in Britain, and the rest were re-exported elsewhere. The re-export system allowed Britain to finance a flow of imports from Europe, including strategic materials like iron, tar and timber, which were essential to Britain's industrialisation. Indeed, the Industrial Revolution depended in large part on this systematic theft from India.

On top of this, the British were able to sell the stolen goods to other countries for much more than they "bought" them for in the first place, pocketing not only 100 percent of the original value of the goods but also the markup.

After the British Raj took over in 1858, colonisers added a special new twist to the tax-and-buy system. As the East India Company's monopoly broke down, Indian producers were allowed to export their goods directly to other countries. But Britain made sure that the payments for those goods nonetheless ended up in London.

How did this work? Basically, anyone who wanted to buy goods from India would do so using special Council Bills - a unique paper currency issued only by the British Crown. And the only way to get those bills was to buy them from London with gold or silver. So traders would pay London in gold to get the bills, and then use the bills to pay Indian producers. When Indians cashed the bills in at the local colonial office, they were "paid" in rupees out of tax revenues - money that had just been collected from them. So, once again, they were not in fact paid at all; they were defrauded.

Meanwhile, London ended up with all of the gold and silver that should have gone directly to the Indians in exchange for their exports.

This corrupt system meant that even while India was running an impressive trade surplus with the rest of the world - a surplus that lasted for three decades in the early 20th century - it showed up as a deficit in the national accounts because the real income from India's exports wasappropriatedin its entirety by Britain.

Some point to this fictional "deficit" as evidence that India was a liability to Britain. But exactly the opposite is true. Britain intercepted enormous quantities of income that rightly belonged to Indian producers. India was the goose that laid the golden egg. Meanwhile, the "deficit" meant that India had no option but to borrow from Britain to finance its imports. So the entire Indian population was forced into completely unnecessary debt to their colonial overlords, further cementing British control.

Britain used the windfall from this fraudulent system to fuel the engines of imperial violence - funding the invasion of China in the 1840s and the suppression of the Indian Rebellion in 1857. And this was on top of what the Crown took directly from Indian taxpayers to pay for its wars. As Patnaik points out, "the cost of all Britain's wars of conquest outside Indian borders were charged always wholly or mainly to Indian revenues."

And that's not all. Britain used this flow of tribute from India to finance the expansion of capitalism in Europe and regions of European settlement, like Canada and Australia. So not only the industrialisation of Britain but also the industrialisation of much of the Western world was facilitated by extraction from the colonies.

Patnaik identifies four distinct economic periods in colonial India from 1765 to 1938, calculates the extraction for each, and then compounds at a modest rate of interest (about 5 percent, which is lower than the market rate) from the middle of each period to the present. Adding it all up, she finds that the total drain amounts to $44.6 trillion. This figure is conservative, she says, and does not include the debts that Britain imposed on India during the Raj.

These are eye-watering sums. But the true costs of this drain cannot be calculated. If India had been able to invest its own tax revenues and foreign exchange earnings in development - as Japan did - there's no telling how history might have turned out differently. India could very well have become an economic powerhouse. Centuries of poverty and suffering could have been prevented.

All of this is a sobering antidote to the rosy narrative promoted by certain powerful voices in Britain. The conservative historian Niall Ferguson has claimed that British rule helped "develop" India. While he was prime minister, David Cameron asserted that British rule was a to India.

This narrative has found considerable traction in the popular imagination: according to a 2014 YouGov poll , 50 percent of people in Britain believe that colonialism was beneficial to the colonies.

Yet during the entire 200-year history of British rule in India, there was almost no increase in per capita income. In fact, during the last half of the 19th century - the heyday of British intervention - income in India collapsed by half. The average life expectancy of Indians dropped by a fifth from 1870 to 1920. Tens of millions died needlessly of policy-induced famine.

Britain didn't develop India. Quite the contrary - as Patnaik's work makes clear - India developed Britain.

What does this require of Britain today? An apology? Absolutely. Reparations? Perhaps - although there is not enough money in all of Britain to cover the sums that Patnaik identifies. In the meantime, we can start by setting the story straight. We need to recognise that Britain retained control of India not out of benevolence but for the sake of plunder and that Britain's industrial rise didn't emerge sui generis from the steam engine and strong institutions, as our schoolbooks would have it, but depended on violent theft from other lands and other peoples.
Editor's note: A previous version of this article erroneously had the beginning of the British Raj as 1847. The correct year is 1858. The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial stance.

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How Britain stole $45 trillion from India

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Academic at the University of London and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. There is a story that is commonly told in Britain that the colonisation of India - as horrible as it may have been - was not of any major economic benefit to Britain itself.

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Jazmine Headley’s Arrest Shows the Danger of Mothering While Black

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It’s strange to feel heartened when someone who should never have been arrested is released.

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"'Don't worry, you'll do well because you're BAME,' 'BAME is the new trend,' 'Everyone is looking for a BAME actor to add to their books.'"

When 24-year-old Nicole Miners first heard the term - which stands for black, Asian and minority ethnic - she was at drama school.

"Being a British East Asian actor, or just a person, this was something that really aggravated me," she says.

"The 'A' in 'BAME' means Asian, which, in itself, is a very broad term. Does it mean 'South Asian', 'East Asian', 'South East Asian', 'Indian', 'Pakistani', 'Chinese', 'Thai', 'Vietnamese'? The list goes on.

"It misleads people into thinking that everyone who isn't white English should come under the term 'BAME'. And on top of that, I'm mixed, which, for me, is even more confusing."

The initialism - and the acronym, "Bame" - has been growing in prominence in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests sweeping the world and a report into the backgrounds of those at higher risk of dying with Covid-19.

But many people say it does more harm than good.

Student Tosin Attah, 20, from Lagos, Nigeria who went to school in the West Midlands, first heard it at university, in London, where there were "BAME officers". But she would never use it about herself, likening it to the word "coloured".

"I mean, it was a white term, if we're being honest," she says. "White people made it so they don't have to say 'black', because they feel weird saying black for some reason.

"I feel like 'BAME' is just their safe word to not come off as racist."

Professor Ted Cantle, who chairs cohesion and integration charity Belong, says the origin of the term goes back to the 60s and 70s when people referred to the 'black community'.

"But, gradually, people said, 'Well, the Asian community is not represented' so it became 'black and Asian'.

"Then, it was pointed out there were other minority ethnic groups in the country as well. So it became 'BME [black and minority ethnic]'. But not all of those minority ethnic groups were black. So it became 'BAME'."

He says although, on the face of it, the term "does lump a lot of minorities together", in practical terms, that is not always the case.

"We often find that a particular organisation or institution wouldn't actually just focus on that broad BAME group. They would try and break it down.

"So if it was a school for example, identifying which particular children needed support, they would look at black Caribbeans, perhaps the Chinese community, or Eastern Europeans who didn't have English as the first language.

"They would, in other words... target it towards particular needs."

But the practical use of the term isn't always felt by those who are labelled with it.

"I hate the term 'BAME', 'people of colour', all these labels," says comedian Eshaan Akbar, 35.

"My experience as a British person who is half Bangladeshi and half Pakistani is very different to a British black male or any other Asian."

Using "BAME" is misleading, he says, and a way for the authorities not to deal with individuals from a community.

"During the pandemic, in the news all I could hear was the 'BAME community' were the most affected by the illness but this was misleading.

"During the Black Lives Matter protests, 'BAME' popped up yet again.

"But many Muslim Asians felt that issues happening in their community were being ignored.

"The only thing I know we definitely have in common with other people in the 'BAME' group is that we all have really good food."

South London rapper Virgil Hawkins says he recognises BAME can be good for administrative reasons "like when you're trying to discern certain trends. But I think it's a cold and really official term."

He says black people face unique difficulties other minorities might not, such as stereotypes about black men being "threatening".

Online, some people are rejecting the BAME label by referring to themselves as not just black but "blackity black".

"I support it," Hawkins says.

"I completely support it, because the message they're trying to convey is, 'Listen, I'm black, I have black issues and there's not really any intersectionality, because in the past, historically, there hasn't been any.'

"I think it's people who are tired of fighting every fight. But then when it comes to black issues, no-one's there for them."

Pamella Bisson, chief executive of Weirdos and Creatives Production says the term BAME has been put together to tick a box in the workplace.

But "it's not going to save or change a legacy of micro-aggressions or a dispassionate understanding of different cultures".

She says she was taken aback by Health Secretary Matt Hancock, when asked how many black people were in the cabinet, replied, 'We have a diversity of thought.'

"What does that even mean?"

"It was shocking to hear this. It showcased how the term 'BAME', which was created by the government, is still not understood."

As a British Brazilian, "I'd rather be called various names depending on the situation", Pamella says.

"Life isn't so black and white".

Zamila Bunglawala wrote in a blog when she was deputy director of the Cabinet Office's Race Disparity Unit that a study of nearly 300 people across the UK had found only a couple recognised the terms BAME and BME and only one knew, vaguely, what they stood for.

"There is also a problem in that the terms BAME and BME aren't always associated with white ethnic minorities such as Gypsy, Roma and Traveller of Irish Heritage groups, which we know are among some of our most marginalised and disadvantaged communities," she said.

"To leave these communities out of the very language we use is to marginalise them even further."

Raifa Rafiq, 27, a lawyer and podcaster from London, says she doesn't necessarily have a problem with the term BAME, but says the label is too often used to group individuals together "almost as if the type of oppression and the issues that they face are on a level playing field, which I don't think is true".

"When it comes to racial discrimination you have anti-blackness in the Asian community and anti-blackness within the Arab community.

"So when you group a group like that together, you're really erasing the fact that men and women within the black community also suffer at the hands of these other persons of colour," she says.

Vanessa Azabe, 23, who grew up in Plymouth, with Rwandan parents, says "BAME" is very "othering".

As the only black girl in her class, she always felt uncomfortable but now feels it is time to have an open discussion about racism.

"Yes it may be an uncomfortable conversation to have but imagine how uncomfortable it is to live through it," she says.

"We as young people in society have a responsibility to keep the flame burning. We must become the change we are dying to see."

And the solution is to get rid of ethnicity categories altogether.

"There is no need to call me 'BAME'," she says. "Just call me 'Vanessa'."

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'Don't call me BAME': Why some people are rejecting the term

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"'Don't worry, you'll do well because you're BAME,' 'BAME is the new trend,' 'Everyone is looking for a BAME actor to add to their books.'" When 24-year-old Nicole Miners first heard the term - which stands for black, Asian and minority ethnic - she was at drama school.

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Nadya Ali discusses the limits of non-judgemental care and how racism passes as 'truth-telling'

The Labour MP Jess Phillips' recent article, 'Abusive men are everywhere - and some of us love them', called for cultivating a non-judgemental attitude of care towards women who refuse to believe survivors of sexual abuse. Phillips did so by invoking actress Lena Dunham who was castigated for her defence of close friend, and writer on her HBO TV Series, Girls. Miller was accused of rape by actress Aurora Perrineau, a claim which Dunham swiftly dismissed as one of the '3% of misreported cases every year'.

But, Dunham was not just called out for letting down survivors of sexual assault who don't come forward for fear of being disbelieved and shamed. She was also deemed to be guilty of racism because the accuser was a woman of colour. Considered in the context of Dunham's track record on racial issues which I will come to later, her treatment of Perrineau drew particular ire from feminists of colour. So, why did Phillips consider Dunham to be an appropriate figure through which to discuss an ethic of non-judgemental care?

Phillips' defence of Dunham is neither surprising nor without precedent. Her sympathy with white women facing public outcry over issues concerning gender and race is an aspect of her unacknowledged 'White Feminism'. This can be well illustrated by digging a little deeper into two recent controversies: that surrounding Dunham, and an earlier one surrounding comments by the Labour MP Sarah Champion.

For me, such an ethic of being non-judgemental towards women who refuse to believe abuse accusations targeted at loved ones is, according to Phillips' past statements, something reserved for white people. The fight to overturn endemic levels of exploitation and abuse of women and girls through movements like #metoo are fatally compromised by White Feminists and their perpetuation of racism through erasure or racist 'truth-telling'.
Phillips on Dunham: erasing racism
Zinzi Clemmons, a writer for Dunham's online publication, Lenny Letter, quit following claims made by Perrineau of sexual assault against Miller. Clemmons accused Dunham of marginalising women of colour by rejecting Perrineau's account of sexual abuse and effectively calling her a liar. She also argued that the behaviour of Dunham and her friends at the university they attended together spoke to their entitlement as rich, white women who would use the N-word in the guise of being ironic. In her resignation, Clemmons said: 'She cannot have our words if she cannot respect us'. Dunham is no stranger to accusations of racism as debates over the lack of racial diversity in Girls attest. In response she claimed, no one would call her a racist if they knew 'how much I wanted to f- Drake". She followed this up in 2016, by claiming black NFL player Odell Beckham Jnr ignored her at an event because he didn't consider her to be a sexual prospect. Both incidents prompting accusations of racializing black masculinity.

For Phillips, Dunham is a 'vocal feminist' and a woman she respects who was simply defending her friend. Dunham's instinct is described as 'normal human reaction to protect yourself from horror'. And normalising is certainly the key phrase here: in offering Dunham her understanding, and in asking us to extend ours (as a sympathetic feminist audience), Phillips is making these forms of racism normal again. She is bringing Dunham in from the cold and back into the snug, feminist fold. Phillips' defence functions as a quintessential form of white privilege: her invocation of Dunham as a potential subject of non-judgemental care is premised on the erasure of a complex racial context. It asks feminists to pretend racism is not the problem and in so doing denies the reality of racism women of colour encounter. This is why Phillips silence about Dunham's racism is willful: even though it became a key part of the story around her defence of Miller, Phillips does not engage with it.
Phillips on Champion: racism as truth-telling
Phillips has prior when it comes racism but her response has varied depending on the context. When the former Labour shadow minister for Women and Equalities, Sarah Champion, resigned for writing an article for the Sun entitled 'Britain has a problem with British Pakistani men raping and exploiting white girls', Phillips leapt to her defence. Champion is MP for Rotherham, which in the Jay Report was home to systematic child sexual exploitation from 1997-2013. Consequently, Rotherham has become emblematic of the racialisation of child sexual exploitation debates, the site of numerous far-right protests and racially motivated murder. Champion was eventually persuaded to resign, much to Phillips' chagrin. She had considered Champion's 'crudeness' of language in the Sun article to be the main point of offence.

Labour MP for Bradford, Naz Shah, had more strident criticism for Champion, "I also have two sons. Blanket racialised loaded statements like these set them up to fail before they even reach their teenage years." Phillips said she 'understood' why Shah would be angry, but ultimately, 'the British Pakistani-Bangladeshi community, certainly where I am, has issues about women's roles in a family, in society." She goes onto say they 'import' brides for their disabled sons as evidence of the rightness of Champion's claims. There is a caveat, however, "That's the truth. Not all of them, obviously. But I have lots of cases on my books." Phillips solidarity does not extend to Shah, or her sons. In fact, her defence of Champion entails the marginalisation of Shah's concerns and the centring of raced concerns about Pakistani and Bangladeshi men. In other words, racism is not erased as in the defence of Dunham but is considered as a form of 'truth-telling' in the name of gender equality. Racism is the defence of Champion.
An ethics of non-judgemental care
This rather complicates Phillips' call for not judging women who cannot believe accounts of sexual abuse which might implicate their fathers, husbands or sons as monsters because 'she looked like you'. Well, not quite like me. (Or Naz Shah, presumably.)

What if the woman in question was a woman of colour? A woman who happened to be Pakistani or Bangladeshi? If Phillips has already judged that there is something particularly wrong with gender relations among Britain's Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities, then how are those Pakistani and Bangladeshi mothers, wives and sisters to be granted the non-judgemental treatment when their abusers are vilified men of colour? There is little ground for being non-judgemental towards women of colour who know an abuser. After all, we all implicitly 'know' the truth about these men. Jess Phillips and Sarah Champion have already delivered this truth to us.

The reality is that we are living through a time of the on-going vilification of Muslim masculinity heralded by 9/11 and the War on Terror. The prosecution of what the British media has dubbed 'Muslim rape gangs' - a distinctly far-right trope - drives racist violence against Muslims. The trial of Darren Osbourne, who drove into a crowd of Muslim worshippers in 2016, killing 51-year old Makram Ali and injuring others, was said to be motivated by the BBC T.V Show 'Three Girls' which depicted a sexual abuse scandal in Rochdale. Muslim men, women and children daily pay the price for this abuse.

The consequences of White Feminism
Comments made by Phillips and Champion legitimate the idea that there is something culturally unique and inevitable about the sexism happening in 'these communities'. Such ideas are not the preserve of far-right groups like Britain First: they are embedded in mainstream political positions and language. They are particularly pernicious when articulated through the context of debates on patriarchy and gender (in)equality. Phillips' feminism is a White Feminism which creates racial hierarchies of gender-based violence and constrains possibilities for how we might challenge and transform these conditions. It's the idea that things are always worse for women 'somewhere else'. The somewhere else is always raced.

For example, when speaking on BBC Question Time about the ( baseless) accusations of Arab men perpetrating mass sexual assault in German cities on New Year's Eve in 2017, Phillips said women face equivalent 'heckling' in Birmingham city streets. But, while she was accused of minimising the crimes of 'immigrant' men, what she said in full was, "We have to attack what we perceive as being patriarchal culture coming into any culture that isn't patriarchal and making sure we tell people not to be like that." Does she consider the UK to be a non-patriarchal culture? I think she does, "But we should be careful in this country before we rest on our laurels when two women are murdered every week in this country." Those must be non-patriarchal laurels to which she refers.

White Feminism also, and inevitably, creates blind spots where white men are concerned. For example, non-judgemental care is extended to Jacob Rees Mogg who Phillips considers to be a 'real gent'. This is the same man who believes abortion even in the extreme instances of incest and rape should not be permissible. Would she describe a Muslim man with similar views in similar terms?

It is precisely this pernicious invitation to uphold racist discourse as a way of 'doing' gender equality that White Feminism is guilty of. Phillips can never be an ally until she understands how the constitution of patriarchal structures and their effects are raced and classed as well as being gendered. Patriarchy exists differently for different women depending on who they are. The term intersectionality speaks to this idea: the experiences and challenges of middle-class white woman are not the same as the experiences and challenges of poor women of colour. This is not a new or novel idea as radical feminists of colour have noted for decades.

In the words of one such towering woman, bell hooks, "Women are divided by sexist attitudes, racism, class privilege, and a host of other prejudices. Sustained woman bonding can only occur when these divisions are confronted and the necessary steps are taken to eliminate them." (2000: 44).
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Nadya Ali joined Sussex University in 2016 after being awarded her PhD (2015) at the University of Reading. Her thesis examined the UK counter-terrorism strategy Prevent and its role in governing Muslim populations. Nadya's research interests include the racialised and gendered understandings of 'terrorism' as a category of political violence and the colonial/postcolonial dimensions of Muslim governance in European states.

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Jess Phillips, Lena Dunham and White Feminism

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Nadya Ali discusses the limits of non-judgemental care and how racism passes as 'truth-telling' The Labour MP Jess Phillips' recent article, 'Abusive men are everywhere - and some of us love them', called for cultivating a non-judgemental attitude of care towards women who refuse to believe survivors of sexual abuse.

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The Museum of Contemporary African Diaspora Arts republished this conversation between iconic Black thinkers James Baldwin and Audre Lorde on their Tumblr page. The conversation took place at Hampshire College in Amherst, MA and was was originally published in ESSENCE in 1984.

The dialogue reveals the importance of recognizing that shared racial histories cannot overshadow the divergent gendered histories between Black men and women.

JB: One of the dangers of being a Black American is being schizophrenic, and I mean 'schizophrenic' in the most literal sense. To be a Black American is in some ways to be born with the desire to be white. It's a part of the price you pay for being born here, and it affects every Black person. We can go back to Vietnam, we can go back to Korea. We can go back for that matter to the First World War. We can go back to W.E.B. Du Bois - an honorable and beautiful man - who campaigned to persuade Black people to fight in the First World War, saying that if we fight in this war to save this country, our right to citizenship can never, never again be questioned - and who can blame him? He really meant it, and if I'd been there at that moment I would have said so too perhaps. Du Bois believed in the American dream. So did Martin. So did Malcolm. So do I. So do you. That's why we're sitting here.
AL: I don't, honey. I'm sorry, I just can't let that go past. Deep, deep, deep down I know that dream was never mine. And I wept and I cried and I fought and I stormed, but I just knew it. I was Black. I was female. And I was out - out - by any construct wherever the power lay. So if I had to claw myself insane, if I lived I was going to have to do it alone. Nobody was dreaming about me. Nobody was even studying me except as something to wipe out.

JB: You are saying you do not exist in the American dream except as a nightmare.

AL: That's right. And I knew it every time I opened Jet, too. I knew that every time I opened a Kotex box. I knew that every time I went to school. I knew that every time I opened a prayer book. I knew it, I just knew it.

JB: It is difficult to be born in a place where you are despised and also promised that with endeavor - with this, with that, you know - you can accomplish the impossible. You're trying to deal with the man, the woman, the child - the child of whichever sex - and he or she and your man or your woman has got to deal with the 24-hour-a-day facts of life in this country. We're not going to fly off someplace else, you know, we'd better get through whatever that day is and still have each other and still raise children - somehow manage all of that. And this is 24 hours of every day, and you're surrounded by all of the paraphernalia of safety: If you can strike this bargain here. If you can make sure your armpits are odorless. Curl your hair. Be impeccable. Be all the things that the American public says you should do, right? And you do all those things - and nothing happens really. And what is much worse than that, nothing happens to your child either.

AL: Even worse than the nightmare is the blank. And Black women are the blank. I don't want to break all this down, then have to stop at the wall of male/female division. When we admit and deal with difference; when we deal with the deep bitterness; when we deal with the horror of even our different nightmares; when we turn them and look at them, it's like looking at death: hard but possible. If you look at it directly without embracing it, then there is much less that you can ever be made to fear.

JB: I agree.

AL: Well, in the same way when we look at our differences and not allow ourselves to be divided, when we own them and are not divided by them, that is when we will be able to move on. But we haven't reached square one yet.

JB: I'm not sure of that. I think the Black sense of male and female is much more sophisticated than the western idea. I think that Black men and women are much less easily thrown by the question of gender or sexual preference - all that jazz. At least that is true of my experience.

AL: Yea, but let's remove ourselves from merely a reactive position - i.e., Black men and women reacting to what's out there. While we are reacting to what's out there, we're also dealing between ourselves - and between ourselves there are power differences that come down...

JB: Oh, yes...

AL: Truly dealing with how we live, recognizing each other's differences, is something that hasn't happened...

JB: Differences and samenesses.

AL: Differences and samenesses. But in a crunch, when all our asses are in the sling, it looks like it is easier to deal with the samenesses. When we deal with sameness only, we develop weapons that we use against each other when the differences become apparent. And we wipe each other out - Black men and women can wipe each other out - far more effectively than outsiders do.

JB: That's true enough.

AL: And our blood is high, our furies are up. I mean, it's what Black women do to each other, Black men do to each other, and Black people do to each other. We are in the business of wiping each other out in one way or the other - and essentially doing our enemy's work.

JB: That's quite true.

AL: We need to acknowledge those power differences between us and see where they lead us. An enormous amount of energy is being taken up with either denying the power differences between Black men and women or fighting over power differences between Black men and women or killing each other off behind them. I'm talking about Black women's blood flowing in the streets - and how do we get a 14-year-old boy to know I am not the legitimate target of his fury? The boot is on both of our necks. Let's talk about getting it off. My blood will not wash out your horror. That's what I'm interested in getting across to adolescent Black boys.

There are little Black girl children having babies. But this is not an immaculate conception, so we've got little Black boys who are making babies, too. We have little Black children making little Black children. I want to deal with that so our kids will not have to repeat that waste of themselves.

JB: I hear you - but let me backtrack, for better or worse. You know, for whatever reason and whether it's wrong or right, for generations men have come into the world, either instinctively knowing or believing or being taught that since they were men they in one way or another had to be responsible for the women and children, which means the universe.

AL: Mm-hm.

JB: I don't think there's any way around that.

AL: Any way around that now?

JB: I don't think there's any way around that fact.

AL: If we can put people on the moon and we can blow this whole planet up, if we can consider digging 18 inches of radioactive dirt off of the Bikini atolls and somehow finding something to do with it - if we can do that, we as Black cultural workers can somehow begin to turn that stuff around - because there's nobody anymore buying 'cave politics' - 'Kill the mammoth or else the species is extinct.' We have moved beyond that. Those little scrubby-ass kids in the sixth grade - I want those Black kids to know that brute force is not a legitimate way of dealing across sex difference. I want to set up some different paradigms.

JB: Yea, but there's a real difference between the way a man looks at the world...

AL: Yes, yes...

JB: And the way a woman looks at the world. A woman does know much more than a man.

AL: And why? For the same reason Black people know what white people are thinking: because we had to do it for our survival...

JB: All right, all right...

AL: We're finished being bridges. Don't you see? It's not Black women who are shedding Black men's blood on the street - yet. We're not cleaving your head open with axes. We're not shooting you down. We're saying, "Listen, what's going on between us is related to what's going on between us and other people," but we have to solve our own shit at the same time as we're protecting our Black asses, because if we don't, we are wasting energy that we need for joint survival.

JB: I'm not even disagreeing - but if you put the argument in that way, you see, a man has a certain story to tell, too, just because he is a man...

AL: Yes, yes, and it's vital that I be alive and able to listen to it.

JB: Yes. Because we are the only hope we have. A family quarrel is one thing; a public quarrel is another. And you and I, you know - in the kitchen, with the kids, with each other or in bed - we have a lot to deal with, with each other, but we've got to know what we're dealing with. And there is no way around it. There is no way around it. I'm a man. I am not a woman.

AL: That's right, that's right.

JB: No one will turn me into a woman. You're a woman and you're not a man. No one will turn you into a man. And we are indispensable for each other, and the children depend on us both.

AL: It's vital for me to be able to listen to you, to hear what is it that defines you and for you to listen to me, to hear what is it that defines me - because so long as we are operating in that old pattern, it doesn't serve anybody, and it certainly hasn't served us.

JB: I know that. What I really think is that neither of us has anything to prove, at least not in the same way, if we weren't in the North American wilderness. And the inevitable dissension between brother and sister, between man and woman - let's face it, all those relations which are rooted in love also are involved in this quarrel. Because our real responsibility is to endlessly redefine each other. I cannot live without you, and you cannot live without me - and the children can't live without us.

AL: But we have to define ourselves for each other. We have to redefine ourselves for each other because no matter what the underpinnings of the distortion are, the fact remains that we have absorbed it. We have all absorbed this sickness and ideas in the same way we absorbed racism. It's vital that we deal constantly with racism, and with white racism among Black people - that we recognize this as a legitimate area of inquiry. We must also examine the ways that we have absorbed sexism and heterosexism. These are the norms in this dragon we have been born into - and we need to examine these distortions with the same kind of openness and dedication that we examine racism...

JB: You use the word 'racism'...

AL: The hatred of Black, or color...

JB: - but beneath the word 'racism' sleeps the word 'safety.' Why is it important to be white or Black?

AL: Why is it important to be a man rather than a woman?

JB: In both cases, it is assumed that it is safer to be white than to be Black. And it's assumed that it is safer to be a man than to be a woman. These are both masculine assumptions. But those are the assumptions that we're trying to overcome or to confront...
AL: To confront, yeah. The vulnerability that lies behind those masculine assumptions is different for me and you, and we must begin to look at that...

JB: Yes, yes...

AL: And the fury that is engendered in the denial of that vulnerability - we have to break through it because there are children growing up believe that it is legitimate to shed female blood, right? I have to break through it because those boys really think that the sign of their masculinity is impregnating a sixth grader. I have to break through it because of that little sixth-grade girl who believes that the only thing in life she has is what lies between her legs...

JB: Yeah, but we're not talking now about men and women. We're talking about a particular society. We're talking about a particular time and place. You were talking about the shedding of Black blood in the streets, but I don't understand -

AL: Okay, the cops are killing the men and the men are killing the women. I'm talking about rape. I'm talking about murder.

JB: I'm not disagreeing with you, but I do think you're barking up the wrong tree. I'm not trying to get the Black man off the hook - or Black women, for that matter - but I am talking about the kingdom in which we live.

AL: Yes, I absolutely agree; the kingdom in which these distortions occur has to be changed.

JB: Something happens to the man who beats up a lady. Something happens to the man who beats up his grandmother. Something happens to the junkie. I know that very well. I walked the streets of Harlem; I grew up there, right? Now you know it is not the Black cat's fault who sees me and tries to mug me. I got to know that. It's his responsibility but it's not his fault. That's a nuance. UI got to know that it's not him who is my enemy even when he beats up his grandmother. His grandmother has got to know. I'm trying to say one's got to see what drove both of us into those streets. We be both from the same track. Do you see what I mean? I've come home myself, you know, wanting to beat up anything in sight- but Audre, Audre...

AL: I'm here, I'm here...

JB: I agree with you. I see exactly what you mean and it hurts me at least as much as it hurts you. But how to maneuver oneself past this point - how not to lose him or her who may be in what is in effect occupied territory. That is really what the Black situation is in this country. For the ghetto, all that is lacking is barbed wire, and when you pen people up like animals, the intention is to debase them and you have debased them.

AL: Jimmy, we don't have an argument

JB: I know we don't.

AL: But what we do have is a real disagreement about your responsibility not just to me but to my son and to our boys. Your responsibility to him is to get across to him in a way that I never will be able to because he did not come out of my body and has another relationship to me. Your relationship to him as his farther is to tell him I'm not a fit target for his fury.

JB: Okay, okay...

AL: It's so entrenched in him that it's part of him as much as his Blackness is.

JB: All right, all right...

AL: I can't do it. You have to.

JB: All right, I accept - the challenge is there in any case. It never occurred to me that it would be otherwise. That's absolutely true. I simply want to locate where the danger is...

AL: Yeah, we're at war...

JB: We are behind the gates of a kingdom which is determined to destroy us.

AL: Yes, exactly so. And I'm interested in seeing that we do not accept terms that will help us destroy each other. And I think one of the ways in which we destroy each other is by being programmed to knee-jerk on our differences. Knee-jerk on sex. Knee-jerk on sexuality...

JB: I don't quite know what to do about it, but I agree with you. And I understand exactly what you mean. You're quite right. We get confused with genders - you know, what the western notion of woman is, which is not necessarily what a woman is at all. It's certainly not the African notion of what a woman is. Or even the European notion of what a woman is. And there's certainly not standard of masculinity in this country which anybody can respect. Part of the horror of being a Black American is being trapped into being an imitation of an imitation.

AL: I can't tell you what I wished you would be doing. I can't redefine masculinity. I can't redefine Black masculinity certainly. I am in the business of redefining Black womanness. You are in the business of redefining Black masculinity. And I'm saying, 'Hey, please go on doing it,' because I don't know how much longer I can hold this fort, and I really feel that Black women are holding it and we're beginning to hold it in ways that are making this dialogue less possible.

JB: Really? Why do you say that? I don't feel that at all. It seems to me you're blaming the Black man for the trap he's in.

AL: I'm not blaming the Black man; I'm saying don't shed my blood. I'm not blaming the Black man. I'm saying if my blood is being shed, at some point I'm gonna have a legitimate reason to take up a knife and cut your damn head off, and I'm not trying to do it.

JB: If you drive a man mad, you'll turn him into a beast - it has nothing to do with his color.

AL: If you drive a woman insane, she will react like a beast too. There is a larger structure, a society with which we are in total and absolute war. We live in the mouth of a dragon, and we must be able to use each other's forces to fight it together, because we need each other. I am saying that in our joint battle we have also developed some very real weapons, and when we turn them against each other they are even more bloody, because we know each other in a particular way. When we turn those weapons against each other, the bloodshed is terrible. Even worse, we are doing this in a structure where we are already embattled. I am not denying that. It is a family discussion I'm having now. I'm not laying blame. I do not blame Black men for what they are. I'm asking them to move beyond. I do not blame Black men; what I'm saying is, we have to take a new look at the ways in which we fight our joint oppression because if we don't, we're gonna be blowing each other up. We have to begin to redefine the terms of what woman is, what man is, how we relate to each other.

JB: But that demands redefining the terms of the western world...

AL: And both of us have to do it; both of us have to do it...

JB: But you don't realize that in this republic the only real crime is to be a Black man?

AL: No, I don't realize that. I realize the only crime is to be Black. I realize the only crime is to be Black, and that includes me too.

JB: A Black man has a prick, they hack it off. A Black man is a ****** when he tries to be a model for his children and he tries to protect his women. That is a principal crime in this republic. And every Black man knows it. And every Black woman pays for it. And every Black child. How can you be so sentimental as to blame the Black man for a situation which has nothing to do with him?
AL: You still haven't come past blame. I'm not interested in blame, I'm interested in changing...

JB: May I tell you something? May I tell you something? I might be wrong or right.

AL: I don't know - tell me.

JB: Do you know what happens to a man-?

AL: How can I know what happens to a man?

JB: Do you know what happens to a man when he's ashamed of himself when he can't find a job? When his socks stink? When he can't protect anybody? When he can't do anything? Do you know what happens to a man when he can't face his children because he's ashamed of himself? It's not like being a woman...

AL: No, that's right. Do you know what happens to a woman who gives birth, who puts that child out there and has to go out and hook to feed it? Do you know what happens to a woman who goes crazy and beats her kids across the room because she's so full of frustration and anger? Do you know what that is? Do you know what happens to a lesbian who sees her woman and her child beaten on the street while six other guys are holding her? Do you know what that feels like?

JB: Mm-hm.

AL: Well then, in the same way you know how a woman feels, I know how a man feels, because it comes down to human beings being frustrated and distorted because we can't protect the people we love. So now let's start -

JB: All right, okay...

AL: - let's start with that and deal.

Essence Magazine, 1984

Related:

5 Books by Audre Lorde Everyone Should Read

Kimberly Foster is the founder and editor of For Harriet. Email or Follow @KimberlyNFoster

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revolutionary hope: a conversation between james baldwin and audre lorde

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Revolutionary Hope: A Conversation Between James Baldwin and Audre Lorde

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The Museum of Contemporary African Diaspora Arts republished this conversation between iconic Black thinkers James Baldwin and Audre Lorde on their Tumblr page. The conversation took place at Hampshire College in Amherst, MA and was was originally published in ESSENCE in 1984.

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How white women’s “investment” in slavery has shaped America today

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White women are sometimes seen as bystanders to slavery. A historian explains why that’s wrong.

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New Perspectives on Decolonisation, the Cold War, and Asian-African Connections.

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Transforming development economics, one experiment at a time.

Esther Duflo, a thirty-seven-year-old professor of development economics-the economics of poor countries and poor people-runs field experiments that measure different ways to save the world. In February, she went to Long Beach, California, to give a presentation at TED, an annual conference devoted to "ideas worth spreading." Her demeanor was brisk and unsmiling. "I'm short, I'm French, I have a pretty strong French accent," she began. Then she showed a slide of a neighborhood in Port-au-Prince that had been knocked down in the recent earthquake. "There's something like a Haiti earthquake every eight days," she said. That is, twenty-five thousand children around the world die of preventable causes every day. How should the developed world respond? With more aid? She showed a graph that plotted the billions in development aid given to Africa in recent decades, along with the continent's G.D.P. per capita over the same period. Aid had risen sharply; G.D.P. had not. But the statistics revealed nothing about cause and effect, Duflo said. Without this money, Africa might have turned out better, or worse, or the same. "We have no idea," she said. "We're not any better than the medieval doctors and their leeches." A slide of a leech.

Eight days later, Duflo was back in her office at M.I.T., in Cambridge. There was a view of the Charles River, and the central heating made plaintive, human sounds. She fiddled ceaselessly with a binder clip; though she was sitting on a narrow office chair, she managed to pull her legs up under her. Her manner mixed intellectual assurance with slight social impatience. (A favorite English phrase: "Give me a break.") Pinned to the door was a poster, in Bengali, related to work she had done in India on local elections; she translated the text as "Together we can talk and solve our problems."

She wondered if her references to Haiti at TED had been "a bit cheap." But, she said, "I'm already understated, and not very funny. I have to be a little in-your-face." She added, "I had two dinners with Bill Gates in two days. It was efficient." She laughed, to acknowledge her fondness for statistical discipline, and for reliable data in great bulk-a preference for the measurable that can approach self-parody. Her response to almost any question about the future is a frown of bemusement and the words "How would I know?"

But Duflo also shows hints of idealism. She is a left-of-center French intellectual with faith in redistribution, and she subscribes to the optimistic notion (which, perhaps, runs ahead of firm data) that tomorrow might turn out better than today. Along with a thing for rock climbing, and for music (classical, with a pop-music exception made for Madness, the British group), this seems to be what fills Duflo's head: the thought of doing good science, and the thought of doing good. And she is in large measure responsible for the emergence of a new, and fashionable, strand of academic study that combines these instincts. She and her colleagues in the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab ( J-PAL), which she co-founded at M.I.T., in 2003, follow a line of pragmatic idealism, where you must first believe that there's something to be done about poverty-not all economists would agree-and then you try to do it.

Within economics, Duflo and her colleagues are sometimes referred to as the randomistas. They have borrowed, from medicine, what Duflo calls a "very robust and very simple tool": they subject social-policy ideas to randomized control trials, as one would use in testing a drug. This approach filters out statistical noise; it connects cause and effect. The policy question might be: Does microfinance work? Or: Can you incentivize teachers to turn up to class? Or: When trying to prevent very poor people from contracting malaria, is it more effective to give them protective bed nets, or to sell the nets at a low price, on the presumption that people are more likely to use something that they've paid for? (A colleague of Duflo's did this study, in Kenya.) As in medicine, a J-PAL trial, at its simplest, will randomly divide a population into two groups, and administer a "treatment"-a textbook, access to a microfinance loan-to one group but not to the other. Because of the randomness, both groups, if large enough, will have the same complexion: the same mixture of old and young, happy and sad, and every other possible source of experimental confusion. If, at the end of the study, one group turns out to have changed-become wealthier, say-then you can be certain that the change is a result of the treatment. A researcher needs to ask the right question in the right way, and this is not easy, but then the trial takes over and a number drops into view. There are other statistical ways to connect cause and effect, but none so transparent, in Duflo's view, or so adept at upsetting expectations. Randomization "takes the guesswork, the wizardry, the technical prowess, the intuition, out of finding out whether something makes a difference," she told me. And so: in the Kenya trial, the best price for bed nets was free.

For work based on such experiments, Duflo won this year's John Bates Clark Medal, for the best economist in America under forty-a Nobel-in-waiting. Last year, she received a MacArthur "genius" fellowship, addressed a committee of the General Assembly at the United Nations, and presented lectures at the Collège de France, in Paris, the youngest person to have done so. (A British newspaper headline: " STEP ASIDE, SARTRE: THIS IS THE NEW FACE OF FRENCH INTELLECTUALISM.") In France, two books based on those lectures became best-sellers; in America, Duflo was included in Foreign Policy' s survey of the Top 100 Global Thinkers. In large part thanks to J-PAL, randomized evaluations are becoming popular at aid agencies and at the World Bank. And J-PAL itself has expanded to the point where it is generating counter-revolutionary grumbles from scholars: Is this really economics?

Duflo recalled one of her TED-conference dinners with Bill Gates: twenty people were present, among them Jeff Bezos, of Amazon; Nathan Myhrvold, the former Microsoft executive; Vinod Khosla, formerly of Sun Microsystems; and "the Facebook guy." She spent some time that evening trying to calculate the per-capita income of the group but lost track. "I'm not good with money," she said. Duflo found the socializing at TED to be "a bit high-pressure. I'm not very social, in the sense of cocktail-party social. I don't like to talk to people I don't know." But she is comfortable when discussing her work, and her scientific approach clearly resonates with the philanthropists of the Internet age. Gates later pressed M.I.T. to make Duflo's undergraduate course on poverty available online, and told her, "We need to fund you."

On a misty afternoon several weeks earlier, on a narrow dirt road running through a village in Rajasthan, in northwestern India, Duflo had been surrounded by dozens of schoolgirls trying to learn how to say hello in French. "One, two, three: bonjour!" Duflo said. "One, two, three: bonjour! " the girls said back, laughing. None of them had heard of France. Duflo was dressed in a shalwar kameez, with a pale-orange scarf over her shoulders. The light was strange, giving every view-small single-story homes with corrugated-iron roofs, flat farmland behind, cows and carts-the texture of a nineteenth-century landscape painting. Earlier, Duflo and a number of others, all holders of advanced degrees, had debated whether the spectral disk of light above our heads was the moon or the sun.

Duflo was midway through a fast-paced trip to India and Rwanda-a series of cramped car rides and short flights on budget airlines, during which she always took from her bag an English translation of "2666," the sprawling novel by Roberto Bolaño, and opened it, with relish, but then found herself pulled into the activities of a professor in demand: judging a paper submitted to a scholarly journal that she edits; responding to e-mail requests for a guest lecture. She was also working on a book, as yet untitled, about the economic lives of the poor. It will be pitched at an alert general reader, she said: "We're not talking 'Freakonomics,' but there won't be equations."

Her co-author is Abhijit Banerjee, a professor at M.I.T., a co-founder of J-PAL, and now, like Duflo, one of its directors. (A third founder, Sendhil Mullainathan, has moved to Harvard but remains affiliated with J-PAL.) In January, Banerjee was one of a number of colleagues whose travels coincided with Duflo's for a few days. A decade older than Duflo, Banerjee has a loping, liquid walk and an ironic manner; he grew up in Calcutta, and he was Duflo's guide on her first trip to India, in 1997. "She's very comfortable in India," he told me. "She doesn't get information overload." Her affection for the country is evident: she returns at least once a year, and in Cambridge she is surrounded by Indian friends and colleagues. In her apartment, in Beacon Hill, where she lives alone, she cooks Indian food in a kitchen remodelled in a spiky modern spirit by an Indian architect. And it is largely in India that Duflo has done the work on which her reputation stands.

In 2003, for example, she helped devise a randomized trial that addressed the problem of absentee teachers in schools run by an Indian nonprofit group. The trial involved a hundred and twenty schools. In sixty of them, teachers were asked to have a photograph taken of themselves, with their students, at the start and the end of each school day, using a tamper-proof camera that time-stamped each image. Pay was then adjusted to attendance. Compared with a control group of the same size, the photographed teachers were half as likely to be absent. They did not resent the cameras, but it wouldn't have troubled Duflo if they had: "Who do you care about? Lazy teachers who show up sixty per cent of the time, or the kids? O.K., I care about the kids." Because the teachers turned up more, they taught more, and their students performed better on tests. Banerjee has described watching Duflo work on a follow-up experiment, and thinking that he was witnessing "a new economics being born."

In the village, Duflo and her colleagues were waiting for a play to begin. We were an hour or so from the city of Bharatpur; judging by Duflo's studies of other districts in Rajasthan, local families were probably living on no more than a few dollars a day, and had no cell phones, no TV, and limited literacy. Across the road, a van with a loudspeaker tied to its roof was parked next to a raised patch of ground. A red mat had been laid out, creating a stage, and three musicians-playing drum, cymbals, and hand-pumped harmonium-sat cross-legged on it. A hundred or so villagers gathered in the road to watch, men on the left, women and children on the right. Crows squawked. In the van's passenger seat, a young man struggled, like Superman, to change into women's clothes.

The musicians began to play, and the loudspeaker let out a shocking jolt of sound. Two actors walked onstage: the man dressed as a woman-rural Rajasthan shares with Elizabethan England an unease about females onstage-and a round, middle-aged man, a master of ceremonies, wearing a maroon jacket, a loose maroon turban, and white pants. He puffed out his chest and, in a good-humored performance, sang and danced, directed a puppet show, mimed a motorbike crash, and delivered a good amount of talk-every line shouted into a microphone-about the wisdom of voting for a village leader who is not corrupt, and who might be a woman. The audience was attentive, at least for the first hour. At one point, we all stepped out of the way to allow a tractor to pass through the village.

It was odd to recall that the script had recently been assessed by a human-subjects ethics committee at M.I.T. (A relevant form asks, "Will radiation or radioactive materials be used?") The play was one small part of a labor-intensive J-PAL experiment that Duflo had helped design. In conjunction with a local organization, J-PAL had set this morality play in motion, hiring ten troupes of actors, each one identically equipped: ten vans, ten maroon turbans. A local election was imminent, and in recent weeks these performers had been visiting village after village; among them, they performed the same show, or some close variant of it, four hundred and sixty times.

This is how Duflo asks a question about women's empowerment. It is also one way that she responds to those who tell her that although they can appreciate experimental evaluations of bed nets or textbooks, they struggle to understand the idea in the messier context of human behavior and politics. (Duflo recalled an emblematic exchange, during a meeting at the World Bank in New Delhi. After Abhijit Banerjee made a passing comment-"Randomized evaluation can be taught, it is not nuclear physics"-a UNICEF official stood up and said, "Studying human beings is much more complicated than nuclear physics.")

On a long drive the previous evening, with the taxi-driver playing a CD of old Bollywood music, Duflo sketched the history of the study. It builds on two previous studies and on a 1993 amendment to India's Constitution requiring that a third of the country's sarpanch positions-a sarpanch is a leader of a local council that controls between five and fifteen villages-be reserved for women. In 2000, in the glancing moment between Duflo finishing her Ph.D. at M.I.T. and accepting tenure there, she began to work with Raghabendra Chattopadhyay, an economics professor in Calcutta, and together they confirmed that in the state of West Bengal the selection of women-only seats had been made with fastidious randomness. It would be possible, then, to extract excellent data from a social experiment that had been designed by others. Was it possible to distinguish a woman's village from a man's village?

Surveyors hired by Duflo and Chattopadhyay visited hundreds of villages in West Bengal to determine the policy priorities of women and the spending habits of each village chief. The data showed that the supply of drinking water was a priority for women voters, and that an average female leader invested more in drinking water than a male leader did. Women had been empowered: the female sarpanches were not acting merely as stooges for their husbands or fathers-in-law, as Indian commentators often claimed.

One might approve of the findings from the point of view of redress, but redress doesn't register as an economic gain. The quota system did not lead to over-all economic efficiencies. And, as Duflo put it, if a policy doesn't "make the pie bigger, you cannot say unambiguously it is a good policy."

In 2006, Duflo and several colleagues returned to West Bengal for a second experiment. They had made several tape recordings of an identical political speech-some versions delivered by men, others by women-and their subjects heard one of them. Duflo found that, in villages that had never experienced women leaders, the hypothetical women speechmakers were judged to be less competent. But in villages that had been led by a female sarpanch there was no such bias. The findings were the first credible evidence Duflo had seen for the idea that public policy can influence voter prejudice. "It really changed my opinion on whether or not it's a good idea to have a quota for women," Duflo told me. Any community that starts considering women candidates for the first time doubles the size of its leadership pool, and should therefore expect policy benefits. Economists can recognize that as a gain. Or some economists: when the paper that Duflo and her team had written was submitted for publication, an anonymous referee was uncomfortable about how many steps of argument were needed to get from the data to the payoff, and expressed doubt that the authors were "saying anything about economics."

In the new experiment involving actors, Duflo and her co-investigators were exploring whether merely hearing information about the worth of women, in the form of an afternoon's entertainment, could change perceptions as much as living in a village where a female leader had governed. (Much of Duflo's work has come to be about prompts-or incentives-to social change.) Some villages, chosen randomly, would see the play; some would not. J-PAL would return to the four hundred and sixty villages several weeks later, and measure voter attitudes. Were the playgoers now less biased? "If it has a positive effect, it means we can educate people," Duflo said. "If it has no effect, then it will be interesting, too, because it will show that you have to get them to experience women in action."

At the performance that afternoon, a J-PAL colleague named Clement Imbert-a dashing Frenchman wearing what may have been the only thick-knit polo-necked sweater in a hundred miles-whispered a running translation from the Hindi. He knew the script well, and was alert to departures from it; there were a few moments of crowd-pleasing bawdiness, including an emphatic thrust of the hips. "What the fuck?" Imbert said. (All shows are videotaped and reviewed, partly to keep an eye on this kind of drift.) The show ended with a cheery, unscripted song: " J-PAL 's coming through the village / giving calendars and giving advice!"

As we left, driving through mustard fields, Duflo said, "That made me happy." We drove to catch the same show, performed by another troupe, in a village nearby.

Duflo was not dour, and at times she was even playful. Trying to keep warm in a highway gas station, during a long drive in dense fog, she sang a French nursery rhyme, "La Bataille de Reichshoffen," while doing the dance that goes with it. (As she later put it, this involves moving various "subsets" of one's limbs, in sequence.) There were occasional signs of professorial distractedness: it took Duflo two days to connect a pleasing new lightness in her luggage to the fact that she had accidentally left behind, in the city before last, most of what she had been carrying. Mainly, though, she was purposeful: a steady gaze; an orderly mind (she would often ask for "a second of focus" while collecting her thoughts, to fend off the sins of repetition and digression); and a tolerant, regretful sympathy for those around her whose heads were filled with idle thoughts or low-quality data. In a government office in the state of Orissa, Duflo saw a printed sign that read " GOSSIPING OFFENDS ALL PLEASE AVOID IT NOW "; she snapped a photograph and kept it as her cell phone's screen image.

In India, she took seven flights in eleven days, and one overnight train ride, with the purpose of looking at J-PAL experiments under way-two hundred and six of them have been launched worldwide since 2003, including some in the developed world. She also met with people, often in government, who might make it possible to start new ones. On a plane to New Delhi one evening, the Bolaño unopened on her tray table, Duflo took a moment to recall her childhood idea of what it was like to be poor in a developing country. "I had this sense of people completely hapless, who have no control of anything, for no fault of their own," she said. She imagined the poor as "people who have to walk ten kilometres to find some dirty water, and then drink it and immediately die of cholera." She laughed.

Her adult view is that the poor are very clever about money, except when they are not clever at all; they are "incredibly smart" about day-to-day financial matters, "because the cost of errors is much bigger," but "so busy doing this effort, and optimizing on some margin, that they might entirely miss some huge elephant in the room," like the importance of buying fertilizer for their crops, or immunizing their children. She referred to the old joke, made at the expense of economists who assume that all consumers are rational, about the person who sees a hundred-dollar bill in the street but is restrained from picking it up by the thought that if it were real someone else would have taken it. "If you're a development economist-at least, in my view-you realize there are many, many, many hundred-dollar bills lying on the sidewalk," she said. "There are efficiency gains waiting everywhere."

Her childhood view of the poor, Duflo said, was shaped by "Protestant left-wing Sunday school" and by the international response to the Ethiopian famine of the mid-eighties (Band Aid, Live Aid). And it was shaped, too, by the work done by her mother, a doctor, who, from the late seventies onward, left her pediatric practice in Paris for a few weeks each year to treat child victims of war, first in Western Sahara and later in El Salvador and Rwanda. Duflo described her mother as "a generous human being to the point where it's unnerving for the rest of us."

Duflo was a serious, independent middle child in a high-achieving family. When she was five, her father, a math professor, showed her how to take a train by herself. From that age, she rode alone on weekends from the family's house, west of Paris, to visit a cousin who lived closer to the city. "I can't really remember a time where I didn't do whatever I wanted to do," she said. "Partly because my parents are laid-back, and partly because I was not very willing to let anybody interfere with my plans." At eight, she decided to become a historian; after high school, she began the classes préparatoires, the two years of superhuman study that readies students to enter one of France's grandes écoles -in her case, the École Normale Supérieure, in Paris, where the country's cleverest twenty-year-olds live, take classes, and receive a state salary.

She began a degree in history, as planned, but combined the subject with economics, in part to capitalize on a keenness for math. But, Duflo said, "I hated economics. I thought it was moronic." And in her second year at university she questioned her future as a professor, and began considering a career in the civil service, or politics. It was in this mood that she spent ten months in Moscow, starting in 1993. She taught French, and worked on a history thesis that told how, in the Soviet Union, "they had used the big construction sites, like the Stalingrad tractor factory, for propaganda, and how propaganda requirements changed the actual shape of the projects." (In high school, Duflo had taken up Russian when most others chose English, figuring that she was bound to end up with English skills eventually; this is how she explains her strong accent in English, which sits oddly alongside her easy command of the language.) In Moscow, she spent her days watching old Soviet newsreels. "I liked doing it, but I thought it was a little bit lacking in discipline," she said. "You don't have enough data points." She was also aware of a nagging undercurrent in her thought-"that what I should really do in my life is help the poor. I'm just researching propaganda in the Soviet Union! I mean, come on. "

In Moscow, she also worked as a research assistant for a French economist then connected to the Bank of Russia, and, separately, for Jeffrey Sachs, the American economist then at Harvard, who was advising the Minister of Finance. These research posts helped her to conclude that "economics had potential as a lever of action in the world," and that she could satisfy academic ambitions while doing "things that mattered." Or, to put it in a way that Duflo did not: to follow the careers of both parents.

She returned to Paris and finished her degree, in 1994. Then she and her boyfriend at the time, Emmanuel Saez, both enrolled at M.I.T. (Saez was also studying economics; he now teaches at Berkeley, and was last year's winner of the Clark Medal.) Duflo, unfamiliar with development economics, which was barely taught in France, took Abhijit Banerjee's class. "After a month, I was sold," she recalled. "It was clear that this was my path." Banerjee, who became one of her thesis advisers, said that Duflo was "extraordinarily bright, but not like your average pushy student. She didn't speak unless she had something to say."

Banerjee was known for questioning the dominant economic model of the poor, which was that they were "poor but efficient"-that is, they acted with the same freedom and self-interest as the wealthy. That paradigm began to weaken, Duflo explained, under the weight of "the very essential revelation that even if you take people who are entirely rational, just being poor changes your set of opportunities. For example, you cannot borrow if you're poor, because you have no collateral. Abhijit is one of the key theorists of that."

A long-term trend in economics toward abstraction was abating by the end of the nineteen-eighties, but Duflo could see little empirical work being done in development economics. And there was certainly almost no interest there in randomized experiments, a method that was first used in drug trials in the nineteen-forties, and later sometimes used in large-scale and expensive public-policy evaluations in the United States and elsewhere. But Joshua Angrist, a labor economist who was another one of Duflo's thesis advisers, exposed her to work that made use of "natural" experiments; in a widely admired dissertation, Angrist had described the economic aftereffects of serving in Vietnam, making use of the randomness of the draft lotteries of the early nineteen-seventies.

One of Duflo's first studies, written for her dissertation, drew on data from an Indonesian school-expansion program of the nineteen-seventies. The paper provided the first conclusive evidence, for a developing country, that increased education results in higher wages. Upon finishing her Ph.D., she was offered a job in every first-rank American economics department except Stanford's. Even before her graduation, she was invited to speak at a seminar run by Angus Deaton, a prominent development economist at Princeton. "She came into the room sort of looking like a schoolgirl," he recalled. "Very young, very small, looking at her feet. Very broken English. We thought, Oh, God. But then she started talking-a focussed, compelling performance." At one point, she was interrupted by a professor, Deaton recalled, "who said, 'What I think you really want to do . . . ' And Esther turned to him"-Deaton adopted an Inspector Clouseau accent-"and said, 'That is exactly what I do not want to do.' And she was right."

After M.I.T. took her on, breaking a long-standing departmental rule against hiring its own graduate students, Duflo began devising her own experiments. "Before, I wrote in all the introductions of my papers, 'The ideal experiment to measure the effect of this would be . . . ' I just got fed up of writing about what the ideal experiment would be. Why don't we just do it?"

Duflo did not invent the idea of randomized experiments in developing countries. In the nineties, Michael Kremer, a young professor at M.I.T., had set up a small trial in Kenya, which showed that a supply of new official textbooks in rural schools had not improved average student test scores. But Duflo set in motion a randomization industry. "I had this idea of working with lots of different partners, in lots of different places," Duflo said. She thinks of herself as an "institution builder," and she had a taste for extracting data from abundant noise. Kremer, who is a friend and a sometime collaborator, was, as Duflo puts it, "very keen to have complete control over what was happening. He had more of a lab model. I was thinking, I'm going to engage with that layer of complexity, even if it's infuriating." The approach requires field-work patience, behavioral insight, and mathematics. A researcher has to have a good idea, and then make a number of key assessments, including the necessary size of the sample. That figure is determined both by statistical noise and by the experimental disorder that's anticipated to come from attrition (your subjects disappear), contagion (your treatment subjects somehow mingle with your control subjects), and other kinds of slippage (some of your treatment subjects hear dirty jokes in their agitprop, and some do not).

An early Duflo experiment, done in India with Banerjee and others, measured the effect of a program to hire low-cost remedial teachers in primary schools. It turned out to be very effective, and now exists nationally, serving thirty-three million children. Another, in Kenya-a defining experiment that Duflo describes as "very dear to me," and that continues today-sought to understand why small-scale maize farmers were not using fertilizer, despite the likelihood of high returns on a modest investment. Farmers put off buying fertilizer after a harvest, when they had the cash to pay for it, and then, when they next needed fertilizer, they no longer had the money to pay for it. In a series of clever experiments, Duflo and colleagues established that fertilizer made unquestionable economic sense in these farms, and then showed how even modest inducements-free fertilizer delivery just after harvest, for example-could draw the farmers into new habits, and could defeat procrastination.

At the age of thirty, Duflo was offered tenure at both Princeton and Yale. This gave her leverage not only to secure the same offer at M.I.T. but to persuade the university to commit three hundred thousand dollars for the creation of the Poverty Action Lab. Two years after its inception, the lab was given an endowment by Mohammed Abdul Latif Jameel, an M.I.T. alumnus, in memory of his father, a Saudi businessman. The intention was to build a Web site, to announce a movement-"to turn this from the project that crazy people do in the back yard to something that is institutional and serious," as Duflo put it-and to start giving "executive education" courses in randomization. "Then it became this brand," she said. "It became a thing-in academia and outside organizations. And then it became controversial, which, in a sense, is even better."

One afternoon in northern Hyderabad, in an area of slum housing built on streets too narrow for cars, Duflo watched as a J-PAL surveyor questioned a homeowner, an assured woman in her forties. The room where the interview took place, in the woman's home, was windowless and quite small but held some signs of spending: a television on which a gangster movie was silently playing, a camera, a large fridge, a fan.

As the young surveyor worked through her questionnaire, the economic life of the interviewee came into focus. She had a small business selling saris, and her husband was a carpenter. The couple were building an extra floor on their home, to take tenants; elsewhere, they owned a second house that was already rented out. And they had chosen not to pay their water bill, in either of their homes, for the past four years. The woman explained, with a smile, that she was visited every month by water-utility officials, and she always promised to pay. When the water was cut off, she would bribe an engineer to turn it back on. "I won't let these people coerce me!" she said.

In part to pay for the new construction, the woman had five loans (or seven, if one followed her own astute example, and considered her two water debts as loans). Three of these were microfinance loans-that is, of the type pioneered by Muhammad Yunus, the founder of Grameen Bank, in Bangladesh, and the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006. Such loans are typically small, and given to women pursuing entrepreneurial projects, and administered by a local group that shares responsibility to see that the debt is repaid.

The woman knew the exact details of each loan, and could report that her combined weekly payment was twenty-five hundred rupees-a little more than fifty dollars. She was clearly comfortable carrying the debt. She made up to three thousand rupees a week from her saris, and in a good week her husband made two thousand. Duflo, who later remarked on the orderliness of the woman's financial thinking, interrupted the survey to ask questions. Why hadn't she saved first, and then built the extra floor? The woman replied that she had wanted the immediate benefit of the rental income. Why hadn't she tried to get one large loan? She did not have papers for her own house, and so could offer no collateral.

The last page of the questionnaire showed a drawing of a ladder with ten steps. The woman was asked where she saw herself on the ladder, financially. She pointed to the third rung from the bottom, saying, in English, "Middle class."

A few minutes later, we were in the more ramshackle home of a neighbor, in a room largely filled with a bed, and decorated with a poster of three chubby babies and the line "Look for someone to make happy and happiness will find you." A weary-looking grandmother in her late forties, when shown the prosperity ladder, pointed to the second rung from the bottom. Her husband was a day laborer, she said, but had recently injured his leg and had stopped working. The couple now had debts of about three thousand dollars, and no income. In the past, her son had helped them out, but he was now married himself, with two children, and his work was unreliable. This woman had taken out loans from four microfinance companies, and to do so she had lied about her entrepreneurial ambitions. She told one company that she had a vegetable business.

Duflo had long wanted to use experimental methods to put microfinance to the test. As she saw it, there was little beyond anecdote to support claims that the technique had a special power to combat poverty, gender inequality, and ill health. This is not to say that Duflo was committed to debunking. "One of my great assets of being in this business, or maybe I've developed it over time, is I don't have many opinions to start with," she told me. "I have one opinion-one should evaluate things-which is strongly held. I'm never unhappy with the results. I haven't yet seen a result I didn't like."

In 2005, after a lengthy search in an industry wary of subjecting itself to this kind of scrutiny, Duflo and her colleagues found a partner in Spandana, a microfinance provider then expanding in Hyderabad. Spandana, which, unusually, does not require its borrowers to use their loans to support a business, identified a hundred and four neighborhoods in which there was no active promotion of microfinance, and agreed to start operations in fifty-two of them. After more than a year, J-PAL surveyed nearly seven thousand households, measuring consumption, business income, standards of education, and markers of health and women's empowerment.

In the intervening months, many people in the treatment areas had chosen not to take up loans, while some in the control areas had done so; other microfinance companies had moved into these areas. The experiment was therefore built not on a binary model of treatment and control but, rather, on the difference between the two groups in the percentage of borrowers: J-PAL established that a household in the treatment area of Hyderabad was significantly more likely to have taken out a microfinance loan than a control-area household. This winter, three years after people started receiving loans, J-PAL was conducting a follow-up survey. Spandana was no longer withholding its services in half of the neighborhoods, and competitors were everywhere, as Duflo's visits to the two households had shown; but J-PAL could still make useful measurements between those with older loans and those with newer ones.

The questionnaires from the first survey have a privileged place in J-PAL 's Hyderabad offices. The data are now on M.I.T. servers, but the original forms are preserved in a room with good light and wide views over the city, while Indian and American staff members are mostly crammed into a hallway outside. Last year, Duflo and three colleagues wrote a preliminary paper based on the data, titled "The Miracle of Microfinance?" They found no miracle. Microcredit allowed some people to start a business, and others to buy durable goods, such as televisions and bicycles. But there had been no rise in average consumption (the best way to get a sense of economic well-being), and no evidence of improvement in levels of education, health, or women's decision-making. As Duflo recently said, "It's a financial instrument that not everybody wants." As a means of getting credit into the hands of the poor, it succeeds, she said, and this is admirable. So the Hyderabad landlady, for example, had probably expanded her property portfolio faster than would have otherwise been possible using such informal credit lines as an unpaid water bill. But Duflo's work has convinced her that the absence of a steady job is what is most likely to be preventing a person in poverty from having an easier life. The second woman had used loans to support her family during a health crisis, and was at least being protected from the interest rates of a moneylender. "But this woman is not an entrepreneur and never will be," Duflo said. Her family needed a reliable income. "They're on the brink of disaster. They lack security, something stable."

When Duflo and her colleagues announced their initial findings, they spoke carefully: if microfinance didn't fix everything, that didn't mean it fixed nothing. Spandana responded in that spirit, and encouraged J-PAL to do the follow-up survey, which would detect any delayed impact. But the wider industry was defensive, which clearly surprised Duflo, who can hardly imagine people who do not welcome solid, hard-won data about their field of interest. One advocacy organization, the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor, responded to the study on its Web site, noting that the poor seemed keen to take up such loans: "Does microfinance improve their lives? Poor people say yes." Duflo described this to me as "the moronic revealed-preference argument." People have been known to buy ill-advised things, after all. Drug dealers thrive.

This spring, a consortium of the leading microfinance organizations published a collective statement, which was, in large part, anecdotal: it told of a woman from Bosnia-Herzegovina who expanded her hairdressing salon, a woman from Peru who built a house. Duflo, out of patience with the industry, told me, "Here is what I think: We tried to help them. They don't want to be helped. Too bad."

Development economists ask many questions that can never be answered by randomized trials. There are two clear restrictions. One is practical. It's hard to cut a country into two-treatment and control-so this is not the way to study central-bank independence, for example, or the virtues of parliamentary democracy. The other, overlapping, restriction is ethical. Randomization causes some part of the population to miss out on the new thing. If an N.G.O. is rolling out a program of free cooking stoves, then a researcher might, with a clear conscience, randomize the order in which people are supplied; but in circumstances of emergency need-after an earthquake, say-such withholding could be scandalous, even if you followed the example of some drug trials, in which the control group does not get a placebo but, rather, gets the best treatment known at the time. Not long ago, an N.G.O. asked Duflo to conduct an experimental evaluation of a program that would feed undernourished children in India with locally sourced food. She declined, for fear of disadvantaging the treatment group, not the control, which would be put on a known regime of packaged food. "I didn't think that it was possible," she recalled. "I may have been wrong."

But Duflo argues, at dozens of talks every year, that trials should be done whenever they can be done properly. In her view, the main players in development-governments in the developing world, as well as the World Bank and the N.G.O.s-have tended to move "from fad to fad." As she told me, "First, it was big dams, then education, then microcredit. And now we're back to dams!" Evaluations of this work, when they have been done, have not been randomized. More rigorous studies, of the kind promoted by J-PAL, are simply "about allocating resources to the best use," she said. "It doesn't seem like a hugely innovative view of the world, but most people who are not economists don't get it. They don't get the idea that there are budget constraints."

Several years ago, Duflo wrote an article in Libération, the French newspaper, in which she advised Western donors to focus more on immunization against measles than on antiretroviral drugs to treat AIDS, which were then very expensive and difficult to administer. Duflo was amazed by the offense people took, although she agrees that it is "emotionally and morally difficult" to weigh one misfortune against another. Rachel Glennerster, J-PAL's executive director, recalled, "When we started, there was a huge amount of resistance and hostility in the development community. We were reducing the complications of poverty to hard numbers! 'You shouldn't be experimenting on people.' O.K., so you have no idea whether they work- that's not experimental?"

Duflo sometimes positions J-PAL, conceptually, in contrast to two prominent thinkers on development spending. One is Jeffrey Sachs, who runs the Earth Institute, at Columbia University, and who has argued, in "The End of Poverty" and elsewhere, that a significant, properly targeted increase in Western aid could help eradicate poverty in the developing world. The other is William Easterly, a former World Bank economist now teaching at N.Y.U., and the author of "The White Man's Burden." Easterly is opposed to such "big push" thinking, and believes that poverty is more likely to be eradicated by the local action of democracy and markets. "The right plan is to have no plan," he has written.

Duflo could be thought of as a natural ally of Sachs-she supports increased aid budgets-but her vigilance about numbers has led her to question some aspects of his approach. Last fall, nearly three years after the start of the Earth Institute's Millennium Villages Project, a pilot scheme of targeted spending in thirteen areas in sub-Saharan Africa, Sachs asked J-PAL for advice about evaluating the program's efficacy. In an e-mail to Sachs, Duflo suggested that it was too late to use J-PAL methods to measure the existing program, adding that the methods could be used in any later expansion. Sachs did not reply. In a Times article about the Millennium Villages, published some months later, he was described as disliking evaluations that withhold treatments, and was quoted as saying, "It pains me to be in a village that doesn't have bed nets." Duflo, who is so decorous that she uses asterisks to soften the word "crap" in an instant-message exchange, reacted to that quote with unusual heat. "He adopts this completely anti-scientific attitude," she told me. "He cannot collect data because it 'pains' him? . . . I am not really asking for a crazy standard of proof, just comparing." Sachs, responding via e-mail, wrote me that "careful measurement and comparisons are, of course, vital," and added, "All I was saying is that if I go into a village without bed nets, it pains me. (I've seen a lot of children dying of malaria over the years. It's enough to pain one.)"

In Duflo's view, both sides of the Sachs-Easterly argument reflect an unrealistic public desire "for an expert discourse, which is going to be able to tell you: This is going to be the end of poverty." Duflo, borrowing an old phrase of the French left, argues that "there is not going to be _le grand soir-_one day, the big revolution, and the whole world is suddenly not corrupt. But maybe you create a small little virtuous group here and something else there. All these things are incremental." According to Duflo, the virtue of randomization is that it not only identifies the best remedies; it does so with a clarity that should be attractive to policymakers, who surely want to be associated with ideas that work. That's a key Duflo assumption, and an optimistic one, and it has not been fully evaluated in a randomized setting. After all, a politician may prefer to be associated with hoopla, or with cash in plain envelopes. And a bad policy with formidable political support could well have a greater impact than a good policy with less support. Duflo is not naïve about such things, but J-PAL's overarching experiment, perhaps, is a study of whether it can make its own agenda irresistible to decision-makers. As Duflo describes it, Phase II of J-PAL, now just beginning, is the effort to engage decision-makers not just as experimental partners but as adopters of programs that have already been vetted.

Meanwhile, Duflo's tone of certainty about the joys of randomization-she boldly told the TED conference that she could "take the guesswork out of policy-making"-maddens some scholars who have greater tolerance for looser, longer-established ways of trying to effect change. Lant Pritchett, a development economist at Harvard, and a former World Bank researcher, noted that randomization has played no part in civil rights, feminism, or any of the other great social changes of his lifetime. With weary amusement, he compared Duflo to a French revolutionary-"He who is not with us is against us!" (Still, he described Duflo as one of the five smartest economists in the world.)

At its core, J-PAL exists to do evaluations and encourage others to do them. But the forty-four scholars at M.I.T. and elsewhere who are attached to the lab have papers to write and careers to make, and so its projects must address questions that engage other economists. Duflo makes that sound easy: "Economics is about behavior, rational and less rational. And about how behavior responds to the environment, and how we can shape the environment to get people to act differently, and whether it's good for them. Very quickly, when you start evaluating programs, you get into these kinds of issues." Rachel Glennerster adds, "You're not just learning about what this particular program does in this particular place but understanding human behavior better. For example: Why do people not do the things that are good for them? Why do people not invest in preventative health? That's an incredibly important conundrum for saving the world."

Not everyone is persuaded. Among the critics of J-PAL 's work, the best known is Angus Deaton, the Princeton economist. Despite his admiration for Duflo, Deaton has become increasingly wary of the fashion for randomization-to the point where, at the end of 2008, he found himself giving a high-profile lecture in London that began with two photographs on a PowerPoint slide. One showed someone floating beneath an open parachute; in the other, a person appeared to be jumping out of a plane without a parachute. The first photo was marked "Esther Duflo," the second "Abhijit Banerjee." The point was this: Do we need to test the idea that parachutes are useful to people who jump out of planes? Deaton's tone came as a surprise to some. Joshua Angrist, Duflo's former adviser, recently wondered if "someone put sand in Angus's toothpaste."

Deaton's lecture, and a subsequent paper, made two main arguments. One: Randomized trials are more difficult than they look, and "experiments are frequently subject to practical problems that undermine any claims to statistical or epistemic superiority." Two: Even if your data are perfect, how can you generalize from the information? Does the policy that works in India work in Brazil? Does the approach that works for a hundred people work when applied to ten million people? This is the problem of "external validity." As soon as you leave behind the particular context of the experiment, then any wider economic point you might like to make derives from inference, which is only as good as the thinking-the theory-behind it.

Deaton told me that he saw his comments as more in the form of an amicus brief than an attack, and he has stayed on good terms with Duflo and Banerjee. "I really like him personally, and think he's brilliant," Duflo said. But her defense was vigorous: "We're not just evaluating a program and attaching some larger thoughts at the end, but finding ways to use evaluation to explore theories," she told me. "The backbone of theory, which he says should be there, it is there. Who is he attacking?" She thought that she detected in Deaton a kind of élitism: "He's saying that if you're smart you're going to do good work anyway, and if you're not smart it'll be bad work anyway. And that we are being misleading, and potentially dangerous, in claiming that this tool will allow you to do good work. Of course, people can make mistakes, but I disagree with his view of the world. I think, if you give people a better tool, they do better work." She added that she could imagine the tool becoming more widely used in nonacademic, non-theoretical environments. She recalled, "I once sat through a presentation where randomized trials had been used to choose the best packaging for yogurt."

After the eleven days in India, Duflo flew to Rwanda. One night in Kigali, she was in a bar on the top floor of the MTN Center, an airy modern mall. A soccer match between Manchester United and Manchester City was on the television, and during moments of high excitement people leaped from their seats to shout. Duflo looked skeptical as she drank her beer. She was feeling reflective, and a little tired. After her time in India, she said, "I don't even want to see a painting of a government official." (In French, you become so tired of something that you can't stand to see its image.) She would soon be flying from Rwanda to Belgium, to receive an honorary doctorate, before heading back to Boston.

Duflo had started the day at a meeting in the Kigali offices of TechnoServe, an American N.G.O. that promotes itself with the slogan "Social Change Has a Business Plan." It was a place of chinos and strong handshakes. The Harvard Business Review was available in the lobby, and someone was eating a bagel. (This all reinforced a striking surface contrast between Indian commotion and Rwandan orderliness.) After the meeting, Duflo was driven to a rural hillside, where she spoke with coffee farmers. A TechnoServe project running across East Africa works to organize farmers into collectives, and helps some of these groups to obtain a coffee mill that raises the quality of the beans they bring to market. J-PAL was not studying the mills themselves-there are too few to randomize-but it was examining the agronomic training that TechnoServe offered its clients. (Instruction in mulching, for example.) Do such efforts increase crop yield? Do they help the friends of those who are trained? Duflo talked to TechnoServe officials about linear networks and star networks. For a moment, she was distracted by a goat. "I want a baby goat," she mused. "I'll take good care of it."

Returning to Kigali, Duflo was dropped at the MTN Center. After a brief conversation with a charming, upbeat café manager about the essential qualities of a croque monsieur, she contemplated the new information of the day: the puzzling price structure of good and less-good coffee; the risk that a collective might mutate into an abusive closed shop; the way farmers used delayed payment from collectives as deliberate savings schemes. Future experiments had suggested themselves.

"It can't only be the data," Duflo said, showing a rare willingness to generalize. "Even to understand what data means, and what data I need, I need to form an intuition about things. And that process is as ad hoc and impressionistic as anybody's."

It can't only be the data, but there must be data. "There is a lot of noise in the world," Duflo said. "And there is a lot of idiosyncrasy. But there are also regularities and phenomena. And what the data is going to be able to do-if there's enough of it-is uncover, in the mess and the noise of the world, some lines of music that actually have harmony. It's there, somewhere." ♦

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massachusetts institute of technology (m.i.t.)

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Transforming development economics, one experiment at a time. Esther Duflo, a thirty-seven-year-old professor of development economics-the economics of poor countries and poor people-runs field experiments that measure different ways to save the world. In February, she went to Long Beach, California, to give a presentation at TED, an annual conference devoted to "ideas worth spreading."

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As the first black woman to win the Booker Prize, Bernardine Evaristo deserved to win alone - gal-dem

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Jhalak Prize chair Sunny Singh argues that Bernardine’s novel wasn’t an ‘obscure choice’ at all, but the rightful winner of the prestigious Booker Prize.

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Always use the word 'Africa' or 'Darkness' or 'Safari' in your title. Subtitles may include the words 'Zanzibar', 'Masai', 'Zulu', 'Zambezi', 'Congo', 'Nile', 'Big', 'Sky', 'Shadow', 'Drum', 'Sun' or 'Bygone'. Also useful are words such as 'Guerrillas', 'Timeless', 'Primordial' and 'Tribal'. Note that 'People' means Africans who are not black, while 'The People' means black Africans.

Never have a picture of a well-adjusted African on the cover of your book, or in it, unless that African has won the Nobel Prize. An AK-47, prominent ribs, naked breasts: use these. If you must include an African, make sure you get one in Masai or Zulu or Dogon dress.

In your text, treat Africa as if it were one country. It is hot and dusty with rolling grasslands and huge herds of animals and tall, thin people who are starving. Or it is hot and steamy with very short people who eat primates. Don't get bogged down with precise descriptions. Africa is big: fifty-four countries, 900 million people who are too busy starving and dying and warring and emigrating to read your book. The continent is full of deserts, jungles, highlands, savannahs and many other things, but your reader doesn't care about all that, so keep your descriptions romantic and evocative and unparticular.

Make sure you show how Africans have music and rhythm deep in their souls, and eat things no other humans eat. Do not mention rice and beef and wheat; monkey-brain is an African's cuisine of choice, along with goat, snake, worms and grubs and all manner of game meat. Make sure you show that you are able to eat such food without flinching, and describe how you learn to enjoy it-because you care.

Taboo subjects: ordinary domestic scenes, love between Africans (unless a death is involved), references to African writers or intellectuals, mention of school-going children who are not suffering from yaws or Ebola fever or female genital mutilation.

Throughout the book, adopt a sotto voice, in conspiracy with the reader, and a sad I-expected-so-much tone. Establish early on that your liberalism is impeccable, and mention near the beginning how much you love Africa, how you fell in love with the place and can't live without her. Africa is the only continent you can love-take advantage of this. If you are a man, thrust yourself into her warm virgin forests. If you are a woman, treat Africa as a man who wears a bush jacket and disappears off into the sunset. Africa is to be pitied, worshipped or dominated. Whichever angle you take, be sure to leave the strong impression that without your intervention and your important book, Africa is doomed.

Your African characters may include naked warriors, loyal servants, diviners and seers, ancient wise men living in hermitic splendour. Or corrupt politicians, inept polygamous travel-guides, and prostitutes you have slept with. The Loyal Servant always behaves like a seven-year-old and needs a firm hand; he is scared of snakes, good with children, and always involving you in his complex domestic dramas. The Ancient Wise Man always comes from a noble tribe (not the money-grubbing tribes like the Gikuyu, the Igbo or the Shona). He has rheumy eyes and is close to the Earth. The Modern African is a fat man who steals and works in the visa office, refusing to give work permits to qualified Westerners who really care about Africa. He is an enemy of development, always using his government job to make it difficult for pragmatic and good-hearted expats to set up NGOs or Legal Conservation Areas. Or he is an Oxford-educated intellectual turned serial-killing politician in a Savile Row suit. He is a cannibal who likes Cristal champagne, and his mother is a rich witch-doctor who really runs the country.

Among your characters you must always include The Starving African, who wanders the refugee camp nearly naked, and waits for the benevolence of the West. Her children have flies on their eyelids and pot bellies, and her breasts are flat and empty. She must look utterly helpless. She can have no past, no history; such diversions ruin the dramatic moment. Moans are good. She must never say anything about herself in the dialogue except to speak of her (unspeakable) suffering. Also be sure to include a warm and motherly woman who has a rolling laugh and who is concerned for your well-being. Just call her Mama. Her children are all delinquent. These characters should buzz around your main hero, making him look good. Your hero can teach them, bathe them, feed them; he carries lots of babies and has seen Death. Your hero is you (if reportage), or a beautiful, tragic international celebrity/aristocrat who now cares for animals (if fiction).

Bad Western characters may include children of Tory cabinet ministers, Afrikaners, employees of the World Bank. When talking about exploitation by foreigners mention the Chinese and Indian traders. Blame the West for Africa's situation. But do not be too specific.

Broad brushstrokes throughout are good. Avoid having the African characters laugh, or struggle to educate their kids, or just make do in mundane circumstances. Have them illuminate something about Europe or America in Africa. African characters should be colourful, exotic, larger than life-but empty inside, with no dialogue, no conflicts or resolutions in their stories, no depth or quirks to confuse the cause.

Describe, in detail, naked breasts (young, old, conservative, recently raped, big, small) or mutilated genitals, or enhanced genitals. Or any kind of genitals. And dead bodies. Or, better, naked dead bodies. And especially rotting naked dead bodies. Remember, any work you submit in which people look filthy and miserable will be referred to as the 'real Africa', and you want that on your dust jacket. Do not feel queasy about this: you are trying to help them to get aid from the West. The biggest taboo in writing about Africa is to describe or show dead or suffering white people.

Animals, on the other hand, must be treated as well rounded, complex characters. They speak (or grunt while tossing their manes proudly) and have names, ambitions and desires. They also have family values: see how lions teach their children? Elephants are caring, and are good feminists or dignified patriarchs. So are gorillas. Never, ever say anything negative about an elephant or a gorilla. Elephants may attack people's property, destroy their crops, and even kill them. Always take the side of the elephant. Big cats have public-school accents. Hyenas are fair game and have vaguely Middle Eastern accents. Any short Africans who live in the jungle or desert may be portrayed with good humour (unless they are in conflict with an elephant or chimpanzee or gorilla, in which case they are pure evil).

After celebrity activists and aid workers, conservationists are Africa's most important people. Do not offend them. You need them to invite you to their 30,000-acre game ranch or 'conservation area', and this is the only way you will get to interview the celebrity activist. Often a book cover with a heroic-looking conservationist on it works magic for sales. Anybody white, tanned and wearing khaki who once had a pet antelope or a farm is a conservationist, one who is preserving Africa's rich heritage. When interviewing him or her, do not ask how much funding they have; do not ask how much money they make off their game. Never ask how much they pay their employees.

Readers will be put off if you don't mention the light in Africa. And sunsets, the African sunset is a must. It is always big and red. There is always a big sky. Wide empty spaces and game are critical-Africa is the Land of Wide Empty Spaces. When writing about the plight of flora and fauna, make sure you mention that Africa is overpopulated. When your main character is in a desert or jungle living with indigenous peoples (anybody short) it is okay to mention that Africa has been severely depopulated by Aids and War (use caps).

You'll also need a nightclub called Tropicana, where mercenaries, evil nouveau riche Africans and prostitutes and guerrillas and expats hang out.

Always end your book with Nelson Mandela saying something about rainbows or renaissances. Because you care.
'How to Write About Africa', by Binyavanga Wainaina. © Binyavanga Wainaina, 2005. Reproduced by permission of The Wylie Agency (UK) Ltd.

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How to Write About Africa | Binyavanga Wainaina | Granta

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'Always end your book with Nelson Mandela saying something about rainbows or renaissances. Because you care.'

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A reading list of key books on the history of anti-colonial resistance and movements for liberation, featuring Priyamvada Gopal's Insurgent Empire, Nick Estes's Our History is the Future, and Walter Rodney's Groundings with My Brothers.

Insurgent Empire shows how Britain's enslaved and colonial subjects were active agents in their own liberation. What is more, they shaped British ideas of freedom and emancipation back in the United Kingdom.

Read an excerpt from Insurgent Empire here.

How two centuries of Indigenous resistance created the movement proclaiming "Water is life". In Our History Is the Future, Nick Estes traces traditions of Indigenous resistance that led to the #NoDAPL movement. At once a work of history, a manifesto, and an intergenerational story of resistance.

Marcus Garvey, Amy Jacques Garvey, Claude McKay, Claudia Jones, C.L.R. James, Stokely Carmichael-the roster of immigrants from the Caribbean who have had a profound impact on the development of radical politics in the United States is a long one. In this magisterial work, Winston James focuses on the twentieth century's first wave of inspirational writers and activists from the Caribbean and their contribution to political dissidence in America.

In 2011, Myanmar embarked in a democratic transition from a brutal military rule that culminated four years later, when the first free election in decades saw a landslide for the party of celebrated Nobel Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi. Yet, even as the international community was celebrating a new dawn, old wars were raging in the northern borderlands. A crisis was emerging in western Arakan state where the regime intensified its oppression of the vulnerable Muslim Rohingya community.

The Dispossessed tells the story of a twenty-four-year-old Salvadoran man, Arnovis, whose family's search for safety shows how the United States-in concert with other Western nations-has gutted asylum protections for the world's most vulnerable. Packed with information and reflection, The Dispossessed is more than a human portrait of those who cross borders-it is an urgent and persuasive case for sharing the country we call home.

It is twenty-five years since the 1994 genocide of the Tutsi of Rwanda when in the course of three terrible months more than 1 million people were murdered. In the intervening years a pernicious campaign has been waged by the perpetrators to deny this crime, with attempts to falsify history and blame the victims for their fate. Facts are reversed, fake news promulgated, and phoney science given credence.

Democracy is not necessarily progressive, and will only be if we make it so. What Mondon and Winter call "reactionary democracy" is the use of the concept of democracy and its associated understanding of the power to the people (demos cratos) for reactionary ends. The resurgence of racism, populism and the far right is not the result of popular demands, it is the logical conclusion of manipulation by the elite of the working class to push reactionary ideas.

The UK government proudly calls the aim of its immigration policy to be the creation of a "hostile environment," while refugees drown in the Mediterranean and Britain votes to leave the EU against claims that "swarms"of migrants are entering Britain. Meanwhile, study after study confirms that immigration is not damaging the UK's economy, nor putting a strain on public services, but immigration is blamed for all of Britain's ills. Yet concerns about immigration are deemed "legitimate" across the political spectrum, with few exceptions. How did we get here?

How Europe Underdeveloped Africa is an ambitious masterwork of political economy, detailing the impact of slavery and colonialism on the history of international capitalism. In this classic book, Rodney makes the unflinching case that African "mal-development" is not a natural feature of geography, but a direct product of imperial extraction from the continent, a practice that continues up into the present.

In this classic work published in the heady days of anti-colonial revolution, Groundings with My Brothers follows the global circulation of emancipatory ideas, from the black students of North America to the Rasta counterculture of Jamaica and beyond. The book is striking in its simultaneous ability to survey the wide and heterogeneous international context while remaining anchored in grassroots politics, as Rodney offers us first-hand accounts of mass movement organizing.

A collection of incisive critiques of contemporary Marxism, of post-colonial development and of the Eurocentric assessment of imperialism.

A passionately urgent call for all of us to unlearn imperialism and repair the violent world we share. In this theoretical tour-de-force, renowned scholar Ariella Aïsha Azoulay calls on us to recognize the imperial foundations of knowledge and to refuse its strictures and its many violences.

A fascinating portrait of life with the Black Panthers in Algiers: a story of liberation and radical politics.

One of America's most historic political trials is undoubtedly that of Angela Davis. Opening with a letter from James Baldwin to Davis, and including contributions from numerous radicals such as Black Panthers George Jackson, Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale and Erica Huggins, this book is not only an account of Davis's incarceration and the struggles surrounding it, but also perhaps the most comprehensive and thorough analysis of the prison system of the United States.

A powerful challenge to the way we understand the politics of race and the history of anti-racist struggle. Whether class or race is the more important factor in modern politics is a question right at the heart of recent history's most contentious debates. Among groups who should readily find common ground, there is little agreement. To escape this deadlock, Asad Haider turns to the rich legacies of the black freedom struggle.

The Heart of the Race is a powerful corrective to a version of Britain's history from which black women have long been excluded. It reclaims and records black women's place in that history, documenting their day-to-day struggles, their experiences of education, work and health care, and the personal and political struggles they have waged to preserve a sense of identity and community. First published in 1985 and winner of the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize that year, The Heart of the Race is a testimony to the collective experience of black women in Britain, and their relationship to the British state throughout its long history of slavery, empire and colonialism.

With racial justice struggles on the rise, a probing collection considers the past and future of Black radicalism.

In this pioneering history, Ron Ramdin traces the roots of Britain's disadvantaged black working class. From the development of a small black presence in the sixteenth century, through the colonial labour institutions of slavery, indentureship, and trade unionism, Ramdin expertly guides us through the stages of creation for a UK minority whose origins are often overlooked. First published in 1987, this revised edition includes a new introduction reflecting on events over the past four decades.

For twenty-five years, Feminism and Nationalism in the Third World has been an essential primer on the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century history of women's movements in Asia and the Middle East. In this engaging and well-researched survey, Kumari Jayawardena presents feminism as it originated in the Third World, erupting from the specific struggles of women fighting against colonial power, for education or the vote, for safety, and against poverty and inequality.

First published in 1990, Michele Wallace's Invisibility Blues is widely regarded as a landmark in the history of black feminism. Wallace's considerations of the black experience in America include recollections of her early life in Harlem; a look at the continued underrepresentation of black voices in politics, media, and culture; and the legacy of such figures as Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Cade Bambara, Toni Morrison,and Alice Walker.

Combining firsthand accounts from activists with the research of scholars and reflections from artists, Policing the Planet traces the global spread of the broken-windows policing strategy, first established in New York City under Police Commissioner William Bratton. It's a doctrine that has vastly broadened police power the world over-to deadly effect.

Many in the United States, including Barack Obama, have called for a "post-racial" politics; yet race still divides the country politically, economically, and socially. In this highly acclaimed work, Manning Marable rejects both liberal inclusionist strategies and the separatist politics of the likes of Louis Farrakhan. Looking back at African-American politics and the fight against racism of the recent past, he argues powerfully for a "transformationist" strategy that retains a distinctive black cultural identity but draws together all the poor and exploited in a united struggle against oppression.

Elizabeth Martínez's unique Chicana voice has been formed through over thirty years of experience in the movements for civil rights, women's liberation, and Latina/o empowerment. In De Colores Means All of Us, Martínez presents a radical Latina perspective on race, liberation and identity. She describes the provocative ideas and new movements created by the rapidly expanding US Latina/o community as it confronts intensified exploitation and racism.

In the age of runaway inequality and Black Lives matter, there is an emerging consensus that our society has failed to redress racial disparities. But who is the culprit?

Most people assume that racism grows from a perception of human difference: the fact of race gives rise to the practice of racism. Sociologist Karen E. Fields and historian Barbara J. Fields argue otherwise: the practice of racism produces the illusion of race, through what they call "racecraft." And this phenomenon is intimately entwined with other forms of inequality in American life. So pervasive are the devices of racecraft in American history, economic doctrine, politics, and everyday thinking that the presence of racecraft itself goes unnoticed.

That the promised post-racial age has not dawned, the authors argue, reflects the failure of Americans to develop a legitimate language for thinking about and discussing inequality.

Groundbreaking analysis of the birth of racism in America.

In Volume II of The Invention of the White Race, Theodore W. Allen explores the transformation that turned African bond-laborers into slaves and segregated them from their fellow proletarians of European origin.

A dissection of the racism that has deformed a century of border policy.

Charting the different modes of domination that engender specific regimes of race and the strategies of anti-colonial resistance they entail, the book powerfully argues for cross-racial solidarities that respect these historical differences.

Until the political ferment of the Long Sixties, there were no Asian Americans. There were only isolated communities of mostly Chinese, Japanese, and Filipinos lumped together as "Orientals." Serve the People tells the story of the social and cultural movement that knit these disparate communities into a political identity, the history of how-and why-the double consciousness of Asian America came to be.

The modernity of racism and its relationship to contemporary capitalism.

Related Books

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A reading list of key books on the history of anti-colonial resistance and movements for liberation, featuring Priyamvada Gopal's Insurgent Empire, Nick Estes's Our History is the Future, and Walter Rodney's Groundings with My Brothers. Insurgent Empire shows how Britain's enslaved and colonial subjects were active agents in their own liberation.

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The voice that sprung from my throat was unfamiliar as I introduced myself to a classroom of White students. Its tone was high-pitched and enthusiastic-a far cry from my naturally soft raspiness.

It wasn't the first time I was unsettled by being the sole Black person in a room, but these moments had a profound effect on me. Without thought, I'd shifted my demeanor and speech. My thoughts were calculated, quickened, and in search of the "right" things to say. The words poured from my mouth pointed and stiff. I enunciated each consonant and vowel, and stressed each syllable. The production of it all, though a departure from my normal self, was seamless.

It was the first time I noticed I had code-switched.

Admittedly, I was later ashamed for abandoning my native tongue-African American Vernacular English-and sense of self in an effort to assimilate into a space of teaching and learning, particularly because, as the instructor, I was an authority figure.

Code-switching is an age-old practice that is familiar to many Black people-and people of color-in the United States. Though when sociolinguist Einar Haugen coined the term in 1954, it was to describe language alternation, or the mixing of two or more languages, or dialects. Albeit, the practice had been known since the early 20 th century. Linguists studied code-switching to examine when it occurs, while sociologists studied why it occurs. The findings differed across ethnic and racial demographics. According to Bridging Differences: Effective Intergroup Communication, code-switching facilitates several functions: to mask fluency and memory in a second language, go between formal and informal conversation, exert power over another, and align and unify among familiar group in certain settings.

In the '70s, the phenomenon gained traction in African-American spaces-academic and otherwise-to describe the relationships between people of color-particularly Black people-and the colonial other. In the text, Language and Interracial Communication in the United States: Speaking in Black and White, George B. Ray describes African-American code-switching as "a skill that holds benefits in relation to the way success is often measured in institutional and professional settings." And though, at times, the performance is superficially understood as a lingual phenomenon that often occurs vis-a-vis a range of social settings, similar to my experience in the classroom, for many African Americans code-switching is a skillset that is integral to our survival.

For African Americans, code-switching is a performative expression that has not only helped some of us thrive in mainstream culture, it has helped many of us simply survive.

The late W.E.B Dubois, world-renowned scholar and civil rights advocate, alluded to the concept of code-switching more than a century ago, when he wrote about African Americans reckoning with dual identities-Blackness and Americanness-while navigating everyday Whiteness in his most celebrated book, The Souls of Black Folk:

"It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness, an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder."

Dubois speaks to how this sense of being is a testament of resilience. However, code-switching goes beyond "feeling." For African Americans, it is a performative expression that has not only helped some of us thrive in mainstream culture-it has helped many of us simply survive.

I consider the "talk" many African American parents have with their children to warn them of, and prepare them for potential encounters with law enforcement, an element of code-switching. The conversation involves clear directives on how to switch up behavior when approached by police. It goes a little something like this:

"Turn down loud music."

"Adjust your posture."

"Keep your hands visible."

"Exercise good manners."

"Speak properly."

Such conversations are a response to the dominant culture's attitude toward Blackness-Black people, Black culture. Unfortunately, for Black citizens, such a perverse attitude remains present during quite a few brushes with the law. A recent study conducted by Stanford researchers revealed that Black motorists experience traffic stops at significantly higher rates than their White counterparts, and were 20% more likely to be ticketed by authorities. Mere traffic run-ins can escalate and sometimes result in death for Black people.

In the case of Sandra Bland and Philando Castile -whose police encounters were recorded and publicly consumed-I often wonder how code-switching may have preserved their lives. If for one moment, like myself standing in the center of that classroom, they had ordered their words, tweaked their voice, or code-switched in the more ironic way I've only read about, when the enslaved and the oppressed dumbed down their literacy and downplayed their dignity when faced with the crack of the slaver's whip or the scrag of Jim Crow's noose.

The ability to code-switch back into our Black selves is another way we subsist, feel whole and in some regard redeemed. Derrick Harriell, a poet who is the director of M.F.A. Creative Writing Program and associate professor of English and African American Studies at the University of Mississippi, like me, says he experienced personal disappointment when he switched up being himself.

"I know certain forms of code-switching have been responsible for saving our lives as Black people and key to our survival, so in that way I'm not judgmental," Harriell says. "I understand that my ability to not code-switch is a privilege, but it's also a privilege my people died for, therefore for me, I have to [be myself] or else I feel as if I'm doing my ancestors a disservice."

Harriell affirms that for a number of Black Americans, despite the conviction of "selling out" oneself in an effort to assimilate into White culture, code-switching is a form of pointed privilege and power.

The privilege speaks to the once-denied prerogative to be audibly and visibly one's authentic self, or masked and acculturated for one's own advantage. However, how we wield that power varies from person to person.

Dr. Dione Mahaffey, an Atlanta-based business psychologist and coach, says the very notion of code-switching is draining, but asserts that the practice has been most beneficial as she progressed in her career.

"It's exhausting, but I wouldn't go as far to call it inauthentic, because it's an authentic part of the Black American experience," Mahaffey says. "Code-switching does not employ an inauthentic version of self, rather, it calls upon certain aspects of our identity in place of others, depending on the space or circumstance. It's exhausting because we can actually feel the difference."

For Mahaffey, code-switching is about exchange, a give and take of sorts. Much of her participation is predicated on how much of herself she is willing to negotiate. She says she doesn't share the things that make her a dynamic woman, or the remarkable professional she is.

"I save that for my village," she says. In the professional sphere, Mahaffey flips those feelings on their head. She has mastered the performative niceties of code-switching and uses it to her own advantage, particularly when working in White spaces. The business coach says she "consider[s] double consciousness to be a part of the laws of power: Play the perfect courtier, and grace your way to the top."

She uses it to get her way, Mahaffey says of code-switching.

"[White folks] don't see me coming because I've made them comfortable. I blend in enough to get my way, to learn what I need, to secure what I came for and then I go on and create and build in an unconventional way."

While I am unsure that code-switching in a classroom of fresh-faced White students was disarming or caught them off guard like Mahaffey's did her colleagues, I am certain it caught me off guard and complicated self-doubt.
My code-switching in the classroom occurred because I doubted that my authentic self was enough to be in the room, and that further complicated how I felt about myself. Because I'm now more consciously aware of the impact code-switching had on me, I'm almost certain I won't do it again. However, I realize that code-switching, for some, is not about assimilating but surviving, and well, I'm not sure how to feel about that.

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Opinion | Code-Switching Is Not Trying to Fit in to White Culture, It's Surviving It

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The voice that sprung from my throat was unfamiliar as I introduced myself to a classroom of White students. Its tone was high-pitched and enthusiastic-a far cry from my naturally soft raspiness. It wasn't the first time I was unsettled by being the sole Black person in a room, but these moments had a profound effect on me.

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ShaRhonda Knott-Dawson currently resides in the west suburbs of Chicago with her two school-aged girls and her husband, Brian. She blogs at ShaRhondaTribune.com and ChicagoUnheard.org. Full profile →

This week America celebrated the 99th anniversary of the 19th Amendment's passage, which granted women the right to vote. However, like much of American history, the words in our Constitution don't reflect the reality of what actually happened.

As a Black womanist, I will not celebrate the passing of the 19th Amendment or the White women suffragists. The truth is that the suffragettes were racist, opportunistic and they sold out the Black Civil Rights movement to partner with Southern, racist White women who supported and participated in domestic terrorism with the lynching of Black Americans.

If the adage is true, "those who forget about history are doomed to repeat it," it is my duty as a parent to teach my children the truth about American history. And it's our collective duty to teach the truth about the fight for women's suffrage to the children in our schools-warts and all.

As luck would have it, I'm a truth-telling tea spiller-so here it is.

Women's Suffrage Was a Political Compromise

We teach our students that the idea of political compromise is part of what makes American democracy "great." But for those of us who are not White men, "compromise" isn't great at all. In fact, it's horrible. The political compromises made by our government are almost always made at the expense of the most marginalized groups in America. And the 19th Amendment is a prime example of how American democracy's compromises work against Blacks folks.

The truth about the 19th Amendment is that it was a political win for White women at the expense of Black women.

Political Coalitions: Black Folks and White Women
Here's the part we don't teach:
Black people and Northern White women realized they were disenfranchised and formed coalitions to advance the civil rights of both groups. This is the part of history that is often highlighted in our history books-both Black folks and White women, working hand in hand to fight for the right to be included in American democracy.

Black folks and Northern White women were political allies. However, in the conservative South, there were no coalitions between Black folks and White men, and especially White women. Southern White women were active participants in the enslavement, disenfranchisement and dehumanizing of Black folks. Some records show that up to 30% of slave owners were White women. Additionally, after the Civil War, White women were full participants in the KKK, lynching Black men.

The Split

After the Civil War, the Northern coalition between Black folks and White women was strong. With the win and a majority in the House and Senate, they quickly went to work on changing government policies to allow new participants. However, when the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments were passed, White women were left behind.

From the moment Black men gained suffrage rights and White women were denied, the coalition was fractured. The suffragettes were furious. It was clear to Black folks that White women were not their allies and many had no real belief in equality. In fact, it became clear to Black folks that although White suffragettes may not have believed in slavery, they were White Supremacists all the same.

You have put the ballot in the hands of your Black men, thus making them political superiors of White women. Never before in the history of the world have men made former slaves the political masters of their former mistresses!
-Anna Howard Shaw, president of the National Women Suffrage Association.

A New Coalition

The suffragettes realized they needed to change their alliances from Black folks to Southern White women. Southern White women are a lot of things, but inconsistent in their hatred for Black people is not one of those things (ShaRhonda tea...). And if the suffragettes wanted to partner with Southern White women, there could be no "racial equality" stuff.

During the Reconstruction, Southern White women were participating in one of the darkest periods of American history for Black folks that some have called, " worse than slavery." Mass incarceration, brutal beatings, dire poverty and the barbaric act of lynching were running rampant in the South. For Black people, stopping lynching was the priority, and they hoped their "suffragette allies" would publicly join the cause.

That is not what happened.

What had happened was White suffragettes decided that the right for White women to vote was more important than lynching. From then on, Northern and Southern White Women decided to side with "Whiteness" and argue that the inclusion of White women in democracy was more important than any racial inclusiveness at all.

Black Suffrage Leaders

Our children rarely, if ever, hear about Black suffrage leaders in their history classes. Yet, Black women were out there doing the work-even when no one wanted them on their team. Black women refused to accept their exclusion from White suffrage organizations or the racist tactics they employed. In fact, some Black women pushed back-hard.

Ida B. Wells-Barnett, a Black woman journalist, newspaper editor, suffragist and Civil Rights leader, planned a boss move-a strategic, savage takedown of the phony White suffragettes.

She called out White suffragettes who were working with racist, Southern White women, while pretending in the North to be anti-racist to their major funders, the British Anti-Racist societies.

When she realized the game the White suffragettes were playing, she decided to fight. Wells got on a boat and went to London, met with the funders for the suffragettes and spilled all the tea about how the suffragettes were compliant and forming coalitions with White folks who were still doing barbaric shit, like burning and lynching a pregnant woman and cutting her stomach and letting the baby hang by the umbilical cord over the fire pit.

The British were outraged and immediately pulled funding from the American suffragettes. Because their funding was in jeopardy, the White suffragettes made more public attempts to seem anti-lynching, while simultaneously coalition-building with Southern White women.

Feminism Was Never for Black Women

Feminism, even and especially the feminism of the beloved suffragettes we remember when we mark the anniversary of the 19th Amendment, has never been for all women. Feminism has been for White women, usually upper-middle-class, White women.

Plenty of White women's suffrage leaders held racist, White supremacist views and worked against the freedom of Black women. Black women understand this betrayal. In the same way we are clear that Black people were not part of the "independence of America," we are also clear that Black women were not part of "women's suffrage."

The suffragettes were focused and even formidable at times. They organized effectively, they marched and they picketed. They were beaten and wrongfully imprisoned. They went on a hunger strike and were forcibly fed. They were strategic and used the public sentiment to win "Votes for Women." They deserve some recognition for this. But we must also recognize that they played a powerful role in maintaining White supremacy.

But Black feminists have been fighting for equality-both racial and gender equity-since the founding of the United States and not only have their struggles been ignored by White feminists and suffragettes historically, but the issues that are priorities for Black women are attacked by White women acting from racial bias today, who, ironically, claim to be feminist.

Different Time, Same Story

This is the complex and complete history we need to teach our children about the women's suffrage movement because the impacts of these political bargains are still alive and well today. Black people are still disenfranchised, especially in the Southern states. And, just like the suffragettes who worked so hard to pass the 19th Amendment, White feminists are quiet about racism, White supremacy and voter suppression. Luckily, Black folks realize that White feminists are not allies. They are about advancing the rights of White women-no matter the cost.

So, as a Black woman, I roll my eyes when I hear praise for the suffragettes. I understand that none of that was for or about me. In fact, Black folks were used as "political pawns" to get White women the right to vote.

As far as political organizing goes, I say to White feminists: "great job organizing to get the 19th Amendment." But, please don't pretend that you didn't sell Black folks out in order to secure your own rights.

Let's keep it real.

Photos via Wikimedia Commons.

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The Suffragettes Were Not Allies to Black Women, They Were Racist

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ShaRhonda Knott-Dawson currently resides in the west suburbs of Chicago with her two school-aged girls and her husband, Brian. She blogs at ShaRhondaTribune.com and ChicagoUnheard.org. Full profile → This week America celebrated the 99th anniversary of the 19th Amendment's passage, which granted women the right to vote.

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Trickle-Down Feminism

While we debate the travails of some of the world's most privileged women, most women are up against the wall. And yet for much of mainstream feminist discourse, it's as if the economy hasn't shifted, or as if there's nothing about it worth examining from the standpoint of gender.

Sarah Jaffe &squarf; Winter 2013

If you read what is popularly known as the feminist press, you'll notice a focus on the "glass ceiling" that excludes much else. Feminist writers are found celebrating the achievements of Facebook CEO Sheryl Sandberg, cheering Christine Lagarde's position at the International Monetary Fund, wringing their hands over Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer's refusal to call herself a feminist, or asking, as Anne-Marie Slaughter did in the pages of the Atlantic, whether (white, well-off, educated) women can "have it all."

While we debate the travails of some of the world's most privileged women, most women are up against the wall. According to the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law, women make up just under half of the national workforce, but about 60 percent of the minimum-wage workforce and 73 percent of tipped workers. In the New York area, a full 95 percent of domestic workers are female. Female-dominated sectors such as retail sales, food service, and home health care are some of the fastest-growing fields in the new economy, and even in those fields, women earn less; women in the restaurant industry earn 83 cents to a man's dollar.

This is where most women spend their time, not atop the Googleplex. This is where feminists should be spending their time, too.

The stakes are clear. Domestic workers, home care workers, nurses, and other largely female contingents must organize their workplaces or the work that most women do will continue to be undervalued, virtually unregulated, and precarious. The deunionization that has left about 88 percent of American workers without unions will drag the rest of us down as well.

And yet for much of mainstream feminist discourse, it's as if the economy hasn't shifted, or as if there's nothing about it worth examining from the standpoint of gender. As uprisings in Wisconsin and Ohio over union rights rocked the country, as a movement for economic justice took to streets and parks around the world, I watched feminist writers seem to give a collective shrug. As Laurie Penny wrote in the New Statesman, "While we all worry about the glass ceiling, there are millions of women standing in the basement-and the basement is flooding."

The brave new economy being rebuilt in the wake of the financial meltdown is being built on low-wage service work, as manufacturing's decline has accelerated and construction ground to a halt. At the beginning of the Great Recession, economist Heather Boushey noted at Slate, manufacturing and construction made up fully half the jobs lost, along with financial services and other business fields, and writers declared the "Mancession" or "He-cession" or even, as Hanna Rosin's popular book has it, The End of Men. But as others have pointed out, as the recession drags on, it's women who've faced the largest losses, not only in direct attacks on public sector jobs that are dominated by women, but in increased competition from the men pushed out of their previous professions. Some 60 percent of the jobs lost in the public sector were held by women, according to the Institute for Women's Policy Research. And women have regained only 12 percent of the jobs lost during the recession, while men have regained 63 percent of the jobs they lost.

Women may be overrepresented in the growing sectors of the economy, but those sectors pay poverty wages. The public sector job cuts that have been largely responsible for unemployment remaining at or near 8 percent have fallen disproportionately on women (and women of color are hit the hardest). Those good union jobs disappear, and are replaced with a minimum-wage gig at Walmart-and even in retail, women make only 90 percent of what men make.

"All work is gendered. And the economy that we have assigns different levels of value based off of that," says Ai-Jen Poo, executive director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance. Poo came to labor organizing through feminism. As a volunteer in a domestic violence shelter for Asian immigrant women, she explains, she realized that it was women who had economic opportunities who were able to break the cycle of violence. She brings a sharp gender analysis to the struggle for respect and better treatment for the workers, mostly women, who "make all other work possible."

Women may be overrepresented in the growing sectors of the economy, but those sectors pay poverty wages.

"Society has devalued that work over time," she notes of the cleaning, caring, cooking, and other work domestic workers perform, largely hidden from public view, "and we think that that has a lot to do with who's done the work."

This argument was at the root of the fight for access to employment outside of the "pink-collar" fields. To be trapped in women's jobs was to be forever trapped in a certain vision of femininity. Breaking out of "women's work" was a form of breaking through the "feminine mystique" that Betty Friedan decried. But that work still needs to be done, and, Poo notes, the conditions that have long defined domestic work and service work-instability, lack of training, lack of career pathways, low pay-are now increasingly the reality for all American workers, not just women. When we focus on equal access at the top, we miss out the real story, which historian Bethany Moreton points out, "is not 'Oh wow, women get to be lawyers,' but that men get to be casualized clerks."

Employers have relied not just on being able to pay women less, but on specific gendered skills and qualities that they expected from female workers. Moreton, in her book To Serve God and Wal-Mart, detailed the way that the retail behemoth exploited the specific skills of Southern white Christian women going to work outside the home for the first time as much as their willingness to work for little pay because they'd never been paid before. The tradition of service that those women grew up with kept them working in low-wage jobs and made it hard for them to see the gender discrimination happening before their eyes-until, that is, a few of them sued.

The conditions of women at the bottom of the economic ladder have had an impact on everyone, as the middle rungs have weakened or disappeared. Using the excuse of "care" to pay women less drove wages down, and now those jobs make up more and more of the economy, defining the lives of more and more workers. When the fastest growth fields are low-wage service jobs, that's not a victory for women, although, Poo notes, it is an opportunity to reshape the way we value service work, to make it less precarious and to create real protections for the workers who do it. In other words, not just to pay lip service to "the end of men," but to place real value on women's work.

It is, of course, the argument of the Right that women freely choose lower-paid work because they prefer caring professions or more free time to spend with their children. "[T]here's no reason to think that women will ever, on average, have the same preferences as men about combining employment and parenthood, or that they will want to become librarians and truck drivers at the same rate as men," wrote Bloomberg columnist Ramesh Ponnuru, explaining that we shouldn't "want" the pay gap to go away. But when a job has been positioned for decades as one of the only acceptable professions for a woman (by women as well as men), is it any surprise that women "choose" it? And when the workers in those professions band together to fight for respect, their fights are seen by too many pundits as outside of feminism's realm of concern or influence.

Chicago's teachers, for example, went out on strike in September. The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) is 87 percent female. It is led by Karen Lewis, a reformer who was the only African American woman in her class at Dartmouth. Prominent liberal male writers promptly sided with Democratic mayor Rahm Emanuel in his battle with the union, echoing anti-union rhetoric about overpaid public employees that differed from that spouted by Wisconsin governor Scott Walker only in degree, not in kind. Nicholas Kristof, in the pages of the New York Times, used "the students" as an excuse for calling the striking teachers' demands (which he failed to list correctly) "unconscionable," and calling for them to have fewer job protections. Dana Goldstein, a feminist and education writer, wrote one of the few pieces (on her personal blog) pointing out the feminist history of teachers' unions, explaining that the decision to hire women as teachers was made, as the nation moved to providing public schools, because women were cheaper-and politicians and public intellectuals concealed that reasoning by portraying women as natural carers, morally superior angels.

As the teachers walked the picket lines, this profession dominated by women was demonized (and continues to be, with the anti-teachers-union movie Won't Back Down in theaters as I write). Both major political parties supported wage cuts and "accountability" in the form of standardized testing and less job security. There was no public outcry as there was when, for example, Susan G. Komen for the Cure™ yanked its funding from Planned Parenthood. This, despite the fact that some 81 percent of elementary and middle-school teachers are women. Gloria Steinem did send a glowing endorsement of the strike, identifying herself as a co-founder of the Coalition of Labor Union Women, but prominent feminist blogs gave little or no space to the strike specifics.

On September 30, California governor Jerry Brown vetoed a historic bill, the second in the country after New York, that would have given domestic workers labor protections similar to those enjoyed by most other workers. Domestic work has long been a site of feminist analysis as well as organizing, yet even in 2012, the year of the "war on women" as Democratic politicians reminded us in fundraising emails, a Democratic governor felt safe vetoing protections for mostly-women workers. "What will be the economic and human impact on the disabled or elderly person and their family of requiring overtime, rest and meal periods for attendants who provide 24 hour care?" Brown's statement asked, after he lauded their "noble endeavor." "What would be the additional costs and what is the financial capacity of those taking care of loved ones in the last years of life?"

Domestic workers, Brown seemed to say, are less important than the people they care for. Feminists know that story all too well.

There's much history to the fight over domestic work. During the sixties and seventies, the Wages for Housework movement became a site where women collectively demanded acknowledgment of their work. Selma James argued, "To the degree that we organize a struggle for wages for the work we do in the home, we demand that work in the home be considered as work which, like all work in capitalist society, is forced work, which we do not for love but because, like every other worker, we and our children would starve if we stopped."

The women of the Wages for Housework movement were explicit that they wanted wages in part as a strategy to refuse the work. To demand a wage, they argued, was to reject that work as some natural component of female life. The National Domestic Workers Alliance isn't out to end domestic work, but by calling for fair standards and better wages, its members are saying that the work they do is as valuable as any other kind of work, and that it is not the "natural" place of women, mainly women of color and immigrant women, to clean up after others.

While women like James were fighting for the recognition of housework as work, the mainstream feminist movement was fighting to leave it behind in favor of "career." As Barbara Ehrenreich pointed out in Global Woman, second wave heroine Betty Friedan "raged against a society that consigned its educated women to what she saw as essentially janitorial chores, beneath 'the abilities of women of average or normal intelligence' and, according to unidentified studies she cited, 'peculiarly suited to the capacities of feeble-minded girls.'"

One of the fundamental tenets of the labor movement has always been that all work is worthy of respect; that there are no degrading jobs, only degrading conditions. It was not, Ehrenreich noted, that housework was manual labor, as Friedan argued, that made it degrading, but rather, "because it was embedded in degrading relationships and inevitably served to reinforce them. To make a mess that another person will have to deal with-the dropped socks, the toothpaste sprayed on the bathroom mirror, the dirty dishes left from a late-night snack-is to exert domination in one of its more silent and intimate forms." (Though Ehrenreich argued in this piece that people should do their own domestic work, she has been one of the NDWA's more prominent feminist supporters.)

The National Organization for Women, Ehrenreich wrote, pushed for the Fair Labor Standards Act to include household workers, but in a way that seemed to assume paid household work was necessary so that other women could do more fulfilling work. In a way, it seems, they argued for the right to drop those socks, leave those dishes, and though they wanted the women who would do the cleaning to receive labor protections, they still seemed to see it as work that, in a way, they were too good for.

Ehrenreich suggested that part of the reason that the fight over housework remains unfinished is that the people who would keep the issue alive are largely a well-off professional class, writers and pundits and politicians and professors who are part of an opinion-making elite that has largely, "like busy professional women fleeing the house in the morning," allowed the work to slide out of view.

It is class that created and maintains the schism between the professional feminists and the women who look to unions rather than to feminism to help them at work. You can't find a self-proclaimed feminist who doesn't pay at least lip service to the idea of equal pay for equal work, but we don't see a whole lot of connection between that problem and the actions that might be taken to rectify it. The Paycheck Fairness Act, which would allow workers to discuss salaries with one another in order to discover discrepancies, has been touted as a partial solution to the gender wage gap, but the idea, for instance, that workers should organize into a union whereby they'd bargain collectively for better pay and conditions seems lost.

By focusing solely on equal pay for equal work, we focus on the pay rates of individual women compared to individual men; we presume that work is taking place in the kind of white-collar workplace where one's salary can be negotiated individually rather than collectively. Marilyn Sneiderman, a lifelong labor organizer and head of Avodah, the Jewish Service Corps, notes that it's an individual struggle for a lawyer trying to make partner, but for a waitress, a janitor, a hotel housekeeper, the hope for a better job isn't promotion through the ranks. Rather, it's in pushing for paid sick days, for job security, for a raise-and those are things you get through organizing with your fellow workers.

As long as there has been a labor movement, there have been women in it; from rabblerousing organizers such as Mary Harris "Mother" Jones to anarchists such as Lucy Parsons and Emma Goldman. Poo points out that the first recorded domestic workers' strike in this country was in 1881. And those women had to fight for their place within the movement. Daniel Katz, dean of the National Labor College, noted that in New York City's famous garment workers strike in 1909, when twenty thousand women took to the streets to protest conditions in the factories where they worked, they weren't just fighting their bosses. "The women rose up against the garment shops, but this was a rising against the men. They were demanding equal participation in the union."

At the same time as the garment workers, a largely immigrant workforce, were fighting for their rights, the women's suffrage movement was in full swing. The suffragists were largely middle-class, a group connected to the larger progressive movement of the same time period, trying to "uplift" the poor; Katz noted that they saw it as "a two-pronged fight, one against the powerful and one against the 'culture' of the poor." The poor were to be saved, in other words, not to be asked for their opinion.

While the garment workers were on the picket lines, the men from the unions largely left them alone, but they were joined by some of the suffragists-including well-known and well-off women such as Nancy Astor and Alva Vanderbilt Belmont, women who, Katz pointed out, came from much more money than the factory owners, who were often immigrants themselves. But through the years the working women were hesitant to let the middle-class and wealthy women dictate the terms of trade union organizing.

Dorothy Sue Cobble, whose book The Other Women's Movement looks at the "labor feminists" whose work between the suffrage era and the second wave did much for women in the workplace, argued that you cannot understand the battles between "equal rights" feminists and the type of social feminists whose organizing was done through the labor movement without looking at class.

Today's feminist movement is not much different. The famous faces are largely white and well-educated; they are authors of books and columns and executive directors of single-focus organizations.

Yet today's feminist leaders know better, or they should. Cecile Richards, head of Planned Parenthood, got her start as an organizer with Justice for Janitors, the revolutionary labor campaign of the 1990s to make management and the world recognize the dignity and humanity of workers doing cleaning, not just in the home, but on an industrial level. Most of the janitors were women, mostly women of color, many of them immigrants.

But the divide persists. When the National Football League locked out its referees' union this year, it seemed to delight in exploiting the perceived "women vs. labor" split, putting a woman on the field for the first time as one of the replacement refs. Feminists cheered, labor folks groaned, and those of us who are both buried our heads in our hands, angered by the cynical move, wanting to cheer new ground broken for women but having learned the hard lesson that not all first steps by women are progressive. Whether it's City Council speaker Christine Quinn in New York City blocking paid sick days or Marissa Mayer taking the helm at Yahoo or Shannon Eastin taking the job of a locked-out worker for less money, we have to recognize that some first steps are taken on the backs of workers, many of whom are also women.

As long as feminists are lauding the ascension of women to boardrooms for equality's sake and not questioning what happens in those boardrooms, true liberation is a long way off.

And so we are at this point, where all too many feminists see "saving" sex workers as an appropriately feminist activity but not walking a picket line with striking teachers or nurses or hotel housekeepers. When Dominique Strauss-Kahn was accused of raping Nafissatou Diallo, a hotel housekeeper, feminists rallied to her defense, but that support hasn't led to increased support for hotel worker unions even as Hyatt hotel workers engage in a nationwide boycott, even though UNITE HERE, the hotel workers' union, supported Diallo and protects workers like her from being fired for speaking out against abuse. Instead, it led to too many swoons over Christine Lagarde, who took Strauss-Kahn's place at the International Monetary Fund.

As long as feminists are lauding the ascension of women to boardrooms for equality's sake and not questioning what happens in those boardrooms, true liberation is a long way off.

This past July, a group of women activists, community leaders, organizers, retail and restaurant workers, and reporters gathered on the front steps of New York's City Hall to speak out about paid sick leave.

Not present in the heat but part of the event just the same was Gloria Steinem, feminist luminary, who that morning had come out in the pages of the New York Times in support of a paid sick leave bill-and pressuring City Council speaker Christine Quinn, an out lesbian who hopes to become New York City's first woman mayor, to allow the bill to come up for a vote.
Author's note, January 28, 2013: "Trickle-down feminism" is a term that has been used by, among others, Tressie McMillan Cottom, Laurie Penny, and Kari Kendall Cameron.
Quinn will no doubt count on the support of feminist heavy hitters like Steinem when it comes campaign time. But Steinem and Ai-Jen Poo, and about two hundred other influential women, had signed a letter saying that their support for her was contingent on her allowing a vote on paid sick days. As long as women remain the primary caregivers in their families and also make up the majority of the city's low-wage workers without benefits, this is a feminist fight. It cannot be disguised with appeals to breaking the mayoral glass ceiling.

The gathering and the public campaign to press Quinn to stand up for all women, not just the wealthy ones, is an all too rare example of feminist leaders fighting for a labor movement goal. At press time, Quinn was holding firm. But the campaign for paid sick leave is a hopeful sign, a sign that perhaps feminism is reconsidering its place on the picket line. Trickle-down feminism won't do the job.

Sarah Jaffe is the former labor editor at Alternet and has written about the economy, organizing, and social movements for the Nation, Dissent, the American Prospect, Truthout, and Jacobin, among others.

Infographics by Imp Kerr. Data from the National Women's Law Center and the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce.

Join the Dissent community. Subscribe today.

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Trickle-Down Feminism - Dissent Magazine

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While we debate the travails of some of the world's most privileged women, most women are up against the wall. And yet for much of mainstream feminist discourse, it's as if the economy hasn't shifted, or as if there's nothing about it worth examining from the standpoint of gender.

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Author's Note: I'm writing this in hopes that it can be used to lighten the load of marginalized folks, keeping in mind that not all marginalized people want to engage in the ally conversation, and that is perfect as well. For those who do, my prayer is that when someone asks you the question, "how can I be a stronger ally?" you might choose to save your breath/energy and send this in its place.
I have been asked by two dear friends, "how can I be a stronger ally?" Being the slow emotional processor that I am, I wanted to spend some time with this before I answered them. I surely appreciate and love these two individuals, and I appreciate their vulnerability in asking me this question.

I am not going to do much coddling here; I don't know that I believe that love requires coddling. Here are six things you can do to be stronger allies.

1. Listen more; talk less. You don't have to have something to say all of the time. You don't have to post something on social media that points to how liberal/how aware/how cool/how good you are. You are lovely, human, and amazing. You have also had the microphone for most of the time, for a very long time, and it will be good to give the microphone to someone else who is living a different experience than your own.

2. For one out of every three opinions/insights shared by a person of color in your life, try to resist the need to respond with a better or different insight about something that you read or listened to as it relates to their shared opinion. Try just to listen and sit with someone else's experience. When you do share in response to what someone has shared with you, it can sometimes (not always) feel like "whitesplaining" - meaning to explain or comment on something in an over-confident or condescending way. This adds to the silencing of the voices of people of color.

3. Being an ally is different than simply wanting not to be racist (thank you for that, by the way). Being an ally requires you to educate yourself about systemic racism in this country. Read Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow and Ta-Nehisi Coates' Between the World and Me and Claudia Rankine's and so many other great books and articles that illuminate oppression and structures of white supremacy and white privilege. Use your voice and influence to direct the folks that walk alongside you in real life (or follow you on the internet), toward the voice of someone that is living a marginalized/disenfranchised experience.

Being an ally requires you to educate yourself about systemic racism in this country.

4. Please try not to, "I can't believe that something like this would happen in this day and age!" your way into being an ally when atrocities like the events in Charleston, S.C.,and Charlottesville, Va., happen. People of color have been aware of this kind of hatred and violence in America for centuries, and it belittles our experience for you to show up 300 years late to the oppression-party suddenly caring about the world. Don't get me wrong, I welcome you. I want for you to come into a place of awareness. However, your shock and outrage at the existence of racism in America echoes the fact that you have lived an entire life with the luxury of indifference about the lives of marginalized/disenfranchised folks. Please take several seats.

5. Ask when you don't know - but do the work first. This is nuanced. Some marginalized/disenfranchised folks will tell you not to ask them anything; don't be offended by that. Folks are tired, and that is understandable because it is exhausting to be a marginalized person in this world. However, there is something special that happens within human connections and relationships. In a nutshell, don't expect for people to educate you. Do the work to educate yourself. Ask questions within relationships that feel safe, and do so respectfully.

6. And finally, stop talking about colorblindness. It's not a thing. Colorblindness is totally impossible in a nation whose land was taken from the indigenous inhabitants through an attempt at genocide and horrific colonization. The same nation that enslaved humans and exploited them in every way imaginable built a nation on their backs, hung them, hunted them, and for centuries kept them from their basic inalienable rights and still does. The same nation that exploits and deports immigrants who were promised refuge within the American Constitution. The same nation that incarcerated Japanese Americans during World War II and continues to promote bigotry, exclusion, and violence against LGBTQ/gender non-identifying folks. This nation that allows swastika-wearing, Confederate-flag-toting, anti-Semitic racists to have a platform for their hate. The same nation that promised religious freedom, yet targets those who do not believe in a white, capitalist Jesus.

Ask when you don't know - but do the work first.

I love Jesus. And promise, Jesus was not white (literally brown, and wonderfully Jewish) and would have never been a capitalist.

It will never be possible for us to be colorblind, and we shouldn't ever want to be.

I heard a saying once at an Al-Anon meeting that offered me liberation: "We are only as sick as our secrets (and our shame)." Shame can only live in the darkness; it can live within the systems of denial and defensiveness that we use to cover it up. We have to name these things, acknowledge them, and begin to do the deep work of transformation, restoration - and reparation.

Yup, now I'm talking about reparations.

Privilege means that you owe a debt. You were born with it. You didn't ask for it. And you didn't pay for it either. No one is blaming you for having it. You are lovely, human, and amazing. Being a citizen of a society requires work from everyone within that society. It is up to you whether you choose to acknowledge the work that is yours to do. It is up to you whether you choose to pay this debt and how you choose to do so.

Sometimes living with privilege can disillusion us into thinking that being in community with other humans doesn't require work. This is a lie; it requires a great deal of work. And all of that work requires being a human and trying to love other humans well.

You're going to make mistakes - expect this. But keep showing up.

I believe that this is holy work, the work of justice, the pursuit of it. It doesn't need an audience, and it will not always have one. It will happen most days in ways that are unseen. It might mean providing a meal or shelter, listening, using your particular area of expertise to help someone in need of that expertise who might not have access to it otherwise, bailing a protester out of jail, or paying a family's rent one month (if you have the resources to do so), or marching at a rally with marginalized folks alongside other allies. There may not always be a practical, tangible way to pursue this work, but I believe you will know it when you meet it face-to-face.

However it looks, it will be something that you do without needing to be thanked or receive praise - you are not a savior. Marginalized/disenfranchised folks can and will survive without you - we are magic. However, I urge you to pursue this work, knowing that a system of white privilege afforded you access to opportunities while denying them to so many others.

Above all, I urge you keep trying. You're going to make mistakes; expect this. But keep showing up. Be compassionate. Lead with empathy, always. Keep learning and growing. If you do this, I truly believe you'll be doing the work of an ally.
Please keep in mind that self care is hugely important. Take care of yourself and protect your energy before you attempt to care for anyone else. Some additional resources:

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For Our White Friends Desiring to Be Allies

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Author's Note: I'm writing this in hopes that it can be used to lighten the load of marginalized folks, keeping in mind that not all marginalized people want to engage in the ally conversation, and that is perfect as well.

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At breakfast the next morning, as I laughingly texted my friends back home about the bizarre looks I'd been receiving, I finally saw one other person who was as dark-skinned as me. She was mopping the floor.

Racism is the reason I was stared at so much. Racism is also the reason that woman was mopping the floor. But many people don't understand how the two are connected, including people who are targets of racism - people such as the Nigerian friends I was texting.

My country is the most populous black nation on Earth. Our region is plagued with malaria, so colonising forces could never settle here. As a result, just like white people, Nigerians don't have to reckon with overt racism in our everyday lives. This means that most of us, also like most white people, have only a

A lot of people think racism is an attitude or a belief, or even a behaviour. It's not. Racism is a system

As I watched this sole other dark-skinned woman clean the floor, I noticed how no one stared at her the way they kept staring at me. It was almost as if she was invisible.

A lot of people think racism is an attitude or a belief, or even a behaviour. It's not. Racism is a system. There are indeed attitudes, beliefs and behaviours that result from it, but fundamentally racism is a socio-economic hierarchy created to justify the European elite's exploitation, violation and murder of Africans via chattel slavery.

This system of racism, which evolved from slavery and still exists today, does mean that certain people irrationally dislike black people, think of black people as inferior, or are mean to black people. But these are just racist attitudes, not racism itself.

The invention of race to justify slavery

Before there were black people, there were enslaved Africans. As racism took shape from its foundation of slavery, "black" people were at the bottom of its hierarchy. This is the heart of racism: that for the last 500 years, white wealth has been produced by black suffering and death. When Europeans institutionalised the practice of converting African people to private property, they needed a way to justify it. So they created a narrative about the people they enslaved.

Despite all evidence to the contrary, slavers insisted that Africans were inherently violent, lazy, stupid, sexually depraved, filthy, bereft of humanity and bestial. The bestiality was particularly important, since chattel slavery was essentially the practice of abducting human beings and forcing them into agricultural labour under animalistic conditions.

As racism took shape from its foundation of slavery, 'black' people were at the bottom of its hierarchy

Slavers relied on the church, the academy, and other belief-disseminating institutions to propagate these ideas. The size of the "African" skull and brain suddenly became of interest, and "proof" was found of our inferior intellect. The shape of our noses, the breadth of our foreheads, the musculature of our bodies, the the size of our penises and the length of our labia were advertised as evidence of inferiority.

All this was done so the profits generated by African labour in the Americas and the Caribbean could be hoarded and enjoyed by Europeans, without their having to confront the violence to which other human beings were subjected. If they felt no guilt at branding their soulless oxen or breeding prize horses, they could feel no guilt in doing the same to their Africans.

You don't have to be a racist to be racist

For the few days that I was in Bahia, I built up a friendly rapport with the mixed-race bartender who worked the evening shift. He would visibly light up as he saw me, but every time a white person approached the bar, his demeanour changed. Even while fixing me a drink, he would abandon my order to start theirs. With white women in particular, he came back to me only after repeatedly confirming that they were satisfied.

This bartender seemed to enjoy my presence at the resort (probably for the same reason that the white folks seemed not to). But that didn't change the fact that in the racist hierarchy, my "rightful" place wasn't sitting at the bar; it was mopping the floor.

Anti-racism doesn't mean to like, or marry, or just interact nicely with black people. It's not even enough to be a black person

It didn't matter that I was as much a paying guest as any of the sunburned people whose hostility made me so uncomfortable, or that the white manager was technically there to see to my satisfaction as a customer, or that the light-skinned receptionists, waiters and bartenders were professional and friendly towards me. It didn't even matter whether any of these people "liked" me or not. The resort was racist because it was a place where slavery's anti-black hierarchy of human value was in full effect.

And here's the thing: even in Nigeria - a country of almost 200 million black people - I've experienced the same de-prioritised service at restaurants that "cater to a certain clientele". I've been profiled as a prostitute while having dinner with a white male colleague, in the same way my best friend was constantly asked "how much?" while walking home in Florence. I've attended open days at Lagos schools whose prospectus is plastered with photos of four non-black children who make up 1% of the student body. My daughter's baby products were covered in photos of white infants.

All of these things are racist, yet I'm certain that few of the people involved in these situations actively dislike black people - or think lowly of them. Instead, they're just people acting normally in a system that promotes and protects Eurocentric power by denying, and at best bracketing, the humanity of Africans and Afro-descendant people. In this world, you don't have to be a racist to be racist; it's racist to just

Racism isn't an attitude (nor is anti-racism)

Racism was created to manage the psychological distress that would otherwise be a natural result of abducting and killing African human beings. That's why white guilt, or any other feeling white people may have, is useless to combat it. Just as racism isn't about your particular attitude or belief or behaviour towards Africans or Afro-descendant people, neither should benign or even benevolent feelings towards us be mistaken for anti-racism.

Racism exists to maintain a gross imbalance of power for white people by devaluing, dehumanising and murdering people of African descent. It is inadequate - and, in fact, incorrect - to think that racism is merely about skin colour, negative beliefs, or discriminatory attitudes.

is the pivot on which racism turns. The only behaviours, beliefs or actions that qualify as a meaningful response to racism are those which demonstrate materially that black people are people. As people - as human beings - we should be able to move through the world, enjoying the same socio-economic resources and freedoms that all human beings deserve.

To be anti-racist, it is not enough to like, befriend, marry, or otherwise It's not even enough to be a black person. To be anti-racist is actively to promote black safety, black prosperity, black health, black innocence, black freedom, black wellbeing and black life.

Racism has little to do with feelings or colour, but everything to do with

Anti-racism is the practice of actively countering anything that denies access, dignity and resources to black people. It's about ensuring that we have the freedom to truly live. The possibility of a life that makes us want to stay alive.

White people as a social category already have that, no matter where they are in the world - in Europe, Bahia, or Lagos. Black people deserve that freedom too - and then some, because

About the images Carolina Arantes is a Brazilian-born, Paris-based photographer. Her work explores the consequences of our colonial legacy in today's globalised world. This series, First Generation, is an ongoing project surveying the first generation of Afro-French women in France. The work surveys young adults who make up the first Afro-French generation, from families which reunited during 1975-1980. The project aims to capture national identity under construction, in the lives of these women with mixed origins. The backdrop of colonialism is a constant, subtle presence in Arantes's work. She's currently making the project into a photo book. (Lise Straatsma, image editor) See more work by Arantes here

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Click here to subscribe to my newsletter. These fires are 400 years old I'm tired, so deeply tired, of feeling grief in my body that isn't mine, but could very well be. There's a thin line between African and black. It may be a long line - 400 years long, severed bloodlines long, drowned ancestors in the Atlantic long - but it's also a thin line. Read my article here

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What racism really is (hint: it's not your attitude or belief)

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Our obsession with racist attitudes can obscure the fact that racism is a system, devised to justify slavery, with a hierarchy that still defines the value of our lives today - that's why you can be racist without being a racist.

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Claudia Rankine: 'By white privilege I mean the ability to stay alive'

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Claudia Rankine is a poet, playwright, essayist and adjunct professor of English and African American Studies at Yale University. She was born in Jamaica and moved to the US as a child. The recipient of the 2015 National Book Critics Circle award for poetry and a 2016 MacArthur "genius" fellowship, she is the author of five books, including the bestsellingCitizen: An American Lyric .

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Teju Cole wrote that a white saviour is someone who, "supports brutal policies in the morning, founds charities in the afternoon, and receives awards in the evening".

Global_Geneva recently released the third annual Top NGO ranking , and unfortunately, it's more of the same. In 2013, I reviewed the Board profiles of the previous ranking , focusing on their gender balance and diversity, and links to the tobacco, weapons and finance industries. The findings were troubling. Many of the listed NGOs were not adequately diverse or representative, and over half had links to the above industries.

This year's ranking reveals similarly disturbing trends. Though 78% of the activities of the NGOs listed take place in the majority world , the ranking remains skewed towards NGOs headquartered in the West (64%). This once again sends signals about who has value and expertise, and reinforces the fallacy that citizens of Western countries are best equipped to change the world.

Diversity continues to lag. Women and men of European origin are still over-represented in leadership positions (over 60% overall and by gender). The representation of women is still relatively low (40%, of whom 63% are of European origin). More disturbing, however, is the lack of ethnic diversity.

The statistics on Africa and Africans (including the diaspora) are once again particularly disconcerting.

Only 5% (26) of the 500 NGOs listed have their headquarters in Africa, yet 33% of activity takes place in that region. Of those 26, only 7 are in the top 100 and most (9) are found in the last tier (401-500).

Only 4% of CEOs are of African descent.

People of African descent are the only group in which there are fewer male than female CEOs. This implies an institutional bias against black men.

In the regional rankings, only 25 NGOs have been selected for the top African ranking compared to 100 each in Europe, North America and Asia/Australasia. Moreover, of the 25, 8 are outside the African continent (2 in Bahrain, 3 in Israel, 3 in Jordan).

Many NGOs continue to display stereotypical and patronising images and videos that portray Africans in particular as poor and needy victims devoid of agency.

In addition, a large proportion of the 'top' NGOs continue to appoint leaders who are not representative of the communities and groups they claim to serve, and retain links to corporate interests that appear to be inconsistent with their mandate or public identity.

As with the previous ranking, a number have Board members as well as funders with links to the tobacco, finance and weapons industries. Some, such as Room to Read for instance, pride themselves in such links: 'Our leadership team is comprised of veterans of such venerable corporations as Goldman Sachs...'. Others are partnered with corporations that have been accused of human rights and environmental violations: for example, Akshaya Patra with Monsanto to provide food for children, Care with Cargill to combat poverty, Vital Voices with Walmart to increase economic opportunities for women, Injaz-al-Arab with ExxonMobil to mentor Arab youth. The International Crisis Group receives support from corporate members of its International Advisory Council, including Shell and Chevron.

Some also have affiliations with individuals whose political or professional record is arguably inconsistent with the mandates of the NGOs they serve: examples include the International Rescue Committee (Henry A. Kissinger, Condoleeza Rice and Madeleine Albright, Overseers), the International Crisis Group and ONE Campaign (Lawrence Summers, Board member), and Operation Blessing (M. G. 'Pat' Robertson, Board member).

The rather broad failure of many of the listed NGOs to have representative leaderships is reflected in some of their publicity statements and attitudes. Some exhibit slogans that offer absurdly simplistic solutions ('You can cure starvation' - Concern Worldwide; 'Change the World in 4 clicks' - Ufeed). Others display hubristic attitudes (S.O.U.L. Foundation says that its President represents 'a new generation of young American activists who are quickly growing into a group of enthusiastic non-profit entrepreneurs and leaders who are choosing a piece of the world and changing it'; GreenHouse's ambition is 'trying to save the world by developing new models of social change to better people's lives'). FAME World even adopts a disturbingly traditional missionary approach: it takes 'Christ to the unreached and underserved' but provides no assistance to non-Christian organisations.

We are all incoherent. Recognising this, where is the line between incoherence and deceit?

As individuals, we can easily deceive ourselves into believing that we do not perpetuate global inequities and discriminatory attitudes we claim to oppose. Organisations are no different. When NGOs are challenged to meet standards of integrity and fail to do so, they start to fit Teju Cole's definition of white saviours.

International aid and advocacy is a multi-billion dollar industry and the corporate structures of the largest NGOs increasingly resemble those of large businesses. At the same time, NGO appeals for public support and public money rely heavily and distinctively on their claim to moral authority. Given this, it is entirely reasonable to expect NGOs to demonstrate their institutional integrity, including accountability to those they claim to serve. Unfortunately, Global_Geneva takes neither of these criteria into account. By choosing to rank so many NGOs in the manner it does, Global_Geneva and those who support it reinforce paternalist models of decision-making and governance that should be challenged rather than lauded.

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Annual NGO ranking shows that the "white savior" status quo remains intact

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Teju Cole wrote that a white saviour is someone who, "supports brutal policies in the morning, founds charities in the afternoon, and receives awards in the evening". Global_Geneva recently released the third annual Top NGO ranking , and unfortunately, it's more of the same.

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Do more black, Asian and minority Ethnic people (BAME) in executive positions in the media help or hinder the progress of BAME people...

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Listen to an interview with Jen on The Diversity Gap podcast about racism, common hang ups white leaders face as they try to pursue antiracist lives and leadership. In this interview, Jen shares personal examples of internalized white superiority.

A page from the notebook I used during the Undoing Racism, People's Institute for Survival and Beyond workshop I took in 2008, the first time I heard the phrase "internalized racial superiority." (1)

More white people now than ever, perhaps, are talking about and interested in racial justice in the U.S. We are visiting the Equal Justice Initiative's lynching memorial and museum in Montgomery, Alabama; we are reading Robin DiAngelo's White Fragility ; we are "woke." And yet, in my work as a racial justice educator, I see white leaders of nonprofits, businesses, health and education departments struggling the most to look inward when it comes to race. Perhaps it's easier to own the privileges we experience as white people because those are about how we are treated by systems and by other people. But to be open to seeing the ways in which the way I lead, the programs I have developed, and the relationships I have with people of color may be tinted by my own racial biases; this is where I see a lot of resistance from white people. And I empathize. I feel icky every time I use the phrase "internalized white superiority." It's shameful and embarrassing. And I use this phrase purposefully in my work. While none of us were born with racist ideas or beliefs, we begin to internalize them as toddlers by observing what is happening all around us.

Ok, so what is internalized white superiority? I think a lot of people are more familiar with internalized inferiority for people of color as one of the many ways racism works. I'd like to challenge white folks who are wondering, "What?! How could I possibly have that?! I love the people of color in my life--my friends, family members. I absolutely do not believe that white people are better in any way than people of color." In a racist society, everyone internalizes racist beliefs to some degree.
A simple way to define internalized white superiority is as the beliefs, thoughts, and assumptions (of white people and cultures as better than other racial groups) that live inside of my white body and my white brain, which influence my actions.
You might think of this like a spectrum. Internalized white superiority is everything from people on the one extreme, "I believe white people are superior to people of all other races" to people on the other extreme, "Of course I do not believe that white people are superior; I am not racist!!" although in reality I do believe this on a subconscious or unconscious level and I act according to those beliefs daily. These dangerous and false racist ideas were invented approximately five centuries ago by Europeans.(2) They need not go unchecked any longer.

This is a list of ways that internalized white superiority often shows up. I compiled this list from multiple sources including dRworks and Robin DiAngelo , and from my own experience:

Ok, so that's a lot to digest. For some personal stories about how this shows up,

Fantasy of fragility: When I experience discomfort in the presence of Black, Indigenous, People of Color; or when matters of race come up, I confuse fear with danger and comfort with safety, triggering a fight, flee or freeze response (read more about this ) here and here

listen to this interview with me. All of these are learned beliefs and behaviors; all of them can be unlearned and replaced. It is on us, as white people, to undo internalized white superiority in ourselves, our institutions, homes, and communities. We must not wait for or rely on Black, Indigenous, and People of Color to explain it to us or to see it for us. Learning to see the ways in which I have internalized beliefs in the superiority of white people and white ways of being/doing further equips me to show up as a white accomplice to Black, Indigenous and People of Color. Why? Because as I learn how I "caught" these messages, I can get better at spotting them when they show up in me and I can get better at uprooting them. This level of antiracism(3) work keeps me humble; it requires building my own stamina internally, for seeing things within myself that I don't like or want and moving through them to learn and teach myself another way of being.
Take on your internalized white superiority, like you take on anything else in your life that you want to change, by:

Choosing to take the uncomfortable path

Making peace with the fact that internalized white superiority (yes, racism!) exists within you

Building a practice of noticing when and how your internalized white superiority is showing up

Releasing perfectionism and unrealistic expectations of yourself

Working through it with a supportive therapist

Talk to other white people about it, and lean on each other for support in uprooting your internalized white superiority and replacing it with more intentional antiracism

Recommended resources for everyone: Recommended resource for people raising or working with white kids:
​ 1. According to The People's Institute for Survival and Beyond, Internalized Racial Oppression manifests itself in two forms: Internalized Racial Inferiority (The acceptance of and acting out of an inferior definition of self, given by the oppressor, is rooted in the historical designation of one's race. Over many generations, this process of disempowerment and disenfranchisement expresses itself in self-defeating behaviors) and Internalized Racial Superiority (The acceptance of and acting out of a superior definition is rooted in the historical designation of one's race. Over many generations, this process of empowerment and access expresses itself as unearned privileges, access to institutional power and invisible advantages based upon race). See 3. I draw on Ibram X. Kendi's work here (
2. Stamped from the Beginning: A History of Racist Ideas by Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist), using the term "antiracism" because antiracism requires proactive daily practice. I agree with Kendi that there is no such thing as "not racist" because in every moment and with every action, we are either colluding with racism or proactively promoting antiracism. He defines an antiracist as "someone who is expressing the idea that racial groups are equals and none needs developing." My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending our Hearts and Bodies by Resmaa Menakem, Unsettling Truths: The Ongoing, Dehumanizing Legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery by Mark Charles and Soong-Chan Rah

"Our grandparents called themselves Christians and sometimes believed they were. Believing it, they were compelled to believe it was morally right for them to hold slaves. They could not say, 'We shall keep our slaves because they are profitable, regardless of right and wrong.' A few tough old realists who didn't claim to be in the Fold probably did say it. But to most, such words would have seemed as fantastic as a confession of their mixed reasons for opposing slavery would have seemed to the Yankees. Our grandfathers' conscience compelled them to justify slavery and they did: by making the black man 'different,' setting him outside God's law, reducing him to less than human. In a way that would have seemed blasphemous, had they stopped to think, they took God's place and 'decided' which of His creatures have souls and which do not. And once doing it, they continued doing it, and their sons continued doing it, and their grandsons, telling themselves and their children more and more and more lies about white superiority until they no longer knew the truth and were lost in a maze of fantasy and falsehood that had little resemblance to the actual world they lived in."

--From Killers of the Dream, by Lillian Smith (1949)

Jen Willsea is an Atlanta-based queer mama, sewist and dreamer living on unceded Muscogee/Creek territory and on a Civil War battle site, with settler colonial ancestors who left Holland and England in the 1600s to claim Haudenosaunee and Wampanoag land. Jen is recognized in Atlanta and across the U.S. as one of the most highly skilled white anti-racist facilitators of our time. People know Jen as open, warm, bold, and unwavering in her commitment to living with integrity and in community to build a future beyond white supremacy. Her personal antiracism journey began almost 20 years ago as a young activist. For more than a decade, Jen has guided groups across the U.S. to strengthen their social and racial justice work--as a facilitator, coach, consultant, and organizer. Jen was Senior Associate at the Interaction Institute for Social Change 2008-2018 (IISC is a nonprofit consulting firm that builds collaborative capacity for people and groups working for social justice and racial equity), and Member of the Board of Directors at Resource Generation 2009-2017 (RG is a group that organizes young people with wealth and class privilege toward equitable redistribution of land, wealth and power). After the murder of Michael Brown by a white police officer in 2014, Jen worked with other folks in the RG community to launch and lead the It Starts Today campaign , organizing $1.4 million in funding to more than 100 Black-led groups "organizing for Black liberation" across the U.S. In 2019, Jen worked in a white accomplice role to help launch The Black Mecca Project , which cultivates the conditions for Black liberation and self-determination in Atlanta, Georgia, a city known across the globe as a "Black mecca" that has yet to fully live up to that promise. Jen's work is motivated by a love for humanity and the earth, and a belief that white people can and must transform ourselves if we are to end white supremacy and participate in a future in which people of all races can thrive.

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Got Internalized White Superiority? The Danger of Denial and the Promise of Another Way

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Listen to an interview with Jen on The Diversity Gap podcast about racism, common hang ups white leaders face as they try to pursue antiracist lives and leadership. In this interview, Jen shares personal examples of internalized white superiority.

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ast week, London nightclub Dstrkt was accused of turning away two young black women for being "too fat" and "too dark", prompting a swift, strident response on social media. The club was quick to deny the allegations and the council equally quick to express its concern. News outlets went into overdrive, to find "voices" to give the incident context. In the Guardian, one writer explained that young black people often resort to unlikely methods to get into certain clubs - the kind, like Dstrkt in Soho, that aren't really about the music anyway - while in the Independent, DJ Edward Adoo discussed the pervasive racism of London's nightclubs as a matter of fact.

But what is alleged to have happened at Dstrkt isn't just about race; the accused promoter is black. It's about gender too. Discrimination, prejudice and unchecked fear aimed specifically at black women now has a name: misogynoir.

The term was coined in 2010 by gay black feminist American academic Moya Bailey, who defined it " to describe the particular brand of hatred directed at black women in American visual and popular culture ".

Since then black women - and some men - predominantly on social media, have taken ownership of the term, using it to describe prejudice experienced in a range of contexts.

"Misogynoir provides a racialised nuance that mainstream feminism wasn't catching," says black feminist commentator, Feminista Jones. "We are talking about misogyny, yes, but there is a specific misogyny that is aimed at black women and is uniquely detrimental to black women."

She says it is both about racial and gender hatred and can be perpetuated by non-black people and by black men - it is the latter, Jones says, she experienced the most often. "In my campaigning on street harassment, I have been targeted because I am a black woman who is vocal. They don't go to anybody from Hollaback or Stop Street Harassment [campaigns run by white women] ... they will say I'm a traitor and call me a tool for white supremacy ... just because I'm calling out their very targeted misogynoir."

It's not ideal, as the comedian The Kid Mero pointed out last week, "We gotta make up better terms for oppressive shit cuz 'misogynoir' sounds like a scandalous Cirque du Soleil Vegas show". Still, the term has spread to Britain, where most recently, writer Maya Goodfellow discussed misogynoir on the online platform Media Diversified, in reference to the abuse Diane Abbott has received since her appointment as shadow international development secretary. Goodfellow concluded that "a black woman who challenges the status quo and won't apologise for doing so will always be judged unfairly. Because too many, subconsciously, feel it's not up to people 'like her' to be the voice of opposition."

Of course, detractors will inevitably counter that bouncers abuse their power all the time and people of all races and gender have at some point been refused entry. And that as a politician, Abbott is fair game for ridicule and scorn. Both of those points are acceptable, but neither explain or invalidate the experiences of hostility that sit at the intersection between sexism and racism.

Diane Abbott ... new job criticised. Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images

At the heart of this concept are two corrosive stereotypes. The first characterises black people as animalistic, uncontrolled or uncontrollable, and is in part responsible for the concepts of the "angry or strong black woman". These are used to deny pain and legitimise offence: "Oh, that unfair treatment you've received at work? You'll get over it, you're a strong black woman." The second is that black women's bodies are hypersexualised: the "sexy black woman" is all tits and twerking.

Few people in the public eye seem to have experienced this problem quite as much as Serena Williams. To the United States Tennis Association president, Katrina Adams - and countless others - Williams is the "greatest athlete of all time". John McEnroe recently described her as "I think, the greatest player that ever lived". But to the Twitter trolls she's "a gorilla", "more manly than any man". As Marc Bain wrote in Quartz: "Only sexism and racism can explain why Serena Williams doesn't earn more in endorsements."

Misogynoir may also explain how American actor Nancy Lee Grahn can praise Patricia Arquette for using her Oscar speech to speak out about gender inequalities, but ridicule Viola Davis for doing the same thing, saying to the former: "Use your win to champion women. Make your moment matter. I like that." But to the latter: "None of us get the respect we deserve. Emmys not venue for racial opportunity."

Zalika Miller, Reisha, Tasha and Lin Mei on their way to Dstrkt nightclub in the West End Photograph: Lin Mei

It is because mainstream feminism has so often failed to recognise and include the experience of black and transgender women that terms such as misogynoir have been able to flourish in the shadow of feminism's third wave. Grahn has since apologised on Twitter.

But the intention was never to use jargon to exclude the majority, in order to create safe space for the minority. Instead, argues Jones, the word is supposed to start a broader conversation. "If people want to dismiss it as jargon, it's because they don't want to be part of the conversation. [The term] is for everybody. We [black women] can talk until we are blue in the face but if nobody else is listening and nobody else is willing to work to make change, it really doesn't do much for us."

But misogynoir simply connects a new generation to the gap in the discourse on rights that abolitionist Sojourner Truth spoke of in her 1851 speech, Ain't I a Woman. Then she told a gathering of feminists about her own needs that went unmet "betwixt the negro in the south and the white woman in the north, all talking about rights". It has only taken 164 years to give Truth's predicament a name. Here's to hoping we don't spend the next 164 discussing the term, while continuing to make excuses for the discrimination it describes.

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Misogynoir: where racism and sexism meet

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ast week, London nightclub Dstrkt was accused of turning away two young black women for being "too fat" and "too dark", prompting a swift, strident response on social media. The club was quick to deny the allegations and the council equally quick to express its concern.

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Make Motherhood Diverse is an act of inclusion.

Because when we look at representations of motherhood in our society awareness demands we ask, where are the black mums, the brown mums, the differently-abled mums? Where are those caring for children with additional needs? Where are those with tattoos and piercings, pink hair or those who just don't care about their appearance? Where are the gay mums, the plus sized mums, the working class mums?

Where are the mums who might tick several or all of these boxes?

This space is dedicated to trying to give all versions of Motherhood the chance to be heard.
STORIES

Mothering autism

Arthur was diagnosed with autism at age 3, a year after his little sister was born. From the age of around 18 months, I was less and less able to identify with others experience of motherhood. From the slowing down of development, the lack of speech and the extreme meltdowns, it was becoming clearer that what was happening in my house, wasn't happening in others.

Elephants

There are many different boxes in this world or circles as some like to call them. They're opportunities to distinguish one group from another. They're also a tool used to categorize people based on factors out of their control. So, since we're on the topic let's talk about the elephants in this room. I am a black, inner-city London, 18-24-year-old, child of a single parent, overweight, dyslexic and dyspraxic, unmarried mother, student, working-class woman. According to societal norms and values, this description of myself is a sentence purely loaded with social inequalities.

mOTHERING MEMORIES

We don't look like mothers, those of us that whose children have died, and yet mothers we are. I had all the thoughts of a mother, all the feelings, and no outlet for them. I had had the experiences, birth, feeding, bad nights, good nights, I knew what to do and yet these things remained inside me

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Make Motherhood Diverse is an act of inclusion. Because when we look at representations of motherhood in our society awareness demands we ask, where are the black mums, the brown mums, the differently-abled mums? Where are those caring for children with additional needs?

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LGBTQ equality charity Stonewall have released new research which shows that more than half of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) LGBTQ people have faced discrimination from the wider LGBTQ community.

The new report investigated the experiences of different groups of LGBTQ people at home, in LGBTQ communities, and in faith groups, polling over 5,000 people for the survey.

The results exposed the extent to which BAME LGBTQ people face double discrimination - being victim to prejudice based on both their sexual orientation and/or gender identity, as well as their race.

Over half of BAME LGBTQ people (51%) say they've faced discrimination or poor treatment from the wider LGBTQ community.

That number increases to three in five (61%) for black LGBTQ people.

BAME LGBTQ have cited racist language and behaviour - particularly on dating apps - as the most common forms of discrimination from within the LGBTQ community.

Elsewhere, Stonewall looked into acceptance from family and friends for different groups of LGBTQ people.

Just under half of LGBTQ people feel able to be open about their sexual orientation and/or gender identity to their whole family.

A third of bisexual people (32%) say they cannot be open with family members about their sexual orientation at all.

Moreover, the research revealed that transgender, LGBTQ disable people, and LGBTQ people of faith were at most risk of being excluded by their families when they come out.

More than a third of rans people (36%), a quarter of LGBTQ disabled people (26%) and a fifth of LGBTQ people of faith (21%) say they've experienced some form of discrimination from within the LGBTQ community.

"This research gives a worrying insight into just how serious a problem prejudice is within our community, and we need to talk about it," said Ruth Hunt, Chief Executive, Stonewall UK.

"Users of dating apps will be familiar with phrases like 'No blacks, no Asians' and 'No chocolate, no curry, no rice, no spice' becoming the modern-day versions of 'No blacks, no dogs, no Gypsies'.

"Both online and in their daily lives, LGBT people of colour are excluded and face stereotyping from their white peers. This leaves BAME LGBT people feeling unwelcome within the wider community."

She added: "This is unacceptable and it causes damage and mistrust. If real change for BAME LGBT people is to occur, we as a community need to hold a mirror to ourselves and have open conversations about how to change.

"This means learning to recognise our own privileges and to be active allies to each other. The same is true for Stonewall: we are absolutely aware that we too are on a journey and we have a long way to go. But we are committed to learning and getting it right going forward - both internally within Stonewall, and externally.

"To truly work with and for all LGBT communities, we have to be an active part of the solution to many of the issues outlined in this report. Our 'Come Out For LGBT' campaign is all about being visible and doing something to stand up for others.

"This research shows just how much those voices are needed if we are to get to a point where everyone in our community is included as an equal.

"It's only by working together that we can create a world where all LGBT people are accepted without exception."

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More than half of BAME LGBTQ people have faced discrimination from the wider LGBTQ community

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LGBTQ equality charity Stonewall have released new research which shows that more than half of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) LGBTQ people have faced discrimination from the wider LGBTQ community. The new report investigated the experiences of different groups of LGBTQ people at home, in LGBTQ communities, and in faith groups, polling over 5,000 people for the survey.

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In my late twenties, I fell in love with Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie's words. In part it was because I understood the world she was describing. I had not yet been to Nigeria, and knew nothing of Nsukka - the university town that features so prominently in so many of her books and stories. Still, that didn't matter. I knew the striving and the drive; the piety and the pride that drove her characters because I had seen them in the household in which I grew up. I recognized my people and their ambitions and so Purple Hibiscus became mine.

I love books for different reasons. I loved Alice in Wonderland because it mapped out an imaginary world I would never have ventured into on my own. I loved Oliver Twist because I understood the longing Dickens so painstakingly described.

There are some books that you love because reading them is a struggle: Albert Camus' L'etranger has a special place in my heart because I read it in French when I was in high school. It was hard work grappling with existentialism in a language I had only heard in school. Yet Camus was preoccupied with making sense of a society built on the same sorts of inequalities and corruptions I knew so well. The complications and difficulties of that book are etched in my heart. In other words, most books matter because of who you are at the time you are reading them. This is precisely why Adichie meant so much to me.

I was not alone. Adichie's arrival on the literary scene was heralded with much excitement because she was precisely the sort of writer many women of my generation needed, and ours was a powerful and unique generation. Born after colonialism had ended we were free and the continent in which we grew up was still gleaming with possibilities. Although by the time I was thirty, Africa was seen as a "basket-case," the Africa of my childhood was not yet a failure. Adichie found a way to articulate that. She was writing the kind of books many of us had been wanting to read. She represented the future so many of us had known as children.

I had not yet thought I might pursue writing in any serious way, but I saw myself as the sort of confident young woman whose ideas might matter and be taken seriously. Before her, I had devoured the books of Miriama Ba and Tsitsi Dangaremba and Sindiwe Magona and a host of African women whose writing had been crucial to my intellectual formation. Yet none of them were my contemporaries. None had come of age alongside me in the way Adichie was doing. I saw myself in the worlds she created, but I also saw myself as a fellow traveller, as someone who was striking out a new path in her field. I was doing what she was doing in a sense, just in my own small professional patch.

In many ways then Adichie occupied a unique place in contemporary black women's thought and literature for at least a decade before the phrase black girl magic was coined as a hashtag, and as the motto for a new generation's struggle for recognition and self-love.

Adichie is African of course, but because she began writing in a world that was more global than it had ever been, because she traveled so frequently between Nigeria and America, she was easily claimed as a member of a much larger global African diaspora. She may technically belong to two countries, but she is collectively seen as a daughter or a sister to black people in a broader sense.

In other words, Adichie has become a signifier for something larger than herself. In some ways, she has marked the rise of what Taiye Selassie calls, "the Afropolitan." The phrase is problematic, and I use it fully aware of its complications. Still, part of the Adichie phenomenon has been the sense for many Africans who are similarly located as citizens of Africa as a concept, that if success was possible for her in the world of arts and letters, then surely, we might all succeed in the various new terrains we sought to master - from engineering to cosmetic surgery to venture capital.

And it was when we began to project our dreams onto her that loving Adichie the symbol - rather than her books - became murky. This is not unique to Adichie, but it provides a stark example of the limits of black girl magic. It plays in the dangerous terrain in which we accept that, "there is some sort of inherent connection between all brown-skinned persons. We know something. We necessarily connect...[A]ll group identities are constructed. However, some group identities run away with us. Some become harmful, or even work against the purpose they were created to defeat...[T]he "Afropolitan" is just such a group identity. It is exclusive, elitist and self-aggrandizing."

By the time Adichie's " Danger of a single story " TED talk was released, she was already flirting with fame. The talk has been viewed millions of times and it helped her to take the first serious steps towards genuine fame. It became a manifesto, a sort of treatise for a new generation of feminists of all races but of a very particular class background, who were looking for more complicated ways of understanding the world than their mothers had been able to provide.

Both in its substance and in its form, the talk laid the foundation for the sort of hero Adichie would be. She was at once acceptable - pretty and made up but not too much - and rebellious. She broke the rules by not memorizing the talk. She read her talk because she was not the sort who would be pushed to adhere to silly rules about how to give good TED talks. She stood in jeans and a head-wrap and read her comments. The ease of her words, and the commonsense style of her delivery were at once charming and intimidating. Adichie was haughty and no nonsense and infinitely poised in a way that was instantly recognizable to me as a middle class African woman who had met many women raised in Adichie's mold. She was not a new phenomenon to me, she was simply a newly celebrated phenom, and I allowed myself the indulgence of enjoying the moment as though it were my own.

The talk cemented her status as the sort of intellectual rock star, the kind of literary and cultural maven many of us had been looking for. Even in her form, she was supremely of the moment. Giving a record-breaking TED Talk was a supremely contemporary way to get famous, and it mapped onto the ways in which a new generation of diligent and prodigious middle class Africans hoped to make their mark. As the "Africa rising" narrative swept across the pages of The Economist and The Financial Times, Adichie's star rose higher and higher.

While her book sales were significant and her name was on the lips of more people than ever, it was her next talk titled " Why we should all be feminists," that sealed her place in the firmament of literary and popular culture. She had tapped into an important conversation - albeit one that had been happening around her with far more complexity and rigor, for many generations.

She was both able to speak to a mainstream audience, and signal to a core constituency of imagined and imaginary black women who were as Selassie might say, "nodding with recognition" at her words. She explained feminism so well that Beyonce - a pop icon who is similarly able to signify to an imagined audience of black folks while speaking in a language the master understands and can commodify - included the talk in her song " Flawless."

Since the release of "Flawless," Adichie has increasingly been used as an expert on non-fiction matters relating to race, gender and African politics. Beyond her books, she has come to be recognized as a spokesperson in the West.

There are traps of course for any literary celebrity, and certainly for one who hails from Africa. As Professor Simon Gikandi points out, "... globalization creates all of these opportunities for novelists and writers; but at the same time, of course, again the more complex issue revolves around the terms of that globalization. Some people could argue... that in order for these fictions to become global, they have had to be involved in a fascinating and sometimes disturbing act of cultural translation because their audiences are no longer located in their sites of referent. Let me put it this way: there is a split between the object of representation, and the people who read it... [W]orks are set in East Africa but... readers are North American, and in that sense it would be interesting to ask what kinds of transactions have taken place so that these African fictions can succeed in a global scene. So the global scene, and globalization in general, are transforming the terms of cultural contact, but also transforming the forms of fiction."

Adichie has no control over this of course. These are forces far larger than she. At the same time, because she has walked so confidently into the realm of non-fiction, and has agreed on multiple occasions, to take up the mantle of "spokesperson," there is an increasing expectation that she is up to the task; that she can in fact authentically speak on behalf of the fans who adore her. Over time those fans have included young women enthralled by her popularization of existing mainstream feminist ideas and LGBTI communities across the diaspora and in urban European, American and African contexts.

Recently, Adichie made comments about trans-women that indicated that she was more conservative in her feminism and her understanding of matters of sexuality and gender than many of her fans had assumed. And finally, it seems the sparkle has worn off Adichie.

Both her comments and her clarifications were offensive. Yet "celebrities" wander into territory they aren't equipped to navigate all the time, and in so doing they grossly oversimplify and flatten and demean the experiences of the people on whose behalf they claim to speak. So, in a sense, one might suggest her misstep was not such a big deal.

The difference is of course that Adichie is not Angelina Jolie. She has staked her reputation on substance and heft and thoughtfulness. Yet the disappointment amongst members of LGBTI and feminist communities I spoke with after Adichie's comments were published, went deeper than that and it is important to examine that disappointment and what it speaks to.

In part, Adichie's over-reach is again bigger than her. It is a consequence of a growing culture of stanning. Adichie has been steeped in a celebrity culture that has created the Beyhive - which functions as an emotional bodyguard for the singer; and she has been embraced and championed by the black girl magic movement. Stanning is not merely being a fan, it often involves taking on an active and confrontational stance in relation to defending one's celebrity. The celebrity becomes an extension of the fan - a persona who stands in for the identities of those who love him or her. I understand the power of this feeling, and it is clear why Adichie has become as much of a celebrity as an African literary author can be, in the midst of this climate.

There is a politics to the adoration of course. Beyonce's fans are not unthinking robots. As Fezokuhle Mthonti notes, in an essay in The Con, those who stan for Beyonce are "a complex set of people who traverse space and place in multiple and complicated ways." Mthonti decries "the assumption that we are a homogenous set of automatons who have no agency, no capacity for critical thought." Similarly, there is a politics that propels those who continue to admire Adichie even in the face of her transphobia. It is a politics similar to that which keeps her fans publicly quiet, even as they wonder about her decision to agree to promote Boots No. 7 by suggesting in a glamorous and expensive-looking ad, "the truth is, make up doesn't actually mean anything, its simply make up." Make up is a choice of course, and the conversation about its role and place in the lives of women and men is an important one. To have that discussion in service of selling make up is at best disingenuous, and at worst, patently self-serving. Still, the very fact of Adichie being chosen to represent a major fashion brand at all is seen as an affirmation - something not to be criticized but to be praised. The disquiet is quelled by the sense of being under siege, of being always scrutinized by the forces of racism and sexism. In this environment, raising questions - especially publicly - is seen as an attack.

It is clear then that the relative silence in relation to the commodification of Adichie's messages - particularly her feminism - is a testament to the fact that black girl magic has reached the limits of its usefulness.

***

When CeShawn Thompson created the hashtag #BlackGirlMagic in 2013, she was giving contemporary voice to a long-practiced strategy for coping amongst marginalized and excluded. The hashtag sought to push back against mainstream narratives about black women. The idea was simple. As a piece in the Huffington Post noted: "Black Girl Magic was used to illustrate the universal awesomeness of black women. It's about celebrating anything we deem particularly dope, inspiring, or mind-blowing about ourselves."

It caught on. It has provided a quick and easy retort to those who have felt it necessary to deride Venus and Serena Williams. It helped to push back against those who suggested Viola Davis was not "classically beautiful." It shone a spotlight on the achievements of Misty Copeland, Simone Biles, Michelle Obama, and a host of other African-American women who were in the public eye, but risked backlash. #BlackGirlMagic enveloped them in a protective blanket. As they soared, they were kept on course by a brigade of young black women wearing capes making the air around them shimmer with beautiful arrogance.

As is almost always the case with pop culture, what began as a subaltern articulation with particular resonance amongst an internally cohesive group, managed to spread. The phrase was a push-back, a statement about the virtual impossibility of continuing to exist in the face of daily threats to life and limb - especially in Europe and Australia, where black women were visible minorities, or in places like Brazil and South Africa where blacks are the demographic majority but come up hard against the reality that the architecture of racism has resisted dismantling. The phrase acknowledges - in a subtext that is easy for black women to understand - the idea that black women pulled rabbits out of hats, made food appear where there was no money, provided us with educations. The phrase captures the sense when black women are able to succeed in systems that were never meant to accommodate them, it takes supernatural strength.

While the genesis of the phrase was political in ways that matter, it was also always teetering on the ledge of the sort of feel-good feminism that can be essentialist and counter-productive. Over time, black girl magic has run into tricky terrain. It has been gobbled up by the mainstream and has begun to privilege mainstream black women. In addition, inevitably, the advertising industry has been only to happy to capitalize on the trendiness of certain kinds of black women in ways that operate to depoliticize and deracinate what is worth saving in the idea of black girl magic.

And so we find ourselves in a moment in which the sort of black girl magic that is visible in popular culture is no longer subversive. Instead, the catch phrase too often celebrates only certain kinds of black women, and in so doing essentializes what it means to be a black girl, and what magic ought to look like. Rather than the emancipatory arrogance that has helped oppressed people survive exploitation, black girl magic offers a smug and increasingly narrow celebration of black womanhood.

And so, for many who remain on the fringes of even black womanhood itself - fat black women, trans women, disabled black women, dark skinned black women, poor black women, queer black women, sex workers who are black women - the notion of magic simply doesn't apply.

It is virtually impossible to be magical while navigating systems of power that are genuinely hostile to those who seek to resist them. So for example, it is not evident in the hashtag movement, whether or not the struggles of black women who survive welfare and criminal justice systems - and do not tweet about their troubles - qualify as black girl magic. Do those who survive physical abuse and continue to go to school but are not straight A students make it onto the list of woman crushes?

Indeed, even for those who are included, those who are toasted for their magic, those - like Adichie and Beyonce and actress Taraji B. Henson - who have legions of fans who sprinkle them with fairy dust, the idea of being magical has its burdens.

Many of the women who occupy the black girl magic spotlight have support systems. Women like Michelle Obama, Serena Williams and Henson - the faves of the black girl magic movement - are wealthy. They are public figures for whom having fans is a part of life. Still, because the rise of black girl magic has coincided with an explosion in celebrity culture, and an intensification of the stan, these women find themselves in untenable positions - having to make choices and speak on behalf of people whose desires and dreams they will never know. This is at once the privilege and the quandary of being high profile. In addition, when the stumble - as Adichie has in a number of ways of late - the condemnation is harsh and swift. The fury aimed at black women is almost always disproportionate to the offense. Ironically, this paradox is precisely why stanning has become such an important - albeit double-edged - act of solidarity.

In "Why we should all be feminists," Adichie argues: "Masculinity is a hard, small cage, and we put boys inside this cage." She is right of course. It is also evident that black girl magic has come to function, if not as a cage, then certainly as a cave. Like cages, caves have their merits. They provide shelter from the elements and can offer privacy and spaces from which to recuperate. Still, caves can be dark dank places because they seldom let in enough light.

We are living through a difficult global moment. There are many forces arrayed against the very people black girl magic was conjured to protect and defend. Perhaps then, it is time to accept that creating new possibilities doesn't happen magically. The work of imaging new futures and shaping alternate trajectories does not belong to a few glammed up spokespersons. Maybe we need to accept that it is the stans who will change their own world - through their solidarity and organizing and their critical intellect. This - much more than magic - will push our faves to be better.

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In my late twenties, I fell in love with Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie's words. In part it was because I understood the world she was describing. I had not yet been to Nigeria, and knew nothing of Nsukka - the university town that features so prominently in so many of her books and stories.

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This story is part of a group of stories called

After a weekend of unrest, many people posted black squares on their Instagrams on Tuesday. The first dozen on my feed were from friends, most of them white, with captions that expressed solidarity with Black Lives Matter, or a commitment to educate themselves and use their privilege to fight against racial injustice. After a few scrolls, the black squares started coming from brands, companies that expressed similar sentiments while also trying to sell me makeup or home goods (or worse, a football team with an explicitly racist name). Then came the celebrities, including one Real Housewife who days earlier had made headlines for writing "all lives matter" on the very same platform.

The black squares were part of a movement called #BlackOutTuesday, where for one day the idea was that people would cease Instagram's ambient noise of dinner plates and napping cats and instead vow to stay silent. "Muted," read some of the posts, "but always learning, and always listening."

It was a turn in discourse, in the wake of the killing of George Floyd and the worldwide protests that have erupted in days since, that has been largely critical of white silence - on an election day, no less. But #BlackOutTuesday is only one of more than a week's worth of what many have criticized as dubious and unhelpful social media trends ostensibly in the service of ending police brutality. Who, really, are the black boxes and pastel illustrations of victims for?

Feminista Jones, an author, speaker, and longtime organizer, noticed the trend when, after midnight on Monday, the Black Lives Matter hashtag was being inundated with black squares. After digging into the source, she found that the trend originated from two black women in the music industry, Jamila Thomas and Brianna Agyemang, who encouraged folks to spend the day reflecting on ways to support the black community under the hashtag #TheShowMustBePaused.

The original goal was a reckoning for the music industry's long history of profiting off of black artists, but the problem was that many who saw the squares on Instagram decided to participate in the trend while also adding hashtags like #BlackLivesMatter and #BLM. "That's when I realized they're erasing everything off of #BlackLivesMatter," Jones says. On Monday night, she says, there were about 11.9 million posts under the hashtag. "It took seven years to get 11.9 million posts, and within seven hours, there were already a million more of them, mostly black boxes."

Jones, along with many other black activists, was quick to inform allies that posting empty boxes to the movement's hashtag was pushing out valuable information that organizers wanted to share, like where to protest and donate, as well as video evidence of police brutality. The backlash to #BlackOutTuesday was almost immediate, with prominent Black Lives Matter activists pleading for people to delete posts that included the hashtag, and others pointing out the largely performative nature of the trend.

"This performative ally stuff is not helping, and this really catered to the people who want toshowthat they care"

"This performative ally stuff is not helping, and this really catered to the people who want toshowthat they care," Jones says. "They thought this little black box was going to be solidarity. I'm like, 'This is not how movements work. This is not how we're supposed to be using social media.' And people fell for it because it takes minimal work and minimal effort."

Jones advises anyone participating in a social media trend to first research where it came from - the official pages for Black Lives Matter or the Movement for Black Lives are good places to start - and to think critically about what their post achieves. "Why would you stage something that even remotely suggests blacking out anything on an election day?" she asks. "Why would you blackout anything in the middle of the biggest uprising of our time?"

Black squares are far from the only largely performative social media meme happening right now. For years, people have shared solidarity sentiments in the form of illustrations or stylishly designed statements in trendy fonts, or by "challenging" each other to tag 10 people in their Instagram Stories to show support for Black Lives Matter. On the more egregious end, videos have circulated of influencers staging photo shoots in front of looted buildings or pretending to drill a hole in a boarded-up storefront.

"People have good intentions, says Anthony James Williams, a writer, facilitator, and sociology PhD candidate. "Often, these cutesy illustrations - or the girl who played Brittany on Glee [Heather Morris]who did a TikTok dance for #BlackLivesMatter - don't harm us. But right now, the biggest thing is not necessarily making a watercolor Black Lives Matter sign or doing an interpretive dance. That's not really helping out people on the ground. If someone's doing that in addition to other actions, cool. But if that's all that you are contributing to the struggle right now, there's a lot more you can do, even if it's just literally making phone calls to your local police department to tell them to release people who've been protesting."

People on social media are always finding new ways to show their asses, but never have more seemed to be publicly floundering online than right now. "I was hesitant to post this, but" has become the rallying cry of many of the newly radicalized, the people who have watched for days (years, really), as others in their circle have posted anti-racist messages, protest footage, and donation receipts before finally realizing that the social cost of not saying anything outweighed the cost of saying something wrong.

There are, to be sure, often conflicting directives on how to be a good ally, which can lead to confusion and paralysis from even the most well-intentioned people. As many times as someone is told that white silence is violence, they will also be told that they need to listen and make room for black voices. They are told to confront their privilege, but also to decentralize themselves in their statements. They hear that performative slacktivism is worse than nothing at all, but feel implicit pressure to share the same memes and images as everybody else who would like to think of themselves as on the right side of history. After all, #BlackOutTuesday originated with two black women fighting for the cause, so how could it be wrong?

But allies have also never had as many resources available to them as they do right now. Guides on white allyship from black organizers are on nearly every major newspaper and publication; they're going viral on social media. There's less of an excuse for ignorance now than there was after the Women's March and the #MeToo movement in 2017, after the election in 2016, or after the Trayvon Martin murder in 2013. Anti-black racism has always been part of the fabric of America, and the Black Lives Matter movement is only a recent chapter in the long history of the fight for civil rights.

By now, American society has largely moved past the point of raising awareness when it comes to institutional racism. "In 2016, that would have made sense to me because of where people were," Williams says. "But we are too far in this political moment, particularly with the president that we have in office, to think that [posting] is enough."

Particularly upsetting was the flurry of posts from white people depicting images and videos of George Floyd's murder in the days following his death. On her podcast What A Day, host Akilah Hughes reminded listeners that white death is almost never shared in the same way. "When I say 'don't look away' I don't mean consume black death like it's a meme on TikTok," she said. "I mean look in the mirror. Look at your family. Look at the community you live in. Look at your friend group. Look at the wealthy white woman with the rescue dog in the goddamn park. And don't look away. Because we know what the problem is. No one is unclear on what the problem is. Where is the justice?"

This isn't to say that allies can't help on social media, which has been a crucial tool of organizing for as long as it has existed. K-pop stans, for instance, have flooded racist hashtags and spammed police watchdog cameras with videos of their favorite stars, while at least one LARPer shared a helpful tip on how to create a lightweight protest shield. Though many allies express their hesitancy to post on social media over fear of seeming performative, publishing screenshots of donations and asking followers to match them helped raise $20 million for the Minneapolis Freedom Fund, which provided bail for jailed protesters, in just four days.

"Peer pressure can actually work," Williams says. "This is the time where, actually, you should be posting about it, and there's proof that this works." They hope that social media will encourage more people to donate to the funds that haven't yet reached their goal, like the funds for women, queer, and trans black people killed by police and organizations without big brand names like the ACLU.

It's why one of the most effective memes from the past week has been a call for people to show they donated to a cause. "Open your purse," a clip from a viral video series on TikTok of the character Rosa, has been a catchy response to anyone who claims to support the movement but hasn't offered proof of direct action.

"People should be sharing bail funds, they should be sharing the fundraisers for the families of the victims," says Feminista Jones. "They should be posting things that are calling out these brands and these corporations that now all of a sudden are talking about how black lives matter to them. A couple of weeks ago it was 'in these uncertain corona-times,' now it's 'Black Lives Matter.'"

For those who do want to do everything they can to help the movement, her advice is the same as many black activists who've been in it for the long haul. "I want people to keep their heads up, keep focused, really start educating themselves, listen to the organizers who have been doing this for a long time, stop with the performances, and focus on the tangible and direct actions that will help the people out here doing the work."

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Who are the black squares and cutesy illustrations really for?

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This story is part of a group of stories called After a weekend of unrest, many people posted black squares on their Instagrams on Tuesday. The first dozen on my feed were from friends, most of them white, with captions that expressed solidarity with Black Lives Matter, or a commitment to educate themselves and use their privilege to fight against racial injustice.

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Episode 86: Accountability Season feat. Shante Bacon-Cius

In the midst of a slew of empty #BlackLivesMatter statements from brands, it's time to take a critical look at the work that is being done in the name of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Someone has to answer for the lack of progress in agencies.

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Episode 86: Accountability Season feat. Shante Bacon-Cius | MIXED COMPANY on Acast

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In the midst of a slew of empty #BlackLivesMatter statements from brands, it's time to take a critical look at the work that is being done in the name of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Someone has to answer for the lack of progress in agencies.

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If Pride is a year-round celebration, then our solidarity should be, too. And amidst a national uprising for the Black Lives Matter movement, Pride 2020 has undoubtedly been one energized with a revived momentum towards racial justice.

City streets typically scattered with pink-washed corporate tents and rainbow swag are now being occupied by protesters marching for the end of police brutality and systemic racism against the Black community. Resources that would typically be spent on Pride celebrations are being redirected towards Black LGBTQ+-oriented bail funds and mutual aid organizations. Pride 2020's call for direct action and Black liberation has brought the LGBTQ+ community closer to its roots than it has been in decades. It is a reminder of the Black leaders of the Stonewall uprisings and queer liberation movement-those to whom many of us owe our very right to celebrate.

However, just as we often remind ourselves and one another at the end of June that Pride is a "year-round" celebration, so too must non-Black members of the LGBTQ+ community and LGBTQ+ allies recognize that the fight for Black liberation, being central to Pride, is both year-round and lifelong. In the spirit of sustained solidarity, we at Esquire have rounded up a guide of tangible actions to support the Black LGBTQ+ community that go beyond this Pride month, news cycle, and year.

It's important to remember that, while being an ally is a verb, these particular actions are among the bare minimum of ways in which allies can support the Black LGBTQ+ community. It is not monolithic, nor should be our support. Allies must be constantly willing and eager to center the voices and demands of the Black LGBTQ+ community-to follow their lead in this fight.

What You Can (And Should) Do Now

Remain informed on violence and discrimination against the Black transgender community, and contact elected officials to hold them accountable.

As we recognize the many Black trans folx who have led the queer liberation movement throughout history, it's crucial to remember that Black trans lives are still in jeopardy. Just as Marsha P. Johnson's murder was disregarded by law enforcement, so too are the murders of Black trans folx every year. Make it clear to officials that this stops now by remaining informed on violence against the transgender community, as well as tracking anti-transgender bills; contacting corresponding government officials; and signing petitions calling for proper accountability.

Start with Tony McDade, a Black trans-masculine person who was killed by a police officer in May, and whose murderer has still not been held accountable. Send this pre-populated email to Florida officials demanding that the name and bodycam footage of the officer be released, text "Tony McDade" to 484848, and sign this petition to reverse the law currently protecting McDade's murderer. If you are a Tallahassee constituent, email officials to redistribute Tallahassee Police Department funding towards community services.

Support bail funds, especially those focused on incarcerated LGBTQ+ people.

Bail funds are a vital way to support Black Lives Matter demonstrators-especially those whose race, income, gender expression, and/or sexuality make them more vulnerable to being incarcerated.

The LGBTQ Freedom Fund posts bail for lower-income people in U.S. prisons and immigration facilities, focusing upon queer individuals. The Emergency Release Fund posts bail for LGBTQ+ and medically vulnerable individuals at Rikers in New York and under ICE detention, with a specialized focus upon trans folx.

Supporting bail funds, both national and local, is an important cause year-round, since Black and LGBTQ+ people are arrested and jailed at an alarming rate. According to the NAACP, Black people are incarcerated at more than five times the rate of white people, while the LGBTQ Freedom Fund's site states that LGBTQ+ people are three times more likely to be arrested than non-LGBTQ+ people.

Protest if you can, but do so safely.

If your personal circumstances allow it, one of the best ways to physically "show up" right now with the Black LGBTQ+ community is by attending Black Lives Matter protests. But don't let your physical presence be an inadvertent threat to fellow protestors. If you take photos or document protests, don't post without first concealing the identity of protesters. And, as always, wear your mask. COVID-19 is disproportionately killing Black people, which is non-coincidentally linked to the many ways in which Black communities and individuals have been systemically oppressed. So, maintaining safety precautions should be a no-brainer.

What You Can (And Should) Do This Month

Seek out Black-led LGBTQ+ organizations to donate to now-and regularly.

When calling for Black LGBTQ+ liberation, it's paramount that we put our money where our mouth is. (Or, where our social media feed is.) There are countless Black-led LGBTQ+ mutual aid organizations and funds that have been doing this work for decades, and deserve our lasting support. If you can, becoming a regular donor to one or more organizations that are close to you geographically, or close to your heart, is a great way to be in their corner as they fight for social justice.

Here are a few of the many important organizations that we recommend supporting:

* The Okra Project aims to provide home-cooked meals and resources to Black trans and gender non-conforming people "wherever [they] can reach them."

* For the Gworls hosts regular parties in New York City to assist Black trans people in paying for their rent and gender-affirming surgeries. Leftover proceeds go toward similarly motivated mutual aid organizations.

* G.L.I.T.S. aims to support and uplift transgender sex workers by focusing their services upon: immediate need/crisis support, health care and resilience, housing, and advocacy and education.

* Black and Pink is a national abolitionist organization that addresses the criminal justice system's incarceration and harm of the LGBTQ+ community and those living with HIV/AIDS through advocacy, education, organizing, and support.

Looking for more ways to support the Black trans community? ActBlue has provided a collection of Black Trans Groups to which you can either split a donation evenly, or donate specific amounts towards organizations from the list.

Make a budget of your time and money for sustainable action.

To ensure that your support is not only reactionary, set up a budget for funds and time. Designate an allotted amount of dollars for monthly donations to mutual aid organizations and bail funds, and decide how much time per week (and when) you will plan to prioritize actions like signing petitions, consuming Black LGBTQ+ art, and educating yourself on relevant issues. (Tip: Set alarms in your phone to keep you on track.)

What You Can (And Should) Do in the Next 3 Months

Expand your bookshelf, as well as your Netflix queue.

As many of us are making conscious decisions about what we read and watch, it's crucial to include stories about, and created by, Black queer voices. Remember to prioritize adding titles that focus on the joyful and the everyday. Do not restrict yourself to the suffering and death that is so often portrayed in mainstream depictions of Black queer lives.

A few books we recommend adding to your library:

And a few films to add to your watch list:

Fill your feed with Black queer voices (but don't expect them to educate you without compensation).

There's more to influencer accounts than discount swimsuit codes. In fact, most anyone you follow likely has more of an impact on your subconscious scroll dialogue than you realize. So, when aggregating a feed, making conscious decisions to follow and support more Black and queer voices is an entry point towards welcoming these voices into your internal sphere of influence.

However, as many prominent Black individuals on social media have noted, it's important to compensate anyone you are actively learning from or whose content and work you are regularly consuming on social media. No one owes you free education, entertainment, or enlightenment. So, when you follow a Black-led account and their Venmo, Cashapp, Patreon, or other payment info is listed, consider a regular payment to them as your tuition fee.

A few accounts we recommend following:

What You Can (And Should) Do in the Next 6 Months

Support Black and queer-owned businesses.

Whether you're looking for clothing, home goods, art, or anything in between, seeking out Black queer-owned businesses to regularly shop from is a great way to show Pride with your dollar. A simple Google search will likely pull up some gems, but here are a few of our favorites with online selections and services:

, Italian for "no sex," or "no gender," is an LA-based fashion brand founded by Pierre Davis. The first transgender-owned brand to show at New York Fashion Week, No Sesso's genderless styles are available online through Depop.

* Decolonizing Fitness is a social justice and educational platform, providing client and community-based fitness services. The collective offers online coaching, consultation, and apparel that is all oriented towards making a safe space for those typically unwelcomed by the fitness sphere.

* Pyramid Seven is a boxer brief brand for "periods, not gender," with styles designed to fit and affirm menstruators of all identities.

Join a local anti-racist organization.

As many organizers have continued to remind us, one of the most effective ways to actively work towards dismantling systemic discrimination against the Black and LGBTQ+ communities is by getting involved locally. "Criminalisation, gentrification, the 'hostile environment,' the closing of local public services," writes organizer and artist Joshua Virasami for the , "these are all arenas of anti-racist activism." Joining a local anti-racist organization will also hold you accountable to your education and action regarding local politics and social issues.

Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ) is a network of community chapters across the nation that work towards racial justice and dismantling white supremacy through organizing, mobilizing, and education. Through its People Power platform and state affiliate programs, the ACLU organizes grassroots action to defend civil liberties and rights "in every corner of the country." And The People's Institute for Survival and Beyond is a national and international anti-racist collective that provides workshops on Undoing Racism and Community Organizing, technical assistance, and consultations to communities and individuals.

And 1 Year From Now...

Your personal action plan, just like this list, will surely need revisions by the time next Pride Month rolls around. Perhaps your budget will change, or your book shelf will be in need of a revamp. (And, what a perfect opportunity to "regift" your 2020 books to some friends or relatives.)

You might find it useful to keep track of your findings over the year, be it organizations and causes you learn about, new concepts and ideas you're introduced to, or adjustments to be made in your own approaches. Be open to remaining correctable and teachable, so that your momentum into next year is powered by your genuine motivation to make a change.

Just that: Keep going.

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How to Support the Black LGBTQ+ Community Not Just Now, But Always

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If Pride is a year-round celebration, then our solidarity should be, too. And amidst a national uprising for the Black Lives Matter movement, Pride 2020 has undoubtedly been one energized with a revived momentum towards racial justice.

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Dr Rosena Allin-Khan, Labour's shadow mental health minister, today posed a question to health secretary Matt Hancock in the Commons, regarding the government's lack of testing and its impact on the UK's coronavirus death toll. A completely valid question that a lot of us have been asking ourselves.

But Hancock's response was anything but valid: "... I think she might do well to take a leaf out of the shadow secretary of state's book - in terms of tone."

I wasn't particularly surprised by the fact a white man was tone policing a woman of colour, but what did catch me off guard was how brazen it was. Hancock made no effort to hide his contempt, or skirt around it in a public arena. He was plain and blunt, like a teacher telling off their student in front of the whole class.

Tone policing is nothing new to women of colour. It's been used against us for most of history. As soon as we started joining conversations, the policing of our voices began. It's a method used time and time again to gain or re-establish power dynamics between white people and women of colour. Of course, this is not to say that a healthy debate can't be had, but when that debate shifts into the realm of tone policing, then that debate has already been lost.

It's a particularly successful tool used by white people, men in particular, to silence and diminish women of colour. When a woman of colour is "checked" on her tone, it serves to reinforce the perceived inferior position that she's in. White woman can be tone policed also, but it's not as commonly used as it is for women of colour. Plus, white women are also entirely capable of tone policing too.

It goes back to the stereotypical imaging around women of colour. We're typically seen as rude, aggressive, and emotional. And if we dare to say something that goes against the status quo, then we're seen as having stepped out of our assigned role in the conversation and must be put back in our place. How dare we speak out of line when they allowed us to be a part of the conversation. We must earn the respect of our white peers in order to be listened to.

Dr Allin-Khan asked a critical question of the government in a sensitive and polite manner. Nothing about her questioning or tone was rude or improper. She's an experienced MP with a wealth of knowledge behind her, and she's an A&E doctor currently working in the NHS. So, if anyone in parliament has the right to ask this question in a pandemic, it's most certainly Dr Allin-Khan.

Hancock's tone policing makes you wonder if the Shadow Secretary had been the one to ask this question, would his tone have been checked like Dr Allin-Khan's?

It's also an effective method at diverting attention away from the question - something I'm sure Hancock was well aware of. The question of testing is a topic he's tried to skirt around for weeks.

Tone policing makes you doubt yourself and what you're trying to say. It can be really embarrassing if done with others present. And it can end up achieving its desired effect of silencing us.

But it's about time white people stopped tone policing us. It's time they stopped silencing our voices, and simply let us speak without repercussions. Dr Rosena Allin-Khan made an excellent point today and that should be our main takeaway.

Shahed Ezaydi is an environmental research & content writer for Intelligent Facility Solutions, and a freelance writer.

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Tone Policing Has Always Been Used To Silence Women Of Colour

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Dr Rosena Allin-Khan, Labour's shadow mental health minister, today posed a question to health secretary Matt Hancock in the Commons, regarding the government's lack of testing and its impact on the UK's coronavirus death toll. A completely valid question that a lot of us have been asking ourselves.

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here is a tendency to classify all victims of racism under the label "people of colour" or " black, Asian and minority ethnic " people (shortened to BAME). However, this generalist approach fails to account for the varied ways that racism affects different races. There is anti-black racism, anti-Asian racism (which affects east Asians and south Asians differently), anti-Arab racism, even sometimes anti-white racism. To be clear, all these strands of racism are significant, and we need to work to eradicate them all. Yet, historically, it's black people who have most often found themselves at the bottom of the pile.

In Brazil, black people are still treated as second class citizens; in India, students of African origin are persecuted

Look at the figures: according to the UK government's race disparity audit, relative to whites and Asians, black defendants at crown court were the most likely to be remanded in custody. Between 2017 and 2018, black people in Britain were approximately 10 times more likely to be stopped and searched by the police than white people were, and three times more likely than Asians. Black Caribbean pupils were permanently excluded at nearly three times the rate of white British pupils, while black people are more likely to be unemployed and homeless than all other racial minority groups.

This is not only a British phenomenon. In the US, black people are more likely to be arrested for drugs offences even though they are not more likely to use or sell drugs, and as a result make up a disproportionate amount of the prison population. They also have a higher chance of getting shot by the police than white or Hispanic people. In today's Brazil, black people are still treated as second-class citizens; while in India, students of African origin are persecuted. In South Africa, a majority black country, 72% of the country's private farmland is owned by white people, who make up 9% of the population. During the apartheid era there was a clear racial hierarchy: whites at the top, Indians and "coloureds" in the middle, and black people at the bottom.

Historically, though slavery covered a range of civilisations, countries and races, for the black race its legacy lives on. From the 16th to the 19th century, around 12 million Africans were transported across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas by European slave traders. Millions more were born into slavery and spent their whole lives enslaved. And after slavery ended in the US, African Americans were subjected to segregation laws, the denial of civil rights and lynching.

And between AD 650 and the 1800s, almost 10 million Africans were sold by Arab slave traders to Arabia and the Indian subcontinent. In fact the Arabic word abeed, which means "slave", is still used to describe black people in countries from Algeria to Yemen.

In her book White Fragility, Robin DiAngelo notes that black people are the "ultimate racial other". In the US, they are called "nigger", in Brazil they are termed macaco; in South Africa, they are nicknamed kaffir; in India, band ar; in China hak gwai.

Even though there is a dictionary definition of anti-blackness, it hasn't yet gained much traction. The political class does not grasp its toxicity. We're currently in the middle of the UN International Decade for People of African Descent, so it is an appropriate time for anti-blackness to be classified separately from racism and given its own prominence. The one-size-fits-all approach to tackling racism leaves undersupported the racial group which suffers the most brutality, hatred and discrimination. Furthermore, in white-dominant societies, blackness has come to be a synonym for crime, laziness, poverty and low intelligence.

A key step in bringing anti-blackness to the forefront is by developing a working definition. This could cover caricatures, stereotypes, disparagement, the perception of black populated countries and the trivialisation of transatlantic slavery. As a precursor, there needs to be buy-in from governments, regional bodies, international organisations, academia and the global black civil society.

Ultimately, it is crucial to call out the most toxic brand of racism. We need to sear anti-blackness into our collective consciousness, so as to put an end to the mistakes of the past and the present, which have brought so much misery to so many people.

Ahmed Olayinka Sule is a writer and social critic

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Racism harms black people most. It's time to recognise 'anti-blackness' | Ahmed Olayinka Sule

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here is a tendency to classify all victims of racism under the label "people of colour" or " black, Asian and minority ethnic " people (shortened to BAME). However, this generalist approach fails to account for the varied ways that racism affects different races.

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People of Color Learn at a Young Age That They Must Be Twice as Good as Our White Counterparts. Here's Why White People Need to Be Twice as Kind

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White people need to be twice as kind, thoughtful, and peaceful to the Black and brown people they encounter these days.

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Black and Brown People Have Been Protesting for Centuries. It's White People Who Are Responsible for What Happens Next.

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As protests spread across America, it's time for white people to look and listen and learn how to fight for racial justice.

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A personal admission: I am always a bit weary of how I am received when I talk about race in feminist spaces. I fear that I might be "causing a division in the sisterhood" as journalist Ruby Hamad describes in her debut book, White Tears/Brown Scars.

I am afraid of being divisive; for calling things out when most people prefer to sweep snarks or discriminations under the veneer of polite conversation. When I bring attention to a remark, I don't do it to mark a line between me and white women (if I did, I'd be separating myself from 90% of my friends).

Hamad's book was discomforting to read; the same sort discomfort I felt sitting through Both activities lead me reluctantly to a source of great pain; it made me confront something I decided long ago to avoid, to look away from because I'd made the resolution that interrogating incidences of racism in my past simply deepens the wound. Robin DiAngelo's lecture on White Fragility at Sydney University last year.

I loved Hamad's book for its unapologetic rigour and sharp threading of racial history in both the United States and Australia. Since its release last week, commentators have called it 'incisive', 'courageous', 'a work of depth and scholarship,' and ' well researched and informative'.

On the same day the book was published, Hamad I winced each time she was interrupted by American author Lionel Shriver (a appeared on ABC's weekly Q & A program to talk about white colonial history and the impact that legacy has left on minorities. total of 8 times; I counted) and by Tony Jones (5 times) as Hamad was the only woman of colour on the panel. Seeing this dynamic play out on national television left me irked because it indicated a lack of awareness from both Shriver and Jones of the realities of the historically disenfranchised and how that history dictates contemporary relations between members of different races.

In May last year, H amad, an Australian journalist born in Lebanon, wrote an Op Ed in The Guardian implicating white women who use tears as a weaponised defensive against women of colour who bring up racial issues. In the piece, she crystallises the type of "trauma inflicted on women of colour; one that few seem willing to admit really happens because it is so thoroughly normalised most people refuse to see it." " Often, when I have attempted to speak to or confront a white woman about something she has said or done that has impacted me adversely, I am met with tearful denials and indignant accusations that I am hurting her." Racial trauma is a term used to describe the physical and psychological symptoms that people of colour experience after exposure to particularly stressful experiences of racism. Similar to survivors of other types of trauma (e.g., sexual assault survivors), people of colour may frequently experience fear and hyper-vigilance, self-blame, confusion, memory difficulty, shame, and guilt after experiencing racism. New York-based recently recorded a podcast titled " Racial Trauma and Therapy ," where the hosts explored the extraordinary absence of racialised rhetoric and knowledge surrounding therapy models for people of colour in white-dominant societies.

"The history of racism involves tonnes of gaslighting; tonnes of institutions and people who try to downplay these racial effects on an individual level. That stress response can lead to weird states of mind," one host says.
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Hamad's book is a powerful assessment of the institutional and cultural structures that have shaped the way we operate both as a society and individually. "White people set the standard of humanity by which they are bound to succeed and others bound to fail," she quotes Richard Dyer, English academic and author of 'White: Essays on Race and Culture.' They do this through film, tv, art, and music: "It's in popular media that our social world is both constructed and reflected back to us." It is the "key site of power and hegemony."

These are perceptions that people of colour like myself are burdened with each day. "Women of colour are living their entire lives in an abusive relationship with whiteness," Hamad writes. "From the very beginnings of settler colonialism, innocence was forcibly stripped from black women through a pervasive process of hypersexualisation and exploitation by white men. They projected the responsibility for this feistihisation and objectification back on to the women themselves."

Hamad agrees with Dyer that "the way people treat us depends on how they see us." What frightens me is that my gender and race are the "decisive factor determining how others perceive" me. I will never be able to escape the physiognomy of my face. "White women pivot between professing sisterhood and solidarity with us based on gender identification, and silencing and oppressing us by weaponising their white womanhood," she writes, whereas "Black women and girls continue to be regarded as less feminine, less innocent, less virtuous, and more promiscuous than white women." What of Asian women? Another harmful trope created by white supremacy is the 'China Doll'. As Hamad notes, the China Doll is "submissive, eager to please, obedient and permanently pleasant." I'm reminded of a piece I Of Arab women, Hamad says they're subjugated to either the
Representation is deftly discussed and examined across multiple chapters in the book; Hamad's analysis broadens to cover the way women from various cultures have been historically curated in western society. about being fetishised and dehumanised as an Asian woman trying to date straight white men. It's that terribly lazy dichotomy which Hannah Gadsby points out in her stand up setNanette. "For Picasso, women were either virgins or whores," she told a packed audience at the Opera House in 2017. That wasn't entirely true. The artist's actual words were, "Women are either goddesses or doormats." These narratives were created by white men because they were the ones who historically held all power; institutional, cultural and political. But it's here, in culture, where I am most frightened of my own ideas about the world. Reading Hamad's book made me realise something I'd known long ago, but need to constantly remind myself year after year. It's the knowledge of the truth that much of my mind is a cerebral museum of ideas shaped and determined by the western imagination; historically, this unique framework has been prescribed and governed by white men. I have so many mixed feelings about this. For instance, I recently tried to watch all of Pet or Threat persona: "positioned as helpless, repressed victims without agency, or we are Bad Arabs that must be contained. If we are not one, we must be the other." Seinfeld from Season 1 for the first time. (I was born a little outside of its target audience when it was at the height of popularity). But I quickly found, mid-way through Season 2, I was unable to keep going. Each episode's humour was predicated on making fun of some 'other' - women, Chinese people, Russians, Jewish people. I found it intolerable.

The characters who were given the most humanity, sympathy and depth were the four main characters - all of whom embody whiteness in a way nobody else on the show did. People on the side were always placed, as Hamad says, "on a lesser rung of humanity. Representation has real world consequences." Domination of one group is always predicated upon the suppression of another.

The most important line in the book centres around sex; "Looking back over the history of race and gender, it is startling to see how it all came down to sex - to the regulation of sex in order to sustain structural power. White supremacy is economic and political domination through the policing of racial purity." Let's not forget that it was not so long ago that interracial coupling was a criminal offence.

In her review of White Tears/Brown Scars, Perth-based writer Rashida Murphy says "This book contains tough, unpalatable truths, but they are truths." Maybe this world would be improved if we could find enough courage within ourselves to face these truths.

White Tears / Brown Scars by Ruby Hamad (MUP $32.99)

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The tough & uncomfortable truths in Ruby Hamad's new book White Tears/ Brown Scars

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A personal admission: I am always a bit weary of how I am received when I talk about race in feminist spaces. I fear that I might be "causing a division in the sisterhood" as journalist Ruby Hamad describes in her debut book, White Tears/Brown Scars.

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The British government's new white paper on immigration has been shaped by a social norm which argues that the white British ethnic majority's interest in limiting the pace of cultural change and facilitating assimilation is racist.

The emphasis on skills rather than numbers, on economic over cultural considerations, and on rebalancing immigration away from Europe speaks to this. The document reflects the thinking of both Brexit and Remain politicians. Yet it does not align with the motives of many who voted Leave, or a considerable chunk of those who voted Remain. These voters seek lower levels of immigration, and research shows that this is driven more by identity threat than by economic considerations. If immigration numbers remain where they are after Brexit, but shift toward non-Europeans with skills, this could just as easily increase as decrease populist pressures. This is but one illustration of how the myth of white exceptionalism is fuelling populism and polarisation.

The notion that whites are a fallen category who can only redeem their sordid group history by denigrating or ignoring it, and that they must be judged against a different standard than other groups, is preventing a measured discussion of questions of immigration and ethnic change. This opens space for less reasonable voices who are willing to provide answers to questions many are asking.

Many liberals regard the disruptive behaviour of radical anti-racist students and administrators at places like Evergreen State College, Middlebury College and U.C. Berkeley as anti-intellectual and irrational, and feel no connection to them.

But ask yourself the following: is it racist for a white person to vote for reduced immigration? Is it racist for whites to identify with a caucasian racial image as a group symbol? Save your answers. Now let's change the questions. Is it racist for a Chinese-American person to favour increased Chinese immigration to grow the size of their community? What about for Hawaiians to identify with a Polynesian racial image as a symbol of their group? Now recall your answers. Even if you answered these questions consistently, if you are white, you probably cringed when completing the first set.

Let's explore this discomfort, because it explains why western mainstream elites are unable to defuse the tensions driving national populism. There is no sensible reason for answering the questions differently. Our cultural cringe can't be a logical response based on a consistent definition of racism. Indeed, if we bracket critical race theory, which is ideologically-motivated and anti-science, there is no basis for [this response]. As political theorist Yael Tamir observes in her book, Liberal Nationalism:

'Liberals often align themselves with national demands raised by 'underdogs,' be they indigenous peoples, discriminated minorities, or occupied nations, whose plight can easily evoke sympathy. But if national claims rest on theoretically sound and morally justified grounds, one cannot restrict their application: They apply equally to all nations, regardless of their power, their wealth, their history of suffering, or even the injustices they have inflicted on others in the past.'

White ethnic groups' past misdeeds cannot justify a double-standard, for if that were the case, Turks (Ottoman Empire), Indian Muslims (Mughal Empire), Japanese, Arabs, Mongolians, Zulus, Mohawks, Tutsi and nearly every other group in the world would also have to repress their identities and interests. No civilisation behaved well in the past, let's face it. Prior to 1919, history was a litany of empire, slavery and conquest.

One assumption is that the attachment of powerful whites to their own group will spell disaster for vulnerable minorities. But that is not the case. Social psychologist Marilynn Brewer shows that in-group attachment is not correlated with out-group hostility except in cases of violent conflict. A white American's warmth towards their own group is, for instance, associated with warmer feelings toward African-Americans.

Ethnicity is defined by subjective myths of descent, not immutable external characteristics. A moderate 'white' majority group that is open to inter-racial marriage (what I term Whiteshift) has a constructive role to play, as ethnic majorities arguably underpin the civic nationalism which is needed to overcome polarisation.

Ethnic majorities are not malign forces: 80 percent of countries have an ethnic majority and the vast majority (think Akan, Tswana, Persian) are peaceful. The systematic study of political violence since 1945 doesn't find that a moderate attachment to ethnic majority identity predicts genocide. Rather, as political scientist Barbara Harff pointed out, the combination of war, autocracy and an exclusivist ideology which brooks no dissent (whether socialist, civic nationalist, ethnic nationalist or Islamist) is what heightens the risk of genocide.

For instance, civic nationalist Indonesia has suffered far worse violence against its Chinese minority than ethnocratic Malaysia, despite the latter's 'sons of the soil' policy which economically favours Malays. Indeed it is domination by an ethnic or religious minority (i.e. Sunnis in Iraq, Alawi in Syria) that increases the risk of civil war.

A larger ethnic majority doesn't lead to a greater oppression of minorities: as I show in my book, the numerical preponderance of whites in US states or Latin American countries bears no relationship to the local white-black income gap. Ethnic identity isn't principally about using group affiliation to acquire money and power, but, as psychologists note, consists of affective attachment to myths, symbols, traditions and memories - regardless of whether the group is in the majority or the minority. The key is to keep this moderate.

What distinguishes the modern world (West and East, North and South) in world-historical perspective is its relatively low rate of violent death, as Steven Pinker demonstrated in The Better Angels of Our Nature.

The analyst mustn't generalise from rare events such as the Holocaust ('selecting on the dependent variable') in which Nordic theories of race played a part. Rather, we must consider all cases where ethnic majority attachment was in play and how this relates to the many cases of genocide. Barbara Harff has done just this, systematically analysing which factors predict an onset of one of the roughly 40 instances of genocide since 1945. By controlling for confounding variables, she has sorted the wheat of causal mechanisms from the chaff of spurious correlation. This shows that ideological extremism of any kind is dangerous. Moderate ethnic, national, religious or socialist beliefs aren't dangerous. Like fire, these creeds can burn us if we get too close, but we need a little to warm us.

In short, the case for treating whites differently from other racial or pan-ethnic groups rests on sand. The Holocaust was a singularly shocking event which claimed the lives of some of my ancestors; and there's no doubt that white anti-Semitic racism was part of the rationale behind colonialism. Yet this cannot damn a group for eternity. A robust social science must compare all groups across all ages before delivering a verdict of guilt or innocence. The Holocaust, slavery, colonialism cannot be in themselves first principles from which consistent arguments may be deduced.

The fact white group identity makes us feel uncomfortable suggests that what African-American academic John McWhorter terms the 'religion of antiracism' is not the preserve of campus radicals. They may be its fundamentalists, but in moderate form, the religion permeates the deep tissue of western high culture, pervading its liberal institutions. The taboo regarding the open expression of white majority ethnicity, or whites' defence of what Shadi Hamid terms their racial self-interest, is deeply grounded in notions of deviant and normal, sacred and profane.

The demise of colonialism and the aftermath of World War II can't fully explain McWhorter's religion of antiracism. It springs instead from shifts in left-wing thinking. New Left ideas transposing egalitarianism from class to race combined with what Daniel Bell terms the 'adversary culture' (which portrayed white Protestantism as stifling and boring) to produce the idea of white original sin.

This then stuck. Western elites pivoted swiftly from being unreflexively racist toward nonwhites to repressing majority ethnic identity as racist.

The sociologist Kai Erikson has pointed out that the definition of deviant and normal is rarely codified, but is established anarchically through precedent, as competing groups in society struggle to define the moral order. Moral panics ensue when those who represent dominant norms sense a threat and target supposed deviants. Accusers - be they the Inquisition, Jacobins, McCarthyites or the 'politically-correct' Left - are empowered. People fear to speak against witch hunters for fear of being labelled deviant (i.e. 'bourgeois' or 'racist'). Meanwhile, those who are deemed deviant battle to re-define the normal.

Prior to the late 1990s, the racist taboo was not only applied to apply to hostility to minorities but to policies which could be construed as racist if one adopted the most malign interpretation. Hence, any criticism of multiculturalism, the value of increased diversity, or current immigration levels were labelled racist. In effect, liberalism 'deviantised' any opinion which differed from multiculturalism. This involved what psychologist Nick Haslam terms 'concept creep' to expand the meaning of racism, hoping to silence challenges to favoured policies.

Multiculturalism and high-immigration were never popular; they came to be accepted through elite institutionalisation rather than electoral politics. Meanwhile, some national courts interpreted non-specific international human rights precepts such as 'non-discrimination' to apply to immigration, removing cultural considerations from immigrant admissions and compelling western states to admit wider categories of refugees for settlement. Elite moral leadership has its place if it rests on sound liberal principles, such as gay rights or black civil rights, in which case people will often come to accept a new dispensation. But when the moral basis of elite policy innovation lies in myths of white exceptionalism or cosmopolitan liberalism, this is likely to end in anti-elite backlash.

The collapsing of the complexity of the real world into a simplistic binary of racism/openness is why western cultural elites are unable to defuse the cultural grievances driving populist right politics. The liberal sacred value of white exceptionalism also explains liberal intransigence in the face of populist claims. In order to fix the mess, we need to start seeing the world in shades of grey rather than black and white.

As immigration increased and ethnic change accelerated, populist concern was sidelined by the media in many western countries (the UK being an exception) and by mainstream politicians. They feared being decried as racist, creating a gap in the political market that populist right political entrepreneurs moved in to fill. The mainstream press and parties typically attacked the new parties as deviant, which helped forestall their appeal - for a time. Many people struggled to reconcile their dislike of rapid ethnic change with their adherence to the new antiracist ethic. This frowned on any expression of majority group interests. Yet disquiet metastasised, like kindling awaiting the arrival of a match.

Beginning with Jean-Marie Le Pen and Jorg Haider in the 90s, coming to include Pim Fortuyn in the early 2000s, and culminating with Ukip, Donald Trump, the Sweden Democrats and the AfD, populist innovators breached normative redoubts. Longstanding resentment at the elite-normative repression of anti-immigration politics burst into the open, acting as force multipliers for populism, especially in America.

Shifts in the moral order ensue when attempts by established societal forces to deviantise fail to register their desired effect. Once this occurs, norms rarely recover their power. Bernie Sanders, for instance, openly describes himself as a socialist, something that would have been unthinkable during the Cold War. His breaking of this taboo means it is unlikely to be easily reinstated.

These populists set a self-perpetuating cascade in motion as they crossed the threshold, allowing the system to tip. As centrist parties sought to win voters back from the insurgents, they first criticised multiculturalism as divisive, then began to compete on issues of immigration restriction and integration. The Overton Window of acceptable debate widened, and old taboos began to be washed away. In the process, things went too far, eroding important norms protecting Muslim religious liberty (France, Switzerland), independent judiciaries and a free press (Poland, Hungary) and respect for political opponents and minority groups (US under Trump).

As the taboos against opposing immigration and voting for populist right parties fell away, the normative restraints that dampened the populist right vote eased, smoothing the way for higher totals. The Front National's 'shock' poll of 18 percent which brought over a million demonstrators onto the streets in 2002 was superseded by Marine Le Pen's 34 percent in 2017. Jorg Haider's 27 percent vote share in the Austrian election of 1999, which led to EU sanctions, was left in the dust by Norbert Hofer's 49.7 percent performance in 2016.

We are currently living through a period of change in our moral order, with anti-racist norms in retreat from their late 1990s high-water mark across much of the West. This is creating a self-fulfilling dynamic whereby weaker anti-racism norms reduce resistance to populist right voting and issue positions. Yet attempts to reinstate old taboos only invigorate populism, as experimental research by Lucian Conway and Ashley Jardina on Trump's appeal shows.

Contrast this with the period of anti-racist norm expansion between the early 1960s and late 1990s, an expansion which continued in liberal circles such as university humanities departments into the 2010s. I chart this rise in my book by tracking the increasing frequency of the term 'racist' (compared to the flatlining of the term 'anti-Semitism') in the West during this period on Google's Ngram viewer and Google Trends.

The way forward is not to restore the ancient regime - which is what produced our current malaise - but to stake out a defensible core of anti-racist beliefs that applies equally across all groups, times and places. These can form the basis of a consistent, evidence-based norm on which those of all political stripes can agree.

We must accept that white majorities are a group like any other, whose conservative members have a non-racist cultural interest in slowing ethnic change and facilitating voluntary assimilation. Only then can a less fraught, more clear-eyed immigration debate can take place. When immigration rates are discussed as calmly as tax rates, people will accept they have been heard and that a compromise has been reached. Nationalist populism will slowly fade away.
Eric Kaufmann is the author of Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration and the Future of White Majorities.

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The myth of white exceptionalism | The Spectator

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The British government's new white paper on immigration has been shaped by a social norm which argues that the white British ethnic majority's interest in limiting the pace of cultural change and facilitating assimilation is racist. The emphasis on skills rather than numbers, on economic over cultu...

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As a governmental affairs coordinator for the National Audubon Society, Tykee James says he's used to interjecting race and equity issues in conversations about the environment and conservation.

"Being the only Black guy in the room, everyone's like, 'Let's yield the floor, Tykee has a statement to say about race. Everybody calm down,'" the 26-year-old Philadelphia native says. "And then I have to become Martin Luther King, just because I want to say that we should care about Black people in our policies."

But James welcomes that role. He is one of a growing group of young, diverse environmental leaders examining how racism and white supremacy have long excluded Black, brown, and Indigenous people in environmental policy, conservation, and public health issues. Their work comes as environmental groups have begun publicly examining their role in perpetuating systemic racist policies and practices. The Sierra Club, one of America's pre-eminent conservationist organizations, recently renounced the racist beliefs and actions of its legendary founder, John Muir. Black scientists and researchers in organizations such as the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have spoken out about decades of dismissive treatment and barriers to advancement based on race.

As the world grapples with an unprecedented public health crisis that is disproportionately affecting people of color, many observers say that excluding them from leadership is a recipe for failure. For instance, many solutions to natural resource concerns are often experienced as environmental gentrification for communities of color, according to James. Take bike lanes, which are often carved through communities where parking space is scarce and public transportation is minimal.

"When you don't address with justice the environmental issues of today, you are perpetuating the root causes of that inequity," says James, who has also worked as a wildlife guide and educator as well as a legislative advisor for a Pennsylvania state senator. "You are stipulating who is going to be sacrificed to make those decisions."

A viral message

For Leah Thomas, the link between the environment and social justice emerged in summer 2014. An unarmed 19-year-old Black man named Michael Brown was shot and killed by police a few miles from her hometown of Florissant, Missouri. The ensuing protests and national dialogue stayed with Thomas when she returned to Chapman University in Southern California, where she was studying environmental science and policy.

"I didn't know Mike, but he was probably just a couple of friend circles away," Thomas, 25, recalls. "The more I learned about the incident, and when I began to study environmental injustice, I started thinking about intersectional theory and how it could also be applied to the environmental movement." Intersectional theory, a term first used by legal scholar and activist Kimberle Williams Crenshaw in 1989, posits that oppression affects certain groups on multiple levels, including race, class, gender, religion, and other aspects of their identity.

Thomas decided that it was hypocritical to preach the interconnectedness of nature and humanity while turning a blind eye to racial and economic injustice, and she was determined to do something about it. She did two internships with the National Park Service during college, and then worked with Patagonia's communications and PR team on corporate sustainability issues. (Here's how national parks are working to become anti-racist.)

But after being furloughed in March because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Thomas wrote an Instagram post outlining why environmentalists should embrace the Black Lives Matter movement. Her words went viral, as did her call for a movement of Black and Indigenous people of color (BIPOC) at the forefront of environmental activism.

" The more I protested about climate change, or helped colleagues speak out about issues like endangered salmon, one thing became increasingly clear," Thomas says. "Not only was I often the only Black person at these events, but I felt invisible. It seemed like they acknowledged everything but my Blackness or were nice about everything but race and culture. It was like, 'Oh Leah, we're doing so much for the planet, why do we have to talk about racial issues?'"

Now, Thomas is focused on communicating her intersectional environmentalist message to a broader audience. She's coordinating the creation of a diversity curriculum for businesses and non-profits in the environmental space and partnering with LGBTQ+ groups and disability activists to ensure that their contributions are also acknowledged in conservation circles. In honor of Disability Pride Month, she is donating five percent of proceeds from a merchandise sale to Queer Nature, a group advocating for disability awareness and the protection of the planet.

"What we're fighting for is representation and acknowledgement and accountability in the environmental movement in a way that has never even been considered before," Thomas says. "What the Sierra Club did was a step in the right direction, but a lot of organizations need to gain back the trust in their work that has eroded or never existed."

And Thomas is not waiting for permission from established environmentalist groups to make these moves.

"They can stand beside us, if they want to," she says. "If you're not going to offer me a seat at the table, I'm going to create my own, and hopefully we can have more and more organizations cropping up. We've grown a community of over 70,000 young people, and it's just growing and growing. They can find a way to partner with us."

Bringing kids into nature

Many environmental activists of color were introduced to wildlife and nature pursuits early in life. But they're keenly aware that historically, many Black and brown children have not had the same opportunities to interact with nature as their white peers. Even those who are raised on farms or in rural areas often have limited trust in those settings because of incidents of violence and threats to people of color there. (People of color are three times more likely to live in 'nature deprived' U.S. neighborhoods.)

Elise Tolbert, who grew up exploring the woods and navigating local creeks and streams near her hometown of Tuskegee, Alabama, is trying to change that.

As the great-granddaughter of Black men who were recruited for the infamous government-funded Tuskegee Syphilis Study, in which men with the disease were not informed of the diagnosis or provided with treatment, the 29-year-old environmental health scientist combines a love of nature with an inherent knowledge of what fuels environmental injustice and inequity.

During a high school seminar about environmental degradation, Tolbert learned about Louisiana's "Cancer Alley," an area along the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans where the largely low-income, Black population has endured unusually high rates of cancer. Tolbert says she left the session feeling like "public health professionals were superheroes without capes."

She went on to study environmental science at Tuskegee University in some of the buildings where legendary African American scientist George Washington Carver conducted his agricultural research. Her background, and the communities she grew up near, prepared her for an expansive view of environmentalism.

"After interning in Mongolia studying water quality for three months, I began to see the issues that exist in developing countries are so similar to the issues that exist in very low-income Black communities in America."

In her current role as deputy director of partner engagement for the Climate Action Campaign, Tolbert says her public health expertise has been invaluable. "I learned more about how global warming was exacerbating the hazards for Black and brown communities. Our environment is the context for our entire life, and those negative exposures affect the ability of a person to pursue their own goals and dreams for life, because it influences their health."

Tolbert also founded the Next Step Up, a Tuskegee-based non-profit that mentors and tutors high school students."There's a difference between letting people sit at the table, but then not letting them have a plate," she says. "I want to help prepare young people to know that they have that right to full access."

Similarly, when Brianna Amingwa was six, she took a pony ride at a Detroit fair and fell in love with horses. But there were no opportunities for her to ride in the inner-city neighborhood where she lived. Her mother eventually heard about an African American attorney who owned a stable in Ann Arbor and invited city kids to come and ride every Saturday. Amingwa spent many weekends working in the stables there during her high school years, and her love of horses gave her a perspective on nature that many of her peers didn't have.

"A lot of my friends and cousins thought it was cool that I liked horses, but definitely kinda weird that I went on long trail rides and spent so much time out in the woods," Amingwa, 27, says. That interest led to a degree from Michigan State University's College of Agriculture and Natural Resources. She's now the environment education supervisor for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service based in Philadelphia, helping more kids access and learn to love nature like she did.

Through her work with the Philly Nature Kids program, Amingwa oversees activities for 150 fourth graders from around Philadelphia. They study science and environmentalism and examine myths and fears about nature before venturing outdoors to the John Heinz Wildlife Refuge for trail walks and on-site learning. After six months of study, each class gets $500 to design a nature conservation project.

"This is my passion, getting kids who are like I was and giving them this totally new experience," Amingwa says. "It's not that kids who are Black and brown don't have an interest in nature and the natural sciences. They simply may not have the access to those spaces."

A sense of belonging

By bringing more young people of color into nature, these activists hope to move away from the perception that people of color don't belong in nature, or that they're not interested in or equipped to contribute to conservation and exploration. And they are leveraging opportunities to lessen threats for Black and brown people in those spaces doing activities that white people take for granted.

Tykee James believes the May 25 Central Park incident where Black birdwatcher Christian Cooper was viewed as a threat not only unmasked white privilege, it also highlighted the dramatically different experiences people of color may have in conservation spaces.

"My first reaction to the Christian Cooper case was part of a reflection that I had been having about Ahmaud Arbery. Ahmaud Arbery could have been out birding when he was killed," James says of the February murder of a Black jogger in Georgia. Three white men, who say they suspected Arbery was a burglar, have been charged in his death. "What happened with Mr. Cooper was the opportunity to say that this doesn't always have to be the narrative. The Black experience isn't always about trauma. It's about strength and pride and style and humor and fun."

In response to the Central Park incident, activists quickly organized a Black Birders Week, capitalizing on the momentum of the Black Lives Matter protests that spread across the country after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. "Black Birders Week was a snowflake that I hope will become an avalanche for the environmental movement." James says.

And in every legislative meeting, rally, or environmental conference going forward, James plans to embrace what being one of the few, or the only, people of color means.

"When you're in the policy room, and you're talking about issues like environmental justice, like land theft, like public health, you get to remind these organizations that their strategies have not led to the outcomes that they intended, and it's because they have institutional blind spots that perpetuate inequity," he says. "That's part of the deeper conversations that need to occur."

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The environmental movement is very white. These leaders want to change that.

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As a governmental affairs coordinator for the National Audubon Society, Tykee James says he's used to interjecting race and equity issues in conversations about the environment and conservation. "Being the only Black guy in the room, everyone's like, 'Let's yield the floor, Tykee has a statement to say about race.

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Cinematic stereotypes reflect and shape common prejudices. Perceptions can be influenced by portrayals of Asians as nerdy, black men as dangerous and Latinas as fiery. So, how does Hollywood portray various groups?

In recent years, there has been increased attention on racism and sexism in Hollywood films, which can be reflected in who acts in front of the camera, who directs behind it and how people are represented on-screen - and often all three. To illustrate how stereotypes have developed in Hollywood, DW analyzed tropes used in more than 6,000 Oscar-eligible movies since 1928.

Hollywood history provides many examples of racist caricatures. Black and Asian people have been repeated targets. Take the 1961 Audrey Hepburn movie Breakfast at Tiffany's and the bucktoothed Mr. Yunioshi, whose stereotypical "Engrish" accent was intended to mock Japanese people. He is notorious, and there are so many more examples.
From racist caricatures to lingering stereotypes
"Racism, in the form of job exclusion and racially stereotyped roles, has defined the Hollywood film industry since its birth in the early 1900s," the sociologist Nancy Wang Yuen writes in her book, Reel Inequality: Hollywood Actors and Racism. Indeed, Asian characters in the early days of Hollywood mostly appeared in the form of racist cliches - either as mysterious, menacing villains or as laughable caricatures such as Mr. Yunioshi. In addition to everything else, that character is played by the entirely white American actor Mickey Rooney, thus making it an example of yellowface: a non-Asian person impersonating an Asian person.

This practice used to be quite common in Hollywood. Production teams were reluctant to hire minority actors of any kind, instead often opting to use white actors in their place. This practice became self-reproducing: Sociologists have found that prejudices break down when people of various ethnic groups have increased contact with each other.

But Asian communities have historically been frequently marginalized in the United States. "Even today, most images of Asians and Asian Americans on screen weren't created by Asians or Asian Americans, but by people who don't know much about them," says Kent Ono, who studies media representations of race at the University of Utah. "This creates a very strange idea of who Asians and Asian Americans are for those who don't know any Asian people. And it also creates a very confused and estranged relationship by Asians and Asian Americans to Hollywood, because they can't fully identify with this bizarre representation of themselves."

The information on these stereotypical cinematic devices has been compiled in the community-generated wiki TVTropes.org, from which the names of the various tropes detailed in this article are drawn. Users there can document any recurring motif they observe in a piece of media: Which TV shows claim Elvis is still alive? Which video games feature a creepy child character? Does a movie feature a white actor dressed up to look Asian?

In 2012, for example, the movie Cloud Atlas drew criticism for making many of the non-Asian actors up as Asian characters for part of the film. Many critics argued that, as there are already so few roles for Asian actors, let alone roles that are not caricatures, white actors should not be cast to play Asian characters. That came up again when Scarlett Johansson starred in the live-action film of the classic Japanese manga series Ghost in the Shell and then Tilda Swinton played an originally Asian character in Doctor Strange. And the list goes on.

A trope that began to appear more frequently in the 1960s and '70s is what TVTropes calls the " Mighty Whitey, Mellow Yellow" dynamic: a powerful white main character with a submissive Asian love interest. Before the 1950s, strict self-censorship in US cinema forbade romantic pairings between people of different ethnicities, or "miscegenation," which meant that there were even fewer roles available to Asian actors. When self-censorship gave way to the current system for rating motion pictures, instances of the trope increased, which indicated that this stereotype of Asian women had already existed before it was depicted on the screen.

Other tropes also became more prominent in the second half of the century. In the 1970s and '80s, the popularity of Bruce Lee and martial arts movies in general led to the entrenchment of the "All Asians Know Martial Arts" trope.

But the most common way of representing Asians and Asian-Americans in US media today is as the "model minority," Ono said: "They might be scientists, doctors or in some technical field. By and large, they're good students, come from good families and don't have any economic problems." This stereotype is not specifically recorded in the TVTropes wiki, but it overlaps with the "Asian and Nerdy" trope, which has occurred more frequently in recent decades.
Minority groups underrepresented
What this analysis cannot show is the share of movies that have nonstereotypical nonwhite characters. These don't typically get documented in the TVTropes wiki. In general, it's difficult to make any large-scale assessments of whether there are fewer stereotypical depictions now than there used to be.

What researchers do track, though, is the number of nonwhite actors cast and how many directors and writers of color see their films produced. "The greater the range of different roles, the less likely people are to think that a group is just one of these representations," Ono said. Conversely, there is all the more weight on individual characters for groups who are rarely represented on-screen.

Hollywood still has a long way to go, according to the Hollywood Diversity Report from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA): The share of female and nonwhite characters on-screen has risen quite steadily over the past few years, but also quite slowly. Even though Asians, for example, make up more than half of the world's population, and just under 6 percent of the US population, only 3 percent of all roles in 2017 and 2018 were played by Asians. Black characters made up 12.5 percent of all roles, which approaches proportionate representation for the US population. But in many cases, the portrayals are quite problematic.
Black characters die first
As with Asians, black characters often weren't played by black people in the early days of Hollywood. In fact, they barely appeared at all, except as caricatures played by white actors in blackface. This practice originated in the American theater tradition of minstrelsy, in which racist stereotypes about black people were a staple.

Blackface occurs much less frequently now, after a long period of criticism of the practice: In Dear White People, for example, college fraternity members throw a blackface-themed party, which the film, as well as the Netflix series of the same name, use as the basis for a discussion of racism at colleges across the United States.

But, as Hollywood has featured more black characters and cast more black actors, it has also emphasized other stereotypes. To this day, black men are often portrayed as scary or angry and black women as loudmouthed and sassy. If a movie features one token black character, it's likely to be the black best friend. And, if people die in a movie, the black character is still likely to go first. Even with awareness of racial stereotypes rising, Hollywood persists with these tropes.
If Africa is featured, it's dangerous and untouched by civilization
Hollywood's stereotypical depictions of black people mostly refer to black Americans. Tropes that are about Africans are rarer, partly because few Hollywood movies have African characters. The most common trope about Africa, though, is what TVTropes users have dubbed "Darkest Africa": Movies portraying the continent as a mysterious and dangerous isolated land with only limited ties to "modern" civilization. That depiction has become less common, however.
Latino characters are defined by their sex appeal
Latinos are the largest ethnic minority in the US, making up around 18 percent of the population. A look at 2,682 movies since the year 2000 finds that tropes about Latino characters focus most often on their sex appeal. For women, this translates as the "Spicy Latina" trope: a temperamental temptress who can hold her own and always looks sexy.

Men get the role of the seductive "Latin Lover," often a fling for a white woman. Additionally, films tend to ignore the diversity of Latino cultures throughout the Americas: A particular brown-skinned, black-haired look is presented as defining the appearance of all Latinos. TVTropes users call this trope the "Latino is brown" stereotype.

The stereotypes perpetuated in movies are particularly hurtful to historically oppressed and marginalized groups. But there are enough tropes in Hollywood to go around. And for groups who don't feel the detrimental effects of being stereotyped in their everyday lives, seeing themselves poorly represented causes much less pain.
Germans in movies are still often Nazis
The most common stereotype about Germans in movies since 2000 is that they are all Nazis. That is closely followed by the character of the German scientist, filed under "Herr Doctor" on TVTropes. The latter was probably influenced by the real-life scientists who fled to the US during the Nazi regime, most notably Albert Einstein, who was born in Germany.

A curious trope has to do with Germans' supposed love for Baywatch and Knight Rider star David Hasselhoff. In 1988, Hasselhoff released his version of the song "Looking for Freedom," which was originally recorded by the German Marc Seaberg in the 1970s. Hasselhoff performed the song at the Berlin Wall just weeks after it fell at the end of 1989. The song fit the zeitgeist and was indeed popular in Germany for a time. Now, the "Germans Love David Hasselhoff" trope is used by the TVTropes community as a shorthand for any person or character who receives unexpected popularity outside of their home country.
A British accent is an indicator of evil
Surprisingly, the most dominant trope about the British is not the classic posh accent or the stereotype of uptightness, though both are on the list. No, British characters overwhelmingly seem to be a popular choice for villains. This is so pervasive that the British actors Ben Kingsley, Mark Strong and Tom Hiddleston even starred in a 2014 Super Bowl commercial poking fun at the trope.

A British accent even seems to signal villainous intent in animated characters: The Egyptians in The Prince of Egypt, the Dreamworks rendering of the biblical story of Moses, have British accents; an animated car with a British accent is the bad guy in the Pixar movie Cars 2; and The Lion King, Kung Fu Panda and Rise of the Guardians all feature British-sounding villains, just to name a few films.
Russians: Tough, rough and played by non-Russians
Finally, Russians in movies are still very much defined by Cold War-era images in Hollywood. The most common stereotype is the "hard-fightin', heavy-drinkin', manly, boorish" character, as the corresponding TVTropes entry describes it. These characters often bear the brunt of the suffering during the movie, getting injured or generally leading hard lives.

Curiously, movie Russians are quite often played by non-Russians. In Rocky IV, the Swedish Dolph Lundgren started his action career as Russian boxer Ivan Drago; Arnold Schwarzenegger in Red Heat and Viggo Mortensen in Eastern Promises are other examples. During the Cold War, there was a predictable shortage of actual Russian actors in Hollywood. But, even in newer movies, non-Russians are often cast to play Russian characters.
Diversity pays
Changing gears would be in Hollywood's best interest: According to the report, movies and TV shows with fairly diverse casts bring in more at the box office and get higher ratings from audiences. However, Hollywood is still a long way from representing the diversity of the world - or even that of the United States. White people are still considerably overrepresented in front of the camera, as well as behind it. That fact, too, has an influence on how stereotypes are perpetuated.

A few events in recent years have given rise to optimism that this might change. When she won the Oscar for her performance in Fences in 2017, Viola Davis became the first black woman to win the triple crown of acting over the course of career, including her two Tony Awards for stage work and the 2015 Emmy for her role in How to Get Away With Murder. In 2018, the romantic comedy Crazy Rich Asians became a box office hit with an all-Asian cast. And the Vietnamese-American actor Lana Condor has the lead role in the successful teen romance To All the Boys I've Loved Before on Netflix.

As the figures from UCLA's Diversity Report indicate, proportionate and accurate representation is not yet the norm. "We're still facing huge challenges," says Kent Ono, "and there are always going to be people that go back to the historical trove of representation. But I'm more hopeful now than even two years ago. There are great independent people doing the work to push out those representations. And sometimes, Hollywood listens."

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What Hollywood movies do to perpetuate racial stereotypes - DW - 02/21/2019

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Cinematic stereotypes reflect and shape common prejudices. Perceptions can be influenced by portrayals of Asians as nerdy, black men as dangerous and Latinas as fiery. So, how does Hollywood portray various groups?

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Adele has attracted criticism from some fans after sharing a photo on Instagram to celebrate what would have been Notting Hill Carnival in London.

Carnival is a traditional celebration of Caribbean and black culture that takes place every year, but it was a virtual event in 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic.

In Adele's photo, she's styled her hair in Bantu knots, which are a traditional way to wear hair within black communities, and is seen wearing a bikini with the Jamaican flag on it.

Many black people, including some politicians and celebrities, have defended Adele by claiming that Notting Hill Carnival is about celebrating Jamaican culture and all she's done has done that respectfully.

However, others have argued that this is just another example of "cultural appropriation" but what does this actually mean?

What is cultural appropriation?

Cultural appropriation is when a tradition, such as clothing or a hairstyle, is taken from a culture and used in a different way.

It can offend people when people do this without making it clear where the traditions come from, or when they don't acknowledge how important they are to certain cultures.

This can make some people feel as if their culture is not being respected.

What does appropriation mean?

Appropriation means taking something from somebody without their permission.

Where can you see cultural appropriation?

One place where you might find cultural appropriation is the fashion industry.

Fashion brands have often been accused of cultural appropriation because people feel as if some parts of the industry take traditional clothes from cultures without paying proper respect.

In 2019, Gucci got a lot of criticism for selling an item which resembled a traditional turban worn by people in the Sikh community.

People were upset because they felt that Gucci had ignored how important the turban is to the Sikh faith and presented their version as if it was a new fashion accessory.

Some Sikh people also spoke about how they had been treated unfairly for wearing a turban.

Cultural appropriation can happen in different areas in society, including the way people view hairstyles.

Certain hairstyles such as braids, cornrows and dreadlocks can be really important to people from African and Caribbean communities. Some hairstyles are used to protect hair whilst others are associated with different religious groups.

However, a lot of black hairstyles have been wrongly seen in the past as untidy and unprofessional which has lead to people being treated unfairly in schools and at their jobs.

In early 2018, Kim Kardashian defended herself for wearing braids at the MTV Movie Awards. She said:

"I just think if it comes from a place of love and you're using it as cultural inspiration, then I think it is okay".

The hairstyle was soon associated with Kim Kardashian instead of black culture - where it originally came from.

In September 2019, Rihanna was also accused of cultural appropriation when she described one of her choreographers as her "spirit animal" on her Instagram.

One of her followers commented and told Rihanna to stop using the phrase as she did not belong to a Native American group.

Rihanna then apologised and said she would stop using the term.

What is a spirit animal?

The term is usually linked with Native American traditions. Some people believe that spirits help and guide people and can sometimes take the form of animals.

Does it mean I can't appreciate other cultures?

No, it doesn't mean you can't appreciate other cultures but some people say that there is line between appropriating a culture and appreciating a culture.

For example, people say that certain areas of the fashion industry should hire models and designers from different backgrounds so that they can properly appreciate and understand cultures when making new clothes and accessories.

Others say that is comes down to properly understanding and respecting whatever you take from another culture.

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Cultural appropriation: What is it and what does it mean?

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Adele has attracted criticism from some fans after sharing a photo on Instagram to celebrate what would have been Notting Hill Carnival in London. Carnival is a traditional celebration of Caribbean and black culture that takes place every year, but it was a virtual event in 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic.

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This section covers racist stereotypes and cultural appropriation.