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For 21 days, challenge yourself to read, watch, and learn from each day's tasks further your understanding of power, privilege, oppression, and equity.

Use the tracking chart provided to stay on course. Attend all scheduled zoom calls (Sundays at 9am beginning on January 24) for more activities and debrief opportunities. Zoom link will be emailed separately.

This plan includes suggestions for readings, podcasts, videos, observations, and ways to form and deepen community connections. Understanding white privilege is a powerful lens into the complexities of doing social justice work, so we’ve focused our resources on that specific issue. Make a commitment to continue the conversation.

Got questions? Email Rev. Gina or Laura Cooper.

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In April 1963, King was jailed in Birmingham, Alabama, after he defied a state court’s injunction and led a march of black protesters without a permit, urging an Easter boycott of white-owned stores. A statement published in The Birmingham News, written by eight moderate white clergymen, criticized the march and other demonstrations.

This prompted King to write a lengthy response, begun in the margins of the newspaper. He smuggled it out with the help of his lawyer, and the nearly 7,000 words were transcribed. The eloquent call for “constructive, nonviolent tension” to force an end to unjust laws became a landmark document of the civil-rights movement. The letter was printed in part or in full by several publications, including the New York Post, Liberation magazine, The New Leader, and The Christian Century.

Reflection: How do Dr. King's words ring true today?

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Images above: King is ready for a mug shot (left) in Montgomery, Alabama, after his 1956 arrest while protesting the segregation of the city's buses. His leadership of the successful 381-day bus boycott brought him to national attention. Right: In 1967, King serves out the sentence from his arrest four years earlier in Birmingham, Alabama.
In April 1963, King was jailed in Birmingham, Alabama, after he defied a state court's injunction and led a march of black protesters without a permit, urging an Easter boycott of white-owned stores. A statement published in The Birmingham News, written by eight moderate white clergymen, criticized the march and other demonstrations.

This prompted King to write a lengthy response, begun in the margins of the newspaper. He smuggled it out with the help of his lawyer, and the nearly 7,000 words were transcribed. The eloquent call for "constructive, nonviolent tension" to force an end to unjust laws became a landmark document of the civil-rights movement. The letter was printed in part or in full by several publications, including the New York Post, Liberation magazine, The New Leader, and The Christian Century.

The Atlantic published it in the August 1963 issue, under the headline "The Negro Is Your Brother."
My Dear Fellow Clergymen:
While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling my present activities "unwise and untimely." Seldom do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas. If I sought to answer all the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would have little time for anything other than such correspondence in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work. But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and that your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I want to try to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms.

I think I should indicate why I am here in Birmingham, since you have been influenced by the view which argues against "outsiders coming in." I have the honor of serving as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization operating in every southern state, with headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. We have some eighty-five affiliated organizations across the South, and one of them is the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. Frequently we share staff, educational and financial resources with our affiliates. Several months ago the affiliate here in Birmingham asked us to be on call to engage in a nonviolent direct-action program if such were deemed necessary. We readily consented, and when the hour came we lived up to our promise. So I, along with several members of my staff, am here because I was invited here. I am here because I have organizational ties here.

But more basically, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the prophets of the eighth century b.c. left their villages and carried their "thus saith the Lord" far beyond the boundaries of their home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco-Roman world, so am I compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.

Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.

You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations. I am sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the city's white power structure left the Negro community with no alternative.

In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self-purification; and direct action. We have gone through all these steps in Birmingham. There can be no gainsaying the fact that racial injustice engulfs this community. Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States. Its ugly record of brutality is widely known. Negroes have experienced grossly unjust treatment in the courts. There have been more unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches in Birmingham than in any other city in the nation. These are the hard, brutal facts of the case. On the basis of these conditions, Negro leaders sought to negotiate with the city fathers. But the latter consistently refused to engage in good-faith negotiation.

Then, last September, came the opportunity to talk with leaders of Birmingham's economic community. In the course of the negotiations, certain promises were made by the merchants-for example, to remove the stores' humiliating racial signs. On the basis of these promises, the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth and the leaders of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights agreed to a moratorium on all demonstrations. As the weeks and months went by, we realized that we were the victims of a broken promise. A few signs, briefly removed, returned; the others remained.

As in so many past experiences, our hopes had been blasted, and the shadow of deep disappointment settled upon us. We had no alternative except to prepare for direct action, whereby we would present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience of the local and the national community. Mindful of the difficulties involved, we decided to undertake a process of self-purification. We began a series of workshops on nonviolence, and we repeatedly asked ourselves: "Are you able to accept blows without retaliating?" "Are you able to endure the ordeal of jail?" We decided to schedule our direct-action program for the Easter season, realizing that except for Christmas, this is the main shopping period of the year. Knowing that a strong economic-withdrawal program would be the by-product of direct action, we felt that this would be the best time to bring pressure to bear on the merchants for the needed change.
"Wait" has almost always meant "Never."
Then it occurred to us that the March election [for Birmingham's mayor] was ahead, and so we speedily decided to postpone action until after election day. When we discovered that Mr. Connor [the commissioner of public safety, Eugene "Bull" Connor] was in the runoff, we decided again to postpone action so that the demonstration could not be used to cloud the issues. Like many others, we waited to see Mr. Connor defeated, and to this end we endured postponement after postponement. Having aided in this community need, we felt that our direct-action program could be delayed no longer.

You may well ask: "Why direct action? Why sit-ins, marches and so forth? Isn't negotiation a better path?" You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent-resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word "tension." I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.

The purpose of our direct-action program is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation. I therefore concur with you in your call for negotiation. Too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in a tragic effort to live in monologue rather than dialogue.

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One of the basic points in your statement is that the action that I and my associates have taken in Birmingham is untimely. Some have asked: "Why didn't you give the new city administration time to act?" The only answer that I can give to this query is that the new Birmingham administration must be prodded about as much as the outgoing one, before it will act. We are sadly mistaken if we feel that the election of Albert Boutwell as mayor will bring the millennium to Birmingham. While Mr. Boutwell is a much more gentle person than Mr. Connor, they are both segregationists, dedicated to maintenance of the status quo. I have hope that Mr. Boutwell will be reasonable enough to see the futility of massive resistance to desegregation. But he will not see this without pressure from devotees of civil rights. My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals.

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct-action campaign that was "well timed" in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant "Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."

We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness"-then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.

You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court's decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may well ask: "How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all."

Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority. Segregation, to use the terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, substitutes an "I-it" relationship for an "I-thou" relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things. Hence segregation is not only politically, economically and sociologically unsound, it is morally wrong and sinful. Paul Tillich has said that sin is separation. Is not segregation an existential expression of man's tragic separation, his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness? Thus it is that I can urge men to obey the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court, for it is morally right; and I can urge them to disobey segregation ordinances, for they are morally wrong.

Let us consider a more concrete example of just and unjust laws. An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself. This is difference made legal. By the same token, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow and that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal.

Let me give another explanation. A law is unjust if it is inflicted on a minority that, as a result of being denied the right to vote, had no part in enacting or devising the law. Who can say that the legislature of Alabama which set up that state's segregation laws was democratically elected? Throughout Alabama all sorts of devious methods are used to prevent Negroes from becoming registered voters, and there are some counties in which, even though Negroes constitute a majority of the population, not a single Negro is registered. Can any law enacted under such circumstances be considered democratically structured?

Sometimes a law is just on its face and unjust in its application. For instance, I have been arrested on a charge of parading without a permit. Now, there is nothing wrong in having an ordinance which requires a permit for a parade. But such an ordinance becomes unjust when it is used to maintain segregation and to deny citizens the First-Amendment privilege of peaceful assembly and protest.

I hope you are able to see the distinction I am trying to point out. In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law, as would the rabid segregationist. That would lead to anarchy. One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.

Of course, there is nothing new about this kind of civil disobedience. It was evidenced sublimely in the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar, on the ground that a higher moral law was at stake. It was practiced superbly by the early Christians, who were willing to face hungry lions and the excruciating pain of chopping blocks rather than submit to certain unjust laws of the Roman Empire. To a degree, academic freedom is a reality today because Socrates practiced civil disobedience. In our own nation, the Boston Tea Party represented a massive act of civil disobedience.

We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was "legal" and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was "illegal." It was "illegal" to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler's Germany. Even so, I am sure that, had I lived in Germany at the time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers. If today I lived in a Communist country where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I would openly advocate disobeying that country's antireligious laws.

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I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens' Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.
The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love?
In your statement you assert that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence. But is this a logical assertion? Isn't this like condemning a robbed man because his possession of money precipitated the evil act of robbery? Isn't this like condemning Socrates because his unswerving commitment to truth and his philosophical inquiries precipitated the act by the misguided populace in which they made him drink hemlock? Isn't this like condemning Jesus because his unique God-consciousness and never-ceasing devotion to God's will precipitated the evil act of crucifixion? We must come to see that, as the federal courts have consistently affirmed, it is wrong to urge an individual to cease his efforts to gain his basic constitutional rights because the quest may precipitate violence. Society must protect the robbed and punish the robber.

I had also hoped that the white moderate would reject the myth concerning time in relation to the struggle for freedom. I have just received a letter from a white brother in Texas. He writes: "All Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but it is possible that you are in too great a religious hurry. It has taken Christianity almost two thousand years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth." Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be coworkers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.

You speak of our activity in Birmingham as extreme. At first I was rather disappointed that fellow clergymen would see my nonviolent efforts as those of an extremist. I began thinking about the fact that I stand in the middle of two opposing forces in the Negro community. One is a force of complacency, made up in part of Negroes who, as a result of long years of oppression, are so drained of self-respect and a sense of "somebodiness" that they have adjusted to segregation; and in part of a few middle-class Negroes who, because of a degree of academic and economic security and because in some ways they profit by segregation, have become insensitive to the problems of the masses. The other force is one of bitterness and hatred, and it comes perilously close to advocating violence. It is expressed in the various black nationalist groups that are springing up across the nation, the largest and best known being Elijah Muhammad's Muslim movement. Nourished by the Negro's frustration over the continued existence of racial discrimination, this movement is made up of people who have lost faith in America, who have absolutely repudiated Christianity, and who have concluded that the white man is an incorrigible "devil."

I have tried to stand between these two forces, saying that we need emulate neither the "do-nothingism" of the complacent nor the hatred and despair of the black nationalist. For there is the more excellent way of love and nonviolent protest. I am grateful to God that, through the influence of the Negro church, the way of nonviolence became an integral part of our struggle.

If this philosophy had not emerged, by now many streets of the South would, I am convinced, be flowing with blood. And I am further convinced that if our white brothers dismiss as "rabble-rousers" and "outside agitators" those of us who employ nonviolent direct action, and if they refuse to support our nonviolent efforts, millions of Negroes will, out of frustration and despair, seek solace and security in black-nationalist ideologies-a development that would inevitably lead to a frightening racial nightmare.

Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself, and that is what has happened to the American Negro. Something within has reminded him of his birthright of freedom, and something without has reminded him that it can be gained. Consciously or unconsciously, he has been caught up by the Zeitgeist, and with his black brothers of Africa and his brown and yellow brothers of Asia, South America and the Caribbean, the United States Negro is moving with a sense of great urgency toward the promised land of racial justice. If one recognizes this vital urge that has engulfed the Negro community, one should readily understand why public demonstrations are taking place. The Negro has many pent-up resentments and latent frustrations, and he must release them. So let him march; let him make prayer pilgrimages to the city hall; let him go on Freedom Rides-and try to understand why he must do so. If his repressed emotions are not released in nonviolent ways, they will seek expression through violence; this is not a threat but a fact of history. So I have not said to my people: "Get rid of your discontent." Rather, I have tried to say that this normal and healthy discontent can be channeled into the creative outlet of nonviolent direct action. And now this approach is being termed extremist.

But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." Was not Amos an extremist for justice: "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream." Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: "I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus." Was not Martin Luther an extremist: "Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God." And John Bunyan: "I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience." And Abraham Lincoln: "This nation cannot survive half slave and half free." And Thomas Jefferson: "We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal ..." So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? In that dramatic scene on Calvary's hill three men were crucified. We must never forget that all three were crucified for the same crime-the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thus fell below their environment. The other, Jesus Christ, was an extremist for love, truth and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment. Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.

I had hoped that the white moderate would see this need. Perhaps I was too optimistic; perhaps I expected too much. I suppose I should have realized that few members of the oppressor race can understand the deep groans and passionate yearnings of the oppressed race, and still fewer have the vision to see that injustice must be rooted out by strong, persistent and determined action. I am thankful, however, that some of our white brothers in the South have grasped the meaning of this social revolution and committed themselves to it. They are still all too few in quantity, but they are big in quality. Some-such as Ralph McGill, Lillian Smith, Harry Golden, James McBride Dabbs, Anne Braden and Sarah Patton Boyle-have written about our struggle in eloquent and prophetic terms. Others have marched with us down nameless streets of the South. They have languished in filthy, roach-infested jails, suffering the abuse and brutality of policemen who view them as "dirty nigger-lovers." Unlike so many of their moderate brothers and sisters, they have recognized the urgency of the moment and sensed the need for powerful "action" antidotes to combat the disease of segregation.

Let me take note of my other major disappointment. I have been so greatly disappointed with the white church and its leadership. Of course, there are some notable exceptions. I am not unmindful of the fact that each of you has taken some significant stands on this issue. I commend you, Reverend Stallings, for your Christian stand on this past Sunday, in welcoming Negroes to your worship service on a nonsegregated basis. I commend the Catholic leaders of this state for integrating Spring Hill College several years ago.

But despite these notable exceptions, I must honestly reiterate that I have been disappointed with the church. I do not say this as one of those negative critics who can always find something wrong with the church. I say this as a minister of the gospel, who loves the church; who was nurtured in its bosom; who has been sustained by its spiritual blessings and who will remain true to it as long as the cord of life shall lengthen.

When I was suddenly catapulted into the leadership of the bus protest in Montgomery, Alabama, a few years ago, I felt we would be supported by the white church. I felt that the white ministers, priests and rabbis of the South would be among our strongest allies. Instead, some have been outright opponents, refusing to understand the freedom movement and misrepresenting its leaders; all too many others have been more cautious than courageous and have remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of stained-glass windows.

In spite of my shattered dreams, I came to Birmingham with the hope that the white religious leadership of this community would see the justice of our cause and, with deep moral concern, would serve as the channel through which our just grievances could reach the power structure. I had hoped that each of you would understand. But again I have been disappointed.

I have heard numerous southern religious leaders admonish their worshipers to comply with a desegregation decision because it is the law, but I have longed to hear white ministers declare: "Follow this decree because integration is morally right and because the Negro is your brother." In the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white churchmen stand on the sideline and mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities. In the midst of a mighty struggle to rid our nation of racial and economic injustice, I have heard many ministers say: "Those are social issues, with which the gospel has no real concern." And I have watched many churches commit themselves to a completely otherworldly religion which makes a strange, un-Biblical distinction between body and soul, between the sacred and the secular.

I have traveled the length and breadth of Alabama, Mississippi and all the other southern states. On sweltering summer days and crisp autumn mornings I have looked at the South's beautiful churches with their lofty spires pointing heavenward. I have beheld the impressive outlines of her massive religious-education buildings. Over and over I have found myself asking: "What kind of people worship here? Who is their God? Where were their voices when the lips of Governor Barnett dripped with words of interposition and nullification? Where were they when Governor Wallace gave a clarion call for defiance and hatred? Where were their voices of support when bruised and weary Negro men and women decided to rise from the dark dungeons of complacency to the bright hills of creative protest?"

Yes, these questions are still in my mind. In deep disappointment I have wept over the laxity of the church. But be assured that my tears have been tears of love. There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love. Yes, I love the church. How could I do otherwise? I am in the rather unique position of being the son, the grandson and the great-grandson of preachers. Yes, I see the church as the body of Christ. But, oh! How we have blemished and scarred that body through social neglect and through fear of being nonconformists.

There was a time when the church was very powerful-in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for being "disturbers of the peace" and "outside agitators." But the Christians pressed on, in the conviction that they were "a colony of heaven," called to obey God rather than man. Small in number, they were big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be "astronomically intimidated." By their effort and example they brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contests.

Things are different now. So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's silent-and often even vocal-sanction of things as they are.

But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today's church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust.

Perhaps I have once again been too optimistic. Is organized religion too inextricably bound to the status quo to save our nation and the world? Perhaps I must turn my faith to the inner spiritual church, the church within the church, as the true ekklesia and the hope of the world. But again I am thankful to God that some noble souls from the ranks of organized religion have broken loose from the paralyzing chains of conformity and joined us as active partners in the struggle for freedom. They have left their secure congregations and walked the streets of Albany, Georgia, with us. They have gone down the highways of the South on tortuous rides for freedom. Yes, they have gone to jail with us. Some have been dismissed from their churches, have lost the support of their bishops and fellow ministers. But they have acted in the faith that right defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. Their witness has been the spiritual salt that has preserved the true meaning of the gospel in these troubled times. They have carved a tunnel of hope through the dark mountain of disappointment.

I hope the church as a whole will meet the challenge of this decisive hour. But even if the church does not come to the aid of justice, I have no despair about the future. I have no fear about the outcome of our struggle in Birmingham, even if our motives are at present misunderstood. We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of America is freedom. Abused and scorned though we may be, our destiny is tied up with America's destiny. Before the pilgrims landed at Plymouth, we were here. Before the pen of Jefferson etched the majestic words of the Declaration of Independence across the pages of history, we were here. For more than two centuries our forebears labored in this country without wages; they made cotton king; they built the homes of their masters while suffering gross injustice and shameful humiliation-and yet out of a bottomless vitality they continued to thrive and develop. If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail. We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands.

Before closing I feel impelled to mention one other point in your statement that has troubled me profoundly. You warmly commended the Birmingham police force for keeping "order" and "preventing violence." I doubt that you would have so warmly commended the police force if you had seen its dogs sinking their teeth into unarmed, nonviolent Negroes. I doubt that you would so quickly commend the policemen if you were to observe their ugly and inhumane treatment of Negroes here in the city jail; if you were to watch them push and curse old Negro women and young Negro girls; if you were to see them slap and kick old Negro men and young boys; if you were to observe them, as they did on two occasions, refuse to give us food because we wanted to sing our grace together. I cannot join you in your praise of the Birmingham police department.

It is true that the police have exercised a degree of discipline in handling the demonstrators. In this sense they have conducted themselves rather "nonviolently" in public. But for what purpose? To preserve the evil system of segregation. Over the past few years I have consistently preached that nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek. I have tried to make clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or perhaps even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends. Perhaps Mr. Connor and his policemen have been rather nonviolent in public, as was Chief Pritchett in Albany, Georgia, but they have used the moral means of non-violence to maintain the immoral end of racial injustice. As T. S. Eliot has said: "The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason."

I wish you had commended the Negro sit-inners and demonstrators of Birmingham for their sublime courage, their willingness to suffer and their amazing discipline in the midst of great provocation. One day the South will recognize its real heroes. They will be the James Merediths, with the noble sense of purpose that enables them to face jeering and hostile mobs, and with the agonizing loneliness that characterizes the life of the pioneer. They will be old, oppressed, battered Negro women, symbolized in a seventy-two-year-old woman in Montgomery, Alabama, who rose up with a sense of dignity and with her people decided not to ride segregated buses, and who responded with ungrammatical profundity to one who inquired about her weariness: "My feets is tired, but my soul is at rest." They will be the young high school and college students, the young ministers of the gospel and a host of their elders, courageously and nonviolently sitting in at lunch counters and willingly going to jail for conscience sake. One day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters, they were in reality standing up for what is best in the American dream and for the most sacred values in our Judaeo-Christian heritage, thereby bringing our nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in their formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

Never before have I written so long a letter. I'm afraid it is much too long to take your precious time. I can assure you that it would have been much shorter if I had been writing from a comfortable desk, but what else can one do when he is alone in a narrow jail cell, other than write long letters, think long thoughts and pray long prayers?

If I have said anything in this letter that overstates the truth and indicates an unreasonable impatience, I beg you to forgive me. If I have said anything that understates the truth and indicates my having a patience that allows me to settle for anything less than brotherhood, I beg God to forgive me.

I hope this letter finds you strong in the faith. I also hope that circumstances will soon make it possible for me to meet each of you, not as an integrationist or a civil-rights leader but as a fellow clergyman and a Christian brother. Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear-drenched communities, and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty.

Yours for the cause of Peace and Brotherhood,
Martin Luther King Jr.
This article appears in the special MLK issue print edition with the headline "Letter From Birmingham Jail" and was published in the August 1963 Atlantic as "The Negro Is Your Brother." © 1963 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., © renewed 1991 Coretta Scott King. All works by Martin Luther King Jr. have been reprinted by arrangement with the Heirs to the Estate of Martin Luther King Jr., care of Writers House as agent for the proprietor, New York, New York.

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leadership of the successful 381-day bus boycott

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terminology of the jewish philosopher martin buber

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landmark document of the civil-rights movement

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part of the work of the nonviolent-resister

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Martin Luther King Jr.'s 'Letter From Birmingham Jail'

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Images above: King is ready for a mug shot (left) in Montgomery, Alabama, after his 1956 arrest while protesting the segregation of the city's buses. His leadership of the successful 381-day bus boycott brought him to national attention. Right: In 1967, King serves out the sentence from his arrest four years earlier in Birmingham, Alabama.

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Day 2: Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story?

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Day 2: Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story?

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True power lies in storytelling. The story we know of Brown vs. Board of Education is often that the poor Black children, subject to inferior schools, were finally allowed to integrate and gain access to white schools.

Who are the stars of that story, and who has been left out?

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Revisionist History is Malcolm Gladwell's journey through the overlooked and the misunderstood. Every episode re-examines something from the past - an event, a person, an idea, even a song - and asks whether we got it right the first time. Because sometimes the past deserves a second chance.

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Revisionist History | Pushkin Industries

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Skip to Main Content Gain access to ad-free versions of 20+ podcasts from the Pushkin library along with exclusive bonus episodes and other member benefits. Revisionist History is Malcolm Gladwell's journey through the overlooked and the misunderstood.

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There's a joke that goes something like this: "An older fish remarks to two baby goldfish, 'How do you like the water?' One turns to the other and says, 'What's water?'"

Racism and oppression are open wounds not everyone in this country wishes to address, yet there are reminders of it everywhere. Waking up to the racism that lies right underneath our noses is like fish recognizing the water; it has been here the whole time, we have been steeped in it, and we have become a part of it. What do we do with that knowledge?

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Hidden in Plain Sight: The Ghosts of Segregation (Published 2020)

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Vestiges of racism and oppression, from bricked-over segregated entrances to the forgotten sites of racial violence, still permeate much of America’s built environment.

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"But here is the theological question: Will Trump’s sedition and attempted coup be met with silence from faith leaders, especially white Christian leaders whose constituencies voted in their majority for Trump?"

Reflection: How does this impact me personally? What is at stake for me, for the country?

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What has been happening since the outcome of the November presidential election has been historic: continuous acts of sedition aimed at overturning the results of an American election by the current president of the United States.

Our nation's first president, George Washington, decided not to become a new king, but voluntarily turned his office over to a new president. John Adams then turned his office over to Thomas Jefferson after he lost an election, setting a precedent that became a bulwark of American democracy. After becoming the most "unprecedented" president in American history, Donald Trump is now trying to destroy that fundamental practice by using the power of the presidency to deny the results of an election he lost. That sedition must not be met with silence - from political leaders or from faith leaders.

There is obviously a very dangerous political lens to these actions: The future of democracy in America is at stake. But I would argue there is also a theological lens - that the growing power of a distinctive American heresy is also at play.

In the face of the president's open efforts to erase the results of the election and defy the Constitution, we have seen cooperation and collaboration by what is now his Republican Party unlike anything we have seen in American history. Even after every accusation of election fraud has been proven false or struck down by courts (including by judges Trump appointed) and multiple recounts in several states, Trump and his media machines have continued to spread disinformation across his base and around the country.

What is now playing out this week in the Congress is nothing less than an attempted coup intended to overturn both a presidential election and the Constitution of the United States - all in order to keep Donald Trump in power.

Currently there are at least 12 U.S. Republican senators and as many as 140 Republican House members planning to object to the certification of electoral votes from one or more battleground states. These efforts have met opposition from other Republicans in both chambers, ensuring they will ultimately fail in altering the outcome, but the scale and spectacle of the planned objections are completely outrageous, as Donald Trump's presidency has been from the beginning. Trump's effort to hold on to power at any cost are desperate, delusional, and, of course, very dangerous. As political leaders from both parties have said, the precedents Trump and much of the elected GOP have set in this post-election period are incredibly damaging to the nation's health and future as a democracy.

Despite the repeated media reports that this coup attempt will fail, we should note that around the world, unsuccessful coups have often preceded successful ones. The real danger of these actions is less in what they will do this time, but rather, what doors they open for the future: Losing candidates or parties could point to these behaviors as somehow setting precedents for and justifying their actions.

But here is the theological question: Will Trump's sedition and attempted coup be met with silence from faith leaders, especially white Christian leaders whose constituencies voted in their majority for Trump? There are at least two fundamental religious issues at stake here.

First is the centrality of truth for Christians: Trump's weekend call to Georgia's Republican secretary of state was filled with one lie after another. "I just want to find 11,780 votes," Trump admitted. Brad Raffensperger said in response, "Mr. President, the challenge that you have is the data you have is wrong." The next day, the state's key election official said, "We believe the truth matters." Does the truth matter to Christians and Christian leaders who supported Donald Trump?

Second, is the biblical abomination of racism and its ideology of white nationalism that stands at the core of the Trump base. It is telling that many of the president's claims originated in the dark corners of the web among QAnon conspiracy theorists and message boards often frequented by white supremacists. These sites also call on Trump supporters to come to Washington on the day of Wednesday's congressional vote - and to come armed.

It is telling that many of the president's claims originated in the dark corners of the web among QAnon conspiracy theorists and message boards often frequented by white supremacists.

Trump's clear attempts to disenfranchise people of color are rooted in the sins of racism and white supremacy. Accepting or ignoring that reality is no longer possible for those who confess Christ as Lord. And the violence implicitly threatened in Trump's encouragement to his supporters to stage "wild" protests in conjunction with the Jan. 6 joint session of Congress to certify the result is absolutely inexcusable for followers of Jesus. This is no longer just politics, it is theological heresy, and one that needs to be exorcised from white Christianity in America.

Some of these religious groups are actually supporting Trump's lies and his call to come to Washington. The most visible, organized pro-Trump Christian involvement is the so-called " Jericho March." It's a partner organization with secular groups like "Stop the Steal," a PAC connected to Roger Stone. The first pro-Trump "Jericho March" was the one in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 12, which was the same day Proud Boys tore down Black Lives Matter signs from churches. Eric Metaxas, a prominent speaker at that event, has made headlines in the post-election period by saying he would "be happy to die in this fight." This week, the Jericho March is again in Washington, D.C., with plans to reenact the siege of Jericho by marching around the Supreme Court and the U.S. Capitol. They also plan to hold nightly prayer vigils outside the Naval Observatory (the official residence of the vice president), to pray that Mike Pence will intervene on Wednesday and declare a Trump victory. (Vice President Pence does not have the power to do this and has said as much, which has not prevented Trump from calling him to do so.)

Some conservative white evangelical leaders have publicly denounced these idolatrous efforts. Southern Baptist author and speaker Beth Moore tweeted in mid-December: "I have never seen anything in these United States of America I found more astonishingly seductive & dangerous to the saints of God than Trumpism. This Christian nationalism is not of God. Move back from it." Conservative author, lawyer, and evangelical David French wrote a piece after the previous Jericho March denouncing "The Dangerous Idolatry of Christian Trumpism," writing:

A significant segment of the Christian public has fallen for conspiracy theories, has mixed nationalism with the Christian gospel, has substituted a bizarre mysticism for reason and evidence, and rages in fear and anger against their political opponents-all in the name of preserving Donald Trump's power ...When core biblical values are contingent, but support for Donald Trump is not, then idolatry is the result.

Fortunately, there are Christians of all races and theological backgrounds speaking out in favor of the rule of law and the possibility of a genuine multiracial democracy for our nation's future. Just yesterday, more than 2,000 faith leaders and religious activists released a statement calling on Congress to honor the result of the November election.

That letter says this:

As faithful citizens, we are praying for a peaceful, smooth, and dignified transfer of power. A delayed and drawn out objection on January 6th would not overturn the will of the American people and change the outcome of the election. It will be nothing but a disservice to the idea of e pluribus unum - and every Member of Congress who believes in the sanctity of our democracy should say so.

The president's continual lies and actions will not end with the congressional vote this week. He will fight at least until Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are inaugurated on Jan. 20 - and likely even beyond the inauguration. An attempted coup, rooted in white nationalism, is now standing at the ready. When a president continually lies, then calls for action based on his followers' belief in those lies, that reasoning isn't just circular - it is evil.

More is at stake now than politics. Let's call it a choice between theological integrity and the idolatry of white Christianity in America. It is now the pro-Trump white Christian leaders who need to break their silence and allegiance to Trump and recommit their allegiance to the truth, and ultimately to following Christ.

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What has been happening since the outcome of the November presidential election has been historic: continuous acts of sedition aimed at overturning the results of an American election by the current president of the United States. Our nation's first president, George Washington, decided not to become a new king, but voluntarily turned his office over to a new president.

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Day 5: Racism is Taught in the Stories we Learn

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Day 5: Racism is Taught in the Stories we Learn

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The power is in the stories. Who gets to tell them, and what those stories reveal -- at the root of all of these decisions is where the power lives.

This article talks about what who decides what we learn, and how we learn it, and what constitutes a "true American" according to the history books.

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Historian Donald Yacovone, an associate at the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research and a 2013 winner of the W.E.B. Du Bois medal, was researching a book on the legacy of the antislavery movement when he came across some old history school textbooks that stopped him cold - and led him to write a different book.

Yacovone, who co-authored "The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross" with Henry Louis Gates Jr. in 2013, is now writing "Teaching White Supremacy: The Textbook Battle Over Race in American History."

The Gazette interviewed Yacovone about the origins of his research, his findings, and why he thinks it's necessary to teach the difficult story of slavery and white supremacy and their legacies.

GAZETTE: How did you start examining history textbooks from the 19th and 20th centuries?

YACOVONE: I had begun a different book about the legacy of the antislavery movement and the rise of the Civil Rights era. I had spent several months at the Houghton Library before it closed down. When I was nearly finished with one particularly large collection, I wanted to take a break and find out how abolitionism had been taught in school textbooks. I thought this was going to be a quick enterprise: I'd go over to Gutman Library at the Graduate School of Education, take a look at a few textbooks, and keep going. Imagine my shock when I was confronted by a collection of about 3,000 textbooks. I started reviewing them, and I came across one 1832 book, "History of the United States" by Noah Webster, the gentleman who's responsible for our dictionary. I was astonished by what I was reading so I just kept reading some more.

In Webster's book there was next to nothing about the institution of slavery, despite the fact that it was a central American institution. There were no African Americans ever mentioned. When Webster wrote about Africans, it was extremely derogatory, which was shocking because those comments were in a textbook. What I realized from his book, and from the subsequent ones, was how they defined "American" as white and only as white. Anything that was less than an Anglo Saxon was not a true American. The further along I got in this process, the more intensely this sentiment came out, I realized that I was looking at, there's no other word for it, white supremacy. I came across one textbook that declared on its first page, "This is the White Man's History." At that point, you had to be a dunce not to see what these books were teaching.

"Americans tend to see racism as a result of Southern slavery, and this thinking has all kinds of problems."

GAZETTE: What are the roots of white supremacy? How is white supremacy connected to the history of slavery?

YACOVONE: White supremacy precedes the origins of the United States. Every aspect of social interaction, particularly in the 18th and 19th centuries, was dominated by white identity, and white supremacy became an expression of American identity.

Americans tend to see racism as a result of Southern slavery, and this thinking has all kinds of problems. First of all, slavery was in the North as well as in the South, and the people who formed the idea of American identity were not Southern slave owners, they were Northerners. The father of white supremacy was not a Southerner; it was John H. Van Evrie, a Canadian who ended up settling in New York City. Van Evrie argued that if no slaves existed, the class-based structure of Europe would have been transferred, kept, and developed in the American colonies. But with the African presence, Van Evrie said, the descendants of white Europeans saw that the difference among white people was virtually insignificant compared to what they perceived as differences between themselves and African Americans. This allowed democracy, which was an unpopular idea in the 17th and 18th century, to flourish and develop.

We always forget that democracy was not an idealized form of government back then. In fact, it was considered an evil. Van Evrie's argument was that Americans had to reimagine a new kind of government and social order and they could do so because of the African presence. This can also explain why white supremacy has persisted for so long, because it is an identity of oneself in contrast to others, a sort of a self-fulfilling, reinforcing thought about one's self-perceived superiority. Even people who opposed slavery believed that African Americans could never be absorbed by white society. Samuel Sewall, who wrote the first antislavery pamphlet in 1700, condemned slavery, but he also characterized people of African descent as "a kind of extravasate Blood," always alien. His idea remained central to the American mind for the next 200 years.

GAZETTE: Some historians say that white supremacy ideology served to justify the enslavement of African Americans.

YACOVONE: The main feature of white supremacy is the assumption that people with Anglo Saxon backgrounds are the primacy, the first order of humanity. Van Evrie, however, saw people of African descent as essential to do "the white man's work," and were designed to do so "by nature and god." He wrote about six different books on the subject, and he used a racial hierarchy in which Caucasians were at the top and Africans at the bottom. You'd think that white supremacists were driven mostly by hate, but at the core they were driven by their ideas of racial superiority, which of course were pure fiction and had nothing to do with reality. White supremacy wasn't developed to defend the institution of slavery, but in reaction to it, and it preceded the birth of the United States.

A lot of the white supremacists in the North didn't even want an African American presence there. Many Northerners advocated the American Colonization Society, which would export African Americans to Liberia. But there was no unanimity of ideas about white supremacy; the only thing they all agreed upon was the "superiority of the white race."

"White supremacy is a toxin. The older history textbooks were like syringes that injected the toxin of white supremacy into the mind of many generations of Americans."

GAZETTE: I once heard a Harvard historian say that the Founding Fathers were white supremacists. Is that a fair characterization?

YACOVONE: Of course. Thomas Jefferson is the classic example. He is the individual responsible for giving us the phrase that embodies the democratic promise - "All men are created equal" - and set the trend to exclude slavery from newly acquired territory. Yet, he refused to free his own slaves, considered people of African descent inherently inferior, and when he wrote those famous words in the Declaration of Independence he thought only of white men.

GAZETTE: What did the textbooks published in the 20th century teach about slavery in comparison to those written in the 19th century?

YACOVONE: For the most part, the textbooks from the pre-Civil War period through the end of the century followed a basic format: They would go from exploration to colonization to revolution to creation of the American republic, and then every succeeding presidential administration. Anything outside of the political narrative was not considered history and was not taught.

During the brief period of Reconstruction (1863-1877), the story emphasized the fulfillment of democracy, and the ideology of freedom suffused many books. This was a dramatic change. I even came across a couple of books that contained pictures of African Americans, and I was flabbergasted when I discovered one that had a picture of Frederick Douglass - that was unheard of. Prior to Reconstruction, textbooks had a few pictures, some engravings. But they disappear pretty quick once we get into the 20th century, because the "Lost Cause" mythology takes over academia and white supremacy reappears with full force.

"We're not teaching students the true American history because African American history is American history."

During the 1920s, the 1930s, and the 1940s, it was astonishing to see positive assessments of slavery in American history textbooks, which taught that the African American's natural environment was the institution of slavery, where they were cared for from cradle to grave. There was a legacy of African American writing about freedom, but the white power structure simply wouldn't accept it as legitimate. They dismissed the slave narratives as propaganda, downplayed the history of Africans before slavery, and ignored the work of African American scholars such as W.E.B. Du Bois and others.

GAZETTE: A report by the Southern Poverty Law Center found that schools failed to teach the "hard history" of African enslavement. What role have the textbooks played in the miseducation of many generations of Americans?

YACOVONE: This is the problem. We're not teaching students the true American history because African American history is American history. I've been lecturing about this project, and every time I ask students what they learn about the history of slavery, they all said, "Not much." But even if there are textbooks that deal with those issues in a more accurate way, white teachers are so intimidated that they won't teach it.

GAZETTE: You mentioned in an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education that while doing your research, you found the history book you read when you were a fifth grader. What did that book teach you about the history of slavery?

YACOVONE: That was one of the great revelations of this research. Like so many of these books, "Exploring the New World" by O. Stuart Hamer and others, which was published repeatedly between 1953 and 1965, said almost nothing. All these books, particularly from 1840 for the next 25 years, go out of their way to not discuss slavery. Some would say that slavery began in 1619, but most said it began in 1620 because those who are writing this narrative are New Englanders, and 1620 is when the Pilgrims sailed on the Mayflower. Half the books from this early period got the date wrong. If the textbooks wrote about slavery, it was only one sentence and would never discuss the nature of slavery or include any descriptions. When American politics became absorbed by the debate over slavery, they could not avoid that, and would mention the 1820 Compromise [that admitted Maine to the union as a free state and Missouri as a slave state] and the 1850 Compromise [that abolished the slave trade -but not slavery- in Washington, D.C.]. None of the textbooks published prior to the Civil War would ever talk about the abolitionist movement, which began in the late 1820s. It wasn't until 1853, when the educator Emma Willard published her massive history of the United States, that she mentioned the abolitionists, but she didn't say who they were or what they were about, except that they were tools of Great Britain dedicated to destroying the republic.

GAZETTE: What did the textbooks published after the 1960s teach about slavery? Has there been any progress over the past few years?

YACOVONE: In the mid 1960s, textbooks began noticeably to change because attitudes and scholarship were changing in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement. Scholars such as Kenneth Stampp reimagined Reconstruction, and it had a dramatic effect. There was a gradual reintroduction of the African American element in history textbooks. And now, many history teachers don't even use textbooks. They're using online resources. Some of the best work is being produced by the Zinn Education Project, the Gilder-Lehrman Center, and the Southern Poverty Law Center.

But even when textbooks are accurate, teachers have to be willing to teach it. We know there are many white teachers who are afraid of doing it. And you have to have school systems, both public and private, committed to doing this work and not to punish teachers for doing so, which is happening. The resources are endless. But it's complicated because in many states there are institutionalized approval processes that determine what textbook will be used. And as far as the publishing industry is concerned, this is huge money. Texas and California dominate and they determine what gets published and what doesn't.

GAZETTE: What are the risks of not teaching the full story of slavery and its legacy?

YACOVONE: This is essential work that has to be done. If America is to be a nation that fulfills its democratic promise, the history of slavery and white supremacy have to be taught in schools across the country. We need to acknowledge that white supremacy remains an integral part of American society and we need to understand how we got to where we are. The consequences of not doing so are lethal. White supremacy is a toxin. The older history textbooks were like syringes that injected the toxin of white supremacy into the mind of many generations of Americans. What has to be done is teach the truth about slavery as a central institution in America's origins, as the cause of the Civil War, and about its legacy that still lives on. The consequences of not doing so, we're seeing every day.
This interview has been condensed and edited for length and clarity.

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Harvard historian examines how textbooks taught white supremacy

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We interview historian Donald Yacovone, an associate at The Hutchins Center for African & African American Research, who is writing the book "Teaching White Supremacy: The Textbook Battle Over Race in American History."

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To close out the week after Dr. Martin Luther King's birthday, consider his speech "The Other America." Which America do you live in, and what can you do to bring these two worlds closer together?

"Somewhere we must come to see that human progress never rolls in on the wheels of inevitability, it comes
through the tireless efforts and the persistent work of dedicated individuals who are willing to be co-workers
with God and without this hard work time itself becomes an ally of the primitive forces of social stagnation.
And so we must always help time and realize that the time is always right to do right. "

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Reflect in your journals: What did I already know? What did I not know? What are some ideas I have about what I just learned?

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Grab a piece of paper and something to write with. Watch the video, and complete the exercise.

If yes, that's not unusual. We like being around people who make us comfortable. But how often do we engage with others who are different, and who, perhaps, make us uncomfortable?

We are influenced most by the people who are most like us. This is affinity bias: we gravitate to others who are similar to us in beliefs, attitudes, and yes, even unconsciously, skin color. How might this show up in our everyday lives? How can we break this pattern?

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Day 7: Colorblindness is Counterproductive

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Day 7: Colorblindness is Counterproductive

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"It is no longer socially acceptable in many quarters to identify oneself as racist. Instead, many Americans purport not to see color. However, their colorblindness 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."

Read the Atlantic article linked below. What windows and mirrors do you see?

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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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To break your affinity bias, you need to stretch yourself outside your comfort zone. Welcome discomfort, as it is where learning occurs. Today, check out Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man. Emmanual Acho speaks some uncomfortable truths that perhaps you didn't know you didn't know.

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The Inaugural Episode - Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man

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In this episode, Jen is joined by fellow podcaster, Will Smith of Let's Talk. Will is a Youth Pastor who holds a degree in Pastoral Care and Counseling, and in this episode, he talks about growing up in the church, his frustration with the racial reconciliation movement, and how people can better approach race, faith, and unity.

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In this episode, Jen is joined by fellow podcaster, Will Smith of Let's Talk. Will is a Youth Pastor who holds a degree in Pastoral Care and Counseling, and in this episode, he talks about growing up in the church, his frustration with the racial reconciliation movement, and how people can better approach race, faith, and unity.
For more from Will, you can follow him on Instagram at @pastorwill_

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and the reconciliation movement with will smith

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‎Speaking of Racism: Faith, Race, and the Reconciliation Movement with Will Smith on Apple Podcasts

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‎In this episode, Jen is joined by fellow podcaster, Will Smith of Let's Talk. Will is a Youth Pastor who holds a degree in Pastoral Care and Counseling, and in this episode, he talks about growing up in the church, his frustration with the racial reconciliation movement, and how people can better ap...

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Day 10: America: This isn't who we are ... or is it?

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Day 10: America: This isn't who we are ... or is it?

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No doubt you've heard that phrase many times since Jan. 6. "This isn't who we are, America." But, what if it is, and always has been who we are? What then?

Check out these articles from NPR and The Atlantic to discuss our perceptions of today's America: what it is, what it isn't, and to whom.

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There is a lie some Americans tell themselves when America is on its worst behavior: "This isn't America!" or "This isn't who we are!" or "We're better than this!"

You heard versions of this lie again this past week after armed insurrectionists stormed the U.S. Capitol on urging from President Trump, attempting to undo the results of last November's election.

Even in the halls of Congress, after the broken glass was cleared and U.S. senators and representatives were allowed back into their chambers from undisclosed locations, Republican Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska came back to this refrain: "Our kids need to know that this isn't what America is."

We are a country built on fabrication, nostalgia and euphemism. And every time America shows the worst of itself, all the contradictions collapse into the lie I've heard nonstop for the last several years: "This isn't who we are."

In the final weeks of Donald Trump's presidency, we are still collectively struggling over whether to treat his term and the reaction to it as an aberration or as a continuation of an American way of life. So much of it feels unprecedented: the emergence of the Trump-led Twitter news cycle, the abandonment of political norms we thought were etched in stone, the seemingly never-ending protest movements sprouting up in reaction to it all.

It all feels new. But it is not.

The images from the Capitol this past week made that clear: a noose hanging outside the building. Inside, insurrectionists carrying a Confederate flag. Members of the mob wearing T-shirts that read "Civil War."

Our current troubles - and our current administration - are both just the latest chapters in America's ongoing battle over race.

Trump's presidency has always been about race and reacting to a nation more diverse than it has ever been. We've been reminded of that time and again since he announced his candidacy. So how can anyone still say, "This is not who we are"? Why do we continue to hear that same lie as the worst of America rears its head?

Once you see it as such, it all makes a lot more sense. Remember, Trump began his ascent to political power on a racist lie: birtherism. He launched his campaign for the presidency calling Mexican immigrants criminals and rapists. His first major policy initiative was travel restrictions on Muslim-majority nations that felt a lot like a travel ban on people with darker skin. His supporters cited "economic anxiety" as their motivation, but they were driven by racial animus. Former KKK leader David Duke endorsed Trump twice for president.

Trump's presidency has always been about race and reacting to a nation more diverse than it has ever been. We've been reminded of that time and again since he announced his candidacy. So how can anyone still say, "This is not who we are"? Why do we continue to hear that same lie as the worst of America rears its head?

I see glimpses of who we are every day and, at the same time, a deep discomfort with that reality. That lie permeates my industry, the media. There would have been a time, several years ago, where if I had attempted to write this essay using words like "racist" or "lie," I would have been told to rewrite it. Urged to soften the tone. To maybe not make it all about race. This is not an indictment of NPR; the entire industry did it. Much of the industry still does.

Even this past week, there was hand-wringing about what to call the rioters storming the U.S. Capitol and how to describe their insurrection.

But I'd be wrong to say it's only the media that nurtures the lie. Our audiences do as well.

As a Black NPR host, I am often talking to mostly white audiences about race. By and large, listeners are happy to go where those conversations lead, but regularly, a loud minority shows that it actually wants no part of such discussions. Listeners send emails wondering whether I ever talk about anything but race. Others suggest I may actually have it all wrong, invoking some version of "not all white people."

A recent example came after an interview with an Asian American author, tracing the long history of discrimination against Asians in this country. Several white listeners wondered why other groups just didn't "work hard" the way their own white ancestors did. And then another listener wrote they didn't consider themselves "the least bit racist," but called all Asians "manipulative and dishonest."

The lie is all around us. So when weeks like the one we just experienced happen, some yell the lie even louder, to our detriment. What would happen if we decided to be more honest about race the next time our nation found itself at a racial flashpoint? What might be lost? What might be gained?

It's hard to know, because I've never seen us, collectively, do it before. But I know that history only yells louder each time we refuse to listen. And no lie, no matter how often it's told, can keep the truth at bay.
Sam Sanders is a correspondent and host of the NPR podcast It's Been a Minute With Sam Sanders. The show's latest episode, "The Capitol, Mobbed," is available for streaming here.

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There is a lie some Americans tell themselves when America is on its worst behavior: "This isn't America!" or "This isn't who we are!" or "We're better than this!" You heard versions of this lie again this past week after armed insurrectionists stormed the U.S.

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Bonus Lesson: Performative Allyship. What is it, and how do I not do it?

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Bonus Lesson: Performative Allyship. What is it, and how do I not do it?

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Dr. Bettina Love, professor and DEI practitioner extraordinaire, lays down some truths about how white people think they are being strong allies, when in reality, they might just be performing. How can you make sure you're doing more than performance?

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Since the world watched Minneapolis resident George Floyd die at the hands of a police officer named Derek Chauvin and learned police in Louisville, Ky., shot and killed Breonna Taylor in her own home, an outpouring of attention has focused on anti-racism and equity. Countless anti-racism book clubs were formed; books addressing America's racism shot up The New York Times bestsellers list; big-name corporations with feeble track records on diversity and inclusion made public statements in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. And the field of education saw a resurgence of calls for anti-racism and equity.

School districts and colleges around the country formed task forces, committees, and working groups to address what they already know: that despite good intentions for racial justice, the work is at best elusive without substantive commitment from the institutions and is dead on arrival without significant structural changes that address systemic racism.

Much of what goes by the name "equity work" is a collective hoping for racial justice. This hope too often hinges on the idea that before we change policies, we must change hearts and minds. So equity work becomes trying to help white people learn to be less racist. The work is dependent on the level of commitment of white people-especially white people in power-and their awareness of racism.

In education, too often change happens when white people are ready for change, and until then, directors of diversity, equity, and inclusion wait, teach, and create reports that tell the story of racism at the very place they work. Under these conditions, the promise of equity is ultimately empty.

Real equity work is attempting to undo and heal generations of violence, trauma, and racial and economic inequities. In the current environment, it relies heavily on the ingenuity and brilliance of Black, Brown, and Indigenous people to fix problems people of color did not create. Equity workers of color are the backbone of equity work.

We are asked to chair diversity committees with little to no compensation, as if we should be honored to help fix the problems of racism. Our voices are now valuable but only in conversations surrounding diversity, equity, and inclusion. We are asked to speak at conferences and gatherings because organizers see diversity as a conference theme-not necessarily an institutional value. As feminist writer and scholar Sara Ahmed reminds us, "The diversity worker has a job precisely because diversity and equality are not daily practice." Even in the midst of all this talk focused on equity work, we must remember Ahmed's words.

In his brilliant speech "A Talk to Teachers," the American essayist and novelist James Baldwin told educators that we are trying to undo "many generations of bad faith and cruelty, when it is operating not only in the classroom but in society." This type of truth telling is needed in equity work because yet another task force or another report is hollow without taking direct aim at the generational harm done by whiteness.

Anti-racism work is all too often done as a performance-to be popular and look "woke." It can be painstakingly ornamental. It needs instead to embed community efforts, organizers, and the actual people who live with America's oppression. It needs to make structural changes that dismantle centuries-old, racist institutions from the ground up in order to rebuild with a commitment to community, safety (without police), justice, diversity, and actual equity. For equity work to work, it must be handed to the community. We have to actually trust the people we say we want to empower to make structural changes, not just tinker at the edges of injustice.

The contemporary abolitionist movement I am part of does not focus on the edges; abolitionists want to create communities free of systemic oppression. We are watching reform that will not address racism, as school districts widely are implementing anti-racist curriculum with no structural changes to how racism functions in their districts. According to a 2019 report by EdBuild, a nonprofit organization that focused on school funding issues, predominately white school districts get $23 billion a year more in state and local funding than predominately nonwhite districts despite serving the same number of students. What good is anti-racist curriculum that does not address racism right under its nose?

Abolitionist and anthropologist Savannah Shange rightly tells us we have to work "within, against, and beyond" for collective liberation. In the current push for anti-racism and equity, some long-fought battles in education have recently been won. The Boston school committee voted unanimously to suspend admissions tests to the city's three most prestigious schools in favor of an analysis of grades and test scores along with affording priority to students who live in the city's poorest ZIP codes. The San Diego school district unanimously approved a grading system that will assess students on mastery of a subject, a change intended to make grades more equitable. Additionally, ethnic-studies courses will be a graduation requirement in the district. After backlash against these structural changes and the move toward anti-racism, the district doubled down on its commitment to equity, a bold move that takes leadership and community support. These systemwide wins are due to years of parents, community members, teachers, and equity workers fighting for and demanding justice.

While the wins are important, we cannot stop here. There will inevitably be white pushback and resistance that will undoubtedly find a way to continue to allow white parents to hoard resources so they are not available to Black and Brown students. (See, for example, Amanda E. Lewis and John B. Diamond's book Despite the Best Intentions.) This cycle is why we must fight for equity and move toward abolition of all oppressions because reform is not liberation. Nonetheless, the shifting of ground by equity leaders and communities does give me hope.

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How to Make Anti-Racism More Than a Performance (Opinion)

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Since the world watched Minneapolis resident George Floyd die at the hands of a police officer named Derek Chauvin and learned police in Louisville, Ky., shot and killed Breonna Taylor in her own home, an outpouring of attention has focused on anti-racism and equity.

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“When the first Africans arrived in Virginia in 1619, there were no ‘white’ people there; nor, according to the colonial records, would there be for another sixty years.” — Theodore W. Allen

Whiteness is a social construct; when and how did it become so powerful? Reflect in your journal areas of your life in which whiteness is the default, and where this may reveal privilege where others lack it.

"The invented category of white people is still the largest case of this colonial strategy in the world. Whiteness was not always invented in opposition to chattel slavery, even in America. As the newly invented whites pushed West, they were reinvented in opposition to the existence of other people inconveniently on the land the newcomers believed God had ordained to them as their destiny. "

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"When the first Africans arrived in Virginia in 1619, there were no 'white' people there; nor, according to the colonial records, would there be for another sixty years." - Theodore W. Allen

"There's nothing that a white man with a penny hates more than a nigger with a nickel!" - Chris Rock

There's a perception that whiteness is working for white people. It's not. Whiteness is one of the biggest and most long-running scams ever perpetrated.

It started in the late 1600s in America, but like so many scams, it spiraled out of control until it had a life of its own.

Not long after Europeans started arriving on the east coast of North America and the Caribbean Islands they found themselves rich in land but desperate for labor to work the land. The answer they struck upon was importation of bond labor, initially mostly Irish. The Irish had not been considered fully human under English law for centuries, and they ended up in plantations and working sugar under the Caribbean sun. The easy part of importing Irish (and Scottish) slave labor was that they were right next to England. The downside is there wasn't enough of them for the amazing amounts of land laid before the eager English settlers, and thus the Atlantic slave trade with Africa was born. This is the story we hear in school, but the abridged version we get, intentionally or not, hides the scam of it. Initially the bond terms of convict, Scotch-Irish, and African labor was a set period of time, at the end of which they received bond money and their freedom in this new land. In fact, not that many bondsmen and women lived to be free, but some did, and established themselves as a mixed-race, free peasantry of the new world. If you've ever wondered where the free blacks of so many stories of early America came from, a large number were the families of freed African bond laborers.

As time went on, the labor needs of the land holders continued to grow, and desperate to cultivate the land, they were loathe to let go of their bond servants and the bondsmen and bondswomen's children (whom they kept in bondage for a legally defined time as well). In the mean time, a growing American peasantry was proving as difficult to govern as the European peasantry back home, periodically rising up in riot and rebellion, light skinned and dark skinned together. The political leaders of the Virginia colony struck upon an answer to all these problems, an answer which plagues us to this day.

The Virginians legislated a new class of people into existence: the whites. They gave the whites certain rights, and took other rights from blacks. White, as a language of race, appears in Virginia around the 1680s, and seems to first appear in Virginia law in 1691. And thus whiteness, and to a degree as well blackness, was born in the mind of America.

As of the 18th century whites could not be permanently enslaved as they sometimes had been before, and black slaves could never work their way to freedom. The whites were told this was because God had made the blacks inferior to the whites, just as the whites were inferior to the superior classes that owned property. It's worthwhile to remember that they didn't give whites political rights, they didn't give whites the vote - that would not happen then nor at the revolution and independence. Whites didn't get the vote until the presidency of Andrew Jackson. Property owners, both of land and slaves, were the only ones who could vote. That included black land and slave owners until various states passed laws in the early 18th century to take their franchise away.

This plan worked gorgeously. It broke all efforts of the majority of people, African or European, to fight for civil and political rights in America against a landed class that ruled everything. It reduced a portion of the people to the status of the negro slave, and gave the poor but now white people a precious and entitled inch to stand above the permanently enslaved on the social ladder. The next thing the politicians did sealed the deal: they paid poor whites a bounty for runaway slaves, and often made them overseers for slaves, turning every poor white in America into a prison guard against the people who had once been their neighbors and allies.

If this seems like a crazy way for people to behave, it's important to think about what was believed about the natural order of things back in the 1600s. Nowadays, we don't really think about class as a thing that often, and certainly not a natural thing. But when white and black people were conceived, the idea of class was literally believed to be handed down from God. Aristocracy flowed from the divine right of kings, and by their blood or elevation. The poor were poor because God so wished it. Keeping peasants in line and using them to their fullest was what the aristocracy was for, and the tactics that accomplished this were considered wise stewardship. Sometimes that meant concessions, and sometimes divide and conquer, but as long as you didn't have peasant rebellions, you were doing a good job. This view of the world, never universal but powerful and prevalent, held on in one form or another for a very long time. It infected the views of British, Spanish, Dutch, and French imperial masters all over. The powerful were those God had chosen, and those in their power were chosen by God to be of use. While fainter, this idea is so strong it still leaks into the modern era in places like the atheological ideas of Prosperity Christianity. In the frame of mind of aristocracy and a divinely ordained ruling class, such a plan to reorder people and make them pliant was understood to be a move of genius blessed by god and king, if it worked.

This plan worked, in fact it worked so well it became the blueprint for the next few centuries of colonization, revised and spread all over the world, even beyond the conception of white and black.

As the aristocrats and their successors traveled around the world through the colonial age, Europeans all over would find or define a group within the colonial territory and elevate it above the other groups, give it some privileges, though never enough to challenge the intruding rulers. In exchange for this slightly elevated status, the rulers would make those people do the colonial dirty work, and usually keep them slightly more well off than their fellows. Over time, these slightly elevated people often tried to keep their European masters in power even after the people realized how evil colonialism was, maintaining the system both to keep above their fellows and out of fear of retaliation for the dirty work they'd done. The most familiar contemporary case of this practice people will recognize is the Belgian categorization of Tutsis and Hutus, and the tragedy that still hangs over that arrangement over a century later. But really, the idea started in Virginia.

The invented category of white people is still the largest case of this colonial strategy in the world. Whiteness was not always invented in opposition to chattel slavery, even in America. As the newly invented whites pushed West, they were reinvented in opposition to the existence of other people inconveniently on the land the newcomers believed God had ordained to them as their destiny. Elsewhere, they were reinvented as the able administrators, the teachers and ministers, and God's own technocrats, both bettering and properly using the non-white world. Each invention of whiteness was a new permutation, but each one also harkened back to the ur-form of Virginia: God made the whites to serve kings, and everyone else to serve whites. Today, corporations and the remains of colonial systems have reduced the vast majority of those in the arbitrary category of white people to drafted screws for a global forced-labor prison camp.

The great thing about the divide-and-conquer of creating white-skin privilege is that you don't have to give people thusly bought off anything more, and American power structures didn't. In places with black slavery, the whites suffered terribly.

There is a simple truth to American history for the majority of people who have ever been American: the worse the black experience, the worse everyone else's experience, including whites. Driving down (or eliminating) black wages, while always agreeable to whites, drove white pay lower than their European counterparts for most of our history. The labor movement that got its start in America took longer to make progress here, especially in terms of hours and working conditions, largely because employers pitted whites against black or immigrant labor, splitting the movement. Civil and political rights in America only ever had to be better for whites than they were for blacks, preserving that furious inch of superiority that was the defining quality of whites. To this day poor whites are the most intransigent racists - left by an exploitative and violent system without education, access to food and medical care, or even the basic necessities of life in the developed world. In this state their only precious possession is the idea of whiteness Virginian aristocracy blessed them with hundreds of years ago.

So privilege doesn't really work for the people who have it, or at least not the way many people imagine it does. Some white privileges are basic human rights, like the right to live where you wish in safety from your neighbors and the local police. Others shouldn't be privileges for anyone at all, like preferred medical treatment based on race. White privilege is sold to whites, but it is the socio-political equivalent of putting "Contains No Arsenic!" on a breakfast cereal box. White folk have bought into that message tremendously. I mean, who wants a breakfast cereal with arsenic in it? Of course, the problem is there's no reason cereal should ever have arsenic in it in the first place.

Just to keep things plausible, the political arsenic keeps getting introduced into the metaphorical food supply. Perpetual bondage as chattel slaves, Jim Crow, and the current drug war are things terrible enough that white people are happy to accept getting out of them, and into a failed health insurance system, outrageous levels of military spending, failing schools for their children, and even actual arsenic in their food supply. The idea that people should be denied rights because of an organizing principle of 17th century aristocratic control baffles conception, even as it shapes our practical and political lives on a daily basis. It is to the political benefit of the existing system to keep whites, especially poor whites with little more than their whiteness to be proud of. It makes for a predictable political group. Whites thus managed will vote and flock to issues as reliably as tides.

The situation is deeply miserable, even for those living slightly higher up on the shit pile. The biggest two indicators that someone will commit suicide in America are the two boxes they check on the census that are supposed to confer the most safety from misery, and the most advantage one could have in our society: white, and male. What could accuse privilege of failure more than seeking one's own violent end?

"The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression."
- W.E.B. DuBois

The very happiest white men I know are those actively working towards ending racism and sexism, not necessarily professionally, but in all the small ways they learn to. Like people who work on space programs or meditate on rejoining the wonder of their conception of God, I believe an enduring and deep form of happiness arises from imagining a future that is better than the present, and feeling like you have the power to move the world towards it. Hope for the future is not only a good way to be happy, it is the best form of happiness, the most enduring, the most resistant. White people have been told they have it the best it can be had, they are told by power structures, the media, and the people disadvantaged by a global system where overwhelmingly the poorest are not considered white. Thankfully, this pernicious and alienating thought is untrue - a world without our present power structures is one of amazing possibilities, with art and play and dreams of space and life made wondrous beyond imagining.

It's hard to want anything to change when you're comfortable, and it is the particular quality of humans, both wonderful and terrible, to get as comfortable as they can where they are. Contentment doesn't really depend on how much stuff you have, or even how safe you are. Whites in terrible circumstances have often looked at blacks and decided their lives were fine. But there is so much more we all could have.

Frederick Douglass escaped from slavery to become a statesman. He spoke out for the human rights of all blacks, advised President Lincoln, lectured in Europe, and worked in support of the vote for women. He was also devilishly handsome, and authored several books after teaching himself to read as a slave. He is one of the great badasses of human history. It is too much to ask that every black person be Frederick Frickin' Douglass in order to be heard.

We've spent the last few hundred years throwing out every Isaac Newton or Albert Einstein or Jonas Salk or Tim Berners-Lee who didn't happen to be white, and didn't happen to be a man. That's a terrible thing to have done to those brilliant and now lost people. It's a much worse thing to have done to the rest of humanity, including our white selves. When I think, "why don't I have a jet car and live in Alpha Centuri by now?" I think this is because the people that would have invented sky cars and interstellar travel were born black in Detroit, or in rural India or in the medina in Algiers in the 1950s, and spent too much time figuring out how to eat and not get killed to invent my damned skycar.

White exceptionalism runs to both negatives and positives. Whether whites are seen as intellectually and spiritually superior or morally abhorrent, the argument that whites are intrinsically different from the rest of humanity has all the same flaws as any such argument. There are no intrinsically innocent and wise peoples of the earth, we are all the same wonderful and terrible creatures. Every community produces gentle geniuses and violent monsters. If we accept the normality of white people-and this proposition has in its favor overwhelming evidence: circumstance, (the arbitrariness of whiteness) history, (the universality of both human crimes and genius) and physiology (the genetic difference among "white" is pretty much the same as any group of white and non-whites)-this leaves us looking to social systems and systems of power for the sources of our social problems, which seems pretty sensible, when you think about it.

Just as American exceptionalism has been used to prevent sensible change-"Americans have the best healthcare in the world! We must retain the present system to keep that!" (Hint: America does not, in fact, have the best healthcare in the world)-white exceptionalism has been used to keep whites and non-whites from asking why society doesn't work in obviously more sensible ways.

We can't undo hundreds of years of cultural programing in a stroke, but the principles of black liberation begin to point a way out of all this for everyone, not just blacks. There are many great lessons to pick up from movements against the status quo across the 20th century and even before, but none in my study so singularly covers the issues that plague both white people and even the existence of our speck of a planet so much as black liberation. Black liberation is comprehensive - it touches on economics, social values, mutual care, environmental systems and problems of pollution, and even the availability and quality of food.

White exceptionalism, and even the elitism of old, finds their end in this age of global troubles. There is no sanity in maintaining these standards of difference. All our children share one destiny - to live their lives at the bottom of the same polluted gravity well, trying, and usually failing, to get their needs met as the acid seas encroach the land and the great variety of life dies before us.

Hubert Harrison, a key figure in the early 20th century Harlem Renaissance, whose thoughts lead off this series.

Hubert Harrison was right to say that the black experience tests and proves the modern democratic idea, but he didn't go far enough for the current age. In the system that created white supremacy and black persecution, nearly all of our causes lie trapped in the swamp of white mythology, all our hopeful futures slowly drowning in it. No one living is responsible for creating this system, and no one living is really at fault for being caught in its workings. But there is no deus ex machina that will descend from the heavens and set it right. We will have to reach across this chasm ourselves. White people must join the world in fighting the pernicious ideas that created their category. Not because it is merely moral, but because without arriving at the principles contained in black liberation, humanity as we know it will surely pass from this earth.

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"When the first Africans arrived in Virginia in 1619, there were no 'white' people there; nor, according to the colonial records, would there be for another sixty years." - Theodore W. Allen It...

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Day 12: Why White People Need to Organize

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Day 12: Why White People Need to Organize

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For many, it sounds contradictory: “Isn’t it racist if just white people to get together? Isn’t that segregation?” The following are our reasons for organizing as a white anti-racist community:

People of color shouldn’t always have to be the ones to educate white people about racism and oppression. We are taking responsibility for learning about racism, our own white privilege, and how to challenge it as white people.

--AWARE-LA

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The Alliance of White Anti-Racists Everywhere – Los Angeles (AWARE-LA) is an all-volunteer alliance of white anti-racist people organizing to challenge racism and work for racial justice in transformative alliance with people of color. www.awarela.org

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"If reconciliation is God's work, what is ours? Surely gratitude and praise and worship of the God who makes a way to reestablish a relationship with us. But what does this grace make possible, not only between God and us, but between one another?"

These articles explore the ways in which reparations have been identified as a solution, and the arguments in support of and against this form of reconciliation. Reflect on your own stance; if this article brings up strong feelings, ask yourself what is at the root of those feelings? What are they telling you?

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"We can try to cut down the bush as many times as we want, but if we don't address the root, the problems will continue to impact us." --Rodney Sadler

No matter how anti-racist your own behaviors and attitudes, there are still systems of oppression in play all around us.

What role does the church play in dismantling systems of oppression? In reconciliation and reparation?

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Day 15: A Conversation About Faith and Justice

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Day 15: A Conversation About Faith and Justice

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In this video, Dr. Khyati Joshi, author of White Christian Privilege, talks with Senator Cory Booker about understanding the American myth of religious freedom, the role Christianity has played in white supremacy, and the ways in which we can move toward justice.

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A Conversation About Faith and Justice with Dr. Khyati Joshi and Senator Cory Booker

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Bonus Lesson: Why Racism Still Makes Sense to White People

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Bonus Lesson: Why Racism Still Makes Sense to White People

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How did white people justify racism for so long in this country? In this podcast, Heather McGhee, the co-chair of Color of Change, the country’s largest online racial justice organization, talks with Rev. Jim Wallis about the legacy of racism in the United States and the lies that allow America’s original sin to be perpetuated to this day.

"There were reasons that good, upstanding, moral white people gave themselves and their children for why segregation made sense,” continues McGhee. “It was about crime. It was about poverty. It was about God's will. It was about the natural order of things. And when you focus on what the possible justifications could have been, as opposed to just saying, ‘old people in the past were evil,’ then you might start to recognize some of those same justifications for the status quo today.”

What are some stories you were told that justified the status quo?

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How did white people justify racism for so long in this country? Heather McGhee, the co-chair of Color of Change, the country's largest online racial justice organization, talks with Rev. Jim Wallis about the legacy of racism in the United States and the lies that allow America's original sin to be perpetuated to this day.

"The whitewashing and posthumous glorification of our society's agitators allows for contemporary people to pretend that they back in that time would have had a clear moral stance," says McGhee. "And that, I think, is a temptation that allows people in the contemporary moment to justify their own ambiguity or hostility towards the agitators of today. So often in conversations with white people about Jim Crow and about slavery, they act as if, of course they would have been one of the good guys back then.... What is lost is how much the justifications for the status quo always evolve and change."

"There were reasons that good, upstanding, moral white people gave themselves and their children for why segregation made sense," continues McGhee. "It was about crime. It was about poverty. It was about God's will. It was about the natural order of things. And when you focus on what the possible justifications could have been, as opposed to just saying, 'old people in the past were evil,' then you might start to recognize some of those same justifications for the status quo today."

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Why Racism Still Makes Sense to White People

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How did white people justify racism for so long in this country? Heather McGhee, the co-chair of Color of Change, the country's largest online racial justice organization, talks with Rev. Jim Wallis about the legacy of racism in the United States and the lies that allow America's original sin to be perpetuated to this day.

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What's the difference between equity and equality?

And how is this photo an example of white supremacy at work? Read the article to learn more.

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We've heard these American Dream myths before. Why don't Black and Brown people "pull themselves up by their bootstraps like we did?" "Look at the Asians, many of them are making it." The perpetration of a "model minority" perpetuates Anti-Blackness. The “model minority” narrative is often used to drive a wedge between Asian American and Black communities by promoting the myth that non-white Americans can succeed and overcome racism by striving for success. Read and listen to these pieces for a better understanding.

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When I was halfway through the 11th grade, my pre-calculus teacher pulled me out into the hallway. He wanted to talk about my latest test. "You can do better than this," he said. "I'm so surprised by grades like this from someone like you."

Someone like you? I'd never done particularly well in his class, so the implication of his words churned in my stomach. In that moment, I felt acutely the weight of the dark braid trailing down my back and the glasses slipping down my nose.

I knew my performance was being evaluated not against my own earlier work but against the image of the perfect, straight-A, Asian student who lived in my teacher's mind: the myth of the "model minority."

What Is the Model Minority Myth?

The myth of the model minority is based in stereotypes. It perpetuates a narrative in which Asian American children are whiz kids or musical geniuses. Within the myth of the model minority, Tiger Moms force children to work harder and be better than everyone else, while nerdy, effeminate dads hold prestigious-but not leadership -positions in STEM industries like medicine and accounting.

This myth characterizes Asian Americans as a polite, law-abiding group who have achieved a higher level of success than the general population through some combination of innate talent and pull-yourselves-up-by-your-bootstraps immigrant striving.

What's So Bad About the Model Minority Myth?

While most people agree that negative stereotypes of Asian Americans are harmful, some still question the harm of the model minority myth. What could be so bad about being part of a group that's seen as being successful?

Like all stereotypes, the model minority myth erases the differences among individuals.

My own 11th-grade experience offers one example. My mother is Malaysian Chinese; my dad is white. I am usually perceived as Asian. So, because of the model minority myth, my failure to reach an expected level of achievement in math was attributed to some kind of deficiency or lack of effort on my part.

Instead of differentiating for me like I saw him do with others in the class, my teacher let me continue to slip. I was not offered extra help or any other support, and I did not know how to live up to the image of the model minority student. I stopped trying.

While I was eventually able to overcome this negative self-image, many others are not. Asian American college students have higher rates of attempting suicide than those in other groups. The model minority myth hides the pressures and paradoxes inherent within an Asian American identity. If you don't fit into the myth, it is hard to find your place at all.

The model minority myth ignores the diversity of Asian American cultures.

Data about Asian American achievement typically lumps this diverse population together into a singular group. Taken as a whole, it shows that Asian Americans tend to hold higher degrees and earn larger incomes than the general population. These successes are often attributed to differences in family attitudes toward education. From these metrics and attributions, the stereotype emerges that Asians are winning in their pursuit of the American Dream. But when we break these numbers down, the myth begins to crack.

Take pay disparities, for example. For every dollar the average white man makes in the United States, an Asian Indian woman makes $1.21 and a Taiwanese woman makes $1.16. A Samoan woman makes $0.62. A Burmese woman makes 50 cents. The experiences of these groups are not the same.

The model minority myth operates alongside the myth of Asian Americans as perpetual foreigners.

The model minority myth is just one of a collection of stereotypes about Asian American people. Popular television and films exoticize Asian culture and peoples. If you're a man, you're a kung fu master. If you're a woman, you're a submissive sex object. If you're gender non-binary or transgender, you don't exist at all. Mickey Rooney's racist portrayal in Breakfast at Tiffany's lives in our collective imagination alongside every East or South Asian actor who has played a bit part as a humorless doctor or IT guy.

Buried under these stereotypes, the message is clear: Asian Americans are all the same-and all different from other Americans. On one hand, Asian Americans are often perceived as having assimilated better than other minority groups. On the other hand, Asian Americans are seen as having some foreign quality that renders them perpetual outsiders.

It's a paradox familiar to every Asian American who regularly faces the question, "But where are you from, originally?"

The model minority myth erases racism against Asian Americans.

Positioning Asian Americans as beneficiaries of the bounty of the American Dream, the myth of the model minority ignores the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and Japanese internment in the 1940s. It suggests that the U.S. has always been a welcoming place for people of Asian descent, in spite of the mass lynchings of Asian Americans in the 19th century and the murder of Vincent Chin in 1982.

The myth persists in spite of the fact that 1 in 7 Asian immigrants in America today is undocumented and facing potential deportation, a fact that is repeatedly overlooked in our national conversation about immigration. The model minority myth says Asian Americans are doing well today and must therefore have benefitted from an elevated status among people of color, in spite of centuries of systematic discrimination.

The model minority myth is harmful to the struggle for racial justice.

The myth says that Asian Americans have played within the rules of the American system to their own group benefit. The success of some groups of Asian American immigrants is often held as an example toward which other groups should strive. It suggests that Asian Americans are doing well and that if other groups would only work harder, have stronger family bonds and get over their histories of oppression, they too would succeed.

When paired with racist myths about other ethnic or racial groups, the model minority myth is used as evidence to deny or downplay the impact of racism and discrimination on people of color in the United States. Given the history of that impact on Black Americans particularly, the myth is ultimately a means to perpetuate anti-Blackness.

The model minority myth pits people of color against one another and creates a hierarchy in which Asian people are often represented at the top. By putting people of color in competition with one another, the myth distracts us from striving together toward liberation for all.

Dismantling the Myth

Understand that the collective is important while individual differences still exist.

The term Asian American was coined in the late 1960s as a means of harnessing the collective power of people of Asian origin, much in the same way the term was first used. Asian American political identity was strongly inspired by the Black Liberation Movement. Today, more inclusive terms like Asian-Pacific American (APA) or Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) signal the continued need for collective striving against similar experiences of racism and imperialism within our various ethnic subgroups. This collective political identity remains important.

At the same time, focusing solely on collective identity can perpetuate the model minority myth: The experiences of the most visible Asian American ethnic groups can hide the experiences of other groups.

Some studies of educational achievement have shown that certain Asian ethnic groups, particularly those from parts of East and South Asia, indeed score very well in some subject areas. When students from these groups consistently do better than even white students, it is easy for educators to take inherently biased actions based on a belief that all Asian students are innately intelligent and hardworking. Those same studies, however, reveal that other Asian ethnic groups have vastly different results. For example, Southeast Asian and Pacific Islander students in particular often underperform when compared with all other racial and ethnic groups.

As an educator, it is important to understand the different histories and experiences of Asian American and Pacific Islander students and communities. Some of these communities arrived in America as refugees escaping war or genocide, and some were imported as sharecroppers to replace enslaved people of African descent after the Civil War. Still other communities, particularly those native to various Pacific Islands, were here long before white settler colonialism. As educators, we must unlearn the biased, simplistic beliefs that we might hold about what it means to be Asian American or Pacific Islander in order to better attend to the real needs of our students and communities.

Feature Asian American figures and texts in your classroom.

One of the commonly felt experiences of Asian Americans is that of being invisible or erased. The model minority myth means that neither our historical struggles nor activism tend to be covered in schools and classrooms. The significant underrepresentation of Asian American educators furthers this problem.

Asian American and Pacific Islander history has been a part of American history for centuries. May is AAPI Heritage Month. Use this as a starting point, but do not limit your conscious inclusion of AAPI people and experiences to a single month. Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders comprise the fastest-growing ethnic group in the United States. We must make a conscious effort to represent these stories and people in our classrooms, regardless of our own identities and those of our students.

Raise awareness in yourself and others.

There may be names and examples in this piece with which you were unfamiliar. Learn about activists like Grace Lee Boggs, Larry Itliong and Yuri Kochiyama. Say the name of Vincent Chin. Teach your students about Ela Bhatt. Research Supreme Court cases like U.S. v. Bhagat Singh Thind and .

Dive into data to help understand the collective and individual experiences of various AAPI groups. Check your own biases and assumptions. Do not let a student like me slip through the cracks because you expect her to be smarter or more studious than her classmates.

As you raise your own awareness, you'll help those around you to understand and dismantle the model minority myth as well.
Blackburn is a professional development trainer for Teaching Tolerance.

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The myth of the "model minority" is pervasive. It does real damage. And Asian American students aren't the only ones it harms.

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When it comes to activism, what we say online, or don’t say, is important.

In this episode of the podcast "Do the Work," friends Marquia and Elodie converse about  the deafening tone of white silence in a digital world how to talk to our friends and family about it and what effective allyship really looks like.

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For well-intentioned white people doing anti-racist and social justice work, the first meaningful step is to recognize their fragility around racial issues—and build their emotional stamina. 'White Fragility' author Robin DiAngelo breaks it down in this article on Learning for Justice.

Consider the concept of white privilege. How do you feel when you hear those words? Many folks have a tendency to feel defensive, guilt, or shame. Learn about becoming less defensive, and how to move beyond racial paralysis into action.

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When it comes to her well-established career as an anti-racist educator, Robin DiAngelo says, "I kind of fell into it." Years of deep learning, research and mentorship from colleagues of color led her not only to understand that her whiteness has meaning-but also to become really good at explaining this to other white people.

The New York Times bestselling author of White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism sat down with Teaching Tolerance to discuss why working against one's own fragility is a necessary part of white anti-racist work-and why good intentions don't matter.

In a nutshell, what is white fragility?

Well, when I coined that term, the fragility part was meant to capture how little it takes to upset white people racially. For a lot of white people, the mere suggestion that being white has meaning will cause great umbrage. Certainly generalizing about white people will. Right now, me saying "white people," as if our race had meaning, and as if I could know anything about somebody just because they're white, will cause a lot of white people to erupt in defensiveness. And I think of it as a kind of weaponized defensiveness. Weaponized tears. Weaponized hurt feelings. And in that way, I think white fragility actually functions as a kind of white racial bullying.

We white people make it so difficult for people of color to talk to us about our inevitable-but often unaware-racist patterns and assumptions that, most of the time, they don't. People of color working and living in primarily white environments take home way more daily indignities and slights and microaggressions than they bother talking to us about because their experience consistently is that it's not going to go well. In fact, they're going to risk more punishment, not less. They're going to now have to take care of the white person's upset feelings. They're going to be seen as a troublemaker. The white person is going to withdraw, defend, explain, insist it had to have been a misunderstanding.

And who is the primary audience for this book?

My audience is the average, well-intended white person who sees themselves as open-minded, and yet cannot answer the question: "What does it mean to be white?"

I think white progressives can be the most challenging because we tend to be so certain that it isn't us. And that certitude is problematic. It doesn't allow for humility, and, to be direct, it's quite arrogant. So we don't tend to be receptive at all. ... I think the worst fear of a well-intended white person is that we would accidentally say something racist. But then how do we respond when someone lets us know, "Hey, you just accidentally said something racist"? We respond with, "How dare you. No, I didn't!"

So, to the degree that our identities are very attached to this idea of being free of racism, we're actually going to resist any of the critical examination that we need to be engaged in for our entire lives. Because every moment that I push against the socialization that I've received into a white supremacist culture, that culture is pushing right back at me. And that pressure is seductive. It's comfortable. There are social rewards for not challenging racism. [White] people perceive you as easier to get along with when you maintain white solidarity.

In the book, you talk about the danger of assuming good intentions. Can you say a little bit about why assuming good intentions can actually be dangerous or harmful?

I think intentions are irrelevant. It's nice to know you had good intentions, but the impact of what you did was harmful. And we need to let go of our intentions and attend to the impact, to focus on that.

A lot of groups that come together to have these discussions generate a list of guidelines or ground rules. And if we really looked critically at those, I think we would see that mostly they're about maintaining white comfort. They presume a lack of differential power in the space. But power relations are always at play, and people are in different power positions in that room. So the very things that might make a white person feel comfortable may be exactly what says to a person of color, "Do not be authentic; do not be yourself. Do not show your emotions. Do not get upset. Do not be angry." ...

There's a question that's never failed me in this work to uncover how racism keeps reproducing itself despite all of the evidence we like to give for why it couldn't be us. And that question isn't, "Is this true or is this false: Was the person's intention good or not?" We're never going to be able to come to an agreement on intentions. You cannot prove somebody's intentions. They might not even know their intentions. And if they weren't good, they're probably not going to admit that. The question I ask is, "How does this function?" The impact of the action is what is relevant.

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What's My Complicity? Talking White Fragility With Robin DiAngelo

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When it comes to her well-established career as an anti-racist educator, Robin DiAngelo says, "I kind of fell into it." Years of deep learning, research and mentorship from colleagues of color led her not only to understand that her whiteness has meaning-but also to become really good at explaining this to other white people.

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Which one are you?

In this article, learn what differentiates an ally from an accomplice in terms of anti-racist practices: allies will mostly engage in activism by standing with an individual or group in a marginalized community, while an accomplice will focus more on dismantling the structures that oppress that individual or group—and such work will be directed by the stakeholders in the marginalized group. Read more about white accomplices here.

In your journal, make note of which structures you have noticed in your neighborhoods, work, or schools which are driven by white supremacy. Will you be an ally or an activist?

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Recently, I attended a Diversity Committee meeting at my daughter's school. For context, the majority of committee members, including me, are white. This committee actively works to educate our community on issues of racial injustice through events for students and parents. One event is an Ally Week during which students consider the hard work of allyship with marginalized communities. As the clerk of the committee, I strive to make ally work-not "savior work"-a core component of our mission and programming.

So when someone mentioned the word accomplice in the context of social justice work, I was taken aback. I joked and said, "It sounds like we would be committing a crime!" But I wanted to know more about how some social justice advocates are using this term. I also wanted to know how I might rethink how those in power can stand with and not for marginalized populations.

Thinking about the word accomplice, I remembered my Latin roots from high school- com means "with" or "together." So while one may hear accomplice and think about crime, the original meaning of the word conveys a sense of cooperation-and not in a criminal sense. In a social justice context, accomplice speaks to a sense of community or "folding together," from the Latin complicare.

Here's something else I learned: For social justice advocates who use the term accomplice, they often see the site of focus as the main difference between the work of an ally and that of an accomplice. An ally will mostly engage in activism by standing with an individual or group in a marginalized community. An accomplice will focus more on dismantling the structures that oppress that individual or group-and such work will be directed by the stakeholders in the marginalized group. Simply, ally work focuses on individuals, and accomplice work focuses on the structures of decision-making agency.

An ally will mostly engage in activism by standing with an individual or group in a marginalized community. An accomplice will focus more on dismantling the structures that oppress that individual or group-and such work will be directed by the stakeholders in the marginalized group.

Of course, these two brands of work blend into each other and are hard to untangle. But for the sake of understanding, we can look at an example: An ally will "volunteer at a local racial justice-focused organization," while an accomplice will "join an organization with an explicit aim of naming and disrupting racial injustice," according to the useful guide " Opportunities for White People in the Fight for Racial Justice." The former is working with individuals toward those individuals' access to representation, dignity or some kind of protection. The latter is working on dismantling a structure, thereby striving for those same protections, but through a different kind of work.

While some writing about these terms implies a hierarchy, with accomplice work as the "best" type of social justice work, I would argue that both ally and accomplice work are crucial. Working on the individual level will push us toward the safety and dignity of marginalized populations in the present moment (ally), and working at the structural level will take a long view to destroy oppressive social structures and create a more equitable world (accomplice).

I don't see the committee at my daughter's school changing the name of Ally Week to Accomplice Week in the near future, but I can see the term accomplice as an entry point for those of us having conversations about how to enact social justice from positions of privilege. Continuing to critically investigate our positions in social justice activism allows us to be more thoughtful teachers and practitioners as we all work toward a more just world.
Clemens is the associate professor of non-Western literatures and director of Women's and Gender Studies at Kutztown University in Pennsylvania.

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Ally or Accomplice? The Language of Activism

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A new use of the word accomplice pushed this educator to rethink her activist approaches inside and outside the classroom.

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Practice saying it: Black Lives Matter.

We say this because in our country, we want our Black brothers and sisters to know that we value them, because they may not be getting that message everywhere.

Do Black Lives Matter to God? Spoiler alert: absolutely.

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How Do We Know Black Lives Matter to God?.pdf

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Bonus Lesson: Black History is Our History

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Bonus Lesson: Black History is Our History

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Black History is American History. Push yourself to learn more about the history of our country by centering Black stories and filling in learning gaps.

Pick 5 videos (10 minutes total) from this collection and journal about them. What did you learn? What are some DKDKs? (something you didn't know you didn't know?)

How can you be an accomplice in dismantling oppressive structures?