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As a Teacher: Reconsider with more empathy and understanding, the inclusion of violence upon the black body in any film / video content I show students.

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I want to explore the concept of brave spaces in my classroom more ... I found this on 'Facing History and Ourselves' ... which is an EXCELLENT resource. I love the poem & am determining a way to use it in my classes.

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There is no such thing as a "safe space" -

We exist in the real world.

We all carry scars and have caused wounds.

This space

seeks to turn down the volume of the world outside,

and amplify voices that have to fight to be heard elsewhere,

This space will not be perfect.

It will not always be what we wish it to be

But

It will be our space together,

and we will work on it side by side.

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Read this poem by Beth Strano with your students to consider what a brave classroom community looks like.

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As a Teacher: Specifically teach how unequal attainment of 'The Dream' (as related to development) is linked to Systemic Racism

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By Nigel Chiwaya and Janell Ross
Aug. 3, 2020
Ebony Jones thought she was one of the lucky ones. Jones, a Black woman in her 30s, inherited a home her grandfather, a World War II veteran, had bought nearly seven decades earlier with the help of his GI Bill benefits.

But when Jones and her two children moved into the house in Compton, California, which was paid off almost 40 years ago, they soon discovered that sewage sometimes backed up in the living room and that the plumbing needed to be repaired. The distressing process of securing a home equity loan introduced Jones to an American reality.

Despite Jones' good credit score, low debt-to-income ratio, better-than-average income and several thousand dollars of savings, lenders who immediately expressed interest stopped or went quiet when they got to two questions.

What was her ZIP code? Answer: 90220. That's Compton, 29 percent Black, 68 percent Latino.

Was she married? Answer: No.

Federal law prohibits lenders from using the answers to those questions to determine a borrower's ability to repay a loan.

"When I initially apply for a loan online, without fail, I get no problem," said Jones, 37. "They bombard me with emails and letters. Then they see the property address or ask me if I'm married, and everything changes."

The United States is in the midst of a racial reckoning as protests that began in the wake of George Floyd's death in Minneapolis police custody, as well as high Black unemployment due to the coronavirus pandemic, have prompted some Americans to contemplate the ways institutionalized racism and discrimination have constrained Black lives for centuries.

Advocates, scholars and officials say one of the clearest examples of that ongoing discrimination exists in the housing market, where the gap in homeownership rates between Black and white Americans is wider than it was before the Civil Rights movement.

Seventy-six percent of white households owned their homes at the end of the second quarter of 2020, compared to just 47 percent of Black households, according to the Census Bureau. That 29-percentage-point gap, perpetuated by decades of housing and economic policies favorable toward white buyers and designed to exclude Black buyers, has only been exacerbated by the pandemic and before it the 2008 financial crisis. Homeownership is the prime driver of America's ongoing wealth gap.

"We have a housing market with different components, including rentals and purchases and financing and insurance, that is really built on a structure that was explicitly racist," said Debby Goldberg, vice president of housing policy and special projects at the National Fair Housing Alliance, a consortium of nonprofit anti-housing discrimination organizations. "It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone looking around to see how segregated we remain. To see this enormous homeownership gap. And hand in hand with that to see the enormous wealth gap that exists."

In Jones' case, being able to live reasonably required access to a home equity loan. Ultimately, just one bank, Navy Federal Credit Union, offered her a loan, but only after making her wait eight months - supposedly to see whether any additional heirs would lay claim to the house, she said - and with the condition that her boyfriend co-sign. Even then, the credit union offered her only $185,000. That's far less than $248,000, or up to 80 percent of the equity Jones had in the home after earlier repairs. That's what lenders typically allow a person with good credit to borrow.

Navy Federal declined to comment on Jones' case, citing its obligation to protect borrowers' privacy. The credit union is "committed to serving all of our members as a trusted financial partner," a Navy Federal spokesperson said by email.

The consequences of not owning a home or of becoming a homeowner later in life are enormous, experts say. It often leaves a family unable to reach other pillars of the American dream, like tapping into home equity to start a business, survive a job loss or a medical emergency or pay for a child's college education. It is part of the reason a higher percentage of Black households owe student loan debt than white households. And experts say not owning a home makes it harder for Black children to become adult homeowners.

"Black Americans are locked in a vicious cycle," said Andre M. Perry, a fellow in the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution who is author of "Know Your Price: Valuing Black Lives and Property in America's Black Cities." "It is the lack of wealth that is the first and most fundamental barrier to homeownership for Black people in this country."

America's housing gap ballooned after the New Deal, experts say, when the federal government rolled out a suite of programs to boost homeownership and construction-industry employment in the wake of the Great Depression. Many of the programs, such as the Federal Housing Administration, an agency that oversees federal backing of private mortgage loans, the introduction of the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage and a tax credit for those with mortgages, made buying a home much more affordable for white families.

But Black households were often left out of the homeownership boom because of redlining, a practice in which the Federal Housing Administration refused to back loans in areas that were occupied predominantly by people of color. Those areas, often lined or shaded red on agency maps, were considered too risky.

Other discriminatory policies also proliferated. In several cities, including Minneapolis, St. Louis, Seattle and Chicago, it wasn't uncommon to see housing deeds that forbade the sale of specific properties to people of color.

As a result, by 1950 only about a third of Black households owned their homes, compared to more than half of white households.

"Housing is a story about wealth. Access to housing is one of the ways to generate wealth," said Skylar Olsen, senior principal economist at Zillow, an online real estate information platform that regularly analyzes market trends. "Not having access to housing in the past because of redlining, that really, really impacted generations of wealth building."

The 1968 Fair Housing Act outlawed redlining. But experts say the barriers between Blacks and homeownership didn't evaporate with the law. A Northwestern University study of bias in the housing market published in January found that while overt forms of discrimination - a real estate agent who won't return a phone call or who will deny that a listing is available - have decreased over the past four decades, discrimination in the mortgage market showed little change from 1968 to 2016.

And Minneapolis, one of the cities where racially restrictive deeds were prominent during the early 20th century, to this day has the largest homeownership gap in the United States.

Experts say the reasons for the lack of change are baked into the financial system. Black neighborhoods are less likely to have bank branches in them, depriving many households of a chance to build a personal relationship with a banker that can lead to loans and positive credit histories. On-time rent payments aren't tallied into credit scores, while late payments are, creating a system that punishes misfortune while ignoring positive behavior. Rent payments and lower incomes also make it difficult for Black households to save for down payments.

And Olsen said that in an era when nearly half of young homebuyers needed gifts from their families to purchase homes, the lack of existing home equity from Black parents makes it harder for their children to purchase homes.

Since the Great Recession, bank lending standards have tightened in a way that bars many moderate-income buyers and those looking to purchase low-cost homes from the world of homeownership, Perry said.

Even when they make it to the mortgage market, Black homebuyers are more likely to be denied mortgages than any other racial group, according to a 2019 report by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or CFPB.

When they are approved for mortgages, Black buyers remain more likely than any other racial group to be charged higher interest rates and to be steered toward predatory loans. And when unemployment rises, as it has during the COVID-19 pandemic, Black households are more likely to lose their jobs and homes. Black Americans were twice as likely to be foreclosed upon during the 2008 financial crisis, Olsen said. They were also far more likely to have been offered high-cost and therefore high-risk loans. Between the second quarter of 2004 and the second quarter of 2019, the Black homeownership rate fell 9.1 percentage points while the white homeownership rate fell 3.1 percentage points.

The homeownership gap between Black and white Americans on the cusp of retirement reached a 30-year high, according to a 2019 Harvard University Joint Center for Housing Studies Report. And among those ages 50 to 64, the Black/white homeownership gap is even larger, at 27 percentage points.

"Let's be clear about what those numbers really mean," said Odette Williamson, a staff lawyer who oversees the Racial Justice and Equal Economic Opportunity project of the National Consumer Law Center, a nonprofit advocacy group. "Not only is this a generation of Black people who have less than some before them, less to help cover medical and other expenses at the end of life, less to live on in retirement. This is yet another generation where many will have absolutely nothing to pass on."

During the Great Recession, a 2007 Rasmussen poll found that 54 percent of Americans believed greedy, dishonest borrowers were to blame for the last housing crisis. The idea, along with racism and a declining sense of white American power, helped to bind the tea party together. But Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., who proposed a wave of financial regulations before and after that crisis, blamed banks and Washington lawmakers.

"Part of the reason for the confusion is that the lenders first peddled their products in communities of color," Warren said in an interview. "They perfected their cheating ways by taking advantage of African Americans and Latinos all across this country. And that just didn't raise anybody's attention.

"The fact that Black families were being stripped of their homes didn't feel like an urgent problem to the regulators in the Bush administration," said Warren, who first proposed the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in 2007. It became a reality during the Obama administration. "The lenders ... figured out the most effective ways to cheat people and then sold those products in every community. And that's when they brought down the whole economy."

Banks also packaged and sold groups of high-risk, high-cost mortgages like securities.

Those who manage to buy their homes also face a gulf in how their home prices will grow. According to the most recent Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances, the mean net housing wealth for Black households was $94,400 in 2016, less than half the $215,800 mean for white households. And an NBC News analysis of home value estimations from May 2020 on Zillow found that homes in ZIP codes that were predominantly Black were valued at just 60 percent of the value of homes in predominantly white neighborhoods.

And prices of Black-owned homes have appreciated far more slowly, as well. An NBC News analysis of home valuations from Zillow from 2010 to 2020 found that price growth of homes in predominantly Black ZIP codes was about half of the growth in predominantly white ZIP codes.

Experts say the same fundamentals that prevent would-be homeowners from getting mortgages keep Black homebuyers from getting loans to perform maintenance on properties and make retailers less interested in setting up shop nearby. Even parks and other public facilities tend to be more common and better maintained by governments in predominantly white areas.

"So now, not only do I not have as much of an income boost, I also have a limited ability to improve the capital stock," said Olsen, of Zillow. "The quality of the homes becomes more and more disparate between Black and white communities."

Perry, of the Brookings Institution, said: "The long-standing narrative in America is that the conditions of Black neighborhoods and cities are a direct result of the residents in them. People are so ahistorical that they forget there has been a policy violence leveled against Black people that comes out in the wash of research. There has been violence in practice from the nation's appraisers, which are almost 90 percent white. You cannot discount that violence happening on paper and in communities, year after year after year."

"To this day, our American Dream looks like an isolated hope."
Ebony Jones

As in many other American industries, The Appraisal Institute, an industry trade group, has maintained a " Diversity Pipeline Initiative" and has committed to expanding the profession in January.

In Compton, Jones said, a regular topic of conversation is how happy people are that Compton has its very own big-box store, part of a national chain. That's a meaningful convenience that Jones said she still can't believe people in other parts of the Los Angeles area have the luxury and gall to protest.

While the Black homeownership rate has increased since mid-2019, advocates worry that the homeownership gap will only grow, not only because the pandemic has sent Black unemployment to its highest level since the 1980s, but also because federal agencies have walked back Obama-era efforts to combat discrimination.

The CFPB, the government financial watchdog created under President Barack Obama and proposed by Warren, has drastically scaled back its discriminatory enforcement actions against bank lenders. The agency filed 11 such actions during the Obama era. The actions reclaimed what former Director Richard Cordray, an Obama appointee, described as $12 billion for consumers. After substantial resistance, they created conditions in which lenders knew the agency was watching and behaved accordingly, he said. The agency has filed just one enforcement action since then.

In July, the Department of Housing and Urban Development terminated a 2015 regulation connected to the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing section of the Civil Rights Act. The rule, which required local governments and jurisdictions receiving HUD funding to analyze systemic barriers to fair and equal housing, was deemed "unworkable and ultimately a waste of time" by HUD Secretary Ben Carson, the only Black member of the Trump Cabinet.

In its place, HUD introduced a rule that lowered the requirements for jurisdictions, allowing them to continue certification as long as they take an "active step" toward promoting the agency's new definition of fair housing.

Goldberg, of the National Fair Housing Alliance, said the new rule disregards segregation and other systemic factors in housing.

"You look around us at what's been going on in this pandemic and you can see the conditions of neighborhoods of color that have been disinvested have put them in harm's way," Goldberg said. "This rule was one of the tools we had to try to tackle the inequalities. To take it away now is just inexplicable and inexcusable."

A senior HUD official said that fair housing remains a vital goal to the department and that freeing jurisdictions from paperwork compliance burdens would allow them to continue making progress in promoting fair housing.

But President Donald Trump in a series of tweets last week appeared to confirm that rescinding the rule was about preventing further racial and economic integration of suburban neighborhoods. Trump, who has repeatedly returned to the racist theme that the American way of life is under assault from Black protesters since the George Floyd protests began, said the rule change was aimed at protecting the "Suburban Lifestyle Dream" from "low income housing built in your neighborhood."

...Your housing prices will go up based on the market, and crime will go down. I have rescinded the Obama-Biden AFFH Rule. Enjoy!
- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 29, 2020

"In the time we were building new suburbs after World War II, we made low-cost credit available to white families and explicitly did not to people of color," Goldberg said. "This is how we thought about the American Dream at that time. That's the image the president is trying to conjure up."

Cities and states have tried to address parts of the gap. Minneapolis voted in 2019 to increase housing density and, with it, likely residential integration by eliminating single-family home zoning. That will allow apartments, condominiums and townhomes to be built in many more neighborhoods. A similar bill is pending in the California Assembly.

But advocates say real change must come from the federal government.

"The benefit of the federal action is that it can be larger-scale," Goldberg said. "It sets a floor for everyone. Everyone has some basic level of protection."

Without leadership from the government, advocates and regulators say, the gap will continue.

"What I fear," said Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., chair of the Financial Services Committee, which regulates banking, "is that in the absence of so many cops on the beat, now that Trump has installed his people over at the CFPB, at HUD and all the agencies, is that redlining may have returned, that new forms of discrimination are taking shape."

That possibility could distort the lives of generations of Black Americans to come.

"I think the issue for us is that we don't come from generations of wealth. Most Black people can't say that - they cannot say their parents and their grandparents, aunts and uncles all owned homes," Jones said. "So, to this day, our American Dream looks like an isolated hope."

"I'm trying to break cycles," Jones said. "I'm trying to assure that my children's goal is not survival but to thrive and flourish in a world full of possibilities that remain easier for some people, white people, to access."

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The American dream while Black: Locked in a vicious cycle

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By Nigel Chiwaya and Janell RossAug. 3, 2020 Ebony Jones thought she was one of the lucky ones. Jones, a Black woman in her 30s, inherited a home her grandfather, a World War II veteran, had bought nearly seven decades earlier with the help of his GI Bill benefits.

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Ongoing engagement with subject-specific resources, such as

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We develop workshops and sessions and deliver to organizations, districts, colleges, and other groups, focusing in our antiracist and decolonization approaches and how to implement them in classroom and music making settings.

We also provide consultant services to individuals, groups, and organizations to take advantage of our expertise in antiracist and decolonizing approaches, cultural responsiveness, and research. Contact us for help with projects, events, camps, curriculum, and more.

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We develop workshops and sessions and deliver to organizations, districts, colleges, and other groups, focusing in our antiracist and decolonization approaches and how to implement them in classroom and music making settings. We also provide consultant services to individuals, groups, and organizations to take advantage of our expertise in antiracist and decolonizing approaches, cultural responsiveness, and research.

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In grade 9 science the curriculum looks at foundational theories in science. These historic discoveries were made by European white men. Looking to provide an antidote to this lens by engaging with non-Western perspectives and looking for examples of cool Canadian scientists of varied identities.

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I intend to read some of the books on the change happening in schools

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Teaching for Change and Rethinking Schools collaborate to bring people's history to the classroom.

A dedicated website to encourage and support teaching about Central American history.

The best selection of multicultural and social justice books for children, YA, and educators.

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Building social justice starting in the classroom.

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I subscribe to this daily (brief) newsletter - it arrives in my email and is a good daily practice to read / learn.

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I intend to review this resource document from CIARS (OISE) on dismantling anti-black racism in schooling to better understand the impacts systemic racism in schools has on the black community.

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As a language teacher, we engage in discussions that French does not exist only in France nor does it purely correlate to developed nations and superpowers. French culture and language is embedded into the fabric of nations in North Africa i.e. Morroco, South Africa i.e.  Nigeria, Middle East i .e. Lebanon & Caribbean i.e. Haiti.
This expands their knowledge on the diversity of French culture i.e. food, music, art,  literature and language i.e. accents, as well as political structures of. different French countries.

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As a teacher, examine the ways in which the (artistic) content and material we choose to engage with reinforces The Dream. Can we choose content that is more reflective of reality?

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"knew that this fear was connected to the carefree lives of those living in the Dream" -Coates.

" most Americans do not advocate racist violence directly but do support the Dream, which indirectly oppresses black people" -Coates
Recognize and question in life.

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Reetu Varadhan

Read the instructor's introduction
Read the writer's comments and bio
Download this essay

Ta-Nehisi Coates's essay Between the World and Me is at once a cautionary tale, a bildungsroman, and an analysis of contemporary American society. Written as a letter to his fifteen-year-old son, Coates uses his own adolescence and young adulthood as a means to communicate the reality of existing as a black man in America, thus creating what appears to be a how-to guide for the young black American. But this summation is surface level. Despite its epistolary form, Between the World and Me caters to an ambiguous audience; Coates himself claims that he "didn't set out to accumulate a mass of white fans" (León 1), but his surprisingly extensive white readership raises the question: What message would Between the World and Me, a letter from a black man to a black teenager, carry for a white reader? One answer is Coates's implicit suggestion that white people, and by extension the American media, should learn to discuss black life via black struggle instead of the inherently racist American Dream. This switch, however, is not offered as a solution to racism; rather, Between the World and Me serves as a call-out to the largely white media on their perpetuation of a quintessentially racist ideal, regardless of whether or not Coates explicitly intended for it to do so.

The keystone facet to Coates's description of the black American's reality is his separation of black Americans from so-called Dreamers-i.e., those who can and do follow the American Dream, which purports that the ultimate goal of life is a nuclear family, white and suburban with two-point-five children. Coates almost immediately dismisses the notion of a Dream that is accessible to black people; he cites that though "for so long [he] . . . wanted to escape into the Dream" he eventually realized that that had "never been an option," because the Dream "[rested] on [the] backs" of black people, on the "bedding made from [their] bodies" (11). With these statements, Coates orchestrates a two-part assertion; first, he establishes that there is a veritable chasm between the black populace and the Dream, and second, he casts the Dream as the begetter of this chasm, the systematic aggressor to the black American's victim. But Coates's condemnation is not exclusive to the Dream, an inanimate ideal. Coates also deliberately others the Dreamers, the individuals responsible for the Dream's continued existence. He laments "the burden of living among Dreamers," who "nullify [the] anger, [the] fear" of the black experience in order to preserve "their [own] innocence" (106); this concept of existing "among" but not as Dreamers draws a clear distinction between non-Dreamers and Dreamers, between black and white, between prosecuted and prosecutors. Furthermore, the claim that Dreamers intentionally delegitimize black pain in order to preserve the rosiness of the Dream suggests that Dreamers are willfully ignorant of black strife, and that the Dream is a tool with which Dreamers can justify their maintenance of the status quo.

Poised opposite the Dream, however, is Coates's cumulative advice to the young black American: struggle. Where the Dream is built on a Janus-like deceit, in which Dreamers can simultaneously "[pillage] Ferguson for municipal governance" and "[quote] Martin Luther King" (131), black struggle acknowledges the aftereffects of history, acknowledges the uneven ground upon which American citizens stand. In the final paragraphs of the book, Coates encourages his son, and more generally black youth, to "struggle for the memory of [his] ancestors" (151); here "struggle" implies that like the Dream, Coates is urging black Americans to strive, but that unlike the Dream, this struggle would not erase the root source of the disadvantages that black people face, and would not blame black society for said disadvantages. Coates provides struggle as a foil to the Dream, an alternative method of viewing the black experience that is free of selective historical amnesia.

Throughout the book the Dreamers are an integral presence, the rightful focus of much of Coates's frustration and pity, and yet they are never once outright addressed. Just as there is a clear distinction between non-Dreamers and Dreamers, there is also an established dichotomy between the direct and indirect audience. The direct audience is the black readership for which Coates intended this book, specifically his son and his son's peers. The indirect audience is white, and a consequence of style. According to those like Matthew Shenoda from The LA Review of Books, Coates's "[rhetorical] 'ignoring' [of] a white audience . . . can be seen as a way of writing to them" ("Reading 'Between the World and Me'"). Although Coates never intended to reach a white audience, he did, and he managed to inform those white readers simply by excluding them. When he expounds that " 'White America' is a syndicate arrayed to protect its exclusive power . . . and control our bodies" (42), he is telling the direct audience that there exists a system bent on their demise, and he is hinting to the indirect audience that they are part of a system bent on the demise of black people. While this unintentional education works to enlighten the white public in general, it also-in light of increased publicity surrounding anti-black violence-affects a very specific sect of the white populace: the American media.

As of 2012, a cringe-worthy three percent of American television was licensed by people of color; the remaining ninety-seven percent of television ownership fell under a white and mostly male domain ("Diversity in Media Ownership"). As such, if white is interchangeable with Dreamer and the American news media is overwhelmingly white, it can be said that Dreamers have a sizeable influence over what appears on-screen. Combined with increased media coverage of anti-black violence, the superimposition of the Dream on black lives by the Dreamer-controlled media is glaringly obvious. Black victims of violence are offered sympathy proportionately to how well they adhered to the Dream; in other words, the Dream becomes a measuring stick for the value of a black life. This standard is evidenced by frequent dialogues surrounding how a victim was college-bound, as in the case of eighteen-year-old Michael Brown ("Remembering Michael Brown"), or an honor student, as in the case of seventeen-year-old Trayvon Martin (LaCapria 1), with no room for error or misgiving. The implication here is that if a murdered black American did not aim for the Dream, if he did not veer from stereotype to his fullest capabilities, then he deserved his fate. The Dreamers' case-by-case judgment of black worth keeps in line with their habit of avoidance; rather than analyze the white structures that feed into the stereotypical caricature of black Americans as lazy and insolent, the Dreamers use the media to applaud black victims who resisted the supposed vices of their race, and in doing so place the blame for the black community's socioeconomic disadvantages on the black community itself.

It is arguable, of course, that the media's impression of the Dream on black lives, and the willful ignorance that lurks beneath it, is better than nothing. News reports that don't feature the Dream are stereotypical and almost damning; for example, in the murder of Trayvon Martin, Martin was deemed a "drug-addled 'thug'" regardless of the invalidity of that statement (Williams 1), and prominent media figures like Fox News's Bill O'Reilly were at liberty to proclaim that Martin looked "how 'gangstas' look," and that though he "was innocent" he still "looked a certain way [and] lost his life" accordingly (Wemple 1). Later in the article O'Reilly does address issues of infrastructure in black communities, but his inability to acknowledge that Martin was murdered as a direct result of racial profiling, and that racial profiling is a product of white supremacy, allows anti-black stereotypes to flourish. With such blatant racism in mind, the Dream seems unproblematic. The Dream humanizes black Americans where others typecast them. The Dream makes discrimination subtler, more palatable. Enter black struggle.

When used in lieu of the Dream, black struggle is the far more effective tool for the humanization of black Americans. If the Dream is a plastic, one-dimensional rendition of life, an impossible fantasy that acknowledges no errors in its all-white formation and tolerates no missteps from its nonwhite participants, then black struggle is a realistic portrait. There is no flash-judgment, no division of messiahs from pariahs; instead, black struggle in the media displays black Americans as human, with ups and downs, triumphs and failures, and it does not shy away from the echoes of slavery and systematic oppression. Two relatively recent examples of black struggle in forms of publicly accessible media are Men We Reaped, the 2013 memoir by Jesmyn Ward, and Fruitvale Station, a 2013 film based on the 2009 shooting of Oscar Grant.

Men We Reaped converges Ward's childhood as a lower-class black American in the Deep South with the premature deaths of several of her loved ones, all of which occurred over the span of five years. Much of the book is anecdotal, packed with starkly human incidents that capture Ward's loved ones' happiness and sorrow, their dreams and their struggles. Ward does not flinch from the truth; if her loved ones participated in stereotypically thuggish behavior, those behaviors were not omitted from the book. In one especially striking scene, Ward sits at the funeral of her friend Rog and laments on the funeral t-shirt, which features a picture of her brother Joshua, who died several years beforehand. In the photograph, Joshua is holding a gun and has a "bandana over the bottom half of his face, [with] his hair cut close to his head"; he looks, according to Ward, the very essence of a "young thug" (Ward 40). But this pigeonholed depiction is undercut by Ward's next proclamation: this image "reveal[s] nothing of what [Joshua] was, and represent[s] everything that he wasn't" (40). Later on in the book Ward attributes Joshua's problematic behaviors to "institutions that systematically undervalue him . . . as a human being" (211), cementing Men We Reaped 's status as a beacon of black struggle. Through Ward's memoir, young black men are portrayed as whole beings beyond stereotype, with both strengths and flaws, and the source of their struggle is made explicit; they are victims of systemic oppression, of a long history of anti-black sentiment.

Along a similar vein, Fruitvale Station follows the final day of Oscar Grant, a black man murdered on New Year's Day by police officers at a BART station in Oakland, California. The film makes a point to emphasize the sheer compassion and love that fuel some of Grant's actions; within the timeframe of his last day of life, he is sweet and indulgent towards his young daughter, he rescues an injured pitbull from a hit-and-run, and he makes preparations for his mother's birthday party. Grant is not a flawless symbol of black virtuosity, however. He is an ex-convict and an ex-dealer who has cheated on his girlfriend in the past and who can be abrasive at times. The film is as clear about these dimensions to his personality as it is about his more endearing traits, and the truly remarkable aspect of Fruitvale Station is that Oscar Grant is afforded dimensionality at all. Grant is presented as a human who has made mistakes, who has struggled, and who tries to improve but is ultimately felled by a system of racism; his story follows the formula of black struggle to tragic precision.

At the time of their release, Men We Reaped and Fruitvale Station were both prime examples of black struggle being conveyed in the media, and they were rewarded for it. Men We Reaped was named a National Book Critics Circle Finalist, whereas Fruitvale Station won a whole host of accolades, including but not limited to an Independent Spirit Award and a NAACP Image Award. As Wesley Morris notes in his response to Fruitvale Station, the depiction of Oscar Grant's final moments, and in broader terms the depiction of black struggle, elicits an emotional response such that Americans are "reduced . . . to their most vulnerable selves" ("Strange Fruitvale"). These narratives surrounding black struggle were indisputably successful, and therein lies the proof that black struggle is an equally, if not more, potent method of humanizing black Americans within a mainstream media culture of demonization.

But the recent success of black struggle does not signal an end to racism, nor is black struggle a solution to racism. The mere fact that humans must be humanized lest they be demonized speaks to a much larger prejudice in the general psyche; replacing the Dream with black struggle is akin to replacing Scotch tape with a Band-Aid on a wound that requires stitches. It is an improvement, but it doesn't solve the core problem. When Coates dismisses the chances of the Dreamers "coming into consciousness" and "[learning] to struggle" (146, 151), he implies to the indirect audience that in a better world, they would move past their need to categorize black people as either saints or stereotypes, but he does not pretend that white acceptance of black struggle instead of the Dream would forgive the horrors of the past. Using its indirect intimations at a white audience, Between the World and Me rightfully accuses Dreamers of ignoring their supremacist history and their supremacist present in favor of a "peppermint"-smelling, "strawberry shortcake"-tasting illusion (11), and it offers said Dreamers a less ignorant viewpoint, but it does not offer a solution to the deeply-embedded racism that sparks stereotype and violence. In a hypothetical future, however, where the seeds of racism have been properly acknowledged and subsequently stamped out, perhaps Roxane Gay's rally cry that "we should not have to prove [black victims] . . . are worthy of living . . . [or] suitably respectable" will come to fruition. Perhaps, in this future, black victims need not be humanized in the media because it is redundant to say that they are human, and perhaps books like Between the World and Me need not instruct black America on how to survive.

Works Cited

Coates, Ta-Nehisi. Between the World and Me. New York: Random House, 2015. Print."Diversity in Media Ownership." Freepress.net. Freepress, 2013. Web. 25 Nov. 2015.

Gay, Roxane. "Silence is Not an Option." Roxanegay.com. Roxane Gay, 10 Aug. 2014. Web. 20 Nov. 2015.

LaCapria, Kim. "Was Trayvon Martin An Honor Student With A 3.7 GPA?" Inquisitr.com. Inquisitr, 5 Jul. 2013. Web. 25 Nov. 2015.

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American Media and the Dream in Ta-Nehisi Coates's Between the World and Me

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Read the instructor's introduction Read the writer's comments and bio Download this essay Ta-Nehisi Coates's essay Between the World and Me is at once a cautionary tale, a bildungsroman, and an analysis of contemporary American society.

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From film kits and lesson plans to the building blocks of a customized Learning Plan—texts, student tasks and teaching strategies—our resources will help you bring relevance, rigor and social emotional learning into your classroom—all for FREE.

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As a teacher, we engaged the Grade 9 students in looking at systemic racism in Canada in the context of the environmental crisis. We used There's Something in the Water, a phenomenal documentary now on Netflix about Nova Scotia black and indigenous communities fighting for environmental justice. Also a great example of women leaders fighting for voice.

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There's Something in the Water Official Trailer

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As a colleague/employee at BH: to help us be transparent in how the dream is reinforced in decisions we make about programs, events, and even who is and is not in our community.

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As an art teacher, I can emphasize that the art historical record excludes many voices  - and bring this back to the Dream. The Dream reverberates down the line - a history of oppression begets a present of oppression. The lack of artists of colour in the historical record reflects 'The Dream' in that there is more value placed on white voices, and more opportunities and exposure given to white artists. White people dominate the discourse both as creators and subjects of art. Until we acknowledge the lack of opportunity of people of colour in all fields, it will be too easy to dismiss their voices as unimportant or attribute the lack of representation up to other - more palatable to The Dream- reasons. To engage in 'The Dream' is to deny the struggle and reality of people of colour. Highlighting works that directly address the issues is also a good idea.

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As a Coach: Recognize the historical commodification of the black body in sport.

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As a Parent: Talk to my children of colour about interactions with Police

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Black Parents Explain How to Deal with the Police | Cut

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If you follow the right people, Tiktok can be an amazing resource. Here is one short video referencing the Black body in & out of uniform:

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Based off a True Story. BLACK LIVES MATTER. #blm #military #army #soldier #fyp #xyzbca #justice #endracism

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@justintheactor
Based off a True Story. BLACK LIVES MATTER. #blm #military #army #soldier #fyp #xyzbca #justice #endracism
♬ Childish Gambino - This Is America / Post Malone - Congratulations - carneyval

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This film is about the 9/11 generation and the American dream. It shines a light on a unique group of Americans, exploring their personal and professional lives, and giving voice to their hopes and fears.

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(Canada, documentary Channel Original, directed by Elizabeth St. Philip)

It's one of the most memorable moments from 9/11: White House Chief of Staff Andy Card walks up to President George W. Bush and whispers in his ear: "A second plane has hit the second tower. America is under attack."

MORE: Watch an interview with the filmmakers.

The place was Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Florida. Sitting in front of the President were sixteen school children, all 6-7 years old. They were chosen because they were some of the best readers in their school and Emma E. Booker was a success story, test scores were up compared to other schools in the district. It was the perfect place for Bush to promote his education program, No Child Left Behind.

MORE: Documentary filmmaker reflects on 9/11 and how it relates to the age of COVID-19

While the President processed the shocking news, the kids read from the book The Pet Goat. The imagery is surreal to watch, even today. An American president on camera at the exact moment he learns of a major attack on the country. Members of the press and Bush's advisors stand nearby, shifting nervously and waiting. The kids keep reading; their voices are strong and full of hope. It's like history is on pause. These are the final moments of innocence, right before the storm.

What happened to those kids? Which ones went on to graduate college and get a good job? Who fell on hard times and why? We've tracked them down to find out what they remember, what's happened since, and their dreams for the future.

Seventeen years later, they are all in their mid-20s, trying to get their footing in a country and world shaped by 9/11. Some have joined the military or started their own businesses, while others have fallen on hard times.

They bore witness to the very moment a new American reality was born. They are the generation of Google, smart phones and Facebook, but also cyber-bullying, global terrorism, and climate change. All of them are African-American and Latino in a country where they be a majority in less than 30 years. President Bush came to speak to them on 9/11 because they represented the future. They still do. It's time to catch up.

This film is about the 9/11 generation and the American dream. It shines a light on a unique group of Americans, exploring their personal and professional lives, and giving voice to their hopes and fears. The 9/11 Kids provide a window into some of the most vital themes of the American experience.

For more on pivotal moments that change our lives, watch Before & After, a digital series inspired by 9/11 Kids.

Produced with additional funding from:

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It's the most famous whisper in American history. President Bush learns of the 9/11 attacks while sitting in front of 16 schoolchildren. This is the untold story of those kids. Today, they are in their mid-20s and offer a fascinating window into post 9/11 America.

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As an employee interacting with students, Stacey Abrams' work reducing voter suppression and increasing voter enrollment and turnout in Georgia is a model for our students who wish to effect change and ensure everyone can realize their own dream. Abrams actions were done positively and by building relationships, a key SEL element. Check out her Wikipedia page here.

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Stacey Yvonne Abrams (;[1] born December 9, 1973) is an American politician, lawyer, voting rights activist, and author who served in the Georgia House of Representatives from 2007 to 2017, serving as minority leader from 2011 to 2017.[2] A member of the Democratic Party, Abrams founded Fair Fight A…

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Consider corporate ads such as this one from Procter & Gamble (Media Studies class) and approach from a critical thinking lens. Are companies using the movement for profit?

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Interesting Book Club discussion from a millennial perspective.

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Kaia Gerber Live with Lexi Underwood talking about "Between the World and Me" | Book Club | 26/06/20

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Consider the lack of safety in public spaces for black bodies and spend 1 hr watching 'When They See Us Now' - Oprah's netflix interview with the exonerated 'Central Park Five"   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18UZO9UmCPg

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Oprah Winfrey Presents_ When They See Us Now (Netflix Official Site)