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Session Objective: to acknowledge how political, social, economic, linguistic & environmental structures marginalise communities
“Confronting Injustice” is about understanding the wider context in which we exist and environmental racism plays out. This week’s time with your Discussion Group will involve defining structural racism and conducting a group exercise analysing political cartoons that comment on issues such as police violence, workplace discriminative, affirmative action, sports participation, and school testing. This session’s Learning Log will help you prepare for that discussion by taking a look at some BIPOC-produced tellings of America and sourcing your own material to share with the group.
Read: the “History of Racism in America” by Meilan Solly for the Smithsonian.
While you’re reading,
Identify: something you did not previously know about the timeline, impact, or extent of racially based oppression in the United States. Note it below to raise during discussion.
Meilan Solly is a journalist and designer who has covered everything from dollhouse crime scenes to student mental health. She is currently an assistant digital editor at Smithsonian magazine; she has previously written for Kiplinger, The Saint, and The Flat Hat. Based in Washington, D.C., Solly is an alumna of William & Mary as well as the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. She is a World War II buff and a lover of the Renaissance, modern art, and dogs.
Watch: at least three of the videos from this series by Jay Smooth about the reality of systemic racism and/or read the analyses behind the information presented, compiled by Race Forward.
In the Learning Log form below,
Record: the statistic from this series that most angers or confuses you.
John Randolph, known professionally as Jay Smooth, is a radio personality highlighting hip hop, politics, and social justice. He started out as a teenager, creating a website in the internet’s early days and founding NYC’s longest running hip hop radio program – WBAI’s Underground Railroad. Smooth left WBAI as an act of protest when the station hired Leonard Lopate after Lopate had been fired by WNYC for sexual assault. Born in New York City, Jay is the son of a Jewish mother and Black father.
Listen: to Lauryn Hill’s self-described ‘sketch’ on “Black Rage”.
Read through the words on her website if you need to, and then
Quote: the lyric that struck you most from Hill’s rewrite.
Lauryn Hill is a singer-songwriter known for the Fugees, a hip hop group drawing on elements of soul and reggae, whose name reclaimed a derogatory term for Haitian Americans derived from the word “refugee”. Hill broke barriers for female rappers throughout her career. “Black Rage” is, in Hill’s words, “about the derivative effects of racial inequity and abuse”. Set to the tune of “My Favorite Things”, you’ll hear Hill’s children playing in the house in this lo-fi version she released dedicated to Ferguson.
Examine: queer Indigenous artist Jeffrey Gibson’s American History canvas featuring a quote from Black playwright and novelist James Baldwin:
“American history is longer, larger...more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it.”
James Baldwin was born in Harlem in 1924. A writer and activist whose work dived deeply into the nuances of Western social divisions along racial, sexual, and class lines, Baldwin’s fiction focused on journeys of self-acceptance for predominantly African American, gay, and bisexual men. Faced with strong anti-Black prejudice and wanting to see his work beyond a reductionist African American context, Baldwin emigrated to France. He lived to witness both the Civil Rights and Gay Liberation Movements. (Photograph by Allan Warren.)
American History (Mixed Media on Canvas, 2015)
Jeffrey Gibson is a queer Mississippi Choctow-Cherokee painter and sculptor who spent his youth in Germany and Korea. His artwork draws on everything from rural pow-wows to urban raves while incorporating media as diverse as Iroquois beadwork and Everlast punch bags. A 2019 MacArthur Fellow, Gibson’s work prompts a shift in how Native American art is historicised.
Complete: your Learning Log via the form below, which invites you to find and bookmark some additional materials to share with your Discussion Group when you meet this week.
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