Tackling on-campus is complicated, here are some practical tips for students looking to create sustainable change. By Gloria Oladipo When will this foolishness end? Real talk though. At Cornell University, my current schooling, there have been a number of “racially insensitive incidents”. In the past 4 months “Build a Wall” has been chanted at the...
Tag: institutional racism
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The Marijuana Industry Alienates Black People and Benefits White Folks
White people are capitalizing off of a plant that led to thousands of Black people getting incarcerated and essentially shutting us out of the legal cannabis market. In 1992, Tupac famously said “instead of war on poverty, they got a war on drugs so the police can bother me.” The effects of the War on...
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Yes, Environmental Racism is Real and It Is Devastating.
Pollution and the risk of disaster is assigned to Black and Brown communities through racial discrimination and political neglect. The first time you heard the term environmental racism may have been after Hurricane Katrina, during the ongoing Flint water crisis, or even as recently as Hurricane Harvey. You may have thought, “What? How can the...
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Two Years Have Passed Since Charleston Massacre, And Nothing Has Changed
Outside symbolic gestures, what’s changed since the Charleston Massacre? Not a damn thing. It seems like an ironic twist of fate, a perverted prophecy of tragedies to come when you think back on it. Two years ago, on June 16, 2015, then-presidential candidate Donald Trump announced his bid for the U. S. presidency. Trump would...
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Ask Ashleigh: Are You Really Broke?
Every time I write or post publicly about my pain with my depression, struggling with surviving antiblackness, living in poverty, and my suicidal thoughts, seven times out of 10 no one believes I’m really hurting as bad I say I am. Let me be clear: I know I have people that support me, see me,...
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Dear Virgie: What Do I Say to Colleagues Who Deny the Existence of Fatphobia & Racism?
Dear Virgie, I am a peer health educator at a college in Arizona. I have felt really prepared for most of the topics we will cover this year, but one of the things I am introducing for the first time is a unit on -isms. This is really important to me because I feel like...
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Do Black Lives and Antiblack Events Matter if We’re Not Murdered by the Police?
Soon after the tragic and horrific flooding in Baton Rouge (to donate, click here), many Black folks affected by the disaster were asking, “Where are all of the Black Lives Matter organizations now?” In a video by Jerry R. Washington, he states, “When it came to all the drama with the Alton Sterling killing, [BLM]...