Category Archives: Black Lives Matter

I looked first for what I could appreciate in Heidi Recuperos response to Joanna Colwells letter in support of flying the Black Lives Matter flag at the Middlebury Union High School (Letters section, Sept. 30 and Sept. 9, respectively). I found most of it in the parts of her letter that did not address what Ms. Colwell was saying. For instance, Ms. Recupero concludes This could be a wonderful teaching moment for students at the high school. But nothing in Ms Colwells letter said flying a BLM flag should end the discussion. Why cant an ongoing teaching moment occur just as easily or to an even greater extent with the Black Lives Matter flag flying?

I dont want this to descend though into a point-by-point reflection on Ms. Recuperos letter, which offers a lot of food for thought. Let me instead respond specifically to her and Ms. Colwells conflict over the meaning of the Racism Has No Home Here slogan. It appears to have originated in the determination of a white lawyer with a bi-racial child to become more active in the struggle against unconscious bias and other generators of behavior that harm racial minorities. In other words, it originated as a statement of white pain and a desire to dismantle racism. I admire her impulse and her campaign has done some good, but its not grounded in the Black experience that gave birth to the Black Lives Matter slogan. It crowds out BLMs spotlight on racisms impact from the perspective of those who have been oppressed, which shows up in the kind of data Ms. Colwell cited.

The BLM slogan is inclusive, despite the desperation of so many people to brand it as divisive. Its a powerful way of saying all lives should matter equally. It echoes Jesuss teaching directing us to pay attention to what those with resources do for the most vulnerable groups in society. Jesus says that is the main test of whether people love him and fully accept that God loves everyone.

You dont have to believe in God or Jesus to get the point. You just have to agree that the best way to live out the slogan all lives matter in a society with our history is to support the reforms necessary to produce the results you would expect if all races truly had equal opportunities. If we achieve that, the statistics will change over time to show that unarmed Black people are no more likely to be shot by police than unarmed whites, that Black workers are no less likely to get hired, Black families are no less likely to own their homes, and so on.

That focuses us on improving opportunities for Black people (and other marginalized groups, most of whom recognize that the logic of the BLM slogan speaks to their conditions as well). Ideally, we can do a lot of it in ways that help whites prosper too. But its unrealistic and unjust to think racism will be dismantled if whites continue to insist on a dishonest accounting of how much their current wealth and freedom rests on centuries of slavery and Jim Crow oppression, and on persistent biases in favor of the status quo baked into our culture.

I get why Ms. Recupero and many other people are going to see Racism Has No Home Here as a powerful sign of commitment to creating anti-racist spaces. But I cant help but wonder whether they care that many of the people they are trying to support, and those white allies who know our economic and political history, may cringe like I do. We all see an invisible footnote on every one of those signs: But Centuries of White Racism Helped Make This Our Home.

Of course, many individual white people are being ground down by the status quo and caught up in personal suffering that white privilege cant overcome. That only makes a turn like BLMs slogan toward honest all lives matter policies even more important.

My impression is that the kids at the high school who want the BLM flag flying get that.

Rev. Barnaby Feder

Middlebury

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Letter to the editor: Anti-racism slogans can send the wrong message - Addison County Independent

Following the Black Lives Matter protests last year, organisation after organisation made anti-racism pledges and committed to tackling racial inequality as an act of solidarity or as a moral stance. But as many aspects of our lives return to normal post-pandemic and workplaces continue to open up, how much has really changed?

There were promises from the Government to look at all aspects of inequality, which, judging by its constant dismissal of the existence of structural racism, doesnt appear to be happening. Other businesses promised to address the concerns of Black members of staff after complaints were lodged last year. Few were successful.

The Science Museums promise, which came following staff complaints, included the launch of a regular blog series on redressing racism, which reports point out still hadnt been added to by November 2020. At the time of writing, there still havent been any follow-up blogposts.

Over at the BBC, mere months after Black staff accused the corporation for defending its use of the N-word in two separate programmes despite widespread outrage in August 2020, employees came out this year to complain that the BBCs diversity pledge had been breached with its all-white BBC News Group Board following redundancies.

And in June 2021, a year after The Barbican Centre posted a black square tribute on its social media after blackout Tuesday, it was accused of being inherently racist in a book by a collection of staff called the Barbican Stories team. Its initial action plan to deal with the issue was then dismissed by staff as being expected to solve racism at the Barbican in two months. Since then, the Barbican has announced an apology and a 10-point alternative plan to improve diversity and inclusion. Whether it will lead to the change the Barbican Stories team have urged for remains to be seen.

This is just a snapshot of unfulfilled promises that countless other workplaces across the UK made, leaving many waiting for even a hint of progress. Given the governments performance as well as the availability of equality monitoring data, we can safely infer not much has changed.

My book Living While Black confronts the ongoing reality of institutional racism in the UK. It speaks to acts of extreme racist violence but also the more mundane acts of anti-Blackness Black people have to endure within society, and in their workplaces, while being expected to function optimally.

In addition to having to work in these conditions, Black people have the added burden of having to accept dehumanisation as well as the minimisation of the harm of whiteness in this context, whiteness refers to the structure that ensures white people remain in positions of power and domination over people of colour at work. Ideally with a smile.

Racism adversely impacts both our mental health and physical health. As a psychologist and therapist, I continue to support people who face blatant racism at work and are often left too traumatised to return. But mostly, it is the more subtle, covert and hidden forms of discrimination and marginalisation that cause significant distress. The type that occurs in plain sight and is left unaddressed. And the fact that discrimination leaves us vulnerable to more physical and/or psychological harm is ignored.

Case studies featured in Living While Black show just how severe the damage can be. A patient of mine (who I refer to as Mike) had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and drug-induced psychosis years after arriving in the UK as a child refugee, was detained in a hospital under the Mental Health Act, and realised many other Black men were there too. And had been detained in mental health services following the involvement of the police.

He saw that of those men, very few were in therapy or were given the chance to talk about their lived experience. When racism was broached, staff often changed the subject or became defensive. His experience is consistent with well-documented race inequality within the mental health system, inequalities that have not abated.

Another person I came across, Sara, spoke of her experience of working as a manager in the civil service. She experienced severe anxiety, shame and difficulties working with her manager, a white man who she seemed to have developed a phobic response or extreme fear towards.

The context here was that Sara frequently found herself advocating for less senior employees of colour who faced discrimination. In addition to the tension this added to her relationship withmanagement (in their eyes, she became the troublemaker), she was treated with hostility and regularly and covertly disrespected by her white peers. Sara, unsurprisingly, found the workplace oppressive and suffocating. When I met her she was hopeless, tearful and overwhelmed.

The evidence overwhelmingly shows that the pledges made last year have not translated into workplace transformation for Black employees. And theres been even less engagement with how Black people are affected when they challenge workplace norms. As Ive observed, and as so many Black people have experienced, maintaining anything other than silence can lead to blacklisting and being blocked from career progression.

Lets be clear: the way to tackle these inequalities is not through unconscious bias training. We need approaches that acknowledge individual incidents as well as the effect of group dynamics and institutional processes on peoples experiences. We also need approaches that disrupt what is normal and not seek to re-establish those norms. A course I specifically created for that purpose, aims to do so.

The diversity and inclusion industrial complex ensures organisations continue to invest millions in interventions that placate or protect white egos. By focusing on what people do inadvertently or implicitly, were missing much of the picture when it comes to dismantling inequality, which often leads to absolving institutions and individuals of guilt and liability.

Ignoring the presence of racism in workplaces is rarely accidental, nor is it always unconscious. And as I say in my book, refusing to confront the mental health impact and the stress generated to employees of colour, the most likely group to experience psychological distress, is not done inadvertently. Those are institutional choices. And often, they are individual choices.

Its been a long year of broken promises, empty talks and white liberal performativity. Perhaps it is time we stopped expecting organisations to solve a problem they have vested interests in maintaining, and reclaim that power ourselves.

Guilaine Kinouani is a psychologist, writer, and founder of Race Reflections, a social enterprise dedicated to tackling inequality, injustice and oppression. Her book Living While Black: The essential guide to overcoming racial trauma was published earlier this year.

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Its been over a year since workplaces made BLM pledges, but Black peoples experiences havent improved - iNews

Mike Gonzalez wants you to understand an important point: The Black Lives Matter movement is not a grift. Its actually much worse than that.

BLM: The Making of a New Marxist Revolution, by Mike Gonzalez. Encounter, 264 pp., $28.99.

A grift would be more in keeping with the times. Left, right, and center, political con men are eager to take peoples outrage and turn it into profit including some in the BLM orbit. The critical race industry is making Robin DiAngelo and Ibram Kendi rich. But at the heart of BLM is an ideology that is far more concerned with power than with money.

Gonzalezs new book, BLM: The Making of a New Marxist Revolution, is in an explanation of that ideology, from BLMs predecessors to its humble beginnings to its apotheosis on the streets in 2020. To speak of Marxist revolution in 2021 is to invite questioning looks and accusations of paranoia. But by their own admission, the leaders of BLM are trained Marxists, as co-founder Patrisse Cullors put it in 2015. Despite recent efforts to hide the movements ideological origin, Gonzalez makes it plain that BLM is a far more revolutionary group than it wants its casual supporters to believe.

Defining terms is important here. Unlike Defund the Police, a slogan that proved disastrously unpopular, Black Lives Matter is a phrase with which it is hard to find fault. This is all the more surprising because it arose somewhat organically: BLM co-founder Alicia Garza wrote black lives matter in a Facebook post after the death of Trayvon Martin in 2013. Cullors added the hashtag, and a slogan was born. Opal Tometi, the third of the co-founders, built the website and took the message to a broader audience.

This is a nice, homespun creation story, but behind the slogan are lifetimes of trained Marxism. As Gonzalez explains, Garza, Cullors, and Tometi all came up through avowedly Marxist organizations, embracing a radical offshoot of black liberation that had long been rejected by the American mainstream. Indeed, Garza has publicly noted the connection between Black Lives Matter and the identically initialed Black Liberation Movement, a 1970s militant group whose armed wing committed murders and robberies in the name of its cause.

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Gonzalez draws particular attention to the direct connection between Garza, Cullors, and Tometi and the previous generation of radicals, most notably Angela Davis and Assata Shakur. And just as Davis and Shakur chose violence and division over unity and equality, their intellectual descendants continue to push an agenda far more divisive than their slogan suggests. Last summer, in response to civil rights icon John Lewiss exhortation that rioting, looting, and burning is not the way, Garza asked reporter David Remnick: Why are we having this conversation about protest and property when a mans life was extinguished before our eyes?

The disagreement between Garza and Lewis is the latest version of an old question: Is the advancement of human rights, and of the rights of black Americans in particular, better served within the United Statess liberal democratic system or outside of it? Lewis, like Martin Luther King Jr., believed the problem was not with liberalism, democracy, or America itself, but with our collective failure to apply our high ideals to our black fellow citizens.

This position is out of fashion today, but it won the argument then, and the results are to be seen everywhere in the growth of racial equality in every facet of life. The promise of American liberal democracy, delivered honestly and fairly to all, has lifted millions out of oppression and poverty. Our country remains imperfect, but such progress as we have achieved, we have achieved through the application and reinforcement of our founding ideals.

As Gonzalez explains, however, radicals such as Davis and Shakur saw the system itself as irretrievably flawed. Influenced by the Frankfurt School scholars who sought to explain Marxisms failure to achieve its goals and reshape it for the 20th century, these radicals were steeped in the critical race theory that is only now attracting widespread attention. That repackaged Marxism eschewed the nonviolence that was even then winning the day.

In the 1960s and 1970s, the radicals lost the argument, but the BLM leadership is winning it today. In many ways, this is a strange development. Racism and poverty still exist, of course, but they are much less endemic than they were 50 years ago. In every measurable way, this nation has vastly improved from the days of Jim Crow.

Why then the turn to radicalism? Partly, its because the messaging has gotten better: Black Lives Matter is much more appealing than Black Power. But there must be more to it than marketing. The radicals words are gentle, but the destruction they wrought on Americas cities last year was not.

The answer may lie in the changing nature of communication itself. We talk to each other differently than we did 50 years ago. In-person conversations encourage moderation, while online yelling rewards extremism. This dynamic was only amplified last year, when coronavirus lockdowns left us with fewer outlets for normal activity and more time to be mad online.

In Martin Gurris 2014 book The Revolt of the Public, we find another part of the answer. Protests used to be organized. The people behind them had tangible goals and plans that required a level of moderation, both in the sense of a moderate who avoids ideological extremism and in the sense of a moderator who presides over a collective enterprise.

Since the rise of internet communications shattered political and media oligopolies, there is no one in a position to moderate political discourse. Radicals and moderates are on equal footing in an unmoderated field of words. Although, as Gonzalez details, BLM leaders have purged their web publications of their former references to extremist ideas, their movement grew even when these details were out there for all to see. People were drawn to the movements energy and to the vague sense that by supporting it, they were doing the right thing. They ignored the destructive message at its heart.

But BLM is no passing fad or simple political grift. Whatever good intentions the movements casual supporters hold, its leaders have a far more malignant purpose. As Gonzalez puts it, While only the deranged can take issue with the sentiment that black lives matter, the agenda of the organizations that have astutely appropriated that slogan is far different.

Gonzalez calls for an equally fervid movement to oppose BLM and stand up for liberty. Who will lead such a movement remains to be seen, but whoever it is must learn the lessons of BLM and adapt the old virtues of America to the new chaos of a world without moderators and, increasingly, without moderates. This book is a good place to start.

Kyle Sammin is the senior editor of Philadelphia Weekly and the co-host of the Conservative Minds podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @KyleSammin.

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Tags: Books, Book Reviews, Black Lives Matter, Race, Civil Rights

Original Author: Kyle Sammin

Original Location: The radical roots of BLM

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The radical roots of BLM - Yahoo News

By early childhood, young children are reasoning about race and their social world and developing a moral understanding of fairness and unfairness, equality and inequality with input from those around them. Young children perceive much more than we realize: Research shows that infants as young as three months show racial preferences that grow into racial discrimination by elementary school without intervention.

Gail M. Ferguson

Among the parents in the study who did mention Floyds murder or the unrest, most mentioned race in a vague manner but did not point out longstanding racial injustice in U.S. policing. Only 17% of white parents in the study used color-conscious or power-conscious language or parenting strategies, meaning that only they directly acknowledged race, racism or Black Lives Matter in discussions with their children.

These study results showed that most white Minneapolis mothers surveyed avoided discussing Floyds murder or systemic racism with their children, despite the high-profile event happening in their community. When parents and other adults are silent about race, it communicates apathy or approval of racism, even if thats not what adults intend.

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Importantly, the study also found that white parents own level of racial identity development was closely linked to how they socialized their children. The subset of parents who used color-conscious and power-conscious parenting showed more advanced white racial identity development than other parents based on their responses. In other words, it appeared that white parents parented their children around race only up to the level of their own maturity in handling racial information.

So what can parents, especially white parents, do to help their children become antiracist? The findings from this study suggest a two-pronged solution: active self-reflection to develop a healthy white racial identity coupled with courageous antiracist parenting.

A white person has a healthy white racial identity when they are fully aware of systemic racism, acknowledge their own racial privilege and role in perpetuating racism, and are committed to self-reflection, self-education and other antiracist actions. White parents seeking this personal growth can join a local chapter of an antiracism organization or use an antiracism workbook.

The other prong of this solution is for white parents to explicitly acknowledge race and racism with children. One common misconception is that having conversations with children about racism will make them racist, when in fact the opposite is true. Such conversations are essential to giving them the skills they need to detect and challenge their own biases and the biases around them.

Adults teach children about concepts like fairness and unfairness and justice and injustice, but these lessons often happen in the context of abstract conversations at home or at school. Children need real-life examples to deepen their understanding of these concepts in relation to race and racism.

White parents can use everyday experiences and events in the media to provide children with concrete examples of justice and injustice, accountability, and antiracist action. They should also engage childrens empathy by humanizing victims of police brutality and racism. Mr. Floyd was someones father, son, brother, friend and neighbor, and white children need adults in their lives to help them imagine how they would feel if he had been their father.

If you are new to conversations around race or racism, it also can help to make a plan about how to have a discussion with your children. Short, frequent conversations that occur naturally during teachable moments work better than having one long discussion about the topic.

Race matters in the United States because racism still exists. Parents, especially white parents, can play a role in addressing racism because of the power and privilege they hold in our racialized society. Taking time for honest self-reflection and explicit conversations with children about race and racism (including your own) is, in and of itself, an important act of antiracism.

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Gail M. Ferguson, Ph.D. is an associate professor in the Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, where she directs the Culture and Family Life Lab.

If youre interested in joining the discussion, add your voice to the Comment section below or consider writinga letteror a longer-formCommunity Voicescommentary. (For more information about Community Voices, see our Submission Guidelines.)

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The importance of talking to children about race and racism (including your own) - MinnPost

From Staff Reports| Vineland Daily Journal

Black Lives Matter's history from Trayvon Martin to George Floyd

From Trayvon Martin to George Floyd, the Black Lives Matter movement continues to highlight Black lives lost to police and racial injustice.

Just the FAQs, USA TODAY

BUENA VISTA - The African American Heritage Museum of Southern New Jersey will present the paintings of John Morris and Melvin Lee Smith in the Black Lives Matter exhibit from Oct. 1 through Dec. 29. A reception to meet the artists will be held from 1 to 4 p.m. Oct. 9.

The expressive brushstrokes of John Morriscapture the spirit of protest and respect that fueled the Black Lives Matter movement, while the grisaille technique of Melvin Lee Smith describes a preceding generation of protest that changed the world. The artwork is a visual conversation between the featured artists.

Museum president and founder, Ralph E. Hunter, Sr., explained that, the issues that led to the Black Lives Matter movement still remain and the museum is proud to oer an exhibit that supports respect for everyone, regardless of race.

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The museum is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and Saturday and Sunday by appointment.

Admission is free, but donations are encouraged.

The museum is in the Martin Luther King Community Center at 661 Jackson Road in Newtonville.

Visitors are asked to wear masks to protect against the COVID-19 virus.

For information, call (609) 704-5495 or visit aahmsnj.org.

Send community news and event items to lvoit@gannett.com. Help support local journalism with asubscription to The Daily Journal/Courier Post/Burlington County Times.

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Black Lives Matter art featured at African American Heritage Museum of Southern New Jersey - The Daily Journal

More than a year after the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and other Black people forced a national reckoning with race, support for the movement has not waned in communities of color, a new Pew Research Center poll finds.

When asked about the Black Lives Matter movement, 83 percent of Black Americans surveyed espoused some level of support, with 58 percent saying they strongly backed the cause.

Overall support was slightly lower among Hispanic and Asian respondents 60 percent and 68 percent, respectively while only 47 percent of white respondents said they either strongly or somewhat supported the resurgent movement.

In a Pew poll last June, two-thirds of all adults either somewhat or strongly supported Black Lives Matter. At the time, 60 percent of white respondents approved of the movement.

That percentage dropped to 55 percent last September, though Pews latest version of the survey indicates the level of majority support has stayed steady since.

While the calls for police reform havent gone away, Congress is at an impasse of the issue after negotiations between Rep. Karen BassKaren Ruth BassHouse passes bill to end crack and powder cocaine sentencing disparity New poll shows lasting support for Black Lives Matter with people of color Police organizations say failed reform proposal would have strengthened departments, not defunded them MORE (D-Calif.), Sen. Tim ScottTimothy (Tim) Eugene ScottHouse passes bill to end crack and powder cocaine sentencing disparity New poll shows lasting support for Black Lives Matter with people of color Police organizations say failed reform proposal would have strengthened departments, not defunded them MORE (R-S.C.) and Sen. Cory BookerCory BookerHouse passes bill to end crack and powder cocaine sentencing disparity New poll shows lasting support for Black Lives Matter with people of color Police organizations say failed reform proposal would have strengthened departments, not defunded them MORE (D-N.J.) fell apart last week.

Since the spring, the trio had been trying to forge a compromise on Democrats George Floyd Justice in Policing Act.

However, after announcing that a framework agreement had been reached in June, talks lost momentum and stalled.

Over the weekend, Scott described a measure in the legislation that would have required police departments to meet new standards to continue receiving federal aid as defunding the police.

We want the best wearing the badge, and we want the vulnerable protected," Scott told CBS Newss Margaret Brennan. "So when you tie funding losses in this legislation, you should expect an allergic reaction from me."

In an interview with CNN, Booker expressed his disappointment over the failed deal.

"It was a frustrating experience in the sense that we had the biggest civil rights demonstrations in this country's history asking for change," the New Jersey senator said.

"We wanted to have more transparency, higher professional standards and real accountability. If you break the law, you shouldn't be shielded from that," he added.

On Tuesday, a pair of police unions pushed back against the notion that the legislation would have defunded the police.

Despite some media reports, at no point did any legislative draft propose defunding the police, the International Association of Chiefs of Police and the Fraternal Order of Police said in a statement.

The legislation specifically provided additional funding to assist law enforcement agencies in training, agency accreditation, and data collection initiatives, the groups added. It is our joint belief that the provisions under discussion would have strengthened the law enforcement profession and helped improve the state of community police engagement without compromising management and officers rights, authorities, and legal protections.

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New poll shows lasting support for Black Lives Matter with people of color | TheHill - The Hill

Will Smith says the worldwide reckoning with racism that occurred in the aftermath of George Floyds death has been mostly positive but he thinks it could use better branding.

The entire world was in lockdown, watched what happened to George Floyd, and stood up with one voice and said, We see it. We agree,Smith told GQ magazinein a profile published Monday.Thats never happened before and with that the opportunities are unlike theyve ever been.

Case in point: Emancipation, Smiths upcoming Civil War-era epic for Apple TV. The movie, directed by Antoine Fuqua, tells the story ofWhipped Peter,an enslaved man who was the subject of one of the most widely circulated images of slavery of its time.

Ive been trying to get movies made for a long time. And the amount of money that Apple is paying to tell the story [of Emancipation] is unprecedented, Smith said. And those opportunities are globally present and plentiful.

Earlier this year, Smith also produced and hosted the six-part Netflix docuseries Amend, which focused on the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and offered a close look at the history of racial oppression in America, among other subjects.

Still, Smith worries that Black Americans could be making more of this moment.

I just want to encourage Black Americans to take the acknowledgment and seize upon the present global opportunities, he told GQ. I would just like us to argue less about certain things and pay attention to the big ripe fruit.

Smith, who has spoken in the past about his own experiences with police racism, said he thinks certain terms, like defund the police and critical race theory, could use different language to make them better understood to people outside the community.

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Abolish the police. Defund the police. I would love if we would just say Defund the bad police. Its almost like I want, as Black Americans, for us to change our marketing for the new position were in. So critical race theory, just call it truth theory, Smith said. The pendulum is swinging in our direction beautifully. And theres a certain humility that will most capitalize on the moment for the future of Black Americans, without discounting the difficulty and the pain and the emotion.

This is a difficult area to discuss, but I feel like the simplicity of Black Lives Matter was perfect, he said. Anybody who tries to debate Black Lives Matter looks ridiculous. So when I talk about the marketing of our ideas, Black Lives Matter was perfection.

By comparison, he argued, Defund the police doesnt get it done, no matter how good the ideas are.

He added: Im not saying we shouldnt defund the police. Im saying, just dont say that, because then people who would help you wont.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.

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Will Smith: 'Black Lives Matter' Is A Better Slogan Than 'Defund The Police' - Yahoo News

In what can be termed as a Black Lives Matter movement effect, two earliest portraits of men of African descent in the history of European art are being exhibited together.

This has happened for the first time in the 500-year-old history, the Rijksmuseums curators have said.

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Over 100 portraits by Renaissance artists are being showcased by the museum in Amsterdam from Tuesday.

The Remember Me exhibition is running until January 16. It features works made between 1470 and 1570. It also examines the reasons that lie behind portraiture, an art form that flourished in the 1500s.

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In it, Albrecht Drers 1508 sketch, which was discovered in the German painters workshop at the time of his death, and Jan Jansz Mostaerts portrait, which dates back to 1525, are being also displayed.

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On asking why it wasnt done before, Friso Lammertse, curator of 17th century Dutch paintings at the Rijksmuseum, suggested, a relative lack of interest about the pieces seems to have been the reason of their exclusion from such exhibitions.

Things have changed only really recently, with the Black Lives Matter movement, Lammertse said.

(With inputs from agencies)

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Black Lives Matter effect: African men portraits by Europeans find space in exhibition for first time - WION

It is very easy to get caught in this frame of mind, because you can look at the millions of people of color, who are a success in one generation. Instead of challenging and fighting racism, they put the blame on the person.

On many different levels people of color are advancing, and there is much to be proud of. There are now more children of color being born, than White children each year, and White people are concerned with their existence.

White supremacy or White supremacism is the belief that White people are superior to those of other races and thus should dominate them. The belief favors the maintenance and defense of White power and privilege. White supremacy has roots in the now discredited doctrine of scientific racism, and was a key justification for colonialism, states Wikipedia.

The Democrats would want Americans to think that in 2021, only Republicans are the only party that is racist, but racism is systemic and institutionalized. When White folks get together, there are always the Black jokes, and the jokes about how fast Black men can run.

Many would think that Black jokes are harmless, and they would never say them in front of their Black friends, but sometimes other words slip out. There is something fundamentally different about being born White, and more doors are opened, from the start.

Some call it White privilege and it is a benefit that is enjoyed by all White folks, and it does not matter if you are a Democrat or Republican. There is a cultural thread that runs through the society, and Whites take advantage of all these benefits. White privilege is an aspect of White power, and all White people have the ability to pull out their White power card.

History in America has demonstrated that White citizens will make war, and justifying horrific atrocities against Black people, including lynching. Even after slavery was abolished, there was still lynching, and many today believe police brutality is still connected to the history of lynching. There were 3436 people lynched from 1889 to 1932, and the majority was Black people, according to publisher Ida Wells.

As Black Americans look to the past for answers, Ida Wells was always very vocal in her campaigns to stop lynching and racial violence against her community. When her newspaper was published, she risked being lynched, and her office was burned to the ground.

She was determined to make a change, and in 2021, Black Americans must agree on a Black Agenda to make significant change. When White supremacy and racism shows its ugly face, it is important that the community is prepared to fight.

In 16 states, White supremacy is fighting to disenfranchise Blacks and people of color. Everyone and it does not matter your color, should be fighting to uphold voting rights. All these organizations should take a page from Ida Wells, and become the loudest voice in the room. We must be more vocal, and racial justice and change must be a part of every conversation.

Intimidation never stopped Ida Wells from getting up in the morning, to do what is right, and it cannot stop us from winning in 2021. Our ancestors have shown us the way, and it is time to come together and start a Black, people of color movement for change.

The color of your skin makes you Black, and All Black Lives Matter, and we must change America, and next the world.

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Black Lives Matter and The Color of Your Skin Free Press of Jacksonville - Jacksonville Free Press

Photo: Scott Olson (Getty Images)

Black Lives Matter signs have been drawing unwanted attention to businesses and family homes, making many supporters of the movement very viable targets.

At his sentencing this past summer, a Michigan man admitted to targeting a Black familys home in 2019 because of the BLM sign in a front window. Michael Frederick Jr. fired bullets into the familys home, threw rocks through their front windows and graffitied their cars over several days.

Last month, Proud Boys leader Henry Tarriowas sentenced to more than five months in prison for burning a Black Lives Matter banner from Asbury United Methodist Church, a historically Black church in Washington D.C.

In another case, a white man was caught on video tearing a BLM sign out of a Chicago familys front lawn.

Now, federal investigators and fire officials are looking into a possible arson fire at a century-old church in Portland, Maine, which had a Black Lives Matter sign hanging out front. According to the Portland Press Herald, Portland New Church members believe it may have been racially motivated.

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From Press Herald:

It appeared to be set in an area where a Black Lives Matter sign had been posted, according to Lorraine Kardash, the church pastor and building manager. The sign, which had been displayed outside the church for at least a year, was later found by investigators in bushes near the church.

Neighbors who spotted the fire called for help and rushed across the street with buckets of water to try to put it out, Kardash said. They did not see any suspects at or near the scene, she said.

Members of the fire department were able to put the flames out in just a few minutes. The fire damaged the front wall, but both the inside entryway and structure of the church remain intact. No one was injured, Press Herald reports. The Portland police and fire departments and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives are investigating. It is standard procedure for the ATF to be involved with church fire cases.

President of the church council, Rev. Anne Gresinger, told the Press Herald that a diversity banner used to hang in the church. However, in the past several months, it was removed. She is unsure if the banners removal is connected to the fire, but she believes someone is trying to make a statement.

It certainly seems like someone is making a statement about not being OK with those things, she said to the Press Herald. Hopefully, the investigation will clarify things. They are asking a whole lot of questions and talking to neighbors. Were told they do have some leads, so we may learn something soon.

According to the Boston Globe, Portland New Churchs pastor, Lorraine Kardash, said the Black Lives Matter sign will be going back up. She also told the Globe that she believes someone started the fire.

A peace picnic, meant to showcase support for diversity, is planned for Oct. 10 in the churchs front yard.

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Investigators Looking Into Suspected Arson Fire at Portland, Maine Church With Black Lives Matter Sign - The Root