Editor’s Letter

People’s responses to racism run the gamut from holding racists accountable to denying racism even exists. Racism stems from hate; the unwillingness to see the inherent humanity in others fosters a mindset that enables one to denigrate others. What other root cause explains America’s on-again/off-again dalliances with slavery and its oppressive permutations? What allows one group of human beings to torture generations of people in every imaginable way, even unto death? The practitioners of racism believe that they are superior to other races based on the color of their skin and that they alone deserve all conceivable rights and privileges — at the expense of others not in their group.

Racism, the belief that different races possess distinct characteristics, abilities or qualities, especially so as to distinguish them as inferior or superior to one another. –New Oxford American Dictionary

How, then, are we to eradicate racism?

The correct answer is to “Love one another,” to quote Jesus.

There it is. Three words. It doesn’t get any simpler than that. I’m no Biblical scholar, but this one is a no-brainer. What follows is my interpretation of Jesus’s commandment in the context of America’s original sin. What with Easter coming up, I find it especially relevant. Enjoy.

In the Episcopal Church, the Thursday before Easter Sunday is known as Maundy Thursday. Services on Thursday commemorate Jesus’s last supper with his Disciples the night before his crucifixion. During the gathering, he institutes the practice we call the eucharist (also known as Holy Communion, the Lord’s Supper, et cetera) and issues a new command to his followers.

Jesus and the Disciples are in the upper room celebrating Passover, and he tells them that he will be betrayed by one of the twelve (Judas). Once Judas leaves to do his deed, Jesus alludes to his upcoming crucifixion and challenges the eleven to raise the bar in their interactions with people, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you: you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love one another.” (John 13: 34, 35 NRSV)

Let’s take a closer look at that.

Jesus uses the word love in two forms four times in three sentences. Jesus wanted to drive his point home with his Disciples. Their teacher and friend did not present his followers with a helpful hint, a suggestion, or a request. He issued a direct order they were to follow. That meant no squabbling over whether or not to follow his mandate. For Christians — then and now — the matter is not up for debate.

Jesus goes even further and tells them how to love another. He must have been familiar with human nature to know that when it comes to serving someone else, given the opportunity, people most often choose the option that requires the most minor investment of time, energy, or resources. To eliminate further misinterpretation, he gives particular parameters for how to love: “as I have loved you.”

How did Jesus love?

Most of the Disciples had been in close contact with Jesus for three years at the time of the Last Supper. They witnessed firsthand how deeply his compassion moved him to intercede on people’s behalf. They understood the precise nature of Jesus’s active, lavish, and radically inclusive love.

The Gospels are replete with stories of him meeting people amid their circumstances. He celebrated with people, and he wept with them. He loved them without judgment or preconditions whenever and wherever he encountered them, which, more often than not, was at their point of need. He never told them, “Go get your life in order, then we can talk,” or “Sorry, pal. You’re not [fill in the blank] enough.” He regarded people as brothers and sisters created in his Father’s image.

Much to the chagrin of the establishment and religious leaders, he sought out the marginalized and outcasts. Jesus chastised his Disciples on more than one occasion for their dismissal of those society deemed unloveable, unworthy, or the other.

Read the full article at Our Human Family.

NEW THIS WEEK

Diversity Must Transcend Fear

By R. Wayne Branch PhD

An Oxymoron: A Nation of Immigrants Stressed by Diversity

Recent political attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policy values have got many people wondering about democracy’s relevance. From the Supreme Court’s Affirmative Action ruling . . . to the Congressional House majority refusing to take up a vote on an immigration bill . . . to states limiting or banning access to women’s health care needs . . . to states’ refusal to fund DEI offices and curriculum . . . to demands for single gender bathrooms, it should be evident that something larger is driving these anti-diversity decisions.

In fact, one could say that DEI has been the epicenter of the country’s culture wars since colonization. It was true when the economic benefits of kidnapping and selling people for profit was used to justify regarding enslaved Africans as less than a person. It was true when Manifest Destiny was used to legitimize the removal of Indigenous nations from their ancestral lands. It was also true when Chinese laborers, Mexican citizens, and other People of Color were used as cheap labor for railroad expansion and slaughterhouses, ranching in Texas, farming in Texas, Mid-West packers. Suddenly, laws became flexible as long as there were no demands for citizenship.

When engineers, nurses, scientists, and many others were needed, however, citizenship became the carrot extended to entice talent. Many became driven by the belief aptly stated by Bianca Miller Cole that, “Diversity and inclusion are essential . . . as a healthy variety of people from different backgrounds and cultures provides us with the balance of voices and diversity of thought that we need.” (Forbes Magazine, September, 2020)

Read the complete article at Our Human Family.

Final Thought

Love One Another (2024) was originally published in Our Human Family on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Editor’s Letter

I grew weary of whiteness many years ago, but I didn’t expect to grow tired of feminism as I have. How many ways can we — should we — shed our skin?

The fight for gender equality in America — currently called feminism by most, or often white feminism by People of Color — has undergone several iterations over the centuries, and it has waxed and waned in popularity. Yet some aspects haven’t changed much, and they need to evolve if we ever hope to achieve success. More than that, though — we need to re-think what we call success if our goal is truly equality. We need to answer equality for whom and why.

After several decades during which feminism was roundly vilified by the Right and deemed no longer necessary by many women on the Left, the movement roared back to the forefront recently with the 2016 election of Trump, a misogynist and alleged rapist who campaigned on promises to restrict women’s rights. Feminists quickly organized the first annual Women’s March for the day after the presidential inauguration, to a great turnout around the world. Yet almost as quickly, evidence of racism arose within the movement that has continued with each round of protest.

feminism:
1. the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes 2. organized activity on behalf of women’s rights and interests
 — Merriam-Webster

white feminism:
white feminism is an epithet used to describe feminist theories that focus on the struggles of white women without addressing distinct forms of oppression faced by ethnic minority women and women lacking other privileges.
–Wikipedia

This is problematic on numerous levels. For Black women and other Women of Color dealing with racism on a daily basis, certainly. For those of us white women who grew up during the Civil Rights Movement and protested along multiple fronts, this has also been distressing. By 2017, I’d somehow assumed we were further along. I’d gotten complacent and therefore complicit, like too many of us.

Still more white women, however, raised on patriarchal approaches to power — as well as a thick, long-simmering vein of racism — expected Women of Color to simply fall in line behind them. At the very least, many white women, often including those who’d self-identify as allies, failed to understand the depth and breadth of the issue and their role in it.

Meanwhile, the wealth of complaints by Black and Brown women have largely gone unanswered. And the few answers that have come have been fraught with the usual whitesplaining, talking over, and failure to listen. In my local Facebook Women’s March group, I witnessed a shrill and ugly argument between two white women who were each sure that they knew best what Black women would want — without actually consulting one. Nor did it end immediately when a Women’s March leader, a local Black woman, commented. Too many of us cannot figure out when to shut up or learn from our mistakes.

Read the full article at Our Human Family.

NEW THIS WEEK

My Reflections on Racism: An Irish Approach

By Sylvia Wohlfarth

At the end of 2022, I retired from teaching and a few months later left Ireland, where I’d lived for six years, and moved back to Germany, where I’d previously lived for over forty years. My mother was Irish and my father was from Nigeria, where I was born. In the late 1960s, my parents sent me to school in Cork, Ireland. Cork — the real capital of Ireland, by the way, according to the locals — is my mother’s birthplace.

As a retiree in Germany, I expected I’d settle down and concentrate on my writing, and my family and friends. But as it happened, I was asked by the Nano Nagle Place’s Cork Migrant Centre (CMC), the organisation I volunteered with when I lived in Cork, to work with them on a nine-month government-funded anti-racism project.

Currently, the Irish Government plans to support actions to help make Ireland a place in which the impacts of racism are fully acknowledged and actively addressed, and sets out actions and objectives to create a fair, equal, and inclusive society, free of racial discrimination.

Its National Action Plan Against Racism (NAPAR) was launched in 2023. It recognises the importance of meaningful efforts to address racism and its impacts in Ireland. Further, it has recognised that a whole-of-government approach is required to achieve this as racism is a cross-cutting issue that requires action by the Government, public bodies, private bodies, communities, and individuals.

This is a huge endeavour, I know, but in the face of increasing racism steered notably by far-right nationalistic and internationally organised populistic groups set on disruption, and exploiting a disgruntled faction of society, every action to counter their mission is crucial.

Since this is a government-funded project, I had to write a personal statement explaining why I was interested in the job. So, after some reflection on my understanding of racism and the chances of living in a society where skin colour isn’t a defining feature, I submitted the following reflections.

Read the full article at Our Human Family.

ALSO BY OUR WRITERS

Black Women’s Integral Role in the Women’s Suffrage Movement

By Sabrina Bryant

I remember learning about the Women’s Suffrage Movement in junior and senior high school. Instructors taught us how pioneers like Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and other white women fought tirelessly to gain the same voting rights for women as white men.

The assumption has always been that since African Americans were enslaved during that period, they couldn’t possibly have either played any part in the movement or offered any meaningful contributions if they did. But this notion could not be further from the truth.

Throughout the struggle for women’s rights, Black women were always in the trenches with white women and worked just as tirelessly despite facing greater opposition. Yet rarely have their efforts shared the same spotlight as those of their white counterparts.

What follows are the names of a few prominent Black women who were involved in the Women’s Suffrage Movement and their contributions in not only securing the right to vote for all women but Black men, too.

The Beginnings of a Movement

Many Black women found themselves drawn to the women’s rights movement through their work advocating for the abolition of slavery and the Temperance Movement. It was within these groups that many women met, shared ideas, and strategized.

Related: A comprehensive list of African-American women who contributed to the movement.

Read the full article at Our Human Family.

Calling all Poets

As a reminder, Tapestry is a new section of Our Human Family devoted to poetry that celebrates both our similarities and our differences, but most of all our shared humanity — and our first few poems will be available this week! It’s poetry that seeks to recognize the contributions from . . . foster racial equity and allyship for . . . and support inclusion of marginalized people into the beautifully varied fabric that is America. We look forward to reading and sharing your poems, as well!

Final Thought

What’s Wrong with White Feminism? was originally published in Our Human Family on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Guest Editor’s Letter

By stephen matlock

Way back in 2020, a man struggling to regain mastery of his life entered a convenience store to buy something he needed. It’s not clear what happened next because there is no record of the conversation he had with the clerk, nor is there evidence of his alleged behavior. We know a lot about his past, both the good and the bad, but curiously, we do not know exactly what transpired in that convenience store.

But we do know this: he was then accosted by the police, who proceeded to take him down to the ground and kneel on his neck for 9 minutes and 29 seconds until he was dead. He cried out for help to those who had given him life and who had always believed in and loved him. Those who surrounded him as spectators tried to intervene, but the police prevented them. Those who came to help him as trained medical professionals were also denied, and so George Floyd spent the last ten minutes of his life in terror, pleading for his life, with one police officer ensuring his death and three others watching him die.

We know more about those last ten minutes than how most people die at the hands of the police because there were a few people who recorded the events and then shared the unedited, unpolished, un-explained-away video with the world.

That video of Floyd’s death started a fire that circled the world. Protests broke out in many cities, not just in the United States of America but in many other countries, as ordinary citizens, enraged at the ease of inflicting death upon Black people by police who casually choked a man to death, came together en masse to say “Stop! Enough!”

The “Black Lives Matter” movement was part of this protest, and the reaction this time to the acceptable brutality of Black people by the police wasn’t just a shrug or even a prayer of thanks to God for escaping the same fate.

This time, the protest was enough to move the nation. Politicians spoke out against it and started working on laws to prevent this type of police brutality. Faith leaders spoke out against this and began a renewed search to understand how their faith had turned them away from empathy and compassion toward the oppressed. Communities began to investigate their own responses to the lives of Black people in their midst more deeply.

Corporations responded by pledging support for increasing their employment of Black people and increasing their sales outreach to the Black community. Some posted commitments to this and promised to promote Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion, or DEI, going so far as to set up business units whose purpose it was to implement this commitment in their employment, from interviewing and hiring candidates to promotions that acknowledge the reality of holding back Black people by simply choosing white candidates.

Even schools across the nation responded by not just talking about diversity but setting up courses and majors that included an emphasis on DEI.

Read the full article at Our Human Family.

Black History Month 2024

Tapestry Poems

“Frederick Douglass,” A Tapestry poem by Sylvia Wohlfarth

“To All the Beautiful Black Women,” A Tapestry poem by Sherry Kappel

“So Tell Me, What Type of Racist Are You,” A Tapestry Poem by Jesse Wilson

Articles

Anti-Racism 101: Own Your Racism, by Rebecca Berry

Why Black History Month 2024 is the Most Important Ever, by William Spivey

Editorials

Anger, Racism, and Black Women, by Sherry Kappel

Black History Yesterday, Today, and Forever, by Clay Rivers

Newsletters

Anger, Racism, and Black Women In This Issue: Editor’s Letter, “Anti-Racism 101: Own Your Racism,” “Let’s Talk Black Excellence, People,” and a quote by Thurgood Marshall.

Black History Yesterday, Today, and Forever In this issue: Editor’s Letter: “On Black History writ large and small in the world and in our lives,” “Why Black History Month 2024 is the Most Important Ever,” “Are You Old, Daddy?” “More on Black History,” and a quote from Michelle Obama.

Read more on Black History, along with various topics in our Reading List.

What Do You Have to Say About It?

Tired of inequities, inequalities, and racism? Help us eradicate it! Send us your most convincing argument in essay or poetic form. Tell us why Black folks are great! Set the history straight! Describe a life-changing experience! We want to hear it all.

Send your polished drafts to Submissions@ourhumanfamily.org.

Final Thoughts

Renewing in Hope was originally published in Our Human Family on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Editor’s Letter

In the past couple months I was near a couple of racist incidents involving Black women I know, and the incidents made me angry but also got me thinking about anger and how we deal with it.

The first was while shopping with Aisha, my Brazilian daughter, a former exchange student who’s now at Wellesley College on full scholarship but comes home to us for the breaks. She is very smart, as you might guess, with excellent English skills (she actually contributed an essay to Our Human Family’s Fieldnotes on Allyship when she was just seventeen!), and hopes to be a doctor someday. She’s also super kind, sweet, and bubbly.

Our whole family was shopping at a little boutique near my sister’s house in Illinois, each of us wandering around in different areas, and Aisha was bopping between us, looking at this and that. The store has a wide range of unique offerings, and I typically spend several hundred dollars there when we visit. I was already holding several shirts when my husband informed me that Aisha had left to sit outside and wait for us. It seemed a clerk was following her every step and glaring.

We have four Black Brazilian daughters we’ve gone various places with, and while I’ve seen hints of racism I hadn’t seen anything that overt. I think sometimes our white privilege extends to them, but in this case the woman saw her with us, referring to us as Mama and Dad, as she does, and it didn’t matter to the clerk.

We were furious. We dropped our potential purchases and walked out. Aisha, who has twenty-one years of experiencing racism, didn’t seem as upset as I was, but her sense was that the woman didn’t want her in the store.

We wrote a letter, and we won’t going be back.

The second incident was much scarier, although I wasn’t present. For some background, Earnest M. Lee was a Black folk art painter who grew up near Raleigh, North Carolina (where I live) and worked toward an art degree at St. Augustine’s University, an HBCU in town, until the grant program was pulled. He then moved to Florida where he died relatively young. His widow is friends with one of my besties and I also love folk art, so when she came to town to show his work at St. Augustine’s I had to check it out.

Choosing prints to purchase was difficult as Earnest had been very prolific, and many of them reflected sites in the Raleigh-Durham area, including families, farms, houses, forests, streams, and more. I narrowed my options down to a couple of prints and went up to pay, chatting with his wife Gloria, when I spotted a print that was unlike the others: a building and several Black folks engulfed in flames.

Read the full article at Our Human Family.

Anti-Racism 101: Own Your Racism

By Rebecca Berry

You’ve heard all the clapbacks.

“I have lots of Black friends!”

“My neighbours are Indian, they bring us over samosas all the time!”

“My brother is married to a Black man!”

And, of course, everyone’s favourite, “I don’t see colour!”

As if that proves the utter impossibility of their being racist. It’s laughable. It’s insulting. How dare you even suggest it?

People rarely react well when someone points out their racist behaviour. Point out sexist or homophobic behaviour, say, and they’ll try to laugh it off. But racism? We’re outraged. White people are incredibly touchy about being labelled racist. Most of us will declare we’re anti-racist and we’ve been misunderstood. But few of us are genuinely, actively anti-racist. Even fewer embrace anti-racism 101.

The True Foundation of Anti-racism

Approximately 99.9% of well-meaning white people like me approach anti-racism with the goal of being able to declare that we aren’t racist. We recognise that racism is a deeply rooted, centuries-old systemic injustice that has robbed millions of people of dignity, opportunity and life. We want no part in that, so we Do The Work.

Read the full article at Our Human Family.

Let’s Talk Black Excellence, People!

By Sherry Kappel

The increasing hate and bigotry of the past several years has become almost unbearable in America. It’s as if almost half of our fellow Americans have traded in every shred of their integrity — nay, their very humanity — for the right to be openly racist . . . sexist . . . homophobic . . . transphobic . . . xenophobic . . . . If you’re in one of the oppressed groups, I can imagine the added fear and horror, and I’m so sorry. If you’re a straight white person but at all empathetic, and I suspect you are if you’re reading OHF Weekly, it’s heartbreaking.

It’s become so painful that my family has considered moving overseas, but that would be taking advantage of our privilege and so unfair to the groups being targeted, many of whom lack this flexibility. And sadly, where America goes, all too often other countries go, as well. My daughters in Brazil, Italy, Spain, and France (for those who are unaware, we’ve hosted almost a dozen exchange students over the years) have all reported a rise in fascism and bigotry in their countries.

Life has become a delicate balancing act of keeping up with the news so I can be as supportive as possible, while at the same time trying to keep it all to a low roar for my mental health. (I know I’m hardly alone in this, take care of yourselves!)

I lauded the beginning of Pride Month with some my gay and trans friends this past week by running a Love is Love 5K and enjoying our annual Pride Celebration / drag queen show, and for the first time I worried about our safety there . . . wondered whether I shouldn’t have taken two of my daughters (fortunately, it was happy as other years).

At the same time, I was horrified to hear about Ajike “AJ” Owens, a Black mother of four who was shot to death by a white woman through a closed door in front of her child. Worse, the local sheriff debated whether to press charges until it became national news (as is too often the case), and then charged the shooter with manslaughter! This was both murder and a hate crime, people: the killer spewed racist insults at AJ’s children, she knew AJ would be coming to discuss it, she had her gun waiting, and she never even opened the door!

A lot of people just shook their heads and said “Florida,” but let’s not kid ourselves: it could happen in a lot of the fifty states, including my own. And “Stand your ground” laws need to be recognized as the racist excuses for murder they are and removed from the books.

Read the full article at Our Human Family.

Calling all Poets

As a reminder, Tapestry is a new section of Our Human Family devoted to poetry that celebrates both our similarities and our differences, but most of all our shared humanity — and our first few poems will be available this week! It’s poetry that seeks to recognize the contributions from . . . foster racial equity and allyship for . . . and support inclusion of marginalized people into the beautifully varied fabric that is America. We look forward to reading and sharing your poems, as well!

Final Thought

Anger, Racism, and Black Women was originally published in Our Human Family on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We wish you love in all forms warm, engaging, and overflowing, today and everyday. This year we share with you a love poem by the prolific Nikki Giovanni, that focuses on one of the most common manifestations — friendship.

Love one another.

Clay and Sherry
The Our Human Family Editors

A Poem of Friendship

We are not lovers
because of the love
we make
but the love
we have

We are not friends
because of the laughs
we spend
but the tears
we save

I don’t want to be near you
for the thoughts we share
but the words we never have
to speak

I will never miss you
because of what we do
but what we are
together

–Nikki Giovanni

More on Love Our Human Family Style

If you’d like to read more about how love colors everything Our Human Family does, follow the bookmarks below. The first is an article that explains what we do and why, the second leads to the “Love” tag page on OHF Weekly — where all articles related to love can be found, and the third connects to an article on how an active love is the first step in eradicating racism. Enjoy!

• The Simplicity of Equality
• Love
• When America Plays the Race Card

Happy Valentine’s Day! was originally published in Our Human Family on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Editor’s Letter

Black History Month is the time of year when we turn our attention back to our ancestors’ individual and collective accomplishments. When you think of our ignoble circumstances and sinister purpose behind our arrival to these shores in 1619, that we as a people are more than surviving yet less than thriving in America despite the incremental fulfillment of the Constitution’s guarantees is a testament to our fortitude, ingenuity, and character.

As some of you may know, my best friend, Mrs. Adams, recently passed away at the incredible age of 103 years old. The world of 2024 surely would be almost unrecognizable to someone born in 1920 had they not experienced the monumental changes our country has wrought. My friend was front row and center for more than a century of it. Talk about some Black history.

A few years ago, Mrs. Adams agreed to be the subject of a biography, the primary focus of which was to share what it was like to live through times very much like these but still very much the same in terms of the need to maintain her dignity in the face of racism. And there was the whole matter of cultivating a positive outlook in a culture built to denigrate her. We sat down for a few interviews, but ultimately, we shelved the project as she began feeling apprehensive about putting so much of herself out there for the world to read.

As you can imagine, I felt disappointed not being able to share my friend’s wisdom with the world, but nonetheless, I respected her decision and shelved the project.

I’m not fond of funerals, homegoings, memorials, requiems, and the like. I avoid them so much that I’ve already told many of my friends chances are pretty high I will not be attending their interment. My stance is not out of disregard but self-preservation. Funerals take me in an emotional sense to a place I find inordinately tricky from which to escape (more than other people): the land of grief.

But I attended my bestie’s funeral.

Read the full article at Our Human Family.

NEW THIS WEEK

Why Black History Month 2024 is the Most Important Ever

By William Spivey

Black people in America have had their history brutally removed before. We were brought to a strange land and forbidden to communicate in our native tongues. Many weren’t allowed to read or write. One reason was to prevent word of uprisings in other parts of the world, like in Haiti.

Some were allowed to read the Bible and were presented with Christianity as the key to salvation. A slave Bible made its way through the West Indies and America with all the references to revolution and freedom removed. Moses never escaped Pharoah in Exodus in the slave bible. The enslaved were taught to comply and obey.

Black History wasn’t taught to the first arrivals; every effort was made to sever the connections to a land where there were Black Kings and Queens. There were slaves as well, but that slavery was nothing like the chattel slavery practiced in America. Despite efforts to contain it, Black History was passed down by griots in stories and songs. Inconvenient histories were often denied until proven by DNA.

Read the full article at Our Human Family.

Are You Old, Daddy?

By R. Wayne Branch PhD

That was the question our six-year-old twins asked me over breakfast one morning. It was a question that, admittedly, caught me in an existential conundrum. You see, most of my conscious life, I’ve resisted boxes, labels, and carrying bags given to me by other people. Stuff like age, race, and sexual orientation, when assigned to us and owned by us, take away from the whole of our being. The person I am now, the me I allow others to see, and how my soul’s journey defines me within the universe gets encased if I accept the regard created by each box checked. And each box fills our bags with as much apprehension, judgment, and bias as others can heap upon us.

Now let me be upfront; I’m a lot older than most fathers of six-year-old children. I’m seventy-three. Therefore, this is a train I’d been expecting from their birth. I’d even wondered whether hiding from their friends would be better so they wouldn’t be embarrassed or bullied. Still, I was not prepared for the moment’s arrival. And indeed, no one could have predicted it would come wrapped in, or because of, my having cancer!

A few days before the question, we’d told our twins that daddy needed to see his doctors again. Since being diagnosed with cancer in 2022, my treatments have taken me to other cities. The first was for surgery. The second was to find an oncologist to discuss a possible reoccurrence. This time will be for treatments, which means more extended time away from them.

Read the full article at Our Human Family.

More on Black History

The Groveland Four: Omitted from Florida’s Black History Guidelines

The Little-Known History of the Underground Railroad to Mexico

OHF Weekly Reading List

Final Thoughts

Black History Yesterday, Today, and Forever was originally published in Our Human Family on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The latest version of The Color Purple is touted as a “celebration of sisterhood” by some, which is certainly a major theme in the movie, but what still strikes me the most is how sad Celie’s life is for several decades. Unfairly labeled as dumb, ugly, and lazy by her father and then her husband, Celie accepts these labels rather than fighting back like the women around her do when mistreated.

Memes, self-help gurus, and the like will tell you to ignore what others say about you; how you should focus on your virtues and feeling good about yourself. It’s what Shug and Sophia do in the movie and it’s a lovely idea, but the truth is that most of us are influenced by what others say about us — particularly when short, succinct labels are used, and especially when those labels carry sociopolitical implications.

The meaning may vary based on who applies them and to whom. Sometimes they make you feel better, and sometimes worse. They may make you question your values, or simply make you defiant. Oftentimes they’re even self-applied, whether accurate or not. But words are important, and our identities frequently coalesce in reaction to these terms. Having a label makes it seem more . . . real.

You know the words: progressive, liberal, ally, libtard, snowflake, atheist, left-winger, right-winger, religious right, conservative, evangelical Christian, extremist, blowhard, racist, bigot, misogynist, white supremacist, sexist, homophobe, and a few I can’t even type . . . it’s a long list, with new words added regularly.

What Qualifies as “Liberal”?

I am not a fan of labels; as a general rule, I fear their power, but especially that of those listed.

Although I’ve always voted in one direction, I’m a registered independent. As those who follow me know, I’m also not a fan of the term “ally” because too many people do those one or two good deeds and then wear the moniker like a medal forever, a kind of virtue signaling. Being an ally should be an ongoing commitment to helping those who are oppressed or even, at times, endangered, and doesn’t require a label. This isn’t to say you need to commit every waking moment to it, but that one time you spoke out for your one Black friend does not an ally make.

I used to think the term “liberal” was realistic. It requires, at a minimum, generally voting on the Left and supporting individual rights. Believing in gender, race, and LGBTQ equality, if not perhaps also equity, reparations, and the like (which seem to fall more under the umbrella of “progressive” these days — left of the Left, if you will). Liberal means caring about your fellow human beings, regardless of what you have in common, following the example of Jesus and other religious icons, whether the liberal in question is religious or not. Not perfection, because we are human after all, but working to be the best and most fair people we can be.

As the right keeps moving further to the right, however, and as America has become so politicized, people feel the need to declare themselves definitively “right” or “left,” right or wrong, one or the other. Liberal has moved to the middle, and progressive — which would have been labeled common, everyday liberal in the 1960s — is seen as extreme.

Are We What We Say?

The result of these moves disheartens me and dilutes the very heart of liberalism. You can’t really depend on liberals being, well, liberal!

Read the complete article at Our Human Family.

NEW THIS WEEK

Diversifying Citizen Science Projects

By The Conversation U.S.

For this project, outreach through partner groups produced a more representative set of volunteers.

Recruiting participants for a citizen science project produced a more diverse group when people were signed up through partner organizations, such as schools and faith-based organizations, than when they joined on their own. We used this approach to recruit volunteers for Crowd the Tap, a citizen science initiative that crowdsources the locations of lead plumbing in homes.

We signed up 2,519 households through partner organizations, in addition to 497 households that signed up on their own. We recruited households from all fifty states, though the majority came from North Carolina. Our project was initially funded by the Environmental Protection Agency, which led to nationwide sampling, but additional funding from the North Carolina Water Resources Research Institute led to prioritizing sampling in North Carolina.

We recruited 2.2 times more Black participants and 2.3 times more Hispanic or Latino participants through partnerships than we did through individual sign-ups. This allowed us to assemble a group of volunteers that more accurately represented the U.S. population. In addition, 11.2 times more lower-income participants took part in Crowd the Tap through partner organizations than on their own.

Read the complete article at Our Human Family.

The Country That Cried Wolf

By R. Wayne Branch PhD

Humanity, it seems, has gotten to a place where people must prove, often in the face of vile shouts and intimidation, the validity of their experiences. The right to call one’s own experiences what we perceive them to be is not guaranteed. Arguments of reason have been replaced by arguments of extremes. Not to mention, the backdrop often being public forums that have evolved into gauntlets that too often put people in “gotcha” spaces, not of their creation. Mistrust has filtered into our discourse, pushed by agenda-furthering messages. The manipulation of information, a billion-dollar endgame, infects our embrace of shared values. Polarizing postures morph into realities to be defended and defeated. Critical thought is no longer expected, much less valued, modeled, and demanded.

Tragically, people’s life experiences, their joys as well as their traumas, are being defined by agenda-laden extremes. It’s worse than telling rape victims they asked for it. Worse than telling victims of racial injustice they’re playing the “race card.” As a society, we too often marginalize others without regard for who they are as people. We double down when our assertions are countered instead of listening reflectively. Delivering well-crafted “red meat” sound bites to move audiences towards self-affirming cheers echoed from well-hoed ditches is paramount. Messaging, data manipulation, trolling, fake news, and now AI-generated imaging are employed, eclipsing voices coming authentically from places seeking rational decision-making and adult conversations.

Take the hot-button words antisemitism and genocide, for example. Today, these words push people to take sides in a war where daily loss outdistances any prospect of hope.

Read the complete article at Our Human Family.

Calling all Poets to Tapestry!

Tapestry is a new section of Our Human Family devoted to poetry that celebrates both our similarities and our differences, but most of all our shared humanity. It’s poetry that seeks to recognize the contributions from . . . foster racial equity and allyship for . . . and support inclusion of marginalized people into the beautifully varied fabric that is America.

You might remember “Equal People,” a special month-long poetry “series” we ran several times (2020 series); now we’re making poetry a permanent, ongoing part of the publication.

At Our Human Family, we believe people can change when we want to change, when we believe change is possible, and when we know how to change. So we want to give people the tools to become better human beings, the people we were created to be, and poetry is a wonderful way to reach people — whether you’re a reader, writer, or both.

Tapestry’s writers can be of any skin tone, gender, sexual identity, age, nationality, and profession. You can be an avid poet who’s written verse for years, or someone game to give it a shot for the very first time.

What you should share in common with other Our Human Family writers is a love for humanity. You should be familiar with the rich contributions of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color to America.

Submissions will be accepted starting immediately. We look forward to reading and sharing your poems!

Clay Rivers and Sherry Kappel
Editor-in-Chief and Managing Editor of Our Human Family

Liberals, Allies, and Other Misnomers was originally published in Our Human Family on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

2024 marks Our Human Family, Inc.’s sixth year of publishing articles to advocate for racial equity, allyship, and inclusion. It’s hard to believe we’re still at it. It’s exhausting, not at all glamorous, and the pay is . . . well, that’s a story for another day.

So why do we do it? Wait — I can’t speak for our managing editor, Sherry Kappel, or our contributing writers. I’m sure they all have reasons for addressing America’s original sin, reasons that they haven’t shared with me. The better question for me is why I still publish a weekly newsletter about racial equity, allyship, and inclusion when there’s so much racism in the world.

That’s an easy question to answer, and it has two parts. First, I’ve seen up close and in the most personal ways what racism can do.

I know of the death and destruction racism has wrought across the South (the lynching of Emmett Till) and near my hometown (Ocoee Massacre). I’ve learned that the residual effects of decades-old events can poison the present, sabotage the future, and snuff out the promises of the Constitution for Black people.

These will always be the results unless those travesties are acknowledged and righted (Oak Tree Union Colored Cemetery of Taylorville [Groveland, Florida]). Note: These aren’t isolated incidents. American history is littered with attempts to rid the country of Black people.

Read the full article in Our Human Family.

NEW THIS WEEK

How Swahili Became Africa’s Most Spoken Language

By The Conversation U.S.

Once just an obscure island dialect of an African Bantu tongue, Swahili has evolved into Africa’s most internationally recognised language. It is peer to the few languages of the world that boast over 200 million users.

Over the two millennia of Swahili’s growth and adaptation, the moulders of this story — immigrants from inland Africa, traders from Asia, Arab and European occupiers, European and Indian settlers, colonial rulers, and individuals from various postcolonial nations — have used Swahili and adapted it to their own purposes. They have taken it wherever they have gone to the west.

Africa’s Swahili-speaking zone now extends across a full third of the continent from south to north and touches on the opposite coast, encompassing the heart of Africa.

Read the full article at Our Human Family.

Oppression in the Kitchen, Delight in the Dining Room

By The Conversation U.S.

The holidays are here, and among the many treats of the season are chocolate and hot cocoa. While these traditions provide a hefty dose of sugar, there’s a bittersweet side to chocolate’s history, too.

Stratford Hall Plantation in Westmoreland County, Virginia, is a plantation museum where, as a historian, I work as the director of programming and education. The museum ushers in the holiday season with a chocolate program, highlighting Colonial chocolate-making and its historical ties to American enslavement.

This sober look into our nation’s past helps illuminate those whose labor and contributions have been long ignored, and examines the darker attributes of this favorite sweet. There is no better place to set in context the history of chocolate and enslavement than at a plantation where cocoa was processed and served by enslaved laborers.

Read the full article at Our Human Family.

Final Thoughts

Racial Equity, Allyship, and Inclusion in 2024 was originally published in Our Human Family on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Editor’s Letter

From the Supreme Court’s gutting of Affirmative Action and other attacks on civil rights to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, 2023 proved to be a tumultuous year. We culled the articles our readers most read and interacted with for each of the past twelve months. Your favorites include articles by longtime OHF Weekly writers and a few newcomers. Themes of the physical, emotional, and economic costs of racism, its impact, and ways to advocate for racial equity run through these articles.

But two themes in particular dominated our most-read articles: despair and hope. The top article for 2023 came in head and shoulders above the others. Catherine Pugh, Esq.’s “Did Karma Ever Catch the Emmett Till Killers?” takes a frank look back at the lynching of Emmett Till and the fates of the trio responsible for his death. Our second most-read article of 2023, “10 Steps to Being an Ally to Marginalized Groups,” by Sherry Kappel, points out specific actions people can take to jump-start and sustain their activism.

Regardless of where you are in your journey toward equity and equality, each of these articles is worth a read — or reread — for helpful insights into the fight against oppression. We hope you’ll take a look and join us in our ongoing efforts to make this world more equitable. Here’s to 2024!

Love one another.

Clay Rivers
Our Human Family Editor in Chief

Sherry Kappel
Our Human Family Managing Editor

OHF Weekly’s Best of 2023

01 | JANUARY

The Race Massacres They Never Taught Us About in School

By Glenn Rocess

Many would-be allies find themselves in the same place Glenn Rocess once was: informed of only one side of American history, one in which deadly injustices visited upon Black, Indigenous, and People of Color by colonizers are omitted. Rocess’s “The Race Massacres They Never Taught Us in School” deftly recounts his numerous “Wait, what?” moments and subsequent epiphanies when learning of specific race massacres and choosing knowledge or ignorance.

Read the complete article at Our Human Family.

02 | FEBRUARY

With Biases, You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know

By Zhivi Williams

Zhivi Williams is an author we found on Mastodon, and what a great find! In “With Biases, You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know,” Zhivi starts by defining bias and discussing how biases are a normal part of life. We all have them, and many are unconscious; by exposing them, however, we can begin to see how they influence our interactions with others.

Read the complete article at OHF Weekly.

03 | MARCH

What Does It Say about Policing When Five Black Officers Beat a Black Man to Death

By Estacious(Charles White)

In “What Does It Say about Policing,” Estacious(Charles White) asks if Black officers are immune to systemic racism and bias in their work when dealing with young Black males. With keen insight, he takes readers behind the badge for a critical look at the forces some succumb to and others resist. He also takes a look at work that led him to his conclusions.

Read the complete article at Our Human Family.

04 | APRIL

You Can Know Me

By Christienne Leigh Hinz

In Christienne Leigh Hinz’s brilliant essay “You Can Know Me,” she begins by pointing out that many Black people are of the mind that white people can’t understand Black pain. Ironically, she notes, Black survival hinges on understanding white people; she then builds the argument that white folks not only can but must make an effort to understand Black people if they wish to fulfill their moral obligations.

Read the complete article at OHF Weekly.

05 | MAY

Bethany Mandel, Wokeness, Intellectual Dishonesty and Perverted Right Wing Politics

By Elwood Watson, Ph.D.

It is not unusual for someone on the right to distort a word or phrase with racial or other cultural implications. Even so, conservative activist Bethany Mandel took it to a new level when she couldn’t define “woke” in an interview, after writing a book about it. In “Bethany Mandel, Wokeness, Intellectual Dishonesty and Perverted Right Wing Politics,” Black Studies professor and new OHF Weekly/Our Human Family contributor Elwood Watson, Ph.D. explores why these distortions happen.

Read the complete article at OHF Weekly.

06 | JUNE

Moral Bankruptcy: The Hidden Cost of Privilege

By Walter Rhein

Walter Rhein is the product of small-town (read: conservative) Wisconsin and a relative newcomer to OHF Weekly, demonstrating the power of empathy and critical thinking. In “Moral Bankruptcy Due to the Hidden Cost of Privilege,” Walter uses an interaction with his daughter to show the advantages of prioritizing vulnerability over privilege and then extrapolates those learnings to racism.

Read the complete article at Our Human Family.

07 | JULY

Did Karma Ever Catch the Emmett Till Killers?

By Catherine Pugh, Esq.

Prompted by the death of Carolyn Bryant, Catherine Pugh, Esq. revisits the horrific lynching of Emmett Till and the fortunes and ignominy of the three Mississippians responsible for his murder. In “Did Karma Ever Catch the Emmett Till Killers,” Pugh provides a wealth of source material that substantiates the killing of the fourteen-year-old Till as “one of the most open, notorious, and unambiguous episodes of human depravity in our nation’s history.”

Read the complete article at Our Human Family.

08 | AUGUST

There Is But One Fight

By Terra Kestrel

In the deeply personal “There is But One Fight,” Terra Kestrel uses her experiences as a transexual to frame and extend Toni Morrison’s argument that the function of racism is to distract people from the real work of fighting greed and the struggle for power. Focusing on various forms of oppression — such as racism, sexism, homo- or transphobia — keeps us from the singular, more critical goal of tearing down the patriarchy that hurts us all.

Read the complete article at OHF Weekly.

09 | SEPTEMBER

10 Steps to Being an Ally to Marginalized Groups

By Sherry Kappel

The author of this article would — and did — object strenuously to inclusion on this list. But the readership (and the editor-in-chief) held sway in the final decision. With “10 Steps to Being an Ally,” Sherry Kappel, Our Human Family managing editor, has put together a practical, no-nonsense list of actionable and substantial steps white people — or anyone for that matter — can take to facilitate a better understanding of racial equity, allyship, and inclusion.

Read the complete article at Our Human Family.

10 | OCTOBER

The Redux: If Not Now, White Folks, When?

By Clay Rivers

In “The Redux: If Not Now White Folks, When,” Our Human Family editor Clay Rivers observes how Black people need to study the thoughts and actions of white people just to get by in this world, while white people — even very good white people — are often oblivious to even the most prominent forms of racism. Here, he discusses the long road to allyship, its cost, and its many benefits.

Read the complete article at Our Human Family.

11 | NOVEMBER

Losing a White Friend Due to His Racism

By William Spivey

As a follow-up to his article “When My Best Friend Was White,” fan favorite William Spivey addresses a little-discussed conflict more common to interracial friendships: racism. In “Losing a Friend Due to His Racism.” Spivey shares his experience as a Black man reconciling the boundaries of his self-respect with a longtime friend’s freshly revealed racist views about Black people.

Read the complete article at Our Human Family.

12 | DECEMBER

Why Organizations Fail at DEI

By Lecia Michelle 📃

Most of us have been exposed to a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) workshop at one job or another; we sit through a session, promptly forget what we learned, and management does nothing to reinforce it. In “Why Organizations Fail at DEI,” OHF Weekly is excited to welcome back Lecia Michelle 📃 as she explains not only the ways in which organizations fail, but also how they can do better to achieve their goals.

Read the complete article at OHF Weekly.

Final Thoughts

OHF Weekly’s Best of 2023 was originally published in Our Human Family on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Editors’ Letter

With 2024 only a few days away, we wish you and your loved ones a joyous holiday season! We can’t thank you enough for support — be it prayerful, financial, via comments, or even good vibes.

With the launch of our Allyship 101 workshop, we look forward to the possibilities the new year holds for engaging with you in new and more direct ways.

On behalf of everyone at Our Human Family — the Board of Directors, the Editorial Staff, and Curriculum Development Team — we wish you a happy and safe holiday season with your family and other loved ones.

Love one another.

Clay Rivers
Our Human Family Editor in Chief

Sherry Kappel
Our Human Family Managing Editor

New This Week

Increasing Racial Diversity Without Affirmative Action

By The Conversation U.S.

When the Supreme Court outlawed the use of race in college admissions in June 2023, it forced colleges and universities to rethink how to maintain and increase diversity in their student bodies. It’s a topic that political science professor Lauren Foley had been exploring in her new book, “On the Basis of Race: How Higher Education Navigates Affirmative Action Policies.” Below, Foley expounds on what she sees as the future of diversity in higher education now that college admission officials can no longer consider race.

Is racial diversity in higher education about to suffer?

Yes, the likelihood of admission for racial minority students will suffer as a result of the nationwide affirmative action ban in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard. We know this from research done in states with existing affirmative action bans. Courts and ballot initiatives have banned affirmative action state by state in the last three decades. These states include California in 1996, Washington in 1998, Michigan in 2006, Nebraska in 2008 and Arizona in 2010. In 1996, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit in Hopwood v. Texas banned affirmative action across its jurisdiction: Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana.

Read the complete article at Our Human Family.

Final Thoughts

Happy Holidays! was originally published in Our Human Family on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.